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23068004 | /m/064l9h9 | Six Suspects | Vikas Swarup | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Seven years ago, Vivek “Vicky” Rai, the playboy son of the Home Minister of Uttar Pradesh, murdered bartender Ruby Gill at a trendy restaurant in New Delhi, simply because she refused to serve him a drink. The opening murder committed by Vicky Rai is similar to the Jessica Lal murder case in which the killer was Manu Sharma. Now Vicky Rai has been killed at the party he was throwing to celebrate his acquittal. The police recover six guests with guns in their possession: a corrupt bureaucrat who claims to have become Mahatma Gandhi; an American tourist infatuated with an Indian actress; a Stone Age tribesman on a quest to recover a sacred stone; a Bollywood sex symbol with a guilty secret; a mobile-phone thief who dreams big; and an ambitious politician prepared to stoop low. Swarup unravels the lives and motives of the six suspects. |
23070434 | /m/064phdh | Hammer of God | null | null | null | Empress Hekat hears the voice of the god, and it wants the world. In Ethrea, Queen Rhian is finally on the throne, she must convince her counterparts of surrounding nations that Mijak is a very real threat. Should she trust Zandakar, the exiled son of Mijak's Empress? |
23070506 | /m/064lrhz | Vita Sancti Wilfrithi | null | null | null | The Vita narrates the life and career of Wilfrid, from his boyhood until his death, with brief digressions into the other affairs of Wilfrid's two main monasteries, Ripon and Hexham. It details his boyhood decision to become a churchman, his quarrels with Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, and various secular figures, his travels back and forth between England and Rome, his participation in church synods, and eventually his death. The text devotes over one third of its contents to Wilfrid's "Northumbrian achievements", but Stephen devotes almost no space to Wilfrid's second period in office as Bishop of York (686–691), and little space to his activity in Mercia. The Vita Wilfrithi, in common with many hagiographies written close to the death of their subject, records very few miracles, but like Bede and Eusebius of Caesarea, incorporates full documents relevant to its story. |
23079673 | /m/064qbdw | Pit Pony | null | null | null | In Pit Pony, Barkhouse describes life in a coal-mining town in turn-of-the-century Cape Breton, but also deals with importance of education itself. It is the story of Willie and Gem. Willie is an eleven-year-old boy forced by family circumstances to work as a trapper in a Cape Breton coal mine, and Gem is a Sable Island mare working as a "pit pony". As they work together, a strong bond develops between boy and horse. The book describes the grim realities of life for a young miner - cold, exhaustion, fear - discomforts and dangers that also affected the horses. When Willie and Gem are trapped in the mine during a "bump" - with falling rock and timber, and choking dust - Willie must choose between escaping with Gem or saving the life of another young miner. Willie's choice to save the young miner's life over Gem's life sets Willie free - free to leave the mines and to pursue his education. As it turns out however, Gem had been pregnant, and her foal is saved. |
23080134 | /m/064ndm7 | Kiss Mommy Goodbye | null | null | null | This novel concerns kidnappings by parents who did not get custody of their children. Donna Cressy loves her husband Victor but the love soon turns to hate when Victor starts mentally harassing her. This causes her to behave oddly owing to her trauma, and during the divorce proceedings a number of people testify that she had been behaving unusually since she married Victor. However, she manages to get custody of their children Adam and Sharon. Victor is allowed weekend visits. Donna moves in with her boyfriend Dr. Segal and his daughter Annie. One day Victor arrives and on the pretext of a weekend visit, he takes Adam and Sharon away. Donna spirals into depression and begins to behave oddly again. Just when she's given up hope, she gets a telephone call from Victor, which she traces to California. When she finally finds the children, Victor almost kills them. However, with the help of Dr. Segal, she is able to get her children back and survive. |
23085447 | /m/064pn0r | Cloak | S. D. Perry | 2001-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Captain Kirk learns the cloaking device he stole from the Romulan Star Empire months ago is being used for sinister purposes. He also learns about Section 31, a group of Starfleet officers who answer to no one and are willing to kill anyone to protect their secrets. |
23088082 | /m/064pkwd | Click | Ruth Ozeki | 2007 | null | In Keane's will he leaves his granddaughter, Margaret, a box containing seven lettered boxes and a message saying "throw them all back". Each lettered box contains a shell. She discovers that each letter on each box represents the continent that the shell came from, and that her grandfather intends her to put them back where they came from over her lifetime. Meanwhile, Jason, Margaret's brother, is left with a camera and uses it to construct multiple photo albums, one of which consisted of a girl doing ordinary things throughout the day, only she is holding a large piece of glass. The last chapter of the book depicts Margaret as an elder living in the future with her great-niece, watching a documentary about her grandfather, her brother, and herself. |
23094273 | /m/064mgys | Desertion | null | null | null | The novel is narrated by Rashid in all but one of the ten chapters, which exception is drawn from the notebooks of his brother Amin. Rashid is the youngest child of teaching parents: he is two years younger than Amin, who is in turn two years younger than Farida, their sister. The children are brought up in Zanzibar in the late in 1950s, during a time of heady transition from colonialism to independence. Rashid spins two tales: one is in part his own, and largely contingent on the other, set some fifty years thence on the outskirts of a small town in colonial Kenya, along the east African coast north of Mombasa, when early one morning in 1899 an Englishman stumbles out of the desert and collapses before a local shopkeeper outside his mosque. The latter, Hassanali, takes him back home and, amidst the considerable kerfuffle, and with some help from family and local professionals, begins nursing the man back to health. Hassanali is a nervous, superstitious, cowardly man. On first being approached by the almost lifeless Pearce, he mistakes him for a ghoulish genie come to spirit his soul away. Before long, an English district officer, one Frederick Turner, arrives on the scene. He accuses Hassanali of having stolen whatever goods the Englishman brought with him, and promptly conveys him back to the residency. The traveller's name, as it turns out, is Martin Pearce, a man of liberal thought and broad linguistic knowledge, and something of an "Orientalist". During his convalescence with Turner, he begins quickly to feel guilty about the harsh treatment and false accusations levelled at his original saviours, for he genuinely arrived with almost nothing but the clothes on his back: the only item he seems to have lost is his notebook. On visiting the shopkeeper to apologise, he sees Rehana, Hassanali's sister, and falls for her immediately. Rehana's father was an Indian trader who settled in Mombasa and married a local woman, but the family is now part of the "Arabised minority" in a town still fresh with the memory of its years of slavery under the sultan. The subsequent relationship between Rehana and Pearce is, of course, a scandal. Rashid in his narrative admits that it is difficult to say how it came about, if less so to figure out how it was discovered. The upshot is that Rehana is forced to vacate the town and take up lodgings elsewhere with Pearce. Half a century later, Amin, Rashid and Farida are growing up and receiving a typical colonial education in pre-independent Zanzibar. Amin, like his parents, is to train to become a schoolteacher; Rashid is studying for Oxbridge; and Farida, an academic failure, becomes the family housekeep and small-business dressmaker to the young women of the town. One of her clients is a beautiful woman named Jamila, granddaughter of Rehana and Pearce. Despite her lowly repute "as a divorced woman whose grandmother slept with mzungus ", Amin falls in love with her, and she with him. His parents are outraged on discovering the secret and refuse to brook it: Do you know who she is? Do you know what kind of people they are? Her grandmother was a chotara, a child of sin by an Indian man, a bastard. When she grew into a woman, she was the mistress of an Englishman for many years, and before that another mzungu gave her a child of sin too, her own bastard. That was her life, living dirty with European men [.... T]hey are a rich family so they don't care what anybody thinks. They've always done as they wished. This woman that you say you love, she is like her grandmother, living a life of secrets and sin. She has been married and divorced already. No one knows where she comes and where she goes, or who she goes to see. They are not our kind of people. Amin is made to promise never to see her again, and he never really does. He fears for the rest of his life that she thinks he has deserted her. In the case of Rashid, meanwhile, it is his passionate book-learning that results in his desertion first of his home and eventually "of the entire culture": "The place was stifling him, he said: the social obsequiousness, the medieval religiosity, the historical mendacities." After independence and the subsequent revolution, life for all the characters is altered completely. Rashid misses the socio-political turmoil back home in his isolation as a university student in England; in fact, he never sees his ailing, tragic family again. Although he keeps up a steady stream of correspondence, this becomes increasingly strained with the preterition of time and the need for caution engendered of a brutal and dictatorial government. His only knowledge of the situation is gleaned from the letters and a few allusive snippets of news. Both Ma and Amin loose their sight, and the former's death is celebrated as having put her out of her mounting misery. Years later, Rashid is able to piece the story together using Amin's notebooks, his own memory and a chance encounter with another of Pearce's descendants. |
23094715 | /m/064ms77 | Butterfly | Sonya Hartnett | 4/2/2009 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | ==Characters in "Butterfly |
23096195 | /m/064m_qp | The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane | Katherine Howe | 6/9/2009 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie’s grandmother’s abandoned home near Salem, she can’t refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance (Hazeltine) Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest—to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge. As the pieces of Deliverance’s harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem’s dark past then she could have ever imagined . |
23099870 | /m/064kxv9 | The Sower | Kemble Scott | 5/18/2009 | null | Oil worker Bill Soileau is a reckless hedonist based in San Francisco and well acquainted with the city’s notorious sexual underground. He long ago contracted HIV but seems unconcerned about exposing his partners. On assignment at what appears to be an oil refinery abandoned by Soviet occupiers in a remote part of modern day Armenia, Soileau meet Dr. Quif Melikian. She’s conducting a health safety inspection of the plant and has discovered a hidden laboratory. An accident in the mysterious lab infects Bill with a manmade virus, later identified as a mutated form of phage. It instantly cures Bill’s HIV, unbeknownst to anyone. Eventually the doctor and oil worker discover the existence of the phage and learn it’s a type of miraculous retrovirus that rewrites diseased cells back to their original configurations, a potential cure for all diseases. The two also learn the phage cure can only be passed to others via sex. This sets in motion a plot to destroy or control the phage and Bill Soileau. |
23100506 | /m/064kv__ | Ninth Grade Slays | null | null | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | In this, the second book in the Vladimir Tod series, Vlad is just starting High School. In the beginning of the novel Henry (Vlad's best friend and human slave) and Vlad (the half vampire/half human protagonist of the story) welcome Henry's cousin, Joss, to Bathory. As they work their way through their Freshman year of high school Joss and Vlad become close friends. Joss develops a crush on Meredith Brookstone, the girl Vlad is in love with, but does not date her at this point because of his and Vlad's friendship. When winter break rolls around Otis Otis, fellow vampire and Vlad's uncle, takes Vlad on a trip to Siberia when Vlad meets Vikas, both his uncle's and his father's teacher and friend. Vlad tells Vikas of his father's death and they hold a Pyre, a vampire funeral. Vikas then begins teaching Vlad to use his powers and tells him the story of the Pravus, the fabled half human/half vampire that would rule of Vampire kind and enslave the human race. Otis shows Vlad memories of Vlad's father and consents to teach Vlad to use his powers due to his disapproval of Vikas's teaching methods. Shortly after returning from Siberia and to school, Joss decides to let Vlad in on his secret, that he is a Slayer and has been sent to Bathory to kill a vampire. At this point Joss still believes Vlad is human and asks that they search for the vampire together. D'Ablo, the vampire antagonist of the first book who was assumed dead, returns to attempt to kill Vlad. Vlad tells Joss about this and the agree to look for the vampire that attacked Vlad together. When they meet in the clearing in the woods D'Ablo is there and Joss finds out that Vlad is a vampire, the vampire he was sent to kill. On top of that, it was D'Ablo who sent Joss and was controlling his mind to prevent him from realizing that D'Ablo was a vampire. Joss stakes Vlad and Vlad almost dies, but is saved by Otis and taken to the hospital. While Vlad is in the hospital Joss visits him and tells him that their friendship is over and leaves. When Vlad gets back to school he finds a note on his locker from Joss confirming that they are no longer friends. |
23109693 | /m/064n_2h | Veitikka | Veikko Huovinen | null | null | The novel begins with the birth of Adolf Hitler and his early childhood. Huovinen describes the young Adolf as a rebellious child with a weak constitution, but with an intimidating gaze and vulgar speech. Also, his uncanny ability with a rifle is commented upon. Adolf eventually ends up as a vagrant in the streets of Vienna, selling mediocre watercolor paintings. The novel suggests that during this time Hitler met Joseph Goebbels, with whom he had an instant rapport with his vulgarities and anti-semitism - the first radical departure from actual history. The novel swiftly moves to the First World War, and describes Hitler's exploits as a behind-the-lines scout sniper - who, in his spare time, criticizes the General HQ and tells jokes so disgusting that even hardened soldiers stay silent. Also his foul-smelling flatulence is commented upon. While following Hitler's rise to power from the Great Depression to the Second World War, the novel makes its most outrageous claim; Hitler and Goebbels jointly conceived the Second World War in order to "teach the pompous German nation a lesson" with two distinct operations. The first, "Operation Ulex" has the goal of starting a war and reaching decisive victories in the short term - while making strategic mistakes that will hurt in the long run. The second, "Operation Saublöder Arsch" involves deliberately losing the war, while prolonging it to the bitter end with as much bloodletting and destruction as possible. When all is lost, Hitler and Goebbels leave the corpses of look-alikes behind, escaping the siege of Berlin with guns blazing and board a Fw-200 Condor bound for South America. When enroute, they express their disgust for the servile, obedient Germans and fantasize about Latin women. |
23112275 | /m/064njgw | The Manny Files | Christian Burch | 2006 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Keats Dalinger, a shy young boy, learns how to be more outgoing and self-confident after his family hires a new "manny" (male nanny). Keats is a small boy who has many troubles at school. He often watches late night TV with his uncle Max and often asks awkward questions or makes sarcastic remarks from the shows to his teacher and his classmates. He most of the time gets sent to the principal for it. The manny is homosexual, it turns out at the end of the novel, when he and Keats' Uncle Max share a kiss. |
23116366 | /m/04y7tr7 | Ardiente paciencia | Antonio Skármeta | 1985 | {"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/02w06c6": "Historical romance"} | The story opens in June, 1969 in the little village of Isla Negra, off the coast of Chile. Mario Jiménez, a timid teenager, rejects the profession of his father, a fisherman, and instead takes a job as the local postman. Despite the entire village being illiterate, he does have one local to deliver to—the poet, Pablo Neruda, who is living in exile. Mario worships Neruda as a hero and buys a volume of his poetry, timidly waiting for the moment to have it autographed. After some time, Mario garners enough courage to strike up a conversation with Neruda, who is waiting for word about his candidacy for the Nobel Prize for literature, and despite an awkward beginning, the two become good friends. Neruda fuels Mario's interest in poetry by teaching him the value of a metaphor, and the young postman begins practicing this technique. In the village, Mario meets Beatriz González, the daughter of the local barkeep, Rosa. Beatriz is curt and distant from Mario, and the young man finds his tongue tied whenever he tries to speak to her. With Neruda's help as a poet and an influential countryman, Mario overcomes his shy nature and he and Beatriz fall in love, much to the dismay of Rosa, who banishes Beatriz from seeing Mario. Neruda's matters are complicated when he is nominated for candidacy as the president of the Chilean Communist Party, but returns to the island when the nomination turns to Salvador Allende. Neruda tries in vain to deter Rosa's negative attitude towards Mario. Months later, when a clandestine meeting between Beatriz and Mario turns to intercourse, Beatriz discovers she is pregnant and the two are married, much to the dismay of Rosa. Neruda leaves to become the ambassador to France, and as he leaves, he gives Mario a leather-bound volume of his entire works. National workers enter the village to install electricity, and Rosa's bar becomes a restaurant for the workers. As Neruda is gone, Mario is no longer needed as the postman, but takes on a job as the cook in the restaurant. Some months pass and Mario receives a package from Neruda containing a Sony tape recorder. Neruda is homesick (and it is implied otherwise ill), and asks his friend to record the sounds of his homeland to send back to him. Among other things, Mario records the tiny heartbeat of his yet unborn child. Secretly, Mario has saved enough money to purchase a ticket to visit Neruda in France, but matters change when his son is born and the money is spent on the child as he grows. It is announced that Neruda has won the Nobel Prize and Mario celebrates with the rest of the village by throwing a party at Rosa's restaurant. Neruda returns some time later, quite ill. Mario considers sending a poem into a contest for the cultural magazine, La Quinta Rueda, and seeks Neruda's help with the work. Neruda, unbeknownst to Mario, however, is on his death bed. Unable to see Neruda, Mario decides to send in a pencil sketch of his son. The revolution reaches Isla Negra, and Mario takes up his job as postman in order to see Neruda. As helicopters circle the area, Mario sneaks into to Neruda's house, to find the poet dying in his bed. Mario reads to Neruda telegrams that he has received offering the poet sanctuary, but it is too late—Neruda knows he is dying and gives his last words, a poem, to Mario. Neruda is taken away in an ambulance and dies in the hospital several days later. Shortly after Neruda's death, Mario is approached by Labbé, the local right-wing general. The general asks Mario to come with him for some routine questioning. As Mario gets into the car, he overhears on the radio that several subversive magazines have been taken over by coup forces, including La Quinta Rueda. In an epilogue, the author talks to one of the editors of La Quinta Rueda. The editor remembers who the winner would have been—a poem by Jorge Teillier. When the author asks about Mario's sketch, the editor has no memory of it. The author ends the story by sipping a cup of bitter coffee. |
23118454 | /m/064lv4w | The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud | Ben Sherwood | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Charlie St. Cloud (age 15) and Sam (12) are two brothers with a love so strong, no force can separate them. When their mom leaves Charlie to babysit Sam, they decide to go to watch a 1991 Red Sox baseball game in Boston against the New York Yankees with their pet beagle, Oscar. They "borrow" their neighbor Mrs. Pung's Ford Country Squire. On the way there they cannot decide which CD to listen to. As they cross the General Edwards bridge on the Saugus River, on the way home, Charlie decides to take a look at the moon to see if Sam was right about the moon being larger that night. Charlie does not see an 18-wheeler truck come and they end up tumbling twice crushing Sam along the way. When they are dead, they find themselves close to the cemetery in Marblehead, the town where they live. Sam is scared and Charlie makes a promise that they will never abandon each other. However, Charlie gets resuscitated in an ambulance by a religious paramedic, Florio Ferrente and carries on living. Thirteen years later, Charlie has grown up and is working at the Marblehead cemetery. Every evening at dusk he goes to a nearby forest where he plays with Sam. Charlie has the gift of seeing ghosts. This serves him well as an undertaker, as he can talk with ghosts. In the town lives Tess Carroll, a yachtswoman who wants to make a round the world trip. A week prior to her departure, she directs her yacht in to a storm to test it, not listening to her shipsman Tink Weatherbee, who told her not to go into the storm. The storm sucks Tess into its grasp and the ship flips, leaving Tess hanging on upside down. Tess appears at the cemetery where her dad is buried. While regarding her father's memorial, she hears a loud clanging noise, which is Charlie scaring away the geese with his methods of banging trash can covers together. She remembers Charlie from high school and wonders if he remembers her. They both talk and Charlie ends up asking Tess to come over for dinner that night. Both are not entirely sure of this arrangement for different reasons. Tess is concerned with the fact that she never really was a true believer in love, and Charlie is worried that this could come in between his promise to him and Sam. The next day while taking a walk with her dog, Bobo, Tess realizes that people ignore her when Bobo comes off his leash and nobody hears her saying to stop him. She then looks into the water and realizes that her reflection is not there. What is more, she can see Sam St. Cloud, the boy who died 13 years ago. While at lunch the next day after their date, an officer comes in and states that Tess's boat, the Querencia, has gone missing and parts of the ship have been found. Charlie is shocked at the thought that Tess could be dead. He had heard of "middle ground" where spirits would stay until they were ready to pass over to the next level. He had seen many come and go quickly and others who liked to stay like his brother. In the meantime everyone in the town in possession of a boat, including Charlie, explores the harbor in order to look for Tess's body. Charlie questions his sanity because the night they shared together was so real and Tess was full of life. There was no way she could possibly be gone. Everyone gives up the search, but then Charlie feels that there is one place he has to go. With Sam's help he finds Tess's body. Tess is transported to a hospital where the doctors stabilize her in a deep coma. A few months later, Charlie decides to quit his job and move on, bidding a final farewell to Sam, now 25 years old from crossing over. Charlie is now a paramedic at Engine 2 on Franklin Street. During his last visit at the hospital Tess wakes up. Charlie remembers how they met, and Charlie tells her the story of how they met and fell in love at Marblehead Cemetery. The afterword of the novel is narrated by the ghost of Florio Ferrente, the paramedic who saved Charlie's life. He reveals that Tess and Charlie fall in love again and eventually marry and have two sons. |
