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3603701 | /m/09pb3l | Child of the Hunt | Nancy Holder | 1998-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Lately Sunnydale has been missing kids, some of them have run away while others seem to have been kidnapped. There have also been attacks by little vicious creatures that completely mutilate their victims by simply biting through their prey. Also in town is a Renaissance Faire and the gang decides to pay it a visit. One visit is enough though because something is slightly off about the faire, everything seems evil and this one boy named Roland is continuously picked on, and not for fun either. After some research and a couple of run-ins with some small attackers, Angel and Giles discover that a group of mystical beings called the Wild Hunt are in town to claim the souls of humans. Angel warns Buffy not to look at them as if she does they will steal her soul and she will be forced to ride with the Hunt. Buffy hides Roland out in her basement to save him from the nasty Faire people. The next night Buffy comes home to find Roland stolen away by the Wild Hunt. Giles informs Buffy that the Wild Hunt is run by the Erl King, lord of the Wild Hunt, and that Roland is his son and the heir to the Erl King title even though Roland is disgusted by the Hunt. Buffy and the gang rush in to rescue Roland but it's of no use. To free her friend Buffy agrees to be bound by the oath of the Erl King in which she loses all willpower to fight against him. On the night of the final Hunt in Sunnydale, the gang (without Buffy) assemble and begin an attack on the Wild Hunt before they can clear their magical forest to attack the town. Buffy is ordered to kill Roland by the Erl King and she must learn to fight against her magickal oath in order to save her life, Roland's and the lives of her friends as well. |
3603706 | /m/09pb48 | Paleo | Yvonne Navarro | 2000-09 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | A student named Kevin Sanderson transfers to Sunnydale High and he's extremely lonely until a lecture is given to his class by a man named Daniel that works for Sunnydale's Museum of Natural History. Kevin immediately considers Daniel to be his mentor as they both thoroughly enjoy palaeontology. Unfortunately Daniel's goal is not at all the same as Kevin's who is just trying to fit in. Daniel has found some manuscripts which will help him resurrect dinosaur eggs, and Kevin seems to be the only person with the appropriate eggs. Meanwhile Oz is getting an offer from a woman name Alysa Bardrick to help run their band. She wants to be their manager but the band members of Dingoes Ate My Baby are still unsure as to her intentions. Daniel and Keven's ritual goes very badly and prehistoric dangers literally stalk the halls of Sunnydale High. |
3603721 | /m/09pb59 | The Evil That Men Do | Nancy Holder | 2000-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | After a vicious shooting spree by Brian Dellasandro, a straight A student, the town of Sunnydale goes into a state of shock, though not one everyone would expect; they turn on each other and become nasty. At the same time, Helen, an ancient vicious vampire over 1500 years old, has come to Sunnydale. She has hunted and killed every single Slayer she has ever met in her life, and Buffy is next on her list. Helen and her lover, Julian, have come to Sunnydale to raise Meter, a goddess of destruction, and to do that they need the heart of the Slayer and the ashes of the Emperor Caligula from way back when in 47 A.D. The urn, containing his ashes, has arrived in Joyce's gallery, and is later stolen. After a run-in with Helen, Buffy learns that Angelus and Helen used to be paramours in the 19th century, but that it ended when he regained his soul. Angel explains to her about Helen's past and how she came to hunt down Slayers. Buffy and her friends are captured and suited up on the night of Meter's ascension. They are led onto a battleground where Buffy must stay alive against dozens of opponents as well as her friends who have been infected by the Potion of Madness in order to prevent Meter from rising. Buffy novels, such as this one are not considered by most fans as part of canon. They are usually not considered as official Buffyverse reality, but are novels from the authors' imaginations. However unlike fanfic, 'overviews' summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise. |
3603737 | /m/09pb6p | Doomsday Deck | Diana G. Gallagher | 2000-12 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Joyce Summers is running a local art show for people from around the United States. A girl named Justine shows up the first day to sign in and Xander is immediately attracted to her. She offers to do a Tarot reading for him which he agrees to. Once Xander has touched her magickal deck he comes under her control and has no will of his own. Justine is building a powerful deck of Tarot cards which will allow her to control the fate of the world with the help of the goddess Kali, who, in return, wants ultimate peace on Earth. Only Justine doesn't realize what ultimate peace is and she's come to Sunnydale to collect the last four people she needs to complete her deck of cards. Once her deck has been completed the four people remaining needed for the deck will die like the other eighteen she's used to make the deck. Buffy must figure out how her friends are being controlled and find a way to fight herself out of the power of Justine's Tarot cards. Buffy novels such as this one are not usually considered by fans as canonical. Some fans consider them stories from the imaginations of authors and artists, while other fans consider them as taking place in an alternative fictional reality. However unlike fan fiction, overviews summarising their story, written early in the writing process, were 'approved' by both Fox and Joss Whedon (or his office), and the books were therefore later published as officially Buffy merchandise. |
3603752 | /m/09pb7q | Immortal | Christopher Golden | 1999-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Veronique is an immortal vampire that continues to return in the body of a newly dead person every time she has been staked. However, she wants to become truly immortal by summoning an ancient demon called the Triumvirate. And of course her choice spot to do so would be in Sunnydale, especially with the extra magical vibes emanating from the Hellmouth. Unfortunately, while Buffy is trying to keep Veronique's vampire henchmen at bay, she also has to deal with the fact that her mother is sick in the hospital. There's a chance that she has cancer, but they won't know for sure until they've performed surgery on her. Buffy has to decide where she's needed most: with her mother, or to stop the end of the world. Buffy and her friends battle Veronique and the Trumverate with help from Lucy Hanover and other spirits who possess them as the Triumverate need to drain the life-force of nearby souls. Without being able to do so, they revert into their hatchling forms and are killed. With them dead, Veronique loses her immortality and is killed by the last of the hatchlings before it dies. |
3603755 | /m/09pb81 | Prime Evil | Diana G. Gallagher | 2000-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Crystal Gregory is a beautiful new teacher at Sunnydale High, who also happens to give Buffy panic fits whenever she's in the same room as her. Buffy can't sense anything unusual about the teacher and begins to wonder if she's losing her mind. But lately, Anya and Michael seem to be getting awfully close to Crystal and would appear to do anything for her. While out for her usual patrol at night, Buffy has two strange encounters; one, a man is completely incinerated by red and lighting and the other being a girl from school who has a burn mark on her neck in the shape of the symbol for infinity. As soon as Giles gets cracking on his books, he finds out that Crystal is in fact Shugra, a powerful primal witch which is trying to activate the source. She needs a coven of 13 willing people to participate in order to draw the proper energy, unfortunately, it seems that Willow is one of those people. Cordelia is nervous about her father's tax position but does not tell the others. This foreshadows later events. Giles and Joyce are nervous in each other's company Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Anya, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz |
3603761 | /m/09pb8r | Power of Persuasion | Elizabeth Massie | 1999-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | When dead guys start turning up as soon as the Moon family appears in Sunnydale Buffy knows that something is wrong. Mo, the mother, and her two daughters, Calli and Polly, all go to Sunnydale High. Within several days Calli and Polly have attracted a huge crowd of females. The Moons are trying to create a "Womyn Power" group at the school that basically detests guys for even living. Willow gets pulled into the group and Buffy resolves to stop the Moons before they brainwash all the girls and turn all the guys into blithering idiots. |
3603770 | /m/09pb92 | Revenant | Mel Odom | 2001-01 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A Chinese gang arrives in Sunnydale and suddenly they're committing criminal acts all over the town. Immediately racial tension begin to increase and one of Willow's friends, Jia Li, is feeling the effects more than anyone else. She's discovered that her brother Lok is delving into the occult in order to learn more about their great grandfather's death in Sunnydale many years ago. Coinciding with these events, a man named Zhiyong is trying to raise the men that died in a cave many years ago in order to raise Sharmma, a demon that would give him power in return. A beautiful warrior called Shing arrives on the scene at the same time and she's just as strong as Buffy. Xander feels an immediate attraction for her but there's something about her that he doesn't know. |
3603773 | /m/09pb9s | Resurrecting Ravana | Ray Garton | 2000-01 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | It's midterm exam time at Sunnydale High School and tensions are rising high in the usual group. Particularly between Buffy and Willow who seem to have some sort of unspoken dislike of the other. Meanwhile, horrible murders have been occurring throughout Sunnydale; two close friends end up dead, one kills the other and then the murderer ends up as a pile of bones. The murders also coincide with the arrival of a large group of demons called the Rakshasa who seem to have a sort of wicked control over their victims. As Buffy and Willow become more and more violent towards each other, Giles does some research which indicates that the Rakshasa are in town to help with the resurrection on an ancient Hindu demon called Ravana. And when Giles spots Ethan Rayne in town, he knows that something chaotic is at hand. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, Oz, and Ethan Rayne. Cordelia's web page in the book is www.shrew.com |
3603781 | /m/09pbb3 | Return to Chaos | Craig Shaw Gardner | 1998-12 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | When four Druids arrive in town everyone knows that something is going on. Three of the Druids are brothers and the other is their uncle. They're in town to try a spell on a certain night to close the gateway in the Hellmouth so that demons would not be allowed to pass through. They'd done it a year before with their father but the spell was not completed and the brothers lost their father in the midst of the spell. Giles is a little put off by the uncle and feels that he's not being told everything that he should know. Also gathering is a large community of vampires run by Eric and his apprentice Naomi, who has been playing nasty tricks with Cordelia's mind by hypnotizing her. Things start to go wrong; magic appears everywhere and the brothers turn against their uncle. On the night of the spell Buffy must manage to fix the spell or deter the uncle from his task as well as figure out what is going on with Eric and his gang. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Cordelia, Willow, Oz and Angel. Drusilla is found to be a user of a spell that would explain her ease in killing Kendra. |
3603791 | /m/09pbch | Visitors | Caroline Macdonald | 1999-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Lately, while patrolling, Buffy's been getting the distinct impression that she's being stalked by a demon that emits a high pitched giggle. After discussion and research with Giles, they discover that Buffy's being stalked by a 'korred'; a nasty hairy beast that feeds on peoples life forces by making them dance to his magical song until they die. The korred is particularly attracted to Buffy because of her Slayer aura. Buffy must stop to korred before he makes her dance to her death. |
3603794 | /m/09pbd5 | Unnatural Selection | Mel Odom | 1999-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Willow is baby-sitting one night when suddenly the baby she's taking care of changes into an evil faerie and tells her that she needs to work harder to save Weatherly Park from being converted into an amusement park. The faerie then attacks Willow before vanishing. After some research, Giles discovers that the fairy is a Russian variety called the domovoi, apparently hiding out beneath Weatherly Park. The faeries also have plans for Willow; they need the blood of a witch in order to resurrect the Homestone which will renew the faeries' strength. Characters include: Buffy, Joyce, Giles, Xander, Angel, Cordelia, Willow, and Oz. First original Buffy novel not to feature Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover. |
3603802 | /m/09pbf7 | Deep Water | Laura Anne Gilman | 2000-02 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | After an oil spill on a nearby Sunnydale beach, Willow discovers a 'selkie'; that is, a girl that can turn into a seal with her sealskin. The selkie, dubbed Ariel by the gang, cannot return to the ocean because her sealskin was damaged by the oil spill. Willow's trying to find a spell to clean it. At the same time, mermaid-like creatures called merrows have come ashore in search of food and the vampire population gets territorial and try to kill the merrows. Buffy and the gang get stuck in the middle of a turf war while trying to save Ariel. |
3603811 | /m/09pbfy | Here Be Monsters | Cameron Dokey | 2000-06 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | After Buffy kills twin teenage vampires, their vampire mother steps in to seek revenge for the death of her sons. The mother summons the goddess of Balance and Buffy is faced with a trial in order to save her life as well as her mother's. In this trial, Buffy discovers what she fears most and her love for her mom must triumph over the vampire mother's love for her dead sons. |
3603822 | /m/09pbgm | The Book of Fours | Nancy Holder | 2001-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Taking place during Buffys third season, Faith and Buffy are the current Slayers. When mayhem caused by tidal waves and burning forests begin to erupt in Sunnydale as well as vicious attackers appearing with ceremonial axes, the gang knows that something is up. A woman named Cecile Lafitte has sent her Servants to kill the Slayers with special axes, Faith being the Slayer of Fire and Buffy being the Slayer of Air. Each Slayer has a special axe made to destroy the Slayer of that particular element. There are four axes in total; air, fire, water and earth. Should Faith and Buffy both be killed then it's believed that the line of Slayers would die out forever. Cecile wants to bring forth the Gatherer, and the only way to do so is to have the Slayers killed, which would feed the demon enough power to bring him forth into the world. Meanwhile, Willow ends up in the hospital with major brain trauma while Giles figures they need answers from the Watcher of the Slayer that preceded Buffy, India Cohen. During the final confrontation with the Gatherer, Willow and Cordelia briefly serve as hosts for India and Kendra respectively. Eventually with the help of the spirits of the former Slayers, Lucy Hanover and the spirits that live in the woods where the battle takes place, the group defeats the Gatherer and destroys it by each absorbing parts of its soul. Buffy also decapitates Cecile with the axes. |
3603849 | /m/09pbjc | Oz: Into the Wild | Christopher Golden | 2002-05 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Determined to find a solution to his lycanthropic problem, Oz sets out to discover the beast within himself, as well as the rest of the world. His journey takes him to LA, Fiji, Australia, China and finally to Tibet in his quest for peace. Oz finds himself running from Gib Cain, the werewolf hunter who wants his skin, battling vampires and all around, just running for his life. His journey takes him to China where he meets a young woman named Jinan, who is something more than human, and the two of them travel to Tibet in search of answers. A monk can guide Oz through his journey, but he can only take him so far into his own self-discovery. During the meantime, Muztag, an evil demon who has been the monk's lifelong enemy, is gathering forces in an attempt to take over a particular valley in Tibet and he must be stopped before he kills the monk, or Oz's hopes for hiding the beast within him will be totally lost. |
3603856 | /m/09pbk1 | These Our Actors | Dori Koogler | 2002-09 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Even though Buffy decided to drop drama class to concentrate on her slaying and taking care of Dawn, Willow still decided keep the class on her course list. She becomes engrossed in it, especially when the teacher, Professor Addams, begins discussing rituals and chants involved in old dramatic works. Unfortunately, the professor, realizing that Willow has some power of her own, decides to use her for his own ends. He needs to locate a particularly powerful book used to summon the Fates, which he believes is located somewhere in Sunnydale. Spike and Willow realise that the professor is actually the father of Spike's mortal love interest, Cecily, who is attempting to use the power of the fates to resurrect his daughter after he accidentally killed her due to Spike's actions in his early days as a vampire. |
3603859 | /m/09pbkd | Tempted Champions | Yvonne Navarro | 2002-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | A young, vicious and beautiful woman named Celina comes to Sunnydale and there's nothing but an uproar caused by her appearance. She's a deadly fighter that is willing to kill both humans and vampires alike. Upon her arrival in Sunnydale, she scares Anya, demanding to know where the Slayer is. As Buffy becomes involved in a short battle with Celina at sunrise, she realizes that she's in way over her head as Celina's method of fighting is far superior to her own. Meanwhile, Anya wrestles with her humanity and realizes that a lot of pain can come from being human and no longer immortal. D'Hoffryn offers her back her demonhood and she must decide which path is right for her. Buffy, after her encounter with the violent Celina, has Giles research who this mysterious woman is to better prepare her for the next time they meet. Unfortunately, the news of what Celina actually IS, is a lot more shocking than Buffy had expected. |
3603864 | /m/09pbkr | Little Things | Rebecca Moesta | 2002-08 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Ever since her mother's death, Buffy has been having problems keeping herself and Dawn living together peacefully, and the lack of money is affecting both of them. When Buffy suddenly develops an acute toothache, with no dental insurance, she can't afford to have it fixed. She must bear through the pain and keep it a secret from her friends while the town of Sunnydale becomes terrorized by miniature vampires. The miniature vampire fairies are led by Queen Mab who has come to Sunnydale with her troop in order to hunt down Anyanka. Back in the day, Anyanka was accidentally involved in turning these fairies into vampires and Queen Mab wants revenge on this act. Unfortunately, Buffy has to figure out how to kill vampires that are smaller than her palm. |
3603867 | /m/09pbl2 | Crossings | Mel Odom | 2002-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | While at the theater for a Star Trek marathon with Anya, Xander recognizes a friend of his, from the arcade, enter the theater and begin threatening and beating humans in a very demonic way. Upon further inspection, Xander learns that his friend, Robby, was involved in total immersion VR video game beta testing. But the testing was a little too secretive, according to Robby's girlfriend. Meanwhile, Buffy and Dawn are having issues with one another, and Buffy doesn't know how to deal with being Dawn's new "mom" after the recent death of their own mother. After much research concerning the bizarre video game tests, and the appearance of a man named Bobby Lee Tooker, the group discovers that the video game isn't so much a video game, as much as it is another dimensional portal while the human bodies are being taken over by demons. Buffy needs to find a way to get these beta testers (including a very reluctant Xander) back into the real world and destroy the evil demon who's using the testers to conjure a powerful being. |
3603873 | /m/09pblf | Sweet Sixteen | Scott Ciencin | 2002-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Buffy has a run-in with a couple demons at store while a gangly blonde girl watches on. Afterwards Buffy tries to talk to her but she runs off, faster than Buffy can catch her. Meanwhile Dawn has befriended a girl named Arianna at her school. Arianna has no friends and an abusive mother and has always longed to become a heroine. After it becomes clear that Arianna is the exceptionally strong girl that Buffy ran into, the gang tries to find out where Arianna's powers are coming from. Meanwhile, a demon called Aurek is searching for his daughter Arianna who is to become the Reaver, a being used for mass destruction of the dimensions. He finally locates her and tries to convince her that all humans are against demons. Just as Arianna starts to befriend Buffy, she then begins to pull away. Fearing that Buffy will just kill her in the end. Arianna has to make a decision on whether or not to keep her humanity. |
3603881 | /m/09pbm3 | Wisdom of War | Christopher Golden | 2002-07 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Two strange breeds of sea creatures are beginning to appear in Sunnydale, and none of them appear to be all too friendly. The Moruach and the Aegeirie are their names, the latter being followers of the immense sea beast Aegir who was once captured by the Moruach but later set free. As soon as Buffy is beginning to discover these creatures, the Watcher's Council steps in with a team with Quentin Travers leading the way. When Buffy does not agree to slay all the demons until she knows more about them and what they're doing in Sunnydale, Travers has Faith released from jail in Los Angeles for a temporary time in order to eradicate the demons in Sunnydale. Buffy begins to question her decision as well as her actions when innocent humans, including some of her friends, begin to transform into Aegir followers. |
