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15259866 | /m/03hngjn | Three Days As the Crow Flies | null | null | null | The book opens with Crow Shade, the protagonist, showering and getting dressed for the day. Crow is an African-American who lives in an under-furnished room in a boarding house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. He has an expensive cocaine habit. Withdrawing from the cocaine and desperate for another high, Crow resolves to visit his friend Danny, an artist, and borrow one hundred dollars. He arrives at Danny's apartment/studio only to find it empty. At that point, Crow impulsively decides to steal three of Danny's paintings and sell them for drug money. On his way out of the apartment, Crow also steals the manuscript that Danny has been working on so that he will have something to read on the train to Manhattan. Crow eventually ends up in Astor Place and heads for the sculpture in the square. He makes an unsuccessful attempt to sell the paintings before a white man named Bones Young strikes up a conversation. Bones, the son of a wealthy hippies, sells art. He offers to help Crow sell the paintings. After sharing a cigarette the two men head east to the Lower East Side. When the men arrive in the Lower East Side, they meet up with Candy, an old friend of Bones and a follower of the art scene. The two take him to the art gallery, which had been converted from a bodega. There they meet Geoff, a married straight man who adopts an exaggerated effeminate posture. Geoff racially insults Crow, who pulls his wig off in front of everyone. Crow then tries to leave but Candy stops him and convinces him to stay. Geoff eventually apologizes and offers to host a showing of Crow's work. He also suggests that Crow come up with more paintings as the three he previously showed Geoff aren't enough for a whole shoe. The group eventually end up at Club Chaos and meet up with Melissa. Melissa is a beautiful fifty-something mixed race woman. She gets Crow to recite poetry with her. After Crow leaves she reads his tarot cards, immediately sensing that there is more to Crow's story than she was led to believe. Later that night, Crow spends the night with Candy although they don't have sex. Early the next day, Melissa wakes the two by playing a flute underneath Candy's window. The three head to yet another club from there. Bones and Geoff show up and Bones, who has become jealous of the attention that Candy is showing to Crow, elbows Crow in the back of the head. The two men argue for a bit before Candy and Melissa lead Crow out of the club. The trio catches a cab to Melissa's house, a five story townhouse. The three sleep for a few hours before Melissa wakes Crow up and asks him to paint more paintings for the showing that Geoff arranged for him. Although Crow momentarily worries that he will be found out, he goes downstair in Melissa's studio and, drawing on the information that Danny has imparted to him previously, paints three pictures. Melissa is impressed with them. She arranges to have a friend, Burt, drive her and the others to the gallery for the showing. When Burt shows up, he insults Crow, touching off another tense confrontation. Melissa defuses the situation by chanting an incantation that terrifies Burt. She demands that she turn over the keys to his car and she, Crow, Candy, and Bones, who had previously arrived, head to the gallery. The show is a huge success. All of the paintings are sold and Crow makes six thousand dollars minus commission. He is elated but begins to feel guilty about stealing Danny's art work and resolves to give Danny a cut of the money. Candy, Bones, and Crow then accompany Geoff back to his home in suburban New Jersey (using Burt's car) to help him placate his angry wife. The four then ride back into the city and go to Melissa's house. After getting high again, Crow begins to tire of the non-stop party. Everyone except Bones agrees and they leave Melissa's house. Bones and Crow walk Candy part way home and Crow heads off to Brooklyn. Bones, who does not want to be alone, begs to go along with Crow. Crow reluctantly agrees and the two board the train. Bones falls asleep. When the two men reach Brooklyn, Crow makes several unsuccessful attempts to wake Bones up. He then decides to leave without him, leaving a note under his arm. Deciding to put off going to Danny's house, Crow steps into the Palm Coast Bar, an after-hours spot and notorious drug den. The police raid the bar. Crow is able to throw his drugs on the floor before the police see him snorting up. He is patted down by a police officer who doesn't find anything on him and leads him toward the door to release him. On the way out, he bumps into Sergeant Dobson, an old friend of Crow's late police officer father. Sergeant Dobson expresses sorrow that Crow is using drugs and tells Crow that his mother, who hasn't seen him since Crow's father's funeral, is worried about him. He also shares that his own son died of a heroin overdose. He promises to let Crow go if he agrees to go to rehab. Crow, who had already considered getting clean, agrees and accepts Sergeant Dobson's card. Dobson cuffs him and puts Crow into the cruiser (so that the others don't think Crow informed on anyone) and drop him off in front of his house. Crow then makes his way to Danny's house. He decides to tell the complete truth (as well as turn over Danny's share of the money) and ask for Danny's help in getting clean. |
15262289 | /m/03hnjbj | The Shakespeare Stealer | Gary Blackwood | 5/1/1998 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Fourteen-year-old Widge is an orphan who doesn't even know his real name. Widge's previous master, a clergyman named Dr. Timothy Bright, taught him charactery, a shorthand language, to steal other preachers' sermons. His new master wants to use Widge's shorthand to acquire William Shakespeare's Hamlet, which hasn't been reprinted yet, for himself. Widge is given the assignment to write the play out in shorthand and sets off to London with a companion named Falconer. Falconer is a ruthless man, who is given the job of making sure that the deed is accomplished. During the play performance, Widge is so caught up in the play that before long, all he wants is to know what happens in the play. When he returns for a second try, his notebook is stolen. Widge comes back, posing as a hopeful player. He is accepted into the Lord Chamberlain's Men and, for the first time, feels like a part of a family. However, Falconer constantly presses Widge to steal the play, and Widge must decide between his master and the company. |
15272742 | /m/03hns3y | A Meeting at Corvallis | S. M. Stirling | null | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Mike (Lord Bear) and Signe Havel of the Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie of Clan Mackenzie, travel to Corvallis, a neutral city-state, to convince them to join with them in resisting the PPA. Meanwhile, the Dunedain Rangers have captured a major knight of the PPA leading a band of raiders into their territory and take him to Corvallis for his trial. Sandra Arminger and her servant/assassin Tiphaine, also travel to Corvallis to speak in defense of the PPA. Sandra sends Tiphaine to kill the knight so he can not be used as evidence against the PPA. Tiphaine successfully kills the knight and flees the scene even though she was ambushed by the Rangers. At the Corvallis Faculty Senate, the governing body of Corvallis originally composed of professors from Oregon State University, the allied forces are unable to convince Corvallis to side against the PPA; but they are successful in getting Corvallis to recognize the Dunedain Rangers. Months later, Lord Protector Norman Arminger finally begins his war against the Bearkillers, Mount Angel, and Clan Mackenzie. Arminger divides his forces into three armies and dispatches them to destroy the three factions. While Corvallis refuses to help, two thousand Corvallis volunteers arrive to reinforce the Bearkillers and help them win their battle against Protectorate forces. The Central Oregon Ranchers Association also pitches in, sending a few hundred light cavalrymen to help the MacKenzies break the siege of Mount Angel. The remaining Protectorate forces regroup and retreat back to PPA territory. Rudi Mackenzie (the son of Juniper Mackenzie and Mike Havel), is captured in a PPA raid to free Princess Mathilda Arminger, and Sandra entrusts him to Tiphaine. Tiphaine takes the two children to her castle, where she holds them. Norman Arminger, however, decides to have Rudi captured and tortured, and sends one of his knights to collect him. A Ranger rescue mission to free Rudy, led by Astrid Larsson, arrives during the skirmish between the PPA factions, but Tiphaine is already victorious. Tiphaine had sworn vengeance on Astrid for killing Tiphaine's lover, Katrina, but Rudi and Mathilda persuade Astrid to leave Tiphaine alive and the women abandon their vendetta. Astrid and the Rangers leave with Rudi, leaving Mathilda with Tiphaine. The war breaks out again and this time the PPA has massed its entire army for one decisive battle. Ten thousand PPA lancers, spearmen and crossbowmen take the field against the combined allied army. Lord Bear Mike Havel, feeling that the allies may lose the battle, publicly challenges Arminger to a personal duel. Arminger, with rebellions back home and knowing that looking weak in front of his nobles would destroy his nation, accepts the challenge. Havel and Arminger meet each other in single combat with lances, swords, and daggers, and after a long fight, Havel slays Arminger with a dagger thrust. Havel, however, was fatally wounded during the battle and after giving his final orders and messages to his family and closest friends he dies. With both leaders dead, the PPA forces begins to break up and return to home. Sandra Arminger negotiates a truce with Juniper MacKenzie and the remaining Bearkiller leaders. They decide on an annual meeting to be held at Corvallis, a peace treaty, and agree that Princess Mathilda and Rudi Mackenzie would spend a few months each year in PPA and MacKenzie territory until they reach adulthood. Soon after, Mike Havel's funeral is held in Bearkiller territory. At the end of the book, Juniper has a vision during a Wiccan ceremony of an adult Rudi leading a massive army that is shouting his craft name "Artos". |
15273424 | /m/03hnssk | Double Solitaire | Melinda M. Snodgrass | 1992-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In a previous volume Dr Tachyon had found his personality placed in the body of a pregnant teenage girl by his evil grandson Blaise. Blaise flees with Tachyon's body to Tachyon's home planet Takis. Determined to recover his body Tachyon and his friends Popinjay and Cap'n Tripps purchase travel on an alien spaceship and head to Takis. While there they have to fend off an attack by an alien race, in the course of which one of Cap'n Tripps' personas is killed. |
15275289 | /m/03hntx3 | Owen Glendower | null | null | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Rhisiart arrives at Dinas Bran, in the company of fellow-travellers including Brut and a group of monks led by the Abbot of Caerleon, to find himself embroiled in a struggle between the local authorities, who are about to burn "Mad Huw", a local friar who preaches that King Richard II of England is still alive, and those trying to prevent the burning. Mad Huw’s chief protector is a teenage girl, Tegolin, known as the "Maid of Edeyrnion", and Rhisiart immediately becomes infatuated with her. Having succeeded in preventing the burning, Rhisiart is approached by Meredith, the son of Owen Glendower, who invites him and his fellow-travellers to Owen’s stronghold at Glyndyfrdwy. They arrive there, in the company of Father Rheinalt (Tegolin’s natural father) and Father Pascentius from the nearby abbey of Valle Crucis, in time to save the life of Gruffydd Young, who has been captured and mistaken for a spy by Owen’s men. At Glyndyfrdwy they meet Owen’s wife (the “Arglwyddes”) and his eldest son, Griffith (Gruffudd ab Owain Glyndŵr), but Rhisiart is particularly taken with Owen’s young daughter, Catharine. After feasting and entertainment, they witness the death of the bard Iolo Goch. With his last breath, the bard predicts Owen’s rebellion. The monks, Rhisiart, Brut, Mad Huw, Master Young and a few other chosen individuals are summoned by Owen to give their opinions on the best course of action. During the meeting, a messenger arrives from the Pope in Rome. The following day, Rhisiart learns that the papal messenger has taken word of the proposed rebellion to Owen’s enemies, and Owen must act quickly. He has agreed to the Church’s demand that he give up Tegolin, Mad Huw, and a young woman named Alice, a former servant at Ruthin who has been captured by Owen’s men. Owen has refused to give up Walter Brut, but Brut insists on accompanying the others to Valle Crucis, and Rhisiart goes with them, gradually finding himself strangely attracted to Alice. The abbot of Valle Crucis, though sympathetic to their plight, allows the hostages to be taken into custody at Rhisiart’s ancestral castle of Dinas Bran, now the home of Tegolin’s mother, Lowri, and grandmother, the Lady Ffraid. On arrival at the semi-ruined castle of Dinas Bran, Rhisiart is taken into the custody of Adda, the elderly seneschal, who shows him a famous relic, the so-called “sword of Eliseg”. He is introduced to more of the castle’s female residents, including the mysterious Luned, her friend Efa (a teenage girl who has volunteered to be sacrificed as the “bride of Derfel”), and the dwarf Sibli. All three wait on Lowri’s mother, Ffraid ferch Gloyw, in her tower room. Rhisiart comes close to being seduced by Lowri, but she departs shortly after his arrival, with her lover Denis Burnell, the constable of the castle. Rhisiart and Brut are held hostage in the castle for three months, until Lowri and Denis return. Rhisiart makes an assignation with Lowri, but after he and Sibli eavesdrop on her and her ex-husband, Simon (now a prisoner at the castle), he realises that Lowri feels nothing for him and is making use of him in a perverted game she is playing with Simon. Soon afterwards the castle receives an unexpected visit from a party including Harry Hotspur and the young Prince of Wales, Henry of Monmouth (the future King Henry V of England). With them are monks from Valle Crucis, one of whom turns out to be Owen Glendower in disguise. Owen reclaims the hostages and takes them to Glyndyfrdwy, where he is proclaimed Prince of Wales by his followers. Chief among these is Crach Ffinnant, “the Scab”, a self-proclaimed prophet who follows the rule of St Derfel. Owen is expected to take Efa as his ceremonial “bride”, but instead he takes her to the home of his friend, the miller, Broch o’Meifod. Rhisiart, newly appointed Owen’s secretary, accompanies them. The miller’s wife, upset by her husband’s decision to join Owen’s rebellion, puts a curse on him, saying that he will only be successful as long as he destroys and kills, but will fail when he tries to rebuild. Almost two years pass, and Rhisiart continues to serve Owen as secretary, whilst beginning a romance with Owen's daughter Catharine. Owen, though aware of their relationship, has other plans for his daughter, as a potential pawn in the political game. After Adda is brutally murdered with the sword of Eliseg by the son of Lord Grey of Ruthin, attitudes towards the English harden. At the Battle of Pilleth, Owen is wounded but the Welsh are victorious against an army led by Edmund Mortimer. Rhisiart is horrified by the desecration of dead English bodies by a group of women led by Lowri. Mortimer, left unransomed by the English king, agrees to a marriage with Catharine that will give Owen the assistance of both the Mortimer and Percy dynasties. Rhisiart makes plans to elope with Catharine, but she refuses, choosing to obey her father's wishes. A further two years go by, and the narrative passes over the Battle of Shrewsbury and the death of Hotspur. Brut has married Alice, and the marriage of Catharine and Mortimer appears successful. Owen is tempted by prophecies he has heard about the crowning of a great king by a girl in armour, and toys with the idea of using Tegolin for this purpose. He continues to negotiate the Tripartite Indenture with Hotspur's father, the Earl of Northumberland, and receives ambassadors from King Charles VI of France. One of these, Gilles de Pirogue, is interrupted by Rhisiart and Father Pascentius in the process of torturing a dog and an elderly Jew, with the encouragement of Lowri and Sibli. Rhisiart's intervention causes a diplomatic incident. Owen signs the Tripartite Indenture, despite the news of a defeat for his forces in the north and the fatal injuries to his trusted "captain", Rhys Gethin (Lowri's current lover). He is obliged to punish Rhisiart for his offence to the French ambassador, and is about to banish him from the court at Harlech Castle when the other ambassador intervenes, ensuring that Rhisiart can remain in service when Owen's parliament meets. Rhisiart, Brut, Mad Huw and Father Rheinalt are scandalized when Owen forces Tegolin to appear before the assembled troops wearing golden armour, and they prepare to oppose the prince's scheme to take her into battle with him. Through their intervention, and that of his own son Meredith, Owen is persuaded to alter his plans, and gives Tegolin to Rhisiart in marriage. Following the ceremony, Rhisiart foils an assassination attempt by Dafydd Gam at the chapel door. Rhisiart and Tegolin are sent with an army to relieve the prince’s forces on the Usk, and the focus of the action shifts to Owen himself. He banishes the interfering Father Pascentius from the castle, but decides to release Dafydd Gam, who in his superstition has concluded that Owen is protected by powerful spirits and now wishes to serve him. Owen’s other followers, initially suspicious of Gam, are horrified when, during a pilgrimage to the shrine of Derfel, Crach Ffinnant is apparently killed by Gam in a mysterious “accident” arranged with Efa’s collusion. On top of the news of Crach Ffinnant’s death comes word that Owen’s armies on the Usk have been defeated. Owen’s own brother has been killed, as has his loyal supporter, the Abbot of Caerleon. Rhisiart and Tegolin have been taken prisoner, along with Owen’s eldest son Griffith. The Arglwyddes rebukes her husband in front of his remaining followers. With Rhys Gethin on his deathbed, Lowri, driven mad by the turn of events, murders her ex-husband Simon. As Harlech Castle fills with confusion and discontent, Denis Burnell and Sir John Oldcastle arrive to visit Owen. As they stand on the shore conversing with Broch, they witness the approach of two ships: one from France and another from Anglesey, the latter carrying Efa’s fiancé, a member of the Tudor family with whom Owen is allied. An English pirate ship attacks the French vessel, and Owen and Broch plunge into the sea to rescue what they take to be a Frenchman. It turns out to be a chimpanzee, sent as a gift for Owen by the French king. While they are recovering from their ordeal, a messenger arrives to tell them that a French army has landed safely in Milford Haven. Broch makes the decision to leave Owen and return to his family. A few months later, Rhisiart and Brut are prisoners in the city of Worcester when Owen arrives at the head of a large army, having recovered many of his losses with the aid of the French. Lacking reliable military advisors, he delays the decision to storm the city until it is too late, and is forced to retreat. This part of the narrative is seen partly through the eyes of the young herald, Elphin. Owen has been allowed a visit from Tegolin, who tells him that, by sleeping with the custodian, she has been able to obtain a guarantee that Rhisiart's life will be spared. She gives Richard a phial containing a colourless liquid which she claims is "certain death". The two prisoners are interviewed by King Henry and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Rhisiart is condemned to the Tower of London and Brut to be burned at the stake. Rhisiart, in order to prevent his friend's suffering, tricks him into drinking the contents of the phial, and Brut dies instantly. The action moves forward to 1416. Owen's rebellion is over, and Catharine's son Rhisiart Mortimer is being cared for by Elphin, now known as "Father Sulien". Henry V is now on the throne, young Rhisiart's parents are both dead, and his godfather Rhisiart is at liberty. The boy tells Elphin/Sulien of a hermit who lives on a nearby mountain, and the two go to the hermit's cave to find that it is Broch. With him is Owen, now an old and sick man, and the prince is reunited with his grandson. Rhisiart ab Owen arrives in the company of Lord Talbot, sent by the new king to offer a pardon to Owen. Owen, using what seems to be magic, appears in a vision to both Rhisiart ab Owen and young Rhisiart Mortimer. By the time they reach his mountain retreat, he is dying, and passes away just at the moment the pardon is about to be bestowed, causing Rhisiart ab Owen to cast the document into the fire. The insult to the king's message prompts a formal but non-fatal duel between Rhisiart and Talbot, which Rhisiart wins. The book ends with Owen's son, Meredith, returning from his father's cremation. There is an atmosphere of optimism about the future of Wales. The fates of the remaining major characters are made known in the course of the epilogue: Dafydd Gam is "ransomed" but remains Owen's servant; the ransom money is used to help construct Owen's last remaining hiding places, and Gam is later killed in the king's French wars. Mortimer dies before Harlech is taken, his wife Catharine is taken prisoner and dies of plague while in captivity, along with her daughters. Sibli leaps to her death from the battlements of the castle when it is taken by the English. Meredith is pardoned by the king and goes to live quietly with his wife, though they have no children. Elliw's father, Rhys Ddu, is killed during the taking of Aberystwyth Castle, an event for which Elliw blames Owen. Lowri has returned to live with Denis Burnell at Dinas Bran. Mad Huw died at about the same time as Master Shore, the man with whom Tegolin was living. Tegolin and Rhisiart have a daughter, Catharine, and are due to be reunited at last, just as the book ends. |
15275504 | /m/03hnv18 | The Liars' Club | null | 1995 | {"/m/016chh": "Memoir"} | The book tells the story of Karr's troubled childhood in a small Texan town in the early 1960s. Using a non-linear storyline she describes the troubles of growing up in a family and town where heavy alcohol abuse and psychological problems are common issues. |
15278931 | /m/03m3yzs | My Life as a Traitor | Zarah Ghahramani | 2007-12 | null | The biography focuses on analysing the life of the author, Zarah Ghahramani and her imprisonment in the infamous Evin Prison. After taking part in student demonstrations at Tehran University, Ghahramani was taken, by police, from the streets of Tehran and put into this prison, where she was tortured and beaten. When in Prison, she was subject to not only beatings, but psychological torture, only retaining her sanity via scratching messages to fellow prisoners. She is kept in the prison for almost one month, and is released after being driven to a distant desert outside of Tehran, where, at the time, she was unsure of her fate and whether or not she would be executed or released. |
15279338 | /m/03hnxph | The Sight | David Clement-Davies | 6/7/2002 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | At the beginning of the novel, a Dragga (the term a wolf uses for the dominant male of a pack) named Huttser, and his mate, the Drappa (The term for dominant female), Palla, seek a cave in the side of a mountain in which Palla had grown up, and where she can nurse the pups that were growing in her womb. They are trying to find this cave in order to raise their cubs in secret from Morgra, Palla's evil half-sister. Many dark rumors have cropped up around Morgra, and some say that she is afflicted with a feared power known as the Sight. Morgra has dark intentions for the wolf pack, which revolve around a legend which brings the wolves together with their most feared enemy: Man. The family experiences trying times and survives through death, sorrow, and pain to stand against Morgra and her hatred. But is their love enough to survive through a prophecy that promises the enslavement of all earth's creatures? Does Morgra win or does the family pull through with their life saving quest to save the ways of the wolf win to have freedom from the sight? |
