Id
stringlengths 3
44
| Code
stringlengths 7
10
⌀ | Title
stringlengths 1
220
⌀ | Author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | Data
stringlengths 3
10
⌀ | Genres
stringlengths 20
352
⌀ | Summary
stringlengths 11
32.8k
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
3788021 | /m/0b01cr | Ascendant Sun | Catherine Asaro | 2000-03 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book begins just after Kelric has escaped the planet of Coba, where he had been held prisoner for over 18 years. Forced to land because of his ships short fuel supply, Kelric takes up a lucrative job as the spaceship Corona's tactical officer under the command of Jafe Maccar, only to be captured by his people's enemies, the Eubians. An Aristo Taratus sells Kelric in an auction to Tarquine Iquar, Minister of Finance. Kelric discovers his mixed feelings for Tarquine, even though he is made to be her slave and provider. Not long after his enslavement, Kelric makes a bold escape, which although successful, cripples his health significantly. Instead of immediately heading home, Kelric heads to the captured Lock, an ancient device made by the original Ruby Empire some 6000 years ago which fell into the Eubians possession during the Radiance War. There, he deactivates the mechanism and meets Jaibriol III, new emperor of the Eubian Empire, whom he immediately suspects to be a psion. Jaibriol proposes peace talks between Eube and Skolia. He manages to make it to another planet, where he meets his future wife Jeejon. Together, they are able to gain passage off world, to Earth. The book's climax is Kelric reuniting with his parents on Earth. |
3788263 | /m/0b01ty | Vis and Râmin | Fakhr al-Dīn Gurgānī | null | null | The story is about Vis, the daughter of Shāhrū and Kāren, the ruling family of Māh (Media) in western Iran, and Ramin (Rāmīn), the brother to Mobed Monikan, the King of Marv in northeastern Iran. Monikan sees Shahru in a royal gala, wonders at her beauty, and asks her to marry him. She answers that she is older than she looks and is already married, but she promises to give him her daughter if a girl is born to her. Several years later, Shahru gives birth to a girl and calls her Vis or Viseh. She sends Vis to Khuzan to be raised by a wet-nurse or nanny who also happens to be raising Ramin, who is the same age as Vis. They grow up ten years together and afterwards, Vis is recalled to her mother. After Vis reaches adolescence, she comes back to her mother and Shahru marries her to her son, Vis's brother, Viru. The marriage remains unconsummated because of Vis' menstruation, which by Zoroastrian law makes her unapproachable. Mobad Monikan finds out about the marriage celebration and sends his brother Zard to remind Shahru of her promise and to bring Vis to him. Vis definitely rejects Mobad Monikan's request and refuses to go. Monikan feels aggrieved and campaigns against Māh-abad. In a battle, Qārin, Vis's father, is killed, but Monikan also suffers a defeat from Viru. Mobad Monikan, although defeated in this battle, takes his army to Gurab, where Vis is waiting the outcome of the battle. He sends a messenger to her, offering her various privileges in return for marrying him. But Vis rejects Mobad's offer proudly and indignantly. Mobad asks advice from his two brothers Zard and Ramin. Ramin, who is already in love with Vis attempts to dissuade Mobad from trying to Vis. However, Mobad's brother Zard suggests bribing Shahru as a way of winning over Vis. Mobad listens to Zard and sends money and jewels to Shahru and bribes her to gain entry to the castle. He then takes Vis away, much to the chagrin of Viru. On the journey back to Marv, Ramin catches a glimpse of Vis and is consumed with love for her, so much so that he falls of his horse and faints. Vis is given residence in the harem of Mobad and gifts are bestowed upon her. Vis's nurse also followers her to Marv, and attempts to persuade her to behave pragmatically, accept Mobad and forget Viru. Vis at first has a hard time accepting her fate, but eventually resigns herself to Mobad's Harem. Vis refuses to give herself to Mobad for a year and she was still mourning the death of her father. At this time, the nurse makes a talisman that renders Mobad impotent for one month. The spell can only be broken if the talisman is broken, and it is swept away in a flood and lost, so that Mobad is never able to sleep with his bride. While Vis was being taken to Marv, Ramin was in her escort and saw her, recognized her, and fell in love with her. Vis was mourning her father's death and her separation from her brother and first husband, Viru. Ramin pleads with the Nanny to inform Vis about his love. Vis gets angry and refuses any meeting. Finally, after a lot of talks and communication through the Nanny, and while King Mobad Monikan is on campaign, Vis and Ramin meet. Vis falls in love with Ramin and the two consummate their love. After Monikan returns, they decide to go and visit Vis's family in Mah. There Monikan overhears a conversation between the nurse and Vis, and realizes his wife loves Ramin. Monikan demands a trial by fire, passing through fire, for Vis to prove her chastity. But Vis and Ramin elope. Monikan's mother makes peace between her two sons Ramin and the king, and they all go back to Marv. Monikan takes Ramin along on a campaign against the Romans but Ramin falls sick and is left behind. Ramin goes back to Vis, who is imprisoned in a castle by Monikan and guarded by the king's other brother Zard. Ramin scales the wall and spends his time with Vis until Monikan comes back from the war and Ramin escapes. Ramin thinks that his love with Vis has no future, so he asks Monikan to send him to Maah on a mission. There, Ramin falls in love with a woman called Gol and marries her. Vis finds about this and sends the Nanny to Ramin to remind him of their love. Ramin sends back a harsh reply. Vis sends an elaborate message pleading with him to come back. At this time, Ramin was bored from his married life and after he receives the second message he goes back to Vis. But when he reaches Marv on his horseback in a snow storm, Vis goes to the roof of the castle and rejects his love. Ramin goes off desperately. Vis regrets what she has done and sends the Nanny after Ramin. They reconcile. Monikan takes Ramin hunting and Vis and the Nanny and some other women attend a fire temple nearby. Ramin becomes absent from the hunting, disguises himself as a woman to enter the temple, and leaves with Vis. They go back to the castle and, with help from Ramin's men, kill the garrison and Zard as well. They then escape to Dailam, on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Monikan is killed by a boar during the hunt. Vis and Ramin come back to Merv and Ramin sits on the throne as the king and marries Vis. Ramin reigns for 83 years. In the 81st year Vis dies and Ramin hands over the kingdom to his eldest son with Vis and goes and mourn on Vis' tomb for 2 years, after which he joins her in the afterlife. |
3789664 | /m/0b03q7 | The Sacred Flame | W. Somerset Maugham | null | null | The Sacred Flame is the story about the misfortune of Maurice Tabret, previously a soldier of World War I who had returned home unscathed to marry his sweetheart Stella. Unfortunately, after only a year of marriage, Maurice is involved in a plane crash and left crippled from the waist down. The play commences some years later in Gatley House near London, home of Maurice's mother, Mrs. Tabret. Mrs. Tabret's home has been set up to care for her son and a young Nurse Wayland has been Maurice's constant aid throughout. She is extremely professional and devoted to her job. Maurice's wife Stella lives with them also and remains his cheerful companion and support. Maurice's brother Colin Tabret has returned from a time in Guatemala to spend the previous 11 months before the play's start with his brother and the family. The local practitioner Dr. Harvester visits frequently to check on Maurice's condition and to prescribe appropriate treatments. Mrs. Tabret's own husband has passed on some time ago and whilst she does not have a close relationship with anyone else, her old friend retired Major Liconda visits often. All is as well as can be expected until Maurice is found dead in his bed one morning. Not altogether unexpected, Dr. Harvester is prepared to write the death certificate but then Nurse Wayland cries foul and indicates that she believes Maurice was murdered by being given an overdose of his sleeping draught. The play then works through a series of Agatha Christie-style "whodunnit" scenes as the audience attempt to figure out whether Maurice was killed, took his own life, or else if the whole thing is no more than an imagining and false accusation by the Nurse. For the majority of the second and third act the main suspect is Stella, who it transpires is having an affair with Colin and is pregnant by him. It looks as if the matter will be brought to the coroner and the police, which is likely to mean Stella going on trial for Maurice's murder. At the end of the third act, Mrs. Tabret reveals that it was she that killed Maurice. She had realised that Stella was pregnant, and because Stella's love was all that Maurice lived for, she couldn't bear to see Stella's betrayal exposed. Mrs. Tabret therefore sees her act as a mercy killing. After this revelation, the play ends as Nurse Wayland asks Dr. Harvester to sign the death certificate indicating that Maurice died of natural causes, meaning there will be no police investigation. |
3789887 | /m/0b0412 | Cosmos | Carl Sagan | 1980 | {"/m/01p4b_": "Popular science", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"} | Cosmos has 13 heavily illustrated chapters, corresponding to the 13 episodes of the Cosmos television series. In the book, Sagan explores 15 billion years of cosmic evolution and the development of science and civilization. Cosmos traces the origins of knowledge and the scientific method, mixing science and philosophy, and speculates to the future of science. The book also discusses the underlying premises of science by providing biographical anecdotes about many prominent scientists throughout history, placing their contributions into the broader context of the development of modern science. Cornell News Service characterized the book as "an overview of how science and civilization grew up together." The book covers a broad range of topics, comprising Sagan's reflections on anthropological, cosmological, biological, historical, and astronomical matters from antiquity to contemporary times. Sagan reiterates his position on extraterrestrial life—that the magnitude of the universe permits the existence of thousands of alien civilizations, but no credible evidence exists to demonstrate that such life has ever visited earth. |
3790344 | /m/0b04qn | The Quantum Rose | Catherine Asaro | 2000 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Quantum Rose is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast folktale in a science fiction setting. In the novel, Kamoj Argali, the governor of an impoverished province on the backward planet Balumil, is betrothed to Jax Ironbridge, ruler of a wealthy neighboring province, an arrangement made for political purposes to save her province from starvation and death. Havyrl (Vyrl) Lionstar, a prince of the titular Ruby Dynasty, comes to Balimul as part of a governmental plan to deal with the aftermath of an interstellar war. Masked and enigmatic, he has a reputation as a monster with Kamoj's people. Lionstar interferes with Kamoj's culture and destabilizes their government by pushing her into marriage with himself. In the traditional fairy tale, Belle must save her father from the prince transformed into a beast; in The Quantum Rose, Kamoj must save her province from the prince in exile. The book deals with themes about the physical and emotional scars left on the survivors of a war with no clear victor. As such, it is also a story of healing for both Kamoj and Lionstar. The second half of The Quantum Rose involves Lionstar's return to his home world with Kamoj, where he becomes the central figure in a planet wide act of civil disobedience designed to eject an occupying military force that has taken control of his planet. Both the world Balimul in the first half of the novel and the world Lyshriol in the second half fall into the lost colony genre of literature in science fiction. |
3790904 | /m/0b05pv | Chasing Redbird | Sharon Creech | 1997 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Zinnia "Zinny" Taylor, a quiet yet sometimes outrageous thirteen year old girl, enjoys the care of her aunt and uncle, Jessie and Nate, as her parents are preoccupied with her siblings. Jessie and Nate live in a home that fits snug against the Taylor home, and Zinny prefers to spend her time with her aunt and uncle. They once had a daughter, Rose, around Zinny's age who died of whooping cough. Because Rose caught the cough from Zinny, she has always, in some way, blamed herself for Rose's death. Years later, Zinny accidentally rediscovers a large overgrown trail that is over two hundred years old. When her aunt unexpectedly dies, Zinny blames herself. Soon afterwards she begins to try to clear the trail. In her grief, the trail becomes an obsession, as she decides to clear and travel the entire length of it. Thinking clearing the trail is the only way to be forgiven by God, Zinny camps out on the trail to clear the trail before the end of the summer. At the same time Zinny learns to cope with her grief, her guilt, and a boy named Jake Boone, who she starts to have feelings for. Throughout the story she must attempt to get over the death of Rose and Aunt Jessie. She also tries to find out whether Jake returns her feelings or is just using her to get to her older sister, May. Through all this Zinny finally finds something to call her very own, the trail that she cleared. Throughout the story Creech uses flashbacks as a literary device, showing snippets of what Zinny's life was like before her aunt's death. |
3791547 | /m/0b06lv | The View from Saturday | E. L. Konigsburg | 1996 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Mrs. Olinski returns to the classroom at Epiphany Middle School several years after an accident that left her paraplegic. Four of her sixth-grade students form a group they call "The Souls" and she chooses them to represent her class in Academic Bowl competition. They defeat the other sixth-grade teams, then the seventh- and eighth-grade champions at Epiphany, and so on until they become New York state middle school champions. Between chapters that feature the progress of the competition, each of the four students narrates one chapter related both to the development of The Souls and to a question in the state championship final. Noah Gershom recounts learning calligraphy and being best man for his grandfather's friend at Century Village in Florida. Nadia Diamondstein describes working to conserve sea turtles and meeting Ethan, also at Century Village. Ethan Potter tells of meeting Julian, a new boy in town, and attending his tea parties, where the four Souls became friends. Julian Singh explains being new at school and tells of handling a chance for revenge against one of the bullies — remarkably grounded in the part played by Nadia's dog in the school musical "Annie". |
3796192 | /m/0b0g4j | Missing May | Cynthia Rylant | 1992 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel is set in present-day [West Virginia]. The protagonist is Summer, an orphaned child who has been passed from one apathetic relative to another. At age six, she meets her Aunt May and Uncle Ob. The kindly old couple notices that, although Summer is not mistreated, she is virtually ignored by her caretakers and decide to take Summer home to their rickety trailer home in the hills of the Appalachian mountains. Summer thrives under their care, feeling that she finally has a home. Six years after Summer moves in, Aunt May dies suddenly in the garden. Summer must cope with her own grief while worrying about Uncle Ob, who is overwhelmed by the thought of living without his beloved wife. Uncle Ob decides to try contacting May's spirit, after he experiences the sensation that she has tried to communicate with him. He is assisted in this endeavor by Cletus Underwood, a classmate of Summer's, who provides information on a supposed spirit medium of some renown. Summer views his ideas with some skepticism, but is willing to try anything that might alleviate her uncle's sorrow. The three take a roadtrip to meet with the medium, only to discover that she had recently died. Uncle Ob is initially crushed by this news, and Summer fears that this disappointment was the last blow to his will to live. However, on the return trip, Uncle Ob suddenly snaps out of his depression, deciding to continue living on for Summer's sake. |
3796368 | /m/0b0gk1 | The Trumpeter of Krakow | Eric P. Kelly | 1928 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | After seeing a spy lurking around his house in Ukriane, Andrew Charnetski hastily removes his family to a safe location. While away, Peter of the Button Face, acting under the orders of Ivan III of Russia, burns the Charnetski's village to the ground in search of the "Great Tarnov Crystal", a mysterious Tarnov crystal that has caused many wars over the millennia and had, a few centuries previously, been entrusted by the city of Tarnów to the Charnetski family for safeguarding until its discovery by others, at which time it was to be given to the current king of Poland. Realizing that Peter must have been after the crystal, and finding himself homeless, Andrew takes his family to Kraków, where his cousin Andrew Tenczynski lives, in order to give the crystal to King Kazimír Jagiełło. However, upon his arrival he finds that Tenczynski has been murdered and that his estate is under the control of Elizabeth of Austria, the queen of Poland. Destitute, Charnetski camps his family in the middle of the city for the day. Charnetski's fifteen-year-old son Joseph explores the city, passing the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, from which a trumpeter plays an unfinished song called "the Heynal" [in Polish: Hejnał mariacki] four times every hour, once to each direction (north, east, south, and west). Joseph ends up saving an alchemist named Nicholas Kreutz and his niece, Elżbietka, from a wolfdog. Kreutz offers Joseph and his family an apartment just below his on the unsavory Street of the Pigeons, a street near Kraków University where scientists and magicians often live. Meanwhile Andrew Charnetski and his wife (who is never named) have been found by Peter of the Button Face, who has pursued them from Ukraine. Surrounded by bandits and a jeering crowd, Andrew, his wife, and Joseph (who joins them) are only saved by the appearance of Jan Kanty, a respected scholar and priest. Kanty offers Andrew the position of night trumpeter in the Church of Our Lady St. Mary. Delighted at the prospect of a job and home on such short notice, Andrew accepts both offers. The following night Andrew takes Joseph with him to the tower of the Church of Our Lady St. Mary, leaving his wife behind with Elżbietka. In the tower Andrew explains to his son the story of the trumpeter of Kraków — a trumpeter who, in 1241, was pierced by a Tartar arrow before he could finish the Hejnał. Accordingly the song has always been abruptly cut short. Nicholas Kreutz, meanwhile, teaches a German student named Johann Tring chemistry in the loft above his apartment every evening. Tring, however, is obsessed with the idea of obtaining the philosopher's stone, and finally convinces Kreutz to go through sessions of hypnosis, which Tring believes will open Kreutz's "Greater Mind", revealing the secret of the creation of a chrysopoeia. All Tring can glean from Kreutz's trances, however, is that the chrysopoeia is at hand (which Tring takes to mean that they have nearly discovered how to make it). When unhypnotized, Kreutz reasons that there cannot be one stone that automatically changes brass into gold, but that there must be a process by which such a change could occur. He believes that all things are subject to change, and wishes to change the bad things in the world to good things through the use of alchemy. An example he gives is the landlady's deformed son, Stas, whom Kretuz believes could be saved through alchemical transmutation. In the meantime, Peter of the Button Face hears Stas, the landlady's son, discussing the Charnetskis and pays him a fortune to learn of their whereabouts. He leads a burglary on the Charnetski's apartment while Andrew is up in the church tower, and discovers the Tarnov Crystal hidden in Andrew's mattress. He and his men are surprised, however, by the appearance of Nicholas Kreutz, clad in clothes covered in phosphorus and burning resin, and take him for a demon. The bandits flee and are caught by the night watchmen, but Peter stays to reclaim the Crystal. When Kreutz asks the mercenary why he has come, Peter realized the alchemist is not a demon and stops being afraid. He directs Kreutz's attention to the Crystal, then trips the alchemist and grabs the gem, heading for the door. Kreutz throws some explosive powder at Peter, who drops the Crystal in agony and escapes over the rooftops of Kraków. Tempted by the realization that the Crystal is the chrysopoeia he and Tring have been ardently seeking, Kreutz steals the Tarnov Crystal before anyone figures what has happened. When he tries to use the Crystal, however, Kreutz realized that it only makes him think of his own desires. He realized, then, that it can only reflect back the gazer's own subconscious knowledge, and therefore will not reveal the secret of chrysopoeia unless he himself has all the pieces stored somewhere in his head. Andrew teaches Joseph the Hejnał, realizing that he may be attacked by seekers of the Crystal and that someone must be left to trumpet the song on the hour. While in the tower one evening, Andrew and Joseph are attacked and held captive by Peter and his band. Peter demands to be led to the location of the Crystal (which neither Andrew nor Joseph knows), but first orders Joseph to trumpet the Hejnał since it is two o'clock and its absence will be noticed. Thinking quickly, Joseph plays the Hejnał the entire way through, not stopping at the broken note. Elżbietka, lying awake in her apartment waiting to hear the Hejnał, realizes the finished tune is a sign and rushes to Jan Kanty's cell. Kanty calls the night watchmen to his aid and heads for the church tower, where they surprise the bandits and free Andrew. Peter, meanwhile, notices the troop of watchmen and flees the city. Much later, Kreutz finally gives in to temptation and reveals the Crystal to Johann Tring. Tring is giddy with excitement and instructs Kreutz to gaze at the crystal. The alchemist, however, is tired from his numerous trances and goes into one as he stares at the gemstone. In it his thoughts arrange themselves into a strange order, and he reads in the stone what Tring believes to be the formula for the chrysopoeia, but what is in actuality the formula for a niter-based explosive. When Tring mixes the ingredients together, the loft explodes into flames and Tring flees for cover. Kreutz grabs the stone and, still crazed, heads off into the streets of Kraków. After that, he is dragged to the tower by Jan Kanty and the Great Tarnov Crystal is given back to Pan Andrew. The fire starts to spread through the Street of the Pigeons, and during the tumult the king's royal guards catch Peter of the Button Face skulking around the scene and haul him off to the prison. Joseph, his mother, and Elżbietka escape from their home to the church tower, and Joseph replaces his father as the trumpeter while Andrew goes to work stopping the flames, which have spread throughout the city. The fire is extinguished by the morning and Jan Kanty finds Nicholas Kreutz wandering aimlessly about in the rubble with the Tarnov Crystal in his hands. Jan Kanty, Nicholas Kreutz, and Andrew and Joseph Charnetski all seek an audience with King Kazimír. Once granted, they present to him the Tarnov Crystal and tell them its story and theirs. The king then summons Peter of the Button Face, who bargains for his life by promising to tell the king why there have been disturbances in Ukraine. He tells the king that Ivan III, the king of Russia, wished to have Makhmud Khan invade Ukraine and capture it for Russia. Makhmud agreed under the condition that Ivan would procure for him the Great Tarnov Crystal. It was thus that Ivan hired the mercenary Bogdan Grozny, called Peter, to steal the Crystal. After hearing Peter's story, Kazimír banishes the mercenary from Poland for life. As they begin to depart, the king gazes into the Crystal and becomes transfixed. Kreutz, still entranced, grabs the Crystal and runs out the door down to the banks of the Vistula, into which he throws the Tarnov Crystal. Jan Kanty and the king decide not to retrieve the crystal, deeming it safely protected in the grounds of the castle. Andrew Charnetski's house in Ukraine is rebuilt and he is rewarded by the king. Kreutz and Elżbietka come to Ukraine as well, the alchemist having regained his sanity, and six years later Joseph marries Elżbietka. |
3799661 | /m/0b0ms6 | A Grave Talent | Laurie R. King | 2006-02 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"} | The strangulation of four children in the vicinity of San Francisco leads the police force to appoint inspectors Al Hawkin and Kate ("Casey") Martinelli to discover the criminal. Suspicion falls on renowned artist Vaun Adams, convicted of murdering a young girl years before. When someone attempts to murder Vaun herself, the police are forced to conclude that someone else must be behind the murders, and they discover that Vaun's ex-boyfriend, maniacally egotistical Andy Lewis, must be the perpetrator. Hawkin convinces a reluctant Kate to set the trap for Lewis in her home by letting Vaun recover there. He arrives and declares that he will kill Kate and her lover Lee and leave Vaun to take the blame. Lee alerts the police to his presence, but the sniper who kills Lewis does not do so in time to prevent him from shooting and permanently disabling her. |
3800855 | /m/0b0ppn | Tokyo | Mo Hayder | 2004 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story is about a young woman (nicknamed 'Grey' by a fellow mental hospital patient) who is obsessed with the 1937 Japanese invasion of Nanking, also known as the Rape of Nanking. She travels to Japan in order to find a professor said to have rare footage of the massacre detailing an event that she could not otherwise prove occurred. The professor decides that he will only show her the tape if she was to procure an unknown ingredient of Chinese medicine from the local Yakuza group. After being recruited into a host club, Grey finds her chance. |
3800896 | /m/0b0pt5 | The Treatment | Mo Hayder | 6/4/2001 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | A husband and wife are discovered imprisoned in their own home near Brockwell Park in South London. It is a hot summer and they are badly dehydrated, they've been bound and beaten, and the husband seems close to death. Rory Peach, their 8-year-old son, is missing. Detective Inspector (DI) Jack Caffery is one of the police team and the disappearance of the little boy rekindles memories of his brother Ewan who was abducted as a 9-year-old and never seen again. Caffery tries to find the boy at the same time as helping his girl friend get over her own sexual attack and following up on clues which might allow him to find out Ewan's fate. Patterns of child sexual abuse start to emerge and Caffery tracks down a young man who was abused in the same park many years earlier as a child. Caffery is convinced the attacker will be targeting another family and when Rory's body is discovered and DNA from semen proves to be Rory's father Alek, the case is turned on its head. Bite marks on the boy's shoulder, however, do not match Alek's dental pattern and Caffery then understands that Peach was forced to sodomise his son. Another family with a young boy, 8-year-old Josh, has been imprisoned and Caffery slowly pieces together the clues to find out who they are. Caffery also gets very close to discovering that his brother is still alive. He suffered brain damage at the hands of a vicious child molester, a member of a paedophile ring who hand children round and make child pornography videos. |