3603887 | /m/09pbmg | Apocalypse Memories | Melinda Metz | 2004-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Willow has arrived back in Sunnydale after spending time with Giles in England. She is terrified of using her magic powers again for fear of a return to dark magic consuming her. However, suddenly Sunnydale once again becomes a center of the weirdness when an angel named Michael brings on signs of the Apocalypse. The angel insists that this is not an artificial one, the type Buffy had stopped before, this is the natural and long-established end of the world. Willow must find a way to overcome her fear of magic in order to perform one of the most dangerous spells known to mankind; the Belial Siphon, which has not been performed before. Meanwhile, Buffy is trying to stop an Apocalypse of her own accord, yet Buffy cannot seem to fight what is thrown at her. |
3603894 | /m/09pbmt | Mortal Fear | Denise Ciencin | 9/1/2003 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Something new has swept into the lives of the Scooby Gang, but all through different sources as they try to find acceptance with other people outside their tight knit slayage group; Xander with his co-workers, Willow with her professor at university and Dawn with a new group of not so straight-laced friends. Meanwhile, Buffy is being sent on random missions by a man that goes by the name of Simon. He wants her to retrieve parts of a mystical sword and put them together, but he refuses to say why or who he even is. When her friends suddenly start to turn against her, Buffy has to figure out how the sword and Simon ties into all the odd goings-on in Sunnydale. |
3605167 | /m/09pfky | The Man of Feeling | Henry Mackenzie | 1771 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"} | The Man of Feeling details the fragmentary episodes of the life of Harley which exist within the remains of a manuscript traded to the initial narrator of the novel by a priest. The novel itself begins with these two latter figures hunting, whereas the manuscript is missing the first ten chapters and approximately thirty others at various locations throughout the manuscript's entirety. As a young boy, Harley loses his parents and is assigned several guardians who constantly disagree with each other. They do however agree that he should make an effort to acquire more wealth, and so they urge him to make an old distant relative amiable towards him to claim some inheritance. Harley fails in this endeavour, as he doesn't cooperate with the relative's attempts to warm to him. Harley is then advised to acquire a patron; to sell his vote at an election for a lease of land. His neighbour Mr. Walton gives him a letter of introduction, and he soon leaves home (and Miss Walton) for London. He meets a beggar and his dog on the way, and after donating to them both, hears the fortune-telling beggar's story. In the next few missing chapters, Harley presumably formally visits the baronet Mr. Walton recommended him to, because when the narrative continues, Harley calls upon him for the second time. The baronet however is away from London, and Harley meets another gentleman named Tom. They go for a stroll and then dine together, discussing pensions and resources with two older men. Harley proceeds to visit Bedlam, and weeps for an inmate there, before dining with a scorned, cynical man and together they discuss honour and vanity. He then demonstrates his skill (or, as many argue, his lack of skill) in physiognomy by being charitable on behalf of an old gentleman, with whom Harley later plays cards. It is after his finanical loss in these card games that Harley is informed the gentleman and his acquaintance are con men. Approached by a prostitute, Harley takes her to a tavern, gives her bread, claret and money, despite having to hand the waiter his pocket watch as collateral for paying the bill, and then meets again with her the next morning to hear her story. At its conclusion her father arrives, and after a misunderstanding is reconciled with his daughter. Upon discovering that his claim for the land lease has failed, Harley takes a stage-coach back home, discussing poetry and vice with a fellow passenger until they part ways and the coach reaches the end of its route. Harley continues on foot, and along the way reunites with Mr. Edwards, an old farmer from his village who has fallen on hard times and is returning from his conscription in the army. Together they approach the village, to find the school house destroyed by a squire, and two orphans who are actually the grandchildren of Harley's companion. Harley takes the three of them home, and provides some land for them. After discussing corrupt military commanders with Edwards, Harley is informed that Miss Walton is going to be married to Sir Harry Benson, and can't bring himself to be anything but happy for Miss Walton, although he does love her. The Man of Feeling then jumps almost randomly to a tale of a man named Mountford, who journeys to Milan with another man named Sedley to meet with a count. They visit a debtor's prison to find a man and his family living there at the behest of the count's son, a man who had been so charming to the two gentlemen. Sedley pays the family's debt, and then Mountford and Sedley leave Milan in disgust. The narrative returns to the story of Harley, and for some unexplained reason Miss Walton does not marry Benson. She visits an unwell Harley (who has contracted a fever nursing Edwards and his grandchildren), who confesses his love to her. They hold hands and die, although Miss Walton is revived. |
3605768 | /m/09ph3p | Non-Stop | Brian Aldiss | 1958 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel's protagonist, Roy Complain, lives in a culturally-primordial tribe where curiosity is discouraged and life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. With a small group, he leaves his home and ventures into uncharted territory. The consequent discoveries will change his perception of the entire universe. Complain's small tribe roam nomadically through corridors overrun by vegetation. After his wife is kidnapped, a tribal priest named Marapper encourages Complain to join a furtive expedition into the unexplored corridors. It is Marapper's belief that they are all living on board a moving space-craft, and that if they can reach the control room they will gain command of the entire, gargantuan vessel. On their journey, the group encounter other tribes, of varying levels of sophistication. Complain is also briefly captured by humanoid 'Giants' of legend, who release him with no explanation. Complain's party eventually join the more sophisticated society of the 'Forwards'. Here they learn that the space-craft is a multi-generational starship returning from the newly colonised planet of Procyon. In a previous generation, the ships's inhabitants had suffered from a pandemic due to an alien amino acid found in the waters of Procyon. Law and order began to collapse and knowledge of the ship and its purpose was eventually almost entirely lost throughout the vessel. 23 generations have passed since this 'Catastrophe'. The Forwards have uncertain knowledge of 'Giants' who, though feared, are generally considered to be benevolent. Other mysterious beings, termed "Outsiders", are thought to infiltrate the human world from an unknown place and are reviled as enemies. However, when the Giants attack a Forward crew-member, the humans conclude that the Giants and Outsiders are colluding against humanity, and prepare to retaliate in force. Meanwhile, Complain and his developing romantic interest Vyann (a Forward officer) learn that the space-craft should only have taken six generations to return to Earth. Aware that 23 generations have passed since the epidemic, they despairingly deduce that the entire space-craft is now plummeting irredeemably into the cold expanse of infinite space. (Though they find the ship's control centre, all the mechanisms have been destroyed). The Forwards briefly engage the Giants, however the conflict quickly ends. It is then revealed that the ship has been moored outside earth's atmosphere for a number of years. The 'Giants' are merely normal sized earth-humans who have been attempting to improve the conditions of the ships inhabitants by slowly repairing the vessel. The 'Outsiders' are unusually short humans from earth who have infiltrated the ship's various societies in order to study the development of their civilization. The rulers of Earth have been reluctant to integrate the ship-dwellers into Earth's civilization, because the epidemic survivors have mutated to live at a rate 4-times faster than earth's population. However, the recent battle on board the space-craft has caused it to begin an emergency split into its composite parts, ensuring that the entire population will now be granted a new start on planet Earth. |
3605895 | /m/025ssxm | The Starlight Barking | Dodie Smith | 1967 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A day of enchantments for the Dalmatians of the first book begins when the Dalmatians wake up and find all the humans and other animals in an unnaturally deep sleep. They hear the barking of Cadpig, carrying all the way from London, where she has become the Prime Minister's pet. She informs them reports from all over the country reveal the same phenomenon, and summons delegate dogs to London. They travel to London by "swooshing", described as gliding just off the ground. Pongo and Missus decide to investigate Cruella de Vil to see if she's behind the mysterious events. Joined by Tommy and the white Persian cat, who are "honorary dogs", and a few dogs, they arrive at her house, where the doors magically open for them. However, they find her fast asleep like all the other humans on earth. The dogs then travel to Trafalgar Square where they are addressed from the top of Nelson's Column by Sirius, Lord of the Dog Star, an extraterrestrial dog. Every dog perceives him as a dog of his own breed. Sirius invites them all to travel back to his home where they will be safe from the dangers of nuclear war on Earth, not to mention the whims and potential abuse of humans. Some dogs are for this, some against, but in the end all the dogs agree that Pongo, known for his braininess and heroism, should make the decision. Pongo joins in a conference with Cadpig and her "cabinet" discussing whether to go with Sirius or not. Then three skinny, mixed-breed strays arrive and ask to be heard. Pongo is sure that they will want to go with Sirius, but they want to stay on earth and someday have owners of their own. Pongo tells Sirius the dogs cannot abandon their humans and the Dog Star sadly accepts the decision. Before he leaves, he grants every dog the power to reach his home before the humans wake up. All the stray dogs take the opportunity to go to the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. |
3606513 | /m/09pjv9 | The Penultimate Truth | Philip K. Dick | 1964 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"} | World War III begins early in the 21st century. It is fought between the two superpowers, Wes-Dem and Pac-Peop. The fighting is extensive and severe, most of it performed by "leadies", robots built to withstand the most extreme circumstance. The Earth becomes a battlefield. Unable to exist in the atmosphere created by robot war, vast "ant tanks" are constructed underground to save the diminishing human population. The government and war engine remains on the surface, the elite "Yance-men". Their president, Talbot Yancy, delivers inspirational speeches to the tankers, motivating them to increase their production of leadies and win the war. The war does eventually end. However, the Yance-men design a conspiracy to maintain the wealth of the Earth for themselves. Yancy continues to describe devastation in televised speeches. The tankers continue to produce leadies. Talbot Yancy is actually a computer generated simulacrum. The Yance-men program him from the "Agency" in New York. They live in immense villas on private parks, called "demesnes". The leadies are actually used by the Yance-men as personal servants and to maintain their estates. The Agency is run by the most vicious and greedy Yance-man, Stanton Brose, who is kept alive by pre-war artificial organs which he hoards. The story begins in one of the tanks, named Tom Mix (named after the actor Tom Mix). The tank president, Nicholas St. James, is forced to go to the surface to look for an artificial pancreas for the tank's lead mechanic. He emerges on David Lantano's property (a Yance-man). When some of Lantano's leadies try to kill St. James, they are destroyed by a mysterious man who looks like Talbot Yancy. St. James wanders around, through the ruins of a 10 year old war, and eventually ends up at Lantano's mansion. There he learns where he can find an artificial organ. Simultaneously, Adams (another Yance-man) is put on a special mission by Brose. He must plant evidence of alien artifacts on land belonging to a housing developer (Louis Runcible) so the land can be legitimately seized. The artifacts are buried using a time travel device. One by one, the people attached to this project are killed. Adams fearfully retreats to Lantano's mansion. Another person to appear in the mansion is Webster Foote, the owner and operator of a private detective corporation. Foote accepts on a per-case basis work from everybody (including Brose, Lantano and Runcible) but wishes to save Runcible from the plot against him. Lantano then reveals to Foote, Adams and St. James, that he is a Cherokee from the distant past, somehow being given extended life by the time travel device that placed the artifacts back in time. He has lived through history, taking many positions of note under different names, and now he has killed the members of this special project. Lantano, Foote, and Adams together now plot to kill Brose and free the people underground. However, Adams figures out Lantano was behind the deaths as part of his plot to bring down Brose. In desperation and fear, he joins up with St. James, who discovered a cache of artificial organs, and flees into the Tom Mix tank with him. They discover that Lantano was ultimately successful but contemplate that the biggest lie is yet to come. |
3608320 | /m/09pn8r | Songs in Ordinary Time | Mary McGarry Morris | 1995-08 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A novel set in a small town in Vermont in 1960 offers the story of lonely and vulnerable Marie Fermoyle, her three children, and a dangerous con man. |
3608348 | /m/09pnbv | The Heart of a Woman | Maya Angelou | null | {"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography"} | The Heart of a Woman takes place between 1957 and 1962, beginning shortly after the end of Angelou's previous autobiography, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas. Angelou and her teenage son Guy have moved into a "houseboat commune in Sausalito". After a year, they move to a rented house near San Francisco. Singer Billie Holiday visits Angelou and her son there, and Holiday sings a song to Guy. Holiday tells Angelou, "You're going to be famous. But it won't be for singing". In 1959, Angelou and Guy move to New York City. The transition is a difficult one for Guy; Angelou is forced to protect him from a gang leader. No longer satisfied with performing in nightclubs, she dedicates herself to acting, writing, political organizing, and her son. On the invitation of her friend, novelist John Killens, she becomes a member of the Harlem Writers Guild. She meets other important African-American artists and writers, including James Baldwin, who would become her mentor. She becomes a published writer for the first time. Angelou becomes more politically active, participating in African-American and African protest rallies, including a sit-in at the United Nations following the death of Zaire's prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, that she helps organize. She meets Malcolm X, and is struck by his good looks and magnetism. After hearing Martin Luther King, Jr. speak, she and her friend, activist Godfrey Cambridge, are inspired to produce a successful fundraiser for King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), called Cabaret For Freedom. King names her coordinator of SCLC's office in New York. She performs in Jean Genet's play, The Blacks, with Roscoe Lee Brown, James Earl Jones, and Cicely Tyson. In 1961, Angelou meets South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make. They never marry, but she and Guy move with him, first to London and then to Cairo, Egypt, where she plays "official wife to Make, who had become a political leader in exile". Their relationship is full of cultural conflicts; he expects her to be a subservient African wife, and she yearns for the freedom as a working woman. She learns that Make is too friendly with other women and is irresponsible with money, so she accepts a position as assistant editor at the Arab Observer. Eventually, Angelou and Make separate, but not before their relationship is examined by their community of friends. She accepts a job in Liberia. She and Guy travel to Accra, Ghana, where he has been accepted to attend college. Guy is seriously injured in an automobile accident, so she accepts a position at the University of Ghana and remains there while he recuperates. The Heart of a Woman ends with Guy leaving for college and Angelou remarking to herself, "At last, I'll be able to eat the whole breast of a roast chicken by myself." |
3608386 | /m/09pndx | She's Come Undone | Wally Lamb | 8/24/1992 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Dolores Price is heartbroken when her handsome, but immature, father leaves their suburban home for another woman. She and her mother move into her uptight Catholic grandmother's house in Easterly, Rhode Island, where she finds herself an outsider in the adolescent social hierarchy and the strict Catholic school she attends. After being raped by a charming neighbor, Jack Speight, she turns to food and television for comfort. By the age of 17, she has eaten her way to clinical obesity and is over 250 pounds. Following the accidental death of her mother , she decides to attend college in Pennsylvania. There she is ridiculed for her weight and cultivates a secret obsession with her peppy roommate's long-distance boyfriend, Dante, who sends love letters and nude photos in the mail. After an ill-conceived one-night stand with her university's lesbian janitor, she takes a long cab ride to Cape Cod, where she witnesses a beached whale dying. She feels kinship with the animal and wades into the water to drown herself. After her suicide attempt, she is institutionalized for several years and begins to work through her issues with the help of her therapist. She loses over 100 pounds, but becomes frustrated with the slow-moving therapy. She decides to move to Vermont, where she has located Dante, the object of her college obsession. Dolores gets a job at a local grocery store and moves into an apartment right across the hall from Dante. He is working as a high school English teacher but is frustrated with the stagnation in his life after having given up his youthful goal to become a priest. They begin a relationship, and eventually marry. However, Dante continues to dominate Dolores and has affairs with his female students. When Dolores becomes pregnant (something she dearly wanted) Dante pressures her into getting an abortion. After the loss of her baby, she becomes resentful of the control he has over her life. After her grandmother dies, she eventually admits to Dante that she orchestrated their entire relationship after becoming infatuated with him through his photos. They divorce and she then leaves and moves into her late grandmother's house, which she inherited. At her grandmother's funeral, Dolores is able to reconnect with several friends from her past, who form a surrogate family for her in Easterly. They encourage her to pursue her dreams, and she enrolls in some college courses while working. Here she meets Thayer, a single father, who is immediately smitten with her despite her troubled past. Initially she rebuffs his advances, but is charmed when he sends his teenage son to recite a rap about how much he likes her. They begin a tentative romance, predicated on Dolores's desire to have a child. Dolores realizes that for the first time, she has a man in her life who she can trust and who will treat her as an equal. Thayer supports her as they receive IVF treatment, but they do not have enough money for a second attempt after the first one fails. Dolores is depressed by the idea that she will never be a mother (by now she is in her late 30's) and Thayer takes her on a whale watching vacation to help her feel better. While on the boat, Dolores muses on her past and future. She decides that her life now is wonderful and is enough. The novel ends with her being the only one to see a whale breach the ocean symbolizing her new found peace. The book's title comes from the song "Undun" by The Guess Who on their album Canned Wheat. |
3608396 | /m/09pnfy | Where the Heart Is | Billie Letts | 8/17/1995 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | This novel opens with Novalee and Willy Jack, her then boyfriend, traveling from Tennessee to California. At the time, Novalee is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight, and superstitious about sevens." Letts describes Novalee's relationships with the number 7: "For most people, sevens are lucky, but not for Novalee; at the age of 7 her mother ran off with a baseball umpire named Fred." Novalee convinces Willy Jack to stop at a Wal-Mart in Sequoyah, Oklahoma, so she can use the restroom and purchase a pair of sandals, as hers fell through the floor of their beat up car. When Novalee comes out of the Wal-Mart, she realizes Willy Jack has left her with nothing more than her beach bag and the $7.77 she has in change from the purchase of new sandals. With nowhere else to go, Novalee spends the afternoon at the Wal-Mart and meets "Sister Husband", a kind and spunky woman who runs the town's "Welcome Wagon." Sister Husband has a deep faith and hands out chapters of the Bible to people she meets. When they first meet, Sister Husband "mistakes" Novalee for a girl named Ruth Ann Mott and gives Novalee a Welcome Wagon basket. She also meets Moses Whitecotton, a photographer who shoots portraits at the Wal-Mart. Moses tells Novalee to give her baby a name "that will mean something" and "withstand a lot of bad times", as well as a photo album. He later becomes Novalee's mentor as she becomes more invested in photography. In addition, she also meets Benny Goodluck, a Native American, who gives Novalee a buckeye tree for good luck. As Novalee lives in Walmart, she watches as the buckeye tree becomes sick. She takes a walk to the library where she meets Forney Hull who helps her find books about the buckeye. Forney is from a well-bred family but had to drop out of college to take care of his alcoholic sister. He appears "crazy" and shouts facts he has read from books at Novalee. Novalee takes a walk to Sister Husband's home, who had told Novalee in Walmart she was welcome to visit her house any time, to ask Sister Husband if she could plant her buckeye on her property. Novalee Nation is forced to have her baby in the Wal-Mart, but Forney, the local librarian's brother, breaks a window and helps her out. At the hospital she makes a good friend and finds out that her baby and she are famous and in the news. |