23121428 | /m/0b6hyc0 | Thérèse Desqueyroux | null | 1927 | null | The novel is set in the Landes, a sparsely populated area of south-west France covered largely with pine forests. As it opens, a court case is being dismissed. The narrator, the titular Thérèse, has been tried for poisoning her husband Bernard by overdosing him with Fowler's Solution, a medicine containing arsenic. Despite strong evidence against her, including prescriptions she forged, the case has been dropped; the family closed ranks to prevent scandal and Bernard himself testified in her defence. On the journey home from court Thérèse reflects at length on her life so far, trying to understand what brought her to continue poisoning her husband after she observed him taking an accidental overdose. She suggests that her actions were part of an "imperceptible slope", caused in part by the pressures of motherhood and marriage and the stifling life of a Catholic landowner's wife in 1920s rural France. However, neither Thérèse, nor the narrator himself, provide a clear explanation for her behaviour. Thérèse assumes that she will be able to leave her husband quietly now the case is over. Instead, Bernard announces that she is to live at his family house, Argelouse, in an isolated spot in the pine forest. He effectively confines her there, giving out that she suffers from a nervous complaint, and making the occasional public appearance with her to quell any gossip. His concern is that the forthcoming marriage of his younger sister Anne, to a suitor approved by the family, is not prevented by any scandal. He allows Thérèse no company other than unsympathetic servants, keeps their daughter away from her, and threatens to send her to prison for the poisoning if she does not cooperate. Thérèse lives mainly on wine and cigarettes, falls into a passive stupor and takes to her bed. When she is ordered to attend a dinner party for Anne, her fiancé and his family, she does so, but her emaciated appearance shocks the guests. Bernard decides that the scandal will never be fully forgotten unless Thérèse is allowed to disappear without controversy. He promises she can leave after Anne's wedding, and moves back to Argelouse to supervise her recovery. The wedding over, he takes Thérèse to Paris and bids her farewell. There will be no official separation and no divorce, and he will make her an allowance to live on. She is free to go. |
23122208 | /m/064p2cg | Kazan | null | null | null | The book starts out with Kazan, who is 1/4 wolf and 3/4 dog, going up north to the Canadian wilderness with his owner Thorpe where he is greeted by a man known as McCready. From the evidence in the beginning, we are shown that McCready used to own Kazan, then known as "Pedro," and that the former was abusive to the latter. When McCready attacks Thorpes wife Kazan kills him then runs off not returning fearing harsh punishment from knowing he had killed human life. Kazan later joins a wolf pack and hunts with them in the Canadian wilderness. cs:Vlčák Kazan pl:Szara Wilczyca |
23123026 | /m/064qc10 | A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag | Gordon Korman | 1987-08 | null | The plot of the novel revolves around Jardine bringing Sean Delancey, his English poetry project partner, into various schemes to ensure their arrival at Theamelpos for the summer. Along the way they encounter Ashley, a beautiful model who becomes the third member of their poetry project, and Cementhead (Steve Semenski), the luckiest student in the school, and help Sean's grandfather impersonate an 88-year-old deceased Canadian poet, Gavin Gunhold. A sub-plot revolves around SACGEN (Solar Air Current GENerator), a government project that is supposed to power the school, using only wind power and solar energy. The school's central core was gutted to house the control room and the storage batteries. Since the project works poorly or not at all, causing frequent blackouts, the students refer to it as "The Windmill." |
23127570 | /m/064kzvc | Ellen; or, The Fanatic's Daughter | null | null | null | The story follows Ellen, the daughter of a Southern mother from Louisiana and a Northern father. Ellen's father quickly leaves his family shortly after the birth of his daughter, and it is discovered shortly afterward that he is an abolitionist. Ellen, now older and wishing to find her father, sets off into the Northern United States where she discovers numerous atrocities being committed by the Northerners that far outrank the South in terms of oppression and cruelty. All Northern women are portrayed as foul-tempered shrews who abuse their white servants worse than black slaves, and all men are portrayed as being scheming, greedy capitalists. It is during her travels that Ellen comes across Parson Blake, an evil abolitionist priest who encourages abolitionism more to steal Southern wealth rather than to aid runaway slaves. Blake attempts several sinister schemes to deter Ellen from returning home, but Ellen luckily escapes his clutches and returns home safely to Louisiana. |
23129363 | /m/064lxrm | Death of a Macho Man | null | null | null | Randy Duggan is the macho man of the title of this work of fiction. He claims to be a professional wrestler and he becomes known in the small village of Lochdubh for his tall stories. When Randy is found murdered, Constable Hamish Macbeth hopes that the killer is not one of the villagers. However, there is enough local resentment against Randy, that someone in quiet, peaceful Lochdubh may have been driven to slaying this macho man. |
23134216 | /m/064p7df | Gifted | Nikita Lalwani | 2007 | null | The novel is set in the 1980s Cardiff where maths prodigy Rumi Vasi grows up with her Hindu parents. Subjected to her father's strict tutoring he is determined that she be accepted by Oxford University at the age of only fifteen. But on starting University she finds it hard to adapt to her new-found freedom. |
23135989 | /m/064qc98 | Hunter in the Dark | Monica Hughes | 1982 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Mike Rankin is an athletic teenager from a wealthy family who is eager to obtain his big-game license to go deer hunting. When he suddenly collapses on the basketball court and is diagnosed with leukemia, he is determined not to be denied his dream hunting trip. He sets out on a journey which forces him to confront the fear which is overwhelming his life. |
23140245 | /m/064nmv9 | Shadow | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | 2001-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Section 31, an amoral, rogue branch of Starfleet, manages to affect the starship Voyager, lost on the other side of the galaxy. 'Seven', a new and trusted crewmember rescued from the Borg, is being targeted with a series of incidents. The crew, whom Janeway thought she trusted implicitly, is harboring a traitor. |
23140420 | /m/064qdjg | Abyss | Jeffrey Lang | 2001-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Shortly after the Deep Space Nine series finale, Dr. Julian Bashir is once again confronted by Section 31. The group is Starfleet's 'black ops', answerable to no one. They convince Bashir to go take on Locken, a man who had taken over an enemy facility and wishes to re-start a new race of genetically enhanced super-beings. Both Bashir and Locken themselves are genetically enhanced. |
23140622 | /m/064p__x | Rogue | Andy Mangels | 2001-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Section 31, Starfleet's rogue spy arm, involves the Starship Enterprise; this endangers a tumultous world they are visiting. The novel also focuses on Lieutenant Hawk, an openly gay helmesman. |
23144090 | /m/064k_s9 | Lincoln Unmasked | Thomas DiLorenzo | 10/10/2006 | {"/m/05qt0": "Politics"} | In his reappraisal of the famed president, DiLorenzo is highly critical of Lincoln. Within the book he argues that states within the union had the right at the time of the American Civil War to secede and that the more centralized government that emerged after the war was incompatible with democracy. DiLorenzo also claims that most scholars of the Civil War are biased in their approach to the history because, as DiLorenzo says, "in war the victors get to write the history". Dilorenzo also argues that Lincoln was opposed to racial equality, and that many abolitionists, including Lysander Spooner, bitterly hated him. |
23145111 | /m/064khsv | Road Dogs | Elmore Leonard | null | null | Jack Foley is sent back to Glades prison and befriends Cundo Rey. Foley and Rey quickly become “road dogs” (inmates who watch each other’s back). Rey sets Foley up with an expensive lawyer who gets the kidnapping charge of Karen Sisko dismissed (event from Out of Sight) and also gets Foley’s bank robbery sentence significantly reduced. As a result, Foley is soon released, just a month ahead of Rey’s upcoming release. Rey arranges for Foley to fly out to Venice Beach and live in one of his houses. Foley soon meets up with Dawn Navarro, Rey’s common law wife living in another of Rey’s houses across the canal. Navarro tries to recruit Foley in her plot to steal Rey’s millions in earnings from various criminal businesses run by Jimmy Rios. |
23168354 | /m/064nqkd | Chartbreak | null | null | null | A girl called Janis Finch, known as "Finch", leaves home due to tension between her and her stepfather, and meets an unsigned rock band called Kelp in the cafe of a motorway service station. She joins the band and they achieve chart success, including an appearance on Top of the Pops for their single "Face It". The lead singer of the band is Christie Joyce, and the other members are Job, Dave and Rollo. |
23170242 | /m/064pltw | Fell | David Clement-Davies | 1/9/2007 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book starts with a pack of grey wolves walking through the snowy regions of Translyvania. One of the pups looks up at a hill and can see an outline of a black wolf. She tells her father, the Dragga, that it might be Fell, the ghost wolf that humans and Varg fear. Because, while Larka has become respected and loved among the Varg for the part she played in the death of Morgra, Fell became feared among them, and that he is a loner, which is unnatural to other Varg. Lost in his grief and guilt over the death of his sister, Larka, Fell rejects the gift of the Sight, and becomes a Kerl, which is the wolf name for a loner. The pack keeps the thoughts of curses out of their heads, and Fell watches them leave. He then goes to a pool and looks into it. His dead sister, Larka, appears to him, and she shows him a picture of a girl with a tattoo in the shape of an eagle on her arm. Larka then tells Fell to find and protect the girl. The girl who Fell saw is Alina Sculcavant, who is growing up in the care of Malduk, a shepherd whom rescued her from the snows. He forces her to dress as a boy and work hard for him. The other villagers believe Alina to be a changeling, and fear her for it. One day Alina finds a parchment that holds the true secret of her past, but Malduk and his wife, Ranna, who have tried to hide it from her for years, find out. They murder a villager and frame Alina, so that she is forced to flee into the mountains to discover who she truly is. Later Alina and Fell get trapped inside an ice cavern. While they are there, they discover that they can mentally communicate using the Sight, and Fell eventually decides to accompany Alina on her journey due to his vision of Larka. On their journey, Alina goes to find a man mentioned to her by Ivan, who was one of her few friends in Moldov. She eventually finds the man,a blacksmith named Lescu. Alina stays with Lescu and his son, Catalin, for a time, during which Lescu teaches Alina to use a sword and Fell spends some time out in the forest, where he meets his adopted brother, Kar, and a she-wolf named Tarlar. Later soldiers attack the house, killing Lescu. Catalin is forced to travel with Alina and Fell. Alina finds out that she has a real family and that the Lady Romana is her real mother and the supposedly dead Lord Dragomir is her real father. However, Alina doesn't know tha her father was murdered secretly by his best friend, Vladeran. Vladeran then had Alina taken away to be killed because she was the true heir to the throne, but Alina and her soldier escort befell an accident. The soldier was killed but Alina survived, and that was when Malduk found her. Meanwhile Vladeran took over as Lord of Castelu and married Dragomir's wife, the Lady Romana. Vladeran and Romana now have a seven-year-old son, Elu. |
23180419 | /m/064pf4s | You Just Don't Understand | Deborah Tannen | 1990 | null | Tannen's chapters, broken up into short titled sections of two or three pages, start by distinguishing what men and women seek from conversations: independence and intimacy respectively. This leads to conversations at cross-purposes, since both parties may miss the other's metamessages, with attendant misunderstandings—for example, a woman complaining about the lingering effects of a medical procedure, who may merely be seeking empathy from female friends by doing so, becomes angry at her husband when he suggests a solution involving further surgery. Men and women both perceive the other gender as the more talkative, and they are both accurate, since studies show men speak more in public settings about public topics while women dominate private conversation within and about relationships. The latter is frequently derided as gossip by both genders, and Tannen devotes an entire chapter to exploring its social functions as a way of connecting speaker and listener to a larger group. Men often dominate conversations in public, even where they know less about a subject than a female interlocutor, because they use conversation to establish status. Women, on the other hand, often listen more because they have been socialized to be accommodating. These patterns, which begin in childhood, mean, for instance, that men are far more likely to interrupt another speaker, and not to take it personally when they are themselves interrupted, while women are more likely to finish each other's sentences. These patterns have paradoxical effects. Men use the language of conflict to create connections, and conversely women can use the language of connection to create conflict. "Women and men are inclined to understand each other in terms of their own styles because we assume we all live in the same world." If the genders would keep this in mind and adjust accordingly, Tannen believes, much discord between them could be averted. |
23184549 | /m/064kg2w | Ceremony | Robert B. Parker | null | {"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"} | Spenser is hired by a successful insurance salesman to find his runaway 16 year-old daughter. He and his wife fear she has turned to prostitution. |
23185953 | /m/064n11b | The Godsend | null | null | null | The story concerns the Marlowe family and an abandoned child named Bonnie, who they take into their home after being left with them by a mysterious woman they meet on a day out to a nearby lake. The story is told in first person by Alan Marlowe, the father of the family, who gradually starts to suspect that the subsequent tragic deaths of his children were caused by Bonnie. |
23186026 | /m/064ld21 | Studies in African Music | Arthur Morris Jones | 1959 | null | The work is divided into two volumes, with the first volume being an analysis of the music presented in Volume II, and the second being full-score reproductions of the pieces in question. # Introduction # Play-Songs and Fishing Songs # The Instruments of the Orchestra # The Nyayito Dance # Yeve Cult Music # Club Dances - The Adzida Dance # The Social Dance - Agbadza # A Comparison of Drumming # The Homogeneity of African Music # Tone and Tune # The Neo-Folk-Music # Play-Songs and Fishing Songs # The Nyayito Dance # Yeve Cult Music: (a) The Husago Dance, (b) The Sovu Dance, (c) The Sogba Dance # The Adzida Dance # The Agbadza Dance # The Icila Dance |
23187149 | /m/064p6nc | Man Gone Down | Michael Thomas | 2007 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel is about an African-American man estranged from his white wife and their children, and who must come up with a sum of money within four days to have them returned. It focuses on an attempt to achieve the American Dream. Thomas describes Man Gone Down as having a "gallows humour". |
23187954 | /m/064qkln | Five Alien Elves | null | null | null | When aliens from the planet of Fixipuddle land in Hamlet, Vermont, on Christmas Eve, they believe that "Santa Claws" is an evil dictator who enslaves elves. So when the town's mayor, Tim Grass, dresses up as Santa, the aliens kidnap him. The kids of Hamlet sink their rivalries to save the mayor. |
23189729 | /m/064pr45 | Who's Your City? | Richard Florida | 2008-03 | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | Whos Your City? is divided into four parts with a total of 16 chapters. The first part presents data that suggests the world's population and economy are becoming increasingly geographically concentrated into few mega-regions, such as BosWash and the San Francisco Bay Area. Thomas Friedman's Flat World Theory, or his assertion that distance and place is becoming irrelevant, is countered by Florida with maps of population growth, economic activity, innovation (as demonstrated by patent registration), and scientific discovery (as demonstrated by residence of the most heavily cited scientists). Florida's maps show "spiky" concentrations in these mega-regions, although each region does not necessarily rank high in each category. For example, the Taiheiyō Belt ranks high in innovation but low in scientific discovery, and Indian and Pakistani cities show high population concentrations but low economic activity. Florida explains the existence of these geographical spikes by insisting that talented individuals tend to cluster to one another, creating a (non-linear) multiplier effect that attracts additional talented individuals to that geographical area. The second part of the book presents evidence that globalization is creating a new class divide: those who are able to move to a different community to take advantage of opportunity and those who are rooted. This mobile class of people are differentiating urban areas in terms of values, culture, economic specialization, and other factors, and businesses are following the most talented people to these cities despite high land prices and labor costs. Florida also insists that a disproportionate amount of wealth is being generated in those cities which have been successful in attracting the creative class. Finally, globalization has reduced the importance of resource extraction and manufacturing in the economy and increased the importance of fields in which the creative class participate. The third part of Who's Your City? examines the role of "where someone lives" as a factor of happiness. Florida's "Place and Happiness Survey", which he conducted with The Gallup Organization, shows that higher incomes and levels of education produces more community satisfaction, married people tend to be more satisfied with their community than singles, as older people as compared to younger people. In addition, renters are slightly more satisfied with their living arrangements than home owners, and people are generally satisfied with where they live. Adding psychological profiles to his previous work, Florida was able to find strong connections between the Big Five personality traits and regions in the United States. For example, neuroticism is concentrated in the New York metropolitan area and the ChiPitts area, agreeableness and conscientiousness in the eastern Sunbelt area, extraversion in the Chicago metropolitan area, the St. Louis/Nashville/Atlanta area, and the South Florida area. Openness seems to be concentrated in the BosWash and the San Francisco Bay Area. Florida explains the results by linking the dominant forms of employment in the areas with the personality traits: manufacturing regions require people who are agreeable (i.e., they follow rules) and conscientious (they work with dangerous machinery), areas with high immigrant populations require that their residents exhibit openness, and management and sales-related jobs need workers with extroversion. Florida was also able to find that his "Gay and Bohemian Index", which connects gay and artistic communities to high growth and wealth generation areas, is a proxy for regions with large concentrations of the openness personality trait. The final part of the book suggests that most people have three significant moves: when leaving their parents' home, when starting a family, and when retiring (or when their own adult children move out). When young people leave their home (or when they complete college), they tend to locate to areas that offer attractive job markets, cultural or recreational amenities, and rank high in quality of life factors. When they get married or have children, people choose areas that are perceived as safe and family-friendly. Florida suggests using a "Trick-or-Treater Index" to gauge if parents feel safe allowing their children to go door-to-door on Halloween. He also cites Catherine Austin Fitts' "Popsicle Index", which gauges how far are parents willing to allow their children to walk to buy a treat. Once retired, or when their adult children move away, people tend to gravitate towards similar areas as young people, if it is close to their grandchildren, but in quieter neighborhoods that provide opportunities for hobbies or for a second career. |
23192663 | /m/0660h95 | The Ask and the Answer | Patrick Ness | 2009 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The novel begins with Todd Hewitt recovering consciousness after surrendering to Mayor Prentiss in The Knife of Never Letting Go. He is physically hurt by the new heads of New Prentisstown, but his only concern is for Viola. Elsewhere, Viola wakes. Likewise her thoughts are for Todd’s welfare. She is in House of Healing for her gunshot wound. Here she meets Mistress Coyle, a renowned healer, who also has previous political and activist ties. Viola also meets the apprentices Madeleine (Maddy) and Corinne (Mistress Wyatt), among others, as she recovers. Meanwhile, President Prentiss psychologically manipulates the people of New Prentisstown into accepting his rule. Back at the House of Healing, Viola has finally recovered enough to help Mistress Coyle and begins an apprenticeship as a healer. Todd is told that Haven has indeed discovered a cure for Noise, but President Prentiss has confiscated the necessary pills for the sole use by leaders of New Prentisstown. Prentiss also separates the males and females and takes all domestic Spackle away to a farm. The President is intent on creating a new world so the settlers, when they arrive, are welcome to a literally "New" Prentisstown. Unhappy with these developments, Mistress Coyle leads a group of women out of New Prentisstown to form a resistance movement, reconvened from the time of the Spackle War, known as "The Answer" to carry out a series of bombings in the city. Todd has to work with Spackle alongside President Prentiss’ son, Davy. Todd hopes that by following the President’s orders, he is ensuring Viola’s health and safety, while the President hopes that Davy will become a better person with Todd's influence. However, uncivilised and arrogant, Davy scorns him, forcing Todd to undergo unethical practices such as branding the Spackle with metal bands without anaesthetic. Todd himself is shocked by the extent of Davy's inability to feel compassion. One of several large bombings happens. Todd, trying to redeem himself, saves a Spackle, 1017, who is ungrateful. Angered by the attacks, President Prentiss sets up a counter-intelligence unit called "The Ask". He promotes Todd and Davy into this unit, where Haven residents are captured and tortured for information on The Answer. Next morning, Viola wakes to find that the House of Healing is completely empty except for Corinne. The rest have gone to join the Answer, but Mistress Coyle returns to recruit Viola, who feels forced to join, knowing that President Prentiss has been torturing women and men alike. Todd realises that he must take sides, and is urged to do so by President Prentiss. At The Answer’s headquarters, Viola learns how to assemble and set off a bomb, which she does during an attack. An older teenager, Lee, befriends her. Lee is intent on avenging his family, who have been taken by The Ask. On his way back to his bell tower prison, Todd tells Davy about the Spackle bombing, and is surprised that they now share a kind of friendship. Meanwhile, Viola and Lee arrive in Haven to rescue Todd, knowing that otherwise Todd will die in an attack on New Prentisstown led by the Answer the next day. Viola notices that there is something darker to his personality, but still urges him to leave with them, warning that the attack will come from the east. Mayor Ledger turns up, explaining his loyalty to President Prentiss. Holding them at gunpoint he finds a self-arming bomb in Viola's bag that detonates on sensing a pulse. Too late, the Mayor attempts to throw it away, but it explodes. President Prentiss captures Viola and Lee. Viola is interrogated and tortured, with Todd watching from a soundproof room. The Answer are planning to attack New Prentisstown, and President Prentiss wishes to know from where. Unable to watch Viola in pain, Todd screams that the Answer is attacking from the East, ending the torture session. The President then tells Todd to meet him in the town Cathedral with Viola. Todd realises where his duty lies, and formulates a plan to stop the President, with the help of Ivan and other military personnel. The guards agree to help Todd rescue Lee and Viola. Smitten with Viola, Lee wants answers about her love for Todd. At the cathedral, the President disables the entire procession simply with his Noise and captures Viola while the rest of Todd’s group are incapacitated. The President still wants Todd to join him, despite his betrayal. Davy Prentiss arrives to tell his father that an army is coming, and requires orders. At this point a second scout ship, like the one Viola crashed in, lands. In desperation, Todd holds Davy at gunpoint, threatening to kill him if the President does not release Viola. Shockingly, the President drops Viola and fires his gun, quickly killing his own betrayed son. In anger, and quick to learn, Todd uses his own Noise as a weapon with Viola’s name to overcome the President and ties him up in the interrogation room. Todd sends Viola off on Davy's horse, to meet with the scout ship. No sooner than this is done, a horn sounds across New Prentisstown to warn of an army of Spackle marching towards the city. President Prentiss tells Todd that since he was the one who killed the Spackle, the army wants revenge. With no alternative, Todd releases President Prentiss to enlist help with the hopes that he is not making the biggest mistake of his life. |
