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31059229

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Captain from Castile

Samuel Shellabarger

1945

{"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction"}

Captain from Castile begins on the evening of June 28, 1518 when naïve 19-year-old Pedro de Vargas, the son of local war hero Don Francisco de Vargas, confesses a long list of minor sins to the local priest in Jaen, Spain. The next day, while attending church with his family, Pedro becomes infatuated with the local Marquis' daughter, Luisa de Carvajal. As Pedro and his family leave church they are met by Diego de Silva, who enlists the help of Pedro in the search for his escaped Indian slave, Coatl. Pedro immediately guesses Coatl's location and sets off alone to find and capture him, but instead is convinced to aid the badly mistreated slave—who claims he is a king among his own people—in his escape. Pedro then comes across and rescues the local tavern dancer, Catana Pérez, from being raped by several rough men and returns her to the Rosario tavern. There he stops for a drink and befriends Juan García, an adventurous merchant and wanted man, whose mother has been wrongfully taken by the Inquisition. Pedro agrees to deliver García's bribe for his mother's freedom to Father Ignacio de Lora, the head of the Jaen Inquisition, though he does not believe men of God can be bought. However, when Pedro delivers the money he is surprised to find that Father Ignacio accepts the bribe and agrees to free García's mother. The next night Pedro has a romantic rendezvous with Luisa de Carvajal and when returning home is stopped by Catana's brother Manuel, who informs him that the Inquisition has taken his family and is hunting him. Pedro flees to the Marquis de Carvajal for help, but finds no help from the cowardly nobleman and so flees to the Rosario tavern where Catana begins plans to help him escape Spain. However, Pedro is discovered and arrested there by the Inquisition. The next morning Pedro is taken back to Jaen, where he witnesses the auto-de-fé at which, despite the bribe, Ignacio de Lora sentences García's mother to death by burning and also sees Garcia (in disguise) manage to kill her before the sentence is carried out. Pedro soon learns that the family has been arrested because of accusations by Coatl's former master, Diego de Silva, who coveted the de Vargas property and whose men Pedro had beaten in defense of Catana's integrity. In an effort to get a confession from Don Francisco, the Inquisition tortures Pedro's sickly sister Mercedes and accidentally kills her. Afterwards Pedro and his family are rescued from their cells by García and Manuel Pérez. During the escape Pedro is confronted by de Silva, whom he disarms, stabs, and leaves for dead. Afterward the family makes their way through the Sierra de Lucena toward Almería guided by Hernán Soler, a cutthroat whom Catana sells herself to in payment for his help. However during their passage through the mountains, Pedro and García are separated from the others when they are attacked by the Inquisition's hunters. While Pedro's family escapes to Italy, Pedro and Garcia travel to Cadiz and from their join an expedition to Cuba, where they join the company of Hernán Cortez departing for Mexico. During their stay along the coast of Mexico, the Aztec king Montezuma sends Cortez a tribute of great gold ornaments and, because of his growing favour with Cortez, Pedro is entrusted with one of the guard shifts. However, during his watch, Pedro is called away to help calm down García, who is in a drunken madness. When Pedro returns to the gold, he finds a small pouch of emeralds has been stolen by way of a secret door. Pedro therefore sets out in search of the stolen stones and tracks them to a group of mutineers preparing a ship for escape back to Cuba. Pedro convinces one of them to repent and help him alert the army but during their escape Pedro is wounded in the head and leg by a crossbow. During Pedro's recovery he receives a promotion to captain (making him the eponymous Captain from Castile), learns of Cortez burning his ships to prevent mutiny, and is reunited with Catana Pérez, who arrives aboard another ship. Soon after the Spanish head inland towards Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire. Along the way Pedro and Catana fall deeply in love with each other. During their stay in Tenochtitlan, Cortez's company is joined by new group including both Father Ignacio de Lora and a still living Diego de Silva. The Spanish are treated like gods but eventually the Aztecs begin to rebel against the Spanish occupation and the Spanish are besieged within the city. During their desperate escape attempt Pedro, Catana, and García almost escape but are left to die by de Silva. While awaiting execution by the Aztecs, Pedro witnesses the death of Ignacio de Lora by burning and the miscarriage of his and Catana's first child. However, instead of being executed Pedro, Catana, and García are taken out into the jungle by the Aztecs and transferred to the custody of another tribe ruled by Coatl, the slave Pedro helped to save. After spending several months living among Coatl's people Pedro becomes eager to return to Cortez and Coatl, as a parting gift, shows Pedro a cave filled with gold treasures which Pedro barters with Cortez to split between themselves, their friends, and the King of Spain. Pedro therefore returns to Spain rich and world-wise with the King's share and acts as Cortez's ambassador. Upon his return he spurns the (as he now realizes) ambition-serving love of Luisa de Carvajal and is again confronted by Diego de Silva but this time turns the authorities against greedy nobleman and in the end kills de Silva in a fight. Thereafter the de Vargas family is pardoned and returns to Spain, where Pedro and Catana receive Don Francisco's blessing to be married. The story concludes with the old Don Francisco reflecting on the bright new age his son is entering into, where courage, honor, and love will blossom in the New World just as it had in the Old.

31059608

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To Die For

Linda Howard

12/28/2004

Blair Mallory is the owner of a fitness center named Great Bods. She got the money to open the fitness club from the divorce of her first husband Jason Carson. Blair caught Jason kissing her underage sister Jenni at a family get-together. Blair knew he wanted to run for congressman so, for the ultimate revenge, she snapped a picture of the two kissing. Jason, knowing the picture would ruin him, paid her a bundle in the divorce. She begins to notice that one of her members, Nicole, has been copying everything she has done. She begins to wear her hair like Blair, dressing like Blair, and even buys the same style car as Blair. Blair isn't the only one who has a problem with Nicole: Almost all the women in the gym do not like Nicole, as she hogs the machines, is mean to other members, and openly flirts with the married men in the gym. After many complaints, Blair sits her down and tells her that her membership will not be renewed for another year. Nicole becomes furious and threatens to sue Blair. Blair is always the last one to leave the gym so as she is about to walk out the door to her car she notices Nicole waiting for her in the parking lot. Blair becomes scared and makes a run for the car with her phone ready to dial 911. She hears a gunshot and instinctively hits the ground, dropping her cellphone underneath the car so that Blair is unable to call for help. She tries to stay quiet so that Nicole won't realizes she didn't hit Blair but, after a while, she thinks maybe Nicole left and makes a run for the door to the gym. She makes into the gym safely where she goes to her office and dials 911. The police arrive and Blair tells the officers the story. They inform her that Nicole didn't kill her because Nicole was murdered. She then hears the voice of her ex-boyfriend, Wyatt Bloodsworth. He is a police lieutenant and came after hearing the case over the radio. Blair is immediately brought back to the memories of the three dates they went on two years ago. He begins to question Blair and lets her know she is no longer a suspect. Wyatt takes her home and, due to the stress, she decides she wants to go to the beach. She rents a condo and spends the day relaxing on the beach, eventually falling asleep. She wakes up to someone carrying her. Blair begins to freak out until she realizes that it is Wyatt. He carries her back to her condo. She is very frustrated when he tells her that he found her by looking at her credit card transactions. He then kisses her and all her feelings for him come rushing back. She agrees that they can start over and try their relationship again. The next day they head home and Wyatt takes her back to her car, still at the gym. As she is about to get in her car, she feels a piercing pain in her arm; she falls to the ground and sees another car driving away. She realizes she has been shot. Wyatt calls the station, reports the crime, and calls an ambulance. Blair is taken to the hospital where they tell her she is going to be okay: It was just a flesh wound. That night Blair goes to Wyatt's. They figure out that a man named Dwyane Bailey is the killer behind Nicole's murder. They bring him into the station for questioning. He admits to killing Nicole but not the attacks on Blair. The next day she is driving, approaching a traffic light, and when she tries to hit the brakes the pedal goes to the floor. Her brakes was cut, and she is going full-speed into the intersection. She goes to the hospital where they tell her she's going to be okay, just sore. Blair and Wyatt go back to his house where he gets a call that Dwayne's alibi checks out for the times of Blair's attacks. They rethink who could be the killer. The next day, she comes down stairs feeling better and Wyatt tosses her a small velvet box. He gets on one knee and asks him to marry her. She says yes. They begin to get ready because she is going to the precinct with Wyatt. She arrives and sits in his office for the day making a list of potential suspects. He comes rushing in saying that all the detectives have been called to a location but can't give any details. She is alone in Wyatt's office when she sees a familiar face: Jason's. He pulls out a gun and tells her to be quiet. Blair isn't that scared because she doesn't think he will able to go through with it. Jason tells her his new wife, Debra, was the one who shot at her in the parking lot. She came home and told him; he got worried that she would get caught and ruin his chance at being a congressmen. So he decided to kill her himself by cutting her brake line. Since that didn't work, he called in a fake report of the a crime being committed to get the police out of the station so he could kill Blair. Just then Debra walks in because she followed Jason here. She is convinced that they are having an affair until Blair tells her that Jason came here to kill her. Surprisingly, this shows Debra that Jason really loves her and becomes happy. Blair decides that this is the perfect time to get the gun from Jason, and she kicks it out of his hands. Just as Blair is doing so, the S.W.A.T team arrives, arresting Jason and Debra. Blair and Wyatt are really together for the first time.

31060260

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The Lightstone

The immortal Morjin, the Lord of Lies, has reappeared in the world of Ea once again to conquer all the land for himself and create a world filled with maddess. To stand against Morjin, King Kiritan of Alonia invites the people of Ea to begin a quest for the Lightstone, a relic with unlimited powers in response to a prophecy that could lead to Morjin's doom. Valashu Elahad, seventh and youngest son of the king of Mesh, is one such knight that takes the pledge to search for the Lightstone, although he has reasons of his own. Valashu has the gift of empathy, a gift and a curse he inherited from his grandfather, which causes him problems along the path of the warrior, a family tradition. Hoping that the golden cup may cure him of his "affliction", Val sets off for Alonia, joined by his teacher, Juwain, and his best friend, Maram. Eventually his party grows to have seven significant individuals, each with their unique gifts and abilities to light the way on their journey throughout the continent for the Lightstone.

31061245

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Pym

Mat Johnson

3/1/2011

{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}

Chris Jaynes is the only African-American professor of literature at a liberal Manhattan college. Refusing to limit his teaching to the African-American canon and serve on the college diversity committee, he is denied tenure. The quest is led by the protagonist's older cousin Captain Booker Jaynes, "the world's only civil rights activist turned deep-sea diver", who is planning on mining blocks of Antarctic ice to melt and sell as expensive bottled water. with a fondness for Little Debbie snack cakes, joins the team in the hope of finding landscape painter Thomas Karvel, "Master of Light" (a parody of Thomas Kinkade, "Painter of Light"), and in part, Pym is laid out as "a road story/bromance between Jaynes and his childhood pal." Other members of the expedition include water treatment engineers Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter, a gay couple documenting the trip for their "Afro-adventure blog." Angela Latham, a lawyer and Jaynes's "much-pined-for" ex-girlfriend, brings along her new husband Nathaniel, treating the venture as a honeymoon. But instead of the black inhabitants described by Poe, Jaynes and his friends come across "a prehistoric world of giant white people, or 'Snow Honkies', who enslave them."

31066364

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The Piano Teacher

The novel is set in 1950s' Hong Kong, still under British government. When 28-year-old, newly married Claire Pendleton moved to Hong Kong from England with her husband Martin, was hired by a wealthy Chinese family, Chen, to teach piano to their ten-year-old daughter, Locket. Claire soon began an affair with Will Truesdale, a 43 year old Englishman working as the Chen's driver, who has a tragic past with his former lover Trudy Liang, ten years ago. Trudy was born of a Chinese father and Portuguese mother; she and Will fell in love but were separated by World War II, when Trudy was forced to become the mistress of a Japanese General. Claire must unlock the secrets about Trudy's fate and the Chens.

31068518

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Rage of a Demon King

Raymond E. Feist

4/7/1997

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

The Emerald Queen's army is almost upon Midkemia and the army is staging. Erik Von Darkmoor is sergeant-major of the King's armies and Rupert is almost single-handedly financing the war. The Emerald Queen and her army are making for the Lifestone, a magical source of power capable of destroying worlds. Vast preparations are being made in Krondor, the anticipated point of invasion by the Emerald Queen's army, and all of Midkemia's allies - as well as some enemies - are being called upon to help. There are a lot of secrets revealed in Rage of a Demon King. Some of the more mysterious figures who have inhabited Feist's books are finally seen in a clearer light. The origins of Macros the Black and Miranda are revealed. Plus, Nakor's "secret", that there is no magic, is explained.

31068865

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At the Gates of Darkness

Raymond E. Feist

1/7/2010

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

The remnants of the Conclave of Shadows, led by Pug, struggle to defeat evil magician Belasco before the Demon horde arrives in Midkemia.

31072807

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A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana

Haven Kimmel

{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}

A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel is her first memoir about her childhood growing up in the small Indiana town of Mooreland, IN near New Castle, Indiana. From her perspective as child, Kimmel describes her beginnings as a seriously ill, speechless, and bald baby who did not speak or grow hair until she was 2 years old. She earned her nickname from her father because she would "zip" around the house like a famous chimp on TV who could roller skate. In this memoir, Kimmel introduces the characters of her own family: Her mother who spends all her time on the couch reading; her father who is an obsessive camping packer, proclaimed non-church goer, and gambler; her older sister, Melinda who tolerates Zippy and convinces Zippy that she is adopted from gypsies; and her handsome, quiet, intense, and much older brother, Daniel, whom Zippy idolizes. She tells of her run ins with neighbors such as Doc who owns the grocery store and is married to Zippy's teacher; Edythe, the elderly woman who seems to have it in for Zippy; and the next door neighbor who wants to poison the family dogs. Zippy's friends from school include Julia, who lets Zippy do the talking for her; Dana who likes to fight with Zippy until Dana suddenly disappears never to be seen again; Polly who fascinates Zippy because her brother is a murderer; and Sissy who wants to save her soul. Her various animal adventures include rescuing her cat, PeeDink, from the bully Peter next door, saving a baby pig from the runt pile, and raising her pet chicken, Speckles (later a meal). Kimmel describes her exploits and humor from her own life as a young girl with an active imagination living in the slow-paced and familiarity of a small town in the Midwest.

31075114

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Anatomy of a Disappearance

Hisham Matar

3/3/2011

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

The book follows the story of Nuri, a teenager living in exile with his family in Cairo in Egypt, after the sudden death of his mother, he also loses his father Kamal Pasha el-Alfi who disappears in mysterious circumstances in Switzerland, and it becomes obvious that he was abducted by the regime of their country. The young Nuri tries to come to terms with the disappearance of his father while he is living in London in Britain.

31075336

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The Rescue

Denise Holton, the 29-year-old heroine, is destitute and forced to live in her mother's old house in Edenton, N.C. She's also the single mother of a handicapped child, Kyle, a four-year-old with "auditory processing problems" that render him unable to express himself or to fully understand others. Though she doesn't suspect it, Denise is on a literal collision course with true love. After she smashes her car into a tree and wakes up to discover Kyle missing, she finds deliverance in the form of Taylor McAden, dashing firefighter and compulsive risk taker, who rescues Kyle, too. Since Taylor enjoys an instant, unprecedented rapport with Kyle, there is little standing in the way of burgeoning romance. Trouble comes, however, when Denise learns of Taylor's checkered romantic past. Taylor's inability to commit, it seems, is somehow tied to his compulsive heroism, of which numerous histrionic examples are described. Denise's quest to find the source of Taylor's emotional distance takes up the final third of the book. * Denise Holton has no family, both of her parents have died.She is alone and a single mother of a child with severe learning disabilities by a former one-night stand. She was a school teacher for many years but now she doesn’t teach anymore; she spends all her time trying to teach her son how to speak. She has a part-time job as a waitress and makes just enough money to get by. * Kyle Holton is the 4-year-old son of Denise Holton. Kyle has severe learning disabilities. * Brett Cosgrove is Denise’s former one-night stand, leading up to Kyle’s existence. He was engaged at the time and wants nothing to do with Kyle. * Taylor McAden—is a volunteer firefighter for the Edenton Fire Department, owns his own carpenter and contractor job. He was the person who found Denise’s son the night of her car wreck. Taylor has had problems in the past with commitment, but that all will change throughout the book. * Judy McAden is the mother of Taylor McAden; she came to the hospital to spend time with Denise while her son was out looking for Kyle. * Mitch Johnson is Taylor’s best friend and a volunteer firefighter for the Edenton Fire Department also. Mitch and his wife Melissa often provide Taylor with advice about his romantic life. Mitch and Melissa are the closest thing Taylor has to siblings, and Taylor is the godfather of the Johnson's oldest son.

31077337

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Shards of a Broken Crown

Raymond E. Feist

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

Thanks to an enemy general who has a change of heart now that the enemy leaders are gone, the reclamation of the western realm of the Kingdom is made easier - but not by much - with Kesh threatening Krondor and the Eastern Armies returning to the east. On top of that, a new evil is unleashed by the enemy, with the dead rising and fighting the Kingdom forces. Pug, Tomas, Nakor and Miranda must defeat the enemy magicians and their unnatural allies for the Kingdom to survive.

31078907

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Mexican WhiteBoy

Danny Lopez, a young teenager, is the main character of Mexican WhiteBoy. The first part of this book talks about him as a shy boy from San Diego. His school, Leucadia prep, has a majority of white children and he feels different from all of the other kids even though he has only a slightly darker skin tone. During this summer he went with his cousin Sofia. Danny’s uncle, Tommy, wanted to beat up someone but did not know who to beat up because Danny wouldn't tell him because he was afraid to. After his uncle left, then Danny got in a car with his friends and his other friends got on another car and they were going to Del Mar Fair. In Danny’s car somebody got out a bottle of alcohol and they were passing it around so everybody would get a sip. Danny had never had a drink in his life but Sofia influenced him to drink a little bit, so Danny did. At one point in the fair they went to go feed some goats celery and Danny remembered his dad. When Danny first sees Liberty, he feels something inside of him that cannot be described. Danny, and Sofi’s friends go to the theatre and Danny bought them popcorn. Danny sees Liberty in the line of the theatre where they were standing at. Danny, and Uno are in the mound, they go against Carmelo and JJ. Danny had a bad day because he couldn't pitch the ball straight at Uno’s hands. Danny overhears Sofie and his Uncle Tommy talking about his dad abusing his mom. Danny, and Uno go against Carmelo and JJ. This time Danny gives Carmelo three strikes, and Carmelo keeps saying do duble or nothing, and they keep on raising money, and Carmelo gets mad JJ grabes the hat with the money inside and tries running with it but Uno gets JJ from behind and punches him and all of JJ’s friend’s comes in and tackle Danny and Uno then this guy from Los Padres scout came and taclke all the kids that were punching Danny and Uno. Later both Danny and Uno runs to the bus stop. Danny gets a phone call from his mother from San Francisco, she tells him how beautiful San Francisco is but out of nowhere she starts crying. In the novel his mother tells him that she wants to be with the family again and be happy so she told him that she is going to pick him up in a few days. So Uno and Danny decide to have one last practice at Las Palmas, that evening Uno and Sofie was talking about there life and how would it change if this happened and looking to the future. She tells him “ Anyways this girl climbs up the ladder real slow right? But her parents let her do it all by herself. And the whole time she has this huge smile in her face. And when she gets to the top of the slide, she sits there for a sec, clapping her hands and laughing. Her parents hustle around to the bottom of the slide and she says ‘Here I come’ its like she was saying it to the world (212). Uno takes Danny to his old school and they found Kyle a future baseball player that had been scouted, Uno tells Kyle to put money on the line but Danny and Uno losses the bet. After getting into a fight with the other guys, Uno and Danny head home. At Sofia's house they talk about their future. As the story ends, Uno and Danny go to their favorite spot throw some rocks. Danny realizes that after all that he's been through he's glad to be where he is today.

31079139

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Love Sick

9/22/2005

{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}

Love Sick follows the story of Ted, a former teenage alcoholic, as he spies on a girl, Erica, at their college for her father. After a drunk driving accident his senior year, Ted is left with a busted knee and no college scholarship. The novel opens with Ted, the protagonist, speaking at an AA meeting at his three month mark. He talks about how he had been drinking throughout his four years at high school, and talks about the accident that caused him to lose his scholarship. After his AA meeting, he goes home, where he meets Michael Eslem. Michael tells Ted that he was there to offer Ted a deal to get him back into his university. He could go to his dream college completely free, except he would have to spy on Erica at the college. With convincing, Ted agrees to the deal. Through a series of emails, it is agreed that Ted will be placed in the same dorm as Erica, making it as easy as possible to spy on her. On his first day, he briefly encounters Erica leaving the bathroom. Slowly, they get to know each other as they deal with their problems. Ted attends local AA meetings, and Erika talks with her therapist over Yahoo Chess. As the book progresses, Erica and Ted confess their feelings for one another, and they spend the night in Ted’s dorm room. Ted realizes he does not want to spy on Erica any longer, and so he calls Michael and quits. Following this, he takes some of his roommate’s alcohol, drinking until Erica wakes up and he tells her. Erica gets angry and leaves for the city, contacting Doctor Rudas and asking to go into rehab to deal with her problem of bulimia. Back at college, Ted realizes his mistake.