3608409 | /m/09pngz | Midwives | Chris Bohjalian | 1997-04 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of a stroke. But what if Sibyl's patient wasn't dead—and Sibyl inadvertently killed her? Midwives tells the story of Sibyl Danforth from the point of view of her young daughter. |
3608582 | /m/09pnvh | A Map of the World | Jane Hamilton | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The book is concerned with how one seemingly inconsequential moment can alter lives forever. Alice Goodwin, mother of two, school nurse and wife of an aspiring dairy farmer in Wisconsin, is getting ready to take her two daughters and her best friend, Theresa's two little girls to their farm pond to swim. When she goes upstairs to find her bathing suit, Lizzy, Theresa's 2-year-old, slips away to the pond and drowns. It all goes downhill from there. The town tramp, whom Alice reprimanded for constantly bringing her sick son to school, accuses Alice of molesting her child. The entire town turns on the Goodwin family, fairly new to the area, and several other mothers come forward with tales of Alice's "abuse". Imprisonment, trial and loss of the farm ensue and Alice's husband and Theresa become "involved." The novel is essentially about a search for authenticity in the contemporary American midwest. A couple struggles to maintain their lives on a farm, keep to ethical practices of both farming and living, and to raise their two young children, but American society stymies their efforts. The novel is an indictment of the U.S. legal system, which works with the subtlety and mercy of a sledgehammer; the farming system, which values dollars over good food and the environment; and the American idea of marriage, which is falling apart from its own internal contradictions. However, the novel manages to be very funny throughout. Its humor comes out not just in the wicked, scathing sentences of its first third, told in a voice that one imagines is close to the author's own, but also in the structural choice of placing section two in the voice of the hilariously but tragically non-verbal husband. The contrast between husband's and wife's thinking is far more eloquent and entertaining than the recent popular psychological studies on the subject of male-female mental processes. Also included: the annoyingly efficient but oblivious mother-in-law, class and race differences but from a female perspective, and the politics of a small town. |
3608588 | /m/09pnwj | Vinegar Hill | A. Manette Ansay | 1994-09 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | When Ellen Grier and her family come back to Holly's Field, Wisconsin, it is not what they were hoping. Ellen's husband, James, has no job. The family have to move in with James's parents, Fritz and Mary-Margaret. These two dislike each other but dislike Ellen far more so far that she's on the brink of suicide. |
3608592 | /m/09pnx6 | River, Cross My Heart | Breena Clarke | 1999 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Potomac River claims the death of the daughter by drowning, and the family leaves their rural North Carolina world in search of a better life among friends and relatives in Georgetown. The seek to come to terms with their loss. |
3608624 | /m/09pnyl | Mother of Pearl | Melinda Rucker Haynes | 1999-06 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Set in Petal, Mississippi, a small town at the close of the 1950s, this novel tells the story of the 28-year-old Even Grade, a black man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, a 15-year-old white girl, who is the daughter of the town prostitute and an unknown father. They are both separately seeking the family, love, and affection they had not had before, until their paths cross owing to their common acquaintance of loner mystic Joody Two Sun. |
3608636 | /m/09pn_9 | The Pilot's Wife | Anita Shreve | 1998-05 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel is about Kathryn Lyons, whose husband, Jack Lyons, dies in a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Malin Head, Ireland. As she and her daughter Mattie try to cope with this sudden loss, she finds herself bombarded by the press. While she and the airlines try to find the reason for the crash, she slowly unravels a series of secrets her husband has kept from her until she realizes that he lived a double life she never knew about. |
3608649 | /m/09pp0p | Jewel | Bret Lott | 1991-11 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The year is 1943 and life is good for Jewel Hilburn, her husband, Leston, and their five children. Although there's a war on, the Mississippi economy is booming, providing plenty of business for the hardworking family. And even the news that eldest son James has enlisted is mitigated by the fact that Jewel, now pushing 40, is pregnant with one last child. Her joy is slightly clouded, however, when her childhood friend Cathedral arrives at the door with a troubling prophecy: "I say unto you that the baby you be carrying be yo' hardship, be yo' test in this world. This be my prophesying unto you, Miss Jewel." When the child is finally born, it seems that Cathedral's prediction was empty: the baby appears normal in every way. As the months go by, however, Jewel becomes increasingly afraid that something is wrong with little Brenda Kay—she doesn't cry, she doesn't roll over, she's hardly ever awake. Eventually husband and wife take the baby to the doctor and are informed that she is a "Mongolian Idiot," not expected to live past the age of 2. Jewel angrily rebuffs the doctor's suggestion that they institutionalize Brenda Kay. Instead the Hilburns shoulder the burdens—and discover the unexpected joys—of living with a Down syndrome child. |
3608656 | /m/09pp10 | Drowning Ruth | Christina Schwarz | 2000-09 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Amanda and Mathilda are two sisters who live in rural Wisconsin; they are very close, but very different. While Mathilda is petite, well-liked, pretty, and adventurous, Amanda is tall, clumsy, awkward, and serious. When Mathilda marries Carl, Amanda feels betrayed and leaves to go to nursing school. She dives into her work and makes her entire life about helping the sick and injured. Meanwhile, Mathilda and Carl are married and living together on a small island just away from the family farm. They are happy there, and welcome their child, Ruth, into the world. A short time later, however, Carl begins to feel trapped, enlists in the army and is sent away to France. Mathilda is devastated and angry at his departure. She moves back to the mainland and into the old house of her late parents. Amanda begins to feel agitated and upset. She's also sick all the time, and a nervous wreck. She is persuaded to take a rest, and travels back to the family farm to stay with her sister and niece. The three grow very close, and Amanda begins to see Ruth as their child, becoming very protective of her. After living in the farm house for a while, Amanda persuades Mathilda to move out to the island. At first, the idea does not go over well, but Mathilda soon agrees, and the three of them move out to the island. During the summer, it becomes apparent that Amanda is pregnant and desperate to hide it from everyone. Mathilda agrees to adopt the child as her own and make up a story about the baby being an orphan from a "hired girl." Amanda is pleased with this arrangement, but still must hide her pregnancy, so she does not leave the island until the baby is born. When the baby finally comes, Mathilda delivers it in the house with Ruth under the bed. Sometime in the night, Amanda changes her mind about Mathilda raising the baby and tries to leave the island by walking across the ice with the child. Ruth, who is approximately four at this time, follows Amanda out onto the ice because she doesn't want her to leave. Mathilda runs out after them, trying to get Ruth back and find out why Amanda is leaving. Out on the ice, they walk over a thin patch and the ice starts to break. Ruth and Mathilda go under, while Amanda desperately tries to save them. Mathilda pushes Ruth to the surface to save her, but falls back in herself. Amanda tries desperately to pull her out, but can't do it without falling in, so Mathilda bites her sister's finger to force her to let go and leave her to drown in the freezing water. Ruth is half dead and frozen on the ice with the baby, but she is revived. Amanda takes the new baby to a woman in town who has recently had a stillborn child. She tells the woman that a hired girl had the baby and then died in childbirth. She also tells her that the baby's name is Imogene. The woman is so taken with the child, and so amazed at the situation that she doesn't notice that both Ruth and Amanda are frozen and wearing nightgowns. She also doesn't notice the blood on Amanda. Soon after Mathilda's death, Carl returns home from the war with serious injuries, and is nursed back to health by Amanda. Ruth, traumatized, is behaving oddly and very leery of her father, whom she barely knows. The three of them live together for a while without incident, but after a while, Carl starts to suspect that there might be more to the story of his wife's death than he has been told. As far as he knows, his wife wandered out into the night all alone and disappeared, later to be found under the ice. Amanda starts having serious issues again with her nerves and anxiety. She is institutionalized in a mental hospital, and Carl is left to take care of Ruth on his own. Worried that he doesn't know enough about children, he asks his cousin, Hilda, to come to the farm and care for Ruth. Ruth dislikes Hilda almost instantly. She is strict, serious, and humorless. She sees Ruth as a problem child, and seems almost to enjoy punishing her. ko:루스의 기억 |
3608681 | /m/09pp4w | Back Roads | Tawni O'Dell | 2000-01 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Harley Altmyer should be in college drinking beer and chasing girls. He should be freed from his stifling coal town with its lack of jobs and no sense of humor. Instead he's marooned in the Pennsylvania backwoods caring for his three younger sisters after the shooting death of his physically abusive father and the arrest of his mother. His existence has become a joyless, exhausting blur of day care, mac and cheese dinners, working two minimum wage jobs, and monthly prison visits to a "once-devoted mother" who seems not only resigned but glad to have handed over the reins of parent and homemaker to her young son. As he sees it, his life is "lousy with women. All ages, shapes, sizes and levels of purity." Frustrated, overwhelmed, plagued by violent fantasies and trapped by feelings of love and duty, he's a guy in an impossible situation: an orphaned child with the responsibilities of an adult and the fiery, aggressive libido of a teenager. Life is further complicated when he develops an obsession with the sexy, melancholic mother of two down the road. Family secrets and unspoken truths threaten to consume him as his obsession deepens and she responds unearthing a series of staggering surprises. In the face of each unexpected revelation and through every wrenching ordeal, Harley does the best he can to hold it all together. Violent and disturbing yet touching and darkly funny, Harley's story is ultimately a search for his own self-worth as he slowly comes to realize that survival is a talent. |
3608696 | /m/09pp6l | Daughter of Fortune | Isabel Allende | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In Chile during the 1840s, Eliza Sommers is a young Chilean girl raised and educated by English Anglican siblings Victorian spinster Rose and strict Jeremy Sommers, and their sailor brother John Sommers, who are colonists living in the port of Valparaiso, ever since they found her on their doorstep, and taught in the art of cooking by the Mapuche Indian Mama Fresia. Over most of Part I, Eliza's origins and upbringing, and her maturity are told. Eliza falls in love with Joaquin Andieta, a young Chilean man who is concerned about his mother, living in poverty. The young couple have an affair, ultimately resulting in Eliza getting pregnant. Soon, news of gold being discovered in California reaches Chile, and Joaquin goes out to California in search of a fortune. Wanting to follow her lover, Eliza goes to California, with the help of her Chinese zhong yi (physician) friend, Tao Chi'en, in the bowels of a ship headed by a Dutch Lutheran captain, Vincent Katz. In the beginning of Part II, Tao's past is revealed, from his early life in poverty, to his apprenticeship to a master acupuncturist, and his ill-fated marriage to Lin, a young and pretty, but frail girl who dies after a brief marriage. Lin's spirit later comes in to help her widowed husband at crucial points for Tao in later parts of the book. During the journey to California, Eliza, due to her pregnancy, is frail and sick, and later suffers a miscarriage. To leave with ship without suspicion, Tao disguises Eliza as a Chinese boy, a disguise that she maintains in San Francisco where they have landed. Eliza earns money by selling some Chilean snacks and Tao becomes a successful zhong yi. Tao, after seeing the greed and brothels in San Francisco, loses most of his faith in America. Eliza sets on her journey to find Joaquin, using a male cowboy's disguise and the moniker Elias Andieta, and claiming to be Joaquin's brother. Meanwhile in Valparaiso, Rose and Jeremy are shocked to find that Eliza has disappeared. When John comes and asks about her whereabouts, Rose reveals a well-kept, shocking secret to Jeremy, a secret that she and John have concealed from him since Eliza's arrival into their home: John is Eliza's father, having had her with an unnamed Chilean woman. Based on intuition, John Sommers sails for San Francisco, commissioned by his wealthy employer Paulina Rodriguez de la Cruz as a steam ship captain, with the additional intent of finding his daughter. Part III finds Eliza broke after still trying to search for Joaquin, she occasionly sends letters to Tao describing what she sees in her journey. Although she has fallen out of love with Joaquin, she cannot stop journeying. In an outskirt town, Eliza meets up with Joe Bonecrusher's travelling caraven of prostitutes and ends up travelling with them as cook and piano player. The members of the caravan believe Eliza to be a homosexual man, a disguise which she takes up much to the frustration of Babalu, the caravan's bodyguard. Eliza stays with the group during the winter as they settle in a small town. During this time, Tao moves to San Francisco to save up money to move back to China. He surprises himself when he realises he misses Eliza's company and is consoled when he begins receiving her letters. John Sommers, in his search for Eliza, comes across Jacob Todd, an old suitor of Rose's who is now a journalist known as Jacob Freemont. Freemont promises that he will look out for any sign of Eliza as he writes articles about the famous bandit Joaquin Murieta, whose description matches Eliza's lover. Meanwhile, as Joe Bonecrusher's business begins to dwindle, Tao finds Eliza and returns to San Francisco with her. They set up a network to help young Chinese prostitutes escape and rehabilitate with the help of friends. Eventually Jacob Freemont is able to pass word to the Sommers that Eliza is alive, who was previously thought to be dead. Tao and Eliza live together and eventually form a relationship; she eventually decides to write to Rose to inform her foster mother that she is alive. When Joaquin Murieta is shot dead and his preserved head is showcased in San Francisco, Eliza and Tao go to see if the man was really Joaquin Andieta. |
3608720 | /m/09pp8n | Icy Sparks | Gwyn Hyman Rubio | 1998 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A young girl struggling with accusations of Tourette's Syndrome with Tourette's syndrome and with selective mutes. Icy Sparks is a young girl living in Eastern Kentucky with her grandparents in the 1950s/1960s. She doesn't get along well with her peers and suddenly starts having tics and croaks. Icy goes down into the root cellar to let out her tics, hiding the condition from her grandparents. Finally she tells her friend, Miss Emily Tanner, a local store owner who is also an outcast from society at 300 pounds. Her teacher tries putting her in a solitary classroom but even that doesn't work. Her grandparents have Icy admitted to a mental institution for observation. Even in the institution, Icy is an outcast. She sees herself as not as mentally ill as her peers there, and is tormented by one of the hospital workers. She befriends a second worker, but really just wants to go home. When she is allowed to go home, she stays in her house or on the surrounding property, but does not venture out in public. After her return home, the atmosphere is tense even there. Icy stays in the house and does not socialize. After her grandfather dies, Icy and her grandmother turn to religion for solace. Inspired by a tent-meeting revival where she observes that people touched by the Holy Spirit behave as if they have Tourette's syndrome, Icy discovers she has a gift for music. She proceeds to attend university, where her disorder is diagnosed officially. Later, she becomes a therapist, working with children with Tourette's syndrome and with selective mutes. |
3608779 | /m/09ppds | The Book of Ruth | Jane Hamilton | 1988 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | An awkward midwest girl, Ruth, is growing up the small town of Honey Creek, Illinois. All of her childhood, and most of her adult life, is spent wondering what would happen if she could get away. Her father, Elmer, left her family when she was ten, which left her mother, May, very bitter. May is extremely unhappy with an disappointed in Ruth because she is nothing like her shining brother, Matt. Matt is a mathematical genius with a scholarship to MIT, while Ruth is considered remedial. Their mother May is crushed when Matt moves away to Boston after graduation and she is left with Ruth, who takes a job with her at the local dry cleaner shop. Ruth and May make two friends during this short time period: Deedee and her daughter Daisy (a fast girl with a loose reputation.) One hot night at the local lake, Ruth meets Daisy's friend, Ruby Dahl, a local male ne'er do well. Ruby and Daisy met through a court mandated course for drivers convicted of a DUI. One of many infractions in Ruby's history of petty crime. When Ruby later takes Ruth out on a date, he tricks her into losing her virginity to him. But Ruth continues to see him, believing his early declaration of love. After several dates they decide to get married. Ruby has no guests at the wedding, as his mother has dementia and died from pneumonia shortly after moving to Florida with Ruby's father, and Ruby's father has no respect for his son. It is revealed at this time that Ruby was a 'normal' baby until his mother, while drunk, falls asleep in the bathtub with Ruby where he almost drowned. Thus explaining the common assumption that he is slow witted. Because Ruby doesn't have a job, after the marriage, he moves in with Ruth and her mother. May and Ruby do not get along and Ruth becomes very agitated because she had envisioned marriage as the end to her troubles and wants peace within the house. She discovers that she is pregnant and May becomes a warmer mother - advising Ruth to relax and coaching her on child rearing. Even May and Ruby get along much better during her pregnancy. After the birth of Ruth's son, Justin, May and Ruby appear to grow closer - much to Ruth's dismay. Over the years, Ruth becomes increasingly discontent, ultimately regretting her marriage to Ruby, who has descended into alcoholism and drug abuse, frequenting pornography theatres and demanding sex from Ruth. During the holiday season, Ruth discovers she is pregnant for the second time. The family tensions come to a head when, now toddler, Justin wants some Christmas baked goods kept in the freezer and May and Ruth refuse him, with the excuse of not wanting his teeth to be rotten like Ruby's. Ruby becomes dark and declares that he is the man of the house, telling Justin to get the sweets, so they can share them. May gets upset and Ruby attacks her, cornering her in the basement and eventually beating and strangling her to death. He turns on Ruth, and breaks her hands, and beats her. He stops short of killing her when Justin tells him to stop. After escaping to a neighbors house, Ruth is rescued by police and Ruby arrested. Ruth is sent to a special hospital for pregnant women with special needs to recover and give birth. Eventually she and her son Justin are taken in by Ruth's Aunt Sid. Justin has a hard time being with his mother and frequently has nightmares about the murder. It is revealed that Ruby was ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and committed to a mental hospital for the crime. The book ends with Ruth pining over her lost life, and how she has to move forward with her sons. |