23193902 | /m/065ynxw | Asking Questions | H. R. F. Keating | null | null | The novel is prefaced by a section entitled "Questions", which consists of four passages numbered in Roman numerals. I Chandra Chagoo is threatened by Abdul Khan, who believes Chagoo has been asking questions in order to gather evidence for the police. II Dr Gauri Subbiah contemplates confronting Chagoo and demanding exactly what he knows about her past. She fears he knows everything. III Dr Ram Mahipal lectures a class of medical students about the importance of asking questions. Privately he contemplates imminent professional ruin for asking the wrong question. IV Professor Phaterpaker also contemplates professional ruin as a result of Ram Mahipal's question, the answer to which Chagoo already knows. The preface ends. The main body of the novel begins with the heading: Answer The Commissioner tells Ghote that a criminal named Abdul Khan has supplied Bombay film stars with drugs from the Mira Behn Institute. Ghote is ordered to find who stole drugs from the institute and arrest them under a false charge to prevent a scandal. Ghote tells the Commissioner that he recently caught an airline stewardess, Nicky D'Costa, smuggling drugs for Abdul Khan. The Commissioner says he will assign another officer to manage Nicky D'Costa as an informant and that it will take a better officer than Ghote to bring Abdul Khan to justice. Ghote questions Asha Rani, a movie star. Her "friend" Mr Ganguly took a sample of a medicine called A.C.E. and nearly died. Khan, who also supplied Mr Ganguly with cocaine, supplied the A.C.E. At the institute, Ghote interviews Professor Phaterpaker. The Professor says he will go to any lengths to protect the institute. The institution's work is largely concerned with making new medicines from the venom of poisonous snakes. Dr Subbiah immediately suspects Chandra Chagoo of having stolen the A.C.E. and leads Ghote to the reptile room. When the door is unlocked they find Chagoo dead with a Russell's viper loose in the room. The next day the Commissioner assigns Ghote to investigate Chagoo's death to prevent the scandal being exposed by another officer. Ghote realises that Chagoo did not have a key to lock the reptile room door and must have been murdered. Ghote interviews Dr Ram Mahipal, who left a reptile-room key in his old office at the institute when he suddenly quit his job. Ghote learns from the building manager that Mahipal returned in order to access his computer files on the night Chagoo died. Dr Subbiah, Professor Phaterpaker, Dr Mahipal and the building manager were all in the building at the time. Ghote suspects that the murder may be an employee at the nearby hospital. He enlists the inspector originally assigned to Chagoo's death to test this theory. On their next meeting Mahipal says he returned to teaching in hopes of instilling integrity in young medical students. Mahipal left the institute because he believed that Phaterpaker faked results, possibly on a regular basis. Phaterpaker takes the news that Chagoo was murdered calmly, remarking that Mahipal was slipshod and implying that he was dismissed for this. Ghote tries to determine exactly why Mahipal left, but Phaterpaker is vague. When Phaterpaker realises he himself is a suspect, he is affronted but admits "cutting corners" and acts like a man with something to hide. Ghote concludes that Phaterpaker is trying to use Mahipal as a scapegoat to protect the institute. Dr Subbiah reacts badly when asked about her relations with Chagoo, however Ghote concludes she is not the killer. Ghote discovers that Dr Mahipal's father works as a cook at the medical school and is a Brahmin, whereas Mahipal claims to be a member of the Dalit caste. Ghote deduces that Mahipal misrepresented himself in order to get a university scholarship reserved for the lower classes. Mahipal confesses this is so. Ghote suggests Chagoo came to learn Mahipal's secret and was murdered because of this. Mahipal denies this and reveals that he left the institute because Phaterpaker was removing lab animals that gave undesirable results. At the police station, Ghote is dismayed when the inspector he is working with points out one of the three scientists must surely hang for the crime and expresses a preference that it be Dr Subbiah. At the institute Ghote accuses Phaterpaker of falsifying test results. Phaterpaker confesses his results are fake. He became aware that Chagoo was stealing drugs from the institute but was forced to agree to a truce because Chagoo knew Phaterpaker was removing lab animals. Ghote considers the reptile room and realises wooden stool must have been used to break the glass, so he decides to have it dusted for fingerprints. At the police station Ghote learns that Nicky D'Costa has murdered, her throat slit after asking too many questions of Abdul Khan. Ghote is angry enough to confront the commissioner, but learns Khan had arranged to be in hospital during the murder. The forensic tests do not find a match between any fingerprints on the stool and Ghote's three suspects. Nor can they prove it was used to break the glass of the viper's cage. Ghote goes home and argues with his wife, then inspiration strikes and he returns to the institute. There he searches the grounds for evidence someone could gain access by night. The security guard catches Ghote and he must call his fellow inspector to rescue him. Afterwards Ghote chances upon Dr Subbiah. Ghote deduces that Phaterpaker persuaded her to "anticipate" the results of her experiments, as Phaterpaker himself was once persuaded. The conversation between Ghote and Subbiah is interrupted when, by chance, they pass the funeral of Nicky D'Costa. Ghote tells Subbiah how Nicky D'Costa was murdered and proceeds to question her about her test results. Subbiah remarks that Abdul Khan was a patient at the teaching hospital recently. Ghote asks whether she anticipated her results before completing the actual experiment. She admits faking her results. Ghote now believes that Subbiah is the murderer. He accuses her and she reacts in amazement, saying that Chagoo was clearly strangled. Ghote realises that he only saw the body laying face down, and the inspector originally assigned to the case never forwarded the medical examiner's report. Ghote realises that Chagoo could not have been strangled by Subbiah or Phaterpaker because neither of them have the necessary strength. Dr Mahipal has a withered arm, eliminating him as a suspect. Returning to the police station, Ghote talks to the forensic expert who examined the stool from the institute reptile room. The expert admits he only compared the fingerprints on the stool to the three suspects Ghote named; Subbiah, Phaterpaker and Mahipal. Without Khan's file in front of him, he could not identify the fingerprints. Khan's file is retrieved and his fingerprints are a perfect match. Ghote realises he can arrest and charge Khan with murder and recalls, with satisfaction, the words used by Commissioner's at the start of the case: "Frankly, Inspector, it will take a better man than you to put paid to Abdul Khan". |
23194988 | /m/065z319 | The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected | Eliza Haywood | null | {"/m/0gf28": "Parody"} | Haywood's novel follows the life of a Pamela-esque character, who attempts to use her seemingly innocent nature to become a prosperous noblewoman at the expense of her empty-headed master. However, the innocence of Haywood's Pamela is simply a mask for her devious cunning and deceit. |
23198300 | /m/065yzpf | Lunatic | Ted Dekker | 2009 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Lunatic picks up where Chaos left off. Johnis, Silvie, and Darsal have returned from the other earth, having claimed all of the lost books of history only to lose them again. More importantly, the world that they have returned to has changed completely. Their home is overrun by their enemies and the healing water of Elyon no longer heals. Much as the first four books of the series make a set, Lunatic and Elyon are a whole story of their own. One difference is that in the first four books, each had an individual story that would be followed through to completion before leaving the main story to be continued. Lunatic and Elyon are one story, completely incomplete without each other. |
23204211 | /m/065_w2y | The Red Room | null | null | null | Kit Quinn is a psychologist who ends up scarred after meeting a troubled arrested man. When she goes back to work after the incident she is asked to review a case for the police, in which the man who scarred her is the main suspect. Against everyone else's suggestions she decides to defend this man, at least until more evidence is found. Her suspicions end up proven and in the end she solves the case in the manner of the most experienced detective (which she is not). |
23206142 | /m/065_s2z | The Green and the Gray | null | null | null | A young couple, still sorting out life together, are given custody of a girl at gunpoint. As they grow in their desire to help and protect the girl, they find themselves in an increasingly complex and dangerous situation. Who - or what - are the Greens and the Grays? |
23210674 | /m/065y2ln | Exposure | Mal Peet | 10/6/2008 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Set in South America, Bush, a car-cleaning boy, greets Paul Faustino when he sees him. When he goes to his shed in the slums, Felicia tells him that his sister, Bianca, is missing. He soon finds her watching the night entertainment at an alley. Meanwhile, Otello becomes contracted to the Rialto football team. He is taken to a party at Brabanta's house and he meets Desmerelda there. After the party, Desmerelda asks him to marry her. Despite Brabanta's disapproval of their relationship, Otello and Desmeralda live a life under the scrutiny of the media. In an attempt to stop "wolf men" from looking at Bianca, Bush makes her wear an oversized sweatshirt. After a failed hold up targeted at Desmerelda, Brabanta pulls some strings to prevent his and his daughter's name from newspaper articles mentioning the hold up. Otello assigns Michael to look after Desmerelda. However, when Michael is involved in a nightclub brawl, Desmerelda gets Otello to take Michael back. Meanwhile, Felicia and Bush discuss how to look after Bianca. Felicia forces her breasts against him and goes away just immediately, leaving Bush in a state of emotional confusion. At the same time, Desmerelda discovers that she is pregnant. In response to other racist and defaming sport articles about Otello's first season in Rialto, Paul lists Otello's achievements in the first season of his Rialto career. To promote Otello's product range, the "Paff!" label was developed. Targeted at teenagers, the main theme of the label was rebellion so they used slum kids. Bianca was the most photogenic child at the photoshoot, with the all the advertisements of the "Paff!" label featuring her. With Bianca missing for three days, Bush and Felicia go to Paul for help. They find her dead with new clothes on her body and 100 dollars in her bra. Bush and Felicia are overwhelmed by her death. Meanwhile, Otello is accused of looking at child pornography. In the aftermath, Desmeralda leaves Otello and employs Felicia to look after her son and Bush to learn from her gardener. |
23216803 | /m/065_b45 | Dragon and Thief | Timothy Zahn | 2003-02 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | After two years in space, the advance team of Shontine and K'da reach Iota Klestis, the world they have bought to flee from their war with their enemies, the Valaghua. The ships that meet them use the Valaghua's weapon, known as the Death, to kill everyone on board the three other refugee ships. Draycos' ship, the Havenseeker, dodges too far and ends up crashing into the planet, where everyone on board except him dies. Jack, who is hiding on Iota Klestis to escape the police, sees the crash and goes to investigate. When he arrives, he finds Draycos, who starts to explain when a soldier comes in and starts interrogating Jack as to why he is there. Draycos, who is on Jack's skin, stuns the soldier with a weapon and they escape by climbing to the top of the ship and down a nearby tree. On their way back to the Essenay, Jack is captured by another soldier, whom Draycos also stuns. Draycos talks Jack into dragging him onto a tree so the soil, which is hot from the ship's impact, won't burn him. Then they continue to the ship. They start to leave when two fighter ships start to pursue them, but with a maneuver of Draycos', they escape and go into hyperspace. While in hyperspace Draycos explains that he is part of an advance team of refugees fleeing from a war with the Valaghua, and Jack tells him he can't help because an arrest warrant is out for him, and also explains he lives on the ship alone, and Uncle Virge is a computer. He and Uncle Virge suggest Draycos go to an official agency for help, but Draycos points out he can't trust anyone, as he doesn't know who set up the ambush. Until he finds out he has to remain in hiding, so Jack is the only one who can help him, but first they have to clear Jack's name. They agree to go back to Vagran, where Jack picked up the cargo he supposedly stole, to see if there are any clues to the real thief. They arrive where Jack picked up the cargo and find one box with a Braxton Universis logo left as a trap. Draycos can't figure out what it is by leaning over the box's side, so Jack breaks into it and finds a deep freezer. They realize the cargo Jack was carrying was a freezer full of dry ice, which evaporated during the journey, making the crates lighter than when they were picked up. They also realize someone put a tripwire on the crate, so they make a run for it into the spaceport. Draycos jumps with Jack onto a second story balcony, where they hide as Lieutenant Raven, Drabs, and a nameless alien go past, looking for them. As they are about to leave, they are surprised by a Wistawk, one of the local aliens, who is drunk and mistakes them as being there for the party. He calls another Wistawk, and Jack realizes they've crashed a Wistawki version of a wedding. He pretends that he and Draycos are magicians sent to entertain them, and they perform magic tricks for the next couple of hours. Once they leave, however, they are ambushed by Lieutenant Raven and company, who frame Jack for murder by killing two Wistawki. Draycos is unable to stop them because they are too far apart for him to attack without being shot. Jack is drugged and Draycos is forced to stay on his skin for several days as they transport Jack somewhere else. Draycos sees them carry Jack onto a ship whose name he can't read, so he memorizes the symbols. On board the ship, Jack is woken up to speak to a mysterious figure behind bright lights with the same voice he heard on the comm link of the soldier on Iota Klestis. At first he thinks he's been caught, then he realizes the person wants his uncle to do a job for him: switch two data tubes in a ship's vault. He promises to get in contact with his uncle once he's on the ship the job is to be done on, and he is put aboard. On board the cruise liner, Draycos reveals the name of the mysterious person's ship, the Advocatus Diaboli, and Jack does a reconnaissance of the ship's vault. He leans against the wall inside the vault while talking to the manager about renting boxes, and Draycos leans over to find the safe deposit box with the data tube identical to the one Raven gave them. Once he knows which box it's in, Jack comes up with a plan and Draycos convinces him to go to the tube's owner and tell them what's going on after the data tubes have been switched. Five minutes before closing, Jack goes into the vault and puts something in the box he rented, and as the manager swings the door closed, he distracts him and Draycos jumps off his arm into the vault as the door closes. Jack sets off a smoke bomb in the ventilation to the security cameras for the vault, and puts a knife through the electrical box for the cameras. Then he goes back to the vault, where Draycos opens it from the inside with a safety lever designed in case someone gets locked inside. He breaks open the box, switches the data tubes, and they leave. They return forty minutes later to see a crowd of people gathered outside the purser's office, demanding to check their deposit boxes, since they had heard the alarm. Jack watches who checks the box they robbed and follows him to the most luxurious part of the ship, and decides to visit the cylinder's owner in the morning. Draycos points out it would be better to hide the cylinder somewhere so the owner doesn't just have them thrown in the brig when they try to return it, and Jack hides it in an elevator, behind the emergency call box, while they go down to vehicle storage. To make sure they don't confuse the two tubes, Draycos scratches a symbol in the metal at the bottom. When they get there, Jack has a short conversation with the guard, so the people watching him will think he handed the data tube off to his uncle down there, and they return to their room. The next morning, Jack goes up to the suite's door, and is stopped by two security guards. He insists to them he needs to talk to their employer, and he is let in, where the secretary tries to get Jack to just tell him. The owner arrives and Jack tells him Cornelius Braxton is trying to take him down by having Jack switch cylinders. He doesn't believe Jack, and Jack belatedly realizes the man is Cornelius Braxton. Jack mentions the Advocatus Diaboli, and the secretary panics and calls Raven and a couple guards, who take Jack and Braxton prisoner. Raven yells at Harper for panicking, saying they could have gotten away with it if he'd stayed calm, and decides to dump Jack and Braxton out of an airlock and tell Braxton's wife that the man got off at the ship's next stop, which is a couple of hours away. Jack drops some hints that his uncle will come for him, and that makes the men nervous enough to stay far apart, and Draycos can't get to them. They go down to a cargo bay, where there are piles of boxes in a grid. Jack pretends to run for it, and manages to get behind some boxes long enough to let Draycos escape before he is caught. Draycos runs along the tops of the piles of boxes, cutting the power to the lights, and reaches the airlock just as Raven and company are about to throw Jack and Braxton out of it. Draycos takes out the lights and jumps down to knock out the bodyguards, while Jack pulls Braxton to the floor, putting his arm over Braxton's eyes so he can't see Draycos. Draycos evades the men's guns and kills Raven as justice for killing the Wistawki. Later the Braxtons invite Jack for tea and thank him, also telling him the Vagran police found a witness to say Raven killed the Wistawki, so Jack's name is cleared. Once Jack leaves, Braxton orders an investigation into Jack and Uncle Virge, as well as how the symbol on his cylinder was carved on it. 2003, United States, Tor, Pub date February 2003, Hardback and Softcover |
23217116 | /m/065xyrk | The Example | null | null | null | Two people meet on Flinders Street Station in Melbourne and are confronted by an unattended briefcase. What follows is an examination of the nature of racism, suspicion and fear. |
23224732 | /m/06601s1 | Days between stations | Steve Erickson | null | null | Lauren falls in love with Jason as a girl, living in the Kansas fields, but when they move to San Francisco and later Los Angeles, she learns that they have much different ideas about how to be in love. Jason is a cyclist, training for the Olympics, and when he is away, as he is frequently, he sleeps with other women, many of whom call Lauren, and Jason asks her to brush them off. Although they have a son, Lauren enters a dissociative fugue one night, and blames herself when their child later dies. In Los Angeles, they meet a mysterious man, with an amnesia of his own, who calls himself either Adrien or Michel, depending on which eye he covers with an eyepatch. He believes he sees differently from his two eyes, much to the consternation of his uncle, a film producer in Hollywood. Although never explicitly stated, Lauren and Adrien-Michel met before, when he raped her while she was lost in the fugue state. Adrien-Michel eventually falls in love with Lauren, and saves her from the sandstorms that engulf Los Angeles. The two travel to Europe, where Jason is set to compete in a bicycle race in Venice. The focus then shifts to tell the story behind The Death of Marat, and the story of its director, Adolphe Sarre. Adolphe was born with a twin, although the two were separated at birth, and Adolphe was raised by his adoptive mother, a prostitute, in a secret room inside her brothel. Eventually, his adoptive mother gives birth to a daughter, who Adolphe falls in love with. He eventually must leave the brothel when he is discovered by the owner's son, and Adolphe tries to kill him by throwing him out the window. He begins working for Pathe Studios, and becomes a prodigal talent. Adolphe eventually is allowed to work on his own project, set during the French Revolution, titled The Death of Marat. He goes to a tiny French village named Wyndeaux, and brings his lover from Paris to live with him. Eventually, he is told that she must return, by the brothel owner's son, who is still very alive. Adolphe tries to keep her as long as possible, by continuing to work on the film, even after the crew senses that their work is finished, but eventually, she is taken. The loss crushes Adolphe, and his masterpiece is never released. Years later, the son of an artist, Graham, discovers that his father's greatest masterpiece has been plagiarized from a frame of this film. He searches for Adolphe Sarre, and finds him in Paris. Eventually, he discovers that Adolphe has completed the film, but cannot stand to show it, due to his feelings of guilt. Graham takes what he thinks is the final reel of The Death of Marat from Adolphe, only to learn that it is a student film by the filmmaker's grandnephew, Adrien-Michel. Graham eventually learns that this student film is as important to Adrien-Michel as completing The Death of Marat has become to him. They trade reels, and Graham arranges for his premier. The novel returns to Jason, Lauren, and Adrien-Michel, who at this point has told Lauren that he has always been Michel. Jason knows that Lauren has come to Paris with Michel, and despite his many dalliances, he feels hurt that she would ever leave him. He asks her to come to Venice, where he is racing, and she agrees. They have to leave Paris, since riots start at the premier of The Death of Marat. Lauren takes a boat, piloted by the lost twin brother of Adolphe Sarre, who dies along the way, but eventually, Lauren gets to Italy. Michel instead takes a train, and becomes trapped in a seeming loop of time, where the other passengers have disappeared, and he keeps entering and leaving the train station in Wyndeaux. In Venice, Lauren, Jason, and Michel negotiate about the future. The bicycle race starts before they come to a conclusion, and during the race, the riders are lost. The canals are empty, due to the retreat of the sea, and after days of searching, the riders are finally found. After Jason returns, Lauren asks for time to make a decision. Lauren tells them that despite being in love with Michel, she has to stay with Jason, and so Michel leaves, heartbroken. Michel returns to Wyndeaux, where he grew up as a child. He gets some of the men in the village to help him dig two coffins up, where he thinks his twin brothers are buried. The coffins are empty. The novel ends with Lauren having returned to Kansas, where she works with foster children. She and Jason lived together for a while, until he was killed in an accident. One of the foster children believes that she was in love with Jason, but hears her calling to Michel one night. |