31080252

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Crescendo

Becca Fitzpatrick

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}

Nora Grey's life is right on track: she has a new boyfriend Patch, who was once a fallen Angel but is now her guardian angel. Their new relationship seems perfect and Nora devotes every waking moment to Patch. However, when Nora tells Patch that she loves him, he doesn't respond. Soon Patch isn't calling Nora and doesn't respond when she calls him. Nora is shocked to finds out from Marcie that Patch stood outside Marcie's house the night that Nora told Patch she loved him. That night Patch shows up at Nora's house. She asks him why he was outside Marcie's house, and he doesn't answer. Patch seems cold toward Nora, upsetting her even more. Patch informs her that since getting his wings back he has been put on a short leash; archangels will probably send him to Hell if he tells Nora he loves her. Nora, scared that she will lose Patch completely, decides to end their relationship. Nora begins talking to Scott Parnell, an old friend, and soon finds out that he has some dark secrets. While her mother insists that she stay away from Scott, Nora becomes obsessed with finding out Scott's secret. Nora believes that Scott could very well be Nephilim, and she convinces Vee Sky to come with her as she follows him. After Scott confronts her, he invites her to a pool hall with a reputation worse than that of Bo's Arcade, Patch's old haunt. While there, she runs into Patch, who insists that Nora isn't safe and that she needs to go home. Patch also confirms that Scott is a Nephil, and a member of a Nephilim Blood Society, an organization which works to break the hold fallen angels have on the Nephilim. Ultimately refusing to takes Patch's advice, she decides to make Patch jealous when she later spots him there with Marcie. Soon someone attempts to rob the pool hall. When Scott refuses to hand over his money, a fight breaks out and gunfire takes place. Pulling her out of the mayhem, Patch offers Nora his Jeep. When he refuses to leave Marcie behind, she refuses the Jeep and fires Patch as her guardian angel. While she is with Vee having lunch, Scott appears at a window luring Nora outside to come talk to him. Nora also receives a envelope containing a ring and a note telling her the 'Black Hand' killed her father. Scott invites her to a Battle of the Bands. Nora, still curious about the secrets that surround him, accepts. While waiting for Scott to find a parking space and waiting for Vee to arrive, Nora spots a figure that resembles her father, and follows him to an abandoned townhouse where he disappears. She hears his voice telling her to turn around that she is in danger, unwilling to turn away Nora calls out to the voice. The voice, responding to her changes, becomes colder. When Nora responds, a hand reaches out to her and soon she is being attacked. Once Nora is able to free herself she finds that no harm has been done to her. She realizes that the voice was not her father, and someone is trying to kill her. At the Battle of Bands, Vee and Marcie get into a heated argument. Then Marcie tackles Nora to the ground and punches her in the eye. Leaving Nora to fight back, she manages to clip Marcie in the jaw, winning her victory. Patch pulls Nora off Marcie, and pushes through the crowd, then doing the same with Marcie. Vee drives home with moody Nora and her black eye. That night Patch visits Nora in her dreams – the only way he can communicate with her without the archangels hearing them. Caught up in the heat of the moment they kiss and remove parts of their clothing, both urging desire for each other. Suddenly Nora's finger brushes against Patch’s back, taking her into the past. Only, this time, it’s a few hours back when Nora saw Marcie get into Patch’s car. She sees Marcie kiss Patch and is heartbroken when he doesn’t pull away. She is then brought back to her dream where she angrily confronts Patch, rips off the chain he gave her and demands for her ring back. Patch refuses and leaves. When Nora wakes up the next day she is forced to conclude that her dream was real as Patch’s chain is no longer around her neck. The next day, she heads off to the media center, where she passes out after receiving a drugged letter of apology that, at the time, she believed was from Patch for what happened during her dream the night before. She wakes up and runs when she hears someone. When she is pulled over and fined for speeding whilst trying to get away the police investigate the library to find no evidence of disturbance. Nora becomes concerned that it's the work of a fallen angel or Nephilim. Nora meets Scott at a party on the beach. While she is waiting, Scott, who is drunk says to the people at the party to drink free beer at his house. Nora drives drunk Scott to his apartment as he vomits everywhere. She takes him to his bedroom and hints sexual innuendos at her. Ignoring him, she goes and gets Scott water, then sees Patch. Their awkward/casual conversation makes Patch ask Nora to run away with him, to defy the archangels. Nora refuses and tells him she's delivering water for Scott. Patch tells her to be careful, but she brushes him off. Scott then kisses her, and she doesn't pull away because she wanted to get back at Patch. Then Scott removes his T-Shirt which causes Patch to burst in the room and throw Scott's shirt back at him. Scott gets rough, but Patch defeats him by punching him in the jaw. Nora and Vee go to Marcie's house party with the intent of snooping to see if they can find any evidence on Patch's and Marcie's "relationship." Nora gets locked out onto Marcie's roof trying to escape being caught. Patch finds Nora and is amused but tells her (telepathically) that he'd go rouge for her if she asked him to, so that they could have some time together because he's tired of "living halfway." Though tempted, Nora doesn't want to be the cause of Patch's downfall and rejects his offer. Vee decides to drag Nora to the beach with Rixon because she wants a tan. Nora agrees because she wants to seek information from Rixon about Patch and Marcie. Rixon says to Nora that Patch is the Black Hand (the person who killed Nora's father) and Nora is devastated. Rixon tells Nora that Marcie and Patch get on well, aiming to put Nora off. Nora asks Rixon for Patch's apartment address. He leaves early, with just Nora and Vee. While heading to the Neon, Vee notices a clamp on her car and they aren't able to remove it. They see Patch's Jeep, which gives Nora an alternative for the two to get home. Back at the farmhouse, Nora makes pasta, while she is taking it to the table, she is shocked to see Patch standing before her. She explains to him why she "borrowed" the Jeep. But he informs her that she owes him "tabs" from the favours he's done for Nora, but she refuses to repay them. As Patch turns more cocky and arrogant; Nora tells Patch that he deserves to go to hell after everything he's done. Nora decides to go back to Marcie's house to return the diary. But Marcie catches her with it and smugly admits that Nora's mum is having an affair with Marcie's dad, Hank. That's why Marcie was ruthless towards Nora for 11 years. Nora refuses to believe it, but it turns out that the affair was really happening. Patch visits Nora in her dreams to give some bad news: he is now Marcie's guardian angel. And worse, he has to prevent Hank from sacrificing Marcie. Patch softly says to Nora he is doing everything he can to keep her safe, but she must let him in her dreams. Nora doesn't, waking up. Nora, Vee and Rixon head to the amusement park, where Scott appears with a gun. Rixon leads Nora to an underground tunnel for her safety. Nora hears her dad’s voice in her head, telling her to touch Rixon’s scars. She complies and is whisked to the past, where she sees Rixon holding a gun at her dad, just like the prologue. She returns to the present and tries to escape from Rixon, realizing he is the real killer. Rixon pursues her, wanting to use her as a human sacrifice. He also tells her he planted the dynamite in "Patch's" apartment (which was actually a Nephilim safe house) that Rixon tricked Nora into thinking it was Patch's house because she wanted to snoop around for evidence of Patch and Marcie "relationship," planned to break-up Nora and Patch from the very beginning and dated Vee simply to get closer to Nora. She bumps into Scott, and informs him that he is an immortal Nephilim so he cannot die. Rixon shoots Scott more than once, leaving Nora to be his sacrifice but then Patch appears just when Nora was shot. After checking out of the hospital, Nora receives a voice mail from Scott. He tells her that he has bought her the car she has wanted and if she wants to do him a favor, she should delete the message so that the police cannot find him. Nora deletes the message, thankful for Scott. Nora finds Patch, who is happy to see her and tells her he sent Rixon to Hell. He takes her to Delphic, down to the underground shed and they embrace - caressing, kissing and nibbling at each other. Then Patch tells her he loves her. Just then, Hank Millar, Nora's real father, comes in and takes her away from Patch. The book ends when Hank Millar asks Nora if it was her that killed "his dear friend, Chauncey Langeais."

31080323

/m/0gg8bq4

Ask Me No Questions

2006

{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}

Nadira, the protagonist, and Aisha are sisters who are total opposites: Nadira is lazy, plump, and an average kid while Aisha is skinny, active, popular, and smart. The family are from Bangladesh and are illegal immigrants in the United States. They have been living for years in New York City on expired visas. With the changed atmosphere after the September 11th attacks, they try to move to Canada but are stopped at the border. Abba (their father) has been sent to INS Detention Center. Their mother, who they call Ma, has been put into a shelter until their father gets out of detention. The girls have to live with relatives in Queens, while waiting for the situation to be resolved.

31080331

/m/0gg9hpb

The Boys from St. Petri

1991

Lars is trying to get into a club called the St. Petri group, which is against the Nazis and Adolf Hitler taking over Denmark, his home. He has to go through an initiation test and support the weight of the church’s chandelier without dropping it, in order to join. And meanwhile, Lars finds a German Luger (gun) which was stolen by a boy named Otto Hvidemann, who later joins the St.Petri group. After Lars succeeds entry into the group the boys plan their first true sabotage of the German headquarters. The fall is when the boys plan to steal some bombs from the German headquarters so they can later blow up the railroad tracks that will carry the German machinery for the war. But when they get there things go wrong. A phone started to ring and when they tried to stop it they tripped over one another and set off an alarm. The Germans then start to come investigate what all the noise is about so the boys have to run. Everything then happened very quickly; everyone started to run, then they sent the dogs to go and search for the intruders. In the midst of all the confusion Otto stole a rifle and sub-machine gun and helped Gunner and Luffy stuff Gunners backpack with bombs that were hidden in the German headquarters and brought it back for the club to use later on. When the German's attack dog was let loose it came running at Lars. He got scared and shot the dog in the head with the luger. When the gun fired it caused the Germans to think they were getting shot at opposed to the dog. They started to fire at them. So the boys had no other choice but to shoot back at them and when they did more Germans came running and by the end of night many Germans were shot. When they were about to leave, a young German boy who was unarmed was on the ground saying "don't kill me". The boys were going to but Lars told them that they could not or it would make them like the Germans. As they were leaving, Otto got shot in the arm. They took Otto to Dr. Halling for help but the man said no because he suspected what the boys had been up to and that they were the saboteurs all the other times. Gunnar then put the gun to his head and told him “I personally, have shot ten Germans tonight. So one more isn’t going to make much difference.” The doctor finally complied to the boys' requests and patched up Otto's arm, and as they were leaving Gunner said if you tell anyone, you are dead. All the boys got on their bike and rode to the brewery where they sat against the wall talking and listening to the sounds of the sirens from the German airfield that they had triggered hours before. Luffy’s words were already beginning to slur so even though they had only been there for a short time, they decided to congratulate one another and head home. The next day at school, all the boys who were there got called to line up at the front where German soldiers were standing and waiting. The young boy soldier who they had let live the previous day was also with the men and this made Lars and Gunner very nervous. The men started to walk the younger boy down the row of boys as he searched their faces on by one. Then the boy caught Lars' eye and gave him a knowing look as if they were on the same side. Lars fidgeted nervously as the men neared and soon he was standing in front of Lars but he passed him without a second glance. The young boy did the same to Gunner, Luff, and Soren, passing them, pretending that he had never seen the boys. Lars and Gunnar went to the church to fit new candles into the pews, when they saw Sevend (Suckerfish). Gunnar stood in front of Sevend and Sevend was drilling him with questions like “Are you a man of your country” and “Do you feel Danish”. The Nazi German does not intimidate Gunnar or his little Brother when he starts threatening them with bad intentions, and discretely telling them he knew what the boys were up to. The St. Petri Group were all afraid of the outcome of what they are about to do. All the boys planned to sneak away from the school play and run to the railroad tracks where a large train would arrive with a lot of important military machinery. The boys were set strategically around the railroad which they had set with a bomb to go off when the train with military machinery inside it was near. They had Axel positioned at the top of the hill with a bright flashlight to signal when the train came into view and the boys anxiously waited for this signal. Finally the boys saw the signal and were about to set off the bomb. Their cover was compromised and suddenly they were surrounded by German soldiers who immediately started shooting at them. Luffy was mortified and unable to run so Gunnar and Lars grabbed him and began to pull him away from the ruckus. Then Lars noticed that Otto was not with them and turned to see him running toward the train tracks to manually set off the bomb. Lars yelled to him to forget about it but Otto did not listen, he was insisting on setting off the bomb and ran faster for the tracks. Lars then saw Otto reach the tracks just as the train was about to reach the area that was set with bombs. Then there was a large explosion and the train fell off the tracks. The boys then all ran separate ways, Gunner went to the cafe in the woods, Axel went home, Otto ran towards the brick yard, and Lars ran to the school. When Lars arrived at the school he went to find Irene and tell her how he truly felt about her. When he found her they sat down on a bench and he told her that he loved her. Right as Lars told Irene he would never leave her Sevend walked into the room and called to Lars, pulling him away from Irean and telling him he was under arrest. Lars was placed into a cell and the next day united with the other group members as they were marched across the camp to a black armed car. Sevend walked over to them and Gunnar asked him how he knew it was them. Sevend replied that he had found Gunnar's pipe at one of the scenes of the crime, and assumed that they had done all the other things as well. Then Sevend walked away and the boys were forced into the car with other police men and as the doors were locked and the car began to move, driving them away from their home, Otto sounded a bell to signal that he had not been captured and that he was free and safe.

31081747

/m/0gg6sg4

Viking Warrior

Judson Roberts

2006

At the beginning of the novel, the reader is introduced to Halfdan, who is cutting wood and squaring timber. Halfdan is a slave, despite being the son of an Irish princess, and a great chieftain. Derdriu (his mother) arrives to watch her son work and to look out at the bay near their estate. Not too soon, Gunhild arrives to send Derdriu back to her chores, for she is a slave, too. As soon as she has finished speaking, a longship enters the bay, carrying Hrorik, who has been in England raiding. The reader soon discovers that their raid has been met with failure, and many died or are wounded. Harald is unharmed, but Hrorik is on the verge of death. Quickly, Harald recounts the lengthy story of their raid, and how Hrorik was injured. Soon after, he, Sigrid, Derdriu, and Halfdan gather around Hrorik as he is dying. With one of his final breaths, he asks Derdriu to accompany him to Valhalla (the hall of warriors) which is an honor in the society described. To do this, she must die with him. She agrees, only if Halfdan is freed from enslavement, and is acknowledged as Hrorik’s son. Hrorik agrees, and soon he is dead. Hrorik and Derdriu are laid in the death ship, upon which dead warriors are sent off to Valhalla, and burned to ash. That night, Harald is made the chieftain of the estate, and Halfdan is officially freed, so he dines with the carls of the household, like a normal free man. He wakes up the following morning, hungover from the previous night's festivities, and Harald begins Hafldan’s training into becoming a warrior. He discovers quickly that Halfdan has a knack for fighting, and begins training with him day and night for months. The two of them go hunting one day, since Halfdan has a great talent with the bow, and Halfdan makes an amazing shot, showing off his skill. That night, Sigrid and Gunhild prepare a feast. Their feast is interrupted though. Toke arrives, after hearing of Hrorik’s death. Toke comes to claim his inheritance (he has received none) and the reader infers that Toke is a disturbed, a war-crazed man. The reader learns of Toke's backstory: it is this attitude of rage that led Hrorik to kick Toke out of the estate where he had been living. While Gunhild informs Toke that he received no inheritance, Harald reveals to Halfdan that Hrorik left him an estate called Limfjord, which Hrorik used to rule. Toke is furious that a former slave gets an estate while he himself gets nothing, and demands that they give him something in return. Harald denies Toke, but lets him stay for the night and enjoy in their feast. During the feast, a fight almost breaks out, but Harald quells it, and ejects Toke, like Hrorik had done long ago. Toke leaves the following morning, and soon Halfdan and Harald, among other carls, set out for Limfjord, the newly-inherited estate. While at Limfjord, Halfdan meets Abbot Aidan, who used to be one of his mother’s friends. Soon after arriving, a band of raiders attack their estate. They are trapped inside the longhouse and attempt to get the slaves, women, and children out. The leader of the raiders seems to heed this request, but as soon as they leave the house, he has them killed. Harald and Halfdan decide that they need to escape, so they hide in between two oxen and leave. Their escape doesn’t last long, however, because the raiders kill the oxen, and leave Halfdan, Harald, and the other carls exposed. In the following battle, Halfdan manages to escape without injury, at the cost of Harald’s death. Halfdan escapes to a forest, where he is being hunted by raiders. At this point he learns that the raiders were Toke and his crew. He manages to stay one step ahead of Toke’s men, and swears an oath to kill every man of Toke’s crew. He kills the two men following him, and heads to the town Hedeby where he begins his journey of revenge.

31082146

/m/0gg97y1

Fallout

The novel is a memoir of the lives of three children of a meth-addicted mother, Kristina, and how her addiction affected their lives. They now live in different homes, with different parents, as well as different last names. Each of them has a different story, some more fortunate than others. Hunter knows about his sisters and new younger brothers, while Summer knows about her brothers and Autumn knows nothing. It starts with Hunter’s story; adopted and raised by his biological mom’s mother and stepfather, he was put in good hands. He refers to his adoptive parents as "Mom and Dad." He works at a radio station in Reno, Nevada, and makes decent money, but lives at home. His girlfriend, Nikki, supports him in everything he does. As Christmas approaches, he is living with Nikki and having relationship troubles. Hunter is doing drugs more frequently, and cheats on Nikki with a persistent radio groupie. All the while, Hunter is feeling like a piece of him is missing because of the lack of knowledge about his father. When he sees him, he knows, but his father is the date of his coworker, Montana. Hunter then gets drunk and calls Brendan (his father) out on his actions about how him raping Kristina produced Hunter. Once that situation is in the past, another problem occurs, as Hunter is approached by Nikki, who hears a voicemail left by Leah on Hunter’s phone about the cheating incident. He is kicked out of Nikki’s house and takes the guestroom in his parents' house because, thanks to Kristina, his two younger brothers, David and Donald, have moved in and taken his room. Shortly after Hunter has moved back in, he is notified that Kristina will be spending Christmas with them. Autumn’s story takes place at her grandfather’s house in Texas. She has been moved around from city to city in order to keep her father and mother away from her. Her OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) and frequent panic attacks make her a loner at school, so her best friend is her Aunt Cora. Although she promises Autumn they will always be friends, she is wooed by her massage therapist professor and taken away from her. Autumn is happy for her aunt, but jealous that she has never been so giddy and in love before. She doesn’t stay jealous long; a new boy comes to her school and is immediately taken with her. She has a hard time opening up to him and even tells him her parents are dead. His name is Bryce and he ends up being Autumn’s first boyfriend, first kiss and first time. When her aunt announces her engagement, the happiness she gets from her new boyfriend fades and she feels alone. Desperate to make sure he stays with her, she has sex with him without protection. Realizing that being drunk makes everything easier to deal with, she begins drinking to make herself feel better. Her father's and grandmother’s interruption at Aunt Cora’s wedding only makes things worse, bringing her past to her present; then, Bryce finds out her parents aren’t dead. Devastated about the lying, Bryce leaves Autumn, and to make matters worse her drinking has gotten out of hand and she is almost raped by the groom’s cousin, Micah. The wedding ends when Autumn realizes how lonely she is and begins to wish she is pregnant, and her father finds her and tells her how she came to be. In the process, he convinces her to go to Reno for Christmas to see the mother she never knew. The California foster system took Summer away shortly after living with her father when they were abandoned by Kristina. She knows everyone in her family except for Autumn. Her father’s ex-girlfriends have molested and used her, causing her to be thrown in different homes with different problems. Her life is pretty stable in one home until one of the meth-using girls that also lives there molests one of the younger girls; it hits close to home and she is unable to control her anger. She gets in a fight with the meth girl and ends up getting sent to live back with her father and his girlfriend of the moment. The day after the fight, her boyfriend, Matt, saw her face and offered no sympathy, so she ran to his best friend, Kyle, who always showed interest. She ends up cheating on her boyfriend with Kyle by having sex with him. She knows that Kyle uses meth and other drugs but his loving nature has drawn her in. When he and Summer confront Matt about their newfound relationship, she sees the side of Kyle she never wanted to and realizes his addiction and anger may cause problems. The living conditions at her father’s house aren’t the best; the constant smoking irritates her asthma and as Thanksgiving approaches, she starts to miss Kristina. She calls her, but can’t remember why; she was blown away by her mother’s selfishness and when her father is drunk later that night, he reveals that Kristina only cares about herself. Her father being drunk proves to be a much worse situation than just spilling the truth; his drinking costs him a DUI and he loses Summer. She is sent to another home in Fresno. Leaving her boyfriend and life behind, she is unwilling to move far away. When she gets to her new home, she is immediately taken aback by her new foster father. His demeanor worries her and makes her wonder what secrets the other girls in the house might have. She knows from experience not to get close to the other girls in the house, but one of the girls tells Summer her secrets and becomes attached to her. During the few days Summer is there, she hides her cell phone and planned to meet Kyle. When she sneaks from under her foster sister’s watch long enough to escape, she ends up running away with Kyle for Christmas—he is so in love with her that he even attempts to stop using meth for her, which means suffering through withdrawal. She and Kyle save up money and live out of his car while they head to a ski lodge, where Kyle plans to work. The stories collide when Kyle and Summer get in a car accident and the closest place to them is Reno, Nevada. Summer ends up calling her grandfather to pick her up from the hospital the morning after the blizzard hit and the accident happened. Hunter is out picking up Kristina and his grandfather from the airport after spending the early morning making up with Nikki. He knows that things won't quite be merry and joyful Christmas morning with the whole family being together. Autumn and Trey show up before Summer gets there and when Trey sees Kristina, they are immediately drawn to each other and spend most of the day before dinner talking to each other. Summer tries to be sisterly to Autumn and Autumn doesn’t know what to make of all of it. When dinner starts, David asks when he’ll be going home and Kristina says she doesn’t know; Donald gets angry and tells her he never wants to go back—that he never wants to be with her again. Hunter is the first one to jump up when Kristina acts offended and he yells at her, telling her the only person responsible for what happened to her was her. Summer jumps in the argument too when Kristina begins to complain that she doesn’t have the resources to take care of her kids or give them a good life. The outcome of the argument is unknown, but Hunter, Autumn and Summer can all look at Kristina at the dinner table on Christmas morning and see themselves. The book ends with a newspaper article saying Marie Haskins has put her new book ‘Monster’, on indefinite hold while Kristina is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. At this point, Kristina has reunited with her husband, Trey, and with her resources, she is trying to make her life better so she can be the mother she has never been.