3609337 | /m/09pqd8 | The Witching Hour | Anne Rice | 10/19/1990 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction"} | In this book we meet some of the trilogy's leading characters: Dr. Rowan Mayfair, a brilliant neurosurgeon who is ignorant of her family history; Michael Curry, a contractor who specializes in the restoration of old homes while dreaming of his childhood in New Orleans and yearning to return there; Aaron Lightner, a psychic scholar and member of the Talamasca; Lasher, a spirit with wicked motives; and the Mayfair Witches, an old Southern family with a taste for poetry and incest. They have a talent for secretiveness and successful business ventures. The majority of the Mayfair Witches are female (with the exception of Julien), and the family line matriarchal in lineage; i.e. families pass down the maiden name "Mayfair" instead of adopting the respective husband's last name. Rowan and Michael fall in love after she saves him from drowning, and when he decides to return to New Orleans, she follows him to learn the secrets of her past against the wishes of her adoptive mother. Aaron has studied the Mayfairs and Lasher from afar for years. He tracks down Michael to share with him the history of the family and the spirit, whom Michael has seen since he was a boy. (He was also interested in Michael because of the psychometric power he purportedly developed since waking from a near drowning experience.) What follows is a gruesome story filled with murder, incest, and betrayal. There are, however, many gaps which can only be filled in by Lasher himself. Rowan and Michael marry despite all this, and Rowan takes on the responsibilities of the Designee of the Mayfair Legacy. She dreams of a medical center where anyone, regardless of age, race, or financial status, can be treated and healed. She conceives, and it seems as if she and Michael may escape the curse of the Legacy. This is not to be, however, as Lasher finally reveals himself to Rowan, and explains his wish: to be made flesh so that he may walk the earth again and sets about slowly seducing Rowan through many intense intimate encounters. Secretly thinking that she can outwit this spirit, she agrees to send Michael away from the house on Christmas Day so that Lasher can fulfil his centuries-old ambition. Her plan (to bind Lasher to 'weak matter' which can be destroyed by her mental killing abilities) backfires as Lasher enters her womb, and makes himself at home in the fetus. Rowan immediately goes into labor, which is violent and bloody, and Lasher is born. Michael returns to the house then, and seeing what has become of the child that he had desperately wished for, he throws himself at the creature, thinking to kill him. Lasher is much too strong, though, and attempts to drown Michael in the pool. Upon this second near death experience Michael loses the power in his hands. Terrified for Michael's life, Rowan drags the creature away, and they run off together. Throughout the novel there are mentions of the "Thirteen Witches" and the Thirteenth being the "Doorway". This is in reference to Lasher selectively manipulating the Mayfair bloodline so that the thirteenth witch, Rowan, would be more powerful than all the others. Lasher required a witch as powerful as Rowan because she possessed the ability to make him live again. Lasher had possessed dead bodies with the help of Mary Beth and Julien Mayfair (two of the most powerful witches in the family), but due to limits in medical knowledge at the time, he could not reanimate the corpse and was unable to transform the bodies into Taltos form. When Lasher possesses Rowan's baby, the child effectively dies and as Lasher exchanges the cells, Rowan's diagnostic/healing abilities, along with her medical knowledge, are required to keep Lasher from dying. es:La hora de las brujas fr:Le Lien maléfique it:L'ora delle streghe ru:Час ведьмовства |
3609415 | /m/09pqkm | A Wind Named Amnesia | null | null | null | The Apocalypse didn't come with a bang, but with a whimper. Silently, the amnesia wind swept away all of mankind's knowledge. Thousands of years of human civilization vanished overnight as people forgot how to use the tools of modern civilization: who they were, how to speak -- everything. Technology decayed as mankind was reduced to the level of cavemen. Two years later, a young man -- miraculously re-educated after the cataclysm -- explores this barbaric world while pursued by a relentless killing machine. He is accompanied by a young mysterious woman who is somehow spared the devastating effects of the amnesia wind. |
3609888 | /m/09prht | Avalon High | Meg Cabot | 12/27/2005 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Elaine "Ellie" Harrison has just moved. Avalon High, seems like a typical high school with the stereotypical students: Lance the jock, Jennifer the cheerleader, Marco, the bad boy/desperado, and Will, the senior class president, quarterback, the student every girl wants and all around good guy. But not everyone at Avalon High is who they appear to be, not even Ellie herself. |
3611536 | /m/09pvx2 | ¡Que viva la música! | Andrés Caicedo | null | null | The novel has been seen as an invitation to a party without end, where the main character comes to see the world as a bottomless pit of debauchery, which she relishes. There is a secret pact with death itself involving the ever more frantic dance of María del Carmen Huerta, the blonde protagonist of the book. The novel also offers an affectionate view of the Colombian city of Cali as unique, magic, and different. Our introduction starts in the privileged north, with its Sixth Avenue ("la Sexta"), Parque Versalles, and its magical places, continuing to the ghetto in the South with its Caseta Panamericana (built especially for the 1971 Pan American Games), the Pance River, the neighborhoods beyond upper-class Miraflores, the winged Andes mountain range, and the hideouts of sex and salsa in the final stretches of 15th Street ("la Quince"). |
3611717 | /m/09pw5x | The Hounds of the Morrigan | Pat O'Shea | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Pidge buys a book entitled A Book of Patrick's Writing and discovers that the book he bought is actually a prison for the evil serpent Olc-Glas. The Morrigan wants the book so that she can absorb the evil of Olc-Glas and take over the world. |
3613379 | /m/09pzf6 | The King in the Window | Adam Gopnik | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | On the night of Epiphany, after enjoying his piece of Epiphany kingcake and wearing a gold paper crown, Oliver gazes out the window. He is approached by a haunting vision of another boy in the reflection. This mysterious boy is a window wraith, and he mistakes Oliver for the new king. The window wraith boy calls Oliver to wield his sword and reclaim the kingdom, luring him into a journey of self-discovery that could save the world. The window wraiths are a cadre of France's deceased poets and artists, such as Molière, who claim Oliver as the king who will save them from the evil force dwelling behind the mirrors of the world capturing the souls of those who stare too long. The element of mirrors in the book is also an ode to Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking-Glass and there is also a pivotal character who is a descendant of Alice Liddell. |
3615855 | /m/09q3wy | The Operated Jew | null | null | null | The book told the story of a young Jewish doctor, who because of antisemitic pressures, seeks to escape his Jewishness by submitting himself to a series of violently painful medical procedures. The doctor has stereotypical Jewish features: black curly hair, oily skin, thick lips, and a large, hooked nose, an effeminate voice, has poor posture and is orthopedically impaired. He agrees to undergo a complex medical operation in order to free himself from his Jewishness. Ultimately, he arranges to have all his bones straightened out, has his hair dyed blonde, and gets his larynx altered to change his voice. He is placed in a bathtub and given a blood transfusion by pure Aryan virgins. Having been seemingly cured of his Jewishness, he weds a blonde German woman. However, just as he is about to deliver a speech at his wedding, his voice takes on a high pitch, as all his previous Jewish features resurface. He ultimately winds up as a gelinatous puddle on the floor, thus signifying the immutability of the Jew: a Jew is always a Jew, regardless of whatever attempts at assimilation he may undertake. The book incorporated all the elements of modern, racial antisemitism: the expression of desire on part of the Jew to escape his identity, the lengths to which he will go to transform himself, the pornographic quality of the affair (as exemplified by the Aryan virgins), and the impossibility of it all. It sought to illustrate that Jews cannot escape their race; if they try, they become something non-human, and indeed sub-human. |
3617404 | /m/09q75l | The Diary of a Chambermaid | Octave Mirbeau | 1900 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0g_jj": "Picaresque novel"} | The novel presents itself as the diary of Mademoiselle Célestine R., a chambermaid. Her first employer fetishizes her boots, and she later discovers the elderly man dead, with one of her boots stuffed into his mouth. Later on, Célestine becomes the maid of a bourgeois couple, Lanlaire, and is perfectly aware that she is entangled in the power struggles of their marriage. Célestine ends by becoming a bourgeois café hostess, who mistreats her servants in turn. |
3617412 | /m/09q76q | Blackwater | Conn Iggulden | 3/2/2006 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"} | "How do you know when you're in too deep? Davey has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, a smiling sociopath who will stop at nothing to protect himself and his family. But when the shadowy figure of Denis Tanter comes into Davey's life, how far will the bond of brotherhood reach?" |
3617997 | /m/09q8cy | The Death of Kings | Conn Iggulden | 1/5/2004 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Exiled from Rome by the new Dictator, Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar is serving with a naval legion. After playing a crucial part in liberating a Roman fort in Mytilene under the command of rebels, Julius receives the honour wreath and increases his standing among his men yet further. Despite this success, his war galley is attacked and captured by pirates, with Julius himself receiving a serious head injury. His household fares no better with its head serving at sea: Cornelia, Julius' wife is assaulted by Sulla despite being heavily pregnant. Julius and Cornelia's daughter is born and named Julia in honour of her father. Marcus Brutus meanwhile has finished his term with a legion in Macedon and is causing trouble with the locals on his return journey to Rome. He and Renius manage to meet jealous husbands and vindictive fathers before returning to the city. In the city itself, Julius' estate manager Tubruk swears revenge on Sulla and schemes to sell himself back into slavery in order to enter Sulla's household. Tubruk then successfully poisons Sulla before managing to escape the city before he can be traced. Antonidus, Sulla's right-hand, promises to track down Sulla's killer and tears Rome apart in his search. As Julius and the survivors of his galley gradually recover while detained on the pirates' ship, their captors demand a ransom. While the men attempt to negotiate lower ransom prices, Julius demands a much high price than the one proposed, defying the pirates and declaring that he will re-claim whatever is paid anyway. Eventually the survivors are left on the north African coast when the ransoms are paid. After returning to Rome and the estate where he and Julius grew up, Brutus asks Tubruk for the whereabouts of his mother, Servilia. After visiting her home, he gradually comes to know the woman who abandoned him as a child, as well as forming a reluctant acceptance of her life. In delight of her new-found relationship with her son, Servilia uses her influence with Crassus, one of the richest men in the Senate, to re-form the legion of Marius (Primigenia) under Brutus' command. Antonidus believes he has narrowed down the list of culprits for Sulla's murder to three: Cinna, father of Cornelia; Crassus; or Pompey, a renowned general and rising star in the Senate. With the backing of Cato, one of the most powerful men in the Senate, Antonidus hires an assassin to kill a loved one of each of the three. Pompey is the first to suffer Antonidus' misplaced vengeance, with his daughter murdered in Pompey's garden. Marching across north Africa, Julius calls for volunteers and, where necessary, presses young men into service to assist in the finding and destruction of the pirates. Risking the wrath of the Roman authorities with Ciro, one of Julius' recruits, accidentally killing a soldier and then Julius and his men stealing a ship, the small force sets out to find the survivors and recover their ransom money. Eventually the pirates are found and destroyed, with a huge hoard found on the pirate's ship, and Julius resolves to land in Greece and return to Rome. Upon landing in Greece, Julius discovers several Roman forts lying destroyed with their inhabitants killed, and learns not only of the return of Mithridates, but also of the death of Sulla. While Cato and the supporters of Sulla delay the Senate's decision to appoint a leader to confront Mithridates, Julius decides to confront Mithridates himself, and recruits many surviving veterans to fight alongside him, calling them the Wolves of Rome. Conducting several major hit-and-run attacks on Mithridates' forces, the Wolves eventually defeat the forces of Mithridates before the forces sent by the Senate even arrive in Greece. After delivering Mithridates' body to the approaching legions, Julius leads the Wolves to Rome and finally returned home. While home at his estate Julius meets his daughter Julia for the first time and learns of Sulla's assault on his wife. In his fury he comes close to killing Tubruk, one of his oldest friends, before learning Tubruk was Sulla's killer. Swearing revenge on Sulla's associates and followers, Julius publicly allies himself with Crassus and Pompey, who publicly denounces Cato as responsible for his daughters death. Tension also flares briefly between Julius and Brutus when Julius demands Brutus hand over Primigenia to him, until Brutus acquiesces and puts his friendship above his pride. Julius' marriage also suffers, with Cornelia feeling increasingly ignored by Julius. When Cato's son is forcibly signed up to Primigenia and is forbidden to withdraw from his service, Julius gathers another opponent. Crisis strikes Rome again when a gladiator known as Spartacus leads a slave revolt and destroys two legions in the north. Infighting in the Senate leads to indecision as to who will lead the legions north leads to Crassus being given command, despite his perceived lack of skill as a general. Knowing this, Crassus makes Pompey his second in command and Pompey responds by summoning Julius and Primigenia. Primigenia marches north and performs admirably, though it is forcibly merged with another legion. Julius remains in command of the newly formed legion, and names it the Tenth. Tragedy strikes Julius before he can see the end of the campaign. Cornelia is murdered on Cato's orders, with Tubruk dying trying to protect her. Julius returns to his estate with Pompey and Brutus, and Pompey discovers Cato's involvement in the murders of Cornelia and his daughter. Cato however commits suicide before he can be executed. A grief-stricken Julius returns to his troops in time to see Spartacus and the slave revolt crushed. Pompey however begins to see Julius as a threat and arranges for him to take up a position in Spain. |
3618005 | /m/09q8d8 | Alamut | Vladimir Bartol | 2004 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel is situated in the 11th century at the fortress of Alamut (Persian for "Eagle's Nest"), which was seized by the leader of the Ismailis, Hassan ibn Sabbah or Sayyiduna (Our Master). At the start of the story, he is gathering an army for the purpose of attacking the Seljuk Empire, which has taken over possession of Iran. The story commences with the journey of young ibn Tahir, who is, according to his family's wish, intending to join the Alamut garrison. There, he is appointed to the squad of the most valiant soldiers, named the fedai. Fedai are expected to obey orders without any demur, death being not an obstacle. During their demanding training, they come to be convinced that they shall go to heaven immediately after their death if they die in the line of duty. Hassan managed to achieve such level of obedience by deceiving his soldiers - he gave them drugs (hashish) to numb them and ordered afterwards that they be carried into the gardens behind the fortress, which were made into a simulacrum of heaven, including houris. Therefore, fedai believe that Allah had given Hassan the power to send anybody into the Heaven for a certain period. Moreover, some of the fedai fall in love with houris and Hassan unscrupulously uses that to his advantage. Meanwhile, the Seljuk army besieges Alamut. Some of the soldiers are captured and Hassan decides to demonstrate his power to them. He orders a pair of fedai (Yusuf and Suleiman) to kill themselves; Suleiman by stabbing himself, Yusuf by jumping off of a tower. They fulfill their master's order with a smile on their face, thinking that they will soon rejoice with their beloved in heaven. Afterwards, Hassan orders ibn Tahir to go and kill the grand vizier of the Seljuk sultan Nizam al-Mulk. Hassan wants to take vengeance for al-Mulk's treachery against him long ago. Ibn Tahir stabs the vizier, but, before he passes away, the vizier reveals the truth of Hassan's deceptions to his murderer. Ibn Tahir decides to return to Alamut and kill Hassan. When ibn Tahir returns, Hassan receives him and also reveals him his true motto: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted". Then, he lets ibn Tahir go, to start a long journey around the world. Another fedai kills the Seljuk Sultan and the Seljuk empire dissolves. The fight for the Seljuk throne begins. Hassan encloses himself in a tower, determined to work until the end of his days. He transfers the power over the Ismaelits to the hands of his faithful dai, military, and religious chiefs. |
3618655 | /m/09q9vf | So You Want to Be a Wizard | Diane Duane | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Nita Callahan is a thirteen-year-old girl who discovers a book titled So You Want to Be a Wizard while hiding from big bullies in a library. She brings the book home with her and discovers that it is about the art of wizardry. She does not completely trust the book's claim that she can become a wizard if she takes the Wizard Oath, but she takes it nonetheless. The next day when she is out trying to do her first spell she meets Kit Rodriguez, another wizard. After they successfully complete a spell together, Nita's doubts are gone: she is a wizard. |
3621403 | /m/09qhbv | The Night Manager | John le Carré | null | null | The novel follows Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier turned night auditor for a luxurious hotel. One night, Pine encounters Sophie, a French-Arab woman who has ties to Richard Onslow Roper, an English black marketeer who has made a fortune from the sale of weapons. Sophie provides Pine with incriminating documents, which Pine forwards to a friend in British intelligence. Despite Pine's best efforts to help her, Sophie's betrayal is discovered and she is subsequently murdered. Six months later, Pine is approached by intelligence operatives Leonard Burr and Rex Goodhew, who are planning a carefully detailed sting operation against Roper. Eager to avenge Sophie, Pine agrees to go undercover to infiltrate Roper's vast criminal empire, but the operation is jeopardized by an inter-agency turf war within the intelligence community. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that Pine has won the confidence of Roper, through an adroit tactic in which Pine saves his child. Pine is assigned a position within the Roper organization, to act as the head of a special-purpose entity - a device sometimes employed by modern corporations. As the head of the company, Pine is tasked with the assignment of executing a large transaction in which shipping containers full of "Colombian coffee" (happy children juggling on the label) are exchanged for arms. The drugs are piled high, and packed into their respective containers - and Pine signs for them. Meanwhile, operation 'Flagship' accomplishes a betrayal of Pine's identity by a group of questionable individuals in the employ of the Intelligence agencies. Seeing Pine discredited, and in full knowledge of the danger to his life, Burr executes a daring tactic to save him, at a cost of scale to the sting operation. The novel ends with Pine alive, having survived being badly tortured. He is leaving Roper's ship "The Iron Pasha" in a launch, and he voices to himself the feeling that he has somehow lost and Roper won. He wonders if Roper, and men and corporations like him, will not leave this earth until they have scarred it so badly that the destruction they have wrought by their actions burns the entire world -- and them along with it. fr:Le Directeur de nuit |
3621668 | /m/09qhrd | A Woman of the Iron People | Eleanor Arnason | 1991-04 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A Woman of the Iron People is divided into two parts. The first primarily deals with Lixia's growing understanding and involvement with life on the planet. Soon after arriving on the planet she meets Nia and starts to pick up the language of gifts, which is a sort of trade language, from her. They leave their current location and journey west, meeting Derek and the Voice of the Waterfall along the way. The second part of the novel deals primarily with the question of intervention. The various factions of humans, most of whom are still in space, disagree as to how much the humans should intervene on the planet. Questions are raised about the policy of intervention. |
3623038 | /m/09qldk | Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet | null | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer (the space-going equivalent of a Marine) Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter ("Rip") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material. In this he is opposed by agents of the "Consolidation of Planetary Governments", who also seek control and use of the asteroid. |