23228408 | /m/0660_4x | Elsie Venner | Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. | 1861 | null | The novel is told from the perspective of an unnamed medical professor. He tells the story of a student named Bernard Langdon, who has to take some time away from his studies to earn money as a teacher. Langdon spends a short time teaching at a school in the village of Pigwacket Centre where he earns respect after taking on the school bully, Abner Briggs. After only a month, however, Langdon leaves to work at the Apollinean Female Institute in the town of Rockland. The owner of the institute is the profit-focused Silas Peckham and the schoolmistress is Miss Helen Darley, who is literally working herself to death. One of his students is the 17-year old Elsie Venner, who purposely sits apart from the other students. She is known for being strange and quick to anger. She is only close to her father Dudley Venner, who she calls by his first name, and her governess, Old Sophy. She also has a friendship with the town physician Dr. Kittredge, to whom she reveals that she ran away from home to hide on the other side of the mountain, where the other town residents are afraid to go. Elsie's half-Spanish cousin Richard "Dick" Venner pays a visit at the Venner estate. Like Elsie, his mother died when he was a child and the two cousins were playmates in their childhood. Elsie, however, was rough on her cousin and once bit him hard enough that he still has scars from it. Dick has since become a skilled horse-rider and a bit of a trouble-maker, though stories of his escapades are unclear. Rumors abound that Dick has come to town to ask his cousin Elsie to marry him; in fact, he intends to marry her so that he can inherit his uncle's estate. Langdon is surprised to find a gift stuck in the pages of a book by Virgil on his desk at school. Pressed inside is an exotic-looking flower, known to be the type Elsie collects. Frightened yet intrigued that the girl has taken an interest in him, he resolves to climb the mountain and find her secret hiding-place. Climbing up several precipitous rock formations, Langdon finds the source of the exotic flower Elsie presented him. Investigating a cavern where he thinks Elsie hides out, Langdon is instead overtaken by a rattlesnake poised to strike. Just at that moment, however, Elsie appears and calms the snake merely by looking at it. Intrigued, Langdon researches snakes, poisons, and the "evil eye". He cages a couple snakes and contacts his old professor for information. Doctor Kittredge recognizes the mutual interest between Langdon and Elsie, and recommends the former begin practicing with a pistol. In the meantime, Dick Venner subtly pursues a relationship with Elsie in order to become heir to the ample Venner estate but is jealous of Langdon and worries Elsie's father might marry Miss Darley. One night, Dick attacks Langdon with his lasso. Langdon shoots his pistol and kills Dick's horse but is injured. Dr. Kittredge's assistant appears, having been ordered to follow Dick and, after exposing the incident, Dick is run out of town. Soon, Elsie admits her interest in Langdon. Though he admits he is concerned about her as a friend, she is devastated and becomes sick. During her illness, she calls for Miss Darley to attend to her. Miss Darley finally asks Old Sophy how Elsie's mother died, and it is implied that she was poisoned by a snake bite shortly before Elsie was born. Elsie slowly loses her mysterious nature and softens enough to tell her father she loves him. She dies shortly after. |
23230997 | /m/0660byz | Sir Harold of Zodanga | L. Sprague de Camp | 1995 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Dimension hopping Harold Shea, having returned home to his psychological practice, is visited by the malevolent enchanter Malambroso, an enemy of Shea and his partner Reed Chalmers who has also discovered the secret of transdimensional travel. Having been thwarted in his attempt to steal Chalmers' wife Florimel in previous adventures, the enchanter attempts to subvert Shea into aiding him. Rebuffed, he threatens vengeance, which he shortly puts into practice by kidnapping Voglinda, the young daughter of Shea and his wife Belphebe of Faerie. In their search for their daughter, Harold and Belphebe find Malambroso has been residing in their world for some time, and from reading material discovered in his abandoned dwelling discover that he had become a fan of the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Reasoning that it is this alternate vision of Mars to which their foe has fled with the girl, they determine to travel there themselves by means of the symbolic logic formulas originally devised by Chalmers. Accordingly, they outfit themselves for the journey, or rather, de-outfit themselves, much to Belphebe's embarrassment; Burroughs' Barsoomians go about largely naked. Arriving on Barsoom, the Sheas seek out the aid of the royal family of the city-state of Helium, which includes Burroughs' protagonist, the transplanted earthman John Carter. Carter is not present, but they manage to obtain an audience with his father-in-law, Mors Kajak, jed (king) of Lesser Helium. Kajak turns out to be somewhat sour on earthmen, including his own son-in-law, presenting a picture of them very different from that of Burroughs. He regards Carter as something of a blowhard, claiming impossible prowess in battle, and Ulysses Paxton, the other earthman resident on Barsoom, as a rabble-rouser, advocating Terran ideas of equality and freedom unwelcome to the heirarchical, slave-owning Martians. Kajak suggests they seek guidance from Paxton's old mentor Ras Thavas, the so-called "master-mind of Mars," formerly villainous and still somewhat amoral. Thavas consents to aid the couple in return for some professional help from psychologist Shea; having previously had Paxton transplant his brain from his original aged body into a young and virile one, he has had difficulty adjusting to changed societal expectations, not to mention the youthful urges of his new form. With his assistance it is discovered that Malambroso has sought refuge in the one Barsoomian city-state that has shown itself receptive to Paxton's ideas – Zodanga, the traditional foe of Helium. Together, the Sheas and Thavas succeed in tracking down Malambroso, first on thoat-back to Zodanga, and then by flier to the Great Toonoolian Marshes, with a stopover in Ptarth when their flier is damaged in an air skirmish. Over the course of their journey, Shea counsels the irascible genius successfully. Barsoom is found to be somewhat divergent from the romantic world written of by Burroughs. While the beasts are generally multi-legged, as described, the number of their limbs tend to be fewer than reported. Aside from in the medical area, the superior technology of the Martians has likewise been exaggerated, more comparable to that of Earth's nineteenth century than the futuristic vision portrayed in the novels. And as for Barsoomian honor, vaunted as much by Thavas as it had been by Carter, they are quickly disillusioned when a Zodangan makes a crude pass at Belphebe. On the other hand, Thavas provides something of a corrective to the jaundiced Kajak's view of Carter, who in his experience is a genuinely charismatic leader who can exact pledges of a defeated foe and make them stick. He attributes his own reform to Carter's influence. The final battle is between Harold and an assassin hired by the enchanter to do his dirty work; they prove fairly evenly matched swordsmen until Thavas, with his superior mental powers, makes the hired killer believe he is confronting six Harolds rather than one. The assassin then abandons the conflict, and Belphebe shoots Malambroso with her bow. Voglinda is safe, as the villain had grown somewhat fond of and paternal toward his captive while on the lam from the Sheas. Thavas uses his medical skills to save the life of the enchanter to keep Belphebe out of trouble with the law (a sword duel is considered a fair fight by Barsoomians, while a shooting death is murder). The recovering Malambroso abandons his vendetta; having become smitten by his Barsoomian nurse, he forswears his previous infatuation with Florimel. Satisfied, the Sheas depart, though not (immediately) to their home dimension; their pursuit has been costly, and they need to return their rented flier to Zodanga to recover their deposit on it, and resell the purchased thoats they had left there. |
23232654 | /m/066081v | Heist Society | Ally Carter | 2/9/2010 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Tired of her lifelong involvement in her family's illicit dealings, teenager Katarina Bishop enrolls herself in a prestigious boarding school. Then after a mere three months there, 16-year-old billionaire Hale arranges for her to get expelled. Following her expulsion,he informs her that five paintings have been stolen from the menacing Arturo Taccone and that her father is the prime suspect. Determined to save him by locating the real thief and stealing the paintings back, Kat gathers a team of larcenous friends to pull off the heist before the two-week deadline. However, her resolve falters when she learns that the paintings are Nazi war spoils. She negotiates complicated relationships in an action-packed plot, and the unknown identity of the thief suggests a sequel. |
23236264 | /m/065ym11 | Stargazer | Claudia Gray | 3/24/2009 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Evernight Academy is an exclusive boarding school for the most beautiful, dangerous students of all—vampires. Bianca, born to two vampires, has always been told her destiny is to become one of them. But Bianca fell in love with Lucas—a vampire hunter sworn to destroy her kind. They were torn apart when his true identity was revealed, forcing him to flee the school. Although they may be separated Bianca and Lucas will not give each other up. She will risk anything for the chance to see him again, even if it means coming face-to-face with the vampire hunters of Black Cross—or deceiving the powerful vampires of Evernight. Bianca's secrets will force her to live a life of lies. Yet Bianca is not the only one with secrets. When Evernight is attacked by an evil force that seems to target her, she discovers the truth she thought she knew is only the beginning. Bianca breaks into Mrs Bethany's carriage house in an attempt to discover what Lucas wanted to know; why humans are allowed at Evernight. She discovers nothing and heads back to Evernight, disappointed. She sees someone in the hall, but decides that it was just her own reflection. Orientation day sees Bianca sharing a room with Raquel, as Patrice has left Evernight for a few decades. Raquel's parents forced her to return to Evernight, despite her having told them that she was stalked by Erich. Bianca catches up with Vic, who gives her a letter from Lucas. Bianca's mail is being searched for this exact reason, so they cannot keep in contact. The letter tells Bianca to meet Lucas in October at the Amherst train station. As Bianca leaves her room to drink blood (she is the only vampire sharing with a human), she sees a blue light and thinks that there is a person on the stairs. This time, she is more curious, but is interrupted before she can investigate further. Bianca tells everyone there is a meteor shower so that she can camp out on the grounds to watch it. Really she is going to see Lucas. She hitches a ride in the laundry truck into Amherst and is walking along to find Lucas when a young vampire girl joins her in her walk. She is afraid of someone following her, and Bianca thinks she looks so lonely and innocent that she cannot refuse. The girl says she once went to Evernight, but did not get along with Mrs Bethany and ran away. They arrive at the train station and Lucas follows shortly after. He sees the girl with Bianca and thinks she is going to harm her. It turns out that Lucas had been the one following the vampire girl and she is very frightened. She attacks Lucas and wants to kill him, but Bianca stops her in time. Lucas calls for the rest of the Black Cross to come, so Bianca tells the girl to run away. She escapes before the Black Cross arrives, and Bianca and Lucas share the weekend at the Base Camp, as Black Cross does not know she is a vampire. When she sneaks back, Balthazar catches her. In an attempt to reason with Balthazar and make sure he does not tell Mrs. Bethany about her visit, she mentions the vampire girl who turns out to be Balthazar's sister. Soon Bianca and Balthazar make an arrangement; they pretend to be dating so Balthazar could get her off campus, since he is a trusted student, so she could meet Lucas while in return Bianca and Lucas help Balthazar find his sister, Charity, which they do. She is now part of a clan and blames Balthazar for killing her. After Courtney finds out about Bianca and Balthazar leaving school she stakes her and then decapitates her before leaving. An attack on the school by Charity and her clan while an attack by Black Cross is taking place leads Bianca, Lucas and Raquel to leave the school and head to Black Cross HQ. On their way out of the school they meets Charity who they think will kill them but as they prepare to run she is pushed against a tree and staked by a sharp branch. Although Lucas wants to finish her off he cannot find anything to destroy her with so agrees to leave her. When at Black Cross HQ Raquel volunteers to join and Bianca later agrees to join. |
23236842 | /m/06618d6 | The Everafter War | Michael Buckley | 2009-05 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Goldilocks kisses awake Henry Grimm, Sabrina and Daphne's father, from his sleeping spell. Henry has a hard time realizing that his daughters have grown up. He is very uncomfortable with their familiarity with magic, remembering how it got his father killed. He decides to disconnect Sabrina and Daphne from Ferryport Landing, forcing them to pack and get ready to return to New York City. Before they can leave, though, the Scarlet Hand surrounds the house and shoots Uncle Jake in the shoulder. Knowing he needs medical care, Granny sends everyone into the Hall of Wonders, to the Room of Reflections, which contains a number of magic mirrors. They enter what turns out to be a rebel fort, headed by Charming, to fight the Scarlet Hand. Uncle Jake asks the girls' help in rescuing his love, Briar Rose(sleeping beauty), whom he'd bought an engagement ring for. After Uncle Jake is knocked out and Daphne accidentally turns Sabrina into a goose, Briar is rescued, but dragons are sent after the group and Briar dies in the fighting. Sabrina accidentally reveals to Puck they get married in the future: they get in a big fight. Realizing it is time to take a side, the Grimm family, with the exception of Henry, agrees to let Charming's army use various magical weapons in the Hall of Wonders. Nevertheless, the army suffers a grim defeat due to a spy in the camp. Charming sets a trap and discovers Pinocchio is the spy; he was promised he could grow up and become a man. The girls eavesdrop and discover their mother was pregnant when she was put under the sleeping spell. However, the baby was born and was stolen by the Scarlet Hand. The camp is attacked by the Scarlet Hand and dragons, and everyone retreats into the Hall of Wonders, then leaves to fight again. Left in the house, the Grimms discover that Pinocchio's marionettes are running loose. Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck follow them into the Hall of Wonders where they discover the marionettes have opened a number of rooms in the Hall of Wonders. They lead to the Master, who is their friend, Mirror. Mirror explains that he wants to be a real person, not just a mirror creature. Taking the girls' baby brother, he goes into a secret room that can only be opened by a Grimm and forces Sabrina to open the door. Mirror goes into the Book of Everafter, to rewrite a story and take the baby's body for himself. The girls follow him, only to end up in the Land of Oz, and realize that they have been separated from Puck, Pinocchio, and their brother. |
23245472 | /m/065y_nd | The Politics of Lust | John Ince | null | null | The book explores the three distinct forces that Ince believes fuel erotophobia: "antisexualism," an irrational negative response to harmless sexual expression; "nasty sex," which includes rape and violent pornography; and "rigidity," the inability to enjoy "playful and spontaneous" sex. Ince argues that, while we are drawn to sex, it also secretly disturbs us. He claims that powerful anxieties lurk in our attitudes to every type of erotic expression, and that these negative attitudes affect our lives by stunting sexual passion, inhibiting frank and honest talk about sex, and generating shame about sexual organs. Ince believes that our attitudes to sex also influence the non-sexual parts of our lives, such as political affiliations. |
23247015 | /m/065yxy5 | After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away | Joyce Carol Oates | 8/22/2006 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Jenna Abbott nearly dies in the car wreck on the bridge that took her mother's life. Broken in body and spirit, she feels lost and alone. She longs for the peace of the "blue" - the drug-filled haze she experienced in hospital - and steals drugs from her uncle's medicine cabinet, setting off on a self-destructive path. Her classmate, the mysterious biker Crow, is the one person she can confide in about her misery and guilt. |
23247641 | /m/065_sgn | Landslide | Desmond Bagley | 1967 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | This story revolves around the protagonist, Bob Boyd, who is a geologist and works in British Columbia timber country. He has no memory of his past following a terrible auto accident. At the start of the novel he arrives in a small town - Fort Farrell, located in the northeastern British Columbia to perform a small job for the Matterson Corporation. By chance he happens to see the name of the square in the town – Trinavant Square, which brings back some memories to him. After consulting the town newspaper he confirms that this is the place where John Trinavant used to live. He learns from a local reporter, McDougall (Mac) that John Trinavant used to be a big businessman in Fort Farrell about ten years ago with the elder Matterson – ‘Bull’ Matterson. However at that time John Trinavant had died in an auto crash along with his son (Frank) and wife. There was a fourth person found in the car driven by the Trinavants – Robert B. Grant who has presumed to be a hitchhiker travelling with them. After meeting with the head of the Matterson Corporation, Howard Matterson (son of Bull Matterson), Bob plans to start a survey of the land owned by the Matterson Corporation in the nearby forest where the Mattersons were planning to build a dam and wanted to get their land surveyed for any precious minerals. Bob starts the survey and comes across a Miss Clare Trinavant who insists that he stays out of her land. After completing the survey he reports back to Howard that nothing of value lied below their land, and collects his pay-check and leaves. But before he leaves he is confronted by Mac to reveal his interest in the Trinavants. Although he refuses to tell Mac anything he is forced to reconsider his decision. Bob thinks about his past. It is revealed that Bob Boyd is indeed none other than Robert Grant who was riding with the Trinavants when the car crashed and the other 3 occupants died. Although he survived the crash his body was badly burned and as a result he lost his memory. He is told by the doctor and the psychiatrist (Susskind) that he is Robert Grant and survived the crash. Susskind urges him to forget about his past and focus on the future. But Bob insists on knowing about his past and so Susskind tells him that he used to be a college student and had a broken family and criminal history. He had no family now and was sought by police for drug and other charges. Susskind tells him that he must forget all that and study and complete his university exams because he was a new person now. Susskind helps him get a new face by plastic surgery and they decide to give him a new name – Bob Boyd. After a little time Bob is able to go back to normal life and works in the northern Canadian territories as a prospector. Back in the present time, Bob Boyd receives news that Susskind had died and feels that he has lost all touch with his past except for Fort Farrell and decided to go back there and investigate. He goes back and meets Mac and tells him everything about his past after which Mac feels sorry for having reprimanded him previously. They decide that to stick together and investigate the Mattersons interest and involvement in Trinavant property especially since after the death of the Trinavant family the Mattersons had gained a lot of wealth. They also decide to contact Clare Trinavant, who is a distant niece of John Trinavant and inform her about Bob’s past. At this time Mac asks Bob how he knows he is Robert Grant, in other words couldn’t he also be Frank Trinavant. Mac reveals to Bob that both Bob and John were boys of same age and a mistake could have been made. If Bob were actually Frank Trinavant he would stand to gain a lot of wealth and this would upset the Mattersons a lot. After hearing this Bob starts to spread the word in Fort Farrell that he is the survivor of the crash in which the Trinavant family died to see the reaction of the Mattersons. Immediately he is called by the elder Matterson (Bull) and accused of blackmail. Bull inform him that he knows Bob is actually Robert Grant and could get him thrown in jail because of his past criminal record. Bull warns Bob to leave town immediately and not create any trouble, but Bob ignores him and tells him he can do nothing. Meanwhile Bob asks Clare her if he can survey her share of the land adjoining the Matterson’s dam because it would be flooded soon. They both go there together and survey the land. While camping together they develop a romantic interest and decide to get married sometime in the future. When they return back from the survey Bob decides to create some more panic for the Mattersons. He decides to visit the dam they are building and starts to poke around in order to provoke them. He also collects some soil samples near the dam and finds they contain quick clay. He tries to warn the Mattersons to stop building the dam lest it gets toppled due to the quick clay; instead, the Mattersons threaten him. Eventually he confronts Bull Matterson and tells him that he could also be John Trinavant. Bull is unable to hear this shocking news and gets a heart-attack. His son, Howard, spreads the rumor that Bob had hit Bull, and gets all his employees to hunt down Bob. Bob quickly learns of Howard’s plan and escapes in the woods. They all follow him in the woods and Howard also captures Clare and Mac and locks them in his cellar. Bob knows that he must quickly escape his hunters and try to free Clare and Mac. He tries several maneuvers in the forest and on one occasion tells one of Howard’s men that he did not hit Bull Matterson. Eventually, Bob is able to escape and reach the Matterson home where Bull is recuperating from his heart attack. Bull tells Bob that five years ago his son and daughter had taken his car and run down John Trinavant’s car with the intent to kill him and his family. They did not want to see the more successful Frank be the successor of the Matterson-Trinavant business. A little time later Bob learns from the police that Howard is killed by police gunshots in the forest after he had killed one of the police officers. They also are able to free Clare and Mac from the cellar. Bob races towards the Matterson dam and orders everyone to evacuate due to the danger of quick clay. In the ensuing evacuation the dam collapses and a few people die, but most of them are able to escape. At the end Bob and Clare get together and look forward to a new life together. After all, he could capture me and take ne back to Fort Farrell, and then the whole story would blow up in his face. He had to get rid of me and the only way was by another killing. I shivered slightly. I had led a pretty tough life but I had never been pursued with deadly intention before. This was quite a new experience and likely to be my last. Of course, it was still possible for me to quit. I could head further west and then southwest to the coast, hitting it at Stewart or Prince Rupert; I could then get lost and never see Fort Farrell again. Bit I knew I would not do that because of Mac and Clare - especially Clare. I dug a blanket from my pack and wrapped it round me. I was dead beat and in no fit condition to make important decisions. It would be time enough in daylight to worry about what to do next. I dropped to sleep with Mac's words echoing in my ears: Keep fighting; give them another slug whole they're off balance. - from back cover of 1967 edition |