15279566 | /m/03hnxv_ | The Film Club | David Gilmour | 2007-09 | null | David Gilmour allowed his 15-year-old son Jesse to stop going to school without getting a job under the condition that they watch three films each week together. They go by their film schedule for three years while discussing them with each other. During this time, Jesse has trouble with the influence of drugs and his girlfriend. By the book's completion, Gilmour works harder and Jesse tries to live successfully. |
15285623 | /m/03hp1x1 | A stranger came ashore | Mollie Hunter | 1975 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | One night on Black Ness, the Hendersons are sitting at home in their but-and-benhouse. There is a heavy storm outside. Then a figure bursts through the door, soaking wet. He is tall, lean and handsome, and calls himself Finn Learson, and he claims to be the only survivor of a shipwreck. The Hendersons trust and help him, except the youngest child, Robbie, his Old Da (grandfather), and his dog Tam, who are suspicious of Finn. Old Da takes an instant dislike to Finn, and Robbie also senses the man is not what he seems. Later that night, when the family have retired to bed, Robbie cannot sleep and hears peculiar noises coming from the main room, where Finn Learson and the dog, Tam, are sleeping. Robbie ventures to peek around the door, and is horrified to see that Tam is crouched low to attack Learson, but Learson gazes deep into the dog's eyes... sending Tam into a calm sleep. Robbie is appalled but hides what he has seen. Old Da mysteriously dies not long after, but before he does he warns Robbie not to trust Finn. He reminds Robbie of stories of selkies, sea spirits which are seals in the water, but are able to shed their seal skin on dry land, and appear as beautiful seductive humans. Robbie remembers stories about the Great Selkie, the malign ruler of the selkies, who dwells in his sea-palace and seduces golden-haired girls away with him to his home under the sea. Every so often, the Great Selkie returns to find another human bride, as each bride he abducts dies whenever she tries to escape his clutches; he then uses their golden hair to roof his palace. Robbie begins to fear for his elder sister, Elspeth, who is golden-haired, very beautiful and entranced by Finn Learson. Robbie becomes convinced that Finn is the Great Selkie, but his family does not believe him. Elspeth states that she will choose one man, Finn or Nicol,(Nicol, who was her man before Finn Learson came ashore) to marry her on the celebration night of Up Helly Aa. Robbie goes to the schoolmaster, Yarl Corbie, for help. Yarl has been accused of being a wizard. Yarl reveals that Finn is indeed the Great Selkie, that he knew all along, and that Finn will try to tempt Elspeth to join him under the sea, as he did with Yarl's fiancee many years before. They trap Finn and fight. Yarl uses his magic to morph into a raven, pulling out one of Finn's eyes. Finn, revealed as the Great Selkie, flees back into the sea in his seal form. He can still hunt fish with his remaining eye, but he can no longer return ashore to tempt girls away with him, as without an eye, he is no longer handsome. |
15286333 | /m/03hp2nh | Death is my Trade | null | null | null | The story begins in 1913, when Lang is 13 years old. His parents give him a harsh catholic education, to which he reacts badly. His unstable father, with whom the young Lang has an awkward relationship, wants him to become a priest. At the age of fifteen, Lang starts a military career which leads in 1943 to the post of commandant of Auschwitz. At first a concentration camp, later an extermination camp, the camp, near town of Auschwitz, was the site of the “slow and clumsy creation of a death factory”. Lang works hard to achieve his mission: to kill as many Jews as possible, disposing of the bodies as efficiently as possible. |
15287149 | /m/03hp3lb | Man and Boy | Tony Parsons | 1999 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | Harry Silver is a successful television producer about to turn 30. He is happily married, has a four-year-old son and drives a convertible sports car. Then he spends the night with a colleague from work and his life falls apart; his wife leaves him and emigrates to Japan, he loses his job and he has to cope with being a single parent... While coping with the stress of being a single parent, he meets another woman at a coffee shop, a woman whom he has already met with her child, then they apart Harry finds a new job and eventually moves on with his life. |
15290077 | /m/03hp693 | Waiting for The Rain | Sheila Gordon | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | When the book begins, Tengo and Frikkie are two young boys on Oom Koos's farm. Frikkie visits on holidays to escape the grinding boredom of the school term, and Tengo lives there with his family. Over time, Tengo comes to see more and more that their friendship is hesitant and tenuous due to the imposing laws of Apartheid, and wants to know more. He cannot understand why Frikkie does not like school when there is so much to learn. He desperately wishes to go to the city and get an education. To quench his thirst for knowledge, Selina asks for books from Mrs. Miller. Tengo receives them and loves them, but they only make him want to know more. Over the course of this book, Tengo is also learning more about Apartheid and how it functions. His cousin Joseph, who lives in the squalid township of Johannesburg, visits one day and tells Tengo of the evils that must be faced every day there. Tengo's eyes are opened after this conversation, and through several more events, he is determined to go to Johannesburg to get an education. He gets permission and leaves for the city. He finds that the city is smelly and noisy like Frikkie said it would be. In Part Two, Tengo becomes a much more active member in the fight against the white regime. About four years later than Part One, Part Two details more closely on Tengo's life in Johannesburg, and only briefly visits Frikkie as he is serving his mandatory term in the army. Tengo is receiving tutoring from Rev. Gilbert, and living with the Millers for a time. Soon, however, more and more protests break out in response to stricter rules set by the white government, and Tengo's school is shut down. He now has a choice to make: should he choose education and try to matriculate to college, or join the demonstrations against Apartheid? He wants to continue his education, but does not see how this is possible - at least, not until Joseph returns and offers him a chance to go overseas and be schooled. As Tengo tries to make the decision, the army is sent out to stop the erupting riots, and Frikkie arrives in Johannesburg as an enemy to Tengo and his fellow blacks. *Oubaas means "old master"; Frikkie's uncle. *Kleinbaas - "young master"; Frikkie is referred to as this by the black people who work on Oom Koos' farm. *Kaffir - a derogatory term directed at native South Africans. Similar to Nigger as used in the USA. Literally translated from Arabic, Kuffar means "non-believer". *Piccanin - a slightly derogatory term meaning one who is young and/or foolish. *Kraal - Small villages of mud huts for the blacks to live in. |
15300781 | /m/03m422r | Hotel for Dogs | Lois Duncan | null | null | Andi Walker is a girl who does not want to move to her animal-allergic great-aunt Alice because to do so would mean having to say goodbye to her beloved dog Bebe. Regardless of this, she is forced to go. However, shortly after the move, she finds a stranded dog and wishes to keep her. Andi's mother vetoes this idea, so, along with her older brother Bruce, she keeps the dog (who she names "Friday") and her pups in an abandoned house across the street. After a while, Andi and Bruce allow in three more partners, Tim, Debbie, and Annabel and eight more dogs: Red Rover (an Irish Setter who ran away from his abusive owner and Bruce's enemy, Jerry Gordon), MacTavish (an abandoned dog), Preston (a paying tenant), and five "Bulldales". In the end, their expenses overwhelm them, and they are discovered by their father, mother, and aunt. During a final scene, Jerry's wickedness is revealed to his ignorant father, Red Rover, Sadie, and Bebe return home with the Walkers, MacTavish is adopted by Tim, the Bulldales find a home, and Andi's writing is finally published. Sequel: A book sequel, called News for Dogs, was released May 1, 2010. |
15302610 | /m/03m43pz | Jangloos | Shaukat Siddiqui | null | null | The novel tells the story of two prisoners, Lali and Raheem Dad who escaped from the jail. The story is created in the backdrop of central Punjab (Pakistan). |
15302986 | /m/03m43_8 | The Blessing | Nancy Mitford | 1951 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | It is set in the post-war World War II period and concerns Grace, an English country girl who moves to France after falling for a dashing aristocratic Frenchman named Charles-Edouard who lusts after other women. Their son Sigi aims to keep his parents apart by engineering misunderstandings. |
15307450 | /m/03m49cq | The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep | Hans Christian Andersen | null | null | Two china figurines (a shepherdess and a chimney sweep) stand side by side on a table top. They are in love. Their romance is threatened, however, by the carved mahogany figure of a satyr called "General-clothes-press-inspector-head-superintendent-Goat-legs" living on a nearby cabinet who wants the shepherdess for his wife. The satyr importunes a porcelain Chinaman on the table (who considers himself the shepherdess' grandfather) to give his consent to the marriage. When the Chinaman agrees to the union, the shepherdess and the chimney sweep flee, clambering down a table leg to the floor. They hide in a toy theater, and, when they emerge, discover the Chinaman has fallen to the floor in attempting to pursue them. The lovers then climb with great difficulty through a stove pipe to the roof, sustained in their flight by a star shining high above them. When the shepherdess reaches the rooftop and gazes upon the world before her, she takes fright at its vastness, and wants to return to the table top. The chimney sweep tries to dissuade her, but, as he loves her greatly, he finally accedes to her wishes and guides her back to the table top. There, the two discover the Chinaman has been repaired in such a way that he cannot press the shepherdess to marry the satyr. The lovers are safe at last. |
15308087 | /m/03m4b5z | Umrao Jaan Ada | Mirza Hadi Ruswa | 1899 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Umarao Jaan is born as Amiran () to a modest family in Faizabad. After the criminal Dilawar Khan is released from jail he decides to get revenge as her father witnessed against him in court. Khan kidnaps Amiran and decides to sell her in Lucknow. She is imprisoned with another girl, Ram Dai, but the two are separated when Dilawar Khan takes her to Lucknow. There she is sold for 150 rupees to Khanum Jaan, the head tawaif of a kotha. She is renamed Umrao and begins to study classical music and dance. Together with the other apprentice tawaif and Gauhar Mirza, the mischievous illegitimate son of a local Nawab, she is taught to read and write in both Urdu and Persian. As Umrao grows up, she is surrounded by a culture of luxury, music and poetry. She eventually gains her first client, (earning her the suffix of jaan) but prefers the impoverished Gauhar Mirza, her friend. Umrao Jaan attracts the handsome and wealthy Nawab Sultan. The couple fall in love, but after a jealous customer tries to start a fight with Nawab Sultan, he shoots him and the jealous customer Zabardast Khan dies. He no longer comes to the kotha and Umrao Jaan must meet him secretly, by the help of Gauhar Mirza. As Umrao Jaan continues to see Nawab Sultan and also serve other clients, she supports Gauhar Mirza with her earnings. A new client, the mysterious Faiz Ali, showers Umrao Jaan with jewels and gold, but warns her not to tell anyone about his gifts. When he invites her to travel to Farrukhabad, Khanum Jaan refuses so Umrao Jaan must run away. On the way to Farrukhabad, they are attacked by soldiers and Umrao Jaan discovers that Faiz is a dacoit and all of his gifts have been stolen goods. Faiz Ali escapes with his brother Fazl Ali and she is imprisoned, but luckily one of the tawaif from Khanum Jaan's kotha is in the service of the Raja whose soldiers arrested her so Umrao Jaan is freed. As soon as she leaves the Raja's court, Faiz Ali finds her and gets her to come with him. He is soon captured and Umrao Jaan, reluctant to return to Khanum Jaan, sets up as a tawaif in Kanpur. While she is performing in the house of a kindly Begum, armed bandits led by Fazl Ali try to rob the house, but leave when they see that Umrao Jaan is there. Then Gauhar Mirza comes to Kanpur and she decides to return to the kotha. Umrao Jaan performs at the court of Wajid Ali Shah until the Siege of Lucknow forces her to flee the city for Faizabad. There she finds her mother, but is threatened by her brother who considers her a disgrace and believes she would be better off dead. Devastated, Umrao Jaan returns to Lucknow now that the mutiny is over. She meets the Begum from Kanpur again in Lucknow and discovers that she is actually Ram Dai. By a strange twist of fate Ram Dai was sold to the mother of Nawab Sultan and the two are now married. Another ghost of Umrao Jaan's past is put to rest when Dilawar Khan is arrested and hung for robbery. With her earnings and the gold that Faiz Ali gave her, she is able to live comfortably and eventually retires from her life as a tawaif. |
15311113 | /m/09mv9c | The Magicians | John Boynton Priestley | 1954 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The main character, Sir Charles Ravenstreet, is an industrialist in his mid-fifties, the Managing Director of the Birmingham-based New Central Electric Company. At a meeting of the Board in London, he finds himself unexpectedly voted out of his position. He turns down an offer to be named Production Manager instead, and later rebuffs the Chairman's suggestion that he enter politics. Later that evening, at a dinner party at Mr Garson's house, he is introduced to Mavis Westfret, a youngish widow. He sells his stock for £200,000 and begins to frequent fashionable restaurants and clubs, but they bore him, and he starts going out with Mavis. After a sexual encounter, she bursts into a sobbing confession of her dissatisfaction with her life, both past and present. The next evening he goes, on the suggestion of an acquaintance named Karney and his friend Prisk, to meet the newspaper tycoon Lord Mervil, who has a new business proposition for him. The proposition concerns a new drug called Sepman Eighteen, which produces a mild euphoria. Initially suspicious, Ravenstreet tries a sample back at his club bedroom, and it makes him so cheerful that he telephones at once to ask for another meeting. The week after, Ravenstreet is driving to his country house, Broxley Manor, when he sees the crash of a jet fighter a few miles ahead. An inn called The White Horse has been destroyed; the only survivors are a barman named Perkins, and three elderly male guests: Wayland, Perperek and Marot. The three men strike him as harmless cranks, and Ravenstreet suggests that they stay with him at his house. On their arrival, Perperek goes straight to the kitchen, waves away Ravenstreet's housekeepers, and starts making goulash for dinner. While he prepares it he perplexes his host by claiming that he and his friends knew in advance that the jet would crash, but that no-one would listen to them. At dinner the three men assert that they are magicians, and although Ravenstreet will not discuss his recent meeting with the tycoon, he is sufficiently intrigued by their manner that he allows Marot to "show him his past." He finds himself reliving, in full, an afternoon from September 1926, when he was on holiday with his girlfriend at a cottage on Pelrock Bay. The day is a turning-point in his life, as it is the day on which he received a letter calling him back to work early, finally prompting him to break with Philippa in order to marry the boss's daughter Maureen. Philippa realises what is happening, but Ravenstreet is resolutely dishonest, and his future self finds the experience a torment, particularly as the decision turned out to be a poor one. Ravenstreet approaches the trio the next morning, and, still somewhat sceptical, asks for more information. They are reluctant to talk in detail, but say that superhuman forces are battling for control of humanity's destiny, and they succeed in persuading Ravenstreet to reveal that his dealings with Lord Mervil concern a new drug. Prisk telephones, wanting him to meet Ernest Sepman, the inventor, at his home. The magicians ask Ravenstreet to hold the next meeting at Broxley Manor so that they can inspect Lord Mervil and his associates. Ravenstreet drives to Cheshire and finds Sepman to be a bitter, cynical and greedy man who idolises his serially unfaithful wife Nancy, even while she boldly flirts with Prisk. Ravenstreet manages with difficulty to arrange a meeting at Broxley Manor. At first, Karney and Lord Mervil are furious at finding other guests in the house, but soon accept the magicians as harmless cranks, and during dinner they find themselves speaking with unusual frankness about their views. Lord Mervil asserts the necessity of a hidden elite in every society and Sepman loudly denounces him, in an outburst which causes his wife to run from the room with Prisk in tow. After dinner, the situation spirals out of Ravenstreet's control. Perperek announces that he has seen Karney somewhere before -- in 1921, in a police station in Constantinople, charged with smuggling. The revelation causes the ultra-respectable Karney to flee in irrational panic. Lord Mervil demands to know who the three strangers really are; Wayland humiliates him and somehow prompts a decompensation which ends in his fainting. When Prisk returns with Nancy, Sepman rounds on her and forces her to admit her unfaithfulness, and they both leave at once in Sepman's car. Ravenstreet pursues in his Rolls, accompanied by Perperek, but he is too late: the Sepmans are dead, having driven at high speed into a quarry. The entire night is spent talking to police. When they return, Wayland gives the exhausted Ravenstreet another vision, of the happiest morning of his life, in the summer of 1910. When he wakes up, he finds that Lord Mervil and his associates have left, and that he has been called to the Birmingham factory to help with a technical difficulty. He talks to the foreman, Tom Hurdlow, and surprises him by agreeing to finance his son's new business. When he returns home he finds that he and Perperek have been ordered to an inquest on the Sepmans' deaths. The inquest, presided over by a self-important coroner named T. Brigden Coss, descends into farce when Perperek is called as a witness. Perperek is charged with contempt of court, and taken to the police station. When the inquest is over, Ravenstreet hurries to the station with Inspector Triffett, where they find all the policemen aphasic and Perperek missing. All three magicians have left Broxley Manor, leaving only a cryptic note from Wayland. Not long afterwards, Ravenstreet is called to Purchester Cottage Hospital on the request of a Mrs Slade, who turns out to be the betrayed Philippa, now on the point of death. Wayland's letter gains meaning when Philippa informs him that one of her sons is also his, and that the two children he saw in the waiting room are his grandchildren. |
15316107 | /m/03m4p82 | Kiss | Jacqueline Wilson | 11/10/2007 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Sylvie and Carl have been friends since they were little. They have called themselves boyfriend and girlfriend since they were small and Sylvie has always believed they would end up married. As they start high school, Carl drifts further and further away from Sylvie. One day, she wanders into the girls' bathrooms and finds Miranda, the most popular girl in school, there. Miranda asks Sylvie to go to her party after finding out about Sylvie's "boyfriend", whom she has taken a shine to, even though they haven't met. Sylvie accepts and then asks Carl about it, hoping that he will not go. To her dismay, Carl is eager to go and they meet Miranda and her friends. They play a game of Spin The Bottle and Sylvie wishes to be kissed by Carl. Unfortunately, he does not kiss her (but to Sylvie's surprise he kisses Miranda) and Sylvie realizes that his feelings have changed. Carl invites Miranda, Sylvie and a boy called Paul to go bowling with him. Sylvie does not like Paul and is surprised when Carl tells Sylvie that he wanted to impress Paul by bowling. On Carl's birthday, Miranda, Paul, Sylvie and Carl go to Kew Gardens since Carl is obsessed with glass. They all get lost while playing hide-and-seek. Miranda and Paul went on the train so Carl and Sylvie go with Carl's mother, Jules. Carl refused to see anyone after that night and later tells Sylvie that he is gay. Sylvie then finds out that Carl had found Paul during hide-and-seek and kissed him. Paul kissed him back for a moment 'like he really cared about [Carl]', but then pushed him away, claiming Carl is a pervert. Carl gets teased and picked on at school. Later, Sylvie goes to find Carl and sees the Glass Hut (where Carl keeps his glass collection) is ruined with glass everywhere. Sylvie gets cut and tells Jules, Mick (Carl's dad) and Jake (Carl's older brother) about the Glass Hut. They see Carl in the bushes all cut from smashing all the glass. He cut all his fingers and wrist and needed lots of stitches. Carl comes out to his mother at the hospital (when asked why he smashed the glass) and she tells him she has no problem with him being gay. Miranda and Sylvie bunk off school to meet Carl in McDonalds for lunch, and after hearing about how he is being bullied at school, Miranda persuades Sylvie to meet Carl after school, impressing all the boys who see them. In the Glass Hut, Carl and Sylvie see all the damage. Sylvie thinks that Carl will not feel the same about her, but instead, he kisses her and says he will always love her. |
15316300 | /m/03m4pkq | On Wings of Eagles | Ken Follett | 1983 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime"} | In December 1978 two EDS executives working in Tehran are arrested on suspicion of bribery. Bail was set at 12.75 million dollars. When Ross Perot, head of the Dallas-based company hears about it, he decides to get his people out no matter what. While the firm's lawyers are trying to find a way to pay the bail, he also recruits a team of volunteers from his executives, led by a retired United States Army officer, to break them out by force, if necessary. Their well-rehearsed plan to break the two out of jail fails because of a prison transfer, and the team has to figure out another way to rescue their colleagues, culminating in a harrowing overland escape to Turkey. Meanwhile, riots and violence dominate the streets of Tehran more and more each day, culminating in the Iranian Revolution led by Khomeini against the Shah, endangering the other EDS employees as well. |
15317071 | /m/02rv4cg | Whiteout | Ken Follett | 2004 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | When a rabbit being tested on to find a cure against a deadly virus, a more dangerous form of Ebola, is stolen from a lab in Scotland. Toni Gallo, head of security, knows that she has failed. But soon things turn out to be a lot worse when the virus itself is also stolen, with inside assistance, to be used in a terrorist attack. Through a Christmas Eve blizzard, and without much help from the local police, Toni has to chase the thieves to recover the virus and save the future of the lab as well as prevent a dangerous outbreak. Meanwhile, she's falling in love with her boss, who is having the family over for Christmas at his nearby mansion. |