3623120 | /m/09qlkt | All Men are Mortal | Simone de Beauvoir | 1946 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Regina is a young theatrical actress. Her career seems to be promising and her reputation becomes wider with every tour and performance. But she is not content. The sparks of attention in the eyes of her audience seem fleeting and the praises seem typical rather than unique. She can not accept herself sharing their attention and regards with her co-star Florence. Following a performance in Rouen, Regina chooses to stand aside from her theatrical troupe and starts an internal monologue concerning her uniqueness, or lack thereof, among other women. She keeps comparing herself to Florence and focusing on the current love life of her fellow actress. She bitterly acknowledges that Florence is probably not thinking about her and neither are the other people around her. Then she notices another man who seems to pay little attention to her, Raymond Fosca. Fosca is described as a reasonably attractive with a crooked nose, tall and athletic, seemingly young but with a passionless face and empty eyes that remind Regina of her father in his deathbed. Soon enough Regina finds that Fosca resides in the same hotel as her theatrical troupe. He has piqued the curiosity of the staff and several visitors for his peculiar habits. He had been staying in the hotel for a month but hardly spoke to anybody and appeared deaf to any attempts to speak to him. He spent his days in the garden, sitting in silence even when raining. He never changed clothes and no one had seen him eat anything. A curious Regina enters his room in his absence and finds release papers from an asylum, claiming the man suffered from amnesia and was incarcerated for an unknown amount of time. He was considered harmless and released a month before. She decides to use the information to approach Raymond Fosca. However Fosca is not in the mood for conversations. Regina asks him for a way to escape her boredom. He only asks how old the actress is. He takes her report of being twenty-eight-years-old and estimates she has about fifty more years to endure. Then she would be free of boredom. Despite his warnings to stay away from him, Regina makes a habit of visiting him. Fosca comments that due to her time has started flowing for him again. Already the man leaves the hotel for the first time in a month to satisfy a new craving for cigarettes. He starts confiding in her and explains that he has no amnesia. Far from it, he remembers everything from his life. Even his thirty years in the asylum. Regina visits the man daily but then tires of him. The theatre company leaves Rouen and she leaves Fosca without a word. She returns to Paris and starts negotiations for a career in the Cinema of France. But only three days later, Fosca has followed her home. She is the only person to currently hold his interest and makes clear his intention to keep following her. He wants to watch and listen to her before she dies. Regina mocks Fosca at first for stalking her, and then worries about his surprising resolve at following her, despite her attempts to get rid of him. Their discussions soon turn to her passion for life and her mortality, while Fosca first hints at his own immortality. She finds it fascinating that a man does not fear death even if the man seems to suffer from his own brand of insanity. Regina contemplates his state of mind and even starts discussing it with the other persons in her life. Fosca soon enough proves his immortality by cutting his own throat with a razor in her presence. At first a stream of blood flows from his throat and the man seems to be dying. But moments later the flow stops, the wound starts closing without treatment and Fosca heals at an incredible rate. He seeks a new start for himself, to feel alive again by her side. Regina is touched, but has another motive to return his affection. In ten thousand years, she thinks, Fosca could still be alive remembering her, long after her own death. Another suitor comments that she would be one memory among many, one butterfly in a collection. But Regina pursues her new immortal lover and even enjoys tutoring him at living again. However she finds herself unable to understand him and his indifferent behavior to many aspects of modern life. Seeking to understand him, Regina demands to listen to his own life story which presumably shaped his perceptions. Fosca has to agree and his narration begins. Fosca was born in a palace of the fictional Carmona, Italy on 17 May 1279. His mother died shortly after his birth. He was raised by his father and trained in equestrianism and archery. A monk was hired to indoctrinate the boy to the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church but Fosca proudly proclaims never caring for anything beyond this Earth and never fearing God or man. He idolized his handsome and strong father and resented that Carmona was instead governed by Francois Rienchi. He was bow-legged and fearful for his own life. The people hated Rienchi and the Duke of Carmona was said to not make a step without his chainmail armor and at least ten guards. Fosca describes him being greedy and having his private chest of gold, kept full by unpopular methods. One by one the nobles of Carmona were accused of treason and executed by hanging or decapitation. Their fortunes were confiscated and provided more gold for Rienchi, as did the heavy taxation of the lower classes. Many lived in hovels and people begging for money and food were commonplace. Fosca considered Francois Rienchi responsible for the misery of Carmona. But Francois eventually died, succeeded by his own brother Bertrand Rienchi. Rumor had it that Bertrand had poisoned his brother but Carmona celebrated the change of Dukes. But the chest of gold was always empty and Bertrand had to fill it by following in the footsteps of his brother. He had promised no more public executions but now the nobles and wealthy traders of Carmona withered away in prison. Their fortunes were still confiscated and heavier taxes were added to the old ones. The people now hated Bertrand Rienchi. The main tension exists between the meaningless of daily life, rituals, style from the perspective of an immortal man contrasted by the seeming trivial concerns of a mortal woman: the importance and the value they put on things are at opposite ends of the spectrum. From his perspective everything is essentially the same. From her perspective even the most trivial is unique and carries significance. |
3623871 | /m/09qmms | The Invention of Love | Tom Stoppard | null | null | The play begins with A. E. Housman, dead at age 77, standing on the bank of the river Styx. Dreaming that he is boarding his boat for the afterlife – captained by a petulant Charon – Housman begins to remember moments from his life, starting with his matriculation to Oxford University, where he studied Classics. The play unfolds as a collection of short scenes that trace, primarily, Housman's relationship with Moses Jackson, the man for whom Housman harboured a lifelong, unrequited love. The scenes also explore the late-Victorian artistic ideals as well as Housman's intellectual growth into a preeminent Latin textual scholar. Throughout the play, the older Housman comments on and occasionally talks to the characters on stage, including his younger self. |
3625764 | /m/09qs5h | The Devil and Miss Prym | Paulo Coelho | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | For almost fifteen years, old Berta had spent everyday sitting outside, watching over the little village Viscos, talking with her deceased husband. She is waiting for the devil to come, as her husband predicted. One day a stranger appears with the intention of staying one week in the village. In the woods he buries 11 bars of gold. On the way back he meets Chantal Prym, a young and beautiful barmaid, who is bored of the idyllic scenery and slow pace of life. Regularly she seduces tourists in the hope that one of them will prove to be her escape route. The stranger shows her the buried treasure and promises that it will belong to the villagers if they agree to kill someone. There is a ferocious battle within the young woman; a battle between her angel and her devil. She sees in the gold the ticket to finally escape. Still, something holds her back. After some days, she decides to tell what the stranger has proposed, trusting that they will refuse. The people’s reaction, however, plants the seed of doubt inside of Chantal. Now she fears for her own life. As an act of desperation, she plans to abandon Viscos with one of the stranger’s bars. Destiny sends a rogue wolf, which threatens Chantal’s life. The stranger arrives, and both escape. Meanwhile the villagers assemble to choose their victim. The scapegoat they choose is Berta, since she is already old and serves no purpose in the village. Before the villagers shoot a sedated Berta, Chantal convinces them that under no circumstances murder is justified; our conduct is a matter of control and choice. |
3626738 | /m/09qvd1 | Off On A Comet | Jules Verne | 1877 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story starts with a comet that touches the Earth in its flight and collects a few small chunks of it. Some forty people of various nations and ages are condemned to a two-year-long journey on the comet. They form a mini-society and cope with the hostile environment of the comet (mostly the cold). The size of the 'comet' is about 2300 kilometers in diameter - far larger than any comet or asteroid that actually exists. |
3626817 | /m/09qvlr | Uneasy Money | P. G. Wodehouse | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish, is hard-up for money. When he is unexpectedly bequeathed a million pounds by an American he once helped at golf, and furthermore learns that the millionaire left his niece and nephew only twenty pounds, he is uneasy. He endeavours to approach them (in then-rural Long Island) and see if he can fix up something, like giving them half the inheritance. He discovers that it can be difficult to give money away... Also features engagements being broken off and renewed anew, love, bee-keeping, and a monkey. |
3636427 | /m/09rf88 | I Can Blink | null | null | null | Uniquely, the written "plot" starts on the cover, with the phrase "I can blink like an owl." The book continues, encouraging children to sniff like a dog, snap like a turtle, chew like a cow, shake their head like a horse, puff their cheeks like a squirrel, stick out their tongue like a snake, smile like a monkey, scrunch their face like a walrus, and wiggle their nose like a rabbit. The last page is an image of a flower, which has no associated action or text. |
3639603 | /m/04_1htr | The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood | Howard Pyle | 1883 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The plot follows Robin Hood as he becomes an outlaw after a conflict with foresters and through his many adventures and run-ins with the law. Each chapter tells a different tale of Robin as he recruits Merry Men, resists the authorities, and aids his fellow man. The popular stories of Little John defeating Robin in a fight with staffs, of Robin's besting at the hands of Friar Tuck, and of his collusion with Alan-a-Dale all appear. In the end, Robin and his men are pardoned by King Richard the Lionheart and his band are incorporated into the king's retinue, much to the dismay of the Sheriff of Nottingham. |
3639800 | /m/09rm6t | Stark | Ben Elton | 1/1/1989 | {"/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"} | Colin "CD" Dobson, lives a humdrum life at a critical point in history. The environment is being destroyed by a series of 'avalanches' - sudden upsets in the Earth's ecosystem, causing widespread destruction. The Stark conspiracy is a cabal of the world's richest and most influential men, who have long been aware that the planet's ecosystem is approaching total collapse. For decades they have been launching unmanned spacecraft loaded with supplies into orbit around the Earth and the Moon. Seeking to save their own lives and leave everyone else to suffer from 'total toxic overload', they secretly build a fleet of spacecraft with the intention colonizing the Moon. Using crude intimidation, they purchase land from Aboriginals in Western Australia to use as a launch site. They sell their stocks and commodities to raise cash, dumping the assets at the same time and in high volumes to engineer a worldwide stockmarket crash and lower the price of the resources they need. They buy the Moon from the United States government, along with the hardware to reach it. Six vessels are designed to travel to the Moon, three of which will carry humans, with room for 250 humans on each. The vessels are named 'Star Arks', referencing the Biblical story of Noah's Ark. The Star Arks contain human and animal embryos in suspended animation, as well as resources needed for life support. The Star Arks are prepared under the cover story that the consortium is building a desert resort. CD and his friends form a group called 'EcoAction'. Each of them have their own reason for fighting the consortium, with the collective goal of trying to protect the environment. They take action against the consortium's activities, and in the process uncover the conspiracy. They infiltrate the launch site and wreak havoc. CD and one of the conspirators, Sly Moorcock, compete for the affections of Rachel, who eventually joins the conspiracy as Sly's intended partner. EcoAction try to warn the rest of the world about the plan, but they are not taken seriously. The cabal kill many of those who have investigated or uncovered the conspiracy. Rachel turns on Sly at the last minute so she can sabotage the launch, but he overpowers and tries to abduct her. She escapes and rejoins the surviving members of EcoAction. The Stark Conspiracy blast off, but find that their existence is frustrating and lonely. Sly Moorcock eventually commits suicide. The narrative ends with an admonishment for the world's consumers over their inaction on environmental issues in the late 1980s and early 1990s. |
3640434 | /m/09rnps | Spherical Harmonic | Catherine Asaro | 2001-12 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Spherical Harmonic is a first person narrative told from the viewpoint of Dyhianna Selei. Although an elected Assembly governs the Imperialate, in ages past the Ruby Pharaoh ruled as absolute sovereign. Selei is the descendant of the ancient pharaohs, and is considered the titular ruler of modern Skolia. Spherical Harmonic takes place following the Radiance War, a conflict fought between the Imperialate and the Eubian Concord, an empire ruled by a rigid caste of narcissists called Aristos. The Eubian economy is based on slave trade, which the Aristos seek to expand to the Imperialate. Just prior to the opening scene of Spherical Harmonic, Dyhianna Selei escapes a Eubian military force by stepping into a Lock, a singularity that defines the boundary between two universes. In mathematical terms, she has entered an alternate dimension defined by the functions known as spherical harmonics. As the book opens, she is "coalescing" on a moon called Opalite. She reforms in partial waves that transfer her from one universe to the other. Some prose in the book is written in the shape of the sinusoidal functions found in the spherical harmonics. As Selei fades in and out of existence, in danger of disappearing, she slowly recovers her memories about her identity and history. She manages to activate an emergency protocol secretly established on the moon for her protection. As a result she is found by Jon Casestar, an admiral in the Skolian Fleet, and Commander Vaz Majda, an elite fighter pilot who is also her sister-in-law. Once aboard an ISC battle cruiser, Selei strives to reunite the Ruby Dynasty and find out what has happened to her people. The book follows her attempts to resurrect the Skolian military and government. Selei also struggles to discover what has happened to her son Taquinil and her husband Eldrinson. Her plan to go to Earth and free members of the Ruby Dynasty being held captive there, including Roca, her sister and heir, meets little enthusiasm among her top officers, as it can be seen as an act of war. Unable to trust anyone, Selei ends up seeking to overthrow the elected government of her own empire so she can rebuild it from the ashes of the war. |
3641419 | /m/09rqdj | God's Bits of Wood | Ousmane Sembène | 1960 | null | The action takes place in several locations—primarily in Bamako, Thiès, and Dakar. The map at the beginning shows the locations and suggests that the story is about a whole country and all of its people. There is a large cast of characters associated with each place. Some are featured players—Fa Keita, Tiemoko, Maimouna, Ramatoulaye, Penda, Deune, N'Deye, Dejean, and Bakayoko. Others part of the populace. The fundamental conflict is captured in two people, Dejean (the French manager and colonialist) and Bakayoko (the soul and spirit of the strike). In another sense, however, the main characters of the novel are the people as a collective, the places they inhabit, and the railroad. The evolution of the strike causes an evolution in the self-perceptions of the Africans themselves, one that is most noticeable in the women of Bamako, Thiès, and Dakar. These women go from seemingly standing behind the men in their lives, to walking alongside them and eventually marching ahead of them. When the men are able to work the jobs that the train factory provides them, the women are responsible for running the markets, preparing the food, and rearing the children. But the onset of the strike gives the role of bread-winner—or perhaps more precisely bread scavenger—to the women. Women go from supporting the strike to participating in the strike. Eventually it is the women that march on foot, over four days from Thiès to Dakar. Many of the men originally oppose this women's march, but it is precisely this show of determination from those (the wives marching) that the French had dismissed as "concubines" that makes clear the strikers' relentlessness. The women's march causes the French to understand the nature of the willpower that they are facing, and shortly after the French agree to the demands of the strikers. The book also highlights the oppression faced by women in the precolonial era. They were deprived of their ability to speak on matters including the society as a whole. Sembene, however, tries to raise women to a higher spectrum by considering them as equally important. |
3641531 | /m/09rql2 | Green Henry | Gottfried Keller | null | {"/m/01jym": "Bildungsroman"} | Green Henry details the life of Heinrich Lee from childhood through his first romantic encounters, his fledgling attempts at becoming a painter in Munich, and his eventual installation as a chancery clerk. The story gets its name from the color that Heinrich affected in dress. Heinrich is a Swiss burgher's son, brought up too tenderly by a widowed mother. After youthful pranks and experiences, and a not altogether justified dismissal from school, he idles away some time in his mother's village in activities of which the description is far better worthwhile than was the reality. He determines to be a painter, and goes to Munich's artistic Bohemia. From there, he finds his way to a count's mansion, and then he returns home to his dying mother and an all-too-tardy and brief repentance. The much revised second version has Heinrich abandoning art to enter the civil service. This experience affords occasion for extended political reflections. The tone of the reminiscences makes it clear that Keller would have the reader understand that Heinrich has lived through and risen out of his instability and irresolution and sees life steadily and cheerfully at last. |
3644787 | /m/09rxhv | Labyrinth | Kate Mosse | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | When Dr Alice Tanner discovers two skeletons at an archaeological site in southern France, she unearths a link with a horrific and brutal past. But it's not just the sight of the shattered bones that makes her uneasy; there's an overwhelming sense of evil in the tomb that Alice finds hard to shake off, even in the bright French sunshine. Puzzled by the words carved inside the chamber, Alice has an uneasy feeling that she has disturbed something which was meant to remain hidden... Eight hundred years ago, on the night before a brutal civil war ripped apart Languedoc, three books were entrusted to Alais, a young herbalist and healer. Although she cannot understand the symbols and diagrams the books contain, Alais knows her destiny lies in protecting their secret, at all costs. Skilfully blending the lives of two women divided by centuries but united by a common destiny, 'Labyrinth' is a powerful story steeped in the atmosphere and history of southern France. |
3645162 | /m/09rybt | The Deviant Strain | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The TARDIS lands the Doctor, Rose and Jack at an abandoned Soviet naval base. However, something is still lurking — something which is treating all humans, including Rose and Jack, as prey. But as the Doctor investigates further, he uncovers an experiment years in the making. |
3645165 | /m/09rych | Only Human | Gareth Roberts | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The presence of a Neanderthal on present-day Earth alerts the Doctor, Rose and Jack to the fact that someone is meddling with time. In order to learn the truth, they must travel back 28,000 years, where they meet humans of the past and future — and something far, far worse. |
3649711 | /m/09s7kg | Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez | Richard Rodriguez | null | {"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography"} | The autobiography Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez is an overall compelling self told story of a scholarship boy. Richard tells readers about his struggle with how separate his home and school life are. Both of which are completely different in many ways. He tells of his feeling of being more distant from his home life each time that he pushed forward in his schooling. Richard goes on to talk about how his school and home had separate views on religion, ethnicity and skin color, and his now current job. Richard mentions frequently the fact that he is a Mexican-American. Telling readers on how being one affected many parts of his life. Later in college and even later in life it affected him because his professors and employers labeled him as a minority student or as part of a minority. He talks about how being labeled a minority gave him many more opportunities but how because of this he felt a sort of guilt. Students who had worked just as hard as him but not being minorities weren't offered as many jobs as he was. The autobiography not only tells about his own life as a middle-class scholarship student but also his views on what others have written about scholarship students. The book gives provocative arguments and profound thought. It tells of his change from a boy trying to become a man and his reflections on the past. |
3653929 | /m/09sgnn | The Honours Board | Pamela Hansford Johnson | null | null | Cyril Annick and his wife Grace have been running Downs Park for many years. Both are universally respected and loved by staff and pupils alike. Unforeseen problems for the school arise when the idiosyncrasies and compulsions of individual members of the staff threaten to upset life at the school. There is Rupert Massinger, the second master, whose womanizing makes victims of both the school secretary and the headmaster's grown-up daughter. Also, with money he has inherited Massinger is planning to take over the school and gently force the Annicks into early retirement. To everyone's surprise, as a strategic move, Massinger and his wife, who also teaches at the school, decide to resign, to reculer pour mieux sauter. Elspeth Murray, the middle-aged French mistress, has been feeling extremely lonely since her husband's death and has only taken up teaching recently to find some sort of distraction. At first, her irrational sexual attraction to Betty Cope, a pretty young lesbian who assists Grace Annick in her capacity as Matron, causes some eye-rolling. Later, when a series of petty thefts occurs everyone suspects a pupil to be stealing his schoolmates' things. However, Murray turns out to be a kleptomaniac, and when she is caught in the act she thinks she cannot cope any longer and commits suicide in the school swimming pool. Leo Canning, the young science master whose humble social background and troubled childhood make it difficult for him to adapt to the thoroughly bourgeois atmosphere of the school, falls in love with Penelope Saxton, the headmaster's young widowed daughter, and in the end they get married. However, it takes Penelope a long time until she makes up her mind to spend the rest of her life with Canning. In the meantime, she is courted by the father of the youngest staff member, a baronet called Sir James Pettifer whose aristocratic ways she finds quite alluring. More trouble appears with the arrival of Norman and Delia Poole, who have come to replace Massinger and his wife. It does not take the staff long to discover that Delia is a hopeless alcoholic whose pathetic attempts at rationalizing her addiction are embarrassing to everyone who happens to witness them. She has to give up her art classes quite soon again and over the following months mainly stays at their home on the school grounds. Finally, although he is a popular teacher, Norman Poole hands in his notice to be able to care for his wife full time. Cyril Annick has no intention to retire, let alone hand over to Massinger. However, when his wife suffers a mild stroke he sees it as the last straw and willy-nilly sells out to him. The Annicks move to a flat in nearby Eastbourne, where shortly afterwards Grace has another stroke and dies. Not yet 60, Cyril Annick moves to London to be near his daughter and son-in-law. |