23248451 | /m/065zs0b | The Snow Tiger | Desmond Bagley | 1975 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | This story revolves around the protagonist, Ian Ballard, who works as a mine manager. He is the grandson of Ben Ballard, owner of the Ballard Holdings Limited, a giant financial group based in London specialising in mining operations around the world. Ben had four sons including Ian’s father. Ian’s father and Ben had fallen apart when Ian’s father left him to settle in the town of Hukahoronui (a.k.a. Huka) located in the South Island of New Zealand in the late 1930s. Ian was born in 1939 and his father died very shortly afterwards in an avalanche there. After his father’s death Ian and his mother continued to live in Huka until he is 16 years old. During this time he develops enmity with a local boy, Charlie Peterson, who is of his age group. It is revealed later in the story that when Ian was about 12 years old Charlie’s twin brother Alec had drowned in the town river. Since Ian was present at the riverside Charlie held Ian responsible for Alec’s death, even though in reality Ian was innocent. At the start of the story Ian is about 35 years old and is injured when he gets trapped in a small avalanche while skiing in Switzerland along with his friend Mike McGill (who is an expert in the study of snow). Ian injures a leg during that accident. While recuperating in London at his mother’s home he is visited by his grandfather, Ben, who offers him the job of managing director of a gold mine located in Huka which is indirectly controlled by Ballard Holdings. Although Ian’s initial reaction is to decline the offer (due to his history at Huka with the Petersons), eventually he decides to take up the offer keeping in mind that Ben had supported him during all his education. The story from this point onwards is told in a flashback format hinged around a courtroom government inquiry into the cause of an avalanche that took place in Huka. This avalanche occurred in July of the year Ian had arrived in Huka, and the courtroom proceedings take place in December of the same year. Witnesses are called in this inquiry who recall their experience before, during and after the avalanche and the story is presented through these explanations, at the same time alternating between June/July and December. Ian arrived in Huka in June and discovers that the gold mine was barely making profit. Moreover he was confronted by the Peterson brothers (John, Eric and Charlie) who have grown up with the small town and now own a big supermarket and hotel and are quite influential in the town council. Ian noticed that Huka had changed a lot since he last visited this place – the town had grown bigger and the mountain slopes near the town were stripped of the tree cover and now lay bare covered completely with snow. Finding himself alone in this place Ian invites Mike McGill (who is planning to go to Antarctica soon) to visit him in Huka for a little time. As soon as McGill arrives in Huka he is extremely worried by several things and feels that the town is in imminent danger of being destroyed by an avalanche. However both the mine management (who distrust Ian due to his age) and the town council (which is controlled by the Peterson brothers and they too distrust Ian) refuse to believe anything that Ian and McGill tell them about the danger from an avalanche. In spite of this, McGill takes samples of snow from the nearby mountain slopes and concludes that the danger is very real and imminent. As soon as he tries to convey this to the outside (New Zealand authorities in Christchurch) the town is cut off from the outside when the road to the town is blocked by snow and the electricity and telephone wires are cut off by a very minor avalanche. After witnessing these events John and Eric Peterson begin to believe what McGill told them and start to mobilise the town resources to prepare for an avalanche. While the whole town is making preparations the avalanche hits them and about 50 people die as a result. During the government inquiry some surprising evidence is presented which shows that Charlie Peterson had actually deliberately started the avalanche by skiing very aggressively at the top of the mountain slopes. His motive was to destroy the gold mine ad extract revenge on Ian. He is immediately arrested and faces charges for the deaths of several people (including his brother John) in the avalanche. Also, during the hearings in December Ian receives the news that his grandfather (Ben) had died and had left the control of Ballard Holdings in Ian’s hand which makes him a very rich person. Also, he had been romantically linked to Liz Peterson (sister of the Petersons) and marries her at the end, once she learns of Charlie’s behaviour. |
23248533 | /m/065y4d8 | High Citadel | Desmond Bagley | 1965 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A small, passenger plane is hijacked by its co-pilot over a mountain range in South America causing a crash landing in which the hijacker dies. Unbenknownst to the pilot and other passengers, among their number is Senor Aguilla, the former president of the country, and his niece, who were returning to the country under a pseudonym. Aguilla had been deposed by a military coup, and now a communist faction wants him dead since they fear he will be a problem for a communist takeover of the country. The hi-jacker′s associates soon arrive at the isolated area, but are separated from Aguilla and the other survivors of the crash by a gorge. There is a damaged bridge between the two sides, which the villains are prevented from crossing by the passengers. As the plot unfolds, the majority of the passengers remain nearby to maintain the stand-off while two set off to cross the mountain range to reach divisions of the country's air force loyal to Aguilla and bring help. The ‘citadel′ at which the siege is maintained becomes increasingly threatened as reinforcements for the villains arrive with prefabricated materials to repair the bridge and storm the position with vehicles. A medieval historian and an engineer manufacture a variety of weapons to prolong the siege as the novel reaches its gripping climax. ja:高い砦 |
23248597 | /m/0660wdy | The Tightrope Men | Desmond Bagley | 1973 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Giles Denison's life is turned upside down when he awakes to find himself in a luxurious hotel in Oslo and, peering into the bathroom mirror, discovers the face of another man. He has been kidnapped from his flat in London and transformed into the likeness of a Finnish scientist, Dr Harold Feltham Meyrick. Compelled to adjust to his new persona (including meeting his daughter) and to play out the role assigned to him by his captors, the group embark on a dangerous escapade from Norway to Finland and across the border into Soviet Russia. |
23248861 | /m/065znyl | The Spoilers | Desmond Bagley | 1969 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | When film tycoon, Sir Robert Hellier, loses his daughter to heroin, he declares war on the drug peddlers. London drug treatment specialist, Nicholas Warren MD, is called in to organise an expedition to the Middle East in an attempt to track down the big-time dope runners, inveigle themselves into their confidence and make them an offer they can't refuse. No expense is spared in the plans for their capture, but with a hundred million dollars worth of heroin at stake, the 'spoilers' must use methods as ruthless as their prey. |
23249033 | /m/065zbk5 | The Freedom Trap | Desmond Bagley | 1971 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | An agent of the British Government is sent on a new and deadly assignment - to snare The Scarperers (a notorious gang of criminals who organise gaol-breaking for long-term prisoners) and Slade, a notorious Russian double agent whom they have recently liberated. The trail leads him to Malta, where he comes face-to-face with these ruthless killers and must outwit them to save his own life. |
23249119 | /m/065yv_3 | Juggernaut | Desmond Bagley | 1985 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | American narrator Neil Mannix is the corporate troubleshooter for multinational British Electric. Nyala, a former British colony newly rich with oil, hopes to prop up its shaky democracy and economy with a new power station near its oil fields. The Nyalans insist that British Electric must dispatch a 300-ton transformer for display to the populace, and Mannix is sent to supervise the travels of "the rig" on a huge flatbed. Civil war breaks out, and Mannix is bullied by a local doctor and an Irish nun into using the rig as a traveling hospital. He must deal with opposing armies, possibly unsafe roads and bridges, some untrustworthy crew members and Nyalans who trek after the machinery, which has taken on symbolic, even mythic meaning. |
23249193 | /m/0661bdp | Night of Error | Desmond Bagley | 1984 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | After receiving news that his brother Mark has died in suspicious circumstances in the Pacific, marine biologist Mike Trevelyan discovers that Mark′s latest research may have discovered a lucrative source of manganese beneath the sea. With only two clues — a notebook in code and a lump of deep–sea rock — Mike's investigations trigger the start of a hazardous marine expedition and a violent confrontation far from civilisation. |
23251826 | /m/06604z4 | Jatta | null | 2009-06 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/017ssy": "Juvenile fantasy", "/m/04n87l": "Dark fantasy"} | Princess Jatta wakes on her bedroom floor after a night’s carnage she cannot remember, suffering a guilt she cannot explain. Piece by piece she uncovers two frightening truths: she is a werewolf; Dartith’s King Brackensith has claimed her as bride for his son. Any protection her father’s kingdom of Alteeda has offered Jatta crumbles when, on her fourteenth birthday, Brackensith invades. Jatta and her brother Arthmael escape to seek help from Sorcerer Redd. They leave him, taking the orb. This purple, plum-sized magical ball creates vivid illusions of sight, sound, smell and taste so convincingly that only the sense of touch can expose them. With Jatta’s own prodigious imagination she soon masters the orb. Its illusions provide almost limitless possibilities for deception, entertainment and escape. However, Jatta cannot escape the sinister werewolf episodes she now suffers. As Brackensith’s grip tightens on Alteeda, Jatta realises that only her surrender will save her kingdom. Her journey with Arthmael to Dartith’s dark isle is fraught with dangers. They are kidnapped, thrown to dragons, and trapped with lost souls inside an enchanted fire. Jatta is forced into a betrothal to the dangerously unbalanced Prince Riz. On Dartith, where night stretches for sixteen of every twenty-four hours, Jatta and Arthmael meet and befriend Princess Noriglade, Brackensith’s Undead daughter. Noriglade also despises what she is. Though the Undead rarely kill, they do kidnap their victim’s soul as they drink, a torturous experience for the victim and a corrupting one for the Undead. Noriglade and Arthmael yearn to escape to Alteeda. Jatta resigns herself to staying, fearing her wolf is invading her personality. When mad Prince Riz stages a coup, the three young Royals are caught up in the massacre. It is Jatta’ unique powers that save them, and Jatta, Arthmael and Noriglade return to Alteeda. |
23254147 | /m/065zmrs | The Honour of the Knights | Stephen J Sweeney | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | In 2617AD, the remains of Mitikas Imperium's naval forces are making a last stand against an unstoppable enemy force known only as the Pandorans who have driven them to the brink of destruction. A pilot by the name of Jacques Chalmers witnesses the final destruction of their forces at the hands of Admiral Zackaria before his own death. The story moves to Earth, on the other side of the galaxy, where Simon Dodds is awoken by a man named Patrick Dean who has mysteriously found his way to his parents' house. Though Dodds attempts to save his life, the man has suffered fatal gunshot wounds and dies of respiratory failure. The Confederation Stellar Navy arrive the next morning to take Dean's body away, telling Dodds to deny his existence. Two weeks later they request he return to naval service. Meeting Admiral Turner, Commodore Parks and Commodore Hawke, Dodds is once again reminded to deny Dean's existence and is then told that he is to spend the next 3 weeks participating in the ATAF project, a newly developed starfighter with superior capabilities to anything else in military history. Dodds is reunited with his old team mates (the White Knights), discovering during his absence that the Confederacy's flagship, a battleship known as Dragon, has been hijacked and has not been seen for nearly 6 months. Commodore Hawke was the only surviving crew member. He has, however, been unable to accurately describe what happened to him during that time. Whilst attending a presentation on the ATAF, Dodds begins to question the starfighter the navy has constructed, feeling the design is not an evolutionary step, but more of a reaction to something more serious. His team mates, however, dismiss his concern. The White Knights spend several weeks participating in simulated tests involving the ATAFs, bidding to become the real test pilots. They are, however, outperformed by another team (The Red Devils) and are transferred to the Confederacy border system of Temper, stationed at a planet called Spirit. Whilst patrolling the system, the group witness a research vessel come under attack by a raiding party. A single raider escapes with a dump of the vessel's databanks and flees into Imperial space. Later, whilst drinking in the naval base's Officer's Club, Dodds hears a series of rumours that explain that the purported Imperial civil war is a fabrication and the empire was wiped out months ago. The rumourmonger tells him that all that is left are a number of refugees and that Dragon, with its 50,000 strong crew, couldn't have been hijacked by anything more than a sizeable opponent. Dodds, Enrique and Chaz discuss the rumours and continue to drink neat whiskey for most of the night, becoming more and more drunk as the evening goes on. The next day the naval base is awoken to the news that Dragon has been located and the CSN plan to intercept and take back the vessel. A secondary goal of the operation is to also capture and arrest Admiral Zackaria, for his believed part in the on-going trouble in Imperial space and the theft of the battleship. Although they are at first assigned to take part in the offensive run against enemy targets, the White Knights are relegated to secondary defence after Commodore Parks discovers that Dodds and Enrique are still drunk. The CSN sends its three major carriers, Griffin, Ifrit and Leviathan to Aster to intercept and bring Dragon home, commanded by Commodore Parks, Commodore Hawke, and Captain Meyers respectively. The start of the operation is disastrous, with Dragon's operators luring the allied forces into a false sense of security by complying with a remote shutdown request and then eliminating all the approaching vessels. It then turns its main cannon on UNF Grendel, destroying it with a single shot. With the allied forces completely outmatched by the enemy starfighter pilots, who many begin to believe are not being piloted by Imperials, Parks orders an immediate retreat. Before they can do so, however, they are attacked by enemy reinforcements and Griffin is left dead in the water. With the original pilots dead and with no means to launch fighters, the White Knights are left to pilot the ATAFs and use them to drive back the enemy forces. Dodds once again begins to question the power of the starfighter, feeling that something is not right about it. After the enemy forces have fled the system, the allies attempt to return home. Griffin, however, suffers a mis-jump and becomes stranded in Imperial space. Whilst the carrier's crew affect repairs and await rescue, Admiral Turner contacts Parks and tells him that the raider who stole the ATAF plans is currently in the same star system attempting to sell them on. He orders Parks to send the White Knights to Arlos starport to meet a government agent (Clare Barber) who has been tasked with retrieving them. Arriving at the starport, Dodds comes to realise that the rumours he had heard the previous nights are, in fact, 100% true and the starport is full of refugees. After hours of searching the starport the team discovers that Barber is dead and they head to the starport's hospital's morgue to search her for the stolen data card. It transpires that the woman has swallowed the card, leaving the team with no choice but to cut her open to get it. As they do so, a detachment of Pandoran soldiers arrive at the starport and begin to slaughter the refugees. The Knights attempt to fight one of the soldiers who has come to the morgue, searching for survivors, but discover the man is not only exceptionally strong, but also possesses incredible healing abilities. The team eventually manage to defeat the soldier and then fight their way out of the starport, heading back to Griffin. Arriving in the vicinity of the carrier, they discover that it has come under attack by Commodore Hawke, who has turned control of CSN Ifrit over to Admiral Zackaria, in service of the Imperial Senate and "The Mission". The Knights once again fight back against the enemy forces, before Dodds attacks Ifrit directly and spaces Hawke and Zackaria. Following this, the enemy forces cease their attack on Griffin and leave. The Knights return home to a heroes' welcome, but are left with a great number of questions on their minds. |
23265858 | /m/0660lbt | In Vivo | Mildred Savage | 1964 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In 1946, young, idealistic scientist Tom Cable steers the fiscally conservative Enright Drug and Chemical Company into dangerous financial waters by committing an increasing number of company resources to the research and development of a new broad-spectrum antibiotic. Supporting Cable in his search for a new broad-spectrum antibiotic are Ade Hale (president), Will Caroline (vice-president for research), Maxwell Strong, and Dr. Mills. Opposing them are Claude Morrissey (director of biochemistry) and Gil Brainard (vice-president for production). The story line is linear with traditional character arcs. The heroes and villains are archetypal with the heroes often possessing trope-like names (e.g. Max Strong, Constance, Hope, etc.) and generally embodying all that is good while the villains back-stab, bicker and descend into abject immorality. |
23266533 | /m/02nq7xl | The Eagle's Prey | Simon Scarrow | 5/23/2005 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | This novel is set in AD 44 during the Roman invasion of Britain. During the second year of their campaign against the British tribes, the Roman legions are under great pressure to complete their mission. However, at a crucial juncture in battle, Macro and Cato's superior, Centurion Maximius, loses his nerve and allows the Britons, including the enemy leader Caratacus, to escape. Cato and his men are forced into hiding to avoid retribution from the empire and capture by the Britons. |
23267733 | /m/065zqz9 | Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit | null | null | {"/m/016chh": "Memoir"} | McCarthy, the son of two college professors, was born in North Carolina but moved to Orlando, Florida at a young age when his parents took jobs at the University of Central Florida. A left-handed pitcher, McCarthy played for Bishop Moore High School in Orlando, and subsequently played for Yale University. McCarthy was drafted by the Anaheim Angels in the 21st round of the 2002 Major League Baseball Draft. He participated in the Angels' minor league Spring Training and was assigned to the rookie-level Provo Angels of the Pioneer League. McCarthy spent the 2002 season going back and forth between the starting rotation and the bullpen. Much of the book describes his life off the field during that season, such as long bus rides to away games, living in a hotel and subsequently with a Mormon family, altercations with teammates, and acclimating to life in predominantly Mormon Provo. He also describes several games from his own perspective on the mound or in the dugout, as well as a different perspective on games such as Joe Saunders' first start for Provo, as well as a game where Larry King was the guest of honor. The next spring, McCarthy returned to Spring Training. He was placed on three different minor league squads, including the Triple-A squad, but was released before Spring Training ended. After his release, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School, and did work in Cameroon and Malaysia. He was a medical intern at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center at the time the book was published. |
23286530 | /m/0660rtf | The Story of Cirrus Flux | null | null | null | The story takes place in 18th century London, and follows an orphan boy named Cirrus Flux. When he was born, his explorer father, James Flux, left him at an orphanage while he carried out his duties to the Guild of Empirical Sciences. He set sail hoping to find more of a brilliant and mysterious light known as the Breath of God. But he did not return from his journey. Now the only known place where the light can allegedly be found is inside a token left for Cirrus Flux by his father. Now, 12 years later, Cirrus is on the run from his orphanage, where a member of the Guild of Empirical Sciences has come seeking him and his token. |
23289444 | /m/065xz04 | Bog Child | Siobhan Dowd | 9/9/2008 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel is set in the 1980s. Fergus McCann and Uncle Tally find a bog body of a small girl near the Ireland-UK border. At the same time, Fergus is studying for his A-Level physics. He makes friends with Owain, one of the border guards, during one of his morning runs across the border. He opens many coversations with Owain. When he goes back to the site of the bog child, Fergus meets Cora and Felicity O'Brien, a girl his age and her archaeologist mother. Fergus named the bog body "Mel". He goes to Long Kesh prison with his mother to meet his brother, Joe, who has been incarcerated as a political prisoner because of his involvement with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He has joined his friends on a hunger strike in protest to free Ireland from The Troubles. After lifting Mel's body from the site, the excavation team, including Fergus and Cora, find that Mel has a noose around her neck. A flashback shows Mel and her family struggling to meet loan repayments. Fergus was asked by Michael Rafters to ferry packets across the border in an attempt to end his brother's hunger strike. Fergus and Cora share their accidental first kiss but begin dating afterwards. After his final A-level exam, physics, Fergus and his family visit his brother in prison to find him gaunt-looking. He gets drunk and dreams about Mel talking to Rur, her love interest. When he wakes up, Cora informs him that Mel was a dwarf. Fergus allows Cora and her mother to stay over at his place due to an appointment with a professor about Mel. Radiocarbon dating reveals that Mel lived around AD 80. After a bombing is shown on the news, Fergus begins to suspect the packets he has been ferrying. He opens them in front of Owain to see condoms and contraceptive pills. Joe falls into a coma after 50 days of fasting. After a heated argument between Fergus and his parents they agree to put him on the drip. Through a series of dreams, Fergus sees the events leading to Mel's death with Rur stabbing her at her request because she did not want to "feel the noose" around her neck. It is also found out at the end that Fergus' Uncle Tally actually is a local bomb-maker, nicknamed Deus, meaning god. |