15318692 | /m/03m4sv9 | Nation | Terry Pratchett | 9/11/2008 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The time is 1860 (the book refers to Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species having just come out). The place is a world, strangely like ours, but different in many subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Scattered across the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean are chains of tiny islands. On one island, a boy named Mau has almost completed his ritual ordeal to become a man. Now he must launch the canoe he has built into the ocean and sail back to his home island, where he will receive his adult tattoos and be given a man-soul to replace the child-soul he has left behind. His entire village awaits him on the beach for his arrival. Aboard the schooner Sweet Judy, presently voyaging through the Southern Pelagic Ocean, bound for Port Mercia, Ermintrude ("Daphne") Fanshaw sails to join her father, the Governor of the Pelagic Territories, presently stationed at Port Mercia. In England, the dreaded Russian Influenza has killed all other heirs to the throne. The Gentlemen of Last Resort, a secret organisation serving the Crown, set out for Port Mercia to bring back Daphne's father within the nine months required by the ratified version of the Magna Carta, accompanied by the heir's mother. Thanks to the epidemic, he is now king, and Ermintrude is now heir to the throne of the British Empire. Neither she nor anyone else within ten thousand miles knows this. Far to the south, a volcano erupts, blowing itself to bits and setting off an enormous tsunami. When the wave has passed, only Mau and Ermintrude remain alive, marooned together among the wreckage and corpses on the island called the Nation. Having left his boy soul behind but with no one remaining to give him his adult tattoos, Mau considers himself to be without a soul. Without his soul, Mau describes himself as a vulnerable blue hermit crab that has left one shell to seek another. This is a major theme throughout the book, since Mau is a man without a country. Just as a soulless person hungers for a soul, Mau is driven to rebuild his country. Upon arrival at the island, Mau discovers that his entire village and family has been wiped out by the tsunami. Numb with horror Mau begins burying the dead, sending them into the sea wrapped in a substance called papervine, a type of tough local vegetation. Island tradition says that the dead, buried at sea will become dolphins. Distraught at what he is doing, he attempts to disassociate himself from his task, working on a kind of mental auto-pilot. Finally, after sending the last corpse into the sea he considers his life as a soulless person, neither boy nor man, and considers suicide. He is only prevented from doing so by Ermintrude, who tries to talk to him. In his dream state, Mau believes her to be a ghost, as she is pale-skinned and dressed in white. Ermintrude is a resourceful girl with an active interest in science. Her ocean voyage was intended to be a way to get away from her overbearing grandmother and create a new life with her kindly, widowed father. Instead, she finds herself surviving mutiny, storm, and shipwreck. She is afraid of Mau, but after watching him bury his dead, she leaves Mau a mango on a plate. When they meet again, she tries to shoot him with a pistol. Fortunately, the gunpowder in the pistol is wet, and the gun fails to fire. Mau mistakenly believes that by waving a gun around, Ermintrude is giving him a spark-maker to make fire. With determination and good faith, the two begin to help each other and establish some basic communication. Ermintrude introduces herself as "Daphne" and never uses her given name, which she has always hated. Soon, drawn by the smoke of Mau's fire, other survivors from neighbouring islands arrive at the Nation, including an old priest called Ataba, and a nameless woman and her infant. The woman cannot breastfeed, and the baby will die unless someone can find milk. With desperation and resourcefulness, Mau finds a way to get milk from a wild pig at great danger to himself. Due to Mau's lack of a soul and his rejection of the gods (since they failed to save his family from the tsunami), Ataba believes that Mau is possessed by a demon, referring to him as "Demon Boy" for most of the rest of his life. A few days later, more survivors arrive, including strong Milo and silver-tongued Pilu, two brothers who are able to communicate with Daphne in English. This speeds the translation of language along considerably. Milos' wife is heavily pregnant and 13-year-old Daphne is drafted as a midwife. She brings the child into the world, singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" throughout the birth, a choice that makes Milo revere Daphne throughout the rest of the book. Confronted with the problem of the missing "god anchors" (white, non-indigenous stones that are said to "anchor" the gods and stop them drifting away), Mau locates and then tries to salvage them from the lagoon, where they have been left by the raging tsunami. He locates and restores two of the original three god anchors but, whilst underwater, searching for the third, he discovers several more of the white stones, one of them with a carving on it. The priest, Ataba, tries to destroy one of the god stones, which he claims to be false. His rage causes him to thrash about in the lagoon and he attracts the attention of a shark. Mau is nearly killed rescuing him from the shark and, having suffered hypothermia and chronic sleep deprivation (he has obsessively spent his nights guarding the beach) Mau falls into a coma. Accepting a magic poison from the women of the island, Daphne travels to the land of Locaha, the Nation's god of death, and rescues him. Still more survivors arrive, bringing news of cannibal raiders from another island who are hunting survivors. Daphne is at one point told by the Grandmothers (the not-at-all remembered counterpart to the ancestral Grandfathers) to open the cave of the Grandfathers. Convincing Mau that this is what they should do, Daphne, Ataba, and Mau enter the Grandfathers' cave, an ancient burial chamber. There, they discover that the Nation is far older than any other civilisation on Earth, and has made huge discoveries (up to and including maps of the stars, telescopes and glasses) which have later been forgotten. Their knowledge of the stars is shown in the ancient legends of the Nation, which can also be seen as metaphors for the movements of the planets. It is from this ancient cave that the white stone that formed the god anchors came. The ancient discoveries remained part of the history of the Nation, but only as stories told to children. When Mau, Daphne and Ataba leave the cave they are met by two English men who mutinied on the Sweet Judy and who were set adrift by the captain of that ship. When the old priest Ataba threatens them with a spear, the mutineers shoot and kill him. They take Daphne hostage as she tells the islanders to melt into the forest. She learns from them that the leader of the mutiny, a man named Cox, has joined the tribe of cannibal raiders, who worship the death god Locaha. Soon after this Daphne offers the two men a local type of moonshine beer. However, one of the mutineers refuses to spit into the beer, which neutralises the poisons in the beer and his first drink kills him. This causes the other to be scared off. He later escapes the island and meets up with Cox and the cannibal raiders. Certain that the raiders will arrive soon, Mau arranges for the cannons on board the Sweet Judy to be set up overlooking the bay for the defense of the Nation. A test firing goes well. However, they only have enough gunpowder for one more shot. The Raiders arrive, with Cox as their new chieftain. Daphne immediately notices that the Raiders hate Cox, but according to their laws they must accept him as chieftain because he killed the previous chieftain. Instead of allowing Cox and the Raiders to attack the entire village, Mau has the only intact cannon, which was reinforced with papervine, fired, frightening the Raiders. The Raiders and the Nation then agree to have the chiefs fight in single combat, as is the tradition. Everyone is surprised when strong Milo announces that Mau is the actual chief of the Nation. Cox is annoyed because a small boy is a more difficult target than a large man, but he is sure that his two pistols can take care of Mau. Mau remembers Daphne's first wet attempt to shoot him, however, and he knows that gunpowder fails when wet. Mau takes the battle into the lagoon, where Mau's skill as a swimmer and his knowledge of the territory help him win the duel. Enraged with the wrath of Locaha, Mau drives away the Raiders, forcing them to release their prisoners. A few days after this battle, Daphne's father arrives. He, like Daphne, is fascinated with the discovery made in the Grandfathers' cave. The Gentlemen of Last Resort arrive two weeks later, informing Daphne's father of his new status as King and presenting him with the crown. Mau, who has learned about world politics from Daphne and Pilu, does not want to become part of the Empire but requests that his Nation become a member of the scientific Royal Society. In the end, Daphne leaves with her father. Though it is never explicitly stated in the book, it is clear that she and Mau would rather stay on the island and be together, but their combined sense of duty leads her to return to England and Mau to remain behind. Years later, in an alternate present day, an old scientist tells this story to two children of the present-day Nation. He explains that Daphne returned to England to marry a prince from Holland and that Mau died of old age. When Daphne died, her body was sent to the Nation to be buried at sea so that her soul would become a dolphin. He tells them that from those days onward, thousands of scientists have visited the island, including Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, and Richard Feynman, and that dozens of observatories have been created to learn about the stars, as the Nation has done for thousands of years. The book ends with the elder of the two children (the girl - by six minutes) standing guard on the beach, protecting the Nation as Mau had done years before. In the lagoon, a dolphin leaps from the sea and the scientist smiles. The book ends with several small "Don't try this at home" warnings, explaining how the book came about and how some of the things described in the book have real-world counterparts, if somewhat dangerous ones. |
15321438 | /m/03m4vwn | Waiting: A Novel | Ha Jin | 1999-09 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Army doctor Lin Kong married his wife, Shuyu, as decided by his parents. While Lin spent most of his of time away from home for his job, Shuyu raised their daughter and cared for both Lin's dying mother and father. Lin feels no love for her, and once he meets Manna Wu, a nurse at the hospital, he falls in love with her and feels that he must divorce his wife. Year after year, Lin tries to divorce the woman he is embarrassed to be married to, and every year when he comes home for a few days during the holidays, he goes with her to the courthouse, and she agrees that she will consent to the divorce. But each time, once they arrive at the courthouse, she does not consent. The "Waiting" of the title refers to Lin's waiting to divorce Shuyu so he can be with Manna. He finally succeeds in divorcing Shuyu, thanks to a law that states that, if a man and wife have been separate for 18 years, the man can divorce her without her consent. Once finally with Manna, however, he feels unhappy with her as well, feeling no love, and the book ends on a dark note. Lin seems to always love the one he doesn't have. |
15324587 | /m/03m4yk0 | Flyaway | Desmond Bagley | 1978 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Max Stafford is owner and president of a security consultation company based in London, which specializes in corporate security and anti-industrial espionage. Although his company is successful, his marriage has collapsed, and work is starting to lose its luster. More on a whim, he decides to investigate the disappearance of minor accountant Paul Billson from one of his client firms. Billson's father, a famous aviator, had vanished in the 1930s on an air race from London to South Africa somewhere over the Sahara desert, and Billson had been obsessed for years with the desire to find out what had happened, and to dispel lingering slander that the disappearance had been staged as an insurance fraud. Soon after Stafford starts to investigate, he is assaulted by men who attempt to “discourage” further investigation. Stafford’s search takes him to Algiers, then the deep desert area around Tamanrasset in southern Algeria, and across the border into Niger. But he finds that he is not the only person looking for Billson and the missing Northrop Gamma. Other people, with tremendous resources are also searching – and will kill to prevent the truth of a 40 year old incident to emerge. |
15328146 | /m/03m53xv | The Brave Bulls | Thomas C. Lea, III | 4/20/1949 | {"/m/0hfjk": "Western"} | The Brave Bulls is the story of Luis Bello, "The Swordsman of Guerreras", the greatest matador in Mexico, who is at the top of his profession, with everything that comes with it, money, a mistress, family and friends, bravado, the crowds are infatuated with him. But one day fear changes everything, he suddenly feels a fear that previously he had not felt in the invincibility that comes with healthy-macho-youth. His best friend and manager, Raul Fuentes, is killed in a car crash along with Luis's mistress, Linda de Calderon, after Linda and Raul had spent a romantic weekend together. This betrayal shakes Luis's beliefs about what has been real and what is real now. Now Luis must deal with these new found feelings while at the same time facing the most feared bulls in all of Mexico, "the brave bulls". In his first fight after the auto accident he is gored by a bull because of the doubt and guilt that has come into the ring with him. In addition, while under the influence of Tequila, and some pressure from ring promoter Eladio Gomez, he agreed to let his younger brother Pepe fight these top bulls with him. Luis must now examine his life to find out where the courage comes from and if he can get it back. |
15333115 | /m/03m58x1 | Fortunata y Jacinta | Benito Pérez Galdós | 1887 | null | The story revolves around Juanito Santa Cruz. The scion of a wealthy family, he goes around carousing and womanizing with his friends. In one of these episodes, he is taken with Fortunata, a young woman of the lower class. This encounter ends with Juanito growing bored of Fortunata and disappearing from her life. His mother decides to marry him to his cousin Jacinta. During their honeymoon, he tells her about his experiences in the poor neighborhoods of Madrid and talks to her about Fortunata. As time passes, Jacinta realizes she cannot have children and she and the rest of the family become obsessed with this. Ido del Sagrario is a poor man whom Juanito invited to the house with the intention of humiliating him for his own amusement. He shows up at the Santa Cruz home one day and informs Jacinta that Juanito had a son with Fortunata. Jacinta becomes very excited about the idea of having her husband's child, laying aside any feelings she had of betrayal. After consulting with Guillermina Pacheco (a saintly neighbor), the two women go through the Pitusín neighborhood. The baby's guardian is José Izquierdo, uncle of Fortunata, from whom they wish to buy the baby. When she talks to her husband, the discussion turns farcical. He tells her that the baby was not his. He is certain that he had a child with Fortunata, but that that baby died some time after he married Jacinta. Meanwhile, Fortunata has been living with various men, and living badly. If one man did not deceive her, he beat her, or abandoned her at the first opportunity. She was in Barcelona for a time, and on her return she moved in with Feliciana, an acquaintance of hers. Feliciana's boyfriend usually came to her house to visit with a friend of his, Maximiliano ("Maxi") Rubín. It is there that Rubín falls hopelessly in love with Fortunata. Soon the young man proposes to maintain her, and Fortunata, seeing this as an opportunity to escape her situation, accepts his offer. Maxi lives with his aunt, Doña Lupe. After a certain point he wants to marry Fortunata. He consults his aunt and brothers. Everyone agrees that Fortunata should spend some time in Las Micaelas convent in order to reform herself. After the prescribed time passed, they married. However, a trap awaits Fortunata in her new home. Juanito Santa Cruz has bought the apartment next door, and he bribes the newlywed's servant to sow discord between the couple. It did not take long before Fortunata took the bait. Maxi returns to his aunt's house, and Fortunata moves into the apartment paid for by Juanito. With time, Juanito grows tired of his vulgar desires. He tries to get far away from Fortunata to the point of abandoning her again, this time leaving her a small sum to live on for a while. Fortunata bumps into Don Evaristo Feijoo, friend of her brother-in-law Juan Pablo. Feijoo proposes a sexual relationship in which she will live well and see new faces. She stays with him for a time, though they do not live together. This works out until Feijoo begins to think he is too old and Fortunata finds herself once again in the gutter. Feijoo advises her to return to her husband's house, and, after pulling a few heart strings, she does. During this time she meets Segismundo Ballester, a co-worker of Maxi's from the pharmacy. Ballester is crazy for her. Seeing Fortunata reformed makes Juanito Santa Cruz want her once again by his side. Fortunata, without even fleeing from the house, falls for him once more. Maxi gradually loses his mind. One day, in his state of insanity, he discovers that his wife is pregnant. Meanwhile, Juanito begins to tire of Fortunata yet again. Fortunata is sure that she is pregnant, and rather than explain to Doña Lupe ("she of the turkeys") what has happened, she simply gets out of the house. Fortunata returns to her Aunt Segunda, in the place she was raised. She had her second child, attended by a doctor who was a friend of the Rubíns and of Segismundo. Maxi is told that Fortunata is dead. He refuses to believe this and is able to figure out where she is and even gets to know the baby. Fortunata is told that Juanito Santa Cruz was betraying her with Aurora, a family friend of the Rubíns and an intimate of hers. As soon as she finds herself alone at home, Fortunata plans to get even. In a few days she dies during a blood-letting. Before expiring, she writes a note in which she gives custody of her child to Jacinta. Maxi, who didn't know whether he was too sane or too crazy, was sent to the insane asylum at Leganés. The same day as Fortunata's funeral, they also bury Feijoo. |
15334769 | /m/03m5c70 | Avilion | Robert Holdstock | 7/16/2009 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Avilion takes place after the events in Mythago Wood. Steven Huxley and the mythago Guiwenneth have been living in Ryhope wood where they are raising their two children, each half-human, half-mythago. The older boy, Jack, wishes to know about the outside world while the younger girl, Yssobel, dreams about her uncle Christian, who vanished into Lavondyss at the end of Mythago Wood. Despite being comfortably settled and living an idyllic agrarian lifestyle, events at hand will change the family's future. |
15342531 | /m/03m5mpb | The Chinaman | Henning Mankell | null | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | In January 2006 the police make the gruesome discovery of the bodies of 19 people who have been brutally murdered in the remote hamlet of Hesjövallen in northern Sweden. The protagonist Birgitta Roslin, a district judge from Helsingborg, realises she has a family connection with some of the victims. Roslin's curiosity is raised by clues found at the scene and leads her to unofficially investigate the massacre. The narrative also chronicles the lives of several characters living during the mid-19th century in China and the United States, whose experiences are somehow also connected to the mass killings. As the plot unfolds, extending across four continents, Roslin unintentionally becomes embroiled in a web of international corruption and political intrigue. |
15345332 | /m/03m5ql4 | Epiphany | Simon Hawke | 1997 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Towards the end of the year 1975, five students have been visiting a deserted barn in the woods of San Francisco as a place to take drugs and have sex. On Christmas Eve, a young boy is abducted from his sister and parents and dismembered body parts are also found near the woods. The kidnapper and murderer is Michael Quinn, one of the students who now frequents the barn. He is strongly obsessed with LSD, quantum physics and the ideas of Schrödinger's cat, which he uses to justify his actions. Fellow student Hal Jamieson finds himself trying to get himself out of the police net that will inevitably close around them, and involves Paul Dunsany, a kind hearted musician who fails to realise the monstrous acts evolving around him. All escape but Quinn, who is incarcerated for 20 years for murder, kidnapping and ransom. The missing child is never found. Towards the end of 1995, Paul Dunsany has grown up in Seattle, as professional musician and owner of a recording studio. He meets a mysterious woman by the name of Joni, who begins to probe him about his past. Hal Jamieson is a rich and successful software mogul, living also in Washington. He is married to Louise, one of the original five. Upon hearing of Quinn's release from prison, he decides to have Quinn taken into solitary 'care', for fear that he could incriminate the rest of them about what happened in early 1976. As Jamieson tries his best to reunite the original five and use his wealth to take care of the situation, he finds Dunsany cannot remember much of what happened, and the fifth person, a girl by the name of Mouse, is of unknown whereabouts. There is also the problem of the inquisitive woman, looking for the answer to what happened to the missing child. Quinn is older now, and has contracted HIV. But he still possesses the view of the world he gained from LSD, and is still very dangerous. Wishing for freedom, he plans his escape from the woodland house Jamieson has him forced to live in. |
15347645 | /m/03m5t0w | Doña Perfecta | null | null | null | The action occurs in 19th century Spain, when a young liberal named Don José (Pepe) Rey, arrives in a cathedral city named Orbajosa, with the intention of marrying his cousin Rosario. This was a marriage of convenience arranged between Pepe's father Juan and Juan's sister, Perfecta. Upon getting to know each other, Pepe and Rosario declare their eternal love, but in steps Don Inocencio, the cathedral canon, who meddles and obstructs the marriage as well as the good intentions of Doña Perfecta and her brother Don Juan. Over the course of time, several events lead up to a confrontation between Pepe Rey and his aunt Perfecta, which is caused by her refusal to allow Pepe and Rosario to marry, because Pepe is a non-believer. The novel ends up with the death of Pepe Rey due to his aunt Perfecta. Rosario, Perfecta's daughter and Pepe's love turns mad and ends up in a madhouse. The novel illustrates the great power that the church wielded. It also describes the differences between the traditional, provincial outlook, and the modern, liberal outlook of Madrid, the capital. |