3802754 | /m/0b0szm | The Black Corridor | Michael Moorcock | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Ryan is a tough-minded British businessman appalled by the breakdown of society at the end of the 20th century. He feels that he is one of the few sane men in a world of paranoiacs. With a small group of family and friends, he has stolen a spaceship and set out for Munich 15040 (Barnard's Star), a planet believed to be suitable for colonisation. Now he keeps watch alone, with his 13 companions sealed in cabinets designed to keep them in suspended animation for the many years of the journey. He makes a daily report on each one: it is always 'Condition Steady'. Ryan is tormented by nightmares and memories of the violence on Earth; he starts to fear he is losing his grip on reality. The shipboard computer urges him to take a drug that eliminates all delusions and hallucinations; but he is strangely reluctant to use this drug. |
3803226 | /m/0b0tmj | Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror | Steve Alten | 1997-07 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Jonas Taylor (1956-) is a deep sea diver working for the United States Navy on a top-secret dive in the Mariana Trench. He sees a megalodon, the "Meg" of the title, a massive ancient predator that is believed to be extinct. Because he is the only survivor he is disbelieved. He becomes a paleontologist and tries to prove that the megalodon is real, but is still considered a crackpot. An old friend, Masao Tanaka, asks him to go back and help recover a UNIS (Unmanned Nautical Informational Submersible), which helps predict earthquakes, from the Mariana Trench. Again, they encounter a megalodon in the depths: the species has indeed survived, but is trapped in the Mariana Trench due to the 'cold water barrier' (the bottom of the Trench is heated by geothermal ducts, keeping the water warm, but that warmth has limited range and the far colder water above it keeps the sharks trapped there as the cold water would apparently have highly negative effects on the giant sharks unless traversed properly). A male megalodon attacks them and kills Tanaka's son before being entangled in the metal ropes connecting the submarine to the ship, which start dragging the shark up. However, the male shark's vulnerable state prompts an even larger female megalodon to emerge and attack it, and as the female rips it apart, she is bathed in the shark's warm blood as she follows the entangled male upwards, the warm flood of liquid keeping the female protected from the cold water long enough for it to reach the warmer surface waters of the ocean, hence unleashing the megalodon anew on the ocean's ecosystem. It doesn't take long for the shark to pick up where it left off after it reaches the surface, as it starts killing and eating whales, and sometimes people, including Jonas's estranged wife, Maggie. To make matters worse, the female is pregnant and gives birth. Both are tracked, as Taylor and Tanaka wish to capture the creature. They manage to get the mother, but it breaks free and starts attacking boats in the area where it was captured. Taylor manages to kill the mother in the carnage by ramming a submersible down its throat, slicing his way through its inner body, and eventually cutting through its heart before escaping. Jonas also manages to capture the offspring of the meg, ending the novel. |
3808619 | /m/0b11fy | Oh, Play That Thing! | Roddy Doyle | 2004 | null | Having fallen foul of his erstwhile comrades in the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Henry escapes to America. In New York, he becomes involved in advertising, pornography and bootlegging. After stepping on the toes of the Mob, Henry heads for Chicago, where he becomes the manager and partner-in-crime of Louis Armstrong. He becomes reunited with his wife and daughter, and, much to his dismay, the IRA. |
3812457 | /m/0b18y7 | Absolutely Normal Chaos | Sharon Creech | 1990 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Mary Lou Finney is less than excited about her assignment to keep a journal over the summer. She also has to read The Odyssey, which she often relates to her own story. Then her cousin Carl Ray comes to stay with her family, under the pretense of looking for a job, which he eventually finds at Mr. Furtz's hardware store. Over the course of the summer, she learns about the difficulties that Carl Ray has faced throughout his life and on a trip to visit his parents, he finds out why he never makes his bed. She also hangs out with her best friend Beth Ann and becomes Alex Cheevey's girlfriend. As Mary Lou's story unfolds, she examines both her struggles with her family and her own sense of self. Sharon Creech stated that the inspiration for this story was an occasion when, "I'd been living overseas (England and Switzerland) for about ten years, and I was sadly missing my family back in the States. I thought I'd write a story about normal family chaos and that's how this began, with me trying to remember what it was like growing up in my family. Writing the story was a way for me to feel as if my family were with me, right there in our little cottage in England.". |
3814522 | /m/0b1cg5 | Mrs Dane's Defence | Henry Arthur Jones | null | null | The story focuses on Mrs. Dane's betrothal to Lionel, adopted son of Sir Daniel who is a famous judge. Rumours have been spread in Sunningwater that young widow Mrs. Dane is actually Felicia Hindermarsh, involved in a tragic scandal following an affair with a married man in Vienna. Before Sir Daniel consents to the marriage, he attempts to put down the rumours and clear Mrs. Dane's reputation. With others, such as Lady Eastney, he starts looking into Mrs. Dane's past, guided by his experience as a judge. Mrs. Dane produces plausible evidence of her identity and everyone involved is quite convinced of her innocence. Yet in the end Sir Daniel's professional approach exposes Mrs. Dane's real identity in a famous cross-examination scene. Sir Daniel begins his examination convinced of her story, only wanting to get some final detail. A slip of the tongue by Mrs. Dane (when she says “We had governesses”) reveals the presence of a cousin she has tried to conceal. This sets Sir Daniel on the right track and he follows up skillfully and mercilessly, finally drawing the confession out of her that she is indeed Felicia Hindermarsh and has taken her late cousin's identity. The truth is kept secret, though (mostly due to Lady Eastney's intervention), and Mrs. Dane's reputation in Sunningwater can be reinstated. Nevertheless, they all decide she should leave the village after her marriage with Lionel has become impossible and she complies. |
3815573 | /m/0b1dq1 | Stamboul Train | Graham Greene | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel focuses on the lives of individuals aboard the train as it makes a trip from Ostend to Istanbul. Although boarding the Orient Express for different purposes, the lives of each of the central characters are bound together in a fateful interlock. Myatt is a shrewd and practical businessman. Partly out of generosity, he gives the sick Coral Musker a ticket, for which Musker feels grateful and dutifully falls in love with him. She then spends a night with him in his compartment. Dr. Czinner, an exiled socialist leader, wants to travel back to Belgrade, only to find that the socialist uprising he was anticipating has already taken place and failed. He decides to go back to Belgrade nonetheless to stand trial as a political gesture. Meanwhile, he is being followed by Mabel Warren, a lesbian journalist who is travelling with her partner, Janet Pardoe. In order to go back to Belgrade, he has to pretend to leave the train at Vienna so that Warren would not follow him. When the train arrives at Vienna, Warren, while keeping an eye on Czinner, leaves the train to make a phone call to her office. It is at this time that her bag is stolen by Josef Grünlich, who has just killed a man during a failed robbery. Grünlich then promptly boards the train with her money, while the angry Warren, left behind and worried about losing Pardoe, vows to get Czinner's story through other means. At Subotica, the train is stopped and Czinner is arrested. Also arrested are Grünlich, for keeping a revolver, and Musker, who by coincidence is with Czinner when the arrest takes place. A court martial is held and Czinner gives a rousing political speech, even though there is no real audience present. He is quickly sentenced to death. The three prisoners are kept in a waiting room for the night. They soon realize that Myatt has just come back for Musker in a car. The skilful Grünlich breaks open the door and all three try to escape and run to the car. Unfortunately, only Grünlich is able to do so -- Czinner is shot and Musker hides him in a barn. Czinner dies soon after. When Warren comes back for her story, she happily decides to take Musker back to Vienna: she has long fancied to have Musker as her new partner. But when Musker is last seen, she is having a heart attack in the back of Warren's car, and her ultimate fate is not revealed. The Orient Express finally arrives at Istanbul, and Myatt, Pardoe and Mr. Savory (a writer) get off. Myatt soon realizes that Pardoe is the niece of Stein, a rival businessman and potential business partner. The story ends with Myatt seriously considering marrying Pardoe and sealing the contract with Stein. |
3816477 | /m/0b1fpc | Out of the Shelter | David Lodge | 1970 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story tells a child's experience in the Blitz during World War II and his rescue from an air-raid shelter. Suffering from a wartime childhood and post-war shortages in London, Timothy has little to enrich his early youth. Everything changes when his glamorous older sister Kath invites him to spend the summer in Heidelberg, Germany. Kath, who left home long ago to work for the American Army, introduces her sixteen-year-old brother to a lifestyle that is deliriously fast, furious and extravagant. Dazzled by the ingulgent habits of the American forces, but at the same time sensitive to the broken spirit of the German community beneath this sparkling surface, Timothy will find that his summer holiday is in more ways than one an unforgettable rite of passage. |
3816721 | /m/0b1fy9 | Paradise News | David Lodge | 1991 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story begins with Bernard, a laicised Catholic priest, escorting his unwilling father Jack to Hawaii at the request of his aunt Ursula, who is dying of cancer. On the day after arrival, Jack is hit by a car and sent to hospital. Bernard spends much time travelling between Jack's bedside and Ursula's nursing home, and through this, gets the opportunity to discover their past. Ursula, always portrayed as the selfish black sheep, had been sexually abused as a child by her oldest brother Sean, who was venerated as a hero by the family for his death in the war. Ursula explains to Bernard that the experience ruined her marriage and her life. She wants Jack's apology for Jack knew of the abuse but kept silent. In the midst of this, Bernard strikes up a tentative relationship with Yolande Miller, the driver of the car that hit his father. Bernard's gradual sexual awakening parallels Ursula's struggle with her illness. The narrative switches between third-person prose, Bernard's diary, a long letter from Bernard to Yolande, and postcards and notes sent from Hawaii by various characters encountered by Bernard and Jack on the plane journey from England, concluding with a letter from Yolande to Bernard. fr:Nouvelles du paradis |
3816929 | /m/0b1gb2 | Home Truths: A Novella | David Lodge | 1999 | {"/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | The story mainly focuses on Adrian Ludlow, a half-retired writer, interviewed by Fanny Tarrant, a journalist famous for sarcastic portrait of her interviewees. ro:Crudul adevăr |
3818118 | /m/0b1jqz | Delusions of Grandma | Carrie Fisher | null | {"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"} | The book is about Cora Sharpe, a Hollywood screenwriter who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant by her boyfriend, an attorney named Ray, a relationship that has gone wrong. Concerned that she will not survive labor, Cora begins to write long letters to her unborn child. As she writes, she begins to recall the events that led to her current situation. Her relationship with Ray became more complicated by the arrival of his mother, who came to live with them to recuperate from breast surgery. Cora's friend and co-writer, Bud, who is completely bipolar, then moves in with them. When another friend, William, who is in the final stages of dying of AIDS, moves in, Ray decides that Cora's efforts to care for William during his final days on earth signals that he, Ray, is not her top priority in life. As things get out of control, Cora returns home to her mother, a retired musical comedy star, and Bud follows. There is an in-depth look at the heartfelt expectations of Cora's zany mother, the show-bizzy grandma-to-be. Cora and Bud then join her mother in an inexplicable and madcap scheme to kidnap Cora's grandfather, who is stricken with Alzheimer's, from his nursing home and take him back to his hometown of Whitewright, Texas. The story then concludes with the birth of Cora's child. |
3822857 | /m/0b1th1 | Open House | Elizabeth Berg | 2000-08 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Throughout the 20 years of her marriage, Samantha Morrow has been content with her life, though she knows it isn't perfect. She has a nice home, a great son, and a husband she loves. But everything is turned upside down when her husband, David, tells her he wants out of their marriage. His rapid departure on the heels of this announcement leaves Sam horribly shocked, utterly confused, and oddly obsessed with Martha Stewart. Her initial reaction is to go on a spending spree, charging thousands of dollars worth of merchandise at Tiffany's to her husband's credit card. But when reality sets in and her husband cuts her off, she realizes that if she wants to keep the house she loves and make a home for herself and her son, she's going to have to generate some income. Her first solution to this dilemma is to find a couple of roommates. Between the finished portion of the basement and the extra bedroom upstairs, Sam figures she can take on two boarders and mitigate a large portion of the mortgage payment. She finds her first boarder quickly—the septuagenarian mother of an acquaintance—and is delighted. Lydia Fitch is quiet, clean, concerned, friendly, and more than eager to play grandmother to Sam's son, Travis. Which is just as well, since Sam's own mother doesn't quite fit the bill. In fact, Sam's mother has made a career out of dating since the death of her husband two decades ago and is now determined to fix Sam up as soon as possible—a plan with foreseeable disasters written all over it. Sam's life is further complicated when she starts looking for a job, for other than a gig singing in a band years ago, she's never been employed. But then King, the gentle giant of a man who helps Lydia move in, puts Sam in touch with the employment agency he works for. Suddenly Sam is off on a variety of short-term jobs, everything from making change at a Laundromat, to working as a carpenter's helper. When she gets the devastating news that Lydia has decided to marry her longtime beau and move out, Sam takes on a second boarder for the basement space: a sullen, depressed college student. |
3826722 | /m/0b1zq8 | The Coral Island | Robert Michael Ballantyne | 1857 | {"/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | The story is written as a first person narrative from the perspective of one of three boys shipwrecked on the coral reef of a large but uninhabited Polynesian island, 15-year-old Ralph Rover. Ralph tells the story retrospectively, looking back on his boyhood adventure: "I was a boy when I went through the wonderful adventures herein set down. With the memory of my boyish feelings strong upon me, I present my book specially to boys, in the earnest hope that they may derive valuable information, much pleasure, great profit, and unbounded amusement from its pages." The account starts briskly, with only four pages devoted to Ralph's early life and a further fourteen to his voyage to the Pacific Ocean on board the Arrow. He and his two companions – 18-year-old Jack Martin and 14-year-old Peterkin Gay – are the sole survivors of the shipwreck. The narrative is essentially in two parts. The first describes how the boys feed themselves, what they drink, the clothing and shelter they fashion, and how they cope with having to rely on their own resources. The second half of the novel is more action-packed, featuring conflicts with pirates, fighting between the native Polynesians, and the conversion efforts of Christian missionaries. At first the boys' life is idyllic. Food in the shape of fruits, fish, and wild pigs is plentiful, and they fashion a shelter and construct a small boat using their only possessions: a broken telescope, an iron-bound oar, and a small axe. Their first contact with other humans comes after several months, when they observe two large outrigger canoes land on the beach. The two groups of Polynesians disembark and engage in battle; the three boys intervene to defeat the attackers, earning them the gratitude of the chief, Tararo. The natives leave, and the boys are alone once more. Less welcome visitors then arrive in the shape of British pirates, who make a living by trading or stealing sandalwood. The three boys conceal themselves in a hidden cave, but Ralph is captured when he ventures out to see if the pirates have left, and is taken on board the pirate schooner. He strikes up a friendship with one of the pirates, Bloody Bill, and when they call at an island to trade for more wood he meets Tararo again. There he experiences many facets of the island's culture, including the popular sport of surfing, the sacrificing of babies to eel gods, rape, and cannibalism. Rising tensions result in the inhabitants attacking the pirates, leaving only Ralph and Bloody Bill alive. The pair succeed in making their escape in the schooner, but Bill is mortally wounded. He makes a death-bed repentance for his evil life, leaving Ralph to sail back alone to the Coral Island, where he is reunited with his friends. The three boys sail to the island of Mango, where a missionary has converted some of the population to Christianity. They find themselves caught up in a conflict between the converted and non-converted islanders, and in attempting to intervene are taken prisoner. They are released a month later after the arrival of another missionary, and the conversion of the remaining islanders. The "false gods" of Mango are consigned to the flames, and the boys set sail for home, older and wiser. |
3829861 | /m/0b2512 | No Man Friday | null | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | A British rocket, developed at minimal cost and secretly from officialdom, lifts off from the Woomera rocket range on a mission to Mars. During the voyage, an accident in the airlock kills all but the narrator, who was returning from EVA and still in his space suit. The rocket reaches Mars but crash lands. There, the narrator learns how to produce oxygen and water, also discovering more about Martian species and nourishment. Eventually, he starts cooperating with the titanic inhabitants of that planet to survive. After fifteen years, an American mission lands, thinking themselves the first to reach Mars. The narrator contacts the Americans, and then tries to return to the Dominant Beings, but is prevented from reaching them. He returns to Earth with the Americans. |
3829882 | /m/0b252j | One Night @ the Call Center | Chetan Bhagat | 2005-10 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book begins with a frame story which recounts a train journey from Kanpur to Delhi. During the journey, the narrating author meets a beautiful girl. The girl offers to tell the author a story on the condition that he has to make it his second book. After a lot of hesitation, the author agrees. The story within the story, which comprises the bulk of the book, relates the events that happen one night at a call center. Told through the eyes of the protagonist, Shyam, it is a story of almost lost love, thwarted ambitions, absence of family affection, pressures of a patriarchal set up, and the work environment of a globalized office. Shyam loves but has lost Priyanka, who is now planning an arranged marriage with another; Vroom loves Esha. Esha wants to be a model, Radhika is in an unhappy marriage with a demanding mother-in-law, and military uncle wants to talk to his grandson; they all hate Bakshi, their cruel boss. Claimed to be based on a true story, the author chooses Shyam Mehra (alias Sam Marcy) as the narrator and protagonist, who is one among the six call center employees featured. |
3830461 | /m/0b25w7 | The Flivver King | Upton Sinclair, Jr. | null | {"/m/09s1f": "Business", "/m/02j62": "Economics", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | On Bagley Street in the city of Detroit, Little Abner Shutt begins the story by explaining to his mother that "there's a feller down the street says he's goin' to make a wagon that'll run without a horse." The man is Henry Ford. The story follows the progress and growth of Ford Motor Company through the perspective of a number of generations of a single family. "The Flivver King" demonstrates the effects of Scientific Management in factories. The Ford factory began with very skilled workers. Through a process of breaking the skilled job down into simple steps, they were able to hire lower wage, less skilled individuals to do the work. The Flivver King explains how the Ford Company used scientific management to replace skilled workers while successfully increasing production. |
3832478 | /m/0b29y1 | The Shadow of the Wind | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | 2001 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel, set in post–war Barcelona, concerns a young boy, Daniel Sempere. Just after the war, Daniel's father takes him to the secret Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old, forgotten titles lovingly preserved by a select few initiates. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it and must protect it for life. Daniel selects a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julián Carax. That night he takes the book home and reads it, completely engrossed. Daniel then attempts to look for other books by this unknown author but can find none. All he comes across are stories of a strange man – calling himself Laín Coubert, after a character in the book who happens to be the Devil – who has been seeking out Carax's books for decades, buying them all and burning them. The novel is actually a story within a story. The boy, Daniel Sempere, in his quest to discover Julian's other works, becomes involved in tracing the entire history of Carax. His friend Fermin Romero de Torres, who was imprisoned and tortured in Montjuic Castle for having been involved in an espionage against the Anarchists during the war – himself being a government intelligence agent – helps Daniel in a number of ways, but their probing into the murky past of a number of people who have either been long dead or long forgotten unleashes the dark forces of the murderous Inspector Fumero. Thus, unravelling a long story that has been buried within the depths of oblivion, Daniel and Fermin come across a love story, the beautiful, yet doomed love story of Julian and Penelope, both of whom seem to having been missing since 1919 – that is, nearly thirty years earlier. Julian, who was the son of the hatter Antoni Fortuny and his wife Sophie Carax (but preferred to use his mother's last name) and Penelope Aldaya, the only daughter of the extremely rich and wealthy Don Ricardo Aldaya and his beautiful and narcissistic American wife, developed an instant love for each other, carried out a clandestine relationship only through casual furtive glances and faint smiles for around four years, after which they decided to elope to Paris, little knowing that the shadows of misfortune had been closing upon them ever since they met. The two lovers are doomed to unknown fates just a week before their supposed elopement, which was meticulously planned by Julian's best friend, Miquel Moliner – also the son of a wealthy father, who had earned much during the war including an ill reputation of selling ammunition. It is eventually revealed that Miquel loved Julian more than any brother and finally sacrificed his own life for him, having already abandoned all his wishes and youth towards lost causes of charity and his friend's well-being after his elopement to Paris, nevertheless without Penelope, who never turned up for the rendezvous. Penelope's memories keep burning Julian and this eventually forces him to return to Barcelona, in the mid 1930s, however he encounters the harshest truth about Penelope, who had just been nothing more than a memory for those who knew her, for she had never been seen or heard of again by anyone after 1919. He discovers that he and Penelope are actually half-brother and sister; her father had an affair with his mother and Julian was the result. The worst thing for his to dicover is that after he left, Penelope's parents imprisoned her because they were ashamed of her committing incest with Julian, and she was pregnant with his child. Penelope gave birth to a son named David Aldaya, who was stillborn. Penelope died during childbirth and her body was never found. Julian is despaired over the deaths of Penelope and David. He attempts suicide by poison and was hospitalized. After his release, he began writing a series of books, but it was A Shadow of the Wind, based on his lifetime, that became famous. Soon after the book was published, Julian disappeared without a trace. After finishing reading the book, Daniel marries Beatriz "Bea" Aguilar, whom he has loved for a long time, in 1956. Soon after, Bea gives birth to a son. Daniel names his son Julian Sempere, in honor of Julian Carax. In 1966, Daniel takes Julian to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where A Shadow of the Wind is kept. |
3832596 | /m/0b2b3p | Boba Fett: Crossfire | Terry Bisson | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Young Boba Fett is brought to Count Dooku's lair on the planet of Raxus Prime by Aurra Sing. Boba Fett snoops around finding out what the Separatists are there for: the Force Harvester. Clone Troopers attack the planet's Separatist forces, rescue Boba Fett as an orphan taking him to a large ship in outer space. On board the Casanderri, Boba Fett hides himself under the name"Teff" and meets another orphan who he develops a friendship with. This bond is broken when Boba flees the ship when it lands on Bespin. Boba Fett escapes to search for his ship Slave 1 which was taken by Aurra Sing. Both meet upon a moon and agree to get Boba Fett his father's money, in exchange for half. The two leave for Count Dooku. Meanwhile, on Excarga, the Separatists seized control over the planet. The Galactic Republic manages to launch a strike force and take back the planet. Several prison camps were liberated, but some prisoners were not found. |
3833407 | /m/0b2cnw | Adolphe | Benjamin Constant | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Adolphe, the narrator, is the son of a government minister. Introverted from an early age, his melancholy outlook has been formed by conversations with an elderly friend, whose insight into the folly and hypocrisy of the world has hindered rather than helped her in life. When the novel opens, he is 22 years old and has just completed his studies at the University of Göttingen. He travels to the town of D*** in Germany, where he becomes attached to the court of an enlightened Prince. During his stay he gains a reputation for an unpleasant wit. A friend's project of seduction inspires him to try something similar with the 32-year-old lover of the Comte de P***, a beautiful Polish refugee named Ellénore. The seduction is successful, but they both fall in love, and their relationship becomes all-consuming, isolating them from the people around them. Eventually Adolphe becomes anxious as he realises that he is sacrificing any potential future for the sake of Ellénore. She persuades him to extend his stay by six months, but they quarrel, and when she breaks with the Comte de P*** and leaves her two children in order to be with him, and tends him after he is injured in a duel, he finds himself hopelessly indebted to her. When he leaves the town of D***, Ellénore follows him, only to be expelled from his home town by Adolphe's father. Adolphe is furious and together they travel to her newly-regained estate in Poland. However, a friend of the father, the Baron de T***, manipulates Adolphe into promising to break with Ellénore for the sake of his career. The letter which contains the promise is forwarded to Ellénore and the shock leads to her death. Adolphe loses interest in life, and the alienation with which the book began returns in a more serious form. |