23292780 | /m/0660xk0 | The Girl from Hollywood | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 8/10/1923 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story alternates between the all-American Pennington family on their remote California ranch and a young Hollywood actress. The Penningtons have a beautiful estate, and affectionate relationships with their children, Custer and Eva. Custer has had an "understanding" with neighbor and childhood friend Grace Evans for a long time, but she finally confides that she wants to try being an actress before she agrees to settle down on the ranch. Her brother Guy is an aspiring writer. He has just purchased some bootleg booze, and shares it with Custer, although both Grace and Custer's mother have observed that he has a drinking problem. Bit-part actress Shannon Burke, known on the screen as Gaza de Lure, remembers her Hollywood history. She had come for fame. She refused to trade sexual favors for work, and found that she could not get better roles. Actor-director Wilson Crumb was the first to behave decently to her, as a gentleman. He got her a contract with his company, and gradually increased his attentions to her. Finally, he gave her powder, saying it was aspirin, and over several days intentionally got her hooked on cocaine. To keep her drug supply steady she angrily agreed to visit him during the day, but refused to live with him, going home each night to her own place. Eventually, she began selling cocaine, morphine and heroin for him. Guy Evans is in love with Custer's sister Eva Pennington, but does not have an income to support her. Slick Allen, briefly employed by the Pennington ranch, asks Guy to help with his bootleg operation. After he threatens the Penningtons, Guy rejects the proposal … and Allen threatens to frame him for the entire bootleg business. Lured by the money, Guy decides to cooperate, arranging to store and transfer illegal goods each week in a remote section of the ranch. Meantime, Grace has had no luck in Hollywood, finding it difficult to get any work at all. Sent to Wilson Crumb, he diffidently offers her a semi-nude part requiring a nude audition, and in a weak moment, she accepts. The other side of Slick Allen's smuggling operation is drugs … sold through Wilson Crumb in Hollywood. Shannon witnesses Allen demanding payment from Crumb. Crumb has been putting him off, and finally arranges for Allen to be arrested for possession of drugs. By insisting on a share of the profits, Shannon has saved enough to buy a home for her mother in the country, near a big ranch - coincidentally, the Pennington's. Shannon's mother gets sick and they send for her. She carefully brings enough drugs to last a week. Her mother is dead when she arrives, so the Penningtons take her in. With decent people, fresh air and exercise, she weans herself from the drug and then entirely kicks her secret habit. She also falls in love with Custer. In Hollywood, Wilson Crumb follows his previously successful method to hook Grace on drugs as well. The folks at home hear from her less often. When Shannon learns about Grace, knowing what Hollywood can be like for a girl with no family to care, she insists someone should go see her. Custer has become aware of mysterious traffic on the ranch, and plans to catch them. Shannon recognises Slick Allen's voice from his meeting with Wilson Crumb, and fears for Custer's safety. She approaches the bootleggers to try to prevent a confrontation, but only makes matters worse. The government finds Custer with the booze, and he is arrested. Although he learns of Guy's involvement, he chooses to accept six months in prison rather than let his sister be disillusioned with Guy. Custer tries to see Grace but she throws him out, pretending she dislikes him. The next day, Guy arrives too late; Grace dies of injuries from domestic abuse, an out of wedlock pregnancy, and drug abuse. A photo on her dresser is Guy's only clue to the guilty man. As months go by, the families recover from losing Grace. Eva arranges for a movie company to shoot some scenes at the ranch, at the request of … Wilson Crumb. Shannon is appalled. On the ranch, Crumb confronts Shannon, insisting she come back to him. Custer overhears their conversation, and gets drunk. Crumb tries to lure Eva out for an "audition", but she is horrified when he makes a pass. Angry, he tells her that Guy was the guilty bootlegger, who let her innocent brother go to jail for it. The next morning, Shannon is seen sweeping away tracks on the trail. Within hours, Crumb is found dead. Shannon claims responsibility but has no gun. Custer had a gun, but was passed out drunk and doesn't remember getting up, let alone killing him. Eva shoots herself over Crumb's allegations about Guy, and is found barely alive. Guy becomes so upset and disoriented when he learns about Eva's suicide attempt that he is taken to a sanatorium (mental hospital). Custer and Shannon are both arrested. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against Custer. Shannon's sordid Hollywood past comes out during the trial. Custer is found guilty and sentenced to death. Shannon is found innocent due to inability to produce a murder weapon. The Penningtons do not hold Shannon's past against her. Eva recovers, and the family frequently visits Custer. On the fatal day, the governor grants a stay of execution. Shannon had been working with Guy at the hospital every day, and he finally recovered his memory. Guy confessed to killing Crumb himself in revenge for Grace's death. Additionally, Slick Allen explained that he planted some of the circumstantial evidence against Custer, but decided to admit it after he realised that Shannon is his long-lost daughter. |
23302449 | /m/065_7mb | Mindplayers | Pat Cadigan | 7/1/1987 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | A dare goes awry when Ali tries on a stolen madcap and is afflicted with psychotic delusions that will not go away. "Cured" by a mindplayer, Ali is soon forced to become one herself or face a prison sentence as a "mind criminal." |
23307938 | /m/065_b3v | Modeste Mignon | Honoré de Balzac | 1844 | null | The first part of Modeste Mignon is based on a traditional species of folktale known as La fille mal gardée ("The Ill-Watched Girl"), in which a young woman takes a lover despite the close attentions of her guardians, who are determined to preserve her chastity for a more suitable match. Modeste Mignon, a young provincial woman of romantic temperament, imagines herself to be in love with the famous Parisian poet Melchior de Canalis, whose works have filled her with passion. She corresponds with him, but he is unmoved by her attentions. Canalis invites his secretary Ernest de la Brière to deal with the matter. Ernest replies to Modeste in Canalis' name; a dangerous intrigue ensues, which sees Ernest appear in Modeste's home town of Ingouville (near Le Havre) disguised as Canalis. The plot is complicated by the interference of Modeste's family and friends, who suspect that she has secretly taken a lover. The wily dwarf Butscha, who loves Modeste as a medieval knight might have loved a lady far above his station, is determined to unmask the man. Things come to a head when Ernest discovers that Modeste's father Charles Mignon has returned from his long exile a very wealthy man: Modeste is no longer a poor provincial girl but a rich heiress with six million francs to her name. Ernest reveals his true identity, but Modeste feels humiliated and casts him off. When Modeste's true worth becomes generally known, Canalis takes a renewed interest in her and believes that his poetic ardour will enable him to win her heart. But his secretary is no longer his only rival: a local wealthy potentate the Duc d'Hérouville now regards the nouveau-riche Modeste Mignon as a suitable match and throws his hat into the ring. The second part of the novel is also based on a traditional story-type, The Rival Suitors. Ernest, Canalis and the Duc d'Hérouville are invited to Ingouville to compete for the hand of Modeste. Still smarting from the trick played on her by Ernest, Modeste is determined to choose between the passionate advances of the poet and the prospect of becoming a duchess should she accept Hérouville. Butscha, however, who realizes that Ernest is the one who truly loves her, is equally determined to expose the pretensions of Canalis and promote Ernest's suit. Thanks to Butscha's intrigues and her father's good sense, Modeste chooses Ernest and the two are married. |
23310350 | /m/065_m4v | Bitter Fruit | null | null | null | Silas Ali is a Johannesburg lawyer approaching 50 who has risen to prominence during Nelson Mandela's presidency. A high-ranking civil servant occasionally even seen on television next to Mandela, he is employed as a liaison officer assigned to coordinate governmental activities with those of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While his attractive wife Lydia works as a nurse, their only child, 18 year-old Michael reads Literature at Wits University. The past catches up with Silas Ali one Sunday morning at a shopping mall when he sees, and recognizes, François du Boise, an Afrikaner policeman who, in 1978, raped Lydia somewhere in the veld while Silas was made to listen to her screams from inside a police van—an act of brutality obviously triggered by Silas's involvement with the MK. For almost twenty years, Silas and Lydia have kept quiet about the crime, both to each other and towards the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Lydia has never shared her terrible suspicion that du Boise is Michael's natural father with anyone other than her secret diary. Trapped in an unpromising, sexless marriage, and more than ten years younger than her husband, Lydia copes badly with Silas's sudden revelation about du Boise and the additional information that the now retired policeman has applied for amnesty for a number of sexual assaults, including the one on her. In an act of self-injury, she dances on broken glass and has to be hospitalised under the pretence of having suffered a freak accident. In the long run, however, all their attempts at keeping up appearances cannot disguise the fact that, for a multitude of reasons, their marriage is failing, and that they have also lost touch with their son, that they have no idea about where, and how, he is actually spending his time. They find out too late that, while performing brilliantly at university, he has turned into a seducer of older women—he has had affairs with one of his father's former "comrades in arms", who is rich, white, and bisexual, and also with one of his literature professors—and that he has started to investigate his own roots by contacting his paternal grandfather's relatives, who are Muslims (although his father Silas, an illegitimate child, is not). Also, they do not realise that he has recently read Lydia's diary. A birthday party thrown in Silas's honour is the last event where the Alis are seen together. By that time, Silas is toying with the idea of going abroad, preferably to Europe, to make a fresh start there, especially now that President Mandela is about to resign and he may lose his prestigious government job; Lydia has stopped working as a nurse and is planning to leave her husband for good; and Michael has acquired a gun and lets himself be influenced by fundamentalist Islamic circles. In the end it is Michael Ali who takes the most drastic actions. Reinventing himself as a Muslim and planning to go into hiding and eventually to India, where his grandfather was born, he goes on a killing spree, shooting first the white father who for many years has had an incestuous relationship with his daughter—who is a friend of Michael's—,and then du Boise. |
23311004 | /m/065y42n | August | Judith Perelman Rossner | 1983 | null | The novel focuses on the relationship between a psychoanalyst, Dr. Lulu Shinefield, and a young troubled woman, Dawn Henley, from the beginning of their therapy together through to its termination. |
23311054 | /m/065z4b6 | August | null | null | null | Set from the mid-1950s till 1971, the book tells the story of the Jones family, who leave their home in London for a camping holiday in Wales every August. |
23312080 | /m/065_0sq | Under a Monsoon Cloud | H. R. F. Keating | 1/30/1986 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | Inspector Ghote is temporarily assigned to a badly run hill station at Vigatpour. Additional Deputy Inspector General "Tiger" Kelkar, a man Ghote once investigated and cleared of suspected corruption, arrives to inspect the station. The situation is worsened by Sergeant Desai, a comically inept and lazy sergeant previously assigned to Ghote in Inspector Ghote Plays a Joker. During the inspection the monsoon storm breaks. Desai, after making a string of irritating blunders, spills ink over Kelkar's uniform and Kelkar, in a fit of temper, throws the brass ink well at Desai. The inkwell strikes Desai on the head and kills him. Owing to the late hour Ghote is the only other officer in the station at the time. Kelkar orders Ghote to arrest him but Ghote persuades Kelkar to cover up the death. Since Desai regularly tried to bet people he could swim the nearby lake in under two hours they take the body to the lake and submerge it. The next day Kelkar completes his inspection and the station's original inspector returns from sick leave, allowing Ghote to go home. Months pass, then Ghote is summoned to the Assistant Commissioner's office where he is introduced to Sergeant Desai's sister in law. Mrs Desai is suspicious because Desai was a good swimmer and the medical officer's report indicates no signs of asphyxia by drowning. Mrs Desai threatens to involve the newspapers and so the Assistant Commissioner agrees to an inquiry. Days later Ghote meets the inspector assigned to inquiry and mentions the untidy state of the lost property room at the hill station. The investigating inspector realises this may be where Desai's missing clothes are to be found and goes off to look. Ghote realises the inspector will find Desai's blood stained uniform jacket. He warns Kelkar who commits suicide. The Assistant Commissioner sends Ghote a memo demanding an account of the events at the hill station. Ghote fears imminent ruin. He weighs the value of the truth against that of his career and finds his career wanting. At home he is moody and silent with his wife and child. Finally he confesses everything to his wife, Protima. The least Ghote expects is demotion but dismissal or even a criminal charge is more likely. Protima urges him to lie to protect his family. Ghote resists, but agrees to see a Hindu priest at the temple. The priest says anger leads to bewilderment, which leads to a wandering mind, which leads to the destruction of the soul. The priest warns Ghote that he is in the third phase of this cycle and asks Ghote what his skills as a policeman are worth if he cannot use them. After this Ghote submits a false statement saying he left duty before the death and cannot shed any light on those events. He is suspended pending a board of inquiry. In court, Ghote watches as a case he worked on collapses under the fierce defence of Mrs Achmed. He realises she will be a fine defence attorney for his own case. He engages her, but tells her he is innocent. The inquiry hearing begins. Ghote is dismayed to learn that the prosecution will be handled by a man with a fierce reputation for cross examination. Kalkar's suicide note, which does not mention Ghote's involvement, is read into evidence. When the inquiry adjourns Ghote accompanies Mrs Achmed to a jail and assists her in gaining access to her clients. Mrs Achmed remarks that if her clients were as outraged as they were entitled to be, the police would spend all their time suppressing riots. She tells Ghote that she campaigns for civil rights because her younger brother was diagnosed with leprosy and sent away. She was angry about this injustice and when she visited her brother near the foothills of the Himalayas she found he was a beggar. From that day on she determined that she would fight for the poor and downtrodden. The next day the inquiry reconvenes. To the surprise of Ghote and Mrs Achmed, the prosecutor then calls Ghote to the stand. Since the board of inquiry is not a true court of law, Ghote is obliged to take the stand where he is questioned about his investigation of Kelkar for corruption. The next day a junior officer is called as a witness and Ghote fears he will be exposed. However the prosecutor only obtains testimony that Inspector Ghote said it was midnight when he left the station. The inquiry again adjourns. Ghote stayed at a boarding house while working at the hill station and the next day the porter who works there is called to testify. The old man recalls that Ghote said it was before midnight, though it felt later. After this, the owner of the boarding house is called and is certain Ghote arrived at twenty to three by an antique clock. Mrs Achmed soon forces the man to admit that the clock was sold long ago and that his memory is playing tricks on him. The prosecutor calls the inspector assigned to the Desai case. The inspector considers Ghote's statement of the time he arrived to be a trick to mislead an ignorant and confused old man. The prosecutor then calls a man who earns his living doing washing for people in Ghote's neighbourhood. The man admits to receiving a police jacket with a missing button from Ghote's wife, Protima. The prosecutor concludes by saying tomorrow he will call a witness to testify that Ghote and Kelkar took Desai's body to the lake on a bicycle. Ghote's conscience, which has been troubling him over his lie to Mrs Achmed, now compels him to confess to her. However, she has a prior appointment and refuses to listen to him. Talking to his wife, Ghote is persuaded to postpone confessing until he has heard the prosecutor's witness. When the inquiry is ready to reconvene Mrs Achmed is late, so Ghote cannot confess to her beforehand. The prosecutor presents his witness but as his testimony unfolds Ghote realises the man is a professional thief. Mrs Achmed deftly exposes the witness's background and the inquiry board send the witness packing. The inquiry now adjourns for the weekend. During the weekend Protima invites Ram, one of Ghote's childhood friends, to visit. Ram, once a fierce and angry young man, has grown into cheerful and successful, if legally and morally dubious, businessman. Protima has confided everything to Ram, who gently teases Ghote about his conscience and suggests bribery as a solution. Ghote angrily rejects this, but in so doing Ram points out that he has proven that he is a policeman to the very bone. Ghote realises this is true and resolves to continue with his lie. When the inquiry reconvenes Ghote decides he cannot continue to deceive Mrs Achmed because she is a dedicated campaigner for truth and justice. Mrs Achmed asks if he intends to confess to the inquiry board and Ghote replies he will not because he has, apart from this incident, been an honest and good policeman and wishes to remain one. Mrs Achmed declares that she believes this and will remain present, but will call no witnesses and speak no more in his defence. Ghote is called to the stand and tripped up by the weather, which varied over the night in question. He barely manages to recover. The inquiry adjourns and on the way out of the building Ghote encounters the inspector who built the case against him. The inspector accuses Ghote of bare faced lying, of which Ghote is guilty, and Ghote responds angrily. The next day the Chairman reads Kelkar's favourable inspection assessment of Ghote's time at the hill station. The inspector then brings out a "first information report" which he claims dates from Ghote's time at the hill station, but in fact dates from some time before. This report shows that an investigation was mishandled. The prosecution alleges that Ghote is responsible and that Kelkar gave Ghote a favourable assessment in return for covering up the death of Sergeant Desai. Ghote denounces the latest piece of evidence and persuades the inquiry chairman to examine the document more closely. The Chairman discovers the date on the book has been altered to implicate Ghote and orders the inspector responsible taken into custody. Asked if he wishes to continue his statement, Ghote seizes this final chance to tell the truth and does so, confessing everything. The chairman finds Ghote guilty and says the board of inquiry will recommend Ghote's dismissal. When the room empties, Ghote realises that the "show cause notice" form has not been filled in. This procedural error will nullify the entire inquiry. The shorthand stenographer rushes the form to the chairman, who deliberately ignores him and walks away, cementing Ghote's suspicion that the error was deliberate. To celebrate Ghote's family visits the beach. Ghote reflects that while anger is sometimes justified it is best contained until an occasion when anger is truly needed. |
23312296 | /m/06610j6 | Geography of a Horse Dreamer | Sam Shepard | null | null | The play is in two acts. In the first act(entitled "The Slump"), which takes place in a sleazy hotel room, apparently in the United States, Cody is chained to a bed, where he is being watched by two gangsters, Beaujo and Santee. A radio announces the action at a local race track for horses. Cody keeps begging the gangsters to unlock him from the bed, but they refuse because they're afraid he'll try to escape. The audience learns that Cody was kidnapped by the gangsters because he has the ability to predict the winners of races in his dreams – they refer to him as a "dreamer." Cody finally talks them into unlocking him for a short time, and some attempted escapes take place, but Cody is stopped. The gangsters complain that Cody has lost his ability to predict winners, and they keep wondering what their bosses are going to do to him. By the end of the first act, the pressure has mounted on Cody, and he begins to regain his ability to predict winners, although they are in dog races. The second act (entitled "The Hump") takes place in a much fancier hotel room, apparently in England. The gangsters are still watching Cody, but he is unchained from his bed. Although Cody picked a long series of winners in dog races, bringing in a lot of money for the gangsters and their bosses, he has since cooled down, and he is again being threatened. The gangsters' boss, Fingers, shows up with the Doctor. They are about to perform surgery on Cody, cutting the "dreamer bone" out of his neck, which allows him to dream winners – this will kill Cody, but the Doctor says that the bone can be inserted in someone else's neck, and that person will become a "dreamer." Just as they are about to cut Cody apart, the hotel room is invaded by Cody's two brothers, Jasper and Jason, who shoot all of the gangsters with shotguns. The two brothers are dressed as farmers. They rescue Cody and leave with him. Once they are gone, a Waiter comes in to see if anyone wants to order food. He hardly seems concerned that the gangsters are lying wounded on the floor. One of them asks the Waiter to play a record, which had been Cody's favorite, and which he was always asking the gangsters to play on a record player, but they wouldn't. The Waiter puts on the record, a zydeco tune (Shepard names a specific record in the script), and it plays, as the play ends. |
23313589 | /m/065z02g | Tit for Tat | null | null | null | The novel follows Totty, a young urchin living in poverty in Victorian-era London. Totty is stolen from his family whilst young, and forced to work as the apprentice of a sadistic chimney sweep. Totty's suffering is ignored by the philanthropists, who are so concerned with the welfare of black slaves in America that they fail to notice that they have simply replaced their own slavery with child labour. |
23316398 | /m/065z9v4 | The Indigo King | James A. Owen | 2008-10 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | After John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return from their last adventure in the Archipelago, they spend five years in the Summer Country, our world. The Caretakers form a group at Oxford, including two close friends, Hugo Dyson and Owen Barfield. Hugo has become so close a friend that John and Jack consider making him an apprentice Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and the Archipelago. Soon after they show Hugo the Geographica, he shows them a book sent to him from Charles, who is in France. The book has a mysterious foreword supposedly written by Hugo in his own blood. They decide to take a walk to take a break from all the confusion. Hugo enters a door in the wood and disappears somewhere in time. Hugo believes that he is being pranked by his companions, but eventually realizes this is not the case. John and Jack meet the Royal Animal Rescue Team, a group of badgers led by Uncas - the son of Tummeler - and his son Fred. They inform the men that fourteen years ago they were ordered to save John, Jack and Charles from an unknown event in the near future. Preparing to leave, Uncas unknowingly shuts the mysterious door, the remainder of the rescue team and the surrounding Oxford area to vanish. Noting the new desiccated land that lies before them called Albion, the group sets out to discover what has become of their world. After they escape from giants contained in a tower, the group is rescued from a Wicker Man by a man called Chaz. Resembling Charles, the two men and badgers realize that "Chaz" is not the Charles they know. Chaz is rough, scared and distrustful from his many years of surviving but the party is sure that Chaz is Charles, just from a different timeline in which Mordred, the Winter King, rules and the Archipelago is destroyed. Chaz leads the group to Bert, who gives John a skull of the deceased Jules Verne, a map, and the Serendipity Box which provides the opener with the thing he needs most. Mordred appears, courtesy of the traitorous Chaz and binds the men and badgers using their true names and departs. Uncas releases the men, who with the help of Bert, who uses a scarab brooch given to him by the Serendipity Box, creates an ocean and the Red Dragon that the companions leave on, except for Bert, who stays behind. On an island, the party discovers a time machine created by Jules Verne left for them in order to fix the problem that Hugo created, that led to the creation of Albion. The time machine runs like a projector, and the first slide is of Ancient Greece, where the companions meet two twins, Myrddyn and Madoc. They deduce that one is the Cartographer of Lost Places and the other is Mordred. In the next slide, the companions visit the Library of Alexandria and find Meridian(Myrddyn), the twin who becomes the Cartographer. They discover that the Holy Grail is being held in this library, and that Madoc, the twin who becomes Mordred, has been sleeping with her. Meridian binds Madoc and when they try to escape, Chaz unknowingly uses his fire balls and causes the fire that destroyed the Library of Alexandria. In the third slide, the companions meet Hugo. They witness the Tournament of Champions, held to determine the next ruler of Meridian's Precinct, modern-day Britain. The three main entrants in this tournament are Merlin, who is the Cartographer, Mordred and Thorn, a young boy who is destined to become the Arthur, or High King. During the fight between Merlin and Mordred, Hugo throws a dagger at Mordred to prevent him from becoming King. Hugo disqualifies both Merlin and Mordred, letting Thorn become Arthur. However, Arthur does not command the loyalty of the people as he would if the fight continued normally. In the fourth slide, the companions fight in a civil war against Arthur, as Merlin has united with the local rulers to gain the crown. Mordred has allied with Arthur. However, Arthur tries reason with Mordred, and so Mordred kills Arthur. The companions learn that Arthur can be resurrected by the Holy Grail. They journey to Avalon, where they encounter the priestess that slept with Mordred, and bring back her daughter. They are forced to leave Chaz, who becomes the first Guardian of Avalon, or the Green Knight. The companions leave Chaz the Lance of Longinus. The daughter of the priestess, named Rose, revives Arthur, who cuts off Mordred's hand when he attempts to kill Merlin. Mordred disappears. Arthur summons the dragons, uniting the fiefdoms and ending the civil war. Merlin departs to become the Cartographer. In the fifth slide, the companions meet Geoffrey of Monmouth, and journey to the Keep of Time, where they talk with the Cartographer. He gives them a key that lets them access the top room of the Keep of Time, the future. The party emerges from the door they first entered, and are summoned to talk with Richard Burton. He tells them that he caused Hugo to travel into the past with the backing of the Imperial Cartological Society. He intended to show the Caretakers that Mordred was merely a victim of fate. He did not know about the creation of Albion when Hugo violated the contest. He also could not see Rose, addressing Hugo, Bert, John, Jack and Charles as though they were the only ones present. In a pre-World War II setting, it is hinted that Mordred has rediscovered the Lance of Longinus, and is ready to begin another assault. |