15352910 | /m/03m5yzn | Statement of Regret | Kwame Kwei-Armah | null | null | Kwaku Mackenzie, founder of a Black policy think tank, hits the bottle after his father's death. As media interest in the once dynamic Institute fades, his team grows fractious and then, disastrously, he favours a young Oxford scholar over his own devastated son. When, in a vain attempt to regain influence, he publicly champions division within the Black community, the consequences are shattering. |
15357916 | /m/03m62fp | The Phenomenon of Man | null | 1955 | null | Teilhard views evolution as a process that leads to increasing complexity. From the cell to the thinking animal, a process of psychical concentration leads to greater consciousness. The emergence of Homo sapiens marks the beginning of a new age, as the power acquired by consciousness to turn in upon itself raises humankind to a new sphere. Borrowing Julian Huxley’s expression, Teilhard describes humankind as evolution becoming conscious of itself. In Teilhard's conception of the evolution of the species, a collective identity begins to develop as trade and the transmission of ideas increases. Knowledge accumulates and is transmitted in increasing levels of depth and complexity. This leads to a further augmentation of consciousness and the emergence of a thinking layer that envelops the earth. Teilhard calls the new membrane the “noosphere” (from the Greek “nous,” meaning mind), a term first coined by Vladimir Vernadsky. The noosphere is the Collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which all are immersed. The development of science and technology causes an expansion of the human sphere of influence, allowing a person to be simultaneously present in every corner of the world. Teilhard argues that humanity has thus become cosmopolitan, stretching a single organized membrane over the Earth. Teilhard describes the process by which this happens as a “gigantic psychobiological operation, a sort of mega-synthesis, the “super-arrangement” to which all the thinking elements of the earth find themselves today individually and collectively subject.” The rapid expansion of the noosphere requires a new domain of psychical expansion, which “is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it.” In Teilhard’s view, evolution will culminate in the Omega Point, a sort of supreme consciousness. Layers of consciousness will converge in Omega, fusing and consuming them in itself. The concentration of a conscious universe will reassemble in itself all consciousnesses as well as all that we are conscious of. Teilhard emphasizes that each individual facet of consciousness will remain conscious of itself at the end of the process. |
15359055 | /m/03m638h | The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant | Douglass Wallop | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The novel's protagonist, mild-mannered, middle-aged Joe Boyd, is depicted as a lifelong fan of the hapless Washington Senators. As the novel begins, the Senators are losing ground in the American League to their longtime nemesis, the New York Yankees. The discouraged Boyd runs into an unexpected offer from a fast-talking confidence man, who introduces himself as "Mr. Applegate." "Applegate" offers to transform Joe Boyd into Joe Hardy, a young baseball superstar, and facilitate his signing with the Senators' front office so that Hardy can help salvage the Senators' lost season. Boyd, suspicious, negotiates with "Applegate" and extracts a promise that the transformation will only be temporary and, after helping the Senators win a suitable number of games, Hardy will be able to re-transfer himself back to his Joe Boyd personality. The transformation takes place, Hardy joins the Senators, and all begins to develop as "Applegate" had predicted. However, the new baseball superstar begins to realize that his deal with "Applegate" may not be so temporary and he may have let himself in for more than he had expected to get. As Hardy's doubts grow over his predicament, "Applegate" presents Hardy with love interest Lola, depicted as a glamorous temptress in the style of the 1950s. |
15371841 | /m/03m6g7v | To Each His Own | Leonardo Sciascia | 1966 | {"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"} | The novel opens when Dr. Manno, the town pharmacist, receives an anonymous letter made up of newspaper cuttings. The letter contains a death threat, but is dismissed by the locals as a practical joke. However, when Dr. Manno and his hunting companion, Dr. Roscio, are found murdered the next day, it becomes quite apparent that the letter was intended to do more than simply frighten the pharmacist from engaging in his favourite pastime. Although the double-homicide is interesting gossip for the townspeople, nobody gives the motives for the murders a second thought, and it is assumed that the pharmacist would have known the reason for his murder and would have thus deserved the consequences. Everybody in the town continues with their daily lives after a short lapse of time apart from Professor Laurana. When Dr. Manno initially received the letter, Laurana notices the word "UNICUIQUE" and proudly believes to be the only person with the knowledge to solve the case. For months Laurana follows various leads, and before long finds himself entangled in a web of corruption from which he cannot escape. Prof. Laurana is soon regarded to be a threat by the perpetrators of the crime, and it does not take long before he too is murdered. |
15372940 | /m/03m6gyv | The Teapot | Hans Christian Andersen | 1863 | null | A porcelain teapot rules the tea table. She is very proud of her handle and spout, but not quite so proud of her lid (which is cracked). She is very proud of holding the tea leaves and of being the one to pour forth her contents for thirsty humankind. One day, the teapot is dropped and the handle and spout are broken. She is given to a beggar woman who fills her with soil and plants a flowering bulb within her. The teapot then feels a happiness she has never known. At the last, the teapot is broken in two, the bulb removed to a bigger pot, and the teapot thrown away. She cherishes her memories. |
15373933 | /m/03m6hks | The Turquoise | Anya Seton | 1946 | {"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | Born in 1850 of a Spanish mother and a Scotsman in New Mexico, and orphaned at a young age in the town for whom she was named, Santa Fe (Fey) Cameron is taken in and raised by dutiful but apathetic neighbors. As a teenager, hot-blooded Fey takes the opportunity to leave town with Terry Dillon, a shifty traveling salesman. As they slowly make their way up the Santa Fe Trail, Fey convinces herself they are in love. Not disagreeable (for the time being), Terry enlists Richens Lacey Wootton to marry them at Raton Pass. Continuing east selling Terry's questionable medicine and utilizing several of Fey's talents to earn extra money, upon reaching Leavenworth, Kansas, they are able to raise train fares to New York. Fey and Terry arrive in New York City without any prospects and are soon forced to use up their small savings for food and board. Terry soon abandons Fey for greener pastures. Discovering she is pregnant, resourceful Fey seeks assistance at a local infirmary for women and makes arrangements to live there in exchange for helping out with the work. After her daughter Lucita is born, bewitching Fey sets her eyes on New York tycoon Simeon Tower as a means of securing her financial future and wins her way into his heart. After securing a discreet divorce for Fey, she and Simeon marry and achieve happiness. They endeavor to increase not only their fortune but their social standing over the years, but the year 1877 would be their downfall. Simeon not only finds himself close to losing nearly everything financially, but Terry Dillon reemerges to disrupt their lives. Terry's attempts to woo Fey and blackmail Simeon result in tragedy. Bankrupt and a social pariah, Fey eventually brings an ailing Simeon back to the simple life in New Mexico to live out their days. |
15386721 | /m/03m6t9l | Reflections in a Golden Eye | Carson McCullers | 1941 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel takes place at an Army base in the U.S. state of Georgia. Private Ellgee Williams is a solitary man full of secrets and desires. He has been in service for two years and is assigned to stable duty. After doing yard work at the home of Capt. Penderton, he sees the captain's wife nude and becomes obsessed with her. Capt. Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora, a feeble-minded Army brat, have a fiery relationship and she takes in many lovers. Leonora's current lover is Major Morris Langdon, who lives with his depressed wife Alison, and her flamboyant Filipino houseboy Anacleto, near the Pendertons. Capt. Penderton, who is a closeted homosexual, realizes that he is physically attracted to Pvt. Williams, unaware of the private's attraction to Leonora. |
15387047 | /m/03m6th2 | Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu | Honoré de Balzac | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Young Nicolas Poussin, as yet unknown, visits the painter Porbus in his workshop. He is accompanied by the old master Frenhofer who comments expertly on the large tableau that Porbus has just finished. The painting is of Mary of Egypt, and while Frenhofer sings her praises, he hints that the work seems unfinished. With some slight touches of the paintbrush, Frenhofer transforms Porbus' painting such that Mary the Egyptian appears to come alive before their very eyes. Although Frenhofer has mastered his technique, he admits that he has been unable to find a suitable model for his own masterpiece, La Belle noiseuse, on which he has been working for ten years. This future masterpiece, that no one has yet seen, is to be the portrait of Catherine Lescault. Poussin offers his own lover, Gilette, as a potential model. Gilette's beauty is so great that it inspires Frenhofer to finish his project quickly. Poussin and Porbus come to admire the painting, but all they can see is part of a foot that has been lost in a swirl of colors. Their disappointment drives Frenhofer to madness, and he destroys the painting and kills himself. |
15389144 | /m/03m6vs4 | The Adventures & Brave Deeds Of The Ship's Cat On The Spanish Maine: Together With The Most Lamentable Losse Of The Alcestis & Triumphant Firing Of The Port Of Chagres | Richard Adams | 1977 | null | The Ship's Cat is introduced as a patriotic swashbuckling crewmember of the English privateer Alcestis. After attacking a lone Spanish ship, the Alcestis is defeated by Spanish reinforcements and its crew taken as captives to the Panamanian port of Chagres. The Ship's Cat is initially imprisoned, but the gaoler's daughter takes pity on him and has him released to serve in the gaoler's kitchen. After the gaoler and his companions become drunk celebrating Saint Philip's Day, the Ship's Cat steals the keys to the gaol and releases his shipmates. Together, they steal a ship from the harbor and sail for home, pursued by their erstwhile captors. Their pursuers are frightened off by the sudden appearance of Sir Francis Drake (outward bound on his global circumnavigation of 1577). After Drake departs, the Ship's Cat reveals that he has discovered a hoard of treasure in the ship's hold. The crew sail home to England, where they are greeted as heroes and the Cat is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I. |
15395414 | /m/03m6zv5 | Between the Bridge and the River | Craig Ferguson | null | null | The novel follows two best friends from Glasgow: Fraser Darby, an alcoholic televangelist caught up in a sex scandal, and George Ingram, an attorney diagnosed with terminal cancer who contemplates suicide. In a parallel, the story also follows two half-brothers in the Southern U.S.: Leon and Saul Martini, the illegitimate children of a Las Vegas, Nevada showgirl, with the two fathers being Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford. Eventually the lives of these four men intersect in a journey that ranges from Scotland to France, from Atlanta, Georgia to rural Florida, and from Hollywood to Belgium during World War I. Supporting characters in the story include the poet Virgil, and Carl Gustav Jung, the eminent psychiatrist. |
15405692 | /m/03m791w | Murder in the Middle Pasture | John R. Erickson | null | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Hank the Cowdog finds that there has been a murder on his ranch, so he sets off to investigate. After a few adventures, Hank thinks the Coyote Brotherhood is responsible for the killing. He travels to the Coyote Brotherhood, and demands to know who the murderer is. The coyotes just laugh and hold Hank hostage, and plan to eat him by dawn; it is later revealed that the coyotes were not responsible for the murder. Hank could have easily escaped had not Chief Guts ordered Rip and Snort, two stupid coyote brothers, to make sure Hank does not run away. They keep him in a cave, guarding the exit. Then Hank escapes (with the help of Missy Coyote) to his ranch. Once gets out he runs back to the ranch to find the real murderers. Apparently the real murderers were a dog named Buster and a gang of two dogs with a pug named Muggs as his assistant. Hank says mean things to the coyote (Scrunch,and Rip and Snort) and Buster and his gang but makes them think that it was each other that was saying mean things to them. The coyotes and the gang got into a fight and the coyotes won and chased the gang off the ranch. That's where the story ends. |
15407077 | /m/03m7b5m | Let Sleeping Dogs Lie | John R. Erickson | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Murder after murder at the chicken house is occurring, and Hank and Drover are beside themselves trying to find just who it is. But all investigating takes a back burner when Hank, out working traffic, sees Beulah and Plato in Billy's pickup. He tries to show off and annoys Billy, which results in him using the truck door to knock this four-legged nuisance over the ditch and "there were five draws to that stupid canyon, and I hit every stinkin' one of 'em" and after a nutty interrogation of Dogpound Ralph, Hank heads home to get bawled out by Loper. After a while he stakes out the chicken house and finds it was a hypnotizing skunk who has been doing the killing. After a brief scare during which Hank is accused of being the killer and is locked up, he breaks away and leaves, and saves Little Alfred from a hooking bull, and Sally May forgives him, and so the story ends. |
15407438 | /m/03m7bdh | The Curse of the Incredible Priceless Corncob | John R. Erickson | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story begins with Sally May feeding Pete, Drover and Hank, two corncobs, and some steak fat. Hank and Drover get the and corncobs with Pete getting the rest. Hank wants the steak, but then Pete says he trade the steak for the corncobs. Hank just gets mixed up and says to Drover that the corncobs must be priceless if Pete was going to trade them for steak fat. So Hank and Drover each get one of the "Priceless Corncobs" and walk away. The next morning Hank and Drover quit being ranch dogs and go into the wilderness. But then while walking through a sleeping coyote brotherhood, Hank steps on Snort's paw, which awakens the whole brotherhood, which plan to eat them. But Hank escapes with his "Priceless corncob," leaving Drover to be eaten. But then Hank realizes that the whole "Priceless Corncob" thing was a curse. So he sacrifices the corncob to save Drover's life. They return to the ranch unnoticed and find another "Priceless Corncob." |
15414649 | /m/03m7q_x | Groosham Grange | Anthony Horowitz | 1988 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The central character David Eliot is a 12-year-old seventh son of a seventh son, cruelly mistreated by his parents. His father chooses a series of repressive boarding schools for him, where David does not perform well. After being expelled from his "last-chance" school, they receive at home the unexpected call from an unknown school, Groosham Grange, of which nobody has heard of before. This school, located on Skrull Island, an island off Norfolk, earnestly invites David to enter it. His father jumps at the chance to pack him off, especially since it appears that the place is suitably severe. He must take a train from Liverpool Street to King's Lynn. On the train he meets two other new students, Jill Green and Jeffrey Joseph. A vicar sits with them and plays hymns on his guitar, but when they mention that they are going to Groosham Grange he suffers a heart attack. A hunchback called Gregor escorts them to the school. Along with Jill (seventh daughter of a seventh daughter) and Jeffrey, David anticipates more mistreatment, and makes a pact with them that they will escape at any cost. After they arrive, they start to learn strange things, are baffled by inexplicable disappearances, very peculiar teachers (including a werewolf and a ghost), assorted frights—and an absence of punishments. They are determined to solve the mystery of the school, but then Jeffrey begins acting suspiciously, seeming to side with the other students rather than with David and Jill. David manages to get a message to the outside world via a note in a bottle, but the school inspector sent to investigate is dealt with permanently courtesy of Mrs. Windergast's black magic. Jill helps David run away, but she gets caught. It is then that he learns that he has been recruited to a school for wizards and witches because he is a wizard himself, and that the staff hopes to help him unleash his full potential as the other students do. This must all be kept secret from normal, non-magical people. David must decide if he will remain at Groosham Grange or not. His dilemma lies in his wish to avoid evil, but the Headmaster tempts him with the promises that he can learn "how to make gold out of lead, how to destroy your enemies just by snapping your fingers... [and] to see into the future and use it for yourself." |
15420579 | /m/03m82p8 | Beguilement | Lois McMaster Bujold | 10/10/2006 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | We are introduced to the main characters in this book. Fawn, a Farmer girl of about 18, has run away from her family, because another Farmer has impregnated her, and made it clear that he wants no part of the baby when it comes. Dag, a Lakewalker patroller, first encounters Fawn hiding up in a tree. Later, they meet again, when Dag saves her from some slaves of a malice. Then she assists him in killing the malice, and, in the process, the ground of her unborn child creates a new sharing knife. Eventually, they realize that they are in love, against the customs of both their cultures, and the real story begins. |
15421138 | /m/03m82zk | Legacy | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2007-07 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Legacy is the immediate sequel to Beguilement in the Sharing Knife series. It follows the pairing of farmer Fawn and lakewalker maverick Dag, after their marriage at Fawn's home in the previous volume. Where they, unencumbered by minor opposition, were married in accord with the customs of both groups. They travel to Dag's clan's home camp at Hickory Lake, where they find the expected prejudices against miscegenation between Farmers and Lakewalkers. Dag is called on to lead a group of Lakewalker patrollers against an advanced malice. Dag decides that confronting the malice is more important than trying to free several Lakewalkers who have been entranced in the mud-man-making process by which the malice produces its slaves. After Dag's group has killed the malice, Dag, himself, also becomes entranced. Fawn carries her heroine role through by thinking out a way to revive him, and the rest of the Lakewalkers. Neither achievement carries enough weight with Dag's brother and mother to make them relent in their efforts to break this pairing. These two carry the role of villains, but they are drawn so that the reasons for their awkward quirks are clear. Although their marriage, and Fawn's potential value to the camp are accepted by some of the Lakewalkers, The Dag-and-Fawn combination raises enough awkward precedents that they are about to be voted into exile when Dag subverts the process, stating that he intends to leave his home community in any case. Dag and Fawn then take as many portable assets as they can, and set out in chosen exile towards the southeast. There, Dag guesses he may be able to confirm his ideas about the near kinship of Farmers to Lakewalkers, and to find ways to combine their efforts toward the eradication of malices. These themes unfold in the next pair of books. |
15422632 | /m/03m83tq | Heimweg | null | null | null | The focus of the story is on the first-person narrator, a grandfather named Josef. He returns home from Russian captivity after the war to find his wife Katharina in an adulterous relationship. Over the course of the story, he tries to get her back. In this respect, he is successful, seeing that she is becoming insane and in this connection only turns to him. The family history continues over several generations, revealing several torn characters and many murders, including his son's murder and suicide. In a key scene, it is revealed that Josef ordered the execution of a Russian commissar during World War II. This is executed helplessly and without judgment by the Commissar Order. After that, Josef needlessly kills another corpse of crouching boys. Towards the end of the story, the mental confusion of Katharina is explained. The "visitors" that she believes to be in her apartment, are in fact the family members of the dead. They appear again in the book on a fictional level as a quasi-ghost figure, while at the same time the heroes appear to be real. The reader learns this as the real family members begin to die. Finally, the first-person narrator finally turns out to be the spirits of the murdered boys. |
15428906 | /m/03m89f7 | The Knight and Death | Leonardo Sciascia | 1988 | null | The protagonist of the novel is a cultured and tenacious detective affected by a deadly disease (which is clearly a cancer, although it is never openly stated). The detective, whose name we never learn (he is simply called "il Vice", as "the Vice Chief of Police") investigates the murder of lawyer Sandoz. His chief believes that Sandoz has been killed by a mysterious revolutionary group, but the detective is convinced that powerful businessman Aurispa is involved in the crime, and that the phoney revolutionary group has been invented ad hoc as a scapegoat to cover up the real reasons behind the murder. The novel is permeated by a sense of impending death, as the increasingly ill and tired "Vice" tries to unravel the mystery. |
15434217 | /m/03m8y7j | Cat among the Pigeons | Julia Golding | 2006 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The setting is London in the late 18th century when slavery has just been ruled illegal in England but is still common in the British West Indies. Things are fine but then trouble rises as Pedro's old slave master, Mr. Hawkins, comes to London and tries to reclaim Pedro as one of his properties. He is at first thwarted by Cat but he vows to return. But not without a fight as Pedro's friends, Cat, Frank, Lizzie, Syd and the gang try to secure his freedom. Once again, Cat finds trouble following her once more as she is chased around in London by the Bow Street Runners coming for her arrest for biting Mr Hawkins after he taunted her. Disguising herself as a boy with the help of her friends, Frank and Charlie, she enters an aristocratic boarding school and learns things like Latin and fencing that girls are never taught. Cat is bullied for being clever and a 'pretty boy' by Richmond, the son of a plantation owner. When they find Cat with a medallion abhorring slavery Richmond and his gang beat Cat up. When Syd arrives bringing sasuages as a decoy, he's furious and wants to take Cat home immediately, but soon realises that she's safe where she is as the Bow Street Runners are still looking for her. Meanwhile Pedro is caught and is being held by Billy Shepherd for Mr Hawkins. Cat finds out where he is but can't inform the police as she has no proof against Mr Hawkins. Finally, as Mr Hawkins is about to set sail with Pedro on board Cat arrives with Lizzie, Frank, Mr Equaino and the Duchess to rescue Pedro. The Magistrate is called and Cat blackmails Mr Hawkins into setting Pedro free. |