3837355 | /m/0b2klz | Mr Midshipman Easy | Frederick Marryat | null | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Easy is the son of foolish parents, who spoiled him. His father, in particular, regards himself as a philosopher, with a firm belief in the "rights of man, equality, and all that; how every person was born to inherit his share of the earth, a right at present only admitted to a certain length that is, about six feet, for we all inherit our graves, and are allowed to take possession without dispute. But no one would listen to Mr Easy's philosophy. The women would not acknowledge the rights of men, whom they declared always to be in the wrong; and, as the gentlemen who visited Mr Easy were all men of property, they could not perceive the advantages of sharing with those who had none. However, they allowed him to discuss the question, while they discussed his port wine. The wine was good, if the arguments were not, and we must take things as we find them in this world." By the time he is a teenager Easy has adopted his father's point of view, to the point where he no longer believes in private property. Easy joins the navy, which his fatherbelieves to be the best example of an equal society, and Easy becomes friendly with a lower deck seaman named Mesty (Mephistopheles Faust), an escaped slave, who had been a prince in Africa. Mesty is sympathetic to Easy's philosophizing, which seems to offer him a way up from his lowly job of "boiling kettle for de young gentlemen"; but once Mesty is promoted to ship's corporal and put in charge of discipline, he changes his mind: "...now I tink a good deal lately, and by all de power, I tink equality all stuff." "All stuff, Mesty, why? you used to think otherwise." "Yes, Massa Easy, but den I boil de kettle for all young gentleman. Now dat I ship's corporal and hab cane, I tink so no longer." In some way Mesty is the real hero of the novel, as he pulls Easy out of several scrapes the impulsive 17-year old gets himself into as he cruises the Mediterranean on several British ships. Easy becomes a competent officer, in spite of his notions. Easy's mother dies, and he returns home to find his father is completely mad. Easy senior has developed an apparatus for reducing or enlarging phrenological bumps on the skull, but in an attempt to reduce his own benevolence bump, the machine kills him. Easy throws out the criminal servants his father has employed and puts the estate to rights, demanding backrents from the tenants, and evicting those who won't pay. Using his new-found wealth, he formally quits the navy, rigs out his own privateering vessel, and returns to Sicily to claim his bride Agnes. As a wealthy gentleman now, no longer a junior midshipman, her family can't refuse him, and he and Agnes live happily ever after. |
3837612 | /m/0b2k_s | Dreamsnake | Vonda McIntyre | 1978 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story opens with Snake, a healer, having been brought into a desert tribe to assist in the healing of a very sick little boy named Stavin. She is dependent upon her snakes for healing purposes and has three: Grass, a small and rare dreamsnake that is used for calming the patient and taking away their pain, Sand, a rattlesnake whose venom is used in making vaccines and healing potions, and Mist, a cobra with the same purpose as Sand but whose venom makes stronger potions. The desert people are afraid of the snakes and of Snake herself, and when Snake leaves Grass to keep Stavin's dreams sweet through the night while she works on an antidote, they remove Grass, crippling it. Snake guards Mist through the night as the snake creates the antidote, assisted by Arevin. When Snake returns to the boy, the villagers show her the snake and she crushes its head to put it out of its misery. Snake blames herself for the loss of her dreamsnake and loathes having to return and tell her fellow healers of her mistake. It is doubtful she will be able to get another dreamsnake, as they are from another world and the healers have been unable to breed them, and can only occasionally clone them. Stavin takes the potion and survives, and Snake travels until the next request for her aid comes. Jesse, a horsewoman, was injured in a fall off a horse and has broken her spine. Snake fears Jesse's request for assistance in a painless death, because Grass is gone. Jesse is eventually convinced by her two companions to try going back to the Central city, where she is from, to get help from the ruling family that she was a part of before she shunned them and left. They have more contact with the otherworlders and perhaps more technology that can help her recover. The four start off toward the city when Jesse suddenly grows worse. Snake realizes, seeing the dead carcass of the horse Jesse was riding in the distance, that Jesse had fallen and lain in one of the radioactive craters remaining from the nuclear war their planet faced years ago long enough to have developed radiation poisoning. It is unclear whether Jesse dies of this or from Mist's strike (Snake's only remaining form of assistance) but her final wish is to bequeath Snake a horse named Swift and urges the healer to tell the city dwellers of Jesse's death in the hopes that the news of Snake's assistance at the end will persuade the Otherworlders to give the healers more dreamsnakes, which will put the family in Snake's debt and perhaps allow her to speak with the Otherworlders and ask them for more dreamsnakes. Before setting off, Snake goes to pick up her pony at the Oasis, where friends of hers have been watching her other things and finds all her belongings have been ruined. The natives of Oasis apologize for not guarding her things better and say that a crazy came down from the hills and must have done it. Her journal is missing. Arevin, the desert dweller, finds himself wanting to go after Snake, because he has fallen in love with her and believes that she is too hard on herself in the issue of Grass' death. He travels to the healers and tells two trustworthy ones the story of what had happened, but is surprised to find that Snake is not already there. He heads south in an attempt to find her. Snake arrives at a village along her way and is invited to the governor's mansion by the governor's son Gabriel, an extremely handsome young man who always goes cloaked out in public. She is also asked to heal the leg of his father, who had a spear go through it. It is infected and Gabriel's father is a difficult man to treat, but Snake manages to cure him without taking the leg. She also invites Gabriel into her bed in the casual way that is done in this time, because every child is put through biocontrol training which prevents their pregnancy. He is horrified by this, having failed in biocontrol when he was a teenager and gotten a friend pregnant, which is why he sulks about in cloaks—he is ashamed. She soothes him, saying that healer pregnancies are rare and they usually adopt children and that she has excellent control herself. Snake also figures out that he was incorrectly instructed in biocontrol, and suggests another town where he might better learn and make a fresh start. While checking in on her horses, Snake meets Melissa, a twelve year old, severely burned girl who hides out in the stables and assists the stablemaster, who takes credit for all her work. She is shy and doesn't like anyone to see her scars in a town with such beautiful people. Melissa has been severely abused by the stablemaster, physically, mentally, and sexually, and Snake uses this knowledge to free her and adopt her as her own child. While riding in the town, Snake is again attacked by the crazy, who grabs her snake case and attempts to take Sand and Mist from her. Snake fights back and keeps her snakes, but is injured and has to take a few days to heal before continuing her journey. When she leaves for the Central city, Melissa accompanies her. The pair make it to the city and are turned away, despite bringing news of Jesse, because of Snake's mention of cloning. They attempt to head back toward the healers, but must shelter in a cave to wait out the desert storms. Once they are over and they start back, they are again attacked by the crazy, who Snake ends up capturing. He is after her dreamsnake, having become addicted to its venom after being bitten many times by many snakes. Snake can think of no place that the man would be able to be bitten by so many snakes and is intrigued. She makes him bring them to North and the broken dome where the crazy said it all happened. At the dome, Snake and Melissa are captured by North, who recognizes her as a healer against whom he bears a grudge as a result of his gigantism; they could have prevented this if he had had treatment as a child. He puts them both in a large, cold pit filled with dreamsnakes. Snake keeps Melissa held above the snakes to prevent her from continuously being bitten, herself protected by her many years of being bitten. After, North takes Melissa away and forces many dreamsnakes to bite Snake until she is drugged and passes out. Snake comes to and manages to escape the pit, finding all North's henchmen asleep in dreamsnake dreams. North himself is awake, but shrinks back when threatened by a dreamsnake, having never been bitten himself, then relents. Snake finds Melissa and tries to escape back to the horses, where they are met by Arevin and safety. |
3838212 | /m/0b2m1x | World of Ptavvs | Larry Niven | 1966 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A reflective statue is found at the bottom of one of Earth's oceans, having lain there for 1.5 billion years. Since humans have recently developed a time-slowing field and found that one such field cannot function within another, it is suspected that the "Sea Statue" is actually a space traveler within one of these time fields. Larry Greenberg, a telepath, agrees to participate in an experiment: a time-slowing field is generated around both Greenberg and the statue, shutting off the stasis field and revealing Kzanol. Kzanol is a living Thrint, a member of a telepathic race that once ruled the galaxy through mind control. Eons ago, Kzanol's spaceship had suffered a catastrophic failure; its reactive drive system failed and the navigation computer automatically jettisoned it. Faced with insufficient power to use hyperspace, Kzanol aimed himself at the nearest uninhabited Thrint planet (which turns out to be Earth) used to grow yeast for food, and turned his spacesuit's emergency stasis field on to survive the long journey and impact. He also arranged for his ship to change course for the system's eighth planet (Neptune) after he was in stasis, with his amplifier helmet and other valuables inside his spare suit (in order to hide these valuables from any rescuers). Although he assumed that the resident thrint overseer would be able to rescue him after seeing the plume of gas created by his impact, his timing could not have been worse; while in stasis on the way to the planet, the slave races revolted against the Thrint. Facing extinction, the Thrint decided to take their enemies with them by constructing a telepathic amplifier powerful enough to command all sentient species in the galaxy to commit suicide. They set it to repeat for centuries and every sentient being in the galaxy perished. After hundreds of millions of years, the yeast food mutated and evolved into complex life on Earth. After his telepathic encounter with the Thrint, Greenberg is confused by having two sets of memories, his own and Kzanol's. He instinctively assumes he is Kzanol. Both Greenberg and the real Kzanol steal spaceships and race to reclaim the thought-amplifying machine on Neptune, which is powerful enough to enable control of every thinking being in the Solar System. Eventually, Greenberg's personality reasserts itself and, armed with the knowledge of how to resist the Power (one of Kzanol's own memories), Greenberg traps Kzanol again in a stasis field. A major element of the story is the Cold War existing between Earth and the "Belters," which threatens to burst into a highly destructive war over control of the same device. |
3838340 | /m/0b2m61 | Israel Potter | Herman Melville | null | {"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | When Israel Potter leaves his plough to fight in the American Revolution, he's immediately thrown into the Battle of Bunker Hill, where he receives multiple wounds. However, this does not deter him, and after hearing a rousing speech by General George Washington, he volunteers for further duty, this time at sea, where more ill fortune awaits him. Israel is captured by the British Navy and taken to England. Yet, he makes his escape, and this triggers a series of extraordinary events and meetings with remarkable people. Along the way, Israel encounters King George III, who takes a liking to the Yankee rebel and shelters him in Kew Gardens; Benjamin Franklin, who presses Israel into service as a spy; John Paul Jones, who invites Israel to join his crew aboard The Ranger; and Ethan Allen, whom Israel attempts to free from a British prison. Throughout these adventures, Israel Potter acquits himself bravely, but his patriotic valor does not bring him any closer to his dream of returning to America. After the war, Israel finds himself in London, where he descends into poverty. Finally, fifty years after he left his plough, he makes his way back to his beloved Berkshires. However, few things remain the same. Soon, Israel fades out of being, his name out of memory, and he dies on the same day the oldest oak on his native lands is blown down. |
3840955 | /m/0b2rmv | The Man Who Could Work Miracles | H. G. Wells | null | null | In an English public house, The Long Dragon, George McWhirter Fotheringay is engaged in vigorously asserting the impossibility of miracles while arguing with the obnoxious Toddy Beamish. However, after an unintended command of Fotheringay's, an oil lamp does the impossibleflaming upside down. Although it is thought to be a trick, and quickly dismissed by his acquaintances, back home Fotheringay continues to use his new power for other petty uncanny deeds. Then, after also magically accomplishing his everyday chores as a clerk at Gomshott's office, Fotheringay goes to a park to practise further. However, he has an untimely encounter with a local constable, Winch, who is then accidentally injured. In the ensuing confrontation Fotheringay unintentionally curses him, so the policeman literally goes to Hades; hours later, Fotheringay relocates him safely to San Francisco. As a result of these and other miracles, Fotheringay decides to attend the local church services on Sunday. He is then moved by the clergyman, Mr. Maydig, as he coincidentally preaches about unnatural occurrences. Fotheringay meets him for advice at his quarters. After few petty demonstrations the priest becomes enthusiastic, suggesting that Fotheringay should do them on behalf of the public; during that night they traverse the town streets, healing the illness and the vice and revamping public works. The priest then plans to reform the whole world. They could disregard their obligations for the next day, if Fotheringay could stop the night altogether. Fotheringay does so, stopping the motion of the whole planet Earth. However, his clumsy wording backfires, resulting in all objects on Earth being hurled off the ground without control, "with more force than a cannon shot". As the surface becomes a pandemonium, Fotheringay miraculously ensures his own safety back on the ground. Fotheringay would not be able to amend such a big mess though, so he repents; for his last two wishes he relinquishes such power forever and he commands a return to the time before he had it. Effectively, this happens: Fotheringay is back in the public house, discussing miracles with his friends as before, without any recollection of the uncanny events. |
3841627 | /m/0b2shq | Caballo de Troya | null | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"} | The book is narrated as if it is a true report of how the author was approached by an unnamed retired US Air Force pilot, referred to as "The Major" throughout the book (Jasón in later books), who in an elaborated indirect way tells the author how to find classified documents telling the story of the Operation Trojan Horse, in which The Major took part as a time traveller sent to witness the last weeks of Jesus's life through a time-travelling device sent back in time by the US military in an Israel base in 1973. A lengthy, detailed "technical" description of the time travel process ("inversion of quantum swivels") is provided. The time-traveller and the time-travelling vehicle are said to have been wrapped by an artificial skin to avoid biological contamination. The Major, who becomes the narrator of the story, is codenamed "Jasón" during the mission, and has to learn fluent Aramaic and Greek as a necessary skill to interact with people of this era and place during the mission, as well as other extensive training. It is "revealed" that many of the amazing stories of eclipses, earthquakes after Jesus's death and his transfiguration were linked to extraterrestrial influences. Jesus's physical appearance is described as almost Nordic, with hazel eyes and very tall (he is sometimes called "The Giant", physically and metaphorically in the book). Even as the 1970s UFO mania has lost traction in Spanish-speaking countries, Benítez has retained solid sales and certain celebrity on the basis of his book series. The following 8 sequels expand on the issued and reveal more detail. Caballo de Troya 9, Caná was published in Spain in 2011. He wrote in his website that he first became interested in the "real" life of Jesus around that time, when a team of researchers said that the Shroud of Turin showed traces of Jesus' body. These claims have later come under scrutiny, but the fact has not stopped the flow of new Caballo de Troya books. The author has claimed the time-travel part of Caballo de Troya is fiction, but that it contains "more truth than people think" suggesting, given he purports to be "a UFO researcher", that he might be claiming alien contact. The author insists that most, if not all, events in his novels are real. |
3843618 | /m/0b2x4r | Socialite Evenings | Shobha De | 1989 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Karuna, the main protagonist and narrator is caught up in a drab, boring life that she seeks to escape by writing memoirs. Her memoirs are successful and she achieves a measure of fame and pride in herself as she becomes an active socialite and eventually uses her newfound prominence as a celebrity to get herself a position as an advertising copywriter and creator of a television series. |
3845535 | /m/03bxc46 | The Worthing Chronicle | Orson Scott Card | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Jason Worthing and one of his descendants, Justice, go to a small village on a backward world to get a boy named Lared to write a book for them. This book is about why Abner Doon destroyed the empire and the planet Capitol and why Jason's descendants destroyed the planet Worthing. It also explains why people all over the settled part of the galaxy are no longer being protected by "God" from pain and hardship. The Worthing Chronicle is an expansion of Card’s first novel, Hot Sleep. |
3846721 | /m/0b31h9 | Up the Line | Robert Silverberg | 1969 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/07s2s": "Time travel"} | The story's protagonist is Jud Elliott III, a failed Harvard history masters student in 2059. Bored with his job as a law clerk, he takes up a position with the Time Service as a Time Courier. After an introductory course, Jud shunts up and down the time line ("up the line" is travel into the past; "down the line" is forward time travel, but only to "now-time," Jud's present of 2059) as a guide for tourists visiting ancient and medieval Byzantium/Constantinople. Jud's problems include not only stupid tourists, but also greedy and mentally unstable colleagues who attempt to cause various types of havoc with the past. He is forced to break the rules in order to patch things up without drawing the attention of the Time Patrol. When he meets and falls in love with the 'marvelous transtemporal paradox called Pulcheria' - his own multi-great grandmother - Jud succumbs to the lure of the past, creates irreparable paradoxes, and faces the inescapable clutches of the Time Patrol. Silverberg's narrative includes some cleverly worked out details about the problems of time-travel tourism. For example, the number of tourists who over the years wish to witness the Sermon on the Mount has increased the audience at the event from the likely dozens to hundreds and even thousands. Time-tour guides re-visiting the same event must also take care not to scan their surroundings too closely, lest they make eye contact with themselves leading another tour party. Silverberg's interest in the Byzantine era of Roman history is put to use with a vivid description of Constantinople during the reign of Justinian, and the Nika riots of 532. |
3850149 | /m/0b36m7 | Freckle Juice | Judy Blume | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Andrew's dream is to have freckles. He envies Nicky Lane because Nicky has numerous freckles all over his face, ears, and neck. Andrew feels as if he is at a disadvantage because he only had two warts on his fingers. Once, Andew tried counting all of Nicky's freckles, but when he got to eighty-six, Miss Kelly, Andrew's teacher, told him to pay attention. He wants to have his own so his mother will not be able to tell if his neck and face are dirty and he would not have to wash them. He makes many attempts to acquire freckles. Andrew thinks that freckles are really neat. After asking Nicky how he got his freckles, and getting the expected answer ("you get born with them"), a girl in his class named Sharon, who often fools him by using sneaky tricks, tells him he can get freckles by drinking a concoction that she claims she used to get freckles. At first, Andrew does not believe her. Sharon then tells Andrew to look closely and Andrew observes that Sharon has six freckles on her nose. She gives him the recipe for "Freckle Juice" for fifty cents. He thinks it is ridiculous that he has to use five weeks worth of allowance for a recipe, but he is dying to get freckles. After school, he runs home to make the recipe which calls for several disgusting ingredients (some of which he did not have and had to use substitutes). He ends up drinking it, after which he gets very sick. His mother comes home, notices how sick he looks, and puts him to bed immediately. She gives him pink medicine which tastes like peppermint to get better. He skips school the next day because he still feels queasy. He never wants to go back, but his mother makes him. Before he goes to school, Andrew tried to find a brown marker but could not find one so he used a blue marker to draw several little dots on his face. He believes this will make him look like he got freckles, which would prove Sharon wrong. He realises that her recipe was only a joke to fool him. He is angry and frustrated because he was the victim of a prank. Unfortunately, everybody, including Sharon, sees through this idea and ends up laughing at him. Miss Kelly gives Andrew her secret formula for removing freckles so he can do so to his blue "ones". Ironically, Nicky Lane, the boy he envied because of his real freckles, asks her if he could use the secret formula as well because he hates them. She explains freckles did not look good on Andrew, but they look good on him. Later, Sharon whispers to Nicky about this recipe for a concoction that can get rid of his freckles. |
3851615 | /m/0b397n | Good as Gold | Alfred Toombs | null | {"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"} | Bruce Gold, a Jewish, middle-aged university English professor and author of many unread, seminal articles in small journals, residing in Manhattan, is offered the chance for success, fame and fortune in Washington D.C. as the country's first ever Jewish Secretary of State. But he must face the consequences of this, such as divorcing his wife and alienating his family, the thought of which energizes him and makes him cringe at the same time. |