31083344

/m/0gg6byz

Lush: A Novel

10/1/2006

Being thirteen is hard, but it gets harder when your father is a drunk. Samantha Gywnn feels exactly the same way. Because of her father's crazy acts, Samantha is on a quest to protect her four year old brother, Luke, from him. Her mother, a yoga "freak", thinks that she needs to go easy on the old man. Despite having three, trustworthy friends, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy, Sam hides the fact that her dad drinks. She feels that anyone who found out would loathe her. Sam used to have a good friend named Charlie Parker whom she had shared her secret with. But their friendship was broken when Samantha thought Charlie stole her bra and put it on show back in seventh grade. Samantha decides, to help her feel better, leave notes in the pages of a book to a stranger in the library, the only place where she can freely be herself. She assumes that the stranger is a girl in high school with the initials A.J.K and they continue to pass messages. While at the fountain in the library one day, Samantha is felt up by a high school boy named Drew Maddox. Drew sits at the jock table and stares at Samantha's chest whenever she walks by. After arriving home, Sam feels no urge to share this with her Nana, who is baking cookies. The next morning, Mr. Gwynn has an announcement. He had been promoted in his architect job to the Feingold Project. Samantha however, does not feel overjoyed. After breakfast, Nana, thinking that her job to make her son more steady again is done, leaves for her house. At school, an assembly is held. Intimate relationships or "Sex The Assembly" as Samantha and her friends call it. During lunch, Kyle Faulkner and Greg Vaughn tease Samantha by doing a fruit-as-boobs act. Right away, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy defend her. Saturday morning Mr. Gywnn decides to give yoga a shot, with his wife. Samantha, practically thinks it is a horrible idea. This time at school, the eighth-grade boys have developed a rating system. For most of it, number 1 is Molly Katz. Samantha is voted "Best Boobs". After eating lunch, she decides to tell her three friends about Drew. In the library, this time Drew kisses her on the lips. Because her mother isn't home and her father is "working" in his study, Samantha has to take care of Luke. Both are jumping on the couch, Luke with a glass of juice. In all the excitement, the two make a lot of noise causing Mr. Gywnn to come to them. Luke jumps too wildly and juice splashes all over the Feingold blueprints Mr. Gywnn spent time on. Angry, frustrated and out of control, Samantha watches her father smash a bottle on Luke's face. Luke has a fracture with stitches and bruises. Both of his eyes are dark red. Samantha's father is nowhere to be found, and nobody tries to reach him. Because of the incident, Charlie Parker's mother and father spend the next few days with the family until Luke gets better. While at her house, Charlie tries to get Samantha to understand that he was not the one who stole her bra. Samantha, of course, denies it. Drew asks Sam to a party at someone's house and she says yes. But to her friends, she also has to lie about not being able to come to their usual Saturday sleepover at Vanessa's house in order to go to it. At the party, Drew asks Samantha what she drinks. Not having to drink before, Samantha decides to drink anything but Jim Beam. After she is fully drunk, Sam wakes up in a room where she is surrounded by coats, her shirt taken off. In the middle of their "sex", Drew leaves after hearing that Samantha is only thirteen, basically a kid. Crying, Samantha walks out of the room - only to bump into Andy Shaver, the party host's brother. Andy persuades Samantha into looking at his room, where he pins her against the dresser and starts to forcefully mash with her. To make it worse, Kyle Faulkner and Danny Harmon (Angie's Crush) are there too, mashing with her. It continues until a friend of Marybeth (Angie's Sister) takes Samantha home. At home, Mrs. Gwynn doesn't ask Samantha about her night. Instead she tells her about how Mr. Gwynn didn't drink until the death of her father. Also about how after she got pregnant, they had to marry. This strikes Samantha in a totally wrong way. She thinks that her being born was a mistake but is quickly assured by her mother that that was not the situation at all. Finally after all that they have shared, A.J.K decides to meet Samantha in person. When they meet, Samantha is totally shocked because the stranger is not a girl, its a boy! The "creepy" library shelf cleaner boy named Alexander, though he prefers to be called Jesse. Jesse takes Samantha to her father's usual drinking bar. Approaching her father, Samantha slaps him across the face. In earth science, at school, Samantha also learns that Charlie did not steal her bra. It was actually a guy named Jacob Mann. While at their normal tree house place, Sam apologizes to her old friend and decides to tell him about the party she went to. The friendship between Samantha and her friends is falling apart. Now that they have learned where their friend really was and what she did. Angie, especially, is mad at Samantha. Sam, ashamed, tells Vanessa that she'll be at the sleepover on Saturday no matter what. Once at Vanessa's house, she cannot hold it any longer. Crying, Samantha spills every one of her secrets. Mr. Gywnn being an alcoholic. Luke's tragic incident. What really happened at the party. Thankfully, Vanessa, Angie and Tracy forgive her. Though Angie still has an edge to her voice. While having one of her normal midnight snacks it occurs to Samantha that she can smash all of the bottle her father hides around the house. Once she has done that, he will not be able to drink, for a while. After she has done that, Samantha sits and looks out the window where it is starting to snow. Maybe, she thinks, we'll build a snowman. Maybe mom will bring hot chocolate. Maybe dad will put Luke on his shoulders. Maybe, someone passing by will think that we are a normal family.

31085557

/m/0gg9s8d

Let It Snow

2008

{"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}

Jubilee Dougal, just a typical teenager, finds herself forced to spend her Christmas Eve with her grandparents in Florida. Her parents were carted off to jail for being involved in a riot for a piece of the Flobie Santa Village, which is a series of small buildings made to resemble a holiday town. They were arrested for an argument that broke out at the store about who was in line first. While on the train ride to Florida, Jubilee meets Jeb, a heartbroken stranger Jeb tries so hard to contact his girl from back home but cannot find cell phone service. Jubilee also finds herself surrounded by a group of cheerleaders who seem to do nothing but annoy her, so she keeps her distance. Her train gets stuck in the snow and she wanders into a nearby Waffle House. While attempting to call her "perfect" boyfriend, Noah, Jubilee meets a guy about her age in a Target uniform named Stuart. She explains to him her situation and he asks her to come back to his place and spend Christmas with him and his family. Jubilee agrees and, with Stuart's help, manages to make her way through the snow to his home safely. Once inside, Stuart's mother Debbie makes Jubilee feel right at home with warm clothes and lots of delicious food. His mother tells Jubilee that she had not seen Stuart this happy ever since before he found his girlfriend cheating on him inside a Starbuck's bathroom. Jubilee tells Stuart all about Noah and how perfect she thinks he is. However, Stuart does not buy it. Jubilee realizes that Noah has yet to care about her and her misfortunes on Christmas Eve - of all nights. She then calls Noah and asks him how he couldn't even take time out of his family festivities to care about her, and when he doesn't respond, she breaks up with him. Stuart comes to comfort her and they kiss. Shocked, yet happy, Stuart runs out to help his neighbor shovel snow, and Jubilee sees this as her perfect chance to leave. She feels like it was wrong for her to kiss Stuart and all she wants to do is to get back to her train. As she wanders around, looking for the right direction back to the Waffle House, Stuart finds her. He tells her everything will be okay and not to let Noah walk all over her. As her phone rings, Stuart sees that it is Noah, and Jubilee tosses her phone into the snowy abyss. Stuart then leans in and kisses Jubilee again. He puts his arm around her shoulder and leads her back towards his home. Tobin, the Duke, and JP are all lounging around on the couch at Tobin's home watching a James Bond movie marathon while his parents are out of town. They also live in Gracetown, so they were hit with the same winter storm. The Duke (also known as Angie) is often not referred to as a girl for her boyish nature and the fact that she does not succumb to the same things such as a girly-girl would. Their friend Keun, a worker at Waffle House, calls and tells them that a bunch of cheerleaders have entered the store and are practicing handstands and splits inside the restaurant, having their own fun. To any male, this would be considered "heaven". He refers to this as a "cheertastic miracle", while the Duke thinks it is just a waste of time. Keun says that the cheerleaders are requesting to play the game of Twister, and Keun will not let them in unless they have the game for them to play. He only wants to make the cheerleaders like him and think he is taking charge like a man. Tobin and JP quickly get dressed and grab Twister from Tobin's closet. Tobin persuades the Duke that even though there are cheerleaders there, Waffle House has fantastic hashbrowns. He knows that the Duke loves the hashbrowns the Waffle House, so she grabs her shoes and they head out to the garage. Tobin's parents left their Honda Civic in the garage so the three hop in and attempt to drive through all of the ice and snow. Eventually, they manage to get to the highway. Once they gain speed and get close to the Waffle House, the Civic loses control and slams into a snow bank, losing one of the tires. The three then continue to hike through the cold and snow to get to the Waffle House, actually forgetting the Twister game. They realize they forgot the game in the car once they were halfway there and then had to turn around and retrieve it because of Keun's threat to not let them in to see the girls. With Twister in hand, Tobin, the Duke and JP make it to the Waffle House just in time. They meet the heartbroken Jeb and he asks them if they knew anyone by the name of Addie. The three say no, and he asks them that if they see her, to tell her that he was coming and that she would know what he meant. As the Duke gets her hashbrowns, Tobin attempts to talk to one of the cheerleaders. Obviously not interested, the cheerleader makes small-talk and then sits down avoiding any more conversation with him. Once Tobin returns to his seat, he realizes that the Duke is sitting outside on the sidewalk - clearly upset and sobbing. He sits beside her and asks what is wrong. She tells him that she hates that they do not refer to her as girly and she was actually jealous that he talked to the cheerleader in front of her because she assumed that he knew that she had feelings for him. Completely unaware of her feelings, Tobin tells her that he had a crush on her all along. They lean in for a kiss and kindle their new love. Addie and Jeb were in love from the moment they met, yet she attempted to change him into her own Prince Charming. Because of this, Jeb felt like he wasn't good enough for Addie and they argued. At a party, they separate and Addie finds her drunken self making out with a boy named Charlie - cheating on Jeb. She tells him, and she claims that it is over. Jeb gets on a train to visit his family in an Indian reservation. Before he had left, Addie sends Jeb an email apologizing for everything and asks him to meet her at Starbuck's, where she works, to talk everything out. Addie does not know that Jeb was leaving town. When he didn't respond or call, she knew he was really upset and that it was probably over for good. She went to Fantastic Sam's, a barber shop, and got all of her long, blonde hair cut off and colored it pink to show that she needed to change. On Jeb's way home, his train also got stuck in the snow - the same train that Jubilee found herself on. He attempted to call Addie on multiple occasions to tell her he loved her and was sorry, yet could never make it through. Addie calls her friends over to talk about things and they tell her that she always thinks of herself and can be self-absorbed at times. She disagrees and attempts to get them to change their minds by picking up a teacup pig from the pet store for her friend, Tegan, in the morning on her break at work. Once morning comes around, Addie gets caught up by an old woman at the counter at work and the woman tells her that she is a Christmas Angel and that we often forget to do things for others when we are wrapped up in ourselves. She then leaves, leaving Addie completely confused. Her other friend, Dorrie calls her to remind her to pick up the pig and Addie has completely forgotten. She runs to the pet store and realizes that the pig had already been adopted by a woman named Constantine. Furious, Addie steals the receipt and attempts to track down the mysterious woman and get Tegan's pig back. Once she finds the address, she realizes that Constantine is the "Christmas Angel" from Starbuck's and she adopted the pig just to teach Addie a lesson. Constantine gives Addie back the pig and heads back to work, only to find that there are more customers waiting to be served. She notices a boy she went to school with named Stuart at the counter. By his side stood his new girlfriend which is introduces as Jubilee. As they get served, two other teens walk in. Addie also recognizes them as Tobin and Angie (but people sometimes call her the Duke). Tobin reads her name tag and it reminds him that he had a message for her from Jeb. He tells her and her stomach drops. She realizes that Jeb did in fact get her message and that he was coming for her! At the same time, Addie's boss keeps asking why there is a pig in the store and that she needs to get it out as soon as possible. At the blink of an eye, Jeb walks in and embraces Addie. He tells her about the train and the cheerleaders and how he could not get service to call her. Tobin laughs because they were the same cheerleaders that they adventured out to see at the Waffle House. Jubilee hears of the cheerleaders, notices Jeb and sees how all of their lives have been intertwined. They were all brought back together with new loves and new senses of life.

31085704

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Amulet: The Stonekeeper

The novel begins with a flashback 2 years prior to the current events of the book. It shows how Emily and Navin's father was killed in a car accident. In the present time, Emily and Navin are moving to a new house inherited from their mom's grandfather. But when a secret door in the basement leads to an alternate version of earth,they find out everything is not as it seemed.

31086801

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How to Eat a Small Country

3/29/2011

{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}

A professionally trained cook turned anxious stay-at-home mom, Amy Finley’s marriage was already in fragile shape when she sent in an audition tape for the third season of The Next Food Network Star. When she was cast on the show in 2007, her husband, who feared for their privacy and hated the idea of reality shows and what celebrity could do to their marriage, forbade her to participate, but Finley did anyway, hoping to jumpstart her career and self-esteem. But while she was filming the show in New York, her husband retaliated by threatening to divorce her. Finley was the last contestant eliminated from Season 3 before the two person finale and returned home defeated to put her marriage back in order, but was recalled into the competition when one of the finalists had to withdraw, and ultimately was voted the winner and starred in her own cooking show, The Gourmet Next Door. But she gave up the show when she realized her family was so shaky, the stress would probably cause her marriage to fail. To get away from a life that had gotten too complicated, they moved to France and took a road trip Finley had dreamed about since she was living in Paris, falling in love with her husband, and going to culinary school. They drive all over France, and while they are learning about and enjoying regional dishes, Finley tries to figure out how her marriage became so delicate, and how to make it, and herself, strong again.

31095130

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The Bushbabies

1965

{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}

Jackie Rhodes is the daughter of a respected gamekeeper, known as "Trapper" Rhodes, in Kenya. She has lived there all of her life, so she is astounded and saddened when she learns from Tembo, her father's African servant, that her family will soon be abandoning the continent. Her biggest concern immediately becomes her pet bushbaby Kamau, which had been a Christmas gift from her father; she fears the creature is too young to fend for itself and will perish if left behind. During a family picnic, Trapper Rhodes comforts Jackie by assuring her that he'll obtain an official export permit that will allow her to take the bushbaby along. When the time comes for their departure, Jackie realizes that she has lost the export permit and grows very concerned. She learns from a steward that the ship's captain is not fond of animals, which makes matters worse. She realizes she cannot possibly hide Kamau as a stowaway or face export officials upon arrival. As her family sleeps, she abandons the ship hoping to set Kamau lose in the docks of Mombasa. Thoughts of the bushbaby's many natural predators immediately make Jackie have a change of heart and decide that Kamau must be returned to his natural habitat if he's to have a chance at survival. Jackie is horror-stricken when she realizes the ship has set sail leaving her and Kamau behind. She is comforted by the sound of a harmonica, realizing that it is being played by Tembo. She explains the situation to him and asks for his help. The African, moved by his loyalty to the Rhodes and a desire to be of service, unenthusiastically agrees to do so. The trio head by bus and foot towards the village of Vipingo. At her father's cottage Jackie and Tembo plan their next move while becoming increasingly acquainted with one another, which soothes the girl's fears. Meanwhile, Kamau encounters a praying mantis and Jackie observes the bushbaby's hunting abilities, growing less concerned about its ability to survive on its own. Unfortunately, the area is affected by a drought and an unexpected encounter with a rat snake foreshadows the dangers that they'll face in their journey. Jackie, who had hoped to be helped by Major Bob, a friend of the family, is astounded to learn that he's abandoned his home. When she approaches the Vipingo post office, she overhears the Hadj speaking to a gathering of villagers. He shows them the police's official order for the arrest of the black man who is believed to have kidnapped the white Rhodes girl. Horror-stricken, Jackie returns to Tembo and tells him that they must leave the place immediately. Back aboard the ship, Jackie's family discover her absence and request that the ship be turned around, a suggestion that coincides with Captain MacRae's plans to avoid a threatening sea storm brewing in the Indian Ocean. A prolongued drought is upsetting the many animals of the African savanahs as they follow the trails of the elephants in search of water. This complicates Tembo and Jackie's journey across the grasslands as they face dangerous creatures. The most dangerous encounter, however, is with an elephant poacher sent out to kill Tembo. Tembo manages to wrestle the man and send him running, but not before one of his poisoned arrowheads strikes Jackie's upper arm.

31099212

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The Nanny

Melissa Nathan

2003

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

When Jo Green takes a nannying job in London to escape her small-town routine, complicated family and perfect-on-paper boyfriend, Shaun, culture shock doesn't even begin to describe it... Dickand Vanessa Fitzgerald are the most compatible pair since Tom and Jerry, and their children - strong and determined Cassandra, humorously protective Zak, and sweet and shy Tallulah - are downright mystifying. Whilst also having Jo on a 24/7 scheduelle, chasing them around to their music or ballet lessons. Suddenly village life doesn't sound too bad. Then, just as Jo's getting the hang of their designer lifestyle, the Fitzgeralds acquire a new lodger and suddenly she's sharing her nanny flat with the distractingly good-looking but inexplicably temperamental Josh. So when Shaun turns up,things get even trickier...

31102420

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Wintergirls

Laurie Halse Anderson

2009

Lia and Cassie become best friends when she later moves in across the street from Lia in second grade. During the summer between fifth and sixth grades, Cassie develops bulimia in a quest to be thinner. By eighth grade, both Cassie and Lia share a goal of being the thinnest girls in their class. From then on, the two engage in a contest to see who can be the thinnest. Lia is hospitalized to treat her eating disorder during their junior year of high school. After her hospitalization, Lia becomes estranged from Cassie, who blames Lia for encouraging her own eating disorder. Nine months later (at the beginning of the novel), Cassie is found dead in a motel. The cause of death is unknown at first; an autopsy later reveals that she died from Boerhaave syndrome, a rupture of the esophagus caused by repeated vomiting. Lia learns the cause of death later, from her mother. Lia, getting a message from a motel employee named Elijah, who told her to come to the motel to meet him, goes to the scene of her friend's death. When she meets Elijah, he does not know who she is, so she gives him the name of her younger step-sister, Emma. At Cassie's wake, they meet again and finally, at the funeral, he learns Lia's real identity. During this time, Lia's weight drops from 101 pounds to 93 pounds, though she has rigged her family's bathroom scale so that her parents believe she weighs more. After her father gets back from his trip, and tells Lia she is moving in with her mother because she and he cannot get along, she goes into the bathroom and cuts deep into her skin, from her neck to just below her heart. Her step-mother Jennifer and step-sister Emma find her and take her to the hospital. After this incident, she is supposed to live with her mother, Dr. Chloe Marrigan. Dr. Marrigan feeds her and doesn't leave her side without having someone else watch her. Lia, who has been haunted throughout the book by Cassie's ghost, has a confrontation with "her" in her therapist's waiting room. She explains that to her therapist, Dr. Parker, who advises that she be committed to a psychiatric institution. Lia runs away to see Elijah and asks him to take her with him when he leaves for Mississippi, which he is planning to do the next day. Elijah agrees on the condition that Lia call her family first; Lia refuses, and Elijah tries to convince Lia that her family is trying to help her and that she should let them do so. They go to sleep, and in the morning Lia finds that he has left without her. Lia is near death and has one more conversation with Cassie's ghost, in which they talk about the good parts of being alive. Lia escapes death and goes to call her mother. The novel ends with Lia in the hospital, working toward recovery.

31106421

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Privies of Wales

2000

{"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}

The first half of the book presents a brief history of human sanitation disposal starting from the digging of small holes to the “earth closet”; the “privy pioneers” of the Minoans, Romans, and Normans; and information about cesspits. The second half examines multiple examples of Welsh privies, how they were constructed, and how they were used. Roberts also writes about industrial privies, public privies, and the restoration of old privies.

31110935

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The Eternal Husband

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

Alexei Ivanovich Velchaninov is a land owner who stays in Saint Petersburg for a trial about a piece of land. He receives a visit from Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky, an old acquaintance who recently became a widower. Velchaninov had an affair with Trusotsky's wife Natalia, and he realizes that he is the biological father of Liza, Trusotsky's eight year old daughter. Velchaninov, who doesn't want Liza to be raised by an alcoholic, brings Liza to a foster family. Liza dies there. Trusotsky now wants to marry Nadia, the fifteen year old daughter of civil servant Zakhlyobinin. She's the sixth daughter of eight. Trusotsky takes Velchaninov with him to visit his fiancee, and buys her a bracelet. Trusotsky is ridiculed by Zakhlyobinin's daughters and locked up during a game of hide-and-seek. Nadia gives the bracelet to Velchaninov, asking him to return it to Trusotsky and tell him she doesn't want to marry him. Nadia is secretly engaged to Alexander Lobov, a nineteen year old boy. Trusotsky spends the night in Velchaninov's room and tries to kill him with a razor knife. Velchaninov manages to defend himself, injuring his left hand. Sometime later, when Velchaninov has won his trial, the two meet again at a railway station. Trusotsky is remarried, but a young army officer is travelling with him and his wife. Trusotsky's new wife invites Velchaninov to visit them, but Trusotsky asks him to ignore this invitation.

31117152

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So Much Pretty

So Much Pretty is about a young woman, Wendy White, who goes missing from her small town and is found murdered several months later. The novel then focuses on the investigation into her life, disappearance, and death by reporter Stacey Flynn.

31117271

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Ring of Fire

At a hotel in Rome, four children, Harvey from New York, Mistral from Paris, Sheng from Shanghai, and Elettra, the hotel owner's daughter, come together, apparently by chance, and realize that they were all born on the same day. They are destined to become involved in a mystery involving a briefcase which contains clues leading to ancient mystical artifacts, a mystery that will bring them all into peril.

31120928

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Three Stations

Martin Cruz Smith

{"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"}

The title refers to the three Moscow rail stations, Leningrad Station, Kazansky Station and Yaroslavl Station situated on Komsomolskaya Square, also often referred to as Three Stations Square. A teenage mother arrives at Three Stations, but her baby is stolen. The only person to help her is Zhenya, the young chess hustler who is a sometime ward of Arkady Renko, the police investigator. Meanwhile, Arkady tries to prove that the overdose death of a young prostitute in the station is nothing of the sort, and is suspended for his trouble. A billionaire casino owner with financial troubles offers to hire Arkady, but the latter can trust no-one. Thugs, dwarves, ballerinas, Central Asians and a gang of homeless tweens complicate matters still further.