15438211 | /m/03m94x3 | The Last Voyage of Columbus | Martin Dugard | 6/1/2005 | {"/m/03g3w": "History", "/m/014dsx": "Travel"} | The books topic focuses on Christopher Columbus, who was one of the first European founders of the Americas. The book tells the story of his life, as well as the problems he faced with his journeys. Columbus had seduced some of the most powerful woman in Europe to pay the expenses of his trip. The book follows Columbus' departure from Spain prior to his first voyage before sunrise on August 3, 1492. After three days of sailing on the Pinta, the rudder became loose, unable to cope with the strength of the seas, Columbus and his fleet stayed for a month on the Canary Islands. After repairing the ship, the fleet resumed sailing, despite pleas from fellow crew members for Columbus to turn back, which he ignored. On October 11, 1492, after seeing a distant light, it was later confirmed this was the area which would soon be marked as the New World, claiming the land to for the Spanish sovereigns, as well as claiming numerous other islands for Spain. In reward for this, Columbus was given ten thousand Spanish maravedis and 1/10 of all Royal profits. |
15442844 | /m/03m9h74 | Switchblade Honey | Warren Ellis | 2003-07 | null | In the 23rd century, humanity is a multi-stellar nation embroiled in a hopeless war with the Chasta, an advanced species. John Ryder, an abrasive yet brilliant and noble starship captain, faces execution for refusing to destroy an ally starship as part of an involuntary kamikaze tactic. He has been given a chance to put his skills to use one last time, by leading a Dirty Dozen-like crew in a long-term guerrilla war against the Chasta. |
15448921 | /m/03m9pxt | Good Morning, Midnight | Jean Rhys | null | null | Sasha Jansen, a middle aged English woman, has returned to Paris after a long absence. Only able to make the trip because of some money lent to her by a friend, she is financially unstable and haunted by her past, which includes an unhappy marriage and her child's death. She has difficulty taking care of herself; drinking heavily, taking sleeping pills and obsessing over her appearance, she is adrift in the city that she feels connected to despite the great pain it has brought her. |
15454256 | /m/03m9w24 | The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal | Lilian Jackson Braun | 1991 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jim Qwilleran and his lovable siamese cats, Koko and Yum-Yum, have moved into an apple barn on the Klingenschoen estate. After a successful closing night on the stage production Henry VIII in the theatre that was once the Klingenschoen mansion the actors throw a cast party at Qwill's new home. At the end of the party, Qwill notices one car had not left yet. Walking towards the car, wondering if someone has broken down or run out of gas, he discovers the dead body of the much disliked play's director and high school principal, Hilary VanBrook. VanBrook was killed by a single gunshot to the back of the head. |
15454458 | /m/03m9w9q | The Cat Who Tailed a Thief | Lilian Jackson Braun | 1997 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The residents of Pickax take pride in a town which has considerably less crime than the places "Down Below." However, this holiday season has seen a streak of small crimes. New in town is the bank manager, Willard Carmichael and wife Danielle. Her cousin wants to historically restore Pleasant Ave, but something seems amiss to Qwill. Two deaths soon follow. One of the victims is a prominent figure of Pickax and the other is Willard. |
15457550 | /m/03m9z8c | The Matter of Araby in Medieval England | Dorothee Metlitzki | 1977 | null | This part of the book consists of four chapters in which Metlitzki explores how scientific achievements were translated and transmitted from Arabic texts to Western (primarily English authors writing in Latin) texts. She begins this book by addressing the crusades and the development of scholarship by Mozarabs, i.e. Christians living under Muslim rule, particularly those in Muslim Spain and Sicily (p. 3-10). She writes about several Western scholars who were involved in translating Arabic texts and studying Arab held libraries, including several key ancient Greek and Roman texts that were only available in Arabic. Some of these scholars included Adelard of Bath (p. 26) who was a Western scholar responsible for translating Al-Khwarizmi’s texts on astronomy and Euclid’s Elements from Arabic into Latin. She details the lives of several of these key scholars including Petrus Alfonsi, a Christian converted ex-Jew living in Muslim Spain and author of the seminal text Disciplina Clericalis, which, according to Metlitzki was the first collection of Oriental tales composed in the West for Westerners (p. 16). Robert of Ketton was the first translator of the Quran into Latin and also translated several key scientific texts such as Alchemy by Morienus Romanus and Math, Algebra and astronomy texts by Al-Khwarizmi. Michael Scot was a scholar interested in magic, alchemy and astronomy and was also the first translator of most of the works of Aristotle (from Arabic into Latin), whose writings had been banned in the West as being heretical (p. 48). In part two Metlitzki explores key English medieval texts and suggests that they either are based entirely on Arabic stories or include elements from Arabic storytelling that suggest that they had been loosely based on Arabic stories. She then suggests that the English medieval Romance itself is strongly influenced by Arabic ideals of romantic chivalry as well as key Arabic stories from various sources including the 1001 Nights. The English texts she closely examines include Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the English Charlemagne Romances like Sir Ferumbras and the Sowdone of Babylone (p. 172-3) and several others. In several of these texts, Metlitzki explains, are found the beginnings of the misunderstanding of Islam by the West and she explores the depiction of Islam and the Islamic prophet Muhammad in these texts in her chapter on History and Romance (p. 95-210). On page 245 she also suggests that contributions to English and Western literature from Arabic literature includes several key themes (such as Romance) and also rhyming poetry itself. |
15458772 | /m/09gf05d | Night of Light | Philip José Farmer | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In a world in orbit around a binary system, once every 7 years it is bathed in a bizarre radiance that rearranges physical reality. To cope with this, most inhabitants go to sleep for the entire two week period. To stay asleep, some of the inhabitants take a special medicine that keeps them under for the whole two week period. Only mystics, newcomers, and devotees to the bizarre religion are willing to stay awake and endure the two weeks of brilliance, where things materialize out of thin air. According to their religion, people undergo an unpredictable change, and many actually die. The good become better, and the bad become worse. One woman's husband metamorphosized into a tree. Another person was chased down streets by statues that came to life. But facing the brilliance is also a rite of passage if you must develop as a being inclined towards acts of goodness, or a being inclined towards acts of evil. It is during those two weeks that the good are pitted against the bad, and it is also a time when their living god must face his successor. To help in the conversion effort, Catholic missionaries have been sent to the planet to help reconcile the planet's religion with their own universal faith. The only problem is that the planet's religion appears to be spreading across the stars. |
15463138 | /m/03mb3m_ | People of the Fire | Kathleen O'Neal Gear | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Amid disastrous climate changes, the Red Hand and Short Buffalo tribes struggle for survival, and against each other. In order to survive in the changing world, they must change with it, but to do that, they need the guidance of a new Dreamer, and the Red Hand's sacred Wolf Bundle must be renewed. |
15464639 | /m/03mb53s | Wiseguy | Nicholas Pileggi | 1986 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/01pwbn": "True crime", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"} | Hill began his life of crime at age 12 in 1955 by working as a go-fer for Paul Vario, the local boss of Hill's working class Irish/Italian neighborhood. Eventually Hill was "promoted" to selling stolen cigarettes for Vario, which he was later caught and arrested for in 1959. Hill refused to cooperate with the police, earning the respect of Vario and Vario's associate Jimmy Burke. In 1960, when Hill was 17, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, to everyone's surprise. When questioned about his decision by Vario, Hill explained that he wanted to please his father, who disapproved of his son's association with the Mafia. While stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, however, Hill continued his criminal activities, which led to his discharge in 1963. He returned to the streets of New York, where he was happily welcomed back by Vario and Burke. In 1964, Hill met Tommy DeSimone, a young aspiring gangster with psychopathic tendencies, and both worked as stick-up men for Vario, hijacking trucks and selling the stolen goods on the street. In 1965 Hill reluctantly joined Lenny Vario, Paul Vario's son, on a double date, where he met Karen Friedman, a young Jewish girl from the Five Towns section of New York. The two continued to date and eloped only four months after meeting. They had their first child, Gregg, in 1966, and a second, Gina, in 1968. In 1967, Jimmy Burke masterminded a robbery of the Air France cargo terminal at JFK International Airport. The heist was carried out by Hill, DeSimone, Robert "Frenchy" McMahon, and Montague Montemurro in April of that year. In 1969, Hill began an affair with Linda Coppociano behind Karen's back, and bought a restaurant/lounge called The Suite. It was here that on June 11, 1970, Burke and DeSimone murdered William "Billy Batts" Devino, a made man with the Gambino family and a close friend of fellow mobster John Gotti. de:Wiseguy it:Il delitto paga bene |
15475573 | /m/03mblff | The Master Key | L. Frank Baum | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The protagonist is a boy named Rob Joslyn. His age is not specified. Baum dedicated the book "To My Son, Robert Stanton Baum," who was born in 1886 and would thus have been about fifteen at the time it was published. Rob, we are told, is in truth, a typical American boy, possessing an average intelligence not yet regulated by the balance-wheel of experience. The mysteries of electricity were so attractive to his eager nature that he had devoted considerable time and some study to electrical experiment; but his study was the superficial kind that seeks to master only such details as may be required at the moment. Moreover, he was full of boyish recklessness and irresponsibility and therefore difficult to impress with the dignity of science and the gravity of human existence. Life, to him, was a great theater wherein he saw himself the most interesting if not the most important actor, and so enjoyed the play with unbounded enthusiasm. We are introduced to Rob as an electrical experimenter whose father encourages him and sees that he "never lacked batteries, motors or supplies of any sort." A "net-work[sic] of wires soon ran throughout the house," and the house is full of "bells, bells, bells everywhere, ringing at the right time, the wrong time and all the time. And there were telephones in the different rooms, too, through which Rob could call up the different members of the family just when they did not wish to be disturbed." Rob loses track of the elaborately interconnected wires, and trying to get a cardboard house to light up, he "experimented in a rather haphazard fashion, connecting this and that wire blindly and by guesswork, in the hope that he would strike the right combination." There is a bright flash, and a being who calls himself the Demon of Electricity appears. He tells Rob that he has accidentally "touched the Master Key of Electricity" and is entitled to "to demand from me three gifts each week for three successive weeks." Rob protests that he does not know what to ask for, and the Demon agrees to select the gifts himself. During the first week, the Demon gives Rob three gifts: *A silver box of food tablets, each one of which provides sufficient nourishment for a whole day. *A "small tube" which can direct "an electric current" at a foe, rendering him unconscious for the period of one hour. As the story unfolds, it appears that this tube has no limit to the number of times it can be fired, and has other capabilities (such as breaking locks when fired at them). *A wristwatch-sized transportation device, which allows the wearer to fly at any height and travel at high speeds in any direction, when it is working properly. It is, however, somewhat fragile and becomes damaged and unreliable during Rob's adventures, creating predicaments for him. During the second week, the Demon gives Rob three additional gifts: *A "garment of protection," which renders him invulnerable to bullets, swords, or other physical attack. *A "record of events," which provides remote views of important events taking place at any part of the world at any time within the last twenty-four hours; *A "character marker," a set of spectacles: "while you wear them every one you meet will be marked upon the forehead with a letter indicating his or her character. The good will bear the letter 'G,' the evil the letter 'E.' The wise will be marked with a 'W' and the foolish with an 'F.' The kind will show a 'K' upon their foreheads and the cruel a letter 'C.'" Over the next two weeks, Rob experiences adventures exploring the use of the Demon's gifts, but eventually concludes that neither he nor the world is ready for them. On the third week, Rob rejects the Demon's gifts and tells him to bide his time until humankind knows how to use them. The Demon leaves. With a light heart, Rob concludes that he made the right decision, and that "It's no fun being a century ahead of the times!" |
15476322 | /m/03mbl_b | The Eagle Has Flown | Jack Higgins | 1991 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Following the events in the previous novel, it is revealed that Kurt Steiner did not die after attempting to kill Churchill, but was only wounded. German intelligence learns that, after recovery in an RAF hospital, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Brigadier Dougal Munro and Captain Jack Carter (recurring characters in several novels by Higgins) of Special Operations Executive, arrange for Steiner to be relocated to a special prison in a priory in Wapping, and make sure, via double agents at the Spanish Embassies in London and Berlin, that German intelligence find out about it. They hope to catch German agents, including Liam Devlin, in their net. Learning of Steiner's survival, Heinrich Himmler summons SD General Walter Schellenberg and orders him to launch an operation to rescue Steiner. Himmler hopes to present him to Hitler as a propaganda coup and also to embarrass Wilhelm Canaris, who had originally opposed Steiner's operation. Schellenberg tracks down Liam Devlin, who is working in a bar in Lisbon and again bribes him to assist in the operation. Whilst Devlin parachutes into Ireland and enters England in the guise of an army chaplain, Schellenberg recruits Asa Vaughan, a pilot in the American Free Corps, to pilot Steiner's escape flight. This is planned to be from Shaw Place, a country house in Kent, owned by Sir Max Shaw and his sister Lavinia, long-standing Nazi sympathizers and 'sleeper agents'. In London, Devlin seeks sanctuary with two IRA sympathizers, living near the priory and also buys army radio communications equipment from the Carver brothers, vicious London gangsters and black marketeers. The rescue of Steiner from the priory, meticulously planned, is successful, although they are forced to take Munroe as a hostage. They drive to Shaw Place, but as Vaughan is making his landing in thick fog, a shootout ensues in which both Carvers and Shaws are killed. Leaving Munroe behind, Vaughan and Steiner fly to France and make a dangerous landing on the coast, also badly fog-bound. About to present Steiner to Himmler and Hitler at a chateau on the French coast, Schellenberg learns that Himmler is plotting to stage a coup and to assassinate Hitler, Erwin Rommel and Canaris. Deciding that the war will end quicker with Hitler in charge than a possible successor, he and Steiner commandeer a nearby force of paratroopers and foil the plot. Himmler makes it clear that the incident must not become public knowledge – in effect, it 'never happened'. Schellenberg opts to remain in Germany, and allows Vaughan and Devlin to 'escape'. They fly to Ireland, landing in County Mayo and sinking their airplane. Their subsequent fate is not revealed. As in several of the novels by Higgins, the plot is surrounded with a prologue and epilogue. In 1975, the author, Higgins, meets an American historian in London, who gives him a photocopy of an illegally obtained secret dossier, with a one hundred-year hold, from the Public Record Office. The document purports to tell the story of Steiner's rescue. Shortly afterwards, the historian is killed in a road accident, which is investigated by a senior police officer – possibly from Special Branch. Higgins contacts Devlin, still living in Belfast, and obtains some, but not all, of the story to corroborate the contents of the dossier. |
15478389 | /m/03mbnn8 | Medalon | Jennifer Fallon | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Medalon Country is surrounded by Karien, threatening from the north with Fardohnya and Hythria in the south. For hundreds of years the Medalonians co-existed peacefully with the Harshini, a mythical race that is now long gone and the Sisters of the Blade now rule from the Citadel. The Harshini and their demons are thought to be extinct and Medalon has an uneasy peace with the other countries. R'shiel Tenragan and her half-brother Tarja, children of the current First Sister, find themselves caught up in the political schemes of the Sisters. When their mother's plotting becomes too much the siblings flee and find a world in turmoil. Meanwhile, Brak, a Harshini outcast, is called to find the demon child, the half-human child of the dead Harshini King, Lorandranek. |
15480353 | /m/03mbqs0 | Queen of Camelot | Nancy McKenzie | 2002 | null | The novel begins at the end of the story. The prologue leads you to know how Guinevere came to write the story of her and Arthur, and the Knights. Guinevere is in a convent when Lancelot comes to her telling her of Arthur's death and deterioration of Britain. Lancelot tells her that he had a vision of Merlin telling him to go to her and ask her to write down the story of her life, and the life of Arthur. He says that is isn't meant for the people of today, but a future generation of Britons. The novel then opens with Guinevere's birth, and a prophecy that was told to her father the night she was born. Guinevere is to be a "white shadow" or gwenhwyfar. Guinevere spends her early years being adored and pampered by her father, a minor king in northern Britain. As he ages, he sends her away to her mother's sister and her husband, who is king of a nearby land. Her aunt has one daughter near her age; Elaine. Elaine and Guinevere grow up together as best friends. Elaine is headstrong, stubborn, and always puts herself first, even before her older cousin. Elaine also adores the legend of Arthur, and then when Arthur takes his place at the throne of Britain, uniting the country and fighting the Saxons, Elaine becomes obsessed with him, believing herself to be his future bride, and meant for his unending love. When Arthur is chosen a bride, it is Guinevere, which complicates her relationship with Elaine, igniting fierce jealousy in the heart of Elaine. Lancelot is sent to retrieve Guinevere for Arthur and take her to "Camelot" for him. At their first meeting they fall passionately and helplessly in love. Though, here, Guinevere's affair with Lancelot is celibate, although no less passionate, and at times much more realistic then other versions of the story. When Lancelot tells Arthur about his bride, Guinevere, Arthur realizes Lancelot's love for her, but due to their great friendship, and his own love and trust in Guinevere, Arthur finds a way to accept it and move on. Years later, Elaine schemes to make Lancelot her husband, as revenge to Guinevere for taking Arthur from her. Though Lancelot does not love Elaine, he takes her for a bride and together they leave Camelot for his family's lands in Gaul, to start a family. As time passes, it becomes clear Guinevere cannot become pregnant. In need of an heir, she and Arthur decide to recognize his bastard son Mordred, whom he had with his sister Morguase. They bring Mordred and his half-brothers to Camelot, to train to become Knights. Guinevere takes a special liking to Mordred, who dreams of a unified Britain. His dreams are the undoing of Arthur. Mordred meets with Saxon leaders in secret to make a peace treaty, as Arthur goes to fight the Saxons. Seeing his son betray him, and stay on the Saxon side leads him to failure and his own death, by Mordred's hand. These are the events that have just taken place when we find Guinevere in the convent during the prologue. |
15481276 | /m/03mbrz5 | The Chemistry of Death | Simon Beckett | 2006 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Forensics expert David Hunter is recovering from a shattering tragedy three years earlier. While he is working in an isolated Norfolk village as a doctor, a woman's mutilated corpse is discovered. Police want to exploit Hunter's forensic knowledge to help identify the killer, but he is wary of involvement. Another woman disappears and the small community in which Hunter has taken refuge is divided by suspicion, including suspicion of Hunter himself. de:Die Chemie des Todes pl:Chemia śmierci sv:Dödens kemi |
15481793 | /m/03mbskz | The Sweethearts; or, The Top and the Ball | Hans Christian Andersen | null | null | In a drawer filled with playthings, a mahogany top woos a leather ball. The ball spurns the top, thinking she deserves a finer suitor. One day, the ball is taken outdoors, thrown high into the air, and disappears. The ball has landed in the roof gutter but the top believes she has become the wife of a swallow living in a nearby tree. Not being able to possess her, the top's infatuation deepens. Years pass, and, one day, the top is refurbished with gilding. He is spun and jumps into the dust bin. Among the trash lying about, he sees the ball who has suffered much from exposure to the elements. She doesn't recognize him as her former suitor and tells him she spent five years in the roof gutter soaked with rain before falling into the dustbin. The maid suddenly arrives, finds the top, and carries him into the house. The top puts aside the passion he felt for the ball, "for love vanishes when one's sweetheart has been soaking in a gutter for five years. You don't even recognize her when you meet her in a dustbin." |
15482565 | /m/03mbtb0 | Ace in the Hole | null | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The plot of Jokers Wild centers on the 1988 Democratic Convention held in that universe's fictional Atlanta, Georgia. Following many years of inadequate recognition and inaction, the plight of the unfortunate victims of the Wild Card virus, the jokers, now forms a large part of the Democratic campaign. With this backdrop, numerous aces, jokers and "nats" (normal humans) converge on Atlanta to support or attempt to kill various candidates, lobby for more specific causes or just create and revel in chaos. |