3852201 | /m/03bzfsh | Trollslayer | William King | 1999-08 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Geheimnisnacht (Night of Secrets) The first chapter finds the adventurers shortly after meeting for the first time and leaving Altdorf together. They are kicked off the coach they were riding on because of Gotrek's comments toward the coach driver and especially his wife. As they continue to travel on foot, they are nearly run down by a black coach, and Gotrek vows to find it and hurt the driver. They reach the Standing Stones Inn, and are able to make their way through the barred door to learn of how on Geheimnisnacht a coven who are based in the Darkstone Ring steal children and other people for sacrifices. They learn that the son of the innkeeper, Gunter, and his wife have both disappeared, and so they vow to find the Darkstone Ring and destroy the coven and save Gunter and his wife. After finding the path to the Ring, they come across a rotting cultist who chants gibberish before being felled. They finally come across the Ring and coven and discover that the leader of the coven is the driver of the Black Coach. They listen in for a while and learn that it is dedicated to Slaanesh, Lord of Pleasure. They finally attack and destroy the coven as they intended to sacrifice a stolen baby, and in the aftermath they discover that Gunter and his wife were both cultists, and so are both dead. They rescue the baby, and move on... This story is frequently alluded to by Felix later in the series, as it was his first true glimpse at Chaos. Wolf Riders The story begins with Felix in a tavern protecting a girl from the attentions of three huge trappers: Hef, Kell, and Lars. He holds his own until Gotrek comes in and drives them out. The girl introduces herself as Kirsten, and explains how her family is part of the von Diehl migration, a cursed noble family and their servants and their families moving to the Border Lands. Gotrek and Felix were on their way to the Dwarf stronghold of Karak Eight-Peaks because of stories of treasure they had heard. They decide to join the von Diehls, as they are heading in the same general direction, and they could use the cover afforded by carts. After traveling through the Grey Mountains, and reaching the Border Lands, Felix falls deeply in love with Kirsten, and she likewise. While camped in the Cursed Hills, the camp is attacked by Undead warriors, and during the fight, Felix kills the trapper Lars, after he goes crazy and attacks him. The men drive off the Undead, and they set off to find a ruined fort, which Gotrek helps repair, hinting at his pre-slayer background as an engineer. Finally, the fort is attacked by Wolf Riders, led by a Goblin Shaman, and during the first siege, Gottfried, the leader of the von Diehls, is struck by an arrow and is carried off by his son, Deiter; his nephew, Manfred; Frau Winter, a sorceress; and Kirsten, Frau Winter's assistant, to be healed. After a day of no word from them, and with the second siege starting, Felix goes off to investigate, leaving gotrek and the remaining men to fight off the horde ready to break through the gates. Felix comes across Frau Winter and Kirsten, the former who is dead and the latter who is dying. Felix watches her die, and swears to avenge her. He then comes across Dieter, whose head was bashed in, and enters Gottfired's room to see him stabbed to death in his bed with Manfred sitting there wiping off his blade. He then explains that the "curse" of the von Diehls was mutation brought on by a heretic cursing Manfred's grandfather. Manfred, going mad, explains that he broke the curse by killing all of the von Diehls. He and Felix duel, and Felix kills him, uttering "The curse is broken". He goes outside to see Gotrek standing on a pile of goblin, wolf and human bodies, including Hef and Kell. He single-handedly held the gate, killing the Shaman and losing his eye in the process. The surviving humans are taken in by one of the many Border Princes, whilst Gotrek and Felix leave, and the story ends... The Dark Beneath the World The story continues immediately after 'Wolf Riders', with Felix and Gotrek travelling towards Karak Eight Peaks in search of treasure. On the way, they meet a party of men under attack from Orcs. The pair intervene and save the three survivors: Aldebrand, a zealous fanatic from the Templars of the Fiery Heart, Zauberlich, a sorcerer, and Jules, a Bretonnian scout, are also journeying to Karak Eight Peaks on a quest. The group decide to travel together. They arrive at a settlement built by the Dwarves close to the ruined city, and ask permission to enter the city, where they learn what the three men are searching for: a magical sword called Karaghul, an heirloom of the Order of the Fiery Heart, left in the city during a previous effort to reclaim part of the city by the Dwarves from the Goblins that infest it. The group are given leave to enter the city, but before they go, a Dwarven Priestess of Valaya warns them that great evil is stirring in the ruins of the city... The group journey into the depths of the ruined city, battling with Goblins, Orcs, Skaven and Ogres that now infest the ruined halls. As they go deeper, they are followed by ghostly lights. Eventually, the lights reveal themselves as dwarven ghosts, who beg Gotrek to help them. When he asks what has happened, they say that an ancient and powerful evil has desecrated their tombs and dragged them back from their eternal rest in the Hall of Ancestors, and that unless it is slain and the tombs resanctified, they will never find their way back to eternal rest. Gotrek vows to aid them. The group finally come to a great treasure room-the very one that Felix and Gotrek have been seeking. In pride of place is a great sword, which Aldebrand recognizes as Karaghul. However, before he can claim it, a huge creature bursts out and kills him, tearing his head from his shoulders. The creature is a great troll, tainted and corrupted by warpstone, twisted and mutated by the power of Chaos that it has become something far more terrible. Gotrek realizes they are in a Dwarven tomb, and that the troll's presence is the reason why the ghosts are stalking the ruins of Karak Eight Peaks. The group attack, but the troll has the ability to heal its wounds almost instantaneously, and they can only slow it. The troll kills Jules and Zauberlich, but not before the sorcerer learns that fire destroys the troll's ability to regenerate. As Gotrek keeps the beast distracted, Felix throws a lamp on it, which ignites, setting the beast on fire and letting Gotrek finally kill it. A huge army of Goblins arrives, attracted by the commotion. As Gotrek and Felix consign themselves to dying in battle, the ghosts of the tomb form up in a spectral army and attack the goblins, killing them with ease and causing the survivors to flee. Gotrek angrily says that the ghosts have denied him a heroic death, but they reply he is destined for a doom far greater...that is soon approaching. The ghosts bless him for his deed and disappear, finally at peace. Gotrek ignores the treasure, realizing that to take it would desecrate the tomb and raise the ghosts again, though Felix takes Karaghul in honour of their dead comrades. Leaving the bodies of their companions at rest in the tomb, the pair seal it and leave Karak Eight Peaks behind... The Mark of Slaanesh The story picks up after they have left Karak Eight Peaks and come to a small village at the edge of the Drakwald Forest. The village is controlled by a gang of vicious thugs who are also cultists of Slaanesh, who viciously beat up Felix in the village tavern shortly after his arrival. To make matters worse, in a battle with mutants on the road, Gotrek was struck on the head with a slingstone and is suffering amnesia, no longer remembering who he is, nor who Felix is, or his quest to find a heroic death. Felix takes Gotrek to a local healer called Kryptmann, who promises to create a brew to restore Gotrek's mind, providing Felix brings back certain ingredients from the nearby mountains. Narrowly avoiding the Slaaneshi thugs and a roving band of mutants, Felix gathers the ingredients and brings them to Kryptmann. However, the brew has no effect, and Felix attacks Kryptmann, accusing the healer of lying to him. In the confusion, Gotrek receives another blow to the head, which restores his memory to him. With the Slayer restored to his wits, the pair go to the tavern and revenge themselves on the cultists... Blood and Darkness The story begins with Gotrek and Felix passing through the Drakwald Forest. They find a young girl called Kat, the sole survivor of a beastman attack on her village. The beastmen were led by a female Chaos Champion of the Chaos God, Khorne, who mysteriously spared Kat's life. The story then switches to the perspective of the female Chaos Champion, a woman called Justine, who turned to Chaos after being raped as a young woman by a nobleman. After many years in the Chaos Wastes, she returns to take her revenge, destroying the nobleman's castle with her army of beastmen and murdering the nobleman. Her army has then taken to raiding nearby villages: however, she has to find and kill Kat in order to become a Daemon Prince and achieve immortality, though she has misgivings about killing the girl (it is constantly hinted, and then finally confirmed later in the story, that she is in fact Kat's mother, a pregnancy caused by her rape). The story then returns to Gotrek and Felix. After slaying a marauding band of beastmen, the three reach another village and warn them of the coming danger. Unfortunately, the Chaos army learns of their location and Justine leads her army in an attack on the village to find Kat. The beastmen break into the village and a vicious battle breaks out between the beasts and the villagers. Justine battles Gotrek, who injures her but cannot kill her (she was gifted with a prophecy that states no warrior can kill her in battle). Upon seeing Kat, Justine abandons her attack and pursues the girl. Realising what the Chaos Champion is after, Felix attacks her in an effort to distract her from Kat, but is swiftly overpowered. As Justine tries to break his neck, Kat intervenes and kills Justine with her own sword, thus fulfilling the prophecy and saving Felix. With their leader dead, the beastmen flee, pursued by the villagers, who slaughter them all. Gotrek and Felix leave the village the day after the victory. Though Kat asks to go with them, Felix replies they cannot take her with them, as they are bound for more dangerous places where she won't be safe. Kat accepts this, and they leave, the three promising never to forget each other... The Mutant Master The story begins with the pair arriving at the village of Blutdorf, on their way to Nuln. They learn the villagers are being held to ransom by a sorcerer in a nearby castle who has abducted their children: however, out of fear, the villagers drug the pair and hand them over to the sorcerer. At the castle, the pair wake up in chains. The sorcerer reveals himself to them, and Felix recognizes him as Albericht Kruger, a fellow student from his days at the University of Altdorf, Kruger having disappeared after stealing forbidden texts on Chaos and its mutations. Kruger, now a megalomaniac egotist, arrogantly explains that he plans to use the knowledge in the texts to create an army of mutants with which to conquer the Empire. However, the pair break free of their captivity and fight back: when Kruger sends Oleg, the most powerful of his mutated soldiers, to kill them, Gotrek strangles the mutant with the chains he was bound with. Kruger tries to make his escape, but Gotrek and Felix pursue, cutting their way through a horde of mutants Kruger sends at them. They corner him in his study, where he explains that the mutants they had just killed were in fact the children of the villagers, Kruger having discovered children were easier to mutate than adults. In a burst of uncharacteristic fury, Felix seizes Kruger by the throat and throws him to his death from the castle battlements, an act that meets with Gotrek's approval. They set light to the castle and leave for the village, to settle a score... Ulric's Children The story begins with Felix and Gotrek heading through the Drakwald Forest in heavy snow, following the tracks of a monster Gotrek believes to be a troll. The forest is unnaturally quiet, but the wolves that dwell in the forest seem unnaturally active... The pair get separated, and Felix is captured by a group of Imperial soldiers who are actually cultists of the Chaos God Tzeentch. Felix is bound in chains next to another captive, Magdalena, a beautiful young woman the cult have captured for their dark purposes... The pair are placed in the dungeons of the cult's leader, Count Hrothgar, and are interrogated by his lieutenant, the sorcerer Voorman. Magdalena explains to Felix the cult have abducted her to use as bait to trap her father, who is one of the 'Children of Ulric'- a werewolf. Felix manages to escape his captivity and works his way through the manor, killing several of the cultists, including Count Hrothgar. He discovers that Voorman plans to perform a spell on the werewolf that will transfer his soul into its body. As he learns this, the werewolf, leading a massive pack of wolves, attacks the manor, easily defeating the cultists. In the main hall, the monster kills Voorman, but not before he completes his spell. As Voorman takes possession of the monster's body, Felix attacks him with a dagger: a dagger with a blade made of pure warpstone, the only thing that will harm the beast. He manages to defeat the beast; as it dies, the wolves attacking the manor flee, as a new arrival joins the fight: Gotrek, who kept on following the tracks until he reached the manor. They capture Magdalena, and although Felix considers her an innocent in the affair, Gotrek believes that as a shapeshifter she is tainted by Chaos and kills her. Felix later states that this act still haunts him. The pair then carry on for Nuln... |
3855726 | /m/0b3j3n | Engine Summer | John Crowley | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The novel tells the story of a young man named Rush that Speaks and of his wandering through a strange, post-apocalyptic world in pursuit of several seemingly incompatible goals. The story is set in a post-technological future. Our own age is dimly remembered in story and legend, but without nostalgia or regret. The people of Rush's world are engaged in living their own lives in their own cultures. Words and artifacts from our own time survive into Rush's age, suggesting that it is only a few millennia in our future. Yet we are given hints that human society and even human biology are significantly changed. Even such basics as reproduction and eating have been altered, one by industrial-age genetic tampering, the other by contact with extraterrestrial life. Rush comes of age in Little Belaire, a mazelike village of invisible, shifting boundaries, of secret paths and meandering stories and antique bric-a-brac carefully preserved in carved chests. The inhabitants are divided into clans called cords based on personality traits. Over the centuries, the people of Little Belaire have perfected an art which they call truthful speaking: communication so clear and accurate, so "transparent", as to leave no potential for deception or misunderstanding. Perhaps as a result of this practice, Little Belaire appears to be free of any violence or even serious competition. Another result of truthful speaking is the existence of the saints, those whose stories speak not only of the specifics of their own lives, but about the human condition. Yet even with the benefit of truthful speaking, secrets and mysteries remain. Rush's journey is set in motion when the girl he loves, Once a Day, elopes from Little Belaire to join another group, an enigmatic society called Dr. Boots's List. In his search for her, Rush befriends a hermit and an "avvenger" and shares the secrets of the List. Ultimately he discovers a transparent sainthood stranger than any story told by the gossips of Little Belaire. |
3857289 | /m/0b3l5z | Coningsby | Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield | null | null | The story of the novel follows the life and career of Henry Coningsby, the orphan grandson of a wealthy marquess, called Lord Monmouth. Lord Monmouth initially disapproved of Coningsby's parents' marriage, but on their death he relents and sends the boy to be educated at Eton College. At Eton Coningsby meets and befriends Oswald Millbank, the son of a rich cotton manufacturer who is a bitter enemy of Lord Monmouth. The two older men represent old and new wealth in society. As Coningsby grows up he begins to develop his own liberal political views and he falls in love with Oswald's sister Edith. When Lord Monmouth discovers these developments he is furious and secretly disinherits his grandson. On his death, Coningsby is left penniless, and is forced to work for his living. He decides to study law and to become a barrister. This proof of his character impresses Edith's father (who had previously also been hostile) and he consents to their marriage at last. By the end of the novel Coningsby is elected to Parliament for his new father-in-law's constituency and his fortune is restored. The character of Coningsby himself is based on George Smythe. The themes, and some of the characters, reappear in Disraeli's later novels Sybil, and Tancred. |
3857751 | /m/0b3lvy | Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer | Steven Millhauser | 1996 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | From humble beginnings as an assistant in his immigrant father's cigar shop, Martin begins employment as a bellboy at the Vanderlyn hotel. He rises through its hierarchy through promotions, due to his reputation as a bright, conscientious worker. When he is offered the position of assistant manager, he quits to focus instead on managing a chain of restaurants. Later, he builds his own new concept for an extravagant hotel, the Hotel Dressler. He finds a friend and business partner in sister-in-law Emmeline Vernon, while his ambiguous, distant marriage to her withdrawn sister, Caroline, is a source of confusion and disappointment. A focus of the novel is Martin's imagination for grand, sweeping business ideas, and his instinctive sense for orchestrating large systems. Through all this Martin has the persistent feeling that there must be something bigger waiting around the next corner. One of the novel's themes is that emptiness may lie behind the ideal of the American Dream. |
3863884 | /m/0b3xym | Bill the Conqueror | P. G. Wodehouse | 11/14/1924 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | George Pyke is overjoyed at hearing he is shortly to be made a lord, but disappointed with his wimpy son Roderick's handling of Society Spice, one of his leading publications. He hopes pressuring the timid chap to marry Flick Sheridan will be the making of him. In New York, Bill West's love for beautiful Alice Coker has stirred him to become a go-getting type, leaving behind his wild youth, and none too soon, as his uncle Cooley, under the malign influence of white-bearded Professor Appleby, has adopted a youth named Horace and disowned his scrounging family. Bill heads to London, ostensibly to find out why his uncle's business there is doing badly, and takes Judson with him, promising the wild lad's father (and sister) that he'll keep the dissolute fellow out of trouble. One day, thanks to one of Judson's schemes to raise money for a binge, he meets up with Flick Sheridan, friend of his youth, who has long adored him. Judson, annoyed to find his plans frustrated, roams the streets, and on reading a slanderous piece in Society Spice claiming one of his henchmen had created the Fifth Avenue Silks, heads to Tilbury House to confront the editor, Roderick Pyke. Roderick, terrified of enraged bookies, flees the scene, leaving his date Flick in the lurch; she decides to break off the engagement forthwith. Judson, now with Bill in tow, trails Pyke to the Hammond's house, where Pyke hits Bill with a stick, enraging him. Bill gets trapped in the garden, where he runs into Flick, who, having locked herself in her room in protest at her family's plans, is now fleeing her home. Bill takes her in, and they become ever closer. She helps him out by investigating Slingsby, Cooley Paradene's man in London, in the course of which she is seen by Percy Pilbeam, tasked with finding her by her uncle. She escapes, but Pilbeam recognises Judson when he comes to complain once more about the slur in Society Spice. Pilbeam takes Judson to the famous Cheshire Cheese for lunch, and after plying him with drink after his long abstinence, finds out his address. He reports this back to Sir George Pyke, and soon Bill and Flick are being chased across country by Pyke; they evade him by stealing his car, but realise that England is too hot for Flick. Bill writes her an introduction to Alice Coker, urging her to stay with the girl, but she is jealous of Bill's affection for her and resolves to go it alone. At Cooley Paradene's house, Horace has been causing trouble, but plans to rob the library have made little headway; his boss Appleby hears Paradene's plans to head to England, putting Horace into a school while he visits his old friend, Flick's uncle Sinclair Hammond, and also learns that during the trip the books will be unguarded. Flick arrives, somewhat bedraggled, having been robbed of her bags and run out of money, and Paradene agrees to take her with him to England. Bill hears, via Judson, that Alice is engaged to someone else, a chap in the steel business, but is surprised to find he doesn't care. He heads off to dispose of her photographs, but finds them hard to shake, until he runs into a young couple, the male half of which seems to recognise Bill. After leaving the man holding the photos, Bill realises it is Roderick Pyke, which in turn leads to the revelation that he loves Flick. Resolving to head back to America to seek her, he is amazed to find her arriving in London with his uncle; they proclaim their mutual love, but Aunt Francie takes Flick away to await her awful fate, of marriage to Roderick. Judson meets his old friend Prudence Stryker, a chorus-girl from the New York stage, who tells him she knows Slingsby's secret. Judson arranges for her to meet up with Bill at a nightclub, but they are seen there by Flick, being taken out by her uncle to cheer her up; she assumes he has fallen for this other girl, and writes to say she will be marrying Pyke on Wednesday. Bill gets the letter, after confronting Slingsby about his fraud and learning that the other cannot be stopped from fleeing to South America with his ill-gotten loot. Distraught, he goes to Flick's house, but finds everyone out; everyone, that is, except Horace, who he observes passing a heavy bag out of the window to his confederate. Bill tackles the man, who escapes after a scrap, leaving Bill with the swag. Bill goes to the church for the wedding, but Roderick doesn't turn up; Judson has visited him, and persuaded him to run away to Italy with the girl he really loves, his stenographer from Society Spice. Bill explains all to Flick, and they head off with Hammond to a registry office. Bill tells his uncle all about Horace and Slingsby, and with Cooley's grateful support he heads off to happiness with his bride. |
3864177 | /m/0b3yrx | Sam the Sudden | P. G. Wodehouse | 10/15/1925 | {"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy"} | Sam Shotter, having failed to please his uncle John B. Pynsent in business, is sent to England to work for Lord Tilbury, who hopes to complete a business deal with Pynsent. Avoiding being trapped in Tilbury's company, Sam opts to join his old pal "Hash" Todhunter, cook on a tramp steamer, for the trip over. On the way, he shows Hash a photo of a girl, found on a wall in a remote Canadian log cabin, whom he has fallen in love with. Arriving in England looking rather bedraggled after his trip, Sam finds Hash has borrowed all his cash to put on a dog. Fortunately, it is the night of the Wrykyn Old Boys' dinner, and in town he runs into first Claude Bates, who, fearing Sam may be begging, flees, and later Willoughby Braddock, an old friend. Braddock is staying with Kay Derrick and her uncle Mr Wrenn while his house is decorated, and takes Sam back there, but wanders drunkenly off when they arrive; Sam is mistaken for a burglar by Lippett, the maid, and ends up sleeping in the empty house next door. During the night, Sam is disturbed by someone in the hallway with a torch. Next morning, the confusion having been sorted out, Lippett gives Sam breakfast. He sees a picture of Kay, the girl of his dreams, and finds her uncle also works for the Mammoth Publishing Company, as editor of "Pyke's Home Companion". He visits Mr Cornelius, the local estate agent, and takes a lease on the empty house, "Mon Repos". He then sees Lord Tilbury, and gets himself employed on Mr Wrenn's paper. Kay, having just quit her job with Claude Bates' aunt after he kissed her, is visiting her uncle's office when Sam arrives. Sam, overcome at having finally met her, kisses her also, upsetting her further. Lord Tilbury, worried by Sam's odd behaviour, is warned by his sister Francie that there may be a girl involved, but is reassured to hear Mr Wrenn has no children. Sam hires Hash Toddhunter to be his cook, while "Chimp" Twist, "Soapy" and "Dolly" Molloy discuss the problem of recovering a large fortune stashed in Sam's new home by an old friend, Edward Finglass, famed for robbing the New Asiatic Bank of two million dollars in bonds. They send in Molloy, posing as a former resident of the house wishing to buy it. The scheme fails, as Sam needs to stay near Kay, and makes Hash suspicious; he buys a large dog named Amy to protect the place. Sam's wooing of Kay begins to bear fruit, and he takes her out to lunch one day, where Lord Tilbury sees them. Having rejected Percy Pilbeam as a helper, he visits Chimp Twist's fake detective agency, and hires Twist to spy on Sam; he forces Sam to hire Twist as an odd job man, but Sam makes Twist remove his repulsive moustache. Hash and Claire become involved, but she is worried by his coolness (he is worried by her mother's nose). Following advice in the "Home Companion", she tries to make him jealous by flirting with Twist, whom Hash chases off in a fury. The Molloys return to "Mon Repos" once more, tie up Hash and begin to search for the money, but Dolly is frightened off by Amy the dog, and Soapy, tired after fending off visitors, is caught napping by Sam, who takes away his trousers. Sam leaves him trapped while he releases Hash and takes him next door to be reunited with Claire. Heading back to his house, Sam meets Braddock, who informs him that Lord Tilbury is in there without his trousers. Sam provides him with some, but the deal between Tilbury and Sam's uncle has fallen through, and Tilbury reveals his dislike of Sam and his opinion that Sam will never be anything better than a moocher. He and Sam part angrily. While Sam and Kay discuss a loving but poor future, Braddock spots Twist sneaking back into the house. He follows him and captures him in the act of pulling up some floorboards. Sam, believing the money cannot be in the house, lets Twist go, but when they hear from local historical expert Mr Cornelius that the two houses were once one, they realise that the money must be stashed in Kay's house. Sam and Kay plan to marry and move to the country on the reward money. |
3864394 | /m/0b3z6d | To Serve Them All My Days | R. F. Delderfield | 1972 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The protagonist is David Powlett-Jones, a coal miner's son from South Wales, who has risen from the ranks and been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in World War I. In 1918, after being injured and shell-shocked, he is employed to teach history at Bamfylde School, a fictional public school in North Devon, in the south-west of England. He swiftly earns the respect of many of his colleagues, with the notable exception of Carter, an ambitious science master and Commanding Officer of the school's Cadet Corps OTC, whose military bearing compensates for the embarrassing fact that he was released from military service for medical reasons. Carter makes no secret of his outrage at the content of David's history lessons, which include recollections of life at the front - David has rejected wartime propaganda and grown to respect German soldiers - and honest analyses, verging on Socialism, of the war's political background and potential consequences. Following the Armistice, the two men disagree on whether or not the school should erect a war memorial; David loses the argument but wins the respect of Brigadier Cooper, one of the governors. Under the tutelage of Headmaster Algy Herries, who views him as a possible successor, David discovers a vocation in teaching. He also forms a close friendship with the curmudgeonly English master, Ian Howarth, and with several students of unique personality and talents, including Chad Boyer, who will himself become a teacher at Bamfylde. He also acquires two nicknames, "P.J." and "Pow-Wow," the latter owing to his propensity for discussion and debate. David meets a young nurse, Beth Marwood, and in 1919 they marry; shortly afterwards, they have twin daughters, Joan (named after Joan of Arc, canonised in 1919) and Grace. Five years later (one year in the television adaptation), Beth and Joan are killed in a road accident. The surviving daughter, Grace, is badly injured and requires many months of rehabilitation before she can return home. (In the television adaptation, both children die: Andrew Davies, who adapted the series, infamously claimed that the thought of Grace clumping her way through the rest of the series filled him with horror.) It takes encouragement from one of the schoolboys to persuade David to contemplate life without his wife, but he carries on for the sake of Grace. His feud with Carter increasingly revolves around the men's diametrically-opposed political beliefs and culminates in a violent confrontation, at which point Herries is forced to mediate an uneasy truce between them. David remains concerned about life in Wales, particularly among the miners, and is politically affected by the General Strike of 1926, which receives play in this and other Delderfield novels. By the mid 1920s, he has also returned to a scholarly writing project, an historical study called "The Royal Tigress", a biography of Margaret of Anjou, which he had put to one side after Beth's death. Whilst researching the book in London, he once again meets Julia Darbyshire, a teacher who had worked briefly at Bamfylde, and strikes up a romance with her. She is now running a business for an American entrepreneur and is determined not to return to Bamfylde which she found suffocating. By 1927, Bamfylde is looking for a replacement for the aging Herries, and the Board of Governors interviews Carter, David, and two external candidates, including a South African named Alcock, for the headmastership. Although David receives much support, the Governors decide to award the position to Alcock, recognising that if either of the internal candidates was elected, the other would feel forced to resign, and the school would lose a valuable teacher. Alcock's authoritarian management of the school brings him into conflict with the staff, with some of the students, and eventually with David. During this period, Carter and David discover that they have a common adversary in Alcock and resolve their differences, which for a time distances David from Howarth. After a couple of terms under Alcock, Carter and a number of other masters resign. By this time, Alcock has become highly unpopular among the teaching staff and regards David as the ringleader of the opposition. In 1931, Alcock brings a formal complaint before the Board of Governors in order to seek David's dismissal. After hearing that the Board has backed David, though before this becomes common knowledge, Alcock dies of a heart attack while writing out his resignation. David is appointed as his successor. David's relationship with Julia ends when she travels to the U.S. with her boss, whom she marries. However, David becomes romantically involved with Christine Forster, an aspiring Labour politician and cousin of an ex-student. She is determined to build a political career but is unable to break into this male-dominated world and eventually accepts a travelling fellowship in Canada and Europe, much to David's disappointment, though her experiences in Germany give him a good sense of the rise of National Socialism, Anti-Semitism, and the likelihood of coming war. When Christine returns to Britain in the mid 1930s, the couple marry. After a difficult period of adjusting to life at Bamfylde, Christine accepts a teaching position at the school and they have a son. It also transpires that Julia Darbyshire had borne David a son soon after moving to America. The son becomes a pupil at Bamfylde, and David does not learn of his paternity until the end of the book, when Julia informs him of it in a letter, shortly before her death from breast cancer in the U.S. As Headmaster, David moves the school forward. As the book ends, World War II has begun, and he is facing the prospect of losing many of his former students in yet another war. |