31122658

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The Snake's Skin

The novel The Snake’s Skin is about entire universe, where the space is complete and united. The scene takes place at the entire planet: the West and the East; Russia, Europe and finally Robakidze’s motherland – Georgia. Here one may also find an imaginary world of American billionaire living in his villa at Mediterranean Sea along with various prominent artists. There is only one tense in the The Snake’s Skin – present, but it includes past and future as well. The main thing is reality, but myths and legends are part of this reality. The way of thinking is not only particularly human, but at the same time metaphysical and idealistic. The personages of the novel do not live in the particular time period, or represent persons with concrete nationality. The author describes generalized citizen of the world that gets transformed into a particular person or in other words, returns to his roots (actual father, motherland), oneself, and the God. This is an adventure of Archibald Mekeshi’s soul taking place throughout the centuries.

31124804

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Hellhole

Kevin J. Anderson

3/15/2011

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}

Only the most desperate colonists dare to make a new home on Hellhole. Reeling from a recent asteroid impact, tortured with horrific storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and churning volcanic eruptions, the planet is a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans…but also a haven for dreamers and independent pioneers. Against all odds, an exiled general named Adolphus has turned Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the desperate colonists who call the planet their home. While the colonists are hard at work developing the planet, General Adolphus secretly builds alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds, forming a clandestine coalition against the tyrannical, fossilized government responsible for their exile. What no one knows is this: the planet Hellhole, though damaged and volatile, hides an amazing secret. Deep beneath its surface lies the remnants of an obliterated alien civilization and the buried memories of its unrecorded past that, when unearthed, could tear the galaxy apart.

31125628

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Whizzard!

Steve Barlow

2002

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

Tym, a wizard's apprentice from the Dun Indewood suburb of Leafy Bottom, dreams of being a great magician. It is only when he encounters the mysterious Dreamwalker that he learns the secret of travelling at super-speed and becomes a Whizzard! When his newfound skill causes havoc and puts the beautiful Lady Zamarind into a coma, Tym must travel far across the Dark Forest to save her, and discover his true destiny.

31133840

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The Ring of Solomon

Jonathan Stroud

{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

The story opens in Jerusalem with the djinni Bartimaeus who is currently in the service of one of King Solomon's 17 High Magicians. His master commands him to retrieve a magical artifact of sorts from the city of Eridu. Bartimaeus succeeds, and then manages to trick the magician into commanding him to use the artifact against him. It sends a spurt of water out at him and knocks him out of his protective circle. Bartimaeus subsequently devours the old man and with the magician's death is released and returns to the Other Place. King Solomon of Israel, upon learning of Bartimaeus's murder of Ezekiel (the hitherto unnamed old magician) is insulted that a mere djinni is the perpetrator. To make Bartimaeus pay for his actions he commands Khaba, an Egyptian and another of the 17 to summon Bartimaeus into his service and punish him. He also proposes to the queen of Sheba and is refused. The scene shifts to the Sheban capital of Marib where Balkis, the aforementioned queen, receives a message from a marid supposedly in Solomon's service: either pay a ransom of 40 sacks of frankincense or be destroyed, and gives her two weeks to pay. Balkis decides to send her loyal guard captain Asmira to Jerusalem to assassinate Solomon. Back in Jerusalem, after being summoned into Khaba's service, Bartimaeus is commissioned to perform multiple degrading jobs including grain counting, sewage treatment, and artichoke collecting. Another unpleasant element is that one of his fellow slaves is his old rival Faquarl. Khaba assembles the eight djinn under his command and informs them that they have been commissioned to build Solomon's Temple on the Temple Mount and that they are to build it without using any magic whatsoever. After Bartimaeus uses his trademark wit to infuriate Khaba, the magician unleashes his essence flail on the djinn and threatens to place them in his essence cages (devices similar to the Mournful Orb in The Amulet of Samarkand) should they displease him a second time. At first Khaba and his foliot Gezeri directly supervise the initial stages of construction but after a while they stop showing up at the building site and the attitudes of the djinn grows lax. They begin assuming nonhuman forms and start using magic to build the temple (both actions directly violate Solomon's edicts). Several days later Solomon makes an unexpected appearance on the building site. The other djinn manage to revert back to human form and disguise their use of magic but Bartimaeus is caught in the form of a pygmy hippopotamus in a skirt (a comic reference to one of Solomon's 700 wives, "the one from Moab"). The king interrogates Bartimaeus and the djinni reluctantly admits his guilt while covering for the other spirits. As Solomon prepares to use the Ring on Bartimaeus, the djinni resorts to a display of groveling in order to appease the king. Bartimaeus's pathetic display amuses Solomon, who agrees to spare the djinni's life and instead punishes him (and Khaba, whom Solomon blames for failing to keep his spirits in line) by sending them to hunt down the bandits. Several days later, out in the desert, Bartimaeus and Faquarl find and defeat the bandits and meets Asmira. Faquarl insists on eating her but Bartimaeus hopes she can intercede with Khaba on their behalf. Asmira is then escorted to Jerusalem by Khaba and manages to persuade him to reluctantly dismiss the two djinn. Faquarl gains his freedom but Bartimaeus is imprisoned in a small bottle for his earlier crimes by Khaba and his principle slave, the marid Ammet. Asmira tries to use her feminine wiles to convince Khaba to get her near Solomon and fails. Asmira frees Bartimaeus from the bottle and commands him to help her kill Solomon. The pair sneak through the palace gardens and scale the tower wall to Solomon's chamber almost completely through Bartimaeus' efforts. They encounter the king in his observatory and Asmira kills him with her dagger only to discover that it is an illusion set up to trap them. Bartimaeus escapes and Asmira is captured and taken before the true King Solomon. Meanwhile Bartimaeus encounters the trapped afrit Philocretes and learns the secret behind Solomon and the Ring. He then sneaks into the chamber where Solomon is interrogating Asmira and steals the Ring. Asmira claims the Ring only to discover that its energies inflict pain upon whoever touches it or uses it. Solomon then confesses to having never sent any ransom demand to Sheba which causes Asmira to doubt herself and her loyalty to Queen Balkis. In the end Asmira does not kill the king, choosing instead to take the Ring back to Sheba in spite of Solomon's warnings and Bartimaeus' demoralizing analysis of her motives. Suddenly Khaba arrives, subdues both girl and djinn and claims the Ring for himself. Khaba commands the Spirit of the Ring to destroy his rival magicians as well as Solomon's palace, but Asmira manages to grab her last throwing knife and slices off Khaba's finger, with the ring still on it, and commands Bartimaeus to throw it in the sea. Although weakened by his use of the Ring, Khaba attempts to destroy both Asmira and Solomon who manage to hold off Khaba's other servants for a brief time. Meanwhile Bartimeaus has fled the palace with Ammet in hot pursuit. The two eventually reach the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and, in an unexpected move, Bartimaeus puts the Ring on and commands the Spirit to seal Ammet inside a wine jar at the bottom of the sea for a few thousand years. Returning to Jerusalem Bartimaeus knocks out Khaba and returns the Ring to Asmira who gives it back to Solomon. The king imprisons Khaba and pardons both Asmira and Bartimaeus for their deeds. Solomon then summons Queen Balkis to Jerusalem and clears the misunderstanding. However, a spiteful Balkis disowns her loyal guard from her service. Solomon then offers Asmira the opportunity to work for him instead. In the aftermath of the attack Asmira willingly dismisses Bartimaeus, revealing her intention to turn down Solomon's offer in favour of choosing her own path in life and the two part ways on friendly terms.

31138608

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Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

Francesca Lia Block

1993

While the grown-ups are away making a movie, teenager Cherokee is left to cheer up her sort-of sister Witch Baby, who is deeply depressed. Cherokee makes her a pair of wings out of wire and feathers, and it cheers Witch Baby up due to an unexplained magical power. The two girls decided to start a band and enlist their two male friends, Raphael and Angel Juan. As their band becomes successful, the other members acquire magical items to wear. Raphael begins to wear goat pants, Angel Juan gets horns, and Cherokee gets hoof-like boots. However, these items begin to lead them down a path of drugs, sex, and jealousy and things begin to unravel. In the end, Cherokee, disturbed by the changes in her friends, makes off with the magical costumes, causing her friends to re-examine their choices and find their way back to their normal selves.

31139122

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Missing Angel Juan

Francesca Lia Block

1995

The story begins with Witch Baby learning that Angel Juan is leaving to go to New York. He wants to go and discover who he is when he is not with Witch Baby. She is left broken-hearted and angry and falls into a depression before deciding to follow Angel Juan to New York. In New York, Witch Baby stays at the apartment of Weetzie Bat's deceased father, Charlie Bat. He appears to Witch Baby as a ghost and becomes her companion as she searches for Angel Juan. In the end, Witch Baby and Angel Juan are reunited, but Angel Juan tells her he needs to stay in New York a while longer and she has to return to Los Angeles. Witch Baby understands, because even though they cannot be together at present, they love each other and will be together again someday.

31139487

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Caucasia

Danzy Senna

1998

{"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}

The novel is about Birdie and Cole, multiracial sisters who become separated in life because of their differing appearances and the racial identities which people ascribe to them. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator Birdie is not classified by appearance. Her sister Cole is described as "cinnamon-skinned, curly haired",Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. [[Riverhead Books], New York (1998)]. traits associated with African Americans of mixed race. Senna hints that the girls' mother is European American (her belly is called a "pale balloon" on page 5 of the novel). Over time, race, as experienced by the girls in United States society, creates a rift between their lives. As young girls, Birdie and Cole speak an indistinguishable language of their creation which they call "Elemeno". The closeness between the two sisters suggests that appearance is not a defining characteristic of personality or behavior. Senna offers culture and atmosphere as having the most profound effect on a child's development. Birdie especially struggles to identify with and reconcile her multiracial identity. At the end of the novel, the two sisters are reunited in Berkeley. The two sisters are separated when their father decides to leave for Brazil in search of a more racially harmonious society and their mother flees their home in fear that she is in trouble with the FBI. Each parent takes the child that is closest to them in appearance, Cole leaving with her father and his new girlfriend and Birdie leaving with her mother. In order to avoid being caught, Birdie and her mother adopt false identities and Birdie is forced to change her name to Jesse Goldman and pass as a Jewish girl. Birdie and her mother remain on the lam for several years, but even as time passes Birdie is unable to fully adopt this new identity. She cannot forget her sister, her father, or her the race that she truly is. She hopes for the day when her family will be reunited and she can stop the facade. Near the end of the novel, after being separated from Cole and her father, Birdie runs away from her mother in order to find them. Her mom has forced her to pass as a Jewish girl for years. Cole, with her darker skin and thicker hair, has been passing as black with their father. Once Birdie comes to realize that she may never be reunited with them unless she takes it upon herself, she leaves her mother to find them. Before meeting with Cole again, she reunites with her father, whom she is angry with. She cannot understand why racial appearance has caused division in her family. Birdie says to her father, "I heard myself say, 'Fuck the canaries in the fucking coal mines. You left me. You left me with Mum, knowing she was going to disappear. Why did you only take Cole? Why didn't you take me? If race is so make-believe, why did I go with Mum? You gave me to Mum 'cause I looked white. You don't think that's real? Those are the facts." Senna, Danzy. Caucasia. [[Riverhead Books], New York (1998)]. (336) For so long, Birdie was made to believe that there was some logical reason behind the splitting of her family. In her immaturity, she was led to think that her passing as someone else and constant displacement were for a greater cause and that her family would eventually be reunited. Birdie’s inability to understand and lashing out against her parents in the end shows she has successfully come of age. After years of struggling to maintain some sense of who she was while having to cover it up in different ways based on her environment, she grew to recognize the ridiculousness of her circumstances. She no longer sees her parents for what she grew up envisioning them as. She is angry that something so shallow could have such deep repercussions for her and her family. She cannot make sense of her father's lack of effort in planning a return to her. An irony exists in her father’s working so hard at writing about race while working so little at forming a relationship with his mulatto daughter based on her racial appearance. Birdie comes to understand that there is nothing to understand about the actions of her mother and father. The way in which skin color has ruined her childhood and the fact that her parents allowed it to is too insensible for her to ever make sense of. Through this coming of age novel, Birdie grows to understand the ridiculousness in accepting appearance as a determining characteristic of performance.

31145325

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Goals in the Air

Michael Hardcastle

1972

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

The book tells the story of Kenny Rider a young striker who plays for fictitious Second Division team Marton Rangers. Kenny manages to break into the first team at the age of sixteen and attracts a lot of attention and some jealousy for his talent and goalscoring ability. Unfortunately, off the field Kenny has to contend with a range of problems including an apathetic girlfriend and an actively hostile father. Whilst many of Hardcastle's other books see their protagonists triumph over adversity, the end of this short novel sees Kenny continuing to struggle with the many pressures of top class football.

31145552

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Soccer Comes First

Michael Hardcastle

1966

{"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"}

The book begins with retired England striker Andy Blair who has recently moved to the town of Scorton watching the local team struggle in a Second Division match. After the game he is approached by club chairman Herbert Graydon who convinces him to come out of retirement and play for Rovers. As the story progresses Andy, whose performances begin to lift Rovers up the table, introduces his eighteen-year old son Bobbie into the team. Bobbie, despite playing well, becomes mixed up with some local match-fixers and experiences some difficulties in his relationship with his girlfriend Adrienne who he follows to Bristol on the eve of a big game to try to resolve their problems. Andy feels forced to take matters into his own hand and tackles the match-fixers himself before retrieving his son. At the novel's conclusion the Blairs are reunited and can finally concentrate on trying to ensure Rovers win promotion to the First Division.

31146081

/m/0gh7mht

Charity

Bernard is still working for Frank Harrington in Berlin where he hardly ever gets to see his wife and children whom he hardly knows anymore. While crossing Poland Bernard is captured by Polish intelligence and is severely beaten for shooting their men while retrieving George Kosinski in Hope. Meanwhile George is being interrogated in London but he has revealed no useful information and is now threatening to destroy Bernard and Fiona's careers. Bernard is using his position in Berlin to investigate Tessa'a death which results in Silas Gaunt confessing to hiring Thurkettle to fake Fiona's death but he denies knowing anything about using Tessa and tells Bernard to back off. Bernard has had enough and contacts The Swede to organise to fly him, his children and hopefully Gloria out of the country to begin a new life. The Swede is drunk and erratic and tells Bernard that on the night of Tessa's death he was hired to fly Jay Prettyman from Berlin to London and was carrying a locked box that Prettyman would need. Prettyman never showed up but his ex-wife did and took the box. Bernard tracks down the dying Prettyman who confesses that he hired Thurkettle but found him dead at the meeting place and drove back to West Berlin and that his ex-wife is now demanding money for the return of the box. Prettyman says the operations was all a waste of time anyway because the ruse never fooled the KGB. Bernard finds Thurkettle's hastily buried body and a gun Werner was asked to give Prettyman at the meeting place. Werner steals the box from Prettyman's ex-wife and in retaliation she shoots and wounds Werner at his grand house warming party. The Swede is murdered by the Russians and Gloria tells Bernard that his plan to abduct his children was stupid and that they are best off where they are, in boarding school which provides them with much needed stability. Bernard realises there is no future for him and Gloria and that she is now seeing Bret. Bret holds an inquiry in to Tessa's murder and announces Silas was solely responsible and no longer has any connection to the Department. The Department ordered Dicky to bring Tessa to Berlin. Silas blackmailed Prettyman into hiring Thurkettle to kill Tessa and then killing him. The box was a bomb designed to blow up The Swede's plane removing the last loose ends. Bernard suspected this but said nothing hoping to flush out who else was in on the plan but is forced to step in when he discovers Bret has ordered Frank's assistant to break into the box. Bret tells Bernard that both he and the Department owe him and that he will do his best to try to get Bernard Frank's job, and a pension, when Frank retires. Bret tells Bernard he is being stupid and that Fiona really loves him and not her job. Bernard say he has asked Fiona to join him in Berlin and hopes that his children can go to school in Berlin just like he did.

31147154

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1001 Best Ways

2011-03

The crowd-sourced collection of best ways to address common life challenges, such as saving money, raising children, relationship, health, creative ideas, etc. It was launched on February 1, 2011.

31151251

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Only Time Will Tell

Jeffrey Archer

2011-09

The plot revolves around the main protagonist Harry Clifton, spanning the time between 1920 and the beginning of the Second World War. The novel is set in Bristol, England, from 1919 to 1940 and centers on Harry Clifton, a young boy destined to follow in the footsteps of his father and uncle and work on the docks until a new world is opened up to him. Harry has the gift of song, and when Miss Monday, the choir mistress, Mr. Holcombe, his elementary school teacher, and Old Jack Tar, a WWI hero and loner is changed forever. Harry’s mother, Maisie, works as a waitress and scrimps and saves to send her son to school and give him a better life. Maisie’s sacrifices and the secret of Harry’s parentage are the main focus of Only Time Will Tell. Harry has grown up thinking Arthur Clifton is his father and that he died in the war, but he begins to doubt that story when he does the math and realizes Arthur couldn’t possibly be his father if he died during the war. Maisie knows the truth about Harry’s parentage, and a few people know the truth about Arthur Clifton’s death, but no one tells Harry anything. While Harry is off at school befriending Giles Barrington, the son of the man who owns the shipping company where Harry’s father and uncle work and who knows what happened to Arthur Clifton, Maisie deals with countless personal tragedies and must make some tough decisions to continue Harry’s schooling. At the same time, it looks as though England may go to war with Germany, and Harry must consider what this means for his future.].

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The Tiger's Wife

Téa Obreht

11/1/2011

The Tiger's Wife is set in an unnamed Balkan country, in the present and half a century ago, and features a young doctor's relationship with her grandfather and the stories he tells her, primarily about the 'deathless man' who meets him several times in different places and never changes, and a deaf-mute girl from his childhood village who befriends a tiger that has escaped from a zoo. It was largely written while she was at Cornell, and excerpted in The New Yorker in June 2009. Asked to summarize it by a university journalist, Obreht replied, "It’s a family saga that takes place in a fictionalized province of the Balkans. It’s about a female narrator and her relationship to her grandfather, who’s a doctor. It’s a saga about doctors and their relationships to death throughout all these wars in the Balkans."

31155094

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Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves

Matthew Reilly

{"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"}

During a routine re-staffing of Dragon Island, an old Soviet weapons installation in the Arctic, a Russian Spetsnaz team comes under fire from an unknown enemy. Vasily Ivanov, a researcher assigned to Dragon, manages to send out a distress signal which is intercepted by an American listening station in Alaska before his plane is shot down. Dragon Island was once the cornerstone of Soviet weapons research, a place where cutting-edge weapons were designed by scientists with a blank cheque. It has been seized by an organisation calling themselves "the Army of Thieves", led by the enigmatic Lord of Anarchy. Self-proclaimed anarchists, the Army is made up of enforcers of the Pinochet regime, Sudanese Janjaweed militants, Islamic fundamentalists and narco-terrorists. They are planning to unleash Dragon Island's centrepiece, known as the Tesla weapon. Experiments with rocket fuel and samples of acids acquired from the atmosphere of Venus have created a compound that, when ignited, can set fire to the atmosphere. The Army of Thieves have taken control of the facility on Dragon Island and have activated the preliminary stages of the Tesla weapon. Still reeling from the events of Scarecrow, United States Marine Corps Captain Shane Schofield has been reassgined to an equipment-testing project in the Arctic, including "Bertie", a mutli-functional, independently-intelligent robot. Although cleared for active duty, Schofield is seen as a liability by the Corps, and has spent most of his time teaching new recruits. His situation is somewhat complicated by an outstanding bounty on his head; although members of the Majestic-12 conspiracy are dead, the French government has offered to pay the bounty as retaliation for the events of Ice Station and Scarecrow. Schofield is one of just two units close to Dragon Island; the other is a Navy SEAL team stationed on the USS Miami, a Los Angeles-class submarine. Ira Barker, the leader of this unit, warns Schofield to stay away from Dragon Island or else risk being caught in the crossfire. The SEAL insertion is a disaster, with every member of the team being killed off by the Army. With no other choice, Scofield makes for Dragon Island. Schofield and his unit locate the remains of Ivanov's downed plane, and manage to rescue him while the Army attack. However, they are interrupted by the arrival of a French submarine; the French government has sent an assassin known as Renard after Schofield. Realising the threat posed by the Army, Schofield saves Renard two members of the French commando team sent after him, Dubois and Huguenot, also known as "The Barbarian", or "Baba" and described as Mother's equal. Successfully infiltrating Dragon Island, Renard reveals herself to be Veronique Champion, cousin to Luc Champion (a French researcher killed in Ice Station). She agrees to help Schofield stop the Army, but pledges to kill him once the threat ends. They question Ivanov, who reveals that in order to fire the Tesla weapon, the Army needs to seed the atmosphere with the acid-rocket fuel mixture, before firing a battery of missiles armed with red uranium into the cloud. Schofield decides to target the red uranium and throw it into the Arctic Ocean. As Schofield and his team begin to fight their way through the installation, David Fairfax - his friend in the Defence Intelligence Agency - begins to research the Army and Dragon Island. He grows suspicious that an irregular army such as the Army of Thieves would be able to carry out a string of attacks against high-value targets to arm themselves, and his suspicions are confirmed when he finds a CIA operative named Marius Calderon was writing about Dragon Island before the Soviet Union actually built anything there. He confirms that the Lord of Anarchy is actually Calderon, the CIA's foremost expert on psychological operations and gifted with extraordinary foresight; Calderon predicted the rise of China as an economic superpower by 2010 as early as 1982. Fairfax realises that Calderon let the Soviet Union discover the plans to the Tesla weapon, and that the acid-rocket fuel mix will be distributed by the jetstream over China, India and Europe; once ignited, these regions will be decimated, but the United States will be relatively unaffected and able to preserve its position as the world's only economic superpower. Calderon succeeds in firing a missile armed with red uranium into the gas cloud, igniting it, but it is revealed that Ira Barker survived the SEAL team's assault and was able to shut down the gas diffusion process long enough to create a safe buffer, thereby limiting the ignition. However, Calderon still has several missiles at his disposal, and the larger gas cloud is well within their range. Schofield destroys the red uranium primers one by one, but most of team is captured before he can destroy the last two. He and his team are tortured by Calderon - Mother and Baba have their heads locked in wooden boxes with hungry rats - before Schofield is electrocuted and his signature sunglasses claimed as a prize by Calderon. He is revived by Bertie and finds Mother and Baba survived by biting the heads off the rats locked in with them. They then give chase to Calderon before he can either launch the final missile, or detonate a warhead on board a cargo plane. Calderon escapes by ejecting a stolen mini-submersible from his plane, but Schofield ejects the last missile from the plane before it can ignite the gas cloud. The subsequent explosion disables Calderon's submarine; he is found two weeks later by a Norwegian fishing trawler, having suffocated at the bottom of the ocean. With the threat posed by the Army finally over, the Russian government authorises a missile strike on Dragon Island. Schofield races back to the facility and gathers his unit in a nuclear bunker hidden under a laboratory. The missile destroys Dragon Island and kills the remnants of the Army. Schofield and his team are found alive and well several days later, having survived the blast. They are commended by the President for their actions, and the French government lift the bounty on Schofield's head for rescuing Veronique's team. Having finally come to terms with the death of Elizabeth Gant, Schofield starts a relationship with Veronique Champion - however, upon returning to the Marine barracks, he finds his sunglasses in his room, implying that Marius Calderon is alive.