23316639 | /m/065_z_0 | The Shadow Dragons | James A. Owen | 2009-10 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | In 1942, John (J.R.R. Tolkien), Jack (C.S. Lewis), and Charles (Charles Williams) return to the Archipelago of Dreams as the last stones of the Keep of Time fall, dangerously approaching the Cartographer (Merlin)'s study as well as the ever-out-of-reach "future" door. As the second World War rages in the Summer Country, the Imperial Cartological Society - led by writer/explorer Sir Richard Burton - rebuilds it at the request of the Archipelago's terrible foe, the shadow of the Winter King, who wields a weapon of such power it can take the soul of anyone it touches - even the ancient and terrifyingly powerful dragons. To defeat the King's shadow, the three Caretakers band together with past Caretakers (the Caretakers Emeritis) found at Tamerlane House, built by Edgar Allan Poe in the Nameless Isles of the Archipelago. Rose Dyson, the Grail Child, Don Quixote, Archimedes, and Stellan Sigurdsson are sent to retrieve and repair the sword Caliburn. In the meantime, the Caretakers are betrayed by Rudyard Kipling and Daniel Defoe, but their cause is bolstered when Burton, Doyle, and Houdini defect from the Imperial Cartological Society, which had allied itself with the Shadow King. Charles and Fred, Tummeler's grandson, chase Defoe through a Trump, and burn down a reproduction of the Keep of Time by the Shadow King. When Rose, Archimedes, and Quixote return, the Nameless Isles are under siege from the armada of children created by the Shadow King in 1926. They were brought by the Chancellor Murdoch, who is a fusion of the Red King from the Clockwork Parliament made by the animals in 1914 and of Mordred's shadow. He wields the Lance of Longinus, which can command the shadows of the Dragons, using their true names. The Dragons' true names, all except for Samaranth's, were found in the Last Book stolen by Defoe. The children are pushed back by the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), and the shadows of the Dragons are prevented from entering into the Nameless Isles by the carvorite deposits in the bases of the islands. The Shadow King, however, crosses and kills Artus, the King of the Silver Throne and descendant of Arthur Pendragon. Kipling reveals himself as a triple agent for the Caretakers, Rose Dyson binds the Chancellor, and Stephen, Aven's son, kills him with Caliburn. Finally, Rose frees each of the dragons, leaving Samaranth the last dragon alive. Stephen becomes the new King of the Archipelago, and the Dragonships, now soulless, are no longer allowed to pass the Frontier. John, Jack, and Charles are returned to Oxford and to their own time, and they forge a full alliance, to be implemented in seven years, with Burton and the Imperial Cartological Society. |
23327221 | /m/065zj7c | The End of Energy Obesity | null | null | null | Like the author’s bestseller A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World (2006), The End of Energy Obesity examines the energy industry by tracing the historical relationship between technological innovation and societal response. Tertzakian coined the term "break point" to describe both the pressures that force the displacement of an incumbent energy source and the subsequent “rebalancing” around a new energy paradigm. An important catalyst for The End of Energy Obesity appears to be the author’s conviction that the world is currently in the midst of a break point of prodigious significance where oil, "the gold standard of energy utility" (p. 101), will see its market preeminence undermined. Signs of break point pressures are legion and include: the triple digit crude oil prices reached in 2008, accelerated economic growth in the populous BRIC countries, widening prevalence of legislative and fiscal measures to address assumed anthropogenic climate change, energy independence policymaking in support of renewable energy and the energy-price influenced global recession. Historical analogues to the current break point are the shift from wood to coal with the industrial revolution and from coal to oil during the World War I. The current rebalancing of the energy mix is substantively different from historical precedents. With the possible exception of natural gas, there are still no other energy sources with adequate utility to take significant market share from oil, let alone supplant it. The rebalancing underway will be effected only in part by an increase of supply from alternative sources. Tertzakian believes that the cross-fertilization of information, communication and energy technologies promises dramatic improvement in conservation practices and energy efficiency. He cites telepresence technology, smart grid networks, Skype telephony and virtualization software as potential "break point innovations" that could dramatically change energy needs by reconfiguring the ways people live, work and play. |
23328624 | /m/09k7b62 | Wild Geese | Martha Ostenso | 1925 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Lind Archer, a teacher from the city, has come to the Gare farm to stay while she teaches in the nearby school. As she continues to learn about life in the country, she begins to realize the plight of the family she is staying with. The strict Caleb Gare uses blackmail and punishment to get what he wants, but how secure is his position? When the young Mark Jordan, the son of his wife with another man, arrives, he tries even harder to retain control over the family. With all of his machinations failing around him, Caleb is quickly losing control over his family and consequently, over his farm. |
23329574 | /m/06w67dl | A Conspiracy of Kings | Megan Whalen Turner | 2010-03 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Sophos, Magus's once studious protégé, finds himself much out of his element as he and his family are ambushed in his villa. Surprising both his attackers and himself, Sophos at first succeeds in evading his attackers and hiding his mother and sisters, but is soon betrayed by his servants. Mistakenly sold into slavery, he finds himself content with manual labor and forms an unlikely camaraderie with the other slaves and workhands. However, eventually, when faced with a choice between a life of contentment or one of influence, capable of making changes much needed by Sounis, he chooses the latter, all the while wondering "if people always choose what will make them unhappy." Soon after a harrowing escape from the Baron who enslaved him, Sophos unexpectedly finds himself the King of Sounis. The state he has inherited is far from ideal. Not only is Sounis deadlocked in war with Attolia, it is also being torn from the inside by internal discontent and a civil war. With neither the monetary resources nor the man power to properly secure his throne, he is faced with several options, each with heavy consequences. Aided by the Magus, Sophos decides to turn to his old friend: Eugenides, the Thief of Eddis, with whom Sophos traveled years before and who is now the King of Attolia. |
23334206 | /m/065zbr0 | Breaking Point | Alex Flinn | null | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Paul has moved to Miami with his mother Laura, 47 years old. They moved there, to a small apartment, following his parents' divorce. Paul's father has a new family now, and his name is Greg. Paul attends a new school where his mother is a secretary. Paul must suffer as a social outcast in the rich kid's private school Gate. Coming in as a sophomore, he is branded as a loser. Though the life of a social outcast is a perilous, tough life, he meets one friend: Belinda (Binky) Lopez-Nande. She is similar to him in the social tree: a lowly outcast. The two manage to live, but just barely. Meanwhile, the fact that his father left him with his mother still stings, and while he never returns his calls, Paul persists in trying. Then, on one miraculous day, the popular, star athlete rich kids, led by the famous Charlie Good, invite him on a mailbox bash. Charlie and his followers, Gray St. John and Randy Meade (St. John and Meat) allow Paul a shot at joining them. Paul agrees and goes with them, and though he respects his neighbors, he decides to bash some boxes. The next day, at school Paul waves to Charlie, but receives nothing in return. Charlie continues to ask Paul to do worse and worse things in order to retain his friendship, leading to the dramatic conclusion - bombing the school. |
23344986 | /m/06w4qwq | Evermore | Alyson Noel | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Ever Bloom is a girl that has psychic abilities. Ever since her parents and little sister Riley died in an accident long ago, she has been able to see people's auras, read thoughts, and even know the contents of a book with a touch, along with a person's history. She is known as a freak throughout her school, until Damen Auguste transfers from New Mexico. He's gorgeous, sweet and can do things a normal person cannot. But that's not what attracts her. What attracts her is that Damen has no visible aura, and she cannot read his thoughts. |
23346803 | /m/06w507p | Skin Tight | Carl Hiaasen | 1989 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Dr. Rudy Graveline, M.D., the director of the prestigious "Whispering Palms" Surgery Center in Bal Harbour, Florida, is in fact a complete fraud. Apart from the fact that he has never been trained or certified in cosmetic surgery, he is a dangerously clumsy and inept surgeon. He has built his reputation through social connections and by taking credit for the work of his more-competent associates. On the rare occasions when Graveline himself performs surgery, the results are inevitably disastrous. He has weathered numerous malpractice complaints and investigations by the state, through bribery and intimidation. However, there is at least one mistake in Rudy's past that no amount of money or prestige could fix: the accidental killing of a college coed named Victoria Barletta, during a botched nose job. So, when Rudy's former surgical nurse, Maggie Gonzalez, tells Rudy that Mick Stranahan, a retired investigator for the Florida State Attorney's office, is looking into the case again, Rudy decides to have Stranahan killed. In reality, Maggie is the whistleblower. After promising to repeat the story on live television, for the sensationalist talk show "In Your Face!", Maggie has pointed to Stranahan to misdirect Rudy. Stranahan is eating breakfast on his stilt house in Biscayne Bay, when a hit man from the mob appears at his front door with a gun. Mick ambushes the man, impaling him through the chest with the sword of a stuffed marlin head, then pushes the body out to sea and decides to find out who wants him dead. He meets the obnoxious host of "In Your Face!", Reynaldo Flemm, and his producer, Christina Marks, who have come to Miami looking for Maggie after she left New York City without warning. Mick has no time for Reynaldo, but finds himself attracted to Christina (and vice-versa). After the mob hitman's failure, Graveline has tried going with "local talent": a disfigured felon nicknamed "Chemo" who agrees to kill Stranahan in exchange for a discount on his dermabrasion treatments. Chemo locates Stranahan the same way that Christina did: through his vengeful ex-wife, Chloe. When Chemo says he's out to "get" Stranahan, she shows him the way to the stilt house, and eagerly comes along to watch. But when she realizes that Chemo means to kill Stranahan, not just scare him, she objects, since she is still receiving alimony. They begin to argue, and she makes the mistake of insulting his face, to which he responds by drowning her in the Bay. Fortunately for Mick, Chloe's directions were wrong, and Chemo burns down an abandoned stilt house instead of Mick's. The next day, homicide detective Al Garcia and Marine Patrol Officer Luis Cordova visit Mick on his stilt house, and inform him that Chloe's body has been found, and he's the prime suspect in her murder. When Stranahan tells them that someone is trying to kill him, they advise him to lie low. Instead of doing so, Mick visits Dr. Graveline outside his clinic, advises him in the strongest terms to abandon his plans to murder Mick, and emphasizes his point by blowing up the doctor's Jaguar. Mick returns to his stilt house, where Christina visits him. She said that she interviewed Mick's old partner, Timmy Gavigan, at the hospital. Before Timmy died, he told her that he'd remembered a detail from the Barletta case: Graveline's brother, George, is a tree trimmer by profession. She isn't sure what that means, but Stranahan is: most trimmers use a wood chipper, an ideal device for disposing of a body in a hurry. Then Chemo appears on the house with a submachine gun, having been told by Graveline that Mick is still alive. In the ensuing shootout, Mick is wounded in the shoulder, and Chemo dives off the house to avoid a shotgun blast. Swimming around the ocean, his hand is bitten off by a strike from a Great Barracuda. Making his way back to Graveline, he opts to attach a portable weed whacker to the stump of his arm instead of a conventional prosthesis. Graveline gives Chemo another job: to go to New York City and eliminate Maggie Gonzalez. But when Chemo finds her in New York, she mentions being a nurse by training, and tells him the truth about Rudy's incompetence. Mortified that he has entrusted his face to such a dangerous hack, Chemo decides to form a partnership with Maggie, to blackmail Rudy with the knowledge about Victoria Barletta's death. Maggie has created a videotaped confession for security, but Stranahan and Christina have gotten hold of a copy. Returning to Miami, Stranahan delivers the video to Al Garcia, before surviving another murder attempt: this time, a pair of corrupt Miami detectives (former cronies of the judge Stranahan shot), are hired by one of Rudy's buddies, a corrupt county commissioner, to kill Stranahan. Yet again, Stranahan outfoxes them and lures them into a fatal booby trap. Stranahan also turns up the heat on Graveline by recruiting his brother-in-law, a shyster personal injury lawyer named Kipper Garth, to sue Graveline for malpractice, yet again. He then confronts George Graveline, the tree trimmer, who tries to kill Stranahan rather than talk, and is shot dead by Al Garcia. Chemo and Maggie kidnap Christina, holding her hostage in exchange for Mick's copy of the videotape. Meanwhile, Reynaldo Flemm, jealous of Christina's growing attraction to Mick, comes up with his own plan to break the Barletta case: he schedules a nose job and abdominoplasty with Rudy, planning to conduct an ambush interview once the nose job is done. His "brilliant" plan quickly goes awry when Rudy announces that he plans to do the abdominoplasty first, and puts Reynaldo under general anesthesia. When Reynaldo's cameraman bursts into the operating room to start the interview, Rudy panics and accidentally stabs the unconscious Reynaldo through the heart with a liposuction cannula. Fleeing the clinic with Reynaldo's body, Rudy calls George, only to be told that he is dead. Now realizing that he has no option left except to flee the country, Rudy returns home, only to find he can't go: his girlfriend, Hollywood actress Heather Chappell, has been kidnapped by Stranahan. Realizing they'll never get paid until Stranahan is no longer a threat to Rudy, Chemo and Maggie join Rudy to confront Stranahan at the stilt house, taking Christina with them. During the confrontation, Stranahan knocks out Chemo and Rudy, and sends Christina, Maggie and Heather back to the mainland. Stranahan then attempts to "jog" Rudy's memory of Victoria Barletta's death by "recreating" the circumstances of the botched nose job. Scared, Rudy confesses: he killed Vicki (purely by accident), then got George to get rid of the body. He also confesses to hiring Chemo to kill Stranahan; Chemo is so alarmed (or embarrassed) at Stranahan learning that Chemo agreed to kill him in exchange for a discount on surgery, that he kills Graveline. Stranahan ties Chemo up, calls the police, and swims away. Garcia arrives, and Chemo is arrested. Various plot threads are resolved by the epilogue: *Chemo is convicted of murdering Chloe Stranahan, and Rudy Graveline, and sentenced to life in prison; *Maggie Gonzalez is convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, and sentenced to community service; *Victoria Barletta's parents receive a suitcase full of money, supposedly a gift from Rudy's estate; *"In Your Face!" is canceled after Reynaldo Flemm's mysterious disappearance, and Christina takes a newspaper job in Miami Florida, and purchases a second-hand fishing boat. |
23352955 | /m/06w4zg7 | The Little Grey Men | Denys Watkins-Pitchford | 1942 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The last four gnomes in Great Britain live beside Folly Brook in Warwickshire; they are named after the flowers Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry. After Cloudberry goes exploring one day and does not return, the others make the tremendous decision to build a boat and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey, set against the background of the English countryside, beginning in spring, continuing through summer, and concluding in autumn, when the first frosts are starting to arrive. |
23357661 | /m/06wbsww | Terminator Salvation: From the Ashes | null | null | null | The novel opens on July 25, 2004 - Judgment Day. USMC Sergeant Justo Orozco and his men of the USMC Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit are running a drug-interdiction exercise with the Mexican Army in Baja California. It is here they witness the rise of Skynet - they suddenly see the opening shots of the War Against The Machines when Skynet's nuclear missiles hit the nearby cities of San Diego, Twentynine Palms and Hermosillo. Upon seeing the end of their old lives, the men, shell-shocked and frozen with fear, ask Orozco for new orders. Orozco takes the lead and assures them "We'll be all right. We'll survive, because we're Marines, and that's what Marines do. " The story jumps forward to post-Judgment Day in Los Angeles, where John Connor, serving as commander and leader of an independent organized Resistance cell group stationed in the area. Though Connor is destined to lead humanity to ultimate victory, at this time he is still just a common soldier. The cell is effective in operations against Skynet's local presence, but is continuously and dangerously short on supplies and Resistance command is hesitant to adopt Connor's cell on a permanent basis. Despite this, all of the men and women under Connor's command have much respect for him, especially Barnes, John's right-hand-man, and Blair Williams, one of the cell's few pilots. While the cell is away on an operation that destroys most of Skynet's local radar towers, Skynet forces launch an attack on the cell's makeshift base. Upon returning, John's team finds the base's lookout dead, having been taken out by a long-range sniper, and Barnes spots eight T-600's moving in on the base. Barnes delays Skynet's assault by destroying a support beam of a nearby building, which collapses on the approaching Terminators. Not long after, the Resistance soldiers, ready for battle, evacuate the base, which is now under attack by multiple T-600's, T-1 tanks, and HK-Aerial's. Blair and Yoshi, the cell's two pilots, are ordered by John to get to their planes and get out as the rest of the personnel escape through an underground tunnel. As the cell escapes, Blair and Yoshi engage and destroy several of the HK's, but Yoshi runs out of ammo and has to rendezvous with the others at the fall-back base. Blair destroys the remaining HK's and heads towards the base as well - but as she does so she observes a concealed Skynet Neighborhood-Sweep Area. Skynet has cordoned off this area and is methodically exterminating all humans within it's border. Upon rendezvousing at their fall-back base, John contacts an unnamed General at Command who, while sympathetic and thankful they escaped with minimal casualties, once again refuses to aid John's cell. Command then wishes them luck and disconnects to take another call. In response to Command's abandonment of their group, John re-invigorates his troops by declaring they will carry out a mission so spectacular and ground-breaking, everyone (i. e. Command, other local Resistance groups and Skynet itself) will take notice. After receiving Blair's report on what she saw while in the air, the other senior members of the cell opt to destroy the Staging Area to get Command's attention. John's goes a step further, however, by convincing the group to capture the Staging Area intact. Meanwhile, Kate Connor asks John to be allowed on field missions, insisting she could be of more use to them. John denies her request and claims it is because she is more useful in a support role, although secretly it is because he does not want to risk her life. John's cell quickly organizes their assault - when Skynet sends its Terminators out for the culling operation, the group's force of soldiers will be divided into two groups; one will make its stand in the neighborhood to keep the Terminators pinned down and destroy them before they can attack the local civilian survivor settlements, and the other will attack the Staging Area itself while it is relatively undefended. Both groups will have continuous air support from Blair and Yoshi. A side-objective of the mission is to recruit new members for the Resistance from the local settlements. Preparations for the assault begins with Kate and Barnes leading a force into the local settlements to gain recruits. The most significant settlement is "Moldering Lost Ashes", where several hundred survivors are sheltering, living and working. Their head of security is Orozco, the only remaining survivor from the Eleventh Marine Expeditionary Unit. Life at Ashes is difficult for Orozco for many reasons; he is the person most aware of the dangers surrounding them, and he is treated with a lack of respect from most of the population. The leader of the group, Chief Grimaldi, is a pompous and unreasonable man who, having previously been a CEO of a corporation that made him rich and powerful before Judgment Day, is obsessed with his belief that Ashes is destined to be a thriving community once again. Grimaldi is an ineffective leader who has left Ashes seriously endangered from the imminent Skynet assault. He is in denial about the deadliness of Skynet and its forces, and believes that keeping a low profile and staying out of Skynet's way is the only means of survival. Orozco's only true friends are 16-year old Kyle Reese and his mute companion, Star. Kyle greatly respects Orozco and learns from Orozco's combat experience. Orozco, in turn, looks after Kyle and Star and admits that they are his two best friends in what's left of the world. The Resistance group is greeted warmly by Orozco, who immediately forms a silent bond with Barnes, but receive a hostile welcome from Grimaldi. Grimaldi resents their attempts to recruit what he considers "his" people. When the handful of recruits leave with the Resistance group, Orozco opts to stay and defend those he's sworn to protect. Skynet steps up its plan of attack, and so forces the Resistance to mobilize sooner than expected. Skynet's forces are dispatched to attack the neighborhood. When the Terminators arrive at the Ashes, Grimaldi, having previously denied the idea of an attack, completely falls apart when he realizes Orozco and the Resistance itself was right all along. Grimaldi passes leadership of the Ashes to Orozco, who proceeds to mobilize the Ashes' defenders for battle. The initial assault is met and beaten back by a coordinated effort from the Ashes defenders and the cell's first group of soldiers, personally led by John himself. Skynet then sends out it's reserve of Terminators to shrink the cordon and attack Ashes. Several Resistance soldiers and many Ashes defenders are killed in the battle, and Skynet soon overruns the entire settlement. Meanwhile, Kyle and Star, having been hunted by the Terminators at the cordon, successfully destroy the Terminator hunting them and proceed to escape the area. Meanwhile, Kate secretly joins Barnes' group against her husband's wishes. They raid the staging area and meet minimal Skynet forces inside. However, Blair finds another force of Terminators moving to reinforce the compromised Staging Area. Just when it seems the operation will fail, more Resistance fighters arrive to turn the tide. Squadron Five, the helicopter squadron under the personal command of General Olsen, arrives to support and reinforce John's cell. Soon Skynet's presence in the area is wiped out. After the battle, Olsen reports that Command has agreed to adopt John's group. John will receive a full slot in the Resistance structure, complete with a brand new base safely away from the local wasteland of Los Angeles. Olsen reveals John's victory is bigger than even he imagined - the Staging Area was also a Skynet Maintenance Center (thus explaining why Skynet was so determined to defend the facility). A massive amount of experimental and prototype Skynet weapons and other technologies are confiscated from the center to be reverse-engineered and used against Skynet. Meanwhile, a badly injured Orozco is retrieved from the ruins of the Ashes and treated by Kate. Orozco surprises her by refusing to join the Resistance. Orozco has grown tired of authority and the need to protect others, and feels that the generals and admirals leading the Resistance are basically the same as those who caused Judgment Day. He vows never to serve them again, and plans to enter self-imposed exile. However, Orozco soon discovers 8 child refugees from Ashes. Regaining his sense of duty, Orozco takes charge of the children and leads them off to survive in the ruins, because "He was a Marine, and that's what Marines do". The story ends as John's cell settles into its new base. Kate reveals to John she is pregnant, leaving him speechless. |