3865265 | /m/0b3_cz | Sorcerer's Apprentice | François Augiéras | 1964 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel is set in the Sarladais (the Dordogne region of France). An adolescent boy is sent to live with a 35-year-old priest, who becomes his teacher and spiritual mentor, and exerts a powerful control over the boy. He abuses him physically and sexually, but the boy willingly accepts his 'punishment.' The boy falls in love with a slightly younger, and very beautiful boy, meeting in secret and having sex. This disturbing story is much more than a tale of a sexually violent predator. The adolescent himself experiences sexual activity with the other boy, but this relationship is one of genuine love and affection, rather than the coercive, harmful abuse he is subjected to by the priest. |
3865635 | /m/0b4007 | Dragon's Teeth | Upton Sinclair, Jr. | 1942 | {"/m/03g3w": "History"} | In the first volume of the series, Lanny Budd had met a family of Dutch Jews. By the time the events of this book occur, his half-sister has married one of their sons. In the climax at the end of this volume, Lanny helps spring the other son from Nazi arrest and jail, and gets caught up in the Blood Purge from June 30 to July 2, 1934 in Germany. |
3867060 | /m/0b428j | Sky Burial | Xinran Xue | 7/1/2004 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel involves a Chinese woman, Shu Wen, retelling her life in Tibet to Xinran in a tea shop in Suzhou. In the 1950s, as China revels in its unification under communism, Shu Wen, a doctor, marries a military doctor who gets orders to go into Tibet to pacify the Tibetan people and bring them under Chinese rule. The reputation of the Tibetans from the government paints them as sympathetic and welcoming to the Chinese, but gradually she learns of their resistance to subjugation. She is informed that her husband has gone missing, and against the wishes of her family and friends, she leaves her comfortable life in Suzhou to join the Army and search for him in Tibet. Her unit encounters a Tibetan woman near death in the highlands, and Shu Wen decides to treat the woman and take her away from her soldiers, who suspect she is a scout or a resistance fighter. Shu Wen goes to live with a nomadic family, and over 30 years learns the Tibetan way of life and gradually loses her sense of Chinese identity while quietly hoping for news of her husband's fate. Years after joining the nomads, she encounters Chinese soldiers who tell her about a doctor who sacrificed himself after his unit wounded a Tibetan in a skirmish in order to prevent the Tibetans from retaliating. After going to a nomad gathering, she meets an old sage, who tells her that he was the man her husband had treated, and in the end he was killed and disposed of in the sky burial, a tradition of the Tibetans. The sage said he would continue to sing the praises of the doctor as long as he lived, and Shu Wen finds peace. She returns to Suzhou, where Xinran encounters her, still searching for her relatives and eking out a modest living. |
3868122 | /m/0b4441 | Settling Accounts: The Grapple | Harry Turtledove | 2006-07 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | U.S. General Irving Morrell's campaign to drive Confederate forces out of Pennsylvania and Ohio is successful, and now pushes them through Kentucky, Tennessee, and ultimately Georgia. At the Battle of Chattanooga American forces land paratroopers on top of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, rather than fight their way to the top in hard-fought battles. Having gained Chattanooga, Morell seems bent on driving to the Atlantic Ocean through Georgia, thus cutting the Confederate territory in two. Confederate General George S. Patton, does less well on the defence than he did in the attack on Ohio two years before, his pugnacious instincts making him squander irreplaceable resources on futile attempts at counter-attack. The murder of blacks in gas chambers at Camp Determination in Texas continues, while U.S. General Abner Dowling's Eleventh Army attempts to attack it and shut it down. With only marginal forces at his disposal, this proves difficult. Dowling does send air support to bomb the railways on which horribly crowded cattle cars full of blacks are brought in. However, the advance takes too long; the sound of distant U.S. artillery had aroused some hope among the condemned black inmates, but when the U.S. forces finally arrive, they find nothing but enormous mass graves with not a single survivor, the extermination operation having been transferred to an "improved camp" in east Texas. Among the innumerable victims is Scipio. Despite this setback, Confederate blacks continue to find ways to resist. In Richmond, the Confederate capital, blacks rebel, seeking not to save their lives but to die with weapons in hand and exact a price from their murderers. Meanwhile, fighting continues among black guerrilla bands in the Georgia countryside. As the war rages, the race between American and Confederate physicists to build a "uranium (i.e., nuclear fission) bomb" continues. The Confederates desperately try to recover from Confederate President Jake Featherston's strategic blunder of initially not taking the bomb seriously and having held up research for over a year. They launch an air raid on the U.S. nuclear project in the state of Washington, to which the Americans reply in kind by bombing Washington University at Lexington, Virginia, the center of Confederate nuclear research. Meanwhile, Imperial Germany seems ahead of both the North American powers in the construction of a uranium bomb. In Europe, German and Austrian forces are gradually pushing the French, British and Russian forces back. Irish and Serb uprisings continue, and the Ukraine remains a battleground for both sides. The Russians are unable to concentrate on their Alaskan possessions. In Virginia, ground fighting seems largely quiet, but both sides are able to launch air strikes against the other, although the Confederates are not able to launch attacks quite as often due to heavy losses. The Mormon rebellion in Utah is suppressed (for the third time) and the U.S. characters debate the morality of various ways of dealing with the problem again. It seems a plan of deporting the Mormons from Utah are drawn up. Meanwhile, the Canadian rebellion is fully active, prompting units which had been fighting in Utah to be transferred to Canada. The troops from the U.S.-backed Republic of Quebec are not numerous enough or motivated enough to hold off the Canadian guerrillas. Fighting in Sequoyah (Oklahoma) appears to be back-and-forth, with both sides sabotaging the oil wells there. A general advance seems to be made in Arkansas, and U.S. forces are pressing the offensive in Sonora and Chihuahua. Allegiances at the top of the Confederate government are beginning to show strain as losses to the Confederacy increase. There is pronounced tension between Brigadier General Clarence Potter and President Jake Featherston, Camp Determination administrator Jefferson Pinkard and Confederate Attorney General Ferdinand Koenig, and between Koenig and Featherston. Featherston engages in shouting matches with his commanding officers over their tactics. Angered with his generals, Featherston puts all his faith in "wonder weapons" to win the war. Most ominously, despite the increasingly desperate military situation, Featherston continues to divert considerable resources to the extermination program as being justified and necessary, since "The War Against the Negroes" is a most important goal which must be "fought" and "won" by total extermination and making the Confederate territories "Negro-free". At sea, the Japanese threat to the Sandwich Islands ends with a naval victory at Midway, and American forces retake that island. Neither side has any real desire to pursue the war further, and there are strong hints that the Japanese might attack British possessions in Malaya and India. The U.S. Navy also smuggles arms to a nascent rebellion in Cuba, in which a teenage Fidel Castro participates. The United States is able to recapture Bermuda in a costly action and is threatening to move naval forces to the South Atlantic, to cut off food shipments from Argentina to the United Kingdom. The U.S. President Charles La Follette asks the Confederate States for unconditional surrender. Featherston replies with a defiant speech, and launches two long-range rockets from bases in Virginia onto Philadelphia. Damage from the rocket-bombs is light, but the psychological damage is much heavier. |
3871136 | /m/0b48p5 | Sharpe's Company | Bernard Cornwell | 5/10/1982 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The story begins with the British Army's assault on Ciudad Rodrigo, the northern barrier into Spain. Sharpe and Harper lead an assault on the French, displaying their usual bravery. Unfortunately, during the assault Sharpe's commander and friend Colonel William Lawford is severely wounded when a mine is detonated. He loses an arm and retires from his post as commander of the South Essex regiment. Sharpe is devastated, not only at the loss of a friend, but also by the fact that his captaincy is up for sale, and without Lawford to defend him, he is likely to lose command of his company. Sharpe's situation only gets worse when his old enemy, Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill, joins the company. Hakeswill hates Sharpe with a vengeance and plans to kill him. Meanwhile, Sharpe's lover Teresa Moreno arrives, informing Sharpe that she has given birth to his daughter Antonia, and that she is living in Badajoz as a citizen. Sharpe promises her that he will protect her when the British army attacks the city. He is also reunited with his former Lieutenant, Robert Knowles, who is now a captain of a fusilier company. Knowles also vows to protect Teresa. Later, Hakeswill encounters Teresa in a stable. He attempts to rape her, but she fights him off, slashing his face and wrist. Sharpe and Harper enter the stable, and Harper brutally beats Hakeswill, throwing him into a puddle of urine. Hakeswill vows revenge on Harper. At this very moment Lawford's replacement, Colonel Windham arrives, as well as Captain Rymer, who has bought command of Sharpe's company. Sharpe is demoted to lieutenant, but Windham attempts to cheer him up by telling him vacancies will soon be available. The army then begins its siege of Badajoz. Sharpe is given command of the regiment's baggage, ordered to guard it while the regiment digs trenches around the city. Sharpe leaves the baggage to visit his company, and when Rymer attempts to talk to him, the French attack. Rymer does nothing, so Sharpe leads his men into battle. The French are unable to fire their muskets due to a heavy rainfall, so Sharpe attacks with his sword, and Harper attacks with a shovel. The French are defeated, but in Sharpe's absence the regiment's baggage is plundered by Hakeswill. Windham is furious with Sharpe for abandoning his post, and is further angered when he discovers that a silver framed portrait of his wife has gone missing. He searches the packs of all the members of the Light Company, and the frame, but not the picture, is found in Harper's bag. Windham has Harper demoted to private and flogged, but is so impressed by Harper's bravery (and ashamed by his own rashness) that he compliments Harper afterwards and gives him money. A few nights later, Windham sends the Light Company on a mission to destroy a section of the French fortifications. He asks Sharpe to serve as his aide. Before the attack, Harper's seven-barrelled gun is taken from him by Hakeswill, as it is a non-regulation weapon. When the Light Company takes longer than expected, Windham sends Sharpe to find out the cause of the delay. Sharpe arrives to see the Light Company doing nothing, due to Rymer's incompetence. Sharpe fires at a French sentry and decides to blow the wall himself. Sharpe's riflemen give him cover fire as he attempts to light the fuse on the powder barrels. The barrels explode, but the wall is too strong to be destroyed. As Sharpe falls back he is shot in the leg by Hakeswill using Harper's seven-barrelled gun. Windham decides to remove Sharpe temporarily to allow Rymer to establish his authority, though he knows Sharpe is a brilliant soldier. He also orders the riflemen to abandon their rifles, which Rymer, at Hakeswill's prompting, blames the mission's failure on, as well as their green jackets. As Hakeswill taunts the disarmed riflemen, Sharpe defends them, humiliating Hakeswill by pretending to shoot him. Hakeswill is more than ever determined to get revenge, and also plans to get to Teresa in Badajoz before Sharpe does. Sharpe is interviewed by the army commander, the Duke of Wellington, a few days later after Sharpe has viewed the city closely. Wellington decides to attack the city that night. Sharpe is ordered to guide the various regiments into their positions. During his job he rejoins his regiment, which has been devastated by the French cannon fire. Windham is bravely trying to lead his men into the breach, and when Sharpe reaches his company, he discovers Rymer has been shot dead. Sharpe once again takes command of his company. Meanwhile, Knowles has managed to reach the top of the French wall and leads his men into the city. While his men kill the French and plunder the homes, Knowles looks for Teresa to protect her. Unknown to him, Hakeswill has also entered the city, armed with his bayonet and a stolen pistol. Knowles reaches Teresa's house, and Teresa lets him in, but Hakeswill climbs to the upstairs room where Antonia is, and as Knowles enters, Hakeswill shoots him. He then threatens to kill the baby unless Teresa has sex with him. Meanwhile, Sharpe has led his men through the French cannon. Not only his company, but the entire regiment follow his lead. Sharpe and Harper fight their way through the French to reach Teresa, and enter the house face to face with Hakeswill. Harper picks up Hakeswill's discarded shako, and finds the picture of Windham's wife inside it, whom Hakeswill believes to be his mother. Harper threatens to destroy the picture unless Hakeswill releases Antonia. Hakeswill releases the baby, and as Harper, Sharpe, and Teresa all attempt to kill him, he escapes by leaping out a window. At the end of the battle, Windham praises Sharpe for his bravery. Sharpe returns his wife's portrait, and Windham apologizes to Harper. Sharpe is once again made a captain, and Harper is once again made a sergeant. The riflemen also have their green jackets and rifles restored to them. Hakeswill deserts from the army, and will return to trouble Sharpe again in "Sharpe's Enemy". |
3874330 | /m/0b4gk9 | Il Turno | Luigi Pirandello | 1902 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story is divided into thirty very short chapters which permit the author to rapidly change situations and environments, bringing alternatively to the forefront the different subjects involved in the singular plan conceived by Marcantonio Ravì, the cause of odd and unpredictable events. This overweight, tenacious father of Stellina has an idee fixe which will, he believes, bring about the happiness of his daughter: establish a turn. That is to say, he will give her over as wife to the aging and well-off Don Diego Alcozèr, and then, after his death, consign her, fabulously wealthy and contented, to her desperate but dirt poor admirer Pepè Alletto. Marcantonio is so convinced of the efficacy of this idea that he goes around the city talking about it to everyone in order to get their consent, obstinately insisting that he's right with the comic intercalation "ragioniamo!" (let's reason about this!). But the majority of the people he meets, as soon as they hear the name of the decrepit Alcozèr, "spit out a laugh." The proposition of the plan dominates the first chapter with the agitated figure of Marcantonio Ravì. His son-in-law in pectoris Diego Alcozèr, sprightly old man, widower of four wives and gaudy dandy with his "small watery furtive bald eyes", having already been "a conqueror of dames in crinoline from the epoch of Ferdinand II king of the Two Sicilies", emerges in the second chapter, where he excitedly chats with his future father-in-law about preparations for the surrender of Stellina. To these two "human stains" a third is added in the following chapter in which Pepè Alletto, the beneficiary of the "turn", takes the fore. What strikes the reader as curious is the fact that Marcantonio Ravì's plan takes him completely by surprise; in reality he it not a true "desperate admirer". He likes Stellina, but because of his lack of courage and his precarious economic conditions, he would never have dared to even think of marrying her. He is incapable of choosing and must always depend on the choices of others. Pepé Alletto is the typical representative of a certain melancholic nobility of the provinces, deeply lazy and morally weak. He lives in the shadow of his aging mother who would never allow him to work (and he obviously adapts himself well to this situation) out of a misbegotten concept of the dignity of her state. Pepé passes the day taking care of his appearance, dreaming of the great city. The idea of the "turn" offers him an unexpected goal, a beautiful wife and a large heredity in view, the solution to all of his problems without too much work. The marriage is filled with scenes of exhilarating comedy: the decrepit Don Diego wears for the occasion "the long napoleon which has survived through four weddings." Such antiquity contrasts miserably with the freshness of Stellina, whose appearance "illuminated the party." Pepé breaks through this dishonest and uncomfortable atmosphere of false compliments and badly dissimulated commiseration when, responding to the solicitations of the guests, he feels invested with the part of future husband and begins playing the piano, singing and conducting the dances. The hysterical crisis of Stellina, who faints after her ancient husband spills the rosolio onto her white dress because of the uncontrollable trembling of his hands, is the event that shatters the apparatus of hypocrisy that Marcantonio had laboriously constructed around himself. But he continues to awkwardly search for vain excuses while the guests hurry to get out of the party. From this point on events precipitate out of control as everything becomes a prey to chance: Pepé, the maldextrous cavalier, gets himself caught up in a duel in order to defend Stellina, a situation which he could have easily avoided had he not asked for help from his overweening and domineering brother-in-law, the lawyer Ciro Coppa, who insists that he must challenge his adversary or be looked on as a coward. Pepé loses and ends up seriously wounded, as he will lose Stellina herself after continually begging Cirro to intervene in his favour. After the death of his wife, Ciro, in fact, marries Stellina, who has lost her patience and can no longer wait for the death of her elderly husband, himself. Ciro inserts himself arrogantly...in the turn, marrying Stellina and rendering her a slave to his insane jealousies. But, once again against all narrative expectations, the robust and optimistic lawyer dies before his time. His two sons and those of his sister must now stay with Pepé who, in the final scene, next to the salm of his brother-in-law, squeezes them to his breast while waiting for a look of consensus from Stellina. The last words of Marcantonio Ravì underscore the contradictions of chance, deus ex machina of the entire novel: "This one, who looked like a lion, look at him here: dead! And that old worm, healthy and full of life! Tomorrow the other one will marry Tina Mèndola, your good friend..." These are bitter words for him, especially if one remembers that Tina is the daughter of the hated Carmela Mèndola who insistently stigmatized the union between Stellina and the old Don Diego, defining it as "a mortal sin which cries out for vengeance!" It's understandable why Pirandello defined the story as "gay if not light-hearted". The desire to play games exhausts itself in a fireworks of exhilarating invention; but in the background there is always the shadow of the discontent of each character, whose desires are never, and can never be, fulfilled. They are nullified by unpredictable and uncontrollable events. |
3876969 | /m/0b4m7n | Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People | Dav Pilkey | 2006 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0hh4w": "Comic science fiction"} | Continuing from the last book, George, Harold, Sulu and Crackers end up in an alternate universe where the whole world is the opposite of their normal world. For example, Melvin Sneedly is struggling to comprehend a simple children's book, Mr. Krupp is nice and has a sense of humor, the villains from the last 7 books are good instead of evil (ex: the Turbo Toilet 2000 is a crossing guard, Zorx, Klax, Jennifer, and professor Poopypants are fire fighters, Frankenbooger and Trixie are construction works,Carl is a mailman, and Dr.Diaper is a police officer.) and the school is overall a welcoming place for students to learn and have fun. There they also meet an evil, alternate version of Captain Underpants, Captain Blunderpants and evil versions of George and Harold (George and Harold's evil counterparts) Sulu and Crackers are kidnapped by George and Harold's evil counterparts and are hypnotized to be evil. Sulu becomes evil and attacks the good George and Harold but Crackers on the other hand, saves them, (Briefly because Crackers might be a female and hypnosis does the opposite on females, the opposite hypno-ring does an opposite effect on MALES, the beams didn't reach Crackers or that the ring only works on mammals). The heroes finally get back to the normal dimension of the world, but end up bringing the Mr. Krupp of the alternate universe (known as nice Mr. Krupp), Sulu (now known as "Evil Sulu"), and the evil George and Harold with them. The evil George and Harold transform nice Mr. Krupp into Captain Blunderpants by getting water on his head. Intending to rescue Sulu, George and Harold try to leave with their super power juice (from the third book) but due to it being Grandparents Day, they have to eat dinner with their grandparents at George's house, delaying them. While there, the evil George and Harold find George and Harold's tree house, rummage through their personal belongings and find the "Goosy-Grow 4000"(from book 4) and transform Sulu into a giant monster. George and Harold fly over on Crackers' back, and decide that they have to drink the super power juice, but discover that it is empty. They fly to the real Mr.Krupp's house and immediately turn him into Captain Underpants who defeats the "Giant-Evil Sulu". Captain Blunderpants is transformed back into the nice Mr. Krupp by the snap of the finger, and Captain Underpants ties them up, but when Harold states that nothing can go wrong, this causes a rain storm to turn the nice Mr. Krupp back into Captain Blunderpants and Captain Underpants is turned back into the real Mr. Krupp and goes home. When all seems lost, George's great-grandmother and Harold's grandfather, arrive. As it turns out, they had drunk the rest of the super power juice (which the boys had bought with them to the table), allowing them to become Boxer Boy and Great Granny Girdle, two of George and Harold's comic characters. They defeat Captain Blunderpants, but the evil George and Harold arrive and try to shrink the heroes with the "Shrinky-Pig 2000" from (also from book 4), only to be tricked into shrinking themselves. Sulu is shrunk and turned good again and Captain Blunderpants and the Evil George and Harold (now shrunken) are taken back to their world. Harold once again states that nothing can go wrong, but this causes police men to arrest them mistakenly think that there the evil George and Harold, who robbed a bank while Captain Underpants was fighting Sulu. Harold again states that things cannot get any worse because they are going to jail for the rest of their lives. This time, however, Tippy Tinkletrousers (Professor Poopypants who changed his name at the end of the book 4) comes and chases George and Harold. The book ends, once again, with George yelling "Oh no!" and Harold yelling "Here we go again!" |
3878023 | /m/0b4n_y | Canal Dreams | Iain Banks | 1989 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The plot is fairly simple. In the first half, when the ship is stranded but unharmed, the mood is bucolic and philosophical, and the main challenge Hisako has is to pass the time in a tropical lake. She has an affair with one of the ship's officers and they go scuba diving together. She practises the cello. She is worried about the future, and has violent nightmares and flashbacks to her early life in Japan. She also spends time with the other passengers, among them a South African engineer and an erudite Egyptian. In the much darker second half, the book becomes an almost Die Hard-like thriller. Guerrillas (who turn out to be agents provocateur) take over the ship. The rebels kill everybody aboard except Hisako and rape her. She avenges herself, killing the pirates. The violence of the rebel takeover and of Hisako's revenge is described very graphically. |
3878615 | /m/0b4q1y | A Song of Stone | Iain Banks | 1997 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Abel and Morgan live in a small castle in an indeterminate place and time of civil war. They decide to abandon their home and join the refugees seeking safety. A group of irregulars led by "The Lieutenant" (or "Loot") stops them and takes them back to the castle, which they proceed to fortify as a base. The soldiers loot the castle, and Morgan is seduced by Loot. A rival faction attacks the castle with artillery and Abel is taken along with the fighters on a counter-attack. When they return, Abel almost shoots Loot and there is a violent and nihilistic ending. A Song of Stone tells the frightening story of what happens when the normal rules of society break down. Themes of incest, violence and war are intertwined with the lives of the rather pompous but lyrical disgraced aristocrat Abel, the vacuous and submissive Morgan, the ruthless Loot, and her soldiers with names like "Psycho", "Karma" and "Deathwish". The story is told by Abel in the first person. Abel describes Morgan's actions in the second person, mostly when she is in his direct view. As the invaders systematically loot and destroy Abel's family's ancestral home, Abel seems ambivalent to what is happening. Later, when the Lieutenant suggests a memorial for Abel's lifelong family retainer, who has just been killed, Abel and the reader realise that he does not know the servant's surname. The violence of war is described graphically. |
3884270 | /m/0b4_dk | Winter Holiday | Arthur Ransome | 1933 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | Brother and sister Dick and Dorothea Callum meet the Swallows and Amazons during the winter beside the lake. Whilst observing the stars in a disused barn, Dick and Dorothea encounter the other children and shortly become firm friends. They become part of the group and join in their play of Arctic expeditions. The holiday is extended when leader Nancy Blackett catches mumps and the group is quarantined and cannot return to their boarding schools. Initially, while waiting for snow to fall, the children embark on a series of adventures ranging from rebuilding an igloo to building an ice sled. There is a heavy snowfall followed by a prolonged period of freezing weather and, unusually, the lake freezes over, providing an excellent opportunity for an expedition to the point at the head of the lake that they have named the "North Pole". However, plans go awry when the Ds set out earlier than expected due to a misunderstanding over a signal flag. When a blizzard blows up and the Ds are missing, a rescue party is organized. cs:Zamrzlá loď kapitána Flinta tl:Winter Holiday |