31158318

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The Manxman

Hall Caine

1894

Part I The novel concerns the love triangle between Kate Cregeen and the two good friends and cousins, the illegitimate, poorly educated but good-hearted Peter Quilliam, and the well-educated and cultured Philip Christian. Kate’s father rejects Pete’s request to marry his daughter, due to his low prospects, and so Pete sets off to Kimberly, South Africa, in order to earn his fortune. He leaves Philip in charge of looking after Kate in his absence. Part II As Kate matures into an adult woman and Philip rises to become the foremost young lawyer in the island, they begin to fall in love. This is first openly spoken of between them when they hear rumours that Pete has died in Africa. However, the course of their love is still not open as Philip has to choose between worldly success and the position as Deemster, or his love of the lower class Kate. Feeling this push them apart, Kate “is driven to an effort to hold on to the man whom life is tearing away from her by making a mistaken appeal to his love.” Part III Pete returns to the island with a fortune fit to have his marriage proposal accepted by Kate’s parents, while Kate is bed-ridden recovering from an illness brought about by Philip’s breaking with her in order to stay true to his promise to Pete. Remaining unaware of anything between Philip and Kate, Pete arranges for the wedding, which Kate goes through with in a confused daze. Part IV Kate gives birth to a daughter which she realises is Philip’s. This fact, along with the reason for Kate’s displeasure at the marriage, remains hidden to Pete, who proves himself to be a good and doting husband. When Kate informs Philip of the paternity of the baby girl, they arrange for her to live with him in secret. She leaves Pete’s house to go to Philip on the evening when Pete is at the head of the crowd honouring Philip on his return to Ramsey, having been made Deemster. Part V Heart-broken at the disappearance of Kate, Pete looks to keep her memory in honour by pretending that she has gone to Liverpool to stay with a fictional uncle. In order to maintain this lie against the gossip of the town, Pete multiplies his lies in beginning to fake a written correspondence between Kate and himself. As Philip watches his friend’s pathetic pretence, he feels the weight of his deceit, which causes him to take to drink and to pull away from Kate who has been secretly installed in his house. This situation continues until Kate leaves Philip so that he is relieved of his wretched situation. Part VI With Pete’s fortune used up, his deception with the letters is found out and Kate is universally thought of as a fallen woman by everyone but Pete. Meanwhile, the child falls sick, the news of which reaches Kate where she had fled, in London. She returns back to see the child where she again meets Pete before throwing herself into the harbour, attempting to end her shameful life. However, she is saved and immediately brought before the Deemster, Philip, to be tried. Philip realises who she is as he commits her to the prison in Castletown, and then faints. Whilst still in a swoon he is taken to Pete’s house, where Pete hears Philip’s feverish and unconscious confessions. However, instead of wreaking vengeance on Philip and Kate, Pete “realises that he alone is the person in the way, and therefore wipes himself out in order that the woman he loves may be happy.” So Pete determines to leave the island again, divorcing Kate before he goes and leaving Philip with the child and his best wishes. Philip then overcomes his final temptation, to take up the position of Governor, and confesses everything publically and so unburdes himself. The final scene sees him retrieving Kate from prison in order to start life afresh.

31158647

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Foundation

This novel tells the story of Mags, an enslaved child working alongside other enslaved orphans in the bowels of a gemstone mine. The mine owner, Cole Peters, treats the children with casual brutality, an Mags, orphaned in his early childhood, has known no other life all the way up until the mysterious white horse stampedes into his life. This of course, is Dallen, his Companion, who assists Mags by bringing in another Herald to free him and the children. Their freedom comes on the heels of the arrest of Cole Peters, and Mags is flung into the fray of Haven as a Heraldic Trainee, with no notion of life outside of abject slavery. This, of course, left its scars, and Mags has both no idea of how to function in "normal" society, and no notion of why he so often winds up on the wrong end of trouble. His heavy accent and "stupidity" about such normal things leads to the King's Own taking him under his wing as a spy protégé, however, Mags lives in perpetual fear of the bad old days. This fear isn't unjustified, for it seems all of the Heralds are experiencing their own tumultuous changes, as they slowly abandon the old system of apprenticeships which Vanyel learned in, for one of a collegiate style such as what Herald Talia and Herald Elspeth experienced in the time of Arrows of the Queen. This switch is due to a sudden surge in the numbers of people Chosen, and the accompanying tremendous burdening of the Heraldic, Bardic, and Healer Collegium resources. The crowding is so intense, that Mags is forced to take a room in the Companion's stable. This, on top of his painful social ineptness, sets the stage for a confrontation between Mags and his detractors. Mags, who used to sleep in worse conditions, does not mind being out in the stables, and remains unaware of why so many others do. However, one Herald accuses him of bringing all manner of illicit goods into the room because of his lodging, and nearly attacks him before the Compainions intervene. Because of Mags's upbringing he has few friends so he literally does not understand many things most people in the Collegium find to be the utmost of importance, however with Dallen's help he finds two true friends, Lena, a Bardic Trainee, and Bear, a Healer Trainee. All while this is happening, Mags is trained by the Kings Own in the art of spying, and is assigned to keep an eye on two 'dignitaries' and their retinue of bodyguards and underlings who are visiting and causing trouble. He is also visiting the Guard Archives, in an attempt to find out how he ended up orphaned and enslaved in the first place. There is a suspicion that Mags' parents may have been bandits themselves, a prospect that leaves Mags troubled and desperate to find the actual Guard reports. There, he discovers that Bear has been kidnapped by the supposed dignitaries, and is being kept hostage with a mad man. The dignitaries have been digging through the guard archives, and there they attack Bear who was doing the same thing for personal reasons. Mags ends up rescuing Bear and dispatching the guards

31159822

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Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine picks up where Skeleton Creek left off, with Ryan and Sarah trapped in the Dredge. They escape and return home, after finding out about the Crossbones, a secret society that protects the Dredge. Ryan learns that his father, Paul McCray, is one of the last ones alive. When Sarah and Ryan return home they attempt to find out as much as they can about the Crossbones. This includes, spying on Ryan's dad, interviews with Henry, Paul's best friend, and encounters with Old Joe Bush, the horrifying ghost of the Dredge. In the end, Ryan and Sarah discover that the Dredge is filled with millions of dollars worth of gold and that Henry is really insane and has been disguising himself as Old Joe Bush.

31160772

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Darkest Mercy

Melissa Marr

2/22/2011

{"/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"}

Keenan must choose between his queen Aislinn and his beloved Donia, while Aislinn is in love with Seth. However when the warmongering villain Bananach attacks they must unite, until at the end the love quadrilateral is resolved.

31167059

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Pierrot lunaire

In a familiar dichotomy of the Symbolists, Pierrot lunaire occupies a divided space: a public realm, over which the sun presides, and a private realm, dominated by the moon. The waking, sunlit world, populated by Pierrot's Commedia dell'Arte companions, is marked by deformity, degeneracy, avarice, and lust. Its Crispins are "ugly", and its Columbine "arches her back", apparently in expectation of sexual pleasure (1: "Theater"). The meretriciously multicolored Harlequin—"shining like a solar spectrum" (11: "Harlequin")—is an "artificial serpent" whose "essential goal" is "falsehood and deceit" (8: "Harlequinade"). An old serving-woman connives in his scheming by accepting a bribe to procure Columbine's favors (11: "Harlequin"). These puppets live under a sky swarming with "sinister black butterflies" that "seek blood to drink", having "extinguished the sun's glory" with their wings (19: "Black Butterflies"). The sun itself is nearing the end of that glory: at its setting it seems like a Roman reveler, "full of disgust", who slits his wrists and empties his blood into "filthy sewers" (20: "Sunset"). It is a "great sun of despair" (33: "The Storks"). Pierrot is of the dreaming, moonlit world. His is an enchanted interior space, in which sequestered violins are caressed by moonbeams, thereby setting their souls, "full of silence and harmony", thrumming (32: "Lunar Violin"). He lives there as an aloof isolato, encountering in a "sparkling polar icicle" a "Pierrot in disguise" (9: "Polar Pierrot") and seeking, "all along the Lethe", not Columbine the fickle woman but her ethereal floral namesakes—"pale flowers of moonbeams/Like roses of light" (10: "To Columbine"). The moon is, aptly, a "pale washerwoman" (5: "Moon over the Wash-House") whose ablutions minister chiefly to the mind. For Pierrot has lost the happy enchantments of the past: the moribund pantomimic world seems "absurd and sweet, like a lie" (37: "Pantomime"), and the "soul" of its old comedies, to which he sometimes mentally propels himself, with an imaginary oar of moonlight (36: "Pierrot's Departure"), is "like a soft crystal sigh" bemoaning its own extinction (34: "Nostalgia"). Now, at the end of the century, Pierrot resides in a "sad mental desert" (34: "Nostalgia"). He is bored and splenetic: "His strange, mad gaiety/Has flown away, like a white bird" (15: "Spleen"). Too often the moon seems like a "nocturnal consumptive" tossing about on the "black pillow of the skies", deceiving the "carefree lover passing by" into mistaking for "graceful rays/[Its] white and melancholy blood" (21: "Sick Moon"). When he cannot find relief in her customary magic—in the "strange absinthe" of her beams, this "wine that we drink with our eyes" (16: "Moon-Drunk")—he takes pleasure in tormenting his enemies: he makes music by drawing a bow across Cassander's pot-belly (6: "Pierrot's Serenade"); he bores a hole in his skull as a bowl for his pipe (45: "Cruel Pierrot"). (Cassander is a target because he is an "academician" [37: "Pantomime"], a dry-as-dust guardian of the Law.) Madness seems to be lurking at Pierrot's elbow, as when he makes up his face with moonlight (3: "Pierrot-Dandy"), then spends an evening trying to brush a spot of it from his black jacket (38: "Moon-Brusher"). At his most despairing, he is visited by thoughts of his "last mistress"—the gallows (17: "The Song of the Gallows"), at the end of whose rope he dangles in "his white Moon robe" (18: "Suicide"). That the moon, indeed, seems to connive in his extinction is suggested by its sometime appearance as "a white saber/On a somber cushion of watered silk" that threatens to come whistling down on Pierrot's neck (24: "Decapitation"). His consolation is that the art in which he resides will have eternal life: "Beautiful verses are great crosses/On which red Poets bleed" (30: "The Crosses"). The old succor of religion is replaced by that of poetry, but at a cost—and with a difference. What is summoned to "the altar of [these] verses" is not the gentle Mary but the "Madonna of Hysteria", who holds out "to the incredulous universe/[Her] Son, with his limbs already green,/His flesh sagging and decayed" (28: "Evocation"). To the assembled faithful, Pierrot offers his heart: "Like a red and horrible Host/For the cruel Eucharist" (29: "Red Mass"). The new Lamb of God is a consumptive, his Word a confession of both self-sacrifice and impotence.

31170616

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Goal

Michael Hardcastle

1969

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

The story charts the rapid rise of talented teenage footballer Barry Dillon. At the start of the book his ambition is simply to make it into the school First XI and by the end he has become the youngest player ever to play for his local professional team, Scorton Rovers. Along the way he has to cope with sceptical parents, some nasty injuries and the jealousy of some of his peers, but his skill and determination, along with the unflinching support of his sister Jane, see him through. Goal is the first Hardcastle book about Scorton Rovers not to feature team captain Andy Blair who is injured when Barry makes his debut against Preston North End.

31170742

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United!

Michael Hardcastle

1973

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

United! follows youth football team Bank Vale United's attempts to improve their fortunes by buying a player from a rival team. Despite the fact that their team is amateur, United's impetuous striker Kevin Ripley believes there is no reason why they cannot pay for someone to come and join them. Kevin's team-mates Keith Nash and Gary Ansell, although sceptical, agree to the plan and the boys manage to raise the princely sum of £1 to purchase the talents of Nick Abel-Smith. Despite Nick's obvious ability he is an unsettling influence and the Bank Vale players have to make a tough choice between success and loyalty. In addition to the usual football action Hardcastle includes a section on another of his interests, Motocross.

31172045

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Unlikely Brothers

John Prendergast

5/17/2011

John Prendergast, at twenty years old, decided to become a Big Brother to Michael Mattocks, a seven-year-old living in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Washington, DC. The book, co-authored by both, describes their different perspectives on their continuing relationship, shared over a period of more than 27 years.

31172333

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Dweller

When Toby Floren was eight years old, he discovered a monster living in the woods behind his house. A ghastly, frightening creature with claws, fangs, and a taste for human flesh. As he ran out of the forest, screaming, Toby felt that he'd been lucky to escape with his life. Years later, Toby finds comfort with the creature. It's his own special secret-something that nobody else in the world knows about. Somebody to talk to. Somebody to confide in. Sure, Toby has concerns about his own sanity, but really, what boy wouldn't want to be best friends with a monster in the woods, especially if he's being tormented by bullies? The creature, who he names Owen, may be the answer to his problems... From Jeff Strand, the author of Pressure, comes the story of a macabre, decades-long friendship. A relationship that will last their entire lives, through times of happiness, tragedy, love, loss, madness, and complete darkness. Dweller. The lifetime story of a boy and his monster.

31180983

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Magic Seeds

V.S. Naipaul

Magic Seeds is a sequel to Naipaul's 2001 novel Half a Life. Magic Seeds takes over where "Half a Life" left off – with Willie Somerset Chandran, a transplanted Indian, living with his sister Sarojini in Berlin. He was forced to come to Germany after a revolution in an unnamed African country (presumably Mozambique) forced him into exile. He had spent 18 years in Africa, and is ill at ease in the urban European setting. His sister arranges for him to return to India and become involved with communist guerrillas over there. He accepts this mission, but without any real sense of commitment to the rebels cause. He is quickly disillusioned with the guerrillas – their personal shortcomings and the ill-advised tactics of the movement – but remains involved with them partly out of inertia and partly out of fear that his former comrades might kill him. Eventually he gets captured and imprisoned, and finds life in prison preferable to a life on the run. He gets released from the prison when his English friend Roger arranges for an old collection of his short stories to be republished, which causes some embarrassment to the Indian government. Willie moves to London, and there he finds himself in an upper-middle class social set, and he slowly drifts into the life in the suburbs, with all its ironies and quiet sense of claustrophobia.

31184460

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The Need for Roots

Simone Weil

The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is subdivided into fourteen sections, each dealing with specific human needs, referred to as 'needs of the soul'. Part 2 is subdivided into three sections, dealing with the concept of uprootedness in relation to urban life, rural life and nationhood. Part 3 is undivided and discusses the possibilities for inspiring a nation. Only a small part of the book discusses the specific solutions that were of unique applicability to France in the 1940s, while most of the work discusses the general case and is of broad and lasting relevance. Part 1 begins with a discussion of obligations and rights. Weil asserts that obligations are more fundamental than rights, as a right is only meaningful insofar as others fulfil their obligation to respect it. A man alone in the universe, she says, would have obligations but no rights. Rights are therefore "subordinate and relative" to obligations. Weil says that those directing the French Revolution were mistaken in basing their ideas for a new society on the notion of rights rather than obligations, suggesting that a system based on obligations would have been better. Weil claims that while rights are subject to varying conditions, obligations are "eternal", "situated above this world" and "independent of conditions", applying to all human beings. The nature of the performance of obligations, however, may vary depending on circumstances. The most fundamental obligation to other human beings involves respecting the essential needs of others - the "needs of the soul". Weil backs up her ideas on the needs of the soul by mentioning that Christian, ancient Egyptian and other traditions have held similar views throughout history, particularly on the obligation to provide others with food. This, Weil says, should serve as a model for other needs of the soul. Weil also makes a distinction between physical needs (such as food, heating and medical attention) and non-physical needs that are concerned with the "moral side" of life. Both kinds are vital, and the deprivation of these needs causes one to fall into a state "more or less resembling death". Weil goes into some detail on collectives. She says that obligations are not binding to collectives, but to the individuals of which the collective is composed. Collectives should be respected, not for their own sake, but because they are 'food for mankind'. Collectives that are not 'food for mankind' - harmful or useless collectives - should be removed. The remainder of Part 1 is divided into sections discussing the essential needs of the soul, which Weil says correspond to basic bodily needs like the requirements for food, warmth and medicine. She says such needs can mostly be grouped into antithetical pairs, such as the needs for rest and activity, or for warmth and coolness, and that they are best satisfied when a balance is struck allowing both needs to be met in turn. In communities where all essential needs are satisfied there will be a "flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty and happiness". Order is introduced as a preeminent need. Weil defines order as an arrangement of society which minimises the situations one encounters where a choice has to be made between incompatible obligations. Liberty is described as the ability to make meaningful choices. It is recognized that societies must inevitably have rules for the common good which restrict freedom to a certain degree. Weil argues that these rules do not truly diminish one's liberty if they meet certain conditions; if their purpose is easily grasped and there aren't too many, then mature individuals of good will should not find the rules oppressive. This is illustrated by describing the habit of "not eating disgusting or dangerous things" as not being an infringement of liberty. The only people who would feel restricted by such rules are characterized as childlike. Obedience is defined as an essential need of the soul as long as it's the sort of obedience that arises from freely given consent to obey a given set of rules or the commands of a leader. Obedience motivated by a fear of penalties or a desire for reward is mere servility and of no value. The author writes that it's important that the social structure has a common goal, the essence of which can be grasped by all, so people can appreciate the purpose of the rules and orders. Weil says that everyone has a need to feel useful and even essential to others. They should ideally make at least some decisions and have opportunity to show initiative as well as carrying out work. She says the unemployed person is starved of this need. Weil advises that for people of a fairly strong character this need extends to a requirement to take a leadership role for at least part of their lives, and that a flourishing community life will provide sufficient opportunities for all to have their turn commanding others. Equality is an essential need when defined as a recognition that everyone is entitled to an equal amount of respect as a human being, regardless of any differences. Weil advises that an ideal society ought to involve a balance of equality and inequality. While there should be social mobility both up and down, if children have a truly equal chance for self-advancement based purely on their own abilities, everyone who ends up in a low grade job will be seen as being there due to their own shortcomings. Weil says an ideal social organisation would involve holding those who enjoy power and privilege to a higher standard of conduct than those who don't; in particular a crime from an employer and against employees should be punished much more severely than a crime from an employee against his or her employer. Weil writes of the importance of a system of hierarchy in which one feels devotion towards superiors, not as individuals, but as symbols. Hierarchism represents the order of the heavenly realm, and it helps one to fit into their moral place. Honour is the need for a special sort of respect over and above the respect automatically due to every human being. An individual's honour relates to how well their conduct measures up to certain criteria, which vary according to the social milieu inhabited by the individual. The need for honour is best satisfied when people are able to participate in a shared noble tradition. For a profession to satisfy this need, it should have an association able to "keep alive the memory of all the store of nobility, heroism, probity, generosity and genius spent in the exercise of that profession". Two sorts of necessary punishment are discussed. Disciplinary punishments help to reinforce an individual's good conscience, by providing external support in the battle against falling into vice. The second and most essential sort of punishment is the punitive. Weil considers that in a sense the committal of a crime puts the individual outside of the chain of obligations that form the good society, and that punishment is essential to re-integrate the individual into lawful society. Weil says it's essential for people to be free to express any opinion or idea. However she advises that very harmful views should not be expressed in the part of the media that is responsible for shaping public opinion. Security is described as freedom from fear and terror, except under brief and exceptional circumstances. She says that permanent fear causes a "semi-paralysis of the soul". Weil argues that risk, in the right amount, can be enough to protect one from a detrimental type of boredom and teach one how to appropriately deal with fear, but not be so much that one is overcome with fear. Weil writes that the soul suffers feelings of isolation if deprived of objects to call its own, which can serve as extensions of the body. She advises that where possible people should be able to own their own homes and the tools of their trade. The need for collective property is satisfied when people, from the richest to the poorest, feel a shared sense of ownership as well as enjoyment of public buildings, land and events. Weil asserts the need for truth is the most sacred of all needs. It is compromised when people don't have access to reliable and accurate sources of information. Because working people often lack the time to verify what they read in books and the mass media, writers who introduce avoidable errors should be held accountable. Propaganda should be banned and people who deliberately lie in the media should be liable to severe penalties.