3657868 | /m/09sqr0 | A Salty Piece of Land | Jimmy Buffett | 11/30/2004 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Tully Mars, a 40-something guide at the Lost Boys Fishing Lodge resort, takes trips around the Caribbean. |
3659282 | /m/09svdb | Chimera | John Barth | null | null | ;Dunyazadiad The Dunyazadiad is a retelling of the framing story of Scheherazade, the famed storyteller of the One Thousand and One Nights. The story is told from the point-of-view of Scheherazade's younger sister Dunyazad. Its characterization as metafiction can be understood as a result of the use of several literary devices, most notably the introduction of the author as a character and his interaction with Scheherazade and Dunyazade. The author appears from the future and expresses his admiration for Scheherazade and the 1001 Nights as a work of fiction, of which Barth's Scheherazade has no knowledge. Realizing that he has appeared to Scheherazade on the eve of her first encounter with Shahryar, and seeing her without a solution to her predicament, the author himself suggests the stratagem of using a chain of interrupted stories to forestall her execution, and offers to tell her a new story every day with which to regale the king the following evening. Taking the author for a genie, Scheherazade agrees. ;Perseid The second novella entitled Perseid follows the middle aged Greek hero Perseus in his struggle to obtain immortality. Told from Perseus' point of view, the first part of the story revolves around the retelling of Perseus' life history while the following part details his rise to, and eventual immortalization as a constellation of stars. ;Bellerophoniad The final novella, Bellerophoniad, chronicles the story of Bellerophon, yet another ancient Greek hero. While somewhat rooted in the myth as told by the Greek and Roman poets, Barth's version of the story is not a direct retelling, but instead a re-imagining. Much like the Perseid, the Bellerophoniad surrounds a middle aged mythic hero who struggles with coming to terms with his past accomplishments and a desire to secure his future glory. It is, for the most part, told from the point of view of Bellerophon, with various interjections by unknown narrators, one of which is presumed to be the author Barth. Of the three novellas, it is by far the longest and—more so than in Dunyazadiad and Perseid—makes numerous references to the other novellas, further connecting common themes and events between the three. |
3660409 | /m/09sxsb | The Octopus: A Story of California | Frank Norris | 1901 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Octopus depicts the conflict between wheat farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and the Pacific and Southwestern railroad (P&SW). The railroad attempts to take possession of the land the farmers have been improving for many years, forcing them to defend themselves. The wheat farmers are represented by Magnus Derrick, the reluctant leader of the ad hoc farmer's League designed to fight for retention of their land and low cost freight rates. S. Behrman serves as the local representative of P. & S. W. In his attempt at writing his great epic poem, Presley witnesses the disintegration of Annixter, Derrick, Hooven, and their families. |
3661366 | /m/09szdk | Building Harlequin's Moon | Brenda Cooper | 6/1/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Gabriel is teaching a group of moon-born teenagers about agriculture. Rachel is one of these; she passes her exams and is selected by Gabriel to become a leader of the moon-born. Andrew is another; he fails his exams because he plays a practical joke on Rachel. Gabriel takes Rachel to the John Glenn. As the first moon-born to visit the ship, she arouses hostility from some of the leaders there. She learns that there are three classes amongst the space travelers: five are High Council, who rule until Ymir is reached; some dozens are Council, including Gabriel, and have extended privileges; and the remaining "Earth-born" are colonists, many of them not having been unfrozen since leaving Earth and with few rights. She also learns to use the vast repository of knowledge in the ship's library, and makes contact with the AI "Astronaut" who is kept severely restricted because the High Council doesn't trust high technology. Rachel comes to realise that when the moon-born have helped restock the ship with antimatter the John Glenn will continue on to Ymir without them, leaving them on a moon that can only sustain life for a century or two. Gabriel decides there is no immediate need for him and Rachel to return to Selene, and that as a leader Rachel would be most useful with the longer lifespan that is conferred by the suspended animation process, and has himself and Rachel frozen for a year. Problems with radiation flares intervene, and without Gabriel to stand up for her, they are left frozen for twenty years. Rachel returns to Selene to find her best friend killed in an accident, her boyfriend married and with children almost her own age, and her remaining friends more than twice as old as she is. She also realizes that the moon-born are being treated as slaves, with Earth-born as overseers. The moon-born must develop the technological infrastructure to refine antimatter, but there are major risks involved in the refining which could destroy the population of Selene. Rachel becomes a teacher of the next generation of moon-born. She teaches them what she is supposed to, but she also includes concepts from Earth history that she learns from the library and Astronaut - concepts such as democracy and passive resistance. She has a few friends among Council, and Astronaut is able to conceal her communications with them from other Council and High Council. Andrew (a childhood enemy) plays a more active role in stirring up rebellion, but the moon-born have no power to change their role. The Council notices the passive resistance and their members begin carrying weapons. Some years later, one of the ship's boats crash lands on Selene and is abandoned there. It has sufficient electronics to house an AI, and Rachel's Council friends make a copy of Astronaut there, Vassal, unknown to High Council. Ten years after Rachel was unfrozen, an accident leads to a Council member shooting one of the moon-born. Andrew leads a revolt and takes a Council member hostage. The rebellion is halted by a flare which requires everyone to shelter together, and by Rachel's heroic intervention. In the wake of the rebellion, a new understanding is reached between the moon-born and the High Council. They will work more as equals, and the refinement of the antimatter will take place at a safe distance from Selene. The travellers will leave more technology behind when they leave (including the copy of Astronaut) so Selene can survive. This is at a cost of delaying their departure significantly. Gabriel decides he will remain on Selene when John Glenn departs. A final, short, section of the novel sums up the next two hundred years, with the antimatter refined, the flare problem on Selene permanently dealt with, and John Glenn preparing for departure. Periods of suspended animation keep Rachel and Gabriel young. There is room for a sequel, dealing with either or both of the futures of John Glenn and Ymir, and of Selene. |
3666353 | /m/09t84p | Power of Three | Diana Wynne Jones | 1976 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story begins when two Lyman siblings, Orban and Adara, accidentally revert a shapeshifted bird on an English moor back into a small Dorig. The Dorig is holding an exquisitely molded collar, which in Lyman and Dorig culture are used to store protective magic. When Orban tries to take the collar, the Dorig says he is the son of the Dorig king, and will curse the collar before giving it up. Orban kills the Dorig and takes the collar anyway, and as the Dorig dies he binds a curse to the collar by the three Powers - the Old Power, the Middle Power and the New Power. Orban grows up to be chief of the Otmound mound. Adara marries Gest, chief of the Garholt mound, and has three children: Ayna, Gair, and Ceri. At a young age, Ayna and Ceri discover they have powerful magical talents called "Gifts" - Ayna has precognition, and Ceri can find anything when asked. Gair, the middle child, becomes increasingly gloomy when he fails to develop a Gift. When Gair is twelve, the Dorig - at war with the Lyman ever since Orban killed the prince - flood the Otmound mound. The Otmounders move into the Garholt mound, bringing with them bad luck which gets worse and worse. Ayna, Ceri, and Gair are exploring the moors one day when they come across two young Giants, whom the siblings follow back to their house. When they are discovered, a cultural exchange takes place. The Giants inform them that there are plans to flood the moor to provide drinking water for England. The siblings, the Giants, and two Dorigs must work together to stop the Moor from being destroyed. The bad luck is found to be emanating from the collar Orban had stolen from the Dorig prince, still strongly cursed. The three races can deactivate it together, or not at all. It turns out that Gair is not so ordinary as he had expected himself to be. His fame grew later throughout the Moor and was known for his magnificent collar, of the finest Dorig work. He was also known to have the rarest Gift of all, and that is the Gift of Sight Unasked. |
3667266 | /m/09tb99 | The Fall of Kelvin Walker: A Fable of the Sixties | Alasdair Gray | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Kelvin, freed from his strict Calvinist upbringing through discovering Nietzsche and 'the divine Ingersoll' in the library of his home town of Glaik, travels to swinging-sixties London to succeed as a television interviewer and newspaper columnist through nothing more than his aptitude for spin and a diabolical will to power, only to return, chastened, to Scotland and to God. Drawing on a mixture of Scottish archetypes and British stereotypes and expressing all the author's cynicism towards religion, the media and the imperial British centre, this brief fable was reportedly inspired by Gray's own visit to London as a struggling artist to record a documentary called Under The Helmet (in which he tried to increase his sales by suggesting that he was dead). |
3670857 | /m/09tkgj | Fugitive Pieces | Anne Michaels | 1996 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In the first part of the book, Jakob Beer is a 13 year old child of a Jewish family living in Poland. His house is stormed by Nazis; he escapes the fate of his parents and his sister, Bella, by hiding behind the wallpaper in a cabinet. He hides in the forest, burying himself up to the neck in soil. After some time, he runs into an archaeologist, Athos, working on Biskupin. Athos secretly takes him to Zakynthos in Greece. Athos is also a geologist, and is fascinated with ancient wood and stones. Jakob learns Greek and English, but finds that learning new languages erases his memory of the past. After the war, Athos and Jakob move to Toronto, where after several years Jakob meets Alexandra in a music library. Alex is a fast-paced, outspokenly philosophical master of wordplay. Jakob and Alex fall in love and marry, but the relationship fails because Alex expects Jakob to change too fast and abandon his past. Jakob dwells constantly on his memories of Bella, especially her piano-playing, and they end up divorcing. Jakob meets and marries Michaela, a much younger woman but one who seems to understand him, and with Michaela's help he is able to let go of Bella. Together they move to Greece into the former home of several generations of the Roussos family. The second part of the book is told from the perspective of Ben, a Canadian professor of Jewish descent who was born in Canada to survivors of the Holocaust. In 1954 the family home in Weston, Ontario is destroyed by Hurricane Hazel. Ben becomes an expert on the history of weather, and marries a girl named Naomi. He is a big admirer of Jakob's poetry and respects the way he deals with the Holocaust, when Ben himself has trouble coping with the horrors his parents must have endured. At the end of the novel, Ben is sent to retrieve Jakob's journals from his home in Greece, where Ben spends hours swimming in Jakob's past. |
3670937 | /m/09tkmd | Pubis angelical | Manuel Puig | 1979 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The narrative alternates between separate narratives. One is reality, an Argentine woman confined to a Mexican sanitarium in the 1970s. The others are a representation of her unconscious. In this second narrative, the woman is in Central Europe in the years leading up to World War II. She is here involved in various intrigues, and carries on an extramarital romance. The third narrative, another representation of the protagonist's unconscious, is a science fiction tale involving a cyborg woman named W218 in a post-apocalyptic Polar Age, who serves the government by performing sexual therapy on aging men, and is therefore in a sense a government sponsored prostitute. |
3672431 | /m/09tmx0 | Thirsty | Matthew Tobin Anderson | 1997 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | The story is set in the town of, and in the areas surrounding, Bradley, Massachusetts. A Vampire Lord, Tch'muchgar, is magically imprisoned in isolation at the bottom of the town reservoir. The townsfolk performs rituals at the annual The Sad Festival] of Vampires to maintain the bonds holding Tch'muchgar prisoner. Early in the book the young hero, Chris, witnesses a vampiress being lynched]. Soon after, he starts to feel a strange sensation — a growing thirst for blood. Chris later notices that his friend Tom is casting a reflection on the water of the reservoir but Chris himself has no reflection. He realizes that he must be suffering from vampirism. Chris is afraid to tell anyone, even his friends, because vampires are killed immediately upon being discovered. Chris is soon confronted by a mysterious person dressed in black, who introduces himself as Chet the Celestial Being. Chet says that he serves the Forces of Light, and that he can cure Chris of his vampirism. But first Chet must place a holy object, The Arm of Moriator, with Tch'muchgar. Once activated, the Arm cannot be moved or deactivated by evil beings. Chet explains that if Tch'muchgar tries to escape from his prison, the Arm will cause him to become trapped between worlds, just like "opening an elevator between floors". Chet leaves for two weeks to retrieve the Arm. Meanwhile, Chris's vampirism grows at a steady rate. He starts sleeping during the day and staying awake at night. He drinks warm water to simulate drinking blood, and even considers his family as potential "beverages". Chris also begins receiving letters through mail from vampires living underground in the community. One of these letters is from a female vampire named Lolli, who appears to be Chris's age and behaves like a popular adolescent girl. Chris starts to notice he is being stalked by a creepy humanoid figure he describes as "The Thing with the One-Piece Hair", or simply The Thing. The Thing corners Chris in the woods, but Chet appears and "kills" The Thing. He warns Chris that The Thing is not really dead and will rematerialize within a few minutes. So Chet places a mark on Chris' wrist, which he said will protect him from the Thing. Chet gives Chris the Arm and bring him to a congregation of vampires in an abandoned church. Chris is accepted as a vampire by the others and learns that they plan to summon Tch'muchgar. He takes this opportunity to enter the realm of Tch'muchgar and drops the Arm. Chris returns to his "normal" life and waits for Chet to return with further instruction. His vampiric symptoms continue to grow. Crazed with thirst, Chris almost bites his friend's dog. He resorts to going hunting for raccoons to drink from. After he cuts himself shaving for the first time, Chris begins drinking his own blood. He eventually resorts to biting himself in the arm. One evening, his mother tells him a story about how Chris nearly died as a newborn, but that a strange nurse took him away for a few minutes. When she brought him back, he was fine. His mother believes that the woman was an angel. Chris fears that the nurse must have been a vampire who infected him with vampirism to save his life. At the Sad Festival of Vampires, Chris is talked into going to a party with Lolli and another young vampire called Bat. They tell him that to become initiated into the vampire community he must make his first kill that night and smear his blood on his cheeks. Chris shies away from the challenge, saying that he couldn't find anyone yet, but Lolli quickly calls his bluff. Chris escapes from the party and finds his crush, Rebecca Schwartz, in the area. He tells her that he needs to talk, but his teeth start to grow in bloodlust. Chris flees back to the vampire party, only to find that everyone save one high student has left. The student tells Chris that Lolli killed a student. Afterwards, she was hit by a car and broke her back. The authorities arrived and took her to be killed. Chris hears Bat coming, and runs outside. He meets Chet, who confirms the story about Lolli's death. Bat hears this and attacks Chet, but Chet makes Bat vanish with a wave of his hand, presumably killing him. At the climax of the story, Tch'muchgar attempts to leave his prison but is shoved out of the dimension and into nonexistence by the Arm of Moriator. Chet reveals that he was actually working for Tch'muchgar, who had realized that he would never escape his prison and was looking for a way to end his miserable life. He also taunts that he was lying about being able to help Chris, because vampirism is incurable. Chet gleefully points out to Chris that he is now doomed. If he kills mortals for blood, they will eventually hunt him down and execute him. If he refuses to drink blood, he will die. If he seeks help from the Forces of Light, they will torment him in place of the vampire lord. If he tries to get help from other vampires, they will kill him themselves for destroying their god. At the end of the story, in Chris's home, his mother is suspicious, and wants him to be tested for vampirism. His brother treats this with derision, but Chris wonders how his mother would react. He has a flashback to when he was young, that a mother bird would not take in her own child if it had been touched by a human; it would rather bash its skull in. The flashback ends with some older boys throwing stones at a hatchling, yelling "This is mercy!" with other children joining in. As the book ends, Chris's fate is uncertain, leaving the main plot of the book unresolved though Chris is certainly doomed either way. In the end, Chris realizes that he needs to feed, but he cannot feed. The story ends with the words, in this order: Oh God I am So Thirsty |