3884501 | /m/0b4_x1 | Damaged Goods | Russell T. Davies | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The novel is set in Britain in 1987, and involves the Seventh Doctor and his companions Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester living on a working-class council estate while attempting to track down an infinitely powerful Gallifreyan weapon before it falls into the wrong hands. A young boy living on the estate, Gabriel Tyler, appears to be the focus of strange powers, and also for the attentions of Mrs Jericho, whose own grievously ill young son seems to be linked to Gabriel in some way, through a secret Gabriel's mother has long tried to hide. |
3886403 | /m/0b53sk | Godless | Pete Hautman | 2004 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Frustrated with his parents' Catholic religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god—the water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers, including: his snail farming best friend, Shin; incredibly ordinary Dan Grant; cute-as-a-button Magda Price; and violent, unpredictable Henry Stagg. As the Chutengodian religion grows, it takes on a life of its own. While Jason struggles to keep the faith pure, Shin obsesses over writing their bible as Henry schemes to make the faith even more exciting—and dangerous. As a result, when the Chutengodians hold their first mass atop the dome of the water tower, things go from dangerous to deadly. |
3887077 | /m/0b54zl | Summer Gone | David Macfarlane | 1999 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book deals with the life of Bailey Newling and his three lost summers. It tells the story of a divorced Bailey and his young son Caz, where on one fateful canoe trip, they share a remarkable night of truth and love. Macfarlane set this novel among the cottage country in northern Ontario, the Waubano Reaches. Bailey, nicknamed Bay, tells of the three summers in his life: the summer he was 12 and attended the camp where he met his camp instructor Peter Larkin, the summer where he, his wife Sarah and 6 year old son rented a cottage near his old campsite and, the summer where he and his 12 year old son shared their extraordinary night. Macfarlane uses a notable technique in the writing of Summer Gone, where he would start the story of one summer and drift into another. It may start with Bay telling of his tale at camp and then shift onto another thought which may have occurred decades later involving his wife or his son. This technique ties all of Bay's summer stories together into one when he tells it to his son. The narration of this story is told by Caz's half brother, from a one night stand of Bailey's, as an adult, retelling what Caz had told him. |
3887859 | /m/0b56ld | Dancers in Mourning | Margery Allingham | 1937 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | An old friend of Albert Campion has written a successful book that has been turned into a hit musical comedy. Jimmy Sutane, an established actor and dancer is the star of the musical. But recently someone has it in for Sutane and has started playing harmless practical jokes that have caused the highly emotional Jimmy much trauma. Jimmy asks Campion to look into who the prankster may be. So Campion takes a trip to the Sutane household, where he unexpectedly finds more than he bargained for. Jimmy Sutane's house is a strange mix of the theatrical and the snobbish. And into this mix comes Chloe Pye, an overdone and melodramatic has-been actress that no one seems to like. When she is accidentally run over by Jimmy Sutane in his car, no one seems upset and everyone is eager to call it an accident. But Campion is not so certain, and the more he investigates the less he desires to find out about the world of the Sutanes. Campion must deal with high strung entertainers and his own emotions as he tries to find out if a murder even happened, and who is still playing tricks on the star and his family. It turns out that Squire Mercer, a genius musician who lives with the Sutanes, was once married to Chloe Pye. She wanted to leave him for Jimmy Sutane, and he threatened never to divorce her. She told him that divorce wasn't necessary since she was still married to someone else, thereby committing bigamy with Squire Mercer. Her return to the Sutane household was to get back into the good graces of Squire Mercer so that he would fall back in love with her and support her financially. Instead he gets annoyed and angry at her advances and kills her. Then he throws her off a bridge in front of Jimmy Sutane's car so that the whole thing will look like an accident. Unfortunately Sutane's understudy, who has been playing the pranks on Sutane because he wants to play the lead role in the hit show, witnessed the whole of Chloe's "accident". When he is killed by one of Mercer's old-time criminal associates, everything is discovered by the police. Unfortunately, Campion's love for Sutane's wife clouds his judgement so that he thinks Jimmy has actually murdered both Chloe and his understudy. It is only at the end that he discovers the truth for himself. |
3888194 | /m/0b574r | Flowers for the Judge | Margery Allingham | 1936 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The Barnabas family is no stranger to mystery, one of the founder's nephews, Tom Barnabas, having disappeared from the street in broad daylight never to be seen again. When it is remarked, at a Sunday evening gathering held by Gina Brande in her flat next door to the offices, that Paul Brande, her husband, has not been home for three days, no-one finds it too remarkable. Shortly after the arrival of his old friend Albert Campion to look into the vanishing, Mike, Paul's younger cousin and clearly in love with Gina, goes to the vault to fetch some papers for the eldest cousin, the Barnabas MD, John Widdowson, and returns looking shaken, but says nothing. Next morning, Paul's body is found sprawled in plain view at the front of the vault. The doctor is called, sees Paul has been dead for several days, and a decision is made to move the body upstairs. Mike is sent to warn Mrs Brande. Campion investigates the scene of the crime, and finds a recently-broken ventilator to the rear of the vault, leading to a garage. Questioning staff, he discovers that the position of the body made it impossible for Mike to have missed him the night before. The police find a length of rubber pipe stained with soot. At the inquest, the doctors and police reveal that Paul was killed by carbon monoxide inhalation, the pipe having been used to connect the exhaust of Mike's car to the vault ventilator. A neighbour testifies she heard the car running for some time on the night Paul disappeared, from six to nine. Mike says he was out walking the streets until eight, but admits to running for a while around nine to warm up. Gina's housekeeper says too much about her mistress's relationship with Mike, and Mike is arrested for the murder. Campion befriends Ritchie, an odd and rather awkward cousin, and with his help questions Miss Netley, Paul's suspicious secretary. He tracks down Paul's mistress, but finds she knows nothing, except that he missed an appointment with her on the night he died. He learns of a valuable unpublished manuscript owned by the firm, which Paul hoped to display, and of a visit Paul paid to a London district, on business concerning a key. From Lugg, he learns that a renowned underground key copier lives in the area mentioned, and together they investigate, using Lugg's criminal past to persuade the man to help - he provides a copy of a key he made for Paul. Campion visits the Barnabas offices, with Ritchie's help, and finds someone in the vault. They fight, and Campion subdues the man, who he finds to be the accountant Rigget. Rigget confesses to having made a copy of the vault key, and sneaking in there at night to pry for valuable information. On the night after Paul's death, he entered the room and found Paul curled up in a corner, the vault unlocked; he had locked it, but taken Paul's key. He also took the vault key from inside the door, locked it and returned the key to its normal place. The trial begins the next day, and Campion, exhausted from his long night, attends. Things look bleak for Mike, but Campion has found out, from an uncle at the British Museum, that the document in the vault is not the original manuscript. He visits John Widdowson's flat with Ritchie, looks around and questions the maid. He leaves a note for Widdowson, who calls him later and tells him to visit the firm's other offices, where he will find the original in a certain locked cupboard. Campion gets there, still without sleep, and almost hurls himself at the jammed door. Changing his mind, he kicks it, and discovers it leads outside, to a terrible drop. At court next day, the case is suddenly called off. Widdowson has been found in his bath, an apparent suicide using fumes from a gas water-heater. Campion learns that the windows were wedged shut and the heater sabotaged, and that Ritchie has vanished. Later, holidaying in France with Mike, Campion finds the long lost Tom Barnabas, who tells him he took the old manuscript to buy a circus, in which Campion sees Ritchie performing, in his element as a clown. |
3888861 | /m/0b58d6 | A Passionate Pilgrim | Henry James | null | {"/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | The narrator meets fellow American Clement Searle at an old-fashioned London inn. Searle has long wanted to settle in England to escape what he considers his arid life in America. But he is physically ailing, and he's also depressed because his lawyer cannot uphold his claim to a share in a country estate currently owned by Richard Searle, a distant relation. Clement and the narrator visit the estate, where they meet the ethereal Miss Searle, who supports Clement's cause. They also meet Miss Searle's brother Richard, who is at first suspicious and then outright hostile and combative toward Clement. Upset by the conflict Clement and the narrator travel to Oxford, where they help a gentleman, Mr Rawson, down on his luck to travel to America. Clement is now very sick and sends for Miss Searle. She responds to his call and tells him that her brother has been thrown from a horse and killed. Clement might now have a real chance for a share of the estate, but the opportunity comes too late for him. He dies and is buried in the England which proved so inhospitable to him. |
3890107 | /m/0b5b8p | As She Climbed Across the Table | Jonathan Lethem | 2/17/1997 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The physicists in Coombs's lab become obsessed with Lack, which appears to have its own personality and preferences. Alice develops a personal relationship with the artificial intelligence that they have created, while Philip becomes jealous of their relationship. Philip begins to get involved after B-84, a laboratory animal (cat) enters Lack. This consumption of B-84 causes a campus wide protest. In an attempt to impress Alice, Philip breaks up the protest by giving a speech about how a single cat being destroyed is minimal and their efforts would better spent on larger problems in the world. Instead of impressing Alice, she becomes defensive of Lack and locks herself in its chamber. After a night of drinking, Philip comes back to his apartment to see that Dr. Soft has brought Alice there. She is asleep but Dr. Soft suspects that she may have tried to enter Lack and that she is no longer capable of running experiments on Lack. This causes Dr. Soft to divide Lack's time up among capable people. He does not want to interrupt Alice's research so he gives her time but asks Philip to monitor her. He also claims a portion of Lack's time for himself, his graduate students, and an Italian physics team headed by Carmo Braxia. Later on Philip also gets Dr. De Tooth to also have his part in studying Lack. Despite all of the new people studying Lack, still very little progress is being made both on the grounds of explaining Lack and in restoring Philip and Alice's relationship. The undergraduates build a device out of only things Lack consumes and try to feed it to Lack but Lack refuses it. Alice tries to give Lack pictures of herself but even those are refused. De Tooth tries to enter Lack himself and fails. Even the Italian Physicist seem to be lost, that is until Braxia tells Philip his theory. He claims Lack is a new universe that doesn't have intelligent life. He says that because of the strong anthropic principle, a universe cannot exist if there isn't conscious life to observe it. Since Lack does not contain any conscious life it clings to the our reality that does. The personality it developed was that of the first conscious person it encountered, Alice. What it absorbed was what she liked. With his new knowledge, and in a state of drunkenness, Philip sets out to be the first lover in history to ever have a definitive answer as to whether or not he is loved back. He enters Lacks chamber and slides himself into Lack. He wakes up the next morning realizing he is no longer in the universe he was the night before.The ground was ball bearings and wool, buildings were made of clay and bowling shoe leather, and the fountain at the entrance of campus was made of aluminum foil and was filled with pistachio ice cream. After retrieving B-84 as proof of the universe, Philip heads back to Lack and climbs in. This time however, instead of going back to reality as he expected, he entered a new universe that had no light. Evan and Garth, two blind men who had also climbed into Lack, helped him once again climb into Lack but this time instead of entering a new universe he merges and becomes one with Lack. The novel deals thematically with many of the philosophical issues pertaining to modern quantum physics, as well as human interaction with artificial intelligence. |
3890124 | /m/0b5bbj | The Birds on the Trees | null | null | null | Toby Flower is a shy, reticent youth who has grown his hair long and who has started wearing a burnous. His father, an editor, and his mother, a novelist, are thrown into despair when Toby is expelled from school because he has been taking drugs. At a loss as to what to do in order to help their son, Charlie and Maggie Flower keep projecting their own goals and aspirations onto their son. They still talk about his going to university despite Toby's assertion that he is not interested in further education. Toby eventually breaks out of that stifling atmosphere, leaves home and moves to London, where he lives in a basement flat without keeping in touch with his parents. Charlie and Maggie Flower finally turn to a psychiatrist friend of theirs who agrees to have Toby hospitalised and treated for mental illness. As it happens, in London Toby associates with Hermia, the psychiatrist's young but rather unattractive daughter, and makes her pregnant. When their parents conspire and talk Hermia into having an abortion, they unwittingly cut the last remaining bond with their son. Toby fetches Hermia from her parents' home, and the young couple move in with Toby's maternal grandmother, a frail old woman who all along has been sympathetic to the young people's needs. |
3892164 | /m/0b5f88 | The Nargun and The Stars | Patricia Wrightson | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The story is set in Australia, and involves an orphaned city boy named Simon Brent who comes to live on a 5000 acre sheep station called Wongadilla, in the Hunter Valley, with his mother's second cousins, Edie and Charlie. In a remote valley on the property he discovers a variety of ancient Australian Dreamtime creatures. The arrival of heavy machinery intent on clearing the land brings to life the ominous stone Nargun. The Nargun is a creature drawn from tribal legends of the Gunai or Kurnai people of the area now known as the Mitchell River National Park in Victoria. Other creatures featured in the story include the mischievous green-scaled water-spirit—Potkoorok, the Turongs (tree people) and the Nyols (cave people). |
3893456 | /m/0b5h75 | Steamboat in a Cornfield | John Hartford | null | null | Hartford tells the exciting true story of the incident in the life of an Ohio River steamboat around 1910. The boat, the Virginia, was subject to the rather fickle nature of the river at that time and ended up beached in a cornfield. This steamboat navigated the river before locks and dams were constructed to help regulate the waterway. Hartford recounts the hard times faced by this particular steamboat company which pressured the captain to make an ill-advised venture. The book uses old photos and maps to show the steamboat and trace its route. The accomplishment of what was seemingly an impossible task to refloat the steamboat is documented. The book ends with a coda, describing the fate of the characters. Steamboat in a Cornfield was published in 1986 by the Crown Publishing Group and it is out-of-print. In May 1991, the Gasoline Alley comic strip featured Hartford in a storyline that paralleled that of the children's book. |
3895398 | /m/0b5my9 | La regenta | null | 1885 | null | The story is set in Vetusta (a provincial capital city, very identifiable with Oviedo, capital of Asturias), where the main character of the work, Ana Ozores "La Regenta", marries the former prime magistrate of the city, Víctor Quintanar, a kind but fussy man much older than she. Feeling sentimentally abandoned, Ana lets herself be courted by the province casanova, Álvaro Mesía. To complete the circle, D. Fermín de Pas (Ana's confessor and canon in the cathedral of Vetusta) also falls in love with her and becomes Mesía's unmentionable rival. A great panorama of secondary characters, portrayed by Clarín with merciless irony, completes the human landscape of the novel. |
3895521 | /m/0b5n4_ | The Invention of Morel | Adolfo Bioy Casares | 1940 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The fugitive starts a diary after tourists arrive on the desert island where he is hiding. Although he considers their presence a miracle, he is afraid they will turn him in to the authorities. He retreats to the swamps while they take over the museum on top of the hill where he used to live. Through his diary we learn that the fugitive is a writer from Venezuela sentenced to life in prison. He believes he is on the (fictional) island of Villings, a part of the Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), but is not sure. All he knows is that the island is the focus of a strange disease whose symptoms are similar to radiation poisoning. Among the tourists is a woman who sees the sunset everyday from the cliff on the west side of the island. He spies on her and while doing so falls in love. She and another man, a bearded tennis player called Morel who visits her frequently, speak French among themselves. Morel calls her Faustine. The fugitive decides to approach her, but she does not react to him. He assumes she is ignoring him, but his encounters with the other tourists have the same result. Nobody on the island notices him. He points out that the conversations between Faustine and Morel repeat every week and fears he is going crazy. As suddenly as they appeared, the tourists vanish. The fugitive returns to the museum to investigate and finds no evidence of people being there during his absence. He attributes the experience to a hallucination caused by food poisoning, but the tourists reappear that night. They have come out of nowhere and yet they talk as if they have been there for a while. He watches them closely while still avoiding direct contact and notices more strange things. In the aquarium he encounters identical copies of the dead fish he found on his day of arrival. During a day at the pool, he sees the tourists jump to shake off the cold when the heat is unbearable. The strangest thing he notices is the presence of two suns and two moons in the sky. He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel does not mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine. After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality — one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun's position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation. He imagines all the possible uses for Morel's invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the "new kind of photographs" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it will not matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel's lover. On the diary's final entry the fugitive describes how he is waiting for his soul to pass onto the recording while dying. He asks a favor of the man who will invent a machine capable of merging souls based on Morel's invention. He wants the inventor to search for them and let him enter Faustine's conscience as an act of mercy. |
3900625 | /m/0b5y5_ | Jacques le fataliste et son maître | Denis Diderot | 1796 | null | The main subject of the book is the relationship between the valet Jacques and his master (who is never named). The two are traveling to a destination the narrator leaves insistently vague, and to dispel the boredom of the trip Jacques is compelled by his master to recount the story of his loves. However, Jacques's story is continuously interrupted by other characters and various comic mishaps. Other characters in the book tell stories as well, and they, too, are continuously interrupted. There is even a "reader" character who periodically interrupts the narrator with questions, objections, and demands for more information or detail. The tales told are usually humorous, with romance or sex as their subject matter, and feature complex characters indulging in deception. Jacques's key philosophy is that everything that happens is "written up above" ("tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut"), a "great scroll" which is unrolled a little bit at a time, on which all events, past and future, are written. Yet Jacques still places value on his actions; he is not a passive character. Critics such as J. Robert Loy have characterized Jacques's philosophy as not fatalism but determinism. The book is full of contradictory characters and other dualities. One story tells of two men in the army who were so much alike that, though they were the best of friends, they could not stop dueling and wounding each other. Another concerns Father Hudson, an intelligent and effective reformer of the church, who is privately the most debauched character in the book. Even Jacques and his master transcend their apparent roles, as Jacques proves, in his insolence, that his master cannot live without him, and therefore it is Jacques who is the master, and the master who is the servant. Jacques is in many ways a metafictional work. The story of Jacques's loves is lifted directly from Tristram Shandy, a design choice which Diderot makes no secret of, as the narrator at the end announces the insertion of an entire passage from Tristram Shandy into the story. Throughout the work, the narrator refers derisively to sentimental novels and calls attention to the ways in which events develop more realistically in his book. At other times, the narrator tires of the tedium of narration altogether and obliges the reader to supply certain trivial details themselves. |
3901027 | /m/0b5yy9 | Madame de Mauves | Henry James | null | {"/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | Outside Paris a wealthy American man named Longmore is introduced to his countrywoman Euphemia de Mauves. She is the sweet but austere wife of Comte Richard de Mauves, a cynical, womanizing Frenchman who hints that Longmore should take an amorous interest in his wife. Longmore resists the suggestion, even though he spots Richard with his latest mistress in a Paris cafe. Longmore still can't bring himself to become involved in an affair with Euphemia. He goes on a trip in the French countryside, where the sight of an artist and his girlfriend on a holiday, as well as a disturbing dream about Euphemia, makes him wonder if his scruples aren't foolish. Longmore finally leaves for America. Two years later he hears that Richard has committed suicide because Euphemia wouldn't forgive his adulteries and reconcile with him, though Richard promised to be faithful to her in the future. Although Euphemia is now free, Longmore is undecided about returning to Europe to pursue her. |
3902815 | /m/0b607p | Them Bones | Howard Waldrop | 1984 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In 1929, some archaeologists find a horse skeleton in a mound in the Louisiana swampland—a mound which pre-dates the re-introduction of the horse to North America. Moreover, the mound contains something even more anachronistic—a corroded brass rifle cartridge. This is a novel about shifts in time. From the late twenty-first century, Madison Yazoo Leake, a member of the Special Group, is transported back in time in an attempt to stop the destruction of the human race. However, he arrives not in 1930s Louisiana, but in a world where Arabs explored America, the Roman Empire never existed, and the Aztec empire extended to the Mississippi. |
3904061 | /m/0b61tz | Shapeshifter's Quest | Dena Landon | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Syanthe is about 18 years old. She is a shapeshifter and has lived with other shapeshifters in the Carlbine forest all her life. Because of an incident that happened years ago, the King had confined all shapeshifters to the Carlbine forest. He marked all of the shapeshifters with a magical tattoo on their faces that would kill them if they crossed the boundaries of the forest. All of the shapeshifters were marked, except Syanthe, who had been hidden at birth from the King's men. When the Carlbine forest and the shapeshifters (who are closely bonded to the forest) slowly grew sick with an illness, Syanthe's mother included, she set out into the King's capital to obtain the cure for the illness. A few days or so later after Syanthe left the forest, she was caught by a caravan of traders. She decided to join these travelers on their way to the capital. She soon found out that the leader of the caravan, Jerel, had powerful magical powers, and realized that there was something amiss with the whole caravan. |