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The Mark of the Horse Lord

Rosemary Sutcliff

1965

{"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"}

The story revolves around slave-gladiator Red Phaedrus, a red haired half Roman, half Celt. He receives his wooden-foil, i.e. his freedom after winning a fight-to-the-death in the Corstopitum arena. He is soon after approached by representatives of the Dal Riada, who ask him to impersonate their king in an effort to win back tribal leadership from a usurper queen. Phaedrus is persuaded, accepts the role of Midir, the original prince who's eyes were put-out by the queen, preventing him from ruling, and receives a signifying tattoo on his forehead, the eponymous Mark of the Horse Lord. The stage is then set for a struggle between King and Queen, between Dal Riada and Caledones, between the Sun God and the Great Mother; a theme used in many Sutcliff novels. Phaedrus spends time in a town on the Northern Wall, learning his role from the original prince Midir and the culture of the Celts. Several historical subjects are discussed, including Lollius Urbicus and the laying-waste of Valentia after subjugation, the Pax Romana and its effects, Calgacus's battles against General Agricola, and the viewpoints of Tacitus on all of this. A revolt ensues against the Queen, and the Dal Riada capital of Dun Monaidh is retaken, but the queen escapes to her kin amongst the Caledones. Phaedrus is crowned king in a ceremony where he places one foot on the carved footprint of previous kings. He lives among the Dal Riada, developing trust and understanding with some who recognize him for an impostor, most who do not. A war ensues between the Dal Riada and the Caledones, who are portrayed as Picts. The fighting occurs across the countryside around Cruachan (described as the Shield Boss of the World), as the Dal Riada struggle to defend their frontier. Other geographical features encountered include Loch Abha, Loch Fhiona, the Cluta, the Firth of the War Boats, and Glen Croe. The Dal Riada eventually win, the Caledones are dispersed, but the Queen flees and finds refuge in a Roman frontier fort. An attempt to assassinate the Queen is made with the help of the true Midir, in which both die, and Phaedrus is captured by the Romans. He is offered freedom at a great cost to the Dal Riada, referencing back to the discussions of Pax Romana and Roman treatment of the native tribes. Phaedrus instead opts to sacrifice himself for the survival of his adopted people, punctuating the concept of responsibility and the sacrificial king developed throughout the novel. The theme of the novel is built around an individual struggling to find identify and belonging, similar to Sutcliff novels such as Outcast and Dawn Wind, revolving around conflicting cultures, and the duties assumed and performed by individuals within those cultures. The duties of a king are shown in many of her novels, including Sword at Sunset and Sun Horse, Moon Horse, and have been credited as being influenced by James Frazer's The Golden Bough.

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Andamina Jeevitam

==Sources== te: అందమైన జీవితము

31190074

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The Cult

Max Simon Ehrlich

{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}

Jeff was a loving son to Mr and Mrs Reed. But when he went to Ashtaroth, they lost him. He took a new name. He cursed his parents and spurned their love. Forever. for Jeff is now a member of The Cult. The Souls for Jesus, the brainchild of the Master, Buford Hodges, a tax-deductible, multi-million dollar industry feeding on the minds and bodies of the young and vulnerable. Only one man can redeem these lost souls. Only one man dares to take on the sinister forces of the Master. Only one man can help the Reeds. The man they call The Devil..

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The Sun Saboteurs

Damon Knight

1961

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

In the future, Earth has been devastated by war and disease and supports only a primitive agrarian society. Most Earthmen live elsewhere, as émigrés on planets that are populated by alien species. The author suggests that the human species is the only one plagued by "original sin", i.e. by an innate tendency to lie, cheat, kill; aliens have come to accept these traits without understanding them. The story takes place among a group of humans in the "Earth Quarter", a ghetto on the planet Palu that is populated by an insect-like alien race called the Niori. The story opens with a visit by a representative of a political group, the "Minority People's League", which endorses the return of humans to their ancestral planet and accommodation with the aliens. The envoy is attacked and murdered by a group of thugs who see all aliens as inferior to humans and who seek retribution for humans' second-class status. Their leader, Rack, commandeers a space ship and convinces a group from the Quarter to follow him as he establishes a new colony on an uninhabited planet. Instead, Rack puts them to work building "total-conversion bombs" and begins a campaign of using the bombs to destroy the suns of alien solar systems (hence the "sun saboteurs" of the title). Eventually Rack is stopped by a fleet of galactic (alien) ships, but he barely escapes and returns to Palu. The humans murder him, but are nevertheless forced by the Niori to leave. At the story's close, the humans are preparing to board a ship for Earth.

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The Belton Estate

Anthony Trollope

Clara Amedroz is the only surviving child of the elderly squire of Belton Castle in Somersetshire. At twenty-five, she is old for an unmarried woman. Her father's income and savings have been dissipated to pay for the extravagances of her brother, who subsequently committed suicide. Since her father has no living sons, his estate, which is entailed, will pass upon his death to a distant cousin, Will Belton. Despite her poor prospects, she has two eligible suitors. Within four days of making her acquaintance, Will Belton proposes marriage to her. Belton is warm-hearted, kind, and generous, and these qualities make a strong impression on Clara. However, she believes herself in love with Captain Frederic Aylmer, although he has given no clear signs of feeling that way toward her. Aylmer is impeccable in his manners, smooth, urbane, well-read, and a member of Parliament; compared to him, Belton is awkward and unpolished. Clara rejects Belton's offer, urging him to regard her as a sister. Not long thereafter, Aylmer proposes to her, and she eagerly accepts. However, her happiness is short-lived. Her new fiancé proves shallow and cold, more concerned with his own comfort than with her happiness. Moreover, he expects her to subject herself to his domineering mother. Mr. Amedroz dies; and although Belton offers to allow Clara to remain at Belton Castle, she goes to live with the Aylmer family in Yorkshire. Lady Aylmer, who wants her son to marry money or a title, exerts herself to make Clara miserable there; and Captain Aylmer offers no support to his betrothed. For Clara, the final straw comes when Lady Aylmer demands that she sever her ties with a friend. Mrs. Askerton, Lady Aylmer has learned, left an abusive drunken husband in India and lived with Colonel Askerton for several years before the death of her husband freed her to marry him. Clara is duly appalled by her friend's past immorality, but cannot bring herself to cast off someone who has come to depend on her friendship. Pressed relentlessly on the subject by Lady Aylmer, she declares an end to her engagement and returns to Somersetshire, where she accepts the hospitality of the Askertons. Will Belton has never ceased to show his love for Clara, and she realizes that he is worthy of her love. However, she believes that it would be wrong to transfer her affection from one man to another. Only after Mrs. Askerton and Will's sister Mary Belton persuade her that it would be unjust to withhold her affection from Will can she bring herself to put aside her scruples and accept him. Marital bliss ensues.

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Charlie Wilcox

The book opens in Newfoundland in 1915. Charlie Wilcox's parents want him to go to college rather than become a seal hunter like his father; they believe that his club foot makes him unfit for an active life. To prove his courage and ability, fourteen-year-old Charlie decides to stow away on a sealing vessel; however, he finds himself instead on a troop ship bound for the war in Europe. Rather than return, he chooses to become a stretcher bearer at the front where he witnesses the horrors of trench warfare and the Battle of the Somme.

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The Pregnant King

The chronology of events as recorded in the Mahabharata has been manipulated and the story of Yuvanashva, replete with characters churned out of the author’s imagination, has been woven in. The protagonist, King Yuvanashva is the well liked ruler of Vallabhi, an obedient son,a devoted husband who aspires to be just towards all and uphold Dharma in his kingdom. From the onset of the story, the epic battle of Kurukshetra is imminent but the king’s mother, Shilavati, refuses to give her consent since he’s yet to sire an heir. Despite having three wives and several years of futile rituals the king has reached a point of desperation. So he seeks the help of the two eccentric sages, Yaja and Upayaja, who after an elaborate ritual create a potion meant for his barren queens but he ‘accidentally’ drinks it and ends up pregnant himself. The incident is hidden from everyone including the child except the wives, Shilavati and Asanga, the healer. After given birth to son, Mandhata, he successfully impregnates his second wife, Pulomi. The king who has lived his whole life by the code of Dharma now finds himself in a dilemma. “I am not sure that I am a man…I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?” The irony of the whole story is that the king who is supposed to be the epitome of manhood and upholder of Dharma longs till his last breath to be called ‘mother’ just once by Mandhata. The novel also delves into the stories of other characters like Shilavati, the ambitious and sharp princess who cannot be king because she’s a woman. Widowed at a young age she becomes the regent but this disturbs the Brahmin elders because “they were not used to a leader who nursed a child while discussing matters of dharma”. (It’s notable that the unconventionality of Shilavati’s own life doesn’t make her any more tolerant of her son’s situation later on, which underlines the point that non-conformity/anti-tradition can take many forms, and these aren’t always kindred spirits.) It also tells the story of Somvat and Sumedha, two childhood friends who decide to get married despite being men. Sthunakarna, a yaksha, who forsakes his manhood to make Shikhandi a husband and then reclaims it to make Somvat a wife. Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives forced to masquerade as a eunuch after being castrated by a nymph. Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by Yaja and an enchantress by Upayaja. It’s also the story of the patron god of Vallabhi, Ileshwar Mahadev, who becomes God on full moon days and Goddess on new moon nights. Throughout the book, the author highlights the paradoxes and ambiguities of life. He also uses the shift in chronology to use episodes in the epic of Mahabharata as parallels or counterpoints for the Yuvanashva story. The characters in this book make chatty references to the lives of their more famous contemporaries in Hastinapur as mentioned in the Mahabhharata. The question of whether the impotent Pandu and the blind Dhritrashtra were fit to become king is set against similar dilemmas involving characters in Vallabhi. There’s some healthy irreverence on view: when a messenger arrives with the momentous news that the war is over, no one in the kingdom is particularly interested, being more concerned about internal matters. When the hero Arjuna makes what amounts to a guest appearance and is asked about a story Bhishma narrated to the Pandavas before he died, his reply is a curt, “I’m sorry but I remember no such story. He said so many things” – a neat dismissal of the ponderous Shanti Parva, Bhishma’s long deathbed discourse about a king’s duties. The story largely seems obsessed with marriage and child birth. There are multiple references to bulls, fields, soil and seeds as euphemisms for sex and conception, and to illuminate the vexing question of “ownership” that arises when a woman is made pregnant by someone other than her husband. And then there are those troublesome dead ancestors, the “pitrs”, waiting for the arrival of a child so they can be reborn in the land of the living. Taking the form of crows, they perch outside bedchambers, waiting for quick results, flapping their wings impatiently when foreplay goes on for too long. (“Does it not bother you that your son’s seed is weak?” one of them indelicately asks Shilavati.) The Pregnant King isn’t a consistently satisfying work – It keeps the reader interested for the larger part but at places it’s punctuated with staccato sentences (“That’s what they were. Vehicles of an idea. Two ideas. No. One idea, two expressions. Two halves of the same idea. Mutually interdependent”) that can annoy. The occasional forced attempt at informality, and some philosophical mumbo-jumbo towards the end (“Within you is your soul, Adi-natha as Shiva, silent, observant, still. Around you is matter, Adi-natha as Shakti, ever-changing, enchanting, enlightening, enriching, empowering”). Also, readers whose engagement with ancient texts runs along orthodox lines might not be too interested in a modern myth about the amorphous nature of the world and its laws. But in a sense, this book is meant for just such readers as the author hopes to make us realise that in the rush to deem situations Black or White, the vast expanse of grey needs to be acknowledged and dealt with as well. “The imperfection of the human condition and our stubborn refusal to make room for all those in between” is a cautionary tale for our own times. The result is a sporadically successful book that tells an engrossing, subversive story but meanders a little too much.

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Half Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls

{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}

Half Broke Horses is the story of Lily Casey Smith’s life. Author Jeannette Walls, the granddaughter of Lily Casey Smith, wrote the book from Lily’s point of view. Lily is portrayed as a strong, spirited, and resourceful woman, who overcomes poverty and tragedy with the positive attitude that “When God closes a window, he opens a door. But it’s up to you to find it.” As a child growing up on the frontier in Texas, Lily learns how to break horses. At the age of fifteen, she rides five hundred miles, alone, to get to her job as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. Later in life, Lily runs a vast cattle ranch in Arizona, along with her second husband and their two children. A woman of many talents, Lily earns extra money at various points in her life by playing poker, selling bootleg liquor, and riding in horse races. She also tries to fight injustice and prejudice wherever she finds it, which occasionally lands her in trouble. Half Broke Horses depicts the freedom of rural life, its joys and struggles, and celebrates the courage and spirit of its protagonist. Jeannette Walls says the book is “in the vein of an oral history, a retelling of stories handed down by my family through the years, and undertaken with the storyteller’s traditional liberties.”

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The Outlaws of Mars

Otis Adelbert Kline

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}

Jerry Morgan, a man with no future on Earth, is offered a new life on Mars. He starts out on the wrong foot, meeting a princess and killing the fearsome-looking Martian beast he takes to be menacing her, which actually turns out to be her pet. From there Morgan becomes entangled in the politics of the Byzantine Martian royal court, spurns the advances of a would-be lover, escapes his hosts and role as an expendable political pawn. Various adventures follow, with dazzling swordplay, feats of strength, and other trials, tribulations and treacheries. Kline's Mars has multiple parallel canals, surrounded by walls and terraces, and the construction of the canals by Martian machines is described. The story has a race-war element that may jar the modern reader.

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Mirror Dance

Lois McMaster Bujold

1994

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}

Clone Mark masquerades as Miles Vorkosigan (his progenitor) and dupes Miles' mercenary force, the Dendarii, into a mission to free clones held "prisoner" on Jackson's Whole, an anything-goes freebooters' planet where Mark was created and raised. When Miles finds out, he attempts to rescue his troops and his brother from the mess Mark has made, but is killed by a needle-grenade. He is frozen in a cryonic chamber on the spot, but the medic in charge becomes separated from the rest of the men while retreating under fire. The medic uses an automated shipping system to send the chamber to safety, but is killed before he can tell anyone its destination. The Dendarii take Mark to Miles' parents on Barrayar. Cordelia accepts him as another son and has him acknowledged legally as a member of the family. After a while, Mark concludes that Miles is still on Jackson's Whole, and decides to go there himself to look for him, since Barrayaran Imperial Security does not believe him. Cordelia helps by buying him a ship. Meanwhile, the frozen Miles has been resuscitated by the Duronas, a research group cloned from a medical genius, who are employed by Jackson's Whole magnate Baron Fell. His memory takes some time to return, and the doctors treating him do not know whether he is Mark, Miles or Admiral Naismith (Miles' cover identity with the Dendarii). Mark finds Miles, but is captured by Miles' old nemesis, Baron Ryoval, held prisoner, and tortured for five days. His personality fragments into four sub-personalities: Gorge the glutton, Grunt the sexual pervert, Howl the masochist, and Killer the assassin. Together, the first three protect the fragile Mark persona, while Killer bides his time. When Ryoval's assistant informs him that Mark seems to be enjoying the torture, a frustrated Ryoval decides to study his victim alone. Killer takes the opportunity to kill Ryoval, allowing Mark to escape. He sells Ryoval's secrets, accessible through a code ring, to Baron Fell for a large sum of money and permission for the Durona Group to emigrate. Miles' short death and revivification have serious repercussions for his health. Mark has his own problems, thanks to his strange upbringing, complicated by the torture. When he asks his mother for help, she sends him to Beta Colony for psychiatric treatment and therapy.

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Flame

== Characters

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Welcome to Higby

Mark Dunn

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

The novel concerns the interconnected lives of the inhabitants of Higby, a fictional town in northern Mississippi, during the Labor Day weekend in 1993. Five separate stories lines are woven together featuring 25 main characters

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A for Anything

Damon Knight

1959

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

An anonymous inventor sends copies of the "Gismo" through the mail to hundreds of people. Civil society immediately collapses; as one news commentator says: "The big question today is: Have you got a Gismo? And believe me, nothing else matters." The story jumps to the year 2149: the society we know has been replaced by a society of wealthy minority supported by slavery. Access to Gismos is jealously guarded by a handful of strong men. The story is told through the eyes of Dick Jones, the son of the leader of Buckhill, a compound in the Poconos. Jones is coming of age and is about to be sent to Eagles, another, larger compound in the Rocky Mountains, for military training. Jones is initially presented as an unsympathetic character: spoiled, impulsive, hot-headed. In his final day at Buckhill, he picks a fight with a cousin, who challenges Dick to a duel; Dick kills him, and has to be ushered away in secret the following morning to avoid retribution. Jones arrives at Eagles, a fabulous city built into a mountain. Like Buckhill, Eagles is run as a slave society; but Jones is startled to realize that the Gismo is used to duplicate slaves, and that the most trusted slaves have been copied hundreds of times. Status among citizens is determined by social connections, and, for males, by skill at hand-to-hand combat. The author takes care to show us the seamy side of Eagles; for instance, the Boss relaxes by dropping slaves from the top of a tall tower and watching them plunge to their death via closed-circuit television. There are hints from Jones's father in Buckhill that the slaves are contemplating revolt. In Eagles, Jones is introduced to a secret society that debates the merits of the slave culture and that plans a revolution, with the collaboration of a disaffected member of the ruling family. Jones is enthralled by the arguments he hears. But before the revolution can be put into action, the slaves revolt, killing most of the free citizens in Eagles and Buckhill, including Jones's family. Jones is forced to choose between his allegiance to kin and his yearning for a better society.

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More Money Than God

In each chapter, Mallaby takes a narrative focus on one individual or company that played an important role in the history of hedge funds. Mallaby then weaves in other people, ideas or companies related to the star of the chapter. The following are some of the major people, institutions and concepts on a per chapter basis. The first in each list is the central character of that chapter. *Ch 1 Big Daddy: A. W. Jones, Hedge fund *Ch 2 The Block Trader: Michael Steinhardt, Steinhardt, Fine, Berkowitz & Co., Block trade, Monetary policy *Ch 3 Paul Samuelson's Secret: Commodities Corporation, Paul Samuelson, Bruce Kovner (Caxton Corporation), Trend trading, Automated trading system *Ch 4 The Alchemist: George Soros, Quantum Fund, Reflexivity, Jim Rogers *Ch 5 Top Cat: Julian Robertson, Tiger Management *Ch 6 Rock-and-Roll Cowboy: Paul Tudor Jones II *Ch 7 White Wednesday: Black Wednesday, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 8 Hurricane Greenspan: Shadow banking system, Bond market crisis of 1994, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 9 Soros vs Soros: 1997 Asian financial crisis, 1998 Russian financial crisis, Stanley Druckenmiller & George Sorros *Ch 10 The Enemy Is Us: Long-Term Capital Management, John Meriwether *Ch 11 The Dot-Com Double: Dot-com bubble, Tiger Management & Quantum Fund *Ch 12 The Yale Men: David Swensen, Tom Steyer, Event-driven investing *Ch 13 The Code Breakers: Renaissance Technologies, James Simons, David E. Shaw *Ch 14 Premonitions of a Crisis: Amaranth Advisors, Brian Hunter *Ch 15 Riding the Storm: John Paulson, Subprime mortgage crisis *Ch 16 "How Could They Do This": Financial crisis (2007–present)

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Empire State of Mind

3/17/2011

{"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"}

From the official blurb: :Empire State of Mind tells the story behind Jay-Z's rise to the top as told by the people who lived it with him- from classmates at Brooklyn's George Westinghouse High School; to the childhood friend who got him into the drug trade; to the DJ who convinced him to stop dealing and focus on music. This book explains just how Jay-Z propelled himself from the bleak streets of Brooklyn to the heights of the business world. Notable sources include hip-hop luminaries such as DJ Clark Kent, Questlove of The Roots, Damon Dash, Fred "Fab 5 Freddy” Brathwaite, MC Serch; NBA stars Jamal Crawford and Sebastian Telfair; and recording industry executives including Craig Kallman, CEO of Atlantic Records. Greenburg also reveals new information on Jay-Z’s various business dealings, such as: * The feature movie about Jay-Z and his first basketball team that was filmed by Fab 5 Freddy in 2003 but never released. * The Jay-Z branded Jeep that was scrapped just before going into production. * The real story behind his association with Armand de Brignac champagne. * The financial ramifications of his marriage to Beyoncé.

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Bird at the Buzzer

{"/m/01z02hx": "Sports"}

The main subject of the book is the Big East Tournament championship game of 2001, although the book intersperses play by play coverage of the game with background information on the entire season, as well as commentary on the players, coaches and other aspects of the two programs. The game featured in the book was neither the first nor the last meeting of the two teams in the season. In January, UConn played Notre Dame at Notre Dame. The UConn team was undefeated, and ranked number one in the country at the start of the game. Notre Dame won the game 92–76, remained undefeated, and moved from third to the number one ranking at the next poll. Both teams would also meet in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, with Notre Dame prevailing and then going on to win the national championship. All of the meetings between the two teams that year were important games for each team, but the game in March had multiple story lines—a tournament championship at stake, a close game in which neither team lead by more than eight points at any time, a devastating injury to one of the games best players, and finally, a game that was decided by a single basket scored in the final moments, by one of the best players in the sport, Sue Bird.

31240119

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We Who Are About To...

Joanna Russ

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"}

The story takes the form of an audio diary kept by the unnamed protagonist. A group of people, with no technical skills and scant supplies, are stranded on a planet and debate how to survive. The men in the group are dedicated to colonizing and populating the planet, but the unnamed female protagonist, who does not believe that long term survival is possible, resists being made pregnant by them. Tensions escalate into violence, until finally she is forced to kill the other survivors in order to defend herself against rape. Left alone, she becomes increasingly philosophical, recounting her personal history in political agitation and attempting to chart the days and seasons even as she begins to hallucinate from hunger and loneliness. She experiences visions, first of the people she killed, and then of people from her past. Finally, weak from hunger, she resolves to kill herself.

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The Traveler's Gift

11/5/2002

Forty-six-year-old David Ponder feels like a total failure. Once a high-flying executive in a Fortune 500 company, he now works a part-time, minimum wage job and struggles to support his family. Then, an even greater crisis hits: his daughter becomes ill, and he can’t afford to get her the medical help she needs. When his car skids on an icy road, he wonders if he even cares to survive the crash. But a unique experience awaits David Ponder. He finds himself traveling back in time, meeting leaders and heroes at crucial moments in their lives—from Abraham Lincoln to Anne Frank. By the time his journey is over, he has received seven secrets for success—and a second chance. The Traveler's Gift offers a modern day parable of one man's choices—and the attitudes that make the difference between failure and success.