3673869 | /m/04czh1r | Pirates of Venus | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1934 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Carson Napier When the author receives a letter saying a woman in white will come to him on the night of the thirteenth, he dismisses it as nonsense. Jason Gridley calls, and the author visits him to discuss the latest news about von Horst, Tarzan, David Innes, Captain Zuppner and Abner Perry in Pellucidar. Having forgetten the letter, however, the woman does appear on the thirteenth, walking through a closed door. She tells him that "he" awaits a reply. Aided by his secretary Ralph Rothmund, the letter is found again and a reply to the sender, Carson Napier, is sent. A few days later Carson shows up at Tarzana, telling the story of his life including how he grew up in India, learning telepathy from the Hindu mystic Chand Kabi, how he lived with his mother's grandfather John Carson, and how he lost his mother. Revealing an intent to fly a rocket to Mars, he fades from view only to enter through the door again. He has used telepathy for the meeting to ascertain they can uphold telepathic communication so that the author may become the medium through which he tells the story of his adventures. Before returning to his rocket on Guadalupe Island Napier also leaves the author in charge of his personal fortune. Off for Mars Arriving at Guadalupe, Carson finds that everything has been made ready under the surveillance of his friend Jimmy Welsh. Jimmy begs for Carson to take him along, but Carson refuses. After a final inspection (during which the rocket ship and plans for the journey are described) Carson bids his workers farewell and takes his place in the rocket. Take-off! At first, everything appears to go well, but after two hours signs indicate that the rocket is moving off course. Eventually, Carson realizes that he forgot to take the moon's gravity into account. Two days later it is clear that his new course will take him towards the Sun and certain death. On the thirtieth day he spots a crescent. Rushing toward Venus The crescent turns out to be Venus. It becomes clear the rocket is going to hit the planet. Venus is said to be unable to support life, but Carson nevertheless does not give up. As the rocket enters the atmosphere he opens its parachutes, then jumps, opening his own parachute. He discovers the air is breathable. Falling through two thick layers of clouds he is unaware of his surroundings (except for a faint luminosity from below) until the parachute gets stuck in the branches of a tree. Freeing himself from the parachute he starts descending and soon learns the trees are of enormous proportions. After climbing down a thousand feet he finds a causeway, apparently built by intelligent beings, where he encounters a hideous wild beast. He discovers a door in the bole of a tree. Hearing a voice speaking in a foreign language, he calls for help. The beast attacks, but he temporarily stops it by snaring it with a piece of rope salvaged from the parachute. Fleeing for his life Napier is rescued by three humans, armed with spears, emerging from the door. Taking him inside, the men give him food and a bed. He soon falls asleep. To the House of the King When he wakes up, Carson discovers he appears to be in a city built in the enormous tree boles. He dresses in his overall, in spite of the heat. His hosts offer him breakfast. During the course of the meal he tries to learn his first few words of the language. The men of the house are named Duran, Olthar and Kamlot. The women are Zuro and Alzo. After breakfast, the men take him to another house where a man by the name Tofar leads them to a man called Jong, who appears to have a high social status. Carson is thoroughly examined and then placed in the care of a man called Danus. During the following three weeks Carson learns the language (which is briefly described), history and customs of Amtor, as the Venusians call their planet. Danus also shows a map, pointing out different regions of Amtor: Trabol, Strabol and Karbol. His explanations make it obvious that the Amtoran view of the world is very limited. They know of nothing beyond the cloud-covered skies, and they think that the equator is the center of the world and that the north pole is its edge. The Girl in the Garden Carson is in the house of Mintep, king (jong) of Vepaja. Duran, father of Olthar and Kamlot, is of the house of Zar. Zuro is attached to Duran, as Alzo to Olthar. Marriage is unknown on Amtor, but couples are usually loyal. Several officers live to the left of Carson. To the right is a garden with a girl. One day five men creep into the garden. Carson follows, killing three. Guards butcher the others, then throw the bodies from the tree. Danus never mentions the incident. Danus tells the history of the Vepajans: There were four classes who lived happily by the millions on thousands of islands. A criminal, Thor, formed the Thorists, who revolted. Everyone became virtual slaves. Some escaped, forming these classless tree cities. Thorists search for them because they themselves have no intelligent people. Vepajans never get sick or grow old because of a serum. Half their women are sterile. Children are only allowed when someone dies by accident. Carson (now 27) is given blood tests for the longevity serum and is found to be filled with bacteria. He loves swimming, boxing, wrestling, and fencing. He exercises because he is overweight. The girl in the garden watches him. He smiles, she runs away. Carson thinks it might be his beard. Danus gives him a depilatory. Asking about the girl, Carson is told he should not even see her. Carson is a prisoner. His apartment is guarded, and he may not leave. Gathering Tarel Carson gets the longevity serum. Not many doctors are needed on Amtor. One day Carson sees the girl and leaps into her garden. When he touches her arm, he gets slapped, but he declares his love. Carson is summoned before Mintep, the jong. He was suspected as a Thorist spy, but now he is to be trained to collect tarel and hunt. Tarel is the strong, silky fiber from which their cloth and cordage are made. Carson is moved to the house of Duran where he is given primitive weapons. (There is an R-ray gun on Amtor, but the Thorists control the rare elements that produce the ray.) That evening he plays a Vepajan game, "tork," with Zuro and Alzo. On the morning hunt Kamlot and Carson climb high in their tree, go through a little door, then pass to other trees. Tarel turns out to be the web of a spider. Carson saves Kamlot from a giant spider (targo), but Kamlot dies. By Kamlot's Grave While Carson carries Kamlot home for burial, he falls into a spider web and kills the targo. He climbs down to the ground (some trees tower 6000 feet and are 1000 feet around the base). He digs a grave to give Kamlot a "Christian burial" but discovers he is still alive, just paralyzed by the spider's venom. Kamlot describes a basto (a bison with the teeth of a carnivore) and the decimal system of weights and measures. Some trees are marked with numbered nails as a mapping system, and the entire map is memorized by the Vepajans. The variety of trees is described. Kamlot kills a basto, kind of like bull-fighting, when Carson suddenly sees a startling sight overhead. On Board the Sofal Five "voo klangan" (the bird-men) capture Carson and Kamlot with wire nooses attached to ropes. They are carried through the air accompanied by klangan singing songs "vaguely reminiscent of Negro spirituals". They have very dark skin and are a mixture of bird and man, having feathers and bat-like wings. They fly for eight hours to the Venusian sea and a ship manned by Thorists. They are questioned and Carson tells them he is a doctor. We also learn that Kamlot's home city is called Kooaad. Thrown into the hold of the ship, Kamlot meets a friend, Honan, with the Amtorian greeting "Jodades" (luck-to-you). They learn that Duare (Doo-ah-ree) has been captured, but held on another ship. Kamlot and Carson are set to polishing the guns on deck. They fire T-rays that destroy everything. They are locked by a master key, which Carson wants. The guns and ship propulsion are explained—lor is the propulsive substance—and element 93 (vik-ro), element 97, element 105 (yor-san) are described. They always sail in sight of land. Honan tells Carson that Duare is "the hope of Vepaja, perhaps the hope of a world." Soldiers of Liberty Tensions ease on the ship; Napier becomes friendly with both crew and captives. Telling stories of Earth, he makes new friends. Gamfor, Kiron, and Zog, who become the nucleus for a rebellion. Meanwhile, Carson learns about the Amtorian compass and sonar. Because the map concepts were skewed, reliance upon the maps was fraught with error—large areas are marked joram (ocean), but Carson believes he knows the location of Thora. Named vookor (captain) among the growing secret rebel faction, Napier later learns from Gamfor that Anoos had reported his suspicions to the ship's captain and that his friend among the ship soldiers had given him a key to the armory. Napier suggest they strike that night, but the hold is sealed when it was usually left open. During the night Anoos is murdered. Mutiny The ship's captain conducts an investigation. Napier's clever reply (said loud enough for the Soldiers of Liberty to hear) suggests Anoos despised the Thorists and was a rabble rouser. They all answer similarly. The captain retires. Napier remarks upon Amtorian time measure. At the seventh hour the mutiny commences. The battle is fierce, Kamlot participates in the attack on the ship's upper decks. The ship's officers are slaughtered, many of the soldiers joining the mutineers. Later, Kodj objects to Napier as vookor, Zog disarms him. Napier plans his assault on the Sovang (where Duare is held) from the Sofal's conning tower. Napier addresses the ship's crew, and Kodj and the malcontents as regards the attack: there will be profit for those who participate. Duare Napier's officers report on the crew's temper through the night, most agree with embarking on piracy as regards Thorian shipping—some wish to go home. Exercising caution, Napier arms the loyal hundred and confines the remainder below. Bringing the Sofal near, the Sovang is boarded. Battle ensues. Napier orders the transfer of the Sovang's prisoners (mostly women) and the removal of the Sofal's malcontents to the other ship. Kamlot later reports the virgin Vepajan princess is on board and is grateful that Napier (upon reply) personally killed the captain who affronted her. Later Napier is summoned to the princess' cabin. He whistles (Amtorian custom instead of knocking) and is astonished to see the princess is the girl from the garden! A Ship! Carson again declares his love, much to the girl's distress and anger saying the Vepajans and her father would immediately kill him. Napier restrains his impulses, questioning her. She pardons his affront due to services rendered, reveals she is not yet nineteen, says they can never speak again, and departs into another room. Amtorian language lesson regarding "sofal" and "sovang" (killer and defender). Kamlot explains majority for Vepajan females (age 20) and penalties of death in particular to royal daughters. Carson reveals his intent to marry Duare, Kamlot responds with sword, then cannot kill his friend. Napier remarks on the differences between both worlds. Kamlot becomes a confused party regarding the possible love between Napier and Duare. Days later Vilor requests audience with Napier to offer his service as guard to the janjong—denied. "Voo notar!" (a ship!). The Sofal pursues the Thorian vessel to take her prize. An ongyan's pennant is displayed (exempt from search) and as the Sofal nears—then presents her guns—Moosko, the ongyan commands his soldiers to repel any boarders. Catastrophe Moosko sends the Yan racing away. Carson pursues in the Sofal. After much T-ray fire, and many casualties on the Yan, Carson catches and boards Moosko's ship. Carson is relieved that those under his command obey him rather than turn to personal looting. After destroying the Yan's guns, Carson allows her captain his freedom with the admonition to tell all he meets that the Sofal is to be obeyed. Moosko is kept hostage, housed in the cabin of Vilor, at Vilor's request. Chasing the Yan has led them near the coast of Noobol. A gale rises. Carson finds an angan with Vilor and Moosko and orders the birdman back to his quarters. Carson then visits Duare who hesitates, then allows him entrance. Carson tells her again that he loves her and Duare tells him she cannot listen. He kisses her by force and she draws her dagger. Carson apologizes and leaves. In the early morning, awakened by storm, Carson discovers Duare missing and fears she may have killed herself because of his assault. Then he finds Vilor and Moosko also missing. The lookout has been murdered. A Vepajan woman, Byea, informs Carson that Vilor was a Thoran spy. Storm A search reveals five klangan also missing. Kamlot, Gamfor, Kiron and Zog meet with Carson and reconstruct the scheme wherein Vilor abducted Duare and Moosko regained his freedom with the help of trusted klangan. Carson orders the Sofal to remain offshore until the gale abates, then launch a rescue party. Leaving the cabin, Carson is swept out to sea. He swims with the waves toward shore. The rough surf betokens death as does eternal swimming. But, Carson concludes, "in the midst of death there is life." Fate washes him past the rocks to a sandy beach. He climbs the inlet wall and sets out across the tableland. Later, hearing fighting, he finds Duare and some klangan beset by manlike creatures. Carson charges, scattering the creatures. One angan remains alive. Duare thanks Carson perfunctorily for saving her from the kloonobargan, a word Burroughs explains. Carson offers pardon to the angan in return for faithful service. They return to the coast. Duare confesses as they travel that the rules forbidding conversation may be relaxed in their present circumstances. Speechless at first, Carson tells her about Earth. At the coast, they build a signal fire. Men on land, led by Vilor and Moosko, come to investigate as does the Sofal. Carson orders the angan to carry Duare to the Sofal; she refuses to leave. Carson grabs her, kisses her, and hands her to the angan. She protests, telling Carson that she loves him as they fly away. Carson is taken captive with that knowledge. |
3673882 | /m/04f08c4 | Wizard of Venus | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1964 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | "The Wizard of Venus". Carson Napier is trapped in the castle of an insane Venusian "wizard" who holds the local population in thrall through the use of hypnotic powers. Napier, who is possessed of comparable powers he has hitherto utilized solely to transmit his account of his Venusian adventures back to Earth, successfully counters the tyrant and frees his victims. "Pirate Blood". A modern-day young man named Lafitte, a descendant of the New Orleans pirate of the same name, finds himself thrown by a bizarre set of events into his ancestor's profession. The tale is a semi-serious takeoff on the hoary theory that heredity equals destiny. |
3675837 | /m/09tvpn | The Stars' Tennis Balls | Stephen Fry | 9/28/2000 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In 1980, Ned (Edward) Maddstone, is a seventeen-year old schoolboy who appears to be the sort of person for whom everything goes right. He is head boy, talented at sports, and following in the footsteps of his father towards Oxford University and a career in politics. Things begin to go wrong for the main character when his schoolfriend Ashley Barson-Garland discovers that Maddstone has secretly read part of his diary and therefore knows his dark secret, namely that he is ashamed of his working class roots. The clever Barson-Garland plots to besmirch Maddstone's good fortune with an arrest for possession of marijuana with the help of Rufus Cade, who is jealous of Maddstone's good looks and popularity, and Gordon Fendeman, Portia's American cousin, who is also in love with her. Unfortunately, when Maddstone is arrested, an envelope in his pocket, entrusted to him by his dying sailing instructor, turns out to be a coded message from the Irish Republican Army. He is whisked away from the police station by a smooth Secret Services operative called Oliver Delft, who listens calmly to Maddstone's explanation of events until he reveals the address to which he was asked to deliver the envelope, which is of Delft's mother and would reveal his hidden ancestral relationship to a Fenian traitor. So, Delft callously decides that Maddstone must disappear. Maddstone is beaten up, pumped full of drugs, and taken away to a remote lunatic asylum on an island off the coast of Sweden. For many years, it is impressed on him by Dr. Mallo that his memories of his life as Ned Maddstone are false and merely the product of a diseased mind. Then, just when he is starting to believe this mind-programming, he is finally allowed to fraternise with the other inmates. He begins regularly playing chess with a man known simply as Babe, a highly educated and perfectly sane man who was also imprisoned by the British government, but has learned to cope with his situation by acting mad for the benefit of his captors. The two men become close friends and generally give each other hope. Babe agrees to educate Maddstone, helping him to master the game of chess and teaching him to speak multiple languages among other things. Eventually, Maddstone realises he is indeed the son of Sir Charles Maddstone and, with Babe's help, laterally determines who betrayed him and how, although he is still baffled as to why he was imprisoned on the island. When Ned mentions the name of Oliver Delft, however, Babe is able to recall a list of IRA sympathisers that he once briefly saw thanks to his photographic memory, leading Ned to learn the true nature of the conspiracy. After some time, Babe dies, having first devised a way in which Maddstone might escape to the mainland by hiding in his intended coffin. Once free, he sells some prescription drugs stolen from the asylum and, as directed by Babe, travels to Switzerland, to visit a bank and gains access to an account in which Babe had deposited large sums of stolen money (which has also accrued many years' worth of interest). Thus, by the year 2000, Maddstone has become fabulously wealthy (to the tune of £324 million). Assuming the identity of Simon Cotter, he swiftly becomes famous as a mysterious Internet entrepreneur, making huge profits by investing in high-risk ventures. He then returns to England and wreaks his revenge by cleverly driving Rufus Cade, Ashley Barson-Garland, Gordon Fendeman and Oliver Delft to their deaths. When his task is complete, he hopes to renew his relationship with Portia, but this is not to be. On discovering his identity, Portia is horrified by the change in Maddstone's personality and flees with her son Albert after the death of her husband, Gordon. The novel ends with Cotter/Maddstone tearing up the old love letters he once sent to Portia as he returns to what he now realises is his only real 'home', the hospital on the island that he now owns. |
3676139 | /m/09tw6d | Queen of the Slayers | Nancy Holder | 5/31/2005 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Following the Hellmouth's closure, hundreds of potential slayers have been awakened. Buffy Summers hoped that overturning the Slayer's self-sacrifice would result in her earning some relaxation following seven years of fighting. However, the victory is short-lived. Dark forces are arising to fill the gap left by the First. Willow's magical spell which sent slayer essence across the world has resulted in girls everywhere discovering a new power. The Scoobies travel to Europe. In London, Giles races to reorganize the remnants of the Watchers Council, hoping to overcome the shortcomings of its previous incarnation. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn, and Dawn's new best friend, a young slayer named Belle travel to Rome to train new Slayers that are drawn to the infamous Immortal, Buffy is attracted to the Immortal, an ambiguous yet charismatic character, who she does not fully trust during the whole novel. They soon hear of an unknown "Queen of the Slayers" who is getting a number of the fresh slayers to form a mystical army. This likely evil seems determined to claim the slayer essence for herself, and viciously and cruelly murders any Slayers that don't cooperate with her and betray Buffy. Faith and Robin Wood take a group of Slayers to the Hellmouth in Cleveland, which has gone supernova with evil, to stabilize the hell there. They face many casualties, and experience strange projections of The Legion of Three, three deadly Hellgods. There are three factions of evils, two of them just want to defeat Buffy after she closed the Hellmouth, who want to kill Buffy, The so-called Queen of the Slayers who wants to destroy Buffy, along with her lover, Antonia Borgia (a sorcerer under the employ of The Immortal) and convinces newbie slayers that Buffy is just using them to gain power, and Two Vampire Sorcerers who live in the Borgia Hell Dimension, and The Legion of Three. Xander goes to Africa hoping to find more about the origins of the slayer essence. He discovers instead that the good in the world is not enough to fight the bad, and that the deciding confrontation is drawing far too near. It will be slayer against slayer, as an ultimate battle of champions approaches. Dawn goes into a coma, because she was The Key, and has a link to the Earth, which is crumbling because of the supernova Hellmouth in Cleveland, and the Hellgods who are breaking through the barrier. Willow also seems to go into a coma, but is somehow woken up by a kiss from her lover, Kennedy when she, Faith and Robin are called back to Rome, because of the non-ending battle in deserted Cleveland. Buffy, Willow, Kennedy, Belle, Vi, and Rona head to Brazil (under the orders of an angelic, Tara), to get The Death Orchid which has healing abilities, and they are attacked by The Queen of the Slayers. They are saved from poison darts by one of the rogue slayers, Haley, who realizes what she has done and gives them the antidote. They then go to Tibet, to meet with the infamous sorcerer, The Golden One, and re-meet Oz who is one of the werewolves that protect The Golden One. After the Golden One is killed, Oz and his wolf-pack decide to head to Rome, to help Buffy and her Slayers against the upcoming battle. After healing Dawn, Buffy goes on patrol along with Faith who meet a rogue Slayer who they believe is leading them into a trap, and their belief comes reality when she leads the Slayer sisters right into the hands of Ornella, the Queen of the Slayers and her demons. Buffy and Faith waste the demons easily and escape back to The Immortal's castle, where he betrays them, for power, knocks them out, and ties them up. Buffy, unconscious is visited by the good demon, Whistler. The Powers that Be, have sent him to The Slayer for her to see the battle going on in L.A. that has Angel, a resurrected Spike, and their team fighting against the hell that Wolfram & Hart has sent upon them, Buffy cries tears of horror as she believes that both the vampires who loved her will die again. She is then joined by both Angel and Spike's souls, and together they create an angelic daughter with all of their features, who gives Buffy the strength she needs to wake up, gather her friends, her team, her Slayers, and defeat The Legion of Three. Buffy wakes up the morning after the battle, to find her friends building her funeral pyre believing her to be dead again. She finds her friends safe and sound, though Faith was forced to kill Slayers who wouldn't surrender. Buffy has a confidential conversation with Willow who reveals that she also saw Buffy's future daughter, Buffy looks into the sunset, declares her love for all of her friends (including Andrew), healing after the battle, and vows to see Angel, and Spike again. |
3676159 | /m/09tw73 | Spark and Burn | Diana G. Gallagher | 7/26/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Spike was born in the nineteenth century as a gentle, intellectual boy named William. As a young adult, he meets a woman called Drusilla, a mysterious vampire. William eventually becomes Spike. He travels Europe with a band of vicious vampires, Dru, Darla, and Angelus. They show him his new existence, and from them he finds out about that most serious of enemies to vampires, one girl in all the world chosen to fight the vampires and the forces of darkness, the Slayer. Having found a soul in Africa in the twenty-first century, Spike is tormented by the first evil and the guilt of his vampiric evils. He recalls many of the events that would lead him to the madness in the hell-influenced basement of the new Sunnydale High School. |
3676393 | /m/09twkm | Keep Me In Mind | Nancy Holder | 4/26/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Ethan Rayne comes back to Sunnydale and releases an evil sorcerer from Bavaria who had been imprisoned since the Middle Ages. At the same time Buffy seems to be finding herself up against a number of old adversaries out for revenge. |
3676398 | /m/09twln | The Suicide King | Robert Joseph Levy | 2/8/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | A number of student suicides has been taking place at Sunnydale High, shaking the community. Then the new grief counselor ends up killing himself, the Scoobies suspect that there is something supernatural to blame. Soon one of them shows suicidal signs and Buffy must race against time to defeat the ancient 'Suicide King'. |
3676556 | /m/09twyb | Cursed | Mel Odom | 11/1/2003 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Various demons have battled Spike since he was given a chip preventing him from hurting humans. Now a more organised and united effort is being made to put him out of the picture. In Los Angeles, Angel is searching for a mystical object that is linked to his days as the evil Angelus. Spike arrives. Each holds a grudge against each other yet they must reluctantly work together and deal with their shared evil pasts. |