15486863 | /m/03mby0_ | Dead Mountaineer's Hotel | Boris Strugatsky | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The novel begins with Peter Glebsky, a policeman by profession, going on a holiday to the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, a small resort located in a secluded valley in the Alps. He meets the other guests: Mr. Moses, a rich old man with highly eccenteric manners, and his stunningly beautiful wife; Mr. du Barnstocre, an illusionist who is accompanied by Brun, his niece (portrayed throughout the novel as an adolescent of unidentifiable sex); Mr. Simonet, the obsessed physicist; Mr. Hinckus, a custodial attorney; and Olaf Andvarafors. Not long after Mr. Glebsky's arrival, an avalanche blocks the entrance to the valley, thus cutting the protagonists off from outside world. At the same time, Olaf Andvarafors is found dead in his room, his door locked and his neck impossibly twisted. Glebsky is forced to start an investigation, but the more he searches for a logical explanation for the murder, the more he realises that the guests are not who they appear to be. |
15489681 | /m/03mb_gb | The Kid Who Only Hit Homers | Matt Christopher | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The plot of the book revolves around a boy named Sylvester Coddmeyer III, who is having trouble hitting on his little league baseball team. One day, Sylvester meets a mysterious stranger named George Baruth, who promises to make Sylvester the best player on his team. After meeting Baruth, Sylvester begins hitting home runs in literally all of his plate appearances. When his friend "Snooky" tries to convince him this mysterious man was just a figment of his imagination, Sylvester Coddmeyer III tries to prove to him the truth. But what was the question left unanswered "Who was Mr. George Baruth?" |
15514492 | /m/03mcxn0 | Agent 13: The Invisible Empire | Flint Dille | 1986 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Set in the late 1930s, just before the outbreak of World War II which ominous events around the world was portending, the book opened with a mysterious nocturnal trip made by a Nazi SS Colonel Schmidt to a clandestine meeting in a secret chamber beneath the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. The chamber predated the existence of the church, and known only to the organization known as the Brotherhood, of which the colonel was a member of, sent as an agent to Germany in late 1918 to closely monitor the factions struggling for control of the humiliated, wrecked nation defeated in World War I. The Brotherhood was seeking to gain control over the whole world, and it was Colonel Schmidt who found a candidate with great potential in an anti-Semitic demagogue in Bavaria to be the puppet leader of Germany, an unwitting but definite pawn of the Brotherhood. Schmidt had carefully groomed the man, bankrolled the endeavor to take over from the troubled Weimar Republic, having first changed the man's name from awful Schicklgruber into Hitler. Having succeeded in securing his pawn as undisputed leader of Germany, and even arranging the disposal of Engelbert Dollfuss of Austria to pave the way for the Anschluss, Schmidt was in Istanbul to make a report to his superiors. He only made it as far as the concealed entrance of the secret chamber, killed right after he triggered the mechanism to disclose the hidden portal. His killer left a calling card on Schmidt's corpse, the number 13 burnt on the forehead of the dead man, and attended the meeting disguised as Schmidt. At the meeting, a senior Brotherhood member was inspecting all attendees, using a special crystal to reveal a number imprinted on the palms of all Brotherhood agents. The palm of Schmidt's killer was inspected and the number 13 was called out in the familiar routine. It was a moment before the significance struck and a gasp of sharp fear seized all who heard it. That moment was all it took for the killer to strike and slaughter all the others, before escaping with his goal accomplished, along with documents Schmidt was carrying, and the bonus of the special crystal, with which he could use to unerringly identify all members of the Brotherhood. The killer, known only as Agent 13 in the series, was once the best assassin raised from childhood and trained by the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood itself claimed to its members to be a hidden guiding hand in world affairs through the centuries, always keeping its presence secret in the background, while manipulating events around the globe through its agents, to direct the development of human culture. Its existence preceded the written history of mankind, originally founded by survivors of the Lemurian nation which was destroyed in antiquity long before the rise of ancient human civilizations. During his training, Agent 13 had perceived that the Brotherhood true nature not to be benevolent but evil, and fled. For years, he was hunted by Brotherhood agents, and in time, he turned around fought back, dedicating himself to cause as much damage possible in his mostly single vanguard crusade against an organization of unimaginable power, resources and reach into the world's governments. One of his main aim was to relocate the Brotherhood's main base. The close pursuit during his desperate flight from the Brotherhood's secret headquarters to the outside world prevented him from retracing his route later. After the debacle of Istanbul, the virtually immortal leader and founder of the Brotherhood, known as Itsu, the Hand Sinister, laid a cunning elaborate trap for Agent 13, knowing his agents were vulnerable with the special crystal (Seer Stone) in Agent 13's possession, the renegade who would stop at nothing to thwart the Brotherhood. From Schmidt's documents, Agent 13 learned of the Brotherhood's interest in an experimental Lightning Gun developed by American scientist Dr. David Fischer. At a successful demonstration of the gun's principles, conducted by the US military, and attended by senior officials, Agent 13 overheard the National Security Advisor (NSA) Kent Walters hurrying to call a National Security Council (NSC) in response to a blackmail threat just received. Infiltrating the meeting, which was attended by the NSC composed of John Myerson (Assistant Attorney General), Jack Halloran (Treasury), Kent Walters (NSA), Constantin Gyrakos (head, Secret Service, East Coast division), and Robert Buckhurst (Deputy Director, FBI), it was revealed through a projection of a film that an enemy, known as the Masque, using the omega as his symbol, easily capable of untraceable large-scale destruction was demanding the USA to drastically scale down its armament process. The blackmailer claimed responsibility for three disasters shown in the film: # Montana Rail Crash as the train Olympian was plying on an 180-feet high bridge. # Complete destruction of Westron Aircraft base for aircraft development and experiments. # Airship Hinderburg disaster. The deliberate filmings indicated prior knowledge of the disasters, and probably, responsibility by the blackmailers. The filmings also strongly hinted at the blackmailers having unknown advance technology, and capable of massive destruction. The council was undecided about the response to the threat when Agent 13 revealed himself. News, with more rumors than truth, of his exploits over the years had filtered to the intelligence community, causing the council to be just as undecided whether he was an ally or a foe. Before the decision was reached, elite assassins from the Brotherhood launched an ambush, killing almost everyone in the room. Only Agent 13 and Kent Walters narrowly escaped death, Kent Walters badly shot and barely alive. From clues collected from the bodies of one of the ambushers, Agent 13 deduced the local footpad was to collect his pay-off at an opera in New York city, performed by the world famous diva named China White. Agent 13 attended the opera disguised as the footpad, with his loyal assistant, Maggie Darr. Maggie noted that the mention of China White invoked a never seen before in Agent 13's otherwise perpetually emotionless expression. Using the Seer Stone as bait, Agent 13 and Maggie Darr were invited to China White's local lair, a speakeasy called the Brown Rat, located beneath the city. They barely escaped with their lives from watery death trap there, but found another clue to follow the Brotherhood's plot to the sailing of the luxury liner SS Normandie. When they discovered Dr. David Fischer was on board with his Lightning Gun, and China White was also along as a star performer, they realized what the Brotherhood wanted, but still did not know how it was to be carried out. Trying to avoid the easy way out to kill Fischer, Agent 13 and Maggie boarded the liner in disguise, separately keeping an eye on Fischer and on White. Too late, Agent 13 and Maggie discovered the Brotherhood intended to sink the ship, while kidnapping the scientist. Fighting valiantly, they managed to save the ship, but the Brotherhood agents escaped with the experimental weapon. Worst of all, Agent 13 was lost to the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where he would have his watery grave after all, leaving Maggie Darr alone in the impossible fight against the Brotherhood. |
15517328 | /m/03mc_ly | Bright Day | John Boynton Priestley | 1946 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Gregory Dawson is an English screenwriter in his fifties, who fought in World War I, and who has spent most of World War II in England after ten years in Hollywood. He has retreated in the spring of 1946 to the Cornish village of Tralorna to finish the screenplay for a film called The Lady Hits Back. An oldish couple staying at his hotel, the Royal Ocean, seem strangely familiar. They are identified to him as "Lord and Lady Harndean". In the hotel's restaurant Dawson is condescending to the musicians, who attempt to impress him by playing the slow movement of Schubert's B flat trio. The music triggers Dawson's memory, and he realises that the couple are Mr and Mrs Nixey, whom he has not seen since 1914. He approaches and introduces himself. Back in his hotel room he recalls the Bruddersford of his youth, where he moved after the death of his parents to live with his maternal uncle. Lonely and missing his family, he finds himself charmed by a certain prosperous family he often sees on the tram and at concerts. He obtains a job at Hawes and Company, a wool firm, under the stentorian Joe Ackworth, and on the first day he is surprised to find that he recognises Ackworth's co-worker, Mr Alington, as the head of that happy family. In December, Mr Alington's daughter Joan stops by at the office, looking for him. She talks to Greg and invites him to a concert at Gladstone Hall. After the concert he is delighted to find himself accepted without question as one of their social circle: the Alington children, Joan, Eva, Bridget, Oliver and David, and their friends Ben Kerry and Jock Barniston. Ackworth quarrels with the cashier Croxton for sending samples away without his permission. Gregory enjoys Christmas 1912, which includes many visits, and a trip to the pantomime Cinderella; in May 1913, Greg accompanies the Alingtons to the village of Bulsden, on the edge of Broadstone Moor, for a picnic and a game of cricket. He meets the old painter Stanley Mervin. On arriving back home, the Schubert trio is played, but it is interrupted by the first arrival of the Nixeys. (Dawson's reminiscing is interrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth Earl, the English actress who is to be the star of the movie he is writing. She is injured by his cool reception. On going downstairs to the bar, he talks to the publicist, Jake West, and the movie's European director, George Adony. Adony believes that she is romantically involved with Dawson, and he tries to persuade him she is not.) In late summer 1913, Nixey takes Dawson out to the Market Grill and the Imperial Music Hall, and asks him about Ackworth and Croxton. Dawson goes on holiday to Silverdale with the Blackshaws, and meets their child Laura. In mid-September, he goes with Oliver and Bridget to a musical evening at the Leatons'. Nixey's monopolisation of a visiting customer, Albert Harfner, leads to a confrontation between him and Ackworth. Dawson guesses that Eleanor Nixey is having an affair with Ben Kerry, who is supposed to be "half-engaged" to Eva Alington. Dorothy Barniston tells Dawson's fortune. Joan demands that he tell her what is going on at the office that is upsetting her father; he quarrels with Ben Kerry at a showbiz party at the Crown. (Dawson explains to Elizabeth Earl that he is feeling troubled by his past.) He recollects 31 December 1913, the last party at the Alington residence, when the family played charades. The arrival of the Nixeys shortly before midnight ruins the atmosphere, and the New Year has, he feels "an ill-omened beginning." (The next morning, George Adony brings him breakfast in his room in order to talk about the script. He has lunch with Elizabeth Earl, who tells him that her agent Leo Blatt is coming this evening. After working for a few hours on the script, Dawson comes down and, during a conversation with Blatt, comes to the decision not to return to Hollywood.) In the late spring of 1914, Ackworth quarrels with Croxton, and soon afterwards decides to leave the company. In June, the Alingtons go for a picnic at Pikeley Scar, a limestone cliff, in the company of Dawson, Jock Barniston, and the 10-year-old Laura Blackshaw. Jock Barniston is to deliver a letter to Eva from Ben Kerry, and is worried that it may herald a break-up. They meet the artist Stanley Mervin again, and Dawson is chatting with Bridget by a river when they hear a scream. Eva has fallen to her death from the cliff, an event witnessed by Laura. It is ruled to be an accident. The day after the funeral, Mr Alington collapses at work, and a fortnight later the Nixeys call at his house, where they are confronted by Bridget, who blames them for what has happened. (Dawson again refuses Blatt's offer of work. Elizabeth Earl plans lunch at a certain seaside hotel, but by the time they arrive it is pouring with rain.) Dawson's last meeting with Joan is in early spring 1919, when they bump into each other at Victoria Station. He accompanies her to her flat and helps her carry her luggage up the stairs. She tells him that her mother has moved to Dorset, and Bridget has married an Irishman named Michael Connally. They go out to a revue, and then to a club, but on returning to the flat he makes the mistake of asking about Eva's death, and Joan becomes hysterical. (Elizabeth Earl's manner towards Dawson has cooled suddenly, because she has concluded that he is still besotted with Bridget Alington and not with her, as she had assumed. She tells him she has met David Alington -- now Sir David and a famous physicist. Back at the Royal Ocean Hotel, Dawson talks to Malcolm Nixey, who is leaving the next day, and perplexes him by demanding to know what he has "got out of it all", that is, out of the "successful" life he has lived. Later, Eleanor Nixey dumbfounds Dawson by informing him that she was indeed in love with Ben Kerry.) Having done with reminiscing, Dawson finishes the screenplay, and while chatting with the restaurant trio he hears them mention a fellow musician named Sheila Connally. When he arrives back in London, Elizabeth Earl organises a surprise meeting with Bridget Alington, whom he has not seen for decades. He learns that Joan is dead. Their talk is uninspiring and leaves them both disgruntled. At a party at Claridges, Dawson encounters Lord Harndean again, who asks him to phone someone called Mrs Childs, who is involved with a film-making youth group. It turns out, to his amazement, that Mrs Childs is in fact Laura Blackshaw. They talk about Bruddersford, and she tells him that she saw Joan push Eva from the cliff. This is the last piece of the puzzle. He agrees to help the youth group, and the book ends with the implication that one part of his life is finally over and that another has begun. |
15519597 | /m/03md1cp | Tom Clancy's EndWar | David Michaels | 2/4/2008 | null | It is the year 2020. After capturing a Russian GRU Colonel named Pavel Doletskaya in Moscow, Team Victor of the Joint Strike Force (JSF) retreats from Russia, with Sergeant Nathan Vatz as the sole survivor. Colonel Doletskaya is interrogated by Major Alice Dennison back in the U.S. The colonel refuses to answer any questions, even under torture. The interrogation is then turned over to Charles Shakura, the JSF's top interrogator. Yet the Colonel still holds out and he is then sent to Cuba. Meanwhile, Outlaw Team, composed of Marine Force Recon, is dispatched to rescue the Colonel when his plane is shot down in the Cuban jungle. The team finds only one survivor, Shakura. Outlaw Team's leader, Sergeant McAllen, is told that this was only a decoy, and that Colonel Doletskaya was ferried to Cuba on a submarine. Prior to this time, all U.S. Special Operations Forces are merged into one combined task force termed the "Joint Strike Force" (JSF). In 2016, there is a nuclear war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, annihilating both countries. This war leads Russia into being the world's leading oil producer. In 2016, Europe becomes one country called the European Federation (EF). The United Nations is then disbanded. The US and EF are no longer allies. After launching the Freedom Star space station from the JFK Space Center in 2020, the space station is attacked by the Green Brigade, a powerful and infamous left-wing ecoterrorist group. All Marines aboard are killed and the Russians are blamed for this. The purpose of the space station is to allow the United States to be able to deploy 3 brigades of U.S. Marines anywhere in the world within 90 minutes. Meanwhile, Major Stephanie 'Siren' Halverson and her wingman, Captain Jake 'Ghost Hawk' Boyd, observe multiple Russian Ka-29 helos flying over Canadian land. While trying to scare the Russian helicopters back to the border, Captain Boyd's F35 is shot down by rocket fire. Major Halverson manages to shoot down 7 Russian helicopters and damage an eighth before trying to land her plane to rescue Jake. He refuses because Major Halverson would then run the risk of being captured or killed by the Spetsnaz forces. After giving her sidearm to Boyd, she returns and takes off in her F35. Soon after, Spetsnaz troops arrive via a Ka-29, and Boyd is killed. Halverson receives a call from the President, and the U.S. fully realizes that Russia is invading Canada. At that time, Canada is the world's second leading oil producer. After refueling and rearming at Igloo Base, which is destroyed seconds after both pilots take off, Major Halverson with her new wingman Captain Lisa 'Sapphire' Johansson and two other F35s attack and destroy a large staging ground with AN-130 super carrier jets. During that engagement, a flight of Russian SU-98 fighter jets shoot down all of the F35s, with Major Halverson being the only survivor. Back in the U.S., Major Dennison figures out the answers to the questions. Operation 2659 is the invasion of Canada, and Snegurockha is Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov. Colonel Doletskaya falls in love with her until she dies. During that time, Outlaw Team is sent to Canada to find Major Halverson and rescue her, their orders from the President himself. Sergeant Vatz's Team also arrives in Canada to combat Spetsnaz troops in the town of High Level, Alberta. Half of Vatz's team dies when the C-130 is shot down. Khaki, an ex-Canadian Special Forces soldier, is a helicopter pilot responsible for transporting Outlaw team to Major Halverson, lands in the town held by Sgt Vatz in order to refuel. At that point, the Russians stage an assault on the airfield, successfully destroying Khaki's helicopter. Outlaw Team begins to form a plan to take a Russian KA-29 helo, and in doing so, are able to enlist the help of one Captain Pravota. Outlaw team then tells Pravota to fly to the location where they will find Halverson. He agrees but warns that the helo has mechanical problems. Pravota tells them that he wants to go with the US soldiers on the return trip to the United States, and McAllen quickly agrees. After thinking they are Spetsnaz troops, Major Halverson begins to open fire at the helicopter, almost injuring the Outlaw Team. After realizing that is the Outlaw Team, she is rescued. Sergeant Vatz's Team, the Bravo Team, goes into combat with a handful of Spetsnaz, and some of his troops are killed. Back in Moscow, the president of the Russian Federation, is called. It is Snegurockha and Green Vox. Green Vox is the leader of infamous terrorist group, the Green Brigade Transnational. They tell the president that they have put two nuclear bombs in Calgary and Edmonton and will detonate them in 48 hours. The only catch is that they will wait for most of the citizen to evacuate, and more of the Spetsnaz to move in. The president demands help from the US to defuse it after all attempts on negotiations with the two terrorists fail. The terrorists put the nuclear bombs in the two cities in order to effectifevly turn the world guns on Russia, and bring any neutral countries into war, because the two cities also have large oil refineries. The President charges Sergeant Marc Rakken to send two Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST) teams to defuse it. Marc Rakken leads them to the nuclear bombs and defuses it before it detonates. However, Marc Rakken sacrifices himself to save the entire NEST team when a lone Spetsnaz troop throws a grenade at them. In the end, Snegurockha kills Green Vox because they fail to detonate the nuclear bombs. Spetsnaz troops begin to evacuate from Canada. The Outlaw Team leader gets his legs shot up, but Major Halverson survives. Nathan Vatz is relieved that the war is over, but also finds out that Rakken died to save the entire NEST Team. Major Alice Dennison approached Colonel Doletskaya and tells him that Colonel Viktoria Antsyforov is still alive and currently hiding out in Canada. Colonel Pavel Doletskaya tells her that he will help Dennison to capture Viktoria, and she frees him. Major Dennison later calls President Becerra and tells him that she hasn't told all of the information to Doletskaya, but he's in on their plan. |
15525090 | /m/03md5cn | Native Speaker | Chang-Rae Lee | 1995 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Henry is the quintessential Korean-American, yet much of his Korean heritage resonates through his voice, personality, and beliefs. His Korean upbringing still shows up in his adult life. Like many American immigrants trying to find an identity in a foreign land, Henry is an “…emotional alien…stranger [and] follower…” who constantly feels isolated from the country in which he lives and also the country from which he came. Even though he is almost completely Americanized, Henry Park has trouble adapting to the U.S. There are many challenges that come with fitting in to American life because of the difference in culture, beliefs, behavior; and because of the desire to still hold on to one’s heritage. |
15529320 | /m/03md9z4 | Life As We Knew It | Susan Beth Pfeffer | 10/1/2006 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Sixteen-year-old Miranda is living in Northeast Pennsylvania, United States. She is a sensitive teenager with a struggling life, seeing as how her parents are divorced, and her stepmother has a baby arriving. She has 2 best friends, Sammi, a carefree girl, and Megan, an overly religious girl. Told in diary form, Miranda lays out the story of a meteor knocking the Moon closer to Earth's orbit and causing worldwide catastrophes. She tells how her family struggles for survival in the apocalypse, which has caused tidal waves on the coasts, volcanoes that turn the air into killer smoke, and earthquakes shaking up the land. Miranda and her family do not live on the coast, nor near volcanoes, and her town has had little earthquake activity, but it affects the others around her, as some of the closest people to her begin to die and her dad's family faces challenges as they try to get to safety. Their family doctor, in a relationship with her Mom, dies of a raging flu that wipes out many people. Her only lifeline is her family, and they are forced to stay in their house and ration their food, water, and clothes. With the electricity out, Miranda starts to get used to her life in the apocalypse, but that changes as the moon's nearness causes climatic change that cools the earth, sending it into a horrible winter. Miranda's friend Sammi leaves with her 40-year-old boyfriend and Megan starves herself to death. Miranda's boyfriend, Dan, moves as well. She also meets her idol Brandon in the winter. Her family's ally Mrs. Nesbitt dies. |