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Surviving your Serengeti

2011-03

Swanepoel compares modern-day business and personal challenges with the life-and-death struggles of the millions of animals of Serengeti plains of East Africa whose 1,000 mile-long migration filled with hunger, thirst, predators and exhaustion is often considered one of the natural wonders of the world. The book matches a person's dominate instinctive skill with its corresponding Serengeti animal. According to the book the seven skills and animals include the "enduring wildebeest", the "strategic lion", the "enterprising crocodile", the "graceful giraffe", the "efficient cheetah", the "risk-taking mongoose" and the "communicating elephant".

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Sir Degrevant

{"/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance"}

The plot of Sir Degrevant revolves around the titular character and his neighbor, an earl, whose daughter Myldore falls in love with Sir Degrevant. While there is a "perfunctory connection" with King Arthur and his court, the romance is devoid of the usual marvels associated with Arthurian literature. Sir Degrevant is the "perfect romance hero": intent on hunting and adventures, he is young, handsome, and strong; most importantly to the plot, he is not interested in the love of a woman. While he is on a crusade, his neighbor, an earl, does great damage to Degrevant's property and kills the foresters who oversee his deer park. Degrevant hurries back from Granada, repairs the fences and the other damage done, then addresses a letter to the earl seeking legal redress. When the earl refuses to make reparations, Degrevant avenges himself by attacking the earl's hunting troop and then his castle. During this latter engagement, the earl's daughter, Melydor, watches from the castle walls and Degrevant falls in love with her. Melydor initially rebuffs Degrevant's attempt to declare his love, but later grants it to him. Her father sets up a tournament to promote the chances of another suitor (the Duke of Gerle), but Degrevant defeats him thrice. The lovers meet secretly in her splendidly decorated bedroom (it contains paintings of saints and angels, and such details as glass from Westphalia and "curtain cords made of mermaids' hair won by Duke Betyse," a reference to a duke from a fourteenth-century chanson de geste Les Voeux du paon), but they remain chaste until marriage. Finally, the earl agrees to his daughter's engagement with Degrevant, convinced by his daughter and his wife's pleas and by Degrevant's obvious chivalry and strength. The couple have seven children and enjoy a happy and prosperous life together. When Melydor dies, Degrevant returns to the crusade and dies in the Holy Land.

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Gideon's Corpse

Lincoln Child

The book begins immediately after the conclusion of Gideon's Sword. Eli Glinn does not seemed displeased by Gideon's previous actions, and recruits Gideon to help calm down a colleague of Gideons at Los Alamos, Reed Chalker, who has gone insane and has taken a family hostage. Chalker is spouting ravings that he has been irradiated by some conspiracy. In an event similar to the death of Gideon's father, Chalker is gunned down. During a search of his apartment, it is discovered that he is highly radioactive. It is determinedd that the cause of this was a botched attempt at assembling a uranium bomb. Chalker's hideout seems to have most of the tools necessary to create a nuclear bomb. It also has a map of DC, and a calender indicating the bomb will detonate in ten day's time. Glinn assigns Gideon to help track down the bomb, and Gideon works with an FBI Agent named Stone Fordyce. The pair of them go out west to Los Alamos, and try to check into Chalker's past. They interview Reed's ex-wife, now a member of a radical cult, His favorite novelist, Simon Blaine, and the members of Chalker's mosque. On their way to Chalker's writers workshop in California, the plane Fordyce is flying suffers a malfunction in both engines, forcing them to crashland. Fordyce comments how unlikely this is to happen by accident, and concludes it was the result of sabotage. Gideon is framed for being a terrorist- incriminating emails are placed on his work computer, and he is forced into hiding. His reluctant accomplice in this is Alida Blaine, Simon's daughter. Gideon eventually comes to the conclusion that Simon is in on the conspiracy. Fordyce, convinced the Bill Novak- the Los Alamos Security Director- is corrupt, assists Gideon in breaking into Simon's computer as the two of them drive to DC. They discover that Blaine's true plan is to steal a vial of smallpox, with most of the security busy searching for an imaginary bomb. Gideon manages to save the vial, but Fordyce dies in the process, and Alida is horribly distraught. Gideon then confirms that he has only a year to live, as Glinn mentioned in the first book.

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The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

3/15/2011

The story begins in 1996 on the day that Kamila graduates with her teaching certificate, and the day the Taliban first arrive in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan and home to the Sidiqi family. Inspired by the sharia law of Islam, it would become the doctrine of the Taliban to completely isolate women from society. Women were not permitted to work, attend school, or even leave the house without a male relative, or mahram. Kamila’s father and brothers do not escape persecution either, and are soon forced to flee the city. Unable to teach and desperate to support her family, Kamila masters the art of dressmaking and passes on the skills to her younger sisters. In order to find work for the budding business, Kamila frequently makes the dangerous trek to the market and meets with the owners of local dress shops. Soon the business is growing, and Kamila sees an opportunity to help other women in her community. With the help of her sisters, she opens a tailoring school in their home to teach women how to sew and to give them work once they completed their training. At a time of almost insurmountable poverty, she is able to employ nearly one hundred of her friends and neighbors, all the while escaping the scrutiny of the Taliban.

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Passage to Nirvana

Lee Carlson

{"/m/016chh": "Memoir"}

Passage to Nirvana begins with Carlson's accident, when he was hit by a car standing outside a car wash, striking his head violently on the pavement, fracturing his skull, lapsing into a light coma and sustaining a Traumatic Brain Injury, with bleeding on the brain and other damage. The story follows him through his brief hospitalization, then a year-long rehab in Florida, then his return to the North Fork of Long Island where he tries to rebuild his shattered life. His wife has left him and moved away with their children, his work life has evaporated, he has no home and has to start over again from scratch. During his year in Florida he also helps care for his mother, who is severely disabled from her own traumatic brain injury sustained when she fell down a flight of basement stairs. She is in a wheelchair, unable to walk, talk or feed herself. While he is in Florida, his mother eventually dies. Upon returning to Long Island, more misfortunes seem to pile on at every turn: his aunt dies of cancer, as does his brother-in-law, and he returns to Buffalo to help his sister and her children while his brother-in-law is in the hospital. While this may sound morbid and depressing, the bulk of the book is uplifting, a positive affirmation of life. Carlson concentrates on his Zen Buddhist studies and meditation as a way of helping him heal, working with the noted writer and Zen teacher Peter Matthiessen. Sections of the book take place in the Ocean Zendo, a Zen center run by Matthiessen, and much of the book is a meditation on the spiritual aspects of healing, acceptance and rebuilding a life. Eventually Carlson meets a beautiful, understanding woman who has been through difficulties of her own: a difficult divorce, raising two children as a single mother. They fall in love, and decide to buy a sailboat named "Nirvana" that they discover rotting in a boatyard in St. Martin. They renovate the boat, sail her back to the eastern end of Long Island, where they are joined by their four children and two dogs, working at creating a new family and a new life. Eventually they sail "Nirvana" to the Bahamas for a winter writing sabbatical, where most of the book was written. Trying to describe the "plot" is difficult, however, as the book is really a collection of short essays, some about events happening in real time, some about Traumatic Brain Injury, some reflections on various aspects of philosophy and Eastern thought, and some stories recalling the author's childhood. See the section "Unique Writing Style" below for more information.

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Transformers: Exodus – The Official History of the War for Cybertron

Alexander C. Irvine

6/22/2010

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"}

The story is set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers. It has been several centuries since Cybertron's golden age of space exploration and planetary colonisation, and Cybertron's society has declined into a state of decadence. The planet's many Space Bridges have went offline due to years of neglect, and as a result Cybertron has lost contact with the other planets that the Transformers colonised during the golden age. When a new Transformer is born from the Well of All Sparks (which contains the AllSpark, the device that creates new Transformers), they are assigned to a caste and guild from which they may never deviate throughout their lives. Castes are separated into a hierarchy, with the highest castes relating to science, art and government, while the lower castes are given to manual labourers in factories and underground mines. Those in the lowest castes are not given individual names. In the industrial city of Kaon, gladiatorial combat grows in popularity among the lower castes. One of the gladiators, a labourer who completely opposes the caste system and calls himself "Megatronus" after one of the original thirteen Transformers, rises to power and becomes a local celebrity due to his skills in the gladiatorial pits. Megatronus' fans and followers shorten his name to "Megatron" in their chants, and the name sticks. In the city of Iacon, a clerk named Orion Pax, who works in Cybertron's Hall of Records and also dislikes the caste system, begins watching Megatron's political speeches and eventually contacts Megatron to discuss their similar political views. Megatron champions a free Cybertron, with each individual determining their own path in life, and Orion finds this highly appealing. Orion turns for guidance to his supervisor and mentor Alpha Trion, who encourages him to meet with Megatron in Kaon, cryptically stating that a great destiny awaits both Orion and Megatron. Taking Alpha Trion's advise, Orion travels to Kaon and meets Megatron in person, along with two of his followers, Shockwave and Soundwave. Orion and Megatron engage in intense but friendly debates over the nature of free will, and they find broad agreement in the need for a new form of Cybertronian government. However, Megatron favours confrontation and revolution, while Orion hopes to inspire the masses to change the system from within. As Megatron's political movement gains power, it also grows more violent. Terrorists professing allegiance to Megatron commit multiple bombings across Cybertron, one of these bombings destroys the "Six Lasers Over Cybertron" amusement park. Megatron repeatedly states in public speeches that he does not know the terrorists and did not orchestrate these attacks, and at one point Orion even vocally defends him. The terrorists then attack the Altihex Casino in the city of Altihex, where Sentinel Prime (the main political leader of Cybertron) is attending a show. When the bombings start, Sentinel relies on his three bodyguards, Starscream, Skywarp and Thundercracker, to escort him to safety. However, the three bodyguards are actually part of the plot as well, and they take Sentinel to Kaon and present him to Megatron. Starscream flirts with joining Megatron's forces, but seeing Sentinel as a potential bargaining chip he doesn't allow Megatron to kill him, and instead orders Skywarp and Thundercracker to take Sentinel to Trypticon Station, a scientific space station that orbits Cybertron. To prevent an all-out war, Alpha Trion helps Orion and Megatron secure an audience before the Cybertron High Council in order to plead their case. The Council members are hostile to any notion of change and view Megatron as nothing but a criminal. Megatron continues to disown the terrorist attacks being committed in his name but continues to appeal for the total removal of the caste system, including the Council itself. His words are supported by the lower castes in the council's audience, who have started calling themselves "Decepticons". By contrast, Orion makes a more noble appeal to the Council. He points out that earlier generations of Transformers would never have been able to repel the Quintessons (an alien race that tried to invade Cybertron centuries ago) if they had been constrained by such a caste system. He proclaims their fuller potential as a race if each individual were to be acknowledged as an autonomous robot, using the ancient term "Autobot" as an expression of that ideal. After his speech, the Council member Halogen agrees that the two radicals might have a point, and that Cybertronian society might have become too static for its own good. Recognizing the depth of the crisis that Cybertron faces, Halogen asserts that they need new visionary leadership to guide a social rebirth. The Council, impressed by Orion's morals, appoint Orion as the new leader of Cybertron, giving him a new name and title: Optimus Prime. However, Orion's sudden elevation destroys his friendship with Megatron, who is outraged and believes the situation to be a set-up. Megatron kills Halogen at once, but as the crowd marshals for war, Optimus Prime manages to convince Megatron not to commit further violence within the Council halls. The two sides retreat from the halls and the great war between Optimus Prime's Autobots and Megatron's Decepticons begins. The war is brutal and largely one-sided. The Autobots retain control of two cities, Iacon and Kalis, while the Decepticons take over everywhere else on the planet. Out of desperation, the Autobots launch the AllSpark into space to keep Megatron from gaining control of the source of Transformer life. Seeking a new advantage, Megatron orders Starscream to give him access to Trypticon Station's stockpile of Dark Energon, a power-enhancing substance that according to legend is the blood of the mythical being Unicron. The Decepticons consume the Dark Energon and become extremely powerful, gaining a combat edge and overwhelming the struggling Autobots. Megatron then seeks control of the Plasma Energy Chamber at Cybertron's core, planning to flood it with Dark Energon, which would permanently empower his own forces while poisoning Cybertron and starving the Autobots to death. But in order to activate the Chamber, he needs to acquire two code keys. One of these keys is stored within Sentinel Prime's chest, and Megatron acquires it by brutally murdering him. Before Megatron can fully activate the Plasma Energy Chamber though, the Autobots reactivate Omega Supreme, an enormous robot that transforms into both a rocket ship and a city, and once served as Cybertron's guardian. While transforming from a city to a rocket ship, Omega Supreme nearly crushes Megatron and the Decepticons, but they narrowly avoid getting killed by the giant. Omega Supreme takes off with the Plasma Energy Chamber and attempts to fly it to safety, but Starscream leads an aerial assault that manages to shoot him down, and after Megatron empowers himself with Dark Energon, he effortlessly defeats the Autobots and Omega Supreme's robot mode. He then floods the Plasma Energy Chamber with Dark Energon and sends it back into the core of Cybertron. As the Dark Energon flows throughout Cybertron, Optimus Prime ventures into the core to fix the Plasma Energy Chamber, accompanied by the Autobots Bumblebee and Jetfire. Once they find it, Bumblebee manages to extract the Chamber from the core, stopping the flow of Dark Energon, and Optimus receives a mental communication from the core itself, which is sentient. With the flow of Dark Energon stopped, the core will eventually be able to heal itself, but it will take centuries, and during that time the core will not be able to generate enough Energon to sustain the population it currently does. The Transformers will either have to abandon the planet until it heals, or risk starvation. To show him not to lose hope, the core bestows Optimus Prime with the Matrix of Leadership. Seeing that the planet will soon be uninhabitable, Optimus Prime orders a mass exodus of the Autobot army, but most of the ships are shot down by Trypticon Station. One Autobot ship, the Eight Track, is able to link up to Trypticon Station and force it to crash into Cybertron, but as it falls the station transforms into an enormous, reptilian monster and goes on a rampage. Alpha Trion grows ever more despairing for Cybertron, and he sets a radical plan into motion: the construction of the largest spaceship in Cybertronian history, the Ark, on which most of the Autobots may escape. Several Autobots, including Alpha Trion, Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and a newly-repaired Omega Supreme, volunteer to stay on Cybertron and protect what little territory the Autobots still hold. Despite Optimus's strong wishes, Alpha Trion refuses to leave Cybertron and declares the time has come for Optimus to make his own command decisions without his advise. As most of the Autobots flee to the Ark and it takes off into space, Megatron commands Trypticon to transform into an equally large spaceship, the Nemesis, in which Megatron and most of the Decepticons will give pursuit. Before they leave, Megatron appoints Shockwave as the dictator of Cybertron, ordering him to destroy all remaining Autobots by the time Megatron returns. With the Nemesis in hot pursuit, the Autobots fly the Ark to the last intact Space Bridge, but because no one alive knows how to use it, there is no guarantee taht the Space Bridge will work. But as the two giant spaceships get within range of the Space Bridge, it does indeed activate and teleports them to an uncharted part of space. With no Decepticons in sight, The Ark detects the energy signature of the AllSpark. Optimus Prime orders the Ark pilots to follow the signal, and their adventure in space begins.

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The Dwarf

The Dwarf is a work of social criticism which focuses on the forced redevelopment of Hangbook-dong (행복동) in Seoul in the 1970s, and the human costs that accompanied it. The Dwarf revolves around a literal “little guy,” and his family and friends, and their changing economic and social relationships which are destroyed by Korean modernization. The book follows the dwarf’s stunted existence through nasty cityscapes. A short cast of characters cycles in and out of the stories in anachronistic order. The dwarf lives in the ironically named Felicity District in Eden Province. The District is chosen for redevelopment and the dwarf and his family are evicted. The dwarf eventually commits suicide in a factory smokestack while his family is sundered. Family members argue that society has misjudged the dwarf, by seeing his height and not his skills. This focus on literal measure is a subtle irony which references several aspects of modernization, including the necessities of measuring everything, regularizing the size of everything, and commodifying everything. At the time the novel was being written the Park government roamed the streets of Seoul, its fashion police literally measuring the hair-length of men and the skirt-length of women. In the factories, meanwhile, standardization, routinization and the tyranny of the time clock erased human differences between workers when not actually erasing humanity. This scarring and diminution is not merely physical, it is social and economic as well. The dwarf dies, his son becomes a murderer, and the dwarf’s daughter is reduced to semi-prostitution to steal back her family's right to a home. This last theft fails; when the daughter returns to her home there is no sign of it ever existing.

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Masters of Evolution

Damon Knight

1959

{"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

In the near future, the world is divided into two antagonistic groups: city dwellers and country dwellers, called "muckfeet". The muckfeet control most of the land area and have a much higher population. The mayor of New York convinces a popular actor, Alvah Gustad, to negotiate an agreement with the muckfeet: technology in exchange for their scarce metals. Alvah reluctantly agrees, and is given a chance to present his wares at a fair in the Midwest. No one is interested; an altercation ensues and Alvah realizes that he is stranded. He is taken in by a pretty young woman named B. J.; gradually he comes to accept and understand the muckfeet way of life, which includes novel uses of genetic engineering in place of machines. Alvah falls in love with B. J. and when the cities launch an attack on the muckfeet, Alvah is forced to reexamine his beliefs about the superiority of the city way of life. ]

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The Space Between Us

Thrity Umrigar

2006-01

{"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"}

The Space Between Us takes place in present-day India and centers on two women: Serabai (Sera) Dubash, an upper-middle-class, Parsi widow, and her domestic servant of more than twenty years, Bhima. Now sixty-five years old, illiterate Bhima lives in the slums of Mumbai with her pregnant, unwed granddaughter, the seventeen-year-old Maya, whose college tuition is paid for by Sera. Through flashbacks, Bhima remembers her husband, who, after a work-related accident caused him to lose three fingers, became an alcoholic and abandoned her, taking their son Amit with him. She also remembers her daughter Pooja, who married, but died of AIDS together with her husband, leaving Maya an orphan at a young age. Since the sudden death of her physically abusive husband three years ago, Sera has cared for her disabled mother-in-law, who had insisted on isolating her from the family when Sera was menstruating. Sera also tends to her pregnant daughter Dinaz, and pays for Maya's abortion. A while later, Maya reluctantly tells Bhima that Dinaz's husband Viraf impregnated her and told her to keep it a secret so that she could continue her education and Bhima could keep her job. Angered, Bhima confronts Viraf, and he later accuses her of stealing from the cupboard. Sera dismisses her, unable to listen to Bhima's hints about Viraf's actions towards Maya. Bhima leaves, and recalling a balloon seller whom she had admired, buys worth of balloons and goes to the seaside. She resolves to deal with tomorrow.

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The Final Summit

4/12/2011

This is mankind's last chance. Centuries of greed, pride, and hate have sent humanity hurtling toward disaster, and far from its original purpose. There is only one solution that can reset the compass and right the ship, and it consists of only two words. With time running out, it is up to David Ponder and a cast of history's best and brightest minds to uncover this solution before it is too late. The catch? They are allowed only five tries to discover the answer. Readers first encountered David Ponder in The Traveler's Gift. Now, in The Final Summit, Andrews combines a riveting narrative with astounding history in order to show us the one thing we must do when we don't know what to do. Many years have passed since David Ponder discovered the Seven Decisions during a divine journey through time. Now 74 years old, Ponder has lost the one thing that mattered to him most: his wife, Ellen. Gone are the days of raising their children together, getting away to their favorite vacation spot, Peter Island, and simply passing the time together. Despite his personal and professional success, Ponder now sits alone at the top of his 55-story high-rise contemplating the unthinkable, just as he did 28 years ago. However, just as things are looking their darkest, Ponder is informed through divine channels that he is needed now more than ever. Together, with the help of hundreds of his fellow Travelers, from Winston Churchill to George Washington Carver to Joan of Arc, he must work to discover the one solution that will save humanity. Time is running out, and the final summit of Travelers must work quickly to avoid dire consequences. The Final Summit explores the historically proven principles that have guided our greatest leaders for centuries, and how we might restore these principles in our own lives...before it's too late.

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The God of Animals

{"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"}

Alice Winston, a twelve-year-old girl, struggles with her place in the world the summer after her sister runs away from home and marries a rodeo cowboy. Her mother—bedridden because of postpartum depression—hasn't left her bedroom since Alice was an infant, and her father is failing to keep their horse ranch running. In order to survive, Joe Winston begins boarding wealthy women's horses, dreaming of the day when his ranch will overflow with children taking show lessons. During the hottest summer in decades, a series of trials overcome the Winstons, teaching Alice how cruel life can be.