3904760 | /m/0b62w1 | Mister Monday | Garth Nix | 7/1/2003 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | On Earth, a boy named Arthur Penhaligon is at a new school. He collapses during an outdoor cross country run during gym because of his severe asthma. Two of his schoolmates, Ed and Leaf, stop to help him use his inhaler before running to get help. While waiting for help, Arthur notices one strange-looking men materializing out of thin air.They discuss a key and whether or not to give it to Arthur. Monday doesn't want to give it up because he needs the key in order to continue his reign, but Sneezer convinces him to as the Will states Monday must give the key to a suitable heir but after Arthur dies, Monday will once again regain control of the Key. Persuaded, Monday agrees to relinquish control of the key, which is shaped like the minute hand of an old clock, although he quickly becomes suspicious of Sneezer, who apparently never showed much intelligence before. Sneezer and Mister Monday then fight and disappear in a flash of light. In their place is a slim book which Arthur puts in his pocket. In his hand, he holds the key which Arthur finds helps him breathe. As his teacher and school nurse approach, Arthur hides the key and passes out. Arthur wakes up in a hospital bed, tired. Ed and Leaf, the brother and sister who helped him, come and visit. Leaf comments that she had seen an old man pushing a bath-chair with a young man in it; obviously Sneezer and Mister Monday. Ed, however, had not seen Monday and Sneezer, but claims to have seen a bunch of men with dog-like faces digging up the field. Arthur asks them if anyone had seen the key he buried in the field and they say no, but promise to visit him soon. Shortly afterward, they have to leave so Arthur can take a shot. In pain, Arthur pushes his hand under the pillow, only to have his fingers touch the key, which has appeared there magically. A week later, Arthur returns home but Ed and Leaf have not kept their promise to visit him. When he gets there, he uses the key to open the book, which is called The Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs, and learns that the House (a giant, polyglot-fashioned building that he passed when going home) has an entrance called Monday's Postern. That night, he is visited by one of the dog-like "Fetchers" mentioned by Ed earlier. He is saved by his ceramic Komodo dragon in which he had placed the Key. During the next day at school, he finds himself being pursued by the Fetchers again. Before being excused from gym class, a friend of Leaf's hands him a printed out email which explains her and her brother's absence. Apparently, they have caught some sort of virus and have been placed in quarantine. Leaf notes that she can smell the same stench from the Fetchers on those in her family but no one else can smell it. Arthur seeks sanctuary in the school library to figure out the Atlas and hide from the Fetchers. During this brief time, he reads up on the Fetchers and finds out that they are vulnerable to salt. His research is interrupted when Monday's Noon, a servant of Mister Monday who proves to be more powerful than the Fetchers, shows up. He attempts to attack Arthur and inadvertently starts a fire in the library. However, Monday's Noon can only attack him between the hours of noon and one o'clock and Arthur manages to evade him until then and Noon disappears. Unfortunately, Arthur still has to contend with the Fetchers who have managed to steal away his Atlas during his struggle with Monday's Noon. He escapes to the kitchens and finds salt to destroy them. During this time, the fire department and the bio-containment and quarantine team, who believe the new virus that Ed and Leaf's family are suffering from has originated from the school, arrive. Arthur realizes that the Fetchers must have caused the disease and notices that the smoke from the burning library is spelling out a message for him to get to the House. Arthur lets go of the key to induce his asthma which causes a paramedic to take him to the hospital. As they get closer to his neighborhood, an unknown force hits the ambulance in the form of a violent rainstorm. Arthur takes advantage of this distraction to leave the paramedic and get to the House. Using the Key, Arthur enters the House and finds that the House is a world unto itself, around which the Universe is organized, whose purpose is, or was, to observe and record all that occurs in the infinity. In his travels through the House, he finds that he is the Rightful Heir, a person to whom the Will referred. If he fulfills this function, the Architect of the World's original intention will be enacted. To save the Lower House, he must kill Mister Monday and steal the other half of the key, of which is the Hour Hand, from him. He is accompanied during the most of his journey by a cockney girl-child named Suzy Turquoise Blue, who was brought to the House by the Piper (one of the immortal Denizens of the House) along with many other children. There, too, he learns something of the House's history: The Architect and the Old One came from nothing to create the universe. Unfortunately, the Architect's consort, the Old One, acts in the role of Prometheus, in that he had defied the Architect for some purpose of his own and been imprisoned as a result. After a while, the Architect left the House and handed over control to the Morrow days. Unfortunately, these Trustees have each been contaminated with one of seven deadly sins and have disobeyed the Architect's will to observe and record the happenings of the Secondary Realms (Our universe) in favor of interfering to where it suits them. Because of their inadequate rule, the House has become a dystopia. At the end of the book, Arthur defeats Mister Monday and takes control of the Hour Hand and gains the First of Seven Keys to the Kingdom. To the displeasure of the Will, he takes pity on Mister Monday and lets him go, after healing him mentally and physically. After going home, with the Will, he hands the responsibility of government over to the Will itself which manifests in the form of Dame Primus (a name almost literally meaning "First Lady" in Latin). He appoints Suzy as the second assistant to Noon who is actually Monday's Dusk who aided Arthur in his attempt to secure the key. Monday's former Noon is changed to the new Dusk while Monday's Dawn retains her position. Monday's Noon (AKA Monday's Dusk) gives Arthur a 'Nightsweeper' to get rid of the virus the dog faces brought with them. After waiting for ten hours, only to fall asleep and wake up at 11:55, Arthur puts the Nightsweeper (which looks like a toy horse) on his windowsill. It flies over his town, turning on every single thing as it passes. Arthur's family tells Arthur that his mother found a cure for the plague. Then a phone rings, which none of Arthur's family can hear. He realizes it is the phone Dame Primus gave him in case of emergencies. The book ends with Arthur looking at the clock and seeing it is one minute past twelve, Tuesday morning. fr:Lundi mystérieux th:จันทร์มหันตภัย |
3908213 | /m/0b68jd | Thank You, Jeeves | P. G. Wodehouse | 3/16/1934 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | After a falling-out concerning Bertie’s relentless playing of the banjolele, Jeeves leaves his master’s service and finds work with Bertie’s old friend, Lord “Chuffy” Chuffnell. Bertie travels to one of Chuffy’s cottages in Dorset in order to continue practising his banjolele-playing without complaints from his neighbours. Chuffy, whose high rank is matched only by his low financial status, is hoping to sell his dilapidated family manor to the American millionaire J. Washburn Stoker, who in turn plans to rent out the property to the famous “nerve specialist” Sir Roderick Glossop, who intends to marry Chuffy’s Aunt Myrtle. Chuffy has also fallen in love with Mr. Stoker’s daughter, Pauline, a former fiancée of Bertie, but feels unable to propose to her until his finances have improved enough to be able to keep her in the style to which she’s accustomed. Upon being informed of the situation, Bertie hatches a plan to make Chuffy propose: he is going to kiss Pauline in the presence of his old friend, in the hope that Chuffy will be spurred on to propose himself. When he puts his plan into action, however, he is seen, not by Chuffy, but by J. Washburn Stoker, who is convinced that Pauline and Bertie are still in love, and that he must exercise ceaseless vigilance in order to prevent them from getting engaged again. Even worse, from Bertie’s perspective, all hopes of marriage between Chuffy and Pauline seem dashed after a fight between Mr. Stoker’s young son Dwight and Chuffy’s cousin Seabury leads to a more general row between the Chuffnells and the Stokers. Mr. Stoker returns to the yacht in which he and his family are staying, keeping Pauline a virtual prisoner on board in order to stop her eloping with Bertie. Chuffy writes a love letter to Pauline which Jeeves is able to smuggle aboard the yacht by pretending to enter Mr. Stoker’s employ; Pauline is so moved that she swims ashore, where she goes to stay in Bertie’s house until she can visit Chuffnell Hall in the morning. Bertie chivalrously lets her sleep in his bed whilst he tries to sleep in the garage. Unfortunately, he is seen by Police Sergeant Voules, who informs Lord Chuffnell of Bertie’s strange behaviour. Chuffy, thinking that Bertie is intoxicated, takes him back up to his bedroom. Upon discovering Pauline there, he leaps to the conclusion that she and Bertie have resumed their romantic relationship. A heated row breaks out, which ends with Pauline declaring that she never wants to see Chuffy again. The two lovers return to their respective homes. Bertie is then disturbed by Mr. Stoker, who has found Pauline missing, and jumped to the conclusion that she has run off with Bertie. Upon searching Bertie’s cottage and not finding her, however, he apologises and leaves. The next day, Bertie gets a message from Mr. Stoker, requesting his presence on board the yacht for his son’s birthday party. Despite his misgivings, Bertie goes, only to be locked in one of the staterooms by Mr. Stoker, who informs Bertie that he has found out about Pauline’s visit to him the previous night. He plans to force Bertie and Pauline to marry. Jeeves, however, is able to help Bertie escape: Mr. Stoker has hired some blackface minstrels for his son’s party, and Bertie is able to disguise himself with boot polish and get ashore. Bertie returns to his cottage, where he encounters his new valet, Brinkley, in a state of considerable drunkenness. Brinkley attacks his employer with a carving knife, before accidentally setting the cottage on fire. In the ensuing conflagration, Bertie’s banjolele is destroyed. Hoping to find some butter to help remove the boot polish from his face, Bertie goes to Chuffnell Hall; Chuffy, however, thinking that Pauline is in love with Bertie, tells him that he ought to marry her, and refuses to (as he sees it) help Bertie in wriggling out of his obligations. Bertie then meets Jeeves, who has returned to Chuffy’s employ in order to avoid Mr. Stoker’s wrath when he finds out about the part Jeeves played in helping Bertie escape. Jeeves informs Bertie that a disagreement has broken out between Sir Roderick Glossop and the Chuffnells. Sir Roderick had blacked up and tried to entertain Master Seabury; Seabury being unappreciative, however, Sir Roderick had subjected the boy to what Jeeves tactfully calls “severe castigation”, and left the Hall. Jeeves moreover informs Bertie that Seabury has stolen all the butter in the Hall to use in a practical joke on Sir Roderick, but that Bertie can sleep in the Dower House, where Jeeves will bring him some the next day. The Dower House is rendered uninhabitable, however, by the presence of Brinkley. While waiting outside and wondering what to do, he meets Sir Roderick Glossop, towards whom he feels considerably friendlier since learning of the argument with Seabury. Sir Roderick goes to Bertie’s garage to find petrol, which he says is as good as butter for removing blackface; Bertie, worried about meeting Sergeant Voules again, remains in the Hall’s grounds. The next day, Bertie meets with Jeeves in Chuffy’s office. Their conversation is cut short, however, when Mr. Stoker arrives, hoping that Chuffy might be able to tell him where Bertie is. Meeting Jeeves, whom he has not forgiven for freeing Bertie, Mr. Stoker threatens to break the valet’s neck; Jeeves is able to disarm him, though, by claiming that he only helped his former master in order to protect Mr. Stoker from a charge of kidnapping, and tells him that Bertie has gone to the Dower House. Pauline Stoker arrives next, and tells Jeeves that she once again wishes to marry Chuffy. Jeeves leaves in order to search for Sir Roderick, and Bertie reveals himself to Pauline in the hope that she’ll be able to get him some breakfast. Frightened at Bertie’s sudden appearance, Pauline emits a piercing shriek, bringing Chuffy running to her. Their past animosities forgotten, the pair seem completely reconciled. Mr. Stoker returns, having had a run-in with Brinkley in the Dower House. Jeeves also comes back, bearing a cable saying that some of Stoker’s relatives are contesting a will, which resulted in Mr. Stoker inheriting some fifty million dollars from his Uncle George, on the grounds that the deceased was insane. Stoker seems unconcerned, saying that Sir Roderick will testify for him that his uncle was in good mental health. It turns out, however, that Sir Roderick has been arrested trying to break into Bertie’s garage, and it seems unlikely that the nerve specialist’s testimony will carry much weight if he is imprisoned. Jeeves suggests that Bertie switch places with Sir Roderick, as he could hardly be charged with breaking into his own garage. The plan succeeds; Chuffy’s financial problems are resolved when Stoker agrees to buy the Hall from him; he and Pauline are to be wed; and Jeeves, who has a policy of never working in the household of a married gentleman, returns to Bertie’s employ. |
3910776 | /m/0b6dyy | The Eyes of the Overworld | Jack Vance | 1966 | {"/m/06qk2l": "Dying Earth subgenre", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Cugel is easily persuaded by the merchant Fianosther to attempt the burglary of the manse of Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Trapped and caught, he agrees that in exchange for his freedom he will undertake the recovery of a small hemisphere of violet glass, an Eye of the Overworld, to match one already in the wizard's possession. A small sentient alien entity of barbs and hooks, named Firx, is attached to his liver to encourage his "unremitting loyalty, zeal and singleness of purpose," and Iucounu uses a spell to transport Cugel via flying demon to the remote Land of Cutz. There, Cugel finds two villages, one occupied by wearers of the violet lenses, the other by peasants who work on behalf of the lens-wearers, in hopes of being promoted to their ranks. The lenses cause their wearers to see, not their squalid surroundings, but the Overworld, a vastly superior version of reality where a hut is a palace, gruel is a magnificent feast, etc. — "seeing the world through rose-colored glasses" on a grand scale. Cugel gains an Eye by trickery, and escapes from Cutz. He then undertakes an arduous trek back to Iucounu, cursing the magician the entire way; this forms the principal part of the book. After many pitfalls, setbacks, and harrowing escapes, including the eviction of Firx from his system, Cugel returns to Iucounu's manse, where he finds the wizard's volition has been captured by a twin to Firx. Cugel manages to extirpate the alien, subdue the magician, and enjoy the easy life in the manse, until he tries to banish Iucounu and Fianosther (who himself has come to pilfer from Cugel) with the same spell that the magician had used on him. But Cugel's tongue slips in uttering the incantation, and the flying demon seizes him instead, delivering him to the same spot as before. Author Michael Shea wrote an authorized sequel, A Quest for Simbilis (DAW Books, NY, 1974). Vance's own Cugel sequel was published as Cugel's Saga in 1983. |
3915934 | /m/0b6n5b | A Specter is Haunting Texas | Fritz Leiber | 1969 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"} | Scully Christopher Crockett La Cruz is an actor, fortune seeker and adventurer from the long isolated orbital technocratic democracies of Circumluna and the Bubbles Congeries. He lands in what he believes to be Canada to reclaim family mining interests only to discover that Canada is now North Texas and what is left of civilization in North America is ruled by primitive, backslapping, bigger than life anti-intellectual "good ole boys" convinced of their own moral superiority. In the tortured version of history known to the giant hormone-boosted Anglo-Saxon inhabitants who rule a diminutive Mexican underclass, the original Texas, or Texas, had actually secretly ruled the pre-nuclear war United States since 1845. Texas escaped the nuclear destruction of the rest of the United States because of the foresight of Lyndon the First. An enormous bunker then known as the Houston Carlsbad Caverns-Denver-Kansas City-Little Rock Pentagram and now referred to simply as the Texas Bunker had saved the heartland during a war that destroyed both American coasts, Europe, Russia, China, and Africa. Texas then conquered the rest of the continent, although Hawaii and Cuba remain stubbornly "unconquered". |
3918318 | /m/0b6r0f | Phallos | Samuel R. Delany | 2004 | {"/m/09kqc": "Humour", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | In many ways Phallos is a coda to Delany's exploration of prehistoric attitudes and technologies, psychologies and sexualities, and a story that connects the prehistoric "nameless gods" from his four-volume series Return to Nevèrÿon, to the historical world of the actual Roman Empire. As does the Nevèrÿon series, Phallos uses a frame story — a double frame, in fact. The first is a brief trio of paragraphs telling of a young man, Adrian Rome, whose adolescent encounter with the book leads to his adult attempt, a decade later, to acquire a copy: and how he settles for an on-line synopsis posted by one Randy Pedarson of Moscow, Idaho. The second frame is more complex — and far more interesting: it concerns the dubious (fictive) editor Randy Pedarson, presumably of Moscow, and his relations with two graduate students, Binky and Phyllis, also enthusiasts of the novel, at the university there. According to Pedarson’s posting, as far as Pedarson can tell, an anonymous gay pornographic novel, Phallos (one of Pederson’s three favorites: the other two are John Preston’s Mr. Benson and William Talsman’s The Gaudy Image — both of which are known for their better-than-average writing), was published in 1969 by Essex House of West Hollywood, California. While the anonymous introduction to that volume suggests that Phallos was known to numerous literary gay men of the past, from the 18th century advocate of Greek beauty, Johanne Joaquim Winkelmann, through the 19th century Oxford aesthetician and novelist Walter Pater, to the historian John Addington Symonds (whose seven-volume The Renaissance in Italy [1875-86] acted as a sort of counterbalance to Pater’s brief single volume [of 1873/75], The Renaissance, still widely read and quoted today), and moving on to such characters as Baron Corvo (pseudonym of Frederic Rolfe) and sex researcher Havelock Ellis, Pederson concludes that all this is simply the kind of bogus folderol that accompanies so much of the pornography published in that licentious decade, as an attempt to legitimate it. If one has any knowledge at all of the sexual revolution occurring throughout the Oxford Aesthetic Movement and the Edwardian decade that closed out the Age of Victoria, however, one recognizes Pedarson’s account is presented with some wit. Pederson goes on to synopsize Phallos — during which synopsis, now and again, he quotes from it more or less liberally. That synopsis, along with the footnotes — some of them as extensive as five or six pages — provided by his friends, recent Ph.D.'s Binky and Phyllis, make up the text of Delany's novella. Phallos proper begins with a Greek epigraph — the "Anaximander fragment," presumably the oldest piece of written Greek philosophy extant from the Ionian presocratics, dating from the last years of the 6th century BCE. This is glossed by a footnote from Binky, who, in four pages, gives his version of Nietzsche’s, Hegel’s, Heidegger’s, and finally Sir Karl Popper’s take on Anaximander, with a few potshots by Phyllis (virtually footnotes to the footnote). Thematically, the idea is to point out all the things the presocratics did know that, later, were forgotten — that the earth was round, what caused the moon to shine and go through its phases, etc., and concomitantly how modern some of their commentators — such as Pater — actually were. This is to make us more willing to accept the relevance to the modern world of what our hero learns of life in the 2nd century CE, as well as to explicate those thirty-one words from the Ionian island and coastal culture of the 6th century BCE, which managed to slip through into the modern world. Pederson reproduces Phallos’s whole first chapter. It serves as a prologue to the novel proper as well as to his own synopsis. Also, it introduces us to our narrator, Neoptolomus, the son of a gentleman farmer on the island of Syracuse (Sicily) who reads Heraclietos and can recite some of Æsop’s fables in Greek. His mother is a one-time Egyptian slave woman, freed long ago. When his parents are killed by a fever in his 17th year, Neoptolomus comes under the protection of a rich Roman merchant who keeps a summer villa in the area. The rich Roman takes young Neoptolomus to Rome and sponsors him as an officer in the Roman army and, on his release, asks him, in return, to travel to Egypt and help him acquire some lands across the Nile from the city of Hermopolis. The Roman Emperor Hadrian is visiting Hermopolis at the time, and Neoptolomus becomes involved with the murder of the emperor’s favorite, Antinous. At the temple of "a nameless god," whose priests control the lands across the river at Hir-wer, Neoptolomus learns that on the day of Antinous’s death, bandits have broken into the temple and, from the statue of the god, stolen the "golden phallos, encrusted with jade, copper, and jewels" — phallos is Greek for the male member. This theft has thrown the whole religious system into chaos. Almost immediately Neoptolomus finds himself kidnapped by a bandit gang, whose leader is certainly the man who killed Antinous. The first third of the novella deals with Neoptolomus, his relation with the bandit chief, and the period before and after the bandit sells him to a scholar in Alexandria. The plot is interlarded — indeed, held together — by numerous gay sexual encounters. Ironically, while Pederson mentions them, his synopsis omits much — indeed, most — of the explicit sexual description. This produces the novel’s first and most pervasive irony: Phallos is pornography with virtually all the sex excised. After several years of the hero's wanderings, the novel’s middle third finds Neoptolomus back in Rome. Once more he is working for his Roman patron, now as a broker of warehouse space in his patron’s several Roman warehouses. After his early education in the sex life of the desert and the barbarian outlands, Neoptolomus finds himself sampling the intricacies of civilized urban sex — as well as negotiating the complexities that arise for him as a gay man trying to have friendships with — and work among — straight men. Through all this, we watch his several attempts to retrieve the phallos, which take us from Rome to Byzantium, back to Syracuse, and even to the volcanic slopes of Mt. Etna. High points of the central third include a drugged Walpurgisnacht among the volcanic peaks and the sad history of a Roman street boy, Maximin, whom Neoptolomus wrongly decides is trying to steal from him, though in reality he has been the victim of one of Neoptolomus’s jealous lovers. In the final third, years later an older and wiser Neoptolomus returns to Hermopolis, where he meets a young black African, Nivek, sent to the Temple of the nameless god, much as Neoptolomus had been, also to acquire rights to the land across the Nile at Hir-wer — which, since Antinous’s death, Hadrian has transformed into the gold and marble city of Antinoöpolis, now a shrine to the memory of the emperor’s late lover, who has officially been declared a god. Here history would seem to repeat itself, only Neoptolomus is in a different role from the one he occupied as a youth. Through this switch in position, Neoptolomus comes to understand a great deal about some of the mysteries around his earlier visit to Hermopolis. (Though the plot elements are entirely different, the narrative technique is similar to the one Delany used to relate the first half to the second half of his novella The Game of Time and Pain in his Return to Nevèrÿon series.) In his relations with Nivek, we get a chance to watch Neoptolomus apply many of the lessons he has learned during his adventures to the problems of an open relationship. Delany makes the point that open relationships take as much care, concern, and commitment as do monogamous ones. Soon, under the pleasures of his committed life-partnership with Nivek, Neoptolomus gives up his search for the phallos. Because of his success both in business and in life — and because they know how much energy in the past Neoptolomus has put into searching for the phallos — many of the couple's friends, however, including a poet, a Christian priest, and a horse-loving adventurer, assume the two, now successful merchants on their own, have secretly found it. Their friends cleave to them in the hopes that they will learn more of the phallos and can perhaps share in its power. "Though," Neoptolomus tells us, "all we had — which, yes, each mistook for its sign — was a certain pleasure in the world and in each other, a pleasure our friends were sometimes rash enough to call happiness." Nivek and Neoptolomus run into problems holding their annual orgies in their own summer villa in the Apennines above Rome — sometimes with their neighbors, sometimes with their guests. Though Neoptolomus and Nivek have given up the search for the phallos, because of their friends’ interest in that object they are almost as greatly plagued by its possible existence — or non-existence — as they were before. The novel more or less concludes when Neoptolomus’s rich Roman patron dies, and Neoptolomus and Nivek return to Syracuse to take over Neoptolmus’s late father’s lands, using some of the money that his patron has left him. Meanwhile Neoptolomus has generously sponsored a young goatherd, Cronin, with a commission in the army, as Neoptolomus himself had been sponsored in his youth; and Nivek has just invited a sexually interesting farm worker, Aronk, to come and work for them — because he realizes that Neoptolomus finds him attractive. In a moving scene in which the two men embrace in an acceptance of the cyclic, yet unpredictable, nature of life, the novel proper ends. The commentary from the triptych of our editor and his friends, however, goes on. In another footnote Binky points out Pederson’s tendency in his synopsis to downplay any racial tensions dramatized in the book. Phyllis has the last say, pointing out in her final note an equally misogynistic streak in Pederson's selection of the materials he has included (and, even more so, left out), so that the final word we read in the text is her accusation against Pedarson of subjecting his version of the book to a certain order of "castration." The outer frame story of Adrien Rome reflects an earlier work of Delany's. In Babel-17, we learn that Rydra Wong (the novel's protagonist) has a friend named Muels Aranlyde (an anagram of "Samuel R. Delany") who wrote books about someone named "Comet Jo", one of which was named Empire Star. Empire Star is, of course, a book by Delany whose protagonist is one "Comet Jo". Similarly, upon carefully reading Delany's 2007 novel Dark Reflections, we learn that the protagonist of that novel, Arnold Hawley, is actually the anonymous author of the novel Phallos that Adrian Rome encountered as an adolescent. |
3921171 | /m/0b6wk0 | Nights at the Circus | Angela Carter | 3/4/1984 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Nights at the Circus begins with American journalist Jack Walser interviewing Sophie Fevvers in her London dressing room following a performance for the circus which employs her. Fevvers claims to have been left as a baby in a basket on the doorstep of a brothel. Until she reached puberty she appeared to be an ordinary child, with the exception of a raised lump on each shoulder; as she begins menstruating, however, she also sprouted complete wings. As a child, she posed as a living statue of Cupid in the reception room of the brothel, but as an adolescent, she is now transformed into the image of the "Winged Victory" holding a sword belonging to Ma Nelson, the madam of the brothel. This stage of Fevvers' life comes to an abrupt end when Ma Nelson slips in the street and falls into the path of a carriage. The house and its contents is inherited by her pious brother who plans to convert it to a house for fallen women, but Ma Nelson's employees burn the place down and go their separate ways. Fevvers continues her story, although doubt is cast on the veracity of her narrative voice throughout. She and Lizzie, she tells Walser, next move in with Lizzie's sister and help run the family ice cream parlour. However, when the family falls on hard times Fevvers accepts an invitation from the fearsome Madame Schreck. This lady puts Fevvers on display in her exclusive combination of freak show and brothel, along with several other women with unique appearances. After some time Madame Schreck sells Fevvers to a customer, "Christian Rosencreutz", who wishes to sacrifice a winged 'virgo intacta' in order to procure his own immortality. Fevvers narrowly escapes and returns to Lizzie's sister's home. Soon after their reunion, she joins Colonel Kearney's circus as an aerialiste and achieves enormous fame. The London section concludes with Walser telling his chief at the London office that he is going to follow Fevvers, joining the circus on its grand imperial tour. The Petersburg section begins as Walser, living in Clown Alley, types up his first impressions of the city. We learn that Walser approached Colonel Kearney who, taking advice from his fortune telling pig Sybil, offered him a position as a clown in the circus. The reader, and Walser, are introduced to the other members of the circus and Walser saves Mignon from being eaten by a tigress. In the next scene the chief clown Buffo and his troupe invoke chaos at their dinner table. Walser ducks out of the meleé only to find Mignon waiting outside for him, as she has nowhere else to go after her husband and lover have both abandoned her. Not sure what to do with the abandoned woman, he takes her to Fevvers's hotel room. Fevvers assumes that Walser is sleeping with Mignon but, though jealous, takes care of the girl. On recognising the beauty of Mignon's singing voice Fevvers introduces her to the Princess of Abyssinia. The Princess, a silent tiger tamer, incorporates Mignon into her act with the dancing cats and Walser is recruited as partner to the redundant tigress. During rehearsals, the acrobatic Charivari family tries to kill Fevvers and the Colonel reluctantly kicks them out of the circus. Buffo the Great loses his mind during that night's performance and tries to kill Walser. The Princess has to shoot one of her tigresses when she becomes jealous of Mignon for dancing with her tiger mate during the tiger waltz. After her performance, Fevvers goes to a date at a mansion belonging to the Grand Duke. Here, she almost falls victim to his amorous advances but narrowly escapes into a Fabergé egg, reaching the circus train as it is about to pull out of the station. This last scene is deliberately bewildering, developing the sense of doubt cast upon the reader in Fevvers' early narrative and laying the foundations for the fantastic occurrences of the final section. The Siberian section opens with the entire circus crossing the continent to Asia. The train is attacked by a band of runaway outlaws who think that Fevvers can help them make contact with the Tsar, who will then allow them to return home to their villages. As the train is now destroyed, the entire circus, other than Walser, is marched to the convicts' encampment; Walser is rescued by a group of escaped murderesses and their former guards, who have become their lovers and helped them to escape. As Walser has amnesia, the band of women leaves him for an approaching rescue party but he flees into the woods before they reach him and is taken under the wing of a village shaman. Fevvers and the rest of the party are being held captive by the convicts. Fevvers tells the convict leader that she cannot help them as everything that they have heard about her is a lie. Depressed, the convicts sink into drunken mourning. Lizzie convinces the clowns to put on a show for the convicts, during which a blizzard comes, blowing the clowns and the convicts away with it into the night. The remnants of the circus begin to walk in the direction in which they hope civilization lies. They come across a run-down music school and take shelter with its owner, the Maestro. A brief encounter with Walser, now thoroughly part of the shaman's village, convinces Fevvers and Lizzie to leave the safety of the Maestro's school to search for Walser. Colonel Kearney leaves the group to continue his quest for civilization so as to build another, and more successful, circus. Mignon, the Princess and Samson remain with the Maestro at his music school. Fevvers finds Walser and the story ends with them together at the moment that the new century dawns and Fevvers' victorious cry "to think I really fooled you". |