3678706 | /m/09t_x_ | Dark Lord of Derkholm | Diana Wynne Jones | 1998 | {"/m/0gf28": "Parody", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"} | A fantasy world is dominated by its destructive tourist industry. "Mr. Chesney's Pilgrim Parties" arrange for annual group tours, evidently from our world, to experience all the cliches: wise Wizard Guides, attacks from Leathery-Winged Avians, the Glamorous Enchantress, the evil Dark Lord. It is a devastating show: farmlands are laid waste, people slain, and so on. The head of Wizards University, Querida, determines a way to end the tours. The apparently incompetent wizard Derk will be the next Dark Lord, wife Mara the next Glamorous Enchantress, and son Blade the Wizard Guide for the final tour. She overcomes objections all around and the plan is underway. |
3679165 | /m/09v0ty | Deep Wizardry | Diane Duane | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Nita's family goes on vacation with Kit and his dog, Ponch, to the South Shore of Long Island. One night, while Nita is swimming in the ocean, she finds a dolphin in the water. She greets it with The Speech, the magical language of Wizardry. The dolphin excitedly replies "A Wizard!" and swims away. Kit and Nita meet at the shore, and Kit tells of Nita of the rocks on a jetty; something bad is coming to the shores, and the rocks remember in fear. Kit and Nita go out the next night to search for the dolphin, much to the suspicion of Nita's parents. They prepare a spell to walk on the water. The dolphin finds them and tells them that a wizard is being attacked. They are carried by the dolphin to a nearby beach, where they see a pack of sharks attempting to devour a humpback whale wizard named S'reee, who is also being defended by a group of dolphins. Kit and Nita freeze the sharks, shielding S'reee and the dolphins, but later release the sharks at S'reee's request, since holding the shield would slowly suffocate them. Nita heals her, and Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted, where they discover from their manuals they are on active assignment again. S'reee is in charge of organizing the Song of the Twelve, a gathering of wizards to play out the story of the time when the Lone Power, the source of all evil, tempted the sea creatures. As the story goes, three whales accepted the Gift, three were undecided, and three rejected it. A Tenth whale, the Silent Lord, was the final vote for all the whales. Instead of accepting, refusing, or not choosing, she killed herself, and was eaten by the Master Shark. This action bound the Lone Power for a time, and succeeding Songs have kept it bound. S'reee and the other whales are short of wizards willing to sing in the Song, and ask Nita and Kit to help. Nita volunteers herself to be the Silent Lord, as she doesn't believe she has a good singing voice. S'reee takes Nita and Kit with her to help find other whales for the upcoming Song. Nita, since she has shared blood with S'reee while healing her, turns into a humpback whale without external aids. Kit is given a whalesark by S'reee—a wizardly web which turns him into an enormous sperm whale. After their first day out in the ocean, Kit and Nita return home very late, and Nita's parents don't want them outside anymore. The next day, Nita and Kit use wizardry to sneak out of the house to help S'reee find more whales for the Song. Kit and Nita meet Ed'Rashekaresket (or Ed), the Pale Slayer, a shark who is to be present for the Song. Then, Nita discovers to her horror that the Silent Lord is actually eaten at the end of the Song; instead of just a play-reenactment, as she had imagined, the effectiveness of the wizardry requires the repetition of the sacrifice. Since Nita is sworn to the role, she cannot pull out, or the whole Song will be sabotaged, killing millions. Meanwhile, outside of Long Island, the sea floor is starting to act up, giving signs that the Lone Power's binding is weakening. Large krakens (mutated giant squids) are attacking the wizards underwater, and volcanic vents are increasing the temperature. Nita realizes that she can't back out of the Song now, because this destruction will eventually becomes large enough to destroy the entire Eastern Seaboard. Nita and Kit return to their home, very late at night. Dairine finds them, gives them their clothes (when they turn into whales, they can't be wearing anything) and allows them time to dry off and prepare an explanation for Nita's mom and dad. Nita and Kit, in the face of her parents' demands for an explanation, decide to reveal wizardry to her parents. Kit and Nita levitate and walk on water, but Nita's dad insists on hypnosis. Finally frustrated, Kit and Nita take them to the Moon - so they could see the Earth from above. This finally convinces Nita's parents to accept the fact of wizardry, and allow them to save the Eastern Seaboard. However, Nita doesn't tell them about her upcoming sacrifice. Their trouble with the parents now over, Kit and Nita go to bed to prepare for the singing of the Song. Dairine looks at Nita's Book, and discovers she can read parts of it - a sign she also has wizardly talent. Nita and Kit leave the beach house and meet S'reee, who takes them to the practice area for the Song. Nita meets the other whales in the Song, and talks to Ed about death. She realizes that Ed is the only creature in the ocean who is still alive from the first Song of the Twelve. The two become very unlikely friends. The procession (the ten whales including Nita and S'reee, Kit as security and Ed as the Master) start to descend into Hudson Canyon. They are relentlessly attacked by kraken and other monsters until they reach the site of the Sea's Tooth, the traditional place where the song is held. S'reee talks about how one Song went wrong, and a continent fell into the ocean; Kit and Nita realize she is referring to Atlantis. The Song goes decently, until one of the whales loses her will and succumbs to the tempting of the Lone Power. She escapes, but returns to allow the Krakens to attack the Singers. S'reee remakes the spell with Kit in the song. Nita goes to perform her sacrifice, but the Lone Power emerges from its binding as an enormous serpent. A fierce battle ensues. Kit reverts to whale speech, showing that the whalesark is in danger of failing. Ed asks Nita for her wizardry power; she gives it to him, and he finishes her part of the Song. He then attacks the Serpent, who wounds him. The Master Shark's blood in the water calls all the sharks in the area to him; they devour his body, and the Serpent, and the krakens. The Song is completed, and though unusually, it still binds the Lone One. Nita and Kit return to the beach house, exhausted. They promise to tell the story to Nita's parents as soon as they are better. Nita checks her manual, and discovers that a payment she and Kit owed to the Powers That Be was paid by the Life Service. She and Kit go out into the ocean one last time, and enter Timeheart: the center of the Universe, where no one dies. They get a last glimpse of Ed, before Kit asks for the Powers to bring them their next job. Nita agrees. |
3679372 | /m/09v183 | High Wizardry | Diane Duane | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | When Dairine, Nita's younger sister, finds Nita's copy of the Wizard's manual, she then proceeds to take the Wizard's Oath. Dairine is given her Wizard's manual in the form of a computer, which Dairine nicknames "Spot." Dairine uses her new power to travel to Mars, then to the Crossings, where she is attacked by agents of the Lone Power. When she uses a worldgate to flee, assisted by an unnamed man she meets in a bar, she finds herself on a giant planet consisting entirely of silicon. In the meantime, Nita and Kit discover she is missing and chase after her. Dairine awakens the massive computer embedded in the planet and gets to work designing and naming 'mobiles' after the planet begins to create quicklife (computer-based) creatures. She names them in a variety of ways ranging from computer programs to Star Wars characters. When the Lone Power overshadows a mobile and attacks Dairine, Nita and Kit arrive in time to help her, assisted by the macaw Machu Picchu (Peach), who reveals herself as the One's Champion incarnate. With Peach's assistance, the Lone Power is defeated by stopping the universe from expanding. The resulting light that explodes as a result of this destroys the Lone Power. The Lone Power then returns to "home" with one of the Powers That Be. As he leaves, he tells Kit and Nita to destroy the "shadows" of him that remain. The universe continues to expand and Nita, Kit and Dairine return to their home, where Dairine's computer sprouts legs and follows her upstairs as Nita and Kit talk to their parents. |
3679490 | /m/09v1j5 | McTeague | Frank Norris | 1899 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | McTeague is a dentist of limited intellect from a poor miner's family, who has opened a dentist shop on Polk Street in San Francisco. (His first name is never revealed; other characters in the novel call him simply "Mac.") His best friend, Marcus Schouler, brings his cousin, Trina Sieppe, whom he is courting, to McTeague's parlor for dental work. McTeague becomes infatuated with her while working on her teeth, and Marcus graciously steps aside. McTeague successfully woos Trina. Shortly after McTeague and Trina have kissed and declared their love for each other, Trina discovers that she has won $5000 from a lottery ticket. In the ensuing celebration Trina's mother, Mrs Sieppe, announces that McTeague and Trina are to marry. Marcus becomes jealous of McTeague, and claims that he has been cheated out of money that would have been rightfully his if he had married Trina. The marriage takes place, and Mrs Sieppe, along with the rest of Trina's family, move away from San Francisco, leaving her alone with McTeague. Trina proves to be a parsimonious wife; she refuses to touch the principal of her $5000, which she invests with her uncle. She insists that she and McTeague must live on the earnings from McTeague's dental practice, the small income from the $5000 investment, and the bit of money she earns from carving small wooden figures of Noah's animals and his Ark for sale in her uncle's shop. Secretly, she accumulates penny-pinched savings in a locked trunk. Though the couple are happy, the friendship between Marcus and Mac deteriorates. More than once the two men come to grips; each time McTeague's immense physical strength prevails, and eventually he breaks Marcus' arm in a fight. When Marcus recovers, he goes south, intending to become a rancher; before he leaves, he visits the McTeagues, and he and Mac part apparently as friends. Catastrophe strikes when McTeague is debarred from practising dentistry by the authorities; it becomes clear that before leaving, Marcus has taken revenge on Mac by informing city hall that he has no license or degree. McTeague loses his practice and the couple are forced to move into successively poorer quarters as Trina becomes more and more miserly. Their life together deteriorates until McTeague takes all Trina's domestic savings (amounting to $400 or roughly $10,000 in 2010 values) and abandons her. Meanwhile, Trina falls completely under the spell of money and withdraws the principal of her prior winnings in gold from her uncle's firm so she can admire and handle the coins in her room, at one point spreading them over her bed and rolling around in them. When McTeague returns, destitute once more, she refuses to give him money even for food. Aggravated and made violent by whisky, McTeague beats her to death. He takes the entire hoard of gold and heads out to a mining community that he had left years before. Sensing pursuit, he makes his way south towards Mexico; meanwhile, Marcus hears of the murder and joins the hunt for McTeague, finally catching him in Death Valley. In the middle of the desert Marcus and McTeague fight over McTeague's remaining water and, when that is lost and they are already doomed, over Trina's $5,000. McTeague kills Marcus, but as he dies, Marcus handcuffs himself to McTeague. The final, dramatic image of the novel is one of McTeague stranded, alone and helpless. He is left with only the company of Marcus's corpse, to whom he is handcuffed, in the desolate, arid waste of Death Valley. |
3680694 | /m/09v3fk | A Wizard Abroad | Diane Duane | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Nita and Kit's parents have never been fully behind their children's practices and in this book Nita's parents reveal that they are sending her to live with her aunt in Ireland over the summer to get away from the wizardry. This is particularly unfortunate for Nita and Kit as they are currently settling a land dispute between trees. When Nita gets to Ireland she begins to go "sideways" between different times and worlds of the location of Ireland. Ireland seems to be having a problem with wizardly overlays, making "sideways" transit much more frequent and the usage of spells very perilous. This is dangerous for wizards and non-wizards alike, as non-wizards would not know how to return to their own time and place. Nita alerts the local Senior, who happens to be a relative of a boy, Ronan Nolan, whom she met in a restaurant and has a crush on. While in her aunt's kitchen, she overhears them talk about a fox problem they've been having and have scheduled a hunt. Nita, being the ever-diligent wizard, goes that night and tells a fox of this. After the hunt, the fox thanks her for the warning by informing her that one of the Powers That Be is near, though as is tradition he cannot say where or who. Things get hectic from there on as wizards must gather to fight an Ancient Evil, a form of the Lone Power. Four ancient relics must be reawakened to fight this evil, even though they're quite weak after the ages. Nita, aided by Ronan and her old ally Kit, is able to find the relics, at which point they go "sideways" with many other wizards to the site of a massive battlefield. At the height of the battle, Balor, a Fomorian king, is slain by the Spear of Light. The Lone Power, who was trying to change the past, is narrowly defeated again. |
3681524 | /m/09v4m1 | The Princess Bride | William Goldman | 1973 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In a Renaissance-era world, a beautiful woman named Buttercup lives on a farm in the country of Florin. She delights in verbally abusing the farm hand Westley, referring to him as "farm boy", by demanding that he perform chores for her. Westley's only answer is "As you wish". After Buttercup realizes the true meaning of the words, as well as the fact that she returns his deep romantic love, Westley leaves to seek his fortune so they can marry. Buttercup later receives word that his ship was attacked at sea by the Dread Pirate Roberts, who is notorious for killing all those whose vessels he boards. Believing Westley to be dead, Buttercup agrees to marry Prince Humperdinck, the heir to the throne of Florin, on the condition that she will never love him. Before the wedding, Buttercup is kidnapped by a trio of outlaws: the Sicilian criminal genius Vizzini, the Spanish fencing master Inigo Montoya, and the enormous and mighty Turkish wrestler Fezzik. A masked man in black follows them across the sea and up the Cliffs of Insanity, whereupon Vizzini orders Inigo to stop him. Before the man in black reaches the top of the cliff, there is a flashback of Inigo's past, in which it is revealed that he is seeking revenge on a six-fingered man who killed his father. When the man in black arrives, Inigo arranges a fair fight, allowing his opponent to rest before the duel. The man in black wins their duel, but leaves the Spaniard alive. Vizzini, stunned, orders Fezzik to kill him. Fezzik, moved by his conscience, throws a rock as a warning, and challenges the man to a wrestling match. He accepts the challenge and chokes Fezzik until the giant blacks out, and then catches up with Vizzini, and proposes a battle of wits. Vizzini is tricked into drinking wine poisoned with iocaine powder and dies. With Prince Humperdinck's rescue party in hot pursuit, the man flees with Buttercup, and reveals that he is the Dread Pirate Roberts, Westley's murderer. Enraged, she shoves him into a gorge, yelling "You can die, too, for all I care!" only to hear him call, "As you wish!" while he is falling. She realizes at this point that he is Westley, and follows him down into the gorge to find him battered but largely unhurt. While they travel through the Fire Swamp to evade Humperdinck's party, Westley tells Buttercup that the Dread Pirate Roberts did attack his ship, but kept him alive after he explained the depths of his love for her. Westley became the Dread Pirate Roberts' valet and later his friend. Over the course of four years Westley learned how to fence, fight and sail. Eventually, Roberts secretly passed his name, captaincy, and ship to Westley, just as his predecessor had done. Upon exiting the Fire Swamp, after facing many trying ordeals such as snow sand and ROUSes (Rodents of Unusual Size), they are captured by Humperdinck and his menacing six-fingered assistant, Count Tyrone Rugen. Buttercup negotiates for Westley's release and returns with Humperdinck to the palace to await their wedding. Rugen, who has been secretly instructed by Humperdinck not to release Westley, but instead take him to the underground hunting arena called the "Pit of Despair", does so. Here Westley is tortured by "The Machine", so as to provide information by which to complete the Count's book on pain and also to satisfy Humperdinck's annoyance that Buttercup prefers Westley to him. Meanwhile, Buttercup has several nightmares regarding her marriage to the prince. She expresses her unhappiness to Humperdinck, who proposes a deal wherein he will send out four ships to locate Westley, but if they fail to find him, Buttercup will marry him. It is revealed that Humperdinck arranged Buttercup's kidnapping and murder in order to start a war with the neighboring country of Guilder, but believes that it will inspire his subjects to war even more effectively if she dies on her wedding night. On the day of the wedding, Inigo meets with Fezzik, who tells him that Count Rugen is the killer of Inigo's father. They seek out the man in black, hoping that his wits will help them overcome the guards. Buttercup learns that Humperdinck never sent any ships, and taunts him with her enduring love for Westley. Enraged, Humperdinck tortures Westley to death. Westley's screams draw Inigo and Fezzik to the scene and down through the many dangerous levels of the Zoo of Death; upon finding Westley's body, they enlist the help of the King of Florin's former "miracle man", a magician named Miracle Max. Max pronounces Westley to be merely "mostly dead" and resurrects him, although Westley remains partially paralyzed. Westley devises a successful plan to invade the castle during the wedding; the resulting commotion prompts Humperdinck to cut the wedding short. Buttercup decides to commit suicide when she reaches the honeymoon suite. Inigo pursues Rugen through the castle and kills him in a sword fight, reciting throughout the duel his long-rehearsed oath of vengeance. Westley reaches Buttercup before she commits suicide and assures her that she is not yet married as the ceremony has not been completed. Still partly paralyzed, he bluffs his way out of a sword fight with Humperdinck. Instead of killing his rival, Westley decides to leave him alone with his cowardice. The party rides off into the sunset on the prince's purebred white horses conveniently discovered by Fezzik. The story ends with a series of mishaps and the prince's men closing in, followed by comments by the author indicating that he believes that the group gets away. |
3681906 | /m/09v58d | Schism | Catherine Asaro | 8/30/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel takes place about 25 years after the events in the previous novel, Skyfall. Eldrinson Valdoria and his wife Roca Skolia live happily on his homeworld Lyshriol and have ten children. Some of them have already left home, like the second oldest son Althor who is training to become a Jagernaut, or the firstborn Eldrin who at the request of the Skolian Assembly had to marry his aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh Dyhianna Selei. The sixth of the Valdoria children, 16-year-old Sauscony (Soz), wants to enter the Military academy to become a Jagernaut like her brother. But Eldrinson has other plans – he would rather prefer to see his "little girl" living safely on Lyshriol, married to a local landlord. When she disobeys, he disowns both her (for leaving) and Althor (for taking her off-world). Though he regrets his harsh words immediately, he has no chance to take them back. Soon after, his teenage son Shannon, unhappy about the family discord, runs away from home. The book is told from the perspective of several main characters – young Soz during her military training; Shannon searching for his lost kin, the mystic Blue Dale archers; and their father Eldrinson, being captured, crippled, and nearly tortured to death by a sadistic Aristo who infiltrated Lyshriol to destroy the Ruby Dynasty. |
3681977 | /m/09v5f0 | Skyfall | Catherine Asaro | 8/5/2004 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | It is a turbulent time for the Skolian Empire. Kurj is trying to lead his people into war with the Traders, a more massive empire. He uses his powerful connections to control his mother who is attempting to sway the Assembly otherwise. The book begins with Roca, in hiding, trying to get to the Assembly meeting. During her voyage, she ends up stranded on a planet known as Skyfall. There, on a planet once part of the Ruby Empire but now antiquated in its technology, she meets Eldrinson Valdoria, and due to extreme weather and lack of incoming ships, she is stranded there for approximately one year. During that time she falls in love with Eldrinson and becomes pregnant. The novel also periodically shifts to describe the perspective of Kurj, a Primary (top ranking) Jagernaut (most feared warriors of the Skolian Empire) and grandson of the ruling couple of Skolian Empire, Pharaoh Lahaylia and Imperator Jarac. Kurj is obsessed with stopping the slave-driven empire of the Traders. But when his mother escapes his clutches, he fears the worst, and spends much of the novel obsessing over finding her instead. We also learn of some of the horrors from his past, giving meaning to his stoic nature. Back on the planet of Skyfall, Roca and her new husband come under siege by a rival who claims the title that Eldrinson possesses. At the point of his final breach into the castle, Kurj arrives with his much superior technology, and ceases hostilities. Roca gives birth to her child which she names Eldrin. The remainder of the novel revolves around the forced separation of Eldrinson from Roca and his child. |
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