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Beautiful Darkness

{"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"}

Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes are recovering from the fact that Lena's uncle, Macon Ravenwood, an Incubus, died during their battle against Lena's evil mother, Sarafine. The two fell in love when Lena came to the small, unchanging town of Gatlin in South Carolina. Lena is a Caster and unlike other caster families, hers shares a curse that was accidentally put on them by their ancestor, Genevieve Duchannes. Each member of Lena's family is claimed his/her sixteenth birthday, for either Light or Dark. Light vs. Dark being the Caster equivalent of good vs. evil. The night that her uncle had died, Lena's sixteenth birthday, one of Lena's eyes had turned Gold (The eye color of Dark Casters) while the other remained Green (The eye color of Light Casters), therefore leaving her in the middle of Dark and Light. Sometime after Macon's death, Ethan starts worrying about Lena, who has been acting strange ever since. Lena has stopped writing in the tattered old journal that she used to carry around with her. She has even almost stopped Kelting with Ethan and rather prefers to block him out. Ethan, on the other hand, is having strange visions that include Macon, Abraham Ravenwood and a girl named Jane, who Macon appears to be madly in love with. On the last day of school, after Lena has told Ethan that she and her family are leaving town, Ethan, Lena and Link (Ethan's best friend) are alone on a lake because of an incident that took place at the high school's parking lot. After kissing Ethan, Lena takes off into the forest and, after chasing her, Ethan witnesses her jump on to the back of a Harley and ride off with a stranger. In hope of finding her, Ethan and Link drive to Dar-ee Keen, Gatlin's greasy version of Dairy King. Instead, they meet up with Ridley, Lena's Dark Caster cousin, who always appeared barely dressed, with the power of persuasion. Ridley is with a guy who introduces himself as John Breed and claims to know Lena. Ethan realizes that John was the one Lena had run off with. At his job in the library, Ethan meets Olivia "Liv" Durand, who befriends him quickly. After giving Liv a tour of Gatlin, Ethan and Liv are eating at the Dar-ee Keen when Lena's car races by, obviously stating that she had seen Ethan and Liv together. During the town's annual County Fair, Ethan is shocked to see that Lena is wearing Ridley's type of clothing: black tank that has ridden up on her stomach, black skirt about five inches short, a streak of blue in her hair and black-rimmed eyes. During Ethan and Lena's conversation, Liv shows up. In response to this, Lena takes off, jealous and angry, causing a chain reaction of chaos as she went. Afterwards, during the pie contest sponsored by Southern Crusty, Ridley, John and Lena cause maggots, beetles and grubs to crawl of every pie except one, Amma Treadeau's. Amma is Ethan's housekeeper, a grandmotherly figure to him, taking care of him since his mother died. When Ethan and Link follow the three troublemakers, they see them enter the Tunnel of Love and disappear, not leaving a clue to where they went. Desperate to get some help, Ethan and Link go to the Lunae Libri, the Caster library, in hope of finding Marian, the Mortal librarian and Caster library Keeper. Once inside, Ethan hears a laugh, guiding him to a room in which he finds Liv. Liv explains to him that she is a keeper in training and knows quite a lot about the Caster world. Marian, on the other hand, suspects that Ethan may be a Wayward, a Mortal who helps Casters in finding the way to their fates, or the one who knows the way. It is also revealed to Ethan that his mother was a Keeper. Determined to find Lena, the three friends, Ethan, Link and Liv set out through the Caster tunnels underground. Eventually, they find their way into a Caster bar, where they find Ridley, John and Lena. Ethan is shocked to see Lena dancing with John, his hands on her hips. After Lena admits that she does not want to see Ethan there, Link, Liv and Ethan get out of there. Back in the tunnels, Ethan almost kisses Liv. In Gatlin, when Ethan goes to see Lena at her mansion, she reveals to him that she is going to run away before her family leaves and that she has put a Cast on him, one that will make sure he is unable to tell anyone. After, on All Souls Day Ethan realizes that the Jane from his visions was his mother, Lila Jane Evers and that she loved Macon, after Marian gives him the Arclight, a metaphysical prison for Incubuses. Though he is shattered, Marian confirms that Lila also loved Mitchell, Ethan's father. Some time after, Ethan and Liv have come to the conclusion that Sarafine is trying to pull the Seventeenth Moon out of time in order to get Lena to claim herself. With the help of Ridley (Who loses her powers after an encounter with Sarafine through the journey), Link and Lucille, Ethan's Great Aunt's cat, the one who keeps disappearing, they find The Great Barrier, the place Sarafine is leading Lena to, after sometime in the Caster Tunnels. Halfway between though, Ethan learned that Lena made a deal with the Book of Moons, a powerful Caster book, for Ethan's life after Sarafine killed him. It was Ethan's life for something, which unexpectedly turns out to be Macon's life. Now, Ethan understood why Lena had been acting strange and blaming herself for killing her uncle. Before the team is about to enter the Sea Cave where Sarafine is hiding, Ethan understands the purpose of the Arclight and, with the help of Liv, is able to bring back Macon from it. Once outside, Macon has Green Caster eyes, which confirms that he has switched from an Incubus to a Caster. He also explains how Lila Jane's ghost helped him once The Book of Moons took his life by capturing him inside the Arclight. In order to help the teenagers fight off the Incubuses and Dark Casters inside the Sea Cave, Leah Ravenwood, Macon's sister and a Succubus, goes with them. Inside the cave, John is holding Lena, who has no idea where she is or what she is doing. There are also a lot of Vexes, powerful demons of the underground, who are sent back once Amma, Arelia (Macon's Mother), Gramma (Lena's Grandmother) and Twyla (Macon's Aunt) arrive. Quickly, while the others are fighting, Ethan helps Lena revive. Lena claims herself to be both Dark and Light, killing off both Twyla, a Light Caster and Larkin, a Dark Caster (Also Lena's Cousin), because on her last birthday, Lena had learned that she were to turn Dark, then all the Light Casters in her family will die and if she turned Light, all the Dark Casters in her family will die. One night after, Link sneaks through Ethan's window and wakes him up. While the fighting was going on, Link was bitten by John, who is revealed to be a hybrid, half Caster, half Incubus. So now, after Lena confirms it, Link is turning into an Incubus.

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All Alone in the Universe

The book begins with Debbie and Maureen being best friends, and everything is going fine, but then Glenna Flaiber begins to join in on their friendship activities, and soon Debbie realizes that Maureen is ignoring her. Debbie decides that a three musketeer plan is not going to work out, so she tries everything in her power to fix her relationship with Maureen, but the book ends with a realistic bang. It does not work out. In the end, Maureen and Glenna are inseparable and Debbie is, so to speak, "all alone in the universe.

31342615

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All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

Maya Angelou

1986

{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes begins as Angelou's previous book, The Heart of a Woman, ends, with her depiction of a serious automobile accident involving her son Guy. After spending two years in Cairo, they come to Accra to enroll Guy in the University of Ghana, and the accident occurs three days after they arrive. After Guy's long convalescence, they remain in Ghana, Angelou for four years, from 1962 to 1965. Angelou describes Guy's recovery, including her deep depression. She is confronted by her friend Julian Mayfield, who introduces her to writer and actor Efua Sutherland, the Director of the National Theatre of Ghana. Sutherland becomes Angelou's "sister-friend" and allows her to cry out all her pain and bitterness. Angelou finds a job at the University of Ghana and "falls in love" with Ghana and with its people, who remind her of African-Americans she knew in Arkansas and California. As the parent of an adult, she experiences new freedoms, respects Guy's choices, and consciously stops making her son the center of her life. She creates new friendships with her roommates and native Africans, both male and female. She becomes part of a group of American expatriates whom she calls the "Revolutionist Returnees", people like Mayfield and his wife Ana Livia, who share her struggles. Angelou strengthens her ties with "Mother Africa" while traveling through eastern Ghanaian villages, and through her relationships with several Africans. She describes a few romantic prospects, one of which is with a man who proposes that she become his "second wife" and accept West African customs. She also becomes a supporter of Ghana president Kwame Nkrumah and close friends with tribal leader Nana Nketsia and poet Kwesi Brew. During one of her travels through West Africa, a woman identifies her as a member of the Bambara tribe based solely upon her appearance and behavior, which helps Angelou discover the similarities between her American traditions and those of her ancestors. Although Angelou is disillusioned with the nonviolent strategies of Martin Luther King, Jr., she and her friends commemorate his 1963 march on Washington by organizing a parallel demonstration in Ghana. The demonstration becomes a tribute to African-American W.E.B. Du Bois, who has died the previous evening. A few pages later, she allies herself with Malcolm X, who visits Ghana in 1964 to elicit the support of black world leaders. He encourages Angelou to return to America to help him coordinate his efforts, as she had done for King in The Heart of a Woman. While driving Malcolm X to the airport, he chastises her for her bitterness about Du Bois' wife Shirley Graham's lack of support for the civil rights movement. Angelou and her roommates reluctantly hire a village boy named Kojo to do housework for them. He reminds her of her brother Bailey, and he serves as a substitute for her son Guy. She is forced to accept a maternal role with Kojo, helping him with his schoolwork and welcoming the thanks of his family, who have rejected him. Traveling Shoes, like Angelou's previous autobiographies, is full of conflicts with Guy, especially surrounding his independence, his separation from his mother, and his choices. When she learns that he is dating a woman older than her, she reacts with anger and threatens to strike him, but he patronizes her, calls her his "little mother", and insists upon his autonomy from her. The African narrative in Traveling Shoes is interrupted by "a journey within a journey" when she decides to join a theatrical company in a revival of The Blacks, a play by French writer Jean Genet. As she had done in New York and described in her previous autobiography The Heart of a Woman, she plays the White Queen and tours Berlin and Venice with the company, which include Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones, Lou Gossett, Jr. and Roscoe Lee Brown. While in Berlin, she accepts a breakfast invitation with a racist, wealthy German family. The book ends with Angelou's decision to return to America. At the airport, a group of her friends and associates, including Guy, are present to wish her farewell as she leaves Africa. She connects her departure from Africa with the forced slavery of her ancestors and her departure from Guy.

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A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Maya Angelou

2002

{"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"}

A Song Flung Up to Heaven, which takes place between 1965 and 1968, picks up where Angelou's previous book, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, ends, with Angelou's airplane trip from Accra, Ghana, where she has spent the previous four years, back to the United States. Her nineteen-year old son Guy has become an adult and is attending college in Ghana, and she is leaving a controlling relationship—her "romantic other", whom she described as "a powerful West African man who had swept into my life with the urgency of a Southern hurricane". She had also been invited to return to the US by Malcolm X, whom she had become friends with during his visit to Accra, to help her create the Organization of African Unity. She postpones meeting with Malcolm X for a month and visits her mother and brother in San Francisco. He is assassinated two days later. Devastated and grief-stricken, she moves to Hawaii to be near her brother and to resume her nightclub act. She realizes, after seeing Della Reese perform, that she lacks the desire, commitment, and talent be a singer, so she returns to her writing career, but this time in Los Angeles instead of in New York City like earlier in her life. To earn extra money, Angelou becomes a market researcher in Watts and gets to know the neighborhood and its people. She witnesses the 1965 Watts Riots, even though it could mean getting arrested, which to her disappointment, does not occur. At one point, Angelou's lover from Ghana, whom she calls "the African", arrives in Los Angeles to take her back to Accra, but Angelou enlists the aid of her mother and brother, and they come to her rescue once again, diverting the African first to Mexico and then back to Ghana. Guy, during a visit to his grandmother in San Francisco, gets into another car accident and his neck is broken again. His maturity is striking to his mother, and she leaves him in the care of his grandmother. Angelou returns to New York, where she dedicates herself to her writing and renews many of the friendships made there in the past. She also describes her personal and professional relationships with Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Beah Richards, and Frank Silvera. Martin Luther King, Jr. asks her travel around the country promoting the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She agrees, but "postpones again", and he is assassinated on her 40th birthday. Again devastated, she isolates herself until invited to a dinner party also attended by her friend James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer and his wife Judy. Judy Feiffer, inspired by her tales about her childhood, contacts editor Robert Loomis, who challenges Angelou to write her autobiography as literature. She accepts his challenge, and Song ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: "What are you looking at me for. I didn't come to stay".

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The Maintenance of Headway

Magnus Mills

2009

{"/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

The book concerns bus-driving, Magnus Mills himself was once a bus-driver in London. The title refers to the concept (upheld by the inspectors) that "a fixed interval between buses on a regular service can be attained and adhered to". The novel concerns the tension between the officious inspectors and the drivers themselves who aim to arrive early.

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In Praise of the Stepmother

Mario Vargas Llosa

1988

{"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"}

Lucrecia and Rigoberto are an upper middle class married couple. On the outside, they look like an average Peruvian couple of their social class. However, they have a rich and open sexual relationship that enriches their life. Their openness with sexuality, however, turns dangerous when Lucrecia starts a relationship with her pre-teen stepson, Fonchito, which ultimately leads to the unraveling of the marriage.

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AstroTown

The book depicts a future where humankind has left the Earth due to global warming, and they have decided to live in the International Space Station. There are 3.2 million residents in this future city in space, called AstroTown. The inhabitants decided to stay in the space station instead of colonizing other planets. We learn from the story that it would be easier to adapt to zero gravity than to send the entire city to a new planet. There is no mention of extraterrestrial life or super powers of any kind. At first, AstroTown is governed by a dictatorship, but the society stages a revolution to overthrow the dictator when a “normal human being,” cloned from the time when the humans lived on Earth, appears on the scene.

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The Naughtiest Girl Helps a Friend

Elizabeth Allen of the first form at Whyteleafe School is staying at school for a camp in the grounds with her best friend Joan Townsend, who is in the second form. Elizabeth's enemy, Arabella Buckley is also staying at the camp. Elizabeth finds out that Joan is afraid of the dark.

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Den of Thieves

Julia Golding

4/28/2009

In this third installment, Mr Sheridan, the theater owner decides that Drury Lane is in need of a refurbishing so he intends to close it down for a few years. Because of this, many of the servants and actors have to leave and find work elsewhere, including Cat. Her friend Pedro is going with the Signor, and Cat is too proud to ask anyone for help. Due to this she is left in the streets and falls prey to a book selling fraud. Later she is rescued by Frank and Mr Sheridan. Mr Sheridan decides to send her to Paris to work as a spy, as he thinks she's perfect for the job. So Cat travels to Paris under the pretence of a girl learning ballet, and hates it. She and Frank are soon tangled up in a revolt. They manage to escape, but the thieves have taken their money and clothes.

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Cat O'Nine Tails

9/29/2009

Since the events of Den of Thieves, Cat has been living with Frank and Lizzie. She is very happy with them, and then Frank's cousin Mr Dixon arrives. He is very nice to Cat and suggests that they all go a ball, even though Cat isn't nobility. Cat gets a beautiful dress, but the ball turns out to be a disaster. Frank is very awkward and doesn't ask her to dance. Then Billy forces a kiss on her which both Frank and Mr Dixon witness. Mortified, they return home with Cat ashamed and upset. Frank tells her off for unladylike behavior, but they soon make up and go riding. They soon get a letter that their friend Syd has not returned home, and worried, they decide to check the docks for any sign of him. They are looking for a boat when they are savagely attacked by a press gang, who throw Frank, Pedro and Cat on board the HMS Courageous and stab Mr Dixon in the stomach. On board Cat is forced to pretend do be a boy by a sailor named Maclean. He threatens Cat and makes her do a lot of chores. Meanwhile, Syd is also on board after being tricked by his manager. He is furious that his friends have also been captured, but there is nothing he can do. Then Cat asks him for a fight so the other sailors respect her more, but Syd refuses. However, he is pushed into it by the Captain and Cat taunts him desperate to be hit, and Syd finally punches her after she remarks that he's a rubbish kisser and Billy is better. Syd is really angry with himself for losing his temper but soon forgives himself after a heart-to-heart with Cat. Then Cat tries to run away when the ship docks but she is chased by Maclean. Cat is rescued by an Indian tribe and she befriends a girl called Kanawha. The Indian chief banishes Maclean and Cat settles in with the ship, but deep down she wants to return home. Cat soon discovers that Dixon had faked his own death to get Frank's wealth as he was broke. Enraged, Cat rides to Philadelphia, to a meeting discussing sending a search party out for her, There, she revels Dixon's treacherous deceit and he is disowned by Frank. Frank finally summons up enough courage to ask Cat to dance, and then Lizzie gives birth to her and Johnny's first child, who is Cat's god-daughter and who is named after her, Catherine Elizabeth Fitzroy.

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The Vault

Ruth Rendell

{"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"}

Reg and Dora Wexford moved from Kingsmarkham to a renovated London Coachhouse owned by their daughter Sheila.

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Sing You Home

Jodi Picoult

3/1/2011

Zoe and Max Baxter cannot have a child because of Max's family's genetic unbalance. They turn to in vitro, and create three healthy embryos, freezing them cryogenically. One is implanted and Zoe successfully becomes pregnant, but loses the baby in late pregnancy, at her baby shower, no less, much to her great sorrow. Zoe and Max soon divorce because Max does not want Zoe to pressure him into trying again for a child. Some time later, Zoe, a musical therapist, still has not recovered from the shock of the divorce, and Max has moved in with his brother, Reid, and his sister-in-law, Liddy. Reid and Liddy are both Christians, and are also trying to have children, and have had several miscarriages because of the Baxter family unbalance. Max originally is hostile to Reid, Liddy, and their pastor's efforts to convert him to their religion, but eventually warms up to the church and becomes a born-again Christian. Zoe meets Vanessa Shaw, who is openly lesbian, while floating at the bottom of a pool early in the morning. Vanessa thinks Zoe is drowning and tries to save her, but Zoe asserts that she was only floating at the bottom, looking at the lights from the bottom of the pool. Zoe and Vanessa become fast friends and eventually fall in love. Zoe, at first, is unwilling to admit to her relationship with Vanessa, but when Vanessa is angry that Zoe is ashamed of her, Zoe eventually admits to Max when she sees him at a grocery store that she and Vanessa are together. Max is shocked and disgusted, and confides in his pastor, Pastor Clive, his fears: that Zoe turned to lesbianism because he was not enough of a man to satisfy her. Zoe and Vanessa marry soon after the incident, and Zoe still wants to have a child. Vanessa suggests that she could carry one of Zoe's frozen embryos, and Zoe readily agrees. They learn that since the embryos are Max's children too, Max must agree for Zoe and Vanessa to try to use the children. Zoe asks Max if he will agree, and Max, confused and stricken, tells her he will think about it. Zoe and Vanessa, thinking that Max is surely going to agree, begin thinking of names and furnishing the baby's room. Meanwhile, Zoe is working with a rebellious teenage girl named Lucy, who is hostile and angry. Max consults Pastor Clive, who tells him that no child should be subjected to being raised in a lesbian household. He suggests that Max sue Vanessa and Zoe for the rights to raise the embryos, which he calls 'pre-born children', and that if Max wins, he should give the children to be raised by Reid and Liddy, who cannot have children of their own. Max agrees, and serves Vanessa and Zoe with papers, suing them for the right to raise the children. Vanessa and Zoe are angry and upset, Zoe being incredulous that Max would betray her like that. The two turn to a lawyer, Angela Moretti, who specializes in gay and lesbian cases, although she is not gay herself. In turn, Max and Pastor Clive enlist the help of Wade Preston, a Christian lawyer, and Ben Benjamin, another lawyer. Over the course of a month or two, the case shifts gears several times, with hostility present between Max, Zoe, Angela and Wade. Initially the judge seems to be in favor of Zoe's case, but then evidence is supplied that Lucy--who is, in fact, Pastor Clive's stepdaughter--was molested by Zoe, which is an untrue allegation. Nevertheless, Zoe cracks and agrees to give up and award the case to Max. Max eventually realizes that he is in love with Liddy, and that to sit by and watch the child be raised as Reid and Liddy's, with him playing the lesser role of uncle, would be unbearable. He agrees to give up the embryos and give them to Zoe and Vanessa to raise as their own; Zoe and Vanessa allow him to play the role of father. The epilogue is seen seven or so years later, through Samantha 'Sammy' Baxter's eyes. Sammy is six years old, has a dog named Ollie, and calls her mothers 'Mama Ness' and 'Mommy Zoe'. She knows that Vanessa is the tooth fairy, because she peeked, and often defends her two mothers against bullying remarks passed by her classmates. She reveals that Liddy and Max are together and are getting married shortly. She considers it normal, and even better, to have two mothers and a father, and knows that all three of her parents care about her equally. In the end she asserts that she is a very happy child, and is, really, the luckiest little girl in the world.

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Weathercraft

After merging with a psychoactive plant known as Salvia divinorum, Whim proceeds to "distort and enslave Frank and his friends". After much suffering, Manhog sets out on a transformative journey, attaining enlightenment. Manhog then returns for a final encounter with Whim.

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Black Heart of Jamaica

Julia Golding

2/4/2008

Cat and Pedro decide to earn a living as a duet of acting and playing the violin, as Cat feels uncomfortable at living with Frank, Lizzie and Johnny without working, and Pedro decides to go with her. Syd is very upset at the prospect of Cat going away from him again but puts up with it for Cat's sake. In Jamaica, Cat and Pedro are disgusted to learn that slavery is still common and both are frightened and horrified when they discover that Pedro's former owner, Mr Hawkins is in Jamaica. Mr Hawkins thinks that slavery is lawful and fair, and he still believes that Pedro belongs to him. He taunts Cat after her performance on stage and then finally kidnaps her. At his plantation Cat falls ill with malaria and while she is still delusional and sick Billy rescues her. He forces her to but a slave which Pedro is disgusted at, but he soon learns to forgive Cat. In the end Cat gets involved in a slave revolt but Pedro tells her to leave, while he will stay and help his fellow men gain their rights of freedom and equality. Cat is heartbroken to leave Pedro alone but she knows she must, so she and Billy leave together.

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The Dragonfly Pool

Eva Ibbotson

9/4/2008

Tally Hamilton is the daughter of the town's beloved doctor. Tally loves her life; she is popular and gets along with everyone. So Tally is very upset when she is sent to a boarding school in England because of the war, but does so for the sake of her father. When Tally arrives at Delderton Hall she soon discovers that this school is certainly like no other: the dancing teacher encourages them to be seeds busting into light, and the enigmatic teacher biology Matteo takes them for study walks at four in the morning. Tally soon settles in and makes plenty of friends, she even organizes a trip for the Deldertonians to attend a dancing festival in Bergania. Meanwhile, Prince Karil of Bergania is a lonely boy who wants to be normal and have friends. He hates wearing stuffy suits and attending so many formal celebrations. One day Karil meets Tally at the Dragonfly Pool, his place of comfort and peace, and the two immediately become friends. But when Karil's father the King is assassinated, Karil is forced to flee with Tally and the Deldertonians to England. The Germans overtake Bergania as part of their plan, as they had arranged the King's assassination.

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Exit Wounds

Rutu Modan

2007

{"/m/012h24": "Comics"}

The book follows a search of a young woman, Numi, for her old lover, who disappeared just before a suicide bomb that left an unidentified body. Numi calls Koby, a cab-driver and the missing person's son, to help her in the search.