15553014 | /m/03mdy6l | Heaven Has No Favorites | Erich Maria Remarque | 1961 | {"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | The main figure, Clerfayt, is an automobile racer who goes to a Swiss hospital to visit a fellow racer, Holman. There he meets the young Belgian woman Lillian suffering from tuberculosis. She is in its terminal stage with no chance of a cure, and she wants to enjoy her last months rather than waiting for her death. Therefore, after a few days in Switzerland she decides to leave the Bela Vista sanatorium with Clerfayt. Together they travel over Europe, while Lillian enjoyed things she did not know before. Eventually they fall in love and Clerfayt starts to hope for a future with her. However, when he expresses his wish to settle down and wants to get her visited by a doctor, she starts feeling trapped and refuses the idea. Although she loves him, she decides to leave him before they start an actual life together. In one race Clerfayt is seriously injured and dies in the hospital. Lillian, devastated, returns to Switzerland. On her way there she encounters Holman, now healed, who has been offered the former job of Clerfayt. Six weeks later, Lillian dies. It is described as a peaceful moment, as if even the landscape had stopped breathing. |
15555188 | /m/03md_jl | Trust Me | Rajashree | 2006 | {"/m/04f2l4d": "Indian chick lit", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | Set against the backdrop of the Hindi film industry, Trust Me is a comic story about love, heart-break and friendship. The protagonist, Parvati, decides to go off men when she is dumped by her boyfriend. She concludes that her girlfriends are right: all men are bastards. Her boss, the fatherly Mr Bose, is the one shoulder she can cry on. He is also the one man she never expects a pass from. She stands corrected: all men ARE bastards. Her girlfriends manage to keep their I-told-you-so’s to themselves. Parvati quits her job, and joins the unit of Jambuwant (‘Call me Jumbo!’) Sinha, assisting him in making his latest Hindi feature film. ‘Jumbo’ is a Bombay film-maker archetype: he believes in white shoes, black money and the casting couch. Manoj, the chief assistant, makes a pass at every woman he meets because he doesn’t want anybody to feel unwanted. And Rahul, an actor, claims to have fallen in love with her. Parvati hopes she is older now, and smarter - but perhaps not smart enough, because, very inconveniently, she finds herself liking Rahul far too much. |
15556648 | /m/03mf0zd | People of the Book | Geraldine Brooks | 1/1/2008 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel tells the fictional story of Hanna Heath, an Australian book conservator who is responsible for restoring the Haggadah. The story alternates between sections set in the present day with Heath and other sections showing the history of the Haggadah. Told in reverse chronological order, the story follows the Haggadah backward in time as it travels across Europe, from war-torn Sarajevo to the book's origins. It also explains such clues as missing silver clasps, preserved butterfly remnants, and various stains and spots, which are all eventually explained as part of the manuscript's long history. |
15559635 | /m/03mf3t5 | Monkey Hunting | Cristina García | 4/15/2003 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel follows three generations of one family: Chen Pan, who leaves China in 1857 on the promise of success in Cuba only to find himself enslaved as an indentured worker; his Chinese granddaughter, Chen Fang, who is raised as a boy so that she can be educated (unbeknownst to her father, who has returned to Cuba as a doctor); and Chen Pan's great-grand-grandson Domingo, who moves with his father to the United States, where he enlists to fight in Vietnam. |
15559807 | /m/03mf3zp | Shell Shaker | LeAnne Howe | 2001-09 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Shell Shaker links two generations of the Billy peacemaking family through increasingly similar circumstances. The early tale, beginning in 1738 in pre-removal Choctaw Mississippi, tells the story of Red Shoes, a historical Choctaw warrior. When his wife of the Red Fox clan of the Chickasaws is murdered, his Choctaw wife, Anoleta, is blamed. Her mother, Shakbatina, forfeits her life to save Anoleta and avert a pending war between the tribes. Anoleta and her family attempt to move on as their tribe spends the next decade deciding what actions to take against Red Shoes as he plays both sides in what would become a war that devastates the people of Yanàbi Town and Anoleta's family. The later story follows the descendants of Shakbatina, now living in Durant, Oklahoma in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma in 1991. As a fire destroys the land around them, Redford McAlester, Chief of the Choctaw Nation, is murdered, and his lover, Assistant Chief Auda Billy, has been blamed. Her mother, Susan Billy, confesses to the murder while her uncle, Isaac Billy, brings together their scattered family to help in the investigation. As the family gets closer and closer to the truth, involving tales of embezzlement, rape, money laundering, contributions to the Irish Republican Army and Mafia involvement, their lives become increasingly parallel to that of their ancestors. They begin to feel the involvement of spirits long gone, complicated by a strange old woman claiming to be Sarah Bernhardt, who just may be more than she seems. |
15562890 | /m/03mf6jv | The Green Knight | Iris Murdoch | null | null | The lives of Louise Anderson and her daughters Aleph, Sefton and Moy become intertwined with a mystical character whose destiny both affects and informs the novel's central conflicts which include a murder that never actually occurs, sibling rivalry, love triangles, and one extremely sentient dog who dearly misses his owner. This novel loosely parodies the Medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; however, it is largely a comedy of errors with bizarre twists and turns in circumstances that threaten the stability of a circle of friends in a London community. |
15565262 | /m/03mf8hv | The Romantics | Pankaj Mishra | 1999 | {"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction"} | Samar, the young narrator of The Romantics, arrives at a boarding house in the holy city of Benaras, an ancient city trying to cope with modern India. There he hopes to lose himself in books and solitude, but, far from offering him an undistracted existence, the city forces all his silent desires into the light. |
15565525 | /m/03mf8tt | I, the Supreme | Augusto Roa Bastos | 1974 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | As critic John King notes, "it is impossible to summarize this extraordinary novel in a few lines. It incorporates the latest developments in linguistic theory and practice, talks of the arbitrariness and unreliability of language that purports to describe reality, rereads and comments upon the various histories and travelers’ accounts of Paraguay, ranges across the breadth of Latin American history, implicitly condemning Stroessner and debating with Fidel Castro, and exploring once again the gap between writer and reader." The book does, however, start by promising a linear narrative. It opens with the title words, set in a font designed to look like handwriting, heralding what appears to be an official order: I the Supreme Dictator of the Republic Order that on the occasion of my death my corpse be beheaded; my head placed on a pike for three days in the Plaza de la República, to which the people are to be summoned by the sounding of a full peal of bells... This pronouncement, it turns out, is not an official declaration. It is an imitation or forgery, found "nailed to the door of the cathedral" in Paraguay's capital, Asunción. Immediately following, then, is a discussion of this pasquinade: Dr Francia, the Supreme, and his secretary, Policarpo Patiño, discuss its meaning and possible provenance. Patiño is set the task of uncovering the perpetrator: "You are to start tracking down the handwriting of the pasquinade in all the files." But this linear detection narrative soon starts to unravel. The Supreme casts doubt even on the presumption that the declaration is indeed a forgery, or rather suggests that the forgery could itself be forged: "Suppose that I myself am an author of pasquinades." Moreover, the literary genre is undone by the introduction of footnotes (which blur the line between fiction and fact), and the narrative transparency subverted by the fact that the novel asserts its own materiality with interpolations such as "(the rest of the sentence burned, illegible)" and "(edge of the folio burned)". The effect of these notes is to remind readers that they are reading a book, and that this book is incomplete, damaged, and fallible. As the novel continues, it becomes more and more caught up in digressions, such that the original narrative line is apparently forgotten. The Supreme and his secretary discuss an often bizarre series of topics: a meteor that is apparently chained to Francia's desk; a prison camp in Tevego whose inhabitants have been turned to stone; and increasingly the dictator also ruminates on the past, particularly the events of Paraguay's foundation when he had to fend off the attention of Spaniards, Argentines, and Brazilians, all of whom threatened the nascent country's independence. Chronology and logic are seemingly abandoned: at one point the dictator discusses the date of his own death; elsewhere he mentions events that will only happen long afterwards, such as the Chaco War of the 1930s (in which Roa Bastos himself fought). Moreover, readers are increasingly made aware of the marginal but insistent voice of the mysterious compiler. At the center of the book, it is revealed that the compiler is, in fact, in possession of the same pen used by the Supreme, a "memory-pen" that reproduces images as well as words, but that is now "partially broken, so that today it writes only with very thick strokes that tear the paper, effacing words as it writes them". The novel ends at the end of Francia's life, with him condemning Patiño to death for supposedly plotting against him, followed by Francia's death in a fire in 1840. As the characters and plot disintegrate, so apparently does the novel. The final line is another interpolation: "(the remainder stuck together, illegible, the rest unable to be found, the worm-eaten letters of the Book hopelessly scattered)." And yet, this is not quite the last word, as it is followed by a "Final Compiler's Note" that reflects on the compilation and the book as a whole. Here the novel seems to pass responsibility on to "the no less fictitious and autonomous reader." |
15565943 | /m/03mf93f | Gents | Warwick Collins | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | From Jamaica, Ez Murphy, takes a cleaning job in a "Gents" lavatory. His eye are opened to the meetings that take place in this unusual setting. |
15566415 | /m/03mf9kw | The Elf Mound | Hans Christian Andersen | null | null | Two lizards scramble about the entrance to the Elf Mound, commenting on the hustle and bustle within. They have heard the elf maidens are practicing new dances and both wonder the reason why. An old maid elf hurries out and summons a raven to deliver invitations to an important event. The elf maidens begin their misty dances. The dishes for the night's festivities include skewered frogs, fungus salad made of mushroom seed, and hemlock. The king polishes his crown and tells his inquisitive youngest daughter that he has arranged marriages between two of his daughters and two of the sons of the Goblin Chief of Norway, who all arrive at that moment with pomp. The feast is held and the two sons prove rowdy and boisterous. The elf maidens are paraded as potential brides, declaiming their most notable talents. The Goblin Chief is so delighted he chooses one for his wife. Dawn approaches, and the old maid elf wants to close the shutters. The two sons of the Goblin King hurry outside to continue their tomfoolery and horseplay, leaving without selecting brides. |
15572315 | /m/03mfyft | The Saint of Dragons | null | null | null | The story opens with a Dragonhunter named Aldric St George infiltrating the mansion of an ancient Dragon. The Dragon, despite his considerable age is still quite powerful and succeeds in killing Aldric's brother along with their entire party before finally being destroyed. As he dies, the creature mocks Aldric saying that he knows he has a son and his fellow Dragons are going after him. The book then introduces the main character, thirteen year old Simon St George who attends the prestigious Lighthouse School for Boys in a fictional New England town called Ebony Hollow. He appears young for his age, has a crush on a girl in a novelty shop near his school and lives with the rather dull school caretakers. Simon has never known his parents and is treated as something of an oddity by his arrogant fellow school pupils. One night when Simon is window-cleaning, (something he does as a favour for the school) he meets a somewhat deranged-looking man (who is actually Aldric) who claims to be his father and tries to get Simon to come with him. Simon refuses. On Halloween Night, during a party Simon gets bored and goes out into a corridor where he overhears the headmaster talking to a man in a white suit who claims to be his father. The man leaves, leaving Simon feeling curious. Whilst crossing a field Simon and some of his fellow pupils are attacked by some thugs who attempt to abduct Simon who is rescued by a man on horseback who is revealed to be Aldric and whom Simon recognises as the deranged-looking man who claimed to be his father. The man takes Simon back to his ship which is named The Ship With No Name. This is ironic as obviously the ship does have a name, that being The Ship With No Name, therefore its name is in fact a misnomer. Aldric reveals to Simon that the two of them are descended from Saint George the Dragonslayer and that Dragons are in fact very real and it is their job to hunt them down. Aldric is in possession of a book called the Book of Saint George which contains the name of every Dragon in existence along with their Deathspell, the incantation required to destroy them. To vanquish a Dragon one needs to apply their hand to its chest and speak its Deathspell. Aldric and his late brother, Ormando have travelled the world killing Dragons and there is only one left : the White Dragon of Manhattan, the brother of the Dragon Aldric killed at the beginning of the story. In New York, the White Dragon who goes by the name of Venemon has developed a crush on a human woman named Alaythia, an artist whose work nobody but he appreciates. When a Dragon makes love, they incinerate their partner who effectively becomes a living flame. Venemon thinks Alaythia would make an excellent flame and goes round to her apartment for dinner. He seduces her with a magical painting which he has made and is about to take her when Aldric and Simon arrive. Aldric and Venemon do battle and Aldric destroys him but a fire is started in the process. Aldric and Simon escape along with the unconscious Alaythia. Aldric and Simon then discover to their horror that there is one more Dragon alive in Venice. Alaythia who possesses magical powers and can read the language of Dragons accompanies them to Venice where they encounter the Water Dragon, Brakkesh, an Italian gangster with an obsession with jewellery. In the ensuing battle Brakkesh proves himself a formidable opponent and Simon almost inadvertently sets fire to all of Venice. Nevertheless Brakkesh is eventually forced to flee. Aldric, Simon and Alaythia go to the Dragons mansion which is brimming with water and infested with eels on account of Brakkesh's status as a Water Dragon. They discover that Brakkesh is planning world domination and in fact there are two Books of Saint George one of which is at the legendary Coast of the Dead, a place feared even by Dragons. Aldric, Simon and Alaythia journey to the Coast of the Dead where they discover the other book and find that there are thousands more Dragons in the world. They immediately leave but are apprehended near Russia and taken into custody. Aldric discovers that the Russian Military is under the command of a Dragon and they escape the detention centre and track down the Russian Dragon who has a mansion in Moscow. The Russian Dragon goes by the name of Russki and is quite old. He appears to be schizophrenic and has an obsession with cats. He is part of the Venetian Dragons plan to unite all the Dragons in the world and eradicate humanity and the Venetian is currently on his way to Moscow but because of their close proximity the Dragons' magic is going out of control causing Russki's fire to develop a mind of its own and defy him. When Aldric, Simon and Alaythia arrive at the Russian's mansion, Brakkesh the Water Dragon of Venice has already arrived along with Tyrannique, the Dragon of Paris, a debauched hedonist with a fondness for eating paintings and drinking paint. They eavesdrop on the Dragons' plan and discover that although Brakkesh is the ring-leader he answers to another Dragon whom he refers to only as "the Master." Simon blows their cover, shooting Brakkesh in the heart and the three Dragons attack. In the ensuing confrontation Aldric, Simon and Alaythia fall down a trap-door and are attacked by Fire-Creatures, conjured by the Dragons who make their escape. Simon shoots the glass dome in the roof causing the snow to fall down on the Firelings and he, Aldric and Alaythia escape. Alaythia feels like she isn't getting enough respect from Aldric and leaves, much to the distress of Simon who doesn't get along with his father and is fond of Alaythia. The somewhat callous and socially-inept Aldric does not go after Alaythia despite obviously having feelings for her. He and Simon go to Beijing to find the Chinese Dragon. There they discover that due to the vibrations in nature caused by the Dragons' considerable power people are quite literally melting into each other, resembling Siamese twins. Simon discovers the Black Chinese Dragon in an underground lair. He is considerably old and apparently harmless. He tells Simon that as well as the evil ones, there are many good Dragons of whom he is one. He tells Simon that there is a meeting taking place in an Art Gallery in London between the Light Dragons. Simon believes the Black Dragon and accompanies him via boat to London. At the Art Gallery however Simon discovers that he has fallen into a trap. There in fact are no Light Dragons and the Art Gallery is infested with evil Dragons. Aldric turns up at this point with Alaythia and the three of them are overpowered. Brakkesh's master arrives at this point and is revealed to be Venemon, the White Dragon of Manhattan who survived his battle with Alric on account of Aldric not speaking his full death-spell. The three of them are captured and taken to the palace of the Dragons, elsewhere in London. In a white dungeon beneath the palace, Venemon reveals his villainous plan to liberate the Dragon Goddess, the Serpent Queen from her underground prison where she was banished by the Ancient Egyptians. He plans to sacrifice Alaythia to the Serpent Queen. Having revealed his plan Venemon takes his leave. He goes upstairs to the throne room and does a grand speech to the assembled Dragons from around the world who will combine their powers to free the Serpent Queen. Meanwhile down below, the Black Dragon who has grown to like Simon and feels remorse for having double-crossed him releases him, Aldric and Alaythia. They go upstairs to the Throne Room and confront Venemon and the other Dragons. Aldric tricks the Dragons into thinking that Venemon plans to destroy them and the Dragons rebel. A furious battle ensues during which the combined energies of the Dragons awaken the banished Serpent Queen. The floor fades and the congregation see the terrifying form of the Serpent Queen rising from the centre of the Earth. Simon however combines the power of a scroll from the Coast of the Dead with one of the Dragonhunter arrows and shoots into the heart of the evil goddess who falls back to the centre of the Earth. In rage Tyrannique attacks Simon. Meanwhile Aldric manages to grab onto Venemon and utter his deathspell, destroying him. In the midst of the battle Brakkesh and Russki are also vanquished and the palace begins to collapse. The Dragons flee and Alaythia creates a magical shield to protect them. As the three of them emerge from the ruins of Venemon's white palace, Tyrannique, the Dragon of Paris attacks them but is destroyed mid-flight by the benevolent Black Dragon. As the result of all the paint the Parisian Dragon had eaten, the sky then sheds multi-coloured rain. The story ends with Aldric, Alaythia and Simon moving into a castle in Ebony Hollow where Aldric continues to teach Simon to be a full-fledged Dragonhunter. |
15577490 | /m/03mg8m9 | Zeroville | Steve Erickson | 2007 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Ike Jerome, a 24-year-old architecture student inspired by the few films he has seen, rides the bus into Hollywood. Jerome is almost autistic (later, his friend dubs him a "cineautistic") in his interactions with the world, and is deeply affected by his childhood with his religiously oppressive father. With a tattoo of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor as they appear in A Place in the Sun (a film that plays an important role in the plot) on his shaved head, he makes an impression on the people around him. Soon breaking into film as a designer and eventually a film editor, Vikar (as he is nicknamed) begins a dreamlike journey into the world of films that eventually ends in tragedy and almost horrific discovery. |
15584298 | /m/03mgj0m | The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times, The Institution That Influences the World | Gay Talese | 1969 | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | While Talese's book outlined the history of the paper back to Adolph Ochs's 1896 takeover of the then-failing paper, the focus was on The Times between 1945 and the 1960s. The Washington bureau of The Times sometimes was seen as the center of the paper's power, but after the death of publisher Orvil Dryfoos in 1963, Talese saw this center as shifting to New York City under Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger beginning in 1963. The title of the book indicated the thrust of Talese's thesis. The Kingdom was The New York Times newsroom, and the Power was the influence the paper wielded, particularly in its interpretation of the paper's famous motto "All the News That's Fit to Print". Talese looked at the personalities driving Times news coverage such as managing editor Clifton Daniel, executive editor James Reston, rising star A. M. Rosenthal and Punch Sulzberger. Time found Talese's portrayal of the highly-respected Reston as particularly critical. Talese described Reston as a "Times-man in the old sense, a man emotionally committed to the institution as a way of life, a religion, a cult." |