23361892 | /m/06w2qrp | Amnesiascope | Steve Erickson | 1996 | null | The main character lives in a converted hotel in Hollywood, where he works as the film critic for a weekly newspaper. The story is told in an oneiric fashion, without a clear explanation of all the strange elements of a partly real, partly imaginary Los Angeles. Amnesiascope focuses mostly on the protagonist's relationship with Viv, a sexually adventurous yet committed artist, with whom the narrator works on the making of an avantgarde erotic short film. The narrator also has to deal with different factions at the paper, the various time zones he experiences driving through LA, the complexities of making a pornographic film, and his feelings of guilt after writing for his paper a review of The Death of Marat, a non-existent film by Adolphe Sarre, a non-existent director, which takes on a life of its own. The non-linear story is often interrupted by descriptions of dreams that the protagonist or other characters have had. Moreover, events told have a dream-like quality, inasmuch as what seems to have actually happened is subsequently dealt with as if it were a dream or fantasy (cf. the first meeting with Justine, who subsequently doesn't seem to remember having met the protagonist). At the end of the novel, the narrating I has lost his job at the paper and Viv, yet he has gained back a sense of himself. |
23364579 | /m/06w3dc5 | The Hoopster | Alan Lawrence Sitomer | 2005 | {"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction"} | The book is about a black teenager named Andre Anderson, who loves to play basketball with his white best friend Shawn and his cousin Cedric. Andre has a dream of becoming a journalist, so he tries to secure a summer job working at a magazine. Shawn thinks that Andre spends too much time on work and not enough on his social life, so he introduces Andre to a Latino girl named Gwen. Andre's boss at the magazine asks him to write an article on racism. While working on the article, Andre's life seems to be perfect until he is violently attacked by a gang of racists and is sent to hospital. His friends and family are left wondering whether or not he will ever recover from the attacks. |
23379698 | /m/06w5g4q | The Charioteer | Mary Renault | 1953 | null | This romance novel is set in the period of World War II at a military hospital during nightly blackouts and bomb raids. The story's young male protagonist, Laurie Odell, is a wounded soldier from the Dunkirk evacuation (Renault herself worked as a nurse treating Dunkirk evacuees during the war), who must decide if his affections lie with a conscientious objector or a naval officer. The conscientious objector, a Quaker, has not come to terms with his own homosexuality, whereas the naval officer, a friend of Laurie's from school, is sexually experienced and established in the homosexual subculture of the British military. Laurie's confused romantic feelings for the two very different young men are compounded by his own discomfort with the gay lifestyle (dramatized in an extended scene at a gay party, regarded by some critics as a literary tour de force). Through this conflict, Renault explored her own ambivalence about whether homosexuals truly constituted what would come to be seen as a gay and lesbian community. She also explored a religious theme, contrasting the pacifist Christianity of the young conscientious objector with the "exalted paganism" (as one character describes it) of ancient Greece. The novel derives its title from the Chariot Allegory employed by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus; Renault also alludes to Plato's Symposium, in which a character philosophizes about an army composed of male lovers. The story's wartime setting is crucial to the ethical issues the novel explores. In a sense, The Charioteer is a warm-up for Renault's historical novels. By turning away from the 20th century and focusing on stories about male lovers in the warrior societies of ancient Greece, Renault no longer had to deal with homosexuality and antigay prejudice as social "problems"; instead she was free to focus on larger ethical and philosophical concerns while examining the nature of love and leadership. |
23382358 | /m/06w8rhc | Hip Hop High School | Alan Lawrence Sitomer | 2006 | {"/m/084s13": "Urban fiction"} | The book takes place about five years after the events in The Hoopster. It is a story about Andre's younger sister, Theresa Anderson. Theresa begins her sophomore year at a ghetto high school. Her best friend, Cee-Saw, is constantly getting her into trouble, and due to the events of the prequel, Theresa's mother doubts Cee-Saw's potential and expects her to fail. While in school, Theresa faces many challenges, such as her teacher, Mr. Wardin, and her friends dropping out of school due to poor grades, and family issues. During the summer, she does a report on Malcolm X that changes how she thinks about school. Theresa is then forced to makes new friends, such as Devon, a tough but intelligent guy that everyone respects. A few weeks before school starts, however, Devon is attacked by a gang, which leaves Theresa to fill out all of his college applications. |
23386706 | /m/06w9sjz | The Court of the Air | Stephen Hunt | 2007 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06www": "Steampunk"} | When streetwise Molly Templar witnesses a brutal murder at the brothel she has recently been apprenticed to, her first instinct is to run back to the poorhouse where she grew up. But there she finds her fellow orphans butchered, and it slowly dawns on her that she was the real target of the attack. For Molly is a special little girl, and she carries a secret that marks her out for destruction by enemies of the state. Oliver Brooks has led a sheltered existence in the backwater home of his merchant uncle. But when he is framed for his only relative's murder, he is forced to flee for his life, accompanied by an agent of the mysterious Court of the Air. Chased across the country, Oliver finds himself in the company of thieves, outlaws, and spies, and gradually learns more about the secret that has blighted his life. Soon Molly and Oliver will find themselves battling a grave threat to civilization, an ancient power thought to have been quelled millennia ago. Their enemies are ruthless and myriad, but the two orphans are also aided by indomitable friends. |
23389559 | /m/06wbdf_ | Fancy Nancy | Jane O'Connor | 2005-12 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Fancy Nancy is a young girl with a larger than life personality, who adores all things fancy. She always dresses extravagantly, wearing boas, tutus, ruby slippers, fairy wings, and fuzzy slippers. Nancy loves using big fancy words such as "iridescent", "ecstatic", and "extraordinary" and anything in French. She has redecorated her bedroom with everyday items, such as feather boas, Christmas lights, paper flowers, and hats. Her favorite doll is named Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier. In Nancy's opinion, her family is ordinary and dresses rather plainly, so Nancy decides to hold a class in the art of fanciness for her family. They oblige, and Nancy helps to dress them in bows, ornaments, top hats, and gaudy scarves. "Ooo-la-la!" Nancy cries in delight. "My family is posh! That's a fancy word for fancy." |
23390752 | /m/06w1wss | The Orchard on Fire | Shena Mackay | null | null | Set in the 1950s it tells the story of the Harlencys who abandon their Streatham pub for the "Copper Kettle Tearoom" in rural Kent. The story centres on their young daughter April and her friendship with the fiery Ruby; and with her attempts to frustrate the unhealthy attentions of Mr Greenidge... |
23401458 | /m/06wbg6w | Professor Shonku | Satyajit Ray | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0707q": "Short story"} | The introduction to the first story, Byomjaatrir Diary, goes: Professor Shonku is a reputed scientist, who has not been heard of for a while. Some say that he has died while attempting a scientific experiment. Others say that he has gone incognito, and is continuing his scientific researches and experiments at some unknown corner of the earth. He will reappear in due time. The first of Professor Shonku’s diaries come to light through a certain Tarak Chatterjee, an amateur (and rather poor) writer, who has a fascination for tiger stories. On hearing that a large meteor had hit the Matharia areas of the Sunderbans, he had visited the location in search of tiger-skin. Failing to find them, he had looked around to find a red notebook (which turned out to be the first of Professor Shonku’s diaries). This he hands to the narrator of the story, who then replicates the journal entries in the diary, and that constitute the first story, Byomjaatrir Diary. The diary, even though apparently made of a material which is inextinguishable and cannot be torn or cut, is eventually destroyed by a bunch of red ants, who somehow manage to eat in to entirety. However, the narrator then visits Professor Shonku’s laboratory in Giridih, and locates 21 other diaries and replicates them periodically, each as a story. After the first few stories, the narrator does not reappear, with the stories starting with the journal entries |
23404033 | /m/06w9j6n | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest | Stieg Larsson | 2007 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | The book begins as Lisbeth Salander is flown to Sahlgrenska Hospital. It picks up where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off. After surgery, Salander is moved to an intensive care ward under guard, accessible only to police, doctors, nurses, and her lawyer, Annika Giannini (who is also Mikael Blomkvist's sister). Zalachenko, whom Salander injured with an axe, is two rooms away. Niedermann, thanks to botched responses from the local law enforcement, is on the run after murdering a police officer and carjacking and kidnapping a woman during his escape. Niedermann seeks help from his old friends at the outlaw Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, kills the treasurer and steals 800,000 kronor before disappearing. These events prompt immediate action from "the Section," a secret division of Swedish Security Service (Säpo) created for purposes of counterintelligence and responsible for Zalachenko's asylum and supervision. Evert Gullberg, founder and former chief of the Section, asks former Section associate Frederik Clinton to become acting head of the Section and plots to deflect attention away from the Section by silencing Salander, Blomkvist and Zalachenko. They form a working alliance with the unsuspecting prosecutor of Salander's case, Richard Ekström. Dr. Peter Teleborian, the psychiatrist who supervised Salander when she was previously institutionalized on the Section's orders, provides Ekstrom with a false psychiatric examination and recommends that she be reinstitutionalized, preferably without a trial. Gullberg, who has terminal cancer, murders Zalachenko in his hospital bed and then commits suicide. Section operatives stage a suicide for Gunnar Björck, the junior Säpo officer who had handled Zalachenko after the latter's defection, and who was Blomkvist's source of information about the Section. Other Section operatives burgle Blomkvist's apartment and mug Annika Giannini, specifically making off with copies of the classified Säpo file that contains Zalachenko's identity, and plant bugs in the homes and phones of Millennium staff. Undeterred by these events, or perhaps even motivated by the fact that they all occurred on the same day, Blomkvist continues to investigate the Section for a Millennium exposé. Blomkvist hires Dragan Armansky's Milton Security to handle countersurveillance. Armansky, on his own initiative, informs Säpo Constitutional Protection Director Torsten Edklinth about the constitutional violations. Edklinth, along with his assistant Monica Figuerola, begins a clandestine investigation into the Section. After Figuerola confirms the allegations, Edklinth contacts the Justice Minister and the Prime Minister who approve a full investigation by Constitutional Protection, and later invite Blomkvist to a confidential meeting in which they are to share information. They agree to Blomkvist's deadline—he intends to publish his findings about the state's manipulation of Salander's constitutional rights on July 15, the third day of her trial, and the government agree to arrest any identified ringleaders of the Section at the same time. Meanwhile, Figuerola and Blomkvist have an affair. Blomkvist convinces Salander's doctor, Dr. Anders Jonasson, to return her handheld computer. Blomkvist arranges to have a cellular phone placed in a duct leading to Salander's room, granting her Internet access through the resulting hotspot. Jonasson also helps her fake complications from her surgery, so that she can remain in the hospital's custody (and out of the police's). Meanwhile, Blomkvist, Armansky, Edklinth and their network of allies continue their joint counter-surveillance, feeding them a disinformation campaign and turning up nine central players in the Section. Whilst all of the above is going on, Erika Berger leaves Millennium to be editor-in-chief at Sweden's largest daily paper, the (fictional) Svenska Morgon-Posten (S.M.P.). Meanwhile, Henry Cortez, junior Millennium reporter, uncovers a story about a Swedish toilet-manufacturing company that engages child labour in Vietnam. His research reveals that the boss of said firm is Magnus Borgsjö, who is CEO and major shareholder at S.M.P. and hired Berger for her new position. Blomkvist gives a copy of the story to Berger, agreeing to delay its publication until August while she confronts Borgsjö and convinces him to resign gracefully. Berger begins receiving graphic e-mails and threats from an anonymous source, most of them calling her a "whore;" a junior reporter at S.M.P. also receives sexual propositions purportedly from Berger. Erika asks her staff to remain on alert, but matters escalate when the stalker breaks into Berger's home and steals scandalous private materials, such as high school love letters, a sex tape made with her husband Gregor Beckman, and her copy of Cortez's story. Berger engages Milton Security to help secure her home, and Armansky sends over former police officer Susanne Linder to provide protection, as Beckman is abroad on business. Salander, while preparing her own statements and legal defense in the safety of the hospital, discovers Berger's plight and mobilizes the "Hacker Nation," an elite and international group of computer wizards, to assist. They determine that Peter Fredriksson, S.M.P. employee and former high school classmate of Berger, is the culprit. Linder steps outside the law to confront Fredriksson and recovers Berger's things. However, Fredriksson has already passed Millenium's exposé on to Borgsjö. Borgsjö orders Berger to suppress the story at Millennium or lose her job at S.M.P. Berger instead runs the story in that day's issue of S.M.P. (under Cortez's byline) and then resigns in protest. Borgsjö and Fredriksson are both forced out. Berger, meanwhile, is accepted back at Millenium with open arms. As Salander's trial approaches, the Section abruptly realize that Blomkvist's and Millenium's seeming lack of preparation are simply a cover story for their (successful, if now detected) campaign of misinformation. Clinton, having no idea what Blomkvist knows or plans to publish, arranges to plant cocaine in Blomkvist's apartment and simultaneously hire two members of the Yugoslav mafia to murder him; their intention is to frame him as a drug dealer and thus destroy his credibility. The former is easily undermined by the security cameras installed by Milton Security, which capture the plant; the latter requires the intervention of Figuerola, Andersson, Modig and several others from both Säpo and Milton. Blomkvist and Berger are spirited off to a Milton safehouse, allowing Säpo to further the misdirection by claiming that the two hitmen simply had the bad luck to stop for a meal at the same restaurant as their police officers. Berger, meanwhile, intuits Figuerola's and Blomkvist's affair, and promises Figuerola to stay clear of Blomkvist as long as they are together. The first two days of Salander's trial, on various counts of aggravated violence, proceed with relative calm. However, on the third day, Millenium's dual book-and-magazine exposé is published, the officers of the Section are arrested, Channel TV4 runs an hour-long program on the Section using (pre-recorded) interviews and material from Blomkvist, and Giannini systematically destroys Teleborian's testimony, proving: that the Section and Teleborian had conspired to commit Salander at age 12 to protect Zalachenko, that Salander's rights had been repeatedly violated, and that they were once again conspiring against her. Blomkvist and Edklinth provide evidence proving that Teleborian's recent "psychiatric assessment" of Salander was fabricated and that he was working with the Section to silence her. Teleborian is then arrested for possession of child pornography, which was found on his computer by Salander and her hacker friends, Plague and Trinity. Ekström, in over his head, withdraws charges against Salander, and her declaration of incompetence is rescinded. With the evidence and credibility of the prosecution shattered, the prosecutor drops all charges against Salander. Freed, Salander embarks on an overseas trip to forget the events. She spends several months at Gibraltar, among other things to pay a visit to the man managing the billions she had stolen from Hans-Erik Wennerström in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She also tracks down Miriam Wu, who is studying at a university in Paris, and apologizes for putting her life in danger. Salander soon discovers that being a "legally responsible citizen," as Giannini puts it, involves its share of toil and drudgery. As Zalachenko's daughter, Salander is obliged to inherit half of his properties and wealth,; the other half goes to her twin sister Camilla, whom no one has heard from in more than a decade. (Author Stieg Larsson's notes indicate that her whereabouts were to be the subject of his next novel.) Suspicious about an abandoned factory in her father's estate, she goes there to investigate and finds two dead women and Niedermann, who had been hiding there from the police. After a brief struggle and chase, Salander outwits Niedermann by nailing his feet to the plank floor with a nail gun. She is tempted to kill him herself, but instead reports his location to the Sonny Niemenen, head of the Svavelsjö biker gang, and then reports the entire brawl to the police. She leaves before the standoff concludes, satisfied that both Niedermann and the Svavelsjö bikers have been brought to justice. (Niedermann is killed by the bikers, and Niemenen shot by the police while resisting arrest.) Back at her apartment in Stockholm, Salander receives a visit from Blomkvist. The story, as well as the Millennium trilogy, ends with the two finally reconciling. |
23404431 | /m/06wbqw6 | The Devouring | null | null | null | When dark creeps in and eats the light,Bury your fears on Sorry Night,For in the winter's blackest hours,Comes the feasting of the Vours,No one can see it, the life they stole,Your body's here but not your soul... The story follows Reggie and her best friend Aaron, two horror buffs who discover an old, anonymous journal written by a woman believed to be crazy. The entries refer to demonic creatures called Vours who steal people's souls on the night of the Winter Solstice, known in the book as Sorry Night. Reggie and Aaron think that Vours are just a silly legend so they try to summon them on the Winter Solstice. To summon them, they decide to face their worst fears not realizing the bravery drives the Vours away. Reggie lets a spider crawl over her body and Aaron stays underwater for a period of time. However, neither one of them becomes a Vour. Discouraged, the teens forget about the Vours until Reggie's little brother Henry starts acting strange. Once a happy-go-lucky kid, Henry becomes violent and rude, destroying his favorite stuffed animal and drowning his pet hamster.He becomes super-sensitive to the cold and spends his time in front of the fireplace, something very out of character for him. When he's hit by a snowball, black marks spread across his skin like a rash. He even attempts to murder Aaron in cold blood. Realizing what's happened to Henry, Reggie tries to learn more about the Vours and somehow rescue Henry. In the process, she must face all of her worst fears, along with all of Henry's. |
23405127 | /m/06w8lmw | Palimpsest | Catherynne M. Valente | 2009-03 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel follows four travelers: Oleg, a New York City locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They've all lost something important in their life: a wife, lover, sister, or direction. They find themselves in Palimpsest after each spend a night with a stranger who has a tattooed map of a section of the city on his or her body. |
23411241 | /m/06w95y8 | Tours of the Black Clock | Steve Erickson | 1989 | null | The novel follows a seemingly relativistic plot, where time and space disappear as absolutes. The first part concerns Marc, the son of a small-town prostitute who becomes the boatman, ferrying tourists from the mainland to Davenhall, the small island in the river where he grew up. Marc leaves town the night he sees a strange man die at his mother's feet, and spends fifteen years on the boat, never setting foot in town, until one day, when he meets a girl in a blue dress, who never returns with the other tourists. Marc goes onto the island to look for her, and sees his mother. Their meeting conjures up the ghost of the man who died fifteen years before, and his story takes over the novel. The ghost tells his story in first person. His name was Banning Jainlight, and he begins by recounting his birth. He has the ability to look through the windows of his bedroom and see his time, as if looking at the Zeitgeist. After killing a brother and burning down the ranch house where he grew up, Jainlight moves to a city, where he becomes the writer of pornographic stories. These stories are eventually being bought by a single customer, an eccentric German named Client X. Jainlight writes stories about a fantasy woman who he is in love with, and she is also an expression of a woman that Client X was once in love with, who later died. The stories alter the course of history, as they change Hitler's mind about how to conduct the war. England falls. Russia and Germany have a tense peace. The Germans decide that they are finished with Jainlight, and they kill his wife and daughter to silence him. He lives for a long time in a prison. Eventually, he hears his stories, broadcast over the radio as propaganda. He comes up with an escape plan, after finding Adolf Hitler in the same prison, now a senile old man. Jainlight and Hitler escape to America, to chase the ghost of the woman they both love. Hitler dies in New York City. Jainlight finds his way to Davenhall, where he lives for seventeen years in the hotel with Marc and his mother, trying to summon up the courage to ask for forgiveness. On the night Marc leaves town, he knows his life is slipping away, and he staggers down the hall, hoping to have time, but he doesn't. The custom in town is to hang the dead in a tree until they say their name. When Marc's mother claims to know the name of the dead man in the tree, she is accused of lying. Somehow, the 20th century heals itself, the two timelines, the one we know, and Banning's timeline of a German victory, come back together. Marc's mother passes away shortly after her son returns to the island. After her death, Marc goes to chase after the girl in the blue dress, after the 20th century, and winds up traveling through time, going from the end of the century back to its beginning. |
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