15584906 | /m/03mgjm6 | Agent 13: The Serpentine Assassin | Flint Dille | 1986 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Due to damages suffered, the SS Normandie was forced to turn around and sail back towards New York. On board, fighting back fears and tears as she watched the waters which she believed claimed the man she loved, Maggie Darr swore to continue his fight against the Brotherhood, despite the impossible odds. Unknown to herself, she still had allies she knew nothing about back in New York, watching over her as she made her way back to Agent 13's lair. Also unknown to her, China White had Agent 13 fished out of the waters, and despite him almost being dead, managed to arrange for him to be secretly transported back to the headquarters of the Brotherhood. In New York, Maggie reviewed the situation and decided to approach Kent Walters, the National Security Advisor who was recuperating in the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Walters had been injured during the events in the first book, ambushed along with Agent 13 by Brotherhood's assassins which saw the massacre of all other members of the National Security Council. She managed to gain Walters' cooperation who suggested she investigate General Hunter Braddock who was in charge of the Lightning Gun project. Braddock was also involved with China White in her diva persona. Meanwhile, Agent 13 was brought back from the brink of death, and told frankly by his former mentor, Jinda-dii, High Priest of the Serpentine Assassins, that he would be brainwashed to be the assassin the Brotherhood was training him to be, and be sent on a mission where he would die at the end of the job. He resisted valiantly, and for a brief moment, felt an unexpected support from an unknown source during the battling for his mind. Yet in the end, he could not prevail and his nemesis, Itsu, cackled gleefully. Tredekka, the original name given to Agent 13 by the Brotherhood, was sent on the spitefully vicious mission to murder Maggie Darr. He was programmed to remember his brainwashing at the completion of his mission, moments before the mantha, the oil of fire he drank before departure, would trigger upon his "success" to combust and consume him, giving him just enough time to fully comprehend the awful horror of what he did to the woman who loved him. Ignorant of the impending doom, Maggie Darr was working feverishly to investigate the disasters which the Masque claimed responsibility, unearthing clues which linked the events together in a previously unnoticed pattern, providing clues to an emerging, still vague but unmistakably ominous picture. |
15586316 | /m/03mgm7g | Sovereign | C. J. Sansom | 2006 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Set in the autumn of 1541, the novel describes fictional events surrounding Henry VIII's 'Progress' to the North (a state visit accompanied by the royal court and its attendants, the purpose of which was to formally accept surrender from those who had rebelled during the Pilgrimage of Grace). Most of the novel is set in York, though events in London and on the return journey via Hull are also depicted. Matthew Shardlake (a London lawyer) and his assistant Jack Barak arrive in York ahead of the Progress to fulfill an official role, but also with a secret mission from Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. The official role is to deal with petitions to the King from the citizens of York; the secret mission is to ensure the welfare of an important political prisoner, Sir Edward Broderick, so he can be brought to London for questioning in the Tower of London. However, events are quickly complicated when the murder of a York glazier leads Shardlake to the discovery of important documents that bring the King's right to the throne into question. |
15600794 | /m/03mh2fn | Nevada | Zane Grey | 1928 | {"/m/0hfjk": "Western", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Ben Ide, restless with the rancher life, moves his family to Arizona, ostensibly for his mother's health, but also to search for his missing partner Nevada. He buys a beautiful ranch, in a territory known for cattle rustling. The deal soon sours as he struggles to keep his cattle and prize horses from the network of rustlers about the wild country of Arizona, not sure who he can trust and who he can't. Hettie Ide pines away for the missing Nevada, meanwhile fending off a horde of suitors. Nevada, having escaped the end of Forlorn River with only his life, resumes the life of an outlaw, seeking a way out of his situation, but working his way deeper amidst the labyrinthine social network of Arizona, in which everyone is a rustler and no one will say who leads the gangs. |
15601080 | /m/03mh2n5 | The Day of the Beast | null | null | null | It is the story of Daren Lane, who returns from the battlefields of World War I to a society tired of hearing about the war and declining morals. It is set in Middletown USA. It is set on the Victorian era's side in the culture conflict with the Roaring Twenties. |
15602513 | /m/03mh3x1 | A Live Coal in the Sea | Madeleine L'Engle | 1996 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Camilla celebrates a long and wonderful life with her friends and family when she is presented with an award for lifetime achievement. But her son's snide comments at the event stir up trouble which lead to Camilla's granddaughter, Raffi, demanding answers about her family history. Camilla relives her younger days as she attempts to give Raffi the answers she seeks. Camilla's story begins when she is an astronomy student in college. Her life has been peaceful until her mother, Rose, visits her on campus and promptly has sex with one of her professors, which Camilla accidentally sees. As she tries to get away, she bumps into a young man named Mac Xanthakos, who is volunteering at a local church, while training to be an Episcopalian priest. Mac invites Camilla in to talk and have a cup of tea, at which point, Camilla sadly explains about her mother. This event leads to a friendship between Camilla and Mac. A romance blooms between the pair but Mac suddenly pulls away. Camilla is left saddened and confused. She continues her education and devotes herself to her work. Then suddenly, Mac reappears and asks Camilla to marry him. Camilla accepts. Mac introduces Camilla to his wonderful and wise parents. They accept Camilla as their own daughter and Camilla begins to feel like she belongs with them. She and Mac are married and Mac begins to work at a church in a small town. Camilla becomes pregnant. The happiness ends in devastation when Camilla's pregnancy ends in miscarriage. Her pain is deepened when Camilla's parents announce they are expecting another child. Camilla becomes pregnant a second time. But once again disaster strikes. Rose is in a car accident and is killed. Before she dies, doctors are able to deliver her baby by c-section. The baby, a boy, needs a blood transfusion and Rafferty attempts to donate. When doctors compare the blood types, they discover a terrible truth. The baby is not Rafferty's. The true father of the baby is unknown. Rafferty is driven nearly insane by combined grief and anger. He begs Camilla to take the child and raise it, with the promise that he pay for all the costs of the baby. She and Mac agree to raise the baby and name it Artaxias, who is quickly nicknamed Taxi. A few months later, their daughter is born and named Frankie. Camilla and Mac raise Taxi as their own child and as Frankie's brother. But their idyllic bliss is shattered after a few short years. Red Grange, Camilla's former professor, appears and claims that Taxi is his son. He 'proves' his paternity with a letter from Rose that states that he is the father. Red gains legal rights to Taxi and takes him from Camilla and Mac. Years pass and Camilla and Mac do not know how to move past the loss of their surrogate son. Frankie is confused by the loss of her brother and constantly prays he will come back to them. Finally Taxi is returned but only after several years have passed and Red and his second wife have been killed in a car crash. But Taxi has changed and no longer remembers Camilla, Mac or Frankie. He is angry, rude, tough and very confused about his identity. Camilla and Max do their best to raise Frankie and Taxi but the problems are endless. Taxi tries desperately to distance himself from Red Grange and his past. He longs to be Camilla and Mac's true son but is constantly reminded by the world that he is not. He frequently acts out and disrupts their home. Frankie is confused by her changed brother and pours herself into her artwork. Camilla flashes forward to the future and explain to Raffi that nothing changed. Taxi became a soap-opera star, married and had one child, Raffi. Taxi is still hurting because his past and still confused about his identity. Frankie still pours her emotion into her art and has become a successful artist. Although the past may be gone and over with, it is still affecting the family and their future. Raffi accepts Camilla's story but is amazed when she accidentally discovers a missing piece in the puzzle. Red Grange was not Taxi's father. Red's son is Taxi's real father. Raffi is excited by this discovery and eagerly tells Taxi. Raffi believes her father will be happy to know that his father is not horrible Red Grange. Taxi instead lashes out and Raffi runs to Camilla for an explanation. Camilla simply says to give it time and Taxi will eventually calm. Raffi believes Camilla and despite the evidence otherwise, accepts Camilla as her one true grandmother. |
15612171 | /m/03mhp1q | Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood | Fatema Mernissi | 1994 | {"/m/016chh": "Memoir"} | The memoir details Mernissi's childhood and adolescence in a traditional harem in Fez, Morocco during the 1940s and early 1950s. The young Mernissi narrates her childhood at both the traditional, walled harem in Fez and the equally traditional but geographically open harem belonging to her grandfather, in the countryside. Of particular concern for Mernissi and her cousin Samir is the definition of adult concepts--throughout the memoir, they are constantly discussing the nature of the harem, of hudud (sacred frontiers), questions of truth versus convenience, and the growing tension between French colonial forces and Moroccan nationalists. |
15619082 | /m/03mhxfk | Don't Eat This Book: Fast Food and the Supersizing of America | null | null | null | The book starts off with some statistics on American spending habits and why certain things are there (i.e. the warning label) and it eventually concentrates on the American eating habits and some references to his movie. It also talks briefly about how McDonald's started and how much trouble many of their CEOs attempt to carry on Ray Kroc's legacy. |
15629907 | /m/03nn2ym | Ashes to Ashes | Tami Hoag | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | A serial killer known as "The Cremator" is killing prostitutes in Minneapolis parks and setting their bodies on fire. When one of his victims turns out to be the daughter of a local billionaire, and a homeless teenager claims to have witnessed the burning, it brings together former FBI agent Kate Conlan (now working as a victim-witness advocate) and the Bureau's top serial-killer profiler, John Quinn. Conlan and Quinn share a painful personal history; now they have to work together against a very smart lunatic who seems to be able to read their minds. |
15633473 | /m/03nn5hg | Wedding Night | null | null | null | After winning a contest Florence and Nicolas set out to get married in Niagara Falls accompanied by their family and friends. No sooner do they arrive than the situation turns sour, and the couple decides to call the whole thing off. Stuck in an unfamiliar town with their respective relatives, Florence and Nicolas have their illusions shattered regarding love and living as a couple. In their own ways the members of both families try to reconcile the ex-future husband and wife, but things are not so simple. |
15640736 | /m/03nndnq | 2 Girls | Perihan Mağden | 2002 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Bodies of several murdered men are found in Istanbul and the oppressive air is evident in the city. Meanwhile Behiye, rebellious, full of teenage angst, oppressed by her conservative family, achieves well in her university entrance exams and gets the chance to enter prestigious Boğaziçi University. This, however, does not take her angst away, but oppressions endure. Behiye's life, longing to get rid of her angst is changed drastically when she meets Handan, a beautiful and naive girl of her age who lives with her beautiful call girl mother. In short time, Behiye becomes attached to Handan and moves into their apartment. The girls form and intense and unidentifiable relationship which has both romantic and sisterly implications. Their uniting relationship has to face social problems and is damaged by peer boys, academic expectations, economic difficulties, and most of all different cultural backgrounds. The story continues as step by step Handan pain-givingly (this is a word) realizes the impossibility of their relationship. |
15649304 | /m/03nnmjh | The Mystery of the Black Jungle | Emilio Salgari | null | {"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | Few can live in the Black Jungle, a desolate place teeming with wild dangerous beasts. Yet it is among its dark forests and bamboo groves here that the renowned hunter Tremal-Naik makes his home. For years he has lived there in peace, quietly going about his trade until, one night, a strange apparition appears before him - a beautiful young woman that vanishes in an instant. Within days, strange music is heard in the jungle then one of his men is found dead without a mark upon his body. Determined to find some answers, the hunter sets off with his faithful servant Kammamuri, but as they head deeper into the jungles of the Sundarbans, they soon find their own lives at risk; a deadly new foe has been watching their every move, a foe that threatens all of British India. |
15655813 | /m/03nntgt | Thorn Ogres of Hagwood | Robin Jarvis | 1999 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Werlings, small creatures with the ability to transform into animals, suddenly find themselves thrust into a battle to overthrow the High Lady of the Hollow Hill, Rhiannon, whose servants are the monstrous thorn ogres. |
15657169 | /m/03w9gqb | In Search for Khnum | null | null | null | The events of the novel take place in Ancient Egypt and in particular during the transitional period after the New Kingdom, towards the start of the Third Intermediate Period, during the 21st Dynasty (c. 1070-945 BC). At this time, Egypt was ruled by the High Priests of the god Amun-Ra, who dwelt in the traditional capital Thebes, which was also known as Waset in ancient times, and is known today as Luxor. This period is known as one of theocratic rule, due to the religious nature of the governments’ authority. Among historians, this is considered one of the rare times when ancient Egypt was directly controlled by the high priests. There was also a civil government who very probably had family ties with Pharaoh Ramses XI (c. 1099-1069 BC), the last king of the last dynasty of the New Kingdom (c. 1539-1070 BC), also known as the Imperial age or (by Egyptologists) as the 20th Dynasty (1186-1069 BC). With the end of the so-called New Kingdom, Egypt lost much of the power, prestige and domination that she had enjoyed earlier. Beyond her borders, the holdings of her empire had diminished, and within the country there was anarchy for a variety of causes. The most important was the split in government between the north and the south. The north was managed by Smendes, the governor of Tanis, a town in the eastern Delta, while the south was managed by the High Priest of Amun-Ra, Herihor, resident at Thebes. The events of the Tale of Wenamun are a good example of the decline in Egyptian possessions as defined by territories and states that characterized this period. In his tale Wenamun leaves the temple of Amun-Re at Thebes to acquire wood from the eastern coastal region of the Mediterranean which had previously been under Egyptian control for several centuries, in order to build a sacred bark for this god. During the dangerous journey the hero of this tale, Wenamun, experiences numerous difficulties: he is driven from one of the towns he visits and is once even threatened with death. All of these unfortunate events show how serious the situation of Egypt is at this time. The events of In Search of Khnum take place in this historical context. In a narrative framework, the author describes an imaginary situation that takes place in precisely this period of Ancient Egyptian history. It is thus not a real or even an experienced history, as was the case with the Pharaonic writings of the very great novelist Naguib Mahfouz: Khufu’s Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War, Before the Throne, Akhenaten: Dweller in Truth. In consequence this story takes place in ancient Egypt to reconstruct the reality and to observe it rather than reproducing it. At the same time, this novel is not only concerned with past time, but also reflects a diaphanous shadow on the present with a skillful literary talent. It is a novel that is as engaged with the present as it is associated with the past and with the fundamental aim of declaring itself optimistic for the future. What is truly remarkable about this literary work is its surprising capacity to reconstruct the Egyptian past and dwell on its fascinating details without bombarding the reader with subjects and historical events, and without compromising the truth of this distant period. Thus the history of Ancient Egypt is presented in such a literary and artistic manner that it confirms art’s true role and incredible capacity in preserving and reanimating cultural heritage. The author also knows how to renew and refashion this heritage in an engaging style which allows the observer to view it with a fresh eye, and both to enrich his thoughts about life and to deepen his knowledge of literature. It is not an easy matter to create a setting similar to the ambiance of the period’s chronicles, and this is what gives this work its originality and brilliance. The author’s style gives the novel its splendor to the novel, since he is a specialist in Egyptology and has a passion to make this science both his career and the subject of his writing. fr:À la recherche de Khnoum |
15673453 | /m/03np9d6 | California Dreaming | Zoey Dean | 4/2/2008 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The book picks up with Anna Percy leaving for Bali with her childhood friend, Logan. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the plane so it turns around and heads back to L.A. Anna starts calling Sam on the airplane's phone, but she loses the connection. Meanwhile, Sam is with her fiancee Eduardo, when she sees the news of the troubled flight on television; she turns to Eduardo and tells him that "If Anna makes it out safe, we'll get married in a week." Anna indeed does make it out safely from the plane and at the airport, her father and Sam are waiting for her. Ben was also there, watching from a few feet away but decides to leave when he sees Anna and Logan kiss, not wanting to ruin their happy moment. Before going to the airport, Ben was with Cammie at the new club, Bye Bye Love, when unexpectedly Adam Flood shows up. While talking to Adam, Cammie gets a call from Sam about Anna, whom she is actually worried about, and she goes inside and turns on the television. Ben sees and goes "home". Sam meets her parents—Jackson and Dina(whom Sam is surprised is back in her life)--to meet Eduardo's parents Consuela and Pedro. They are all very excited about the wedding but Eduardo's parents are hesitant about the marriage since Sam will be at USC film school and Eduardo in Paris. Sam doesn't know if she wants to give up her place at her dream school to be with Eduardo in a different country and tells the others she is not ready to make her decision. All the while, Cammie is at the club with Ben, trying to rekindle their relationship. Anna wakes up to talk to her dad, still undecided about Yale. She decides to finish the screenplay on her laptop that she started in Manhattan and sends it to Sam Sam, Cammie, and Dee get their nails done and Sam decides she wants Cammie to be her Maid Of Honor and for Dee to be a bridesmaid. Later on Monday morning, after 24 hours of writing, Anna meets up Logan who insists they go to Bye, Bye, Love as Logan got an invitation. At the club, Anna spots Cammie and Ben together. When Ben spots her with Logan, she thinks he seems jealous. Anna has second thoughts about going to Bali with Logan. Sam attends a USC orientation, and is surprised to find herself excited for school which causes her to have second thoughts about going to Paris with Eduardo. Later on she goes to have coffee with Dee and Cammie so they can help plan her wedding, but Cammie is too busy with the club which cause Sam to get angry that Cammie is not fulfilling her responsibilities as Maid of Honor. She announces that Dee, who had always been ecstatic about the wedding planning, is her new maid of honor, and if Cammie is still interested, she can be a bridesmaid. Anna goes to a meeting after which she catches up with Logan, when she gets an emergency call-her dad at the hospital with a case of subdural hematoma. Sam also comes to the hospital to show support for Anna. While there, Ben, who got a call from Sam, shows up saying that he's sorry how things got so weird between them. Anna agrees and that encounter changes things. Sam has read Anna's screenplay, but has not told her. Instead, she goes to Marty Martison,a huge movie producer, to see if it can be a movie but she leaves disappointed. Later on, Sam goes for a fitting on her new dress designed by Giselle, a Chilean designer who she thought was interested in Eduardo, and suspects she is a lesbian. After her mother, Dina, comes and they have a heart-to-heart conversation about why she never showed up in her life. Anna is at the hospital with her dad who says he was playing tennis when the ball hit him. Surprisingly, Anna's estranged sister Susan shows up and announces she will be staying with their father so that Anna will be free to leave for Yale on Saturday, which Anna begins having second thoughts about. Adam and Cammie reconnect at Sam's wedding rehearsal but not in a romantic way. Anna makes her final decision and tells Logan she hasn't regretted anything they've done together, but she's not going to Bali with him and she is not attending Yale either. Sam begins having pre-wedding jitters and starts to wonder if she is too young to get married when she walks in to her father and mother kissing. Sam goes back to the rehearsal, saying she can't get married, but her parents convince her it is only pre-wedding jitters but Cammie disagrees. She announces to the others that Sam doesn't want to get married while Sam just nods in response which crushes Eduardo and he tells her he wish he never met her. Sam and Anna are out for drinks next day and they decide to make big plans for Anna's last day. Sam calls Cammie, who is with Ben. She tells him that the club is his thing and that they should just be friends when she receives Sam's call who tells her to grab her bridesmaid's dress and meet her and Anna on Jackson Sharpe's boat. While on the boat, Anna is confronted by none other than Marty Maritson, saying that he read the screenplay and it is the perfect thing and they would love to make a deal. Anna is shocked—Sam not only read it but had gotten one of Hollywood's biggest producers to help make it a movie. She agrees, but only if Sam can direct. Anna goes to find Sam, who reveals she was listening in from the balcony. They agree to change the title to The A-List and start discussing actors to star in it, setting the stage for the The A-List: Hollywood Royalty. Cammie goes to Adam and apologizes to him, saying she will move to Michigan with him, just to be together but Adam tells her he's changed his mind and will be attending Pomona, a college nearby. He tells Cammie that he did not want to tell her about his decision because he knew she would only be with him because of that fact. While Sam's mom and dad are getting remarried, a helicopter enters with Eduardo who apologizes to Sam and asks her to keep in touch. Anna and Ben meet up and Anna tells him she loves him. The books ends with the two sharing their first kiss since their break up. This book is the last novel in the series. |
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