3921865 | /m/0b6xc5 | Pilgrimage to Hell | Laurence James | 1986-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction"} | A major character of the saga who appears in this novel is the Trader, who apparently goes off to die alone near the end of the book, but is constantly referenced in future novels. It also brings Doc Tanner (a senile-sounding gentleman with knowledge of pre-war America) to the group, and gives us our first glance at one of the series' long running mutant menaces : Stickies. This book also introduces the Redoubts, in particular the Cerberus Redoubt, and the MAT-TRANS teleport chambers that are a major plot device driving the series. |
3924503 | /m/0b70pn | The Author of Beltraffio | Henry James | 1884 | {"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The narrator of the story, a somewhat naive American admirer of English novelist Mark Ambient, visits the writer at his home in Surrey. The narrator is very enthusiastic about Ambient's work, especially his latest novel Beltraffio. He meets Ambient's beautiful but chilly wife, his sickly seven-year-old son Dolcino, and his strange sister Gwendolyn. He also learns that Ambient's wife strongly dislikes her husband's novels and considers them corrupt and pagan. Dolcino eventually becomes much more ill. In order to "protect" him from what she sees as the baleful influence of his father, Ambient's wife withholds the boy's medicine. Dolcino dies, and the details of his mother's conduct are told to the narrator by Gwendolyn. The mother, grief-stricken over her role in Dolcino's final illness, dies herself after a few months. In a grimly ironic note to conclude the story, the narrator says Ambient later revealed that his wife had become partially reconciled to his novels and even read Beltraffio in the weeks before her death. |
3924740 | /m/0b710h | Etidorhpa | John Uri Lloyd | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The complex structure of the books begins with a Preface signed by Lloyd, which presents the frame concept, that Lloyd has discovered a thirty-year-old manuscript by Llewellyn Drury in a library. Then comes a Prologue in which Drury introduces himself. The book's Chapter I begins the story of how Drury met the mysterious "I-Am-The-Man", who reads his own manuscript account of his adventures to Drury over many sessions. The mysterious stranger, also known as The-Man-Who-Did-It, relates events that supposedly occurred thirty years earlier, during the early part of the nineteenth century. By his account, the speaker is kidnapped by fellow members of a secret society, because he is suspected to be a threat to their secrecy. (This was likely based on the 1826 kidnapping of William Morgan and the start of the Anti-Masonry movement.) I-Am-The-Man is taken to a cave in Kentucky; there he is led by a cavern dweller on a long subterranean journey. It becomes an inner journey of the spirit as much as a geographical trip through underground realms. The book blends passages on the nature of physical phenomena, such as gravity and volcanoes, with spiritualist speculation and adventure-story elements (like traversing a landscape of giant mushrooms). The whole ends with a summary letter from "I-Am-The-Man" and a conclusion from Drury. Subsequent editions of the book added various prefatory and supplementary materials. |
3927411 | /m/0b74g1 | Valiant : A Modern Tale of Faerie | Holly Black | 2005 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The book follows the life of runaway Valerie Russell in New York. Valerie is the child of a single mother and is quite tomboyish. At the start of the novel, Val attends high school, is a lacrosse player, and is best friends with the eccentric lesbian-identified Ruth. Val discovers her boyfriend, Tom, and her mother are having an affair. Betrayed and not sure where to go, Val runs away to New York City. She meets up with a group of teen-squatters, including Lolli (as in lollipop), Dave, and Luis. Val earns the nickname "Prince Valiant" after she helps a drag queen locate her shoe. This may be a homage to Hal Foster's comic strip, Prince Valiant or Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur. Though she earns the trust of the rest of the group, Luis remains wary of Val. She soon learns about the group's contact with a troll, Ravus. He lives beneath a bridge, a reference to the traditional fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Ravus also makes 'Never' that faeries in exile use so their bodies can be resistant towards iron. These exiles are dispersed throughout the city, and Dave and Luis must deliver the glamour to them. 'Never', according to the novel, can be used as a drug by humans. When used, humans are given magic for a short period of time. It's highly addictive; a comparison can be drawn between it and heroin. Lolli and Dave introduce Val to taking "Nevermore," as they refer to it. Val, like the other squatters, is soon hooked. Ravus, despite Val's first impressions, is much kinder than he appears. He begins to teach her swordplay and the bond between them strengthens. Val's mounting problems and addiction take a nasty turn, and the trust Ravus has in her is threatened. Many of the Seelie court exiles are being poisoned. Ravus is blamed for the crime. When Ruth arrives, attempting to convince Val to come home, she refuses and Ruth insists she won't leave without Val. Val agrees to go home, but says she must say goodbye to Ravus before she leaves. She attempts to find him in his alcove, but he is not home, so she finds Ruth, Lolli and Luis by Belvedere Castle. Luis, all the while making sexual thenceforwards with Lolli very unexpectedly, informs her Dave has angrily stormed off, and they all fall asleep in a terrible state. In the middle of the night, Val awakes to see a tree-spirit faerie, who leads her to a festival by the water, where faeries and humans called "sweet tooths" run around freely. Ravus arrives, and delirious and half-starved, Val kisses him. He is pleased, until Mabry arrives as well, and when Val realized Mabry is the one who killed all the Fey. She tries to tell Ravus but Mabry cuts in, telling Ravus Val has been stealing his potions, and she flees as he becomes enraged. Ruth and Val go to find evidence of Mabry's murders, and they find a harp in which Mabry has strung the hair of those she's killed, including that of Tamson, Ravus' best friend and Mabry's ex-lover. When the hairs are plucked, they sing of their deaths, revealing that Mabry is responsible for Tamson's death and Ravus' exile. The girls also find Luis. The three of them come back to the other Luis and Lolli, and they realize that Dave is impersonating Luis, uncontrollably high off Never he got from Mabry after putting poison in Ravus' potions for her. Dave takes off his glamour, laughing, and falls unconscious. Ruth rushes him to the hospital as Lolli runs off, and Luis and Val rush to find Ravus so he can cure Dave. They find that Mabry has cut out Ravus' heart, and she runs off to the Unseelie Court with it. When she leaves, Val pulls back the curtains and turn Ravus to stone, and Val and Luis pursue Mabry into the Unseelie Court. She challenges Mabry to a first-blood duel for Ravus' heart with the glass sword belonging to Ravus, and after a moment's decision to never use Never again, she fights Mabry on talent alone, stabbing Mabry in the throat. She and Luis rush back to Ravus, and after placing his heart back into his chest, he instantly heals. Ravus gives Luis the tools to go heal his brother, and he and Val finally admit their love for one another. Eventually, Val decides to leave the streets and return home with Ruth. She and Ravus continually see one another, and Val says she plans to go to NY for college so she can see him. The two kiss, and Val is happy her life is back to normal, with the exception of having a faerie for a boyfriend and never being able to introduce him to her mother. Some fans have pointed out that Lolli, Dave and Luis are similar to Lutie-loo, Gristle and Spike from Tithe, respectively. Note: In the book Roiben and Kaye make appearances. Silarial and Nicnevin are referred to by Mabry. |
3928946 | /m/0b76hp | Villa Incognito | Tom Robbins | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Following the arrest of one of the MIAs, for trafficking drugs while dressed as a priest, the novel depicts American life in a post-9/11 context through the involvement of the two sisters. |
3934211 | /m/0b7h89 | Uncle Fred in the Springtime | P. G. Wodehouse | 8/18/1939 | {"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In London, Pongo Twistleton is having money troubles, and his wealthy friend Horace Pendlebury-Davenport is in trouble with his girl, Pongo's sister Valerie, for hiring Claude "Mustard" Pott to trail her during the Drones Club weekend at Le Touquet. Pongo resolves to call in the redoubtable Uncle Fred for assistance. Meanwhile at Blandings, Horace's uncle the Duke of Dunstable, as well demanding eggs to throw at whistling gardeners, has taken it into his head that the Empress needs some fitness training, and Lord Emsworth needs help; in the absence of his trusty brother Galahad, he calls in the next best thing: Gally's old friend Uncle Fred. Horace, having fallen out with his cousin Ricky Gilpin over Gilpin's fiancee Polly Pott, daughter of Mustard, lands Pongo even further in the soup by being dressed as a Zulu rather than a Boy Scout during a round of the Clothes Stakes, run by Pott at the Drones. While Uncle Fred ponders how to get Polly into Blandings to court her prospective uncle-in-law, Emsworth gives them a chance by insulting Sir Roderick "Pimples" Glossop, who he was supposed to engage to analyse the increasingly loopy Duke of Dunstable. Fred seizes his chance, and heads down to Blandings posing as Glossop, with Pongo playing the role of his secretary and nephew, and Polly his daughter Gwendolyne. They meet Glossop on the train, but head him off, only to pass him into the hands of Rupert Baxter, now working for the Duke. Arriving at Blandings, they are met by Lord Bosham, who was conned out of his wallet by Uncle Fred the previous day. Baxter is sacked, having been seen at a ball by Horace, but is taken on again when Uncle Fred persuades Horace, and the Duke, that Horace is suffering delusions. Horace heads off for a rest-cure, and Baxter is left unable to reveal that he has seen through Fred disguise, having met the real Glossop before. Baxter, however, is put on his guard, and informs Lady Constance; she in turn has Bosham hire a detective to protect her jewels, and he of course selects Mustard Pott. Dunstable's scheme to acquire the pig continues apace, and he calls in his strapping nephew to help, but when Gilpin asks for funds to buy an onion soup bar, thus enabling him to marry Polly, the two row and part. Dunstable ropes in Baxter instead. Uncle Fred, meeting Pott just after he has taken £250 from Lord Bosham at Persian Monarchs, takes the money off him, insisting it will help Polly marry wealthy Horace. Pott, meeting Gilpin at the The Emsworth Arms, tells him this story, and the enraged poet chases a fearful Horace back to the Castle. Fred gives the money to Pongo to pass on to Polly for Gilpin's benefit, but she is spurned by him, and lets Pongo use the cash to pay off his debts. When Fred has reunited the couple, more money is required. Pott is persuaded to take it from Dunstable at Persian Monarchs, but the wily peer wins himself £300. Fred tries to get it back, but Dunstable has the pig, captured earlier by Baxter, hidden in his bathroom, and is keeping his room under lock and key. Having knocked out the vigilant Baxter with a Mickey Finn, Fred finally gains access to the room, Pongo having lured Dunstable away with a rendition of "The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". He is caught by a shotgun-bearing Bosham, just as Pott drinks a second Mickey destined for Dunstable, and is locked in a cupboard. Valerie arrives, reunited with her man and hot for vengeance on the uncle that made her Horace think himself insane, and confirms Fred's identity; Fred convinces all that Emsworth has become infatuated with Polly, and that he is there to put a stop to it. He takes Dunstable's roll of cash to pay the girl off, insisting that his visit remain a secret to maintain the Threepwood dignity, and heads back to London with not only the money for Gilpin's soup bar, but an extra fifty quid for himself to blow on a few joyous weeks in the city. |
3934685 | /m/0b7hyw | Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth | null | null | null | Commissioner Gordon informs Batman that the patients of Arkham Asylum have taken over the facility, threatening to murder the staff unless Batman agrees to meet with them. Among the hostages is Dr. Charles Cavendish, Arkham's administrator, and Dr. Ruth Adams, a therapist. The patients are led by the Joker, who kills a guard to spur Batman to obey his wishes. Meanwhile, Two-Face's mental condition has deteriorated as a result of Adams' therapy; she replaced Two-Face's trademark coin with a six-sided die and a tarot deck, hoping that he would realize that he doesn't need any of them. Instead, the treatment renders him incapable of even making simple decisions, such as going to the bathroom. The Joker forces Batman into a game of hide and seek, giving him one hour to escape Arkham before his adversaries are sent to hunt him down. However, unbeknownst to Batman, the Joker shortens the time from one hour after being pressured by the other inmates. Batman subsequently encounters Clayface, Mad Hatter, and Maxie Zeus, among other villains. During a struggle with Killer Croc, Batman is thrown out of a window, grabbing onto the statue of an angel. Clutching the statue's bronze spear, Batman climbs back inside and impales Croc before throwing him out the window, sustaining a severe wound from the spear in the process. Batman finally reaches a secret room high in the towers of the asylum. Inside, he discovers Cavendish dressed in a bridal gown and threatening Adams with a razor. It is revealed that he orchestrated the riots. When questioned by Batman, Cavendish has him read a passage from the diary of the asylum's founder, Amadeus Arkham. In flashbacks, we see that Arkham's mentally ill mother, Elizabeth, suffered delusions of being tormented by a supernatural bat. After seeing the creature himself, Arkham cut his mother's throat to end her suffering. He blocked out the memory, only to have it return after an inmate, Martin "Mad Dog" Hawkins, raped and murdered Arkham's wife and daughter. Traumatized, Arkham donned his mother's wedding dress and razor, vowing to bind the evil spirit of "The Bat" with sorcery. He treats Hawkins for months before finally killing by means of electrocution during a shock therapy session. Arkham continues his mission even after he is incarcerated in his own asylum; using his fingernails, he scratches the words of a binding spell all over his cell until his death. After discovering the diary, razor, and dress, Cavendish came to believe that he was destined to continue Arkham's work. On April Fools Day--the date Arkham's family was murdered--Cavendish released the patients and lured Batman to the asylum, believing him to be the bat Arkham spoke of. Cavendish accuses him of feeding the evil of the asylum by bringing it more insane souls. Batman and Cavendish proceed to struggle, which ends after Adams slashes Cavendish's throat with the razor. Seizing an axe, Batman hacks down the front door of the asylum, proclaiming that the inmates are now free. The Joker offers to put him out of his misery. Batman retrieves Two-Face's coin from Adams and returns it to him, stating that it should be up to Two-Face to decide Batman's fate. Two-Face declares that they will kill Batman if the coin lands scratched side up, but let him go if the unscarred side appears. Two-Face flips the coin and declares Batman free. The Joker bids Batman good-bye, taunting him by saying that should life ever become too much for him in "the asylum" (the outside world) then he always has a place in Arkham. As Batman disappears into the night, Two-Face stands looking at the coin and it is revealed that it landed scratched side up – he chose to let Batman go. He then turns to the stack of tarot cards and recites a passage from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: "Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards." |
3935482 | /m/0b7k3g | Rape of the Fair Country | Alexander Cordell | 1959-01 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Cordell's first successful novel draws the hardship of life in early industrial Wales with the father starting off as positive towards the English coal and iron masters of the time but then on seeing his family and neighbours suffer (and sometime die) he revolts with his son, Iestyn to protest. The family life leads to the fight for trade unions and Chartism. The historical background against which the novel is set is described in considerable detail with profoundly researched events like the 1839 Newport Rising show this book to be worthy of the bestseller status it achieved in the UK as well as the USA. Cordell told of the story of the Chartist movement starting in Wales accurately and clearly like no other, but with a background of humanity of the Mortymer family. |
3935529 | /m/0b7k67 | Enoc Huws | null | null | null | The story concerns the activities of the villainous Captain Trefor, and is set in the small town of Treflan, which appears in two earlier novels by the same author. |
3935667 | /m/0b7kcg | The Secret Room | null | null | null | The story is set in the reign of King Charles II of England and follows the experiences of Quaker leader Rowland Ellis who founded a Welsh colony in Pennsylvania after being forced to leave Wales because of religious persecution. A sequel, Y Rhandir Mwyn (The Gentle Region), continues the story. Rowland Ellis becomes a Quaker as a result of the influence of a neighbour, but his wife does not share his religious beliefs. Following her death, he marries a sympathetic cousin. He is betrayed to the authorities by a servant he has dismissed, who describes a "secret room" he claims to have seen in the house, containing objects of Catholic worship. However, this is not the main reason why the novel is named "The Secret Room", as it also refers to the secret room within one's heart where the inner light is found. Ellis and his fellow Quakers are imprisoned and illegally condemned to death, but are released following the direct intervention of the king. Nevertheless, they decide to leave Wales for a better life in America. cy:Y Stafell Ddirgel |
3937818 | /m/0b7p2c | Black Creek Crossing | John Saul | 3/16/2004 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Angel Sullivan has always been the outcast, suffering the taunts of cruel schoolmates and the wild fits of an alcoholic father. Things for Angel's family have hit rock bottom until a call from her aunt has them moving to a new town and making a fresh start. In the town of Roundtree, Massachusetts a beautiful home awaits, a home that is selling at a steal of a price, there is only one problem...the house at Black Creek Crossing holds a murderous secret. Seth Baker lives in Roundtree and, much the same as Angel, he too is the outcast of his schoolmates, as well the victim of a psychically abusive father. Seth does his best to deal with his father, but finds sanctuary in photograph taking, until he meets Angel. As Seth and Angel become better friends, Seth tells her of the deadly legacy surrounding her home and the rumors of supernatural possession that still dwells there. Angel, desperate for the truth about Black Creek Crossing, uncovers a centuries-old horror that lies within her home's walls. Now, that Angel and Seth have uncovered the dark secrets buried in Roundtree, they find themselves trapped in a maelstrom of desire and violence that will erupt in unspeakable tragedy. `Black Creek Crossing' is a chilling page-turner that begs to be read in one sitting. From the shocking opening to the explosive climax the plot speeds along with unstoppable force. Vivid gothic descriptions and likable characters combined with creepy scares will hold readers breathless until the final page has been turned. |
3939949 | /m/0b7skz | A London Life | Henry James | null | {"/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | Laura Wing, an impoverished American girl, is visiting her sister Selina Berrington in London. Selina's husband Lionel, boorish and often drunk, is preparing to divorce his wife for her adultery with Charlie Crispin. Laura challenges Selina about her affair and doubts Selina's protestations of innocence. Lady Davenant, an elderly friend of the family, counsels Laura not to take her sister's marital troubles so hard. Laura meets a pleasant but boring American named Wendover, who becomes a suitor. Eventually, after a tempestuous and (for the reader) entertaining scene at the opera, Selina leaves her husband and goes to Brussels with Crispin. Laura spurns Wendover's marriage proposal and pursues her sister to Brussels, where she accomplishes nothing. Laura finally goes back to America, where Wendover follows her though there is no assurance as to how their future will play out. The story ends with a reminder that the case of Berrington v. Berrington and others is upcoming in the courts. |
3940646 | /m/0b7td1 | Great Northern? | Arthur Ransome | 1947 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | The Swallows, Amazons and Ds are all on a sailing cruise with Captain Flint in the Outer Hebrides. While the older members of the party clean the boat before returning her to the owner, the younger ones explore inland and a mysterious bird is seen nesting on an island in a loch. The question arises whether it is a Great Northern Diver, which has never been known to nest in the British Isles, or a Black-Throated Diver. Mr Jemmerling the expert they consult turns out to be a deadly enemy of the birds, as he collects birds eggs and stuffed skins of birds. Hence they try to protect the birds while gathering photographic evidence of their nesting. Complicating the matter is a misunderstanding with the local Scottish inhabitants who are mostly Gaelic speaking. As the plot involves more excitement and violence than usual, with the egg-collector attempting to shoot the rare bird of the title, some have classified this book as one of the metafictional stories in the series: a fantasy tale made up by the children themselves. The other two books generally agreed to be metafictional are Peter Duck and Missee Lee. |
3946888 | /m/0b82n7 | Angry White Pyjamas | Robert Twigger | null | {"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"} | The book is set in Tokyo in the mid-1990s. Twigger is living with two friends in a tiny apartment near central Tokyo. They all decide to enrol at the Yoshinkan Hombu Dojo in order to get fit and break out of their sedentary life-style. Soon after beginning regular training, Twigger decides that the only way to truly experience aikido is to do the Yoshinkan Senshusei course, a gruelling 11-month program to train up instructors of Yoshinkan aikido. The course consists of four hours of training, five days a week, in addition to dojo-cleaning duties, special training weekends and demonstrations. Twigger spends the majority of his time describing the rigor and sometimes agony of the very intensive course. He refers to doing kneeling techniques, or suwari-waza, until his knees bled, only to practice the next day and in so doing tear open the scabs. He describes techniques being performed with such vigor and intensity that smashing one's head into the mat was a frequent occurrence. Other experiences on the course include "hajime" sessions where one technique is performed repeatedly, without a break, sometimes for up to half-an-hour or more. During these sessions, trainees sometimes pass out or vomit, especially in the summer months. Instructors sometimes dish out punishments to trainees if they feel they are not pushing themselves enough, including rounds of push-ups, sit-ups and bunny hops. Other people featured in the book include several top Yoshinkan instructors, including Chida, Shioda and Chino, as well as Robert Mustard, the chief foreign instructor and David Rubens from England. Teachers are sometimes portrayed as being quite cold and occasionally brutal and unsympathetic to the students, whom they are trying to push to greater and greater efforts in order to build their technique and "spirit". In addition, Twigger describes other aspects of Tokyo and his life there, including his relationship with his girlfriend and her family, his work at a Japanese high-school as an English teacher, and stories of living with his two flatmates. He also gives thoughts and observations about Japan and Japanese culture. |
3946926 | /m/0b82rr | The Fifth Man | Randall Ingermanson | 2002 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Eight months into their stay on Mars, the life-sciences specialist discovers a microbial fossil. Subsequent to this, the crew begin to suffer various mishaps, including damage to mission property and direct attacks upon themselves. Complicating the situation is the apparent psychiatric breakdown of the mission commander and his definite attempts to injure or kill his fellow crewmembers. On Earth, the Mars Mission Director, working with an agent of the FBI, races to discover who sabotaged the mission before the crew even arrived on Mars—and who might be trying to strand the crew on Mars now that they're on it. He is shocked to discover that his own Flight Director committed the initial sabotage—he was trying to seed Mars with a bacterium that would be taken as evidence of life on Mars, thus ensuring continued funding of Project Ares, the official name for the program. But when the life-sciences specialist falls ill from an actual microbial infection—from live bacteria which she has subsequently discovered—the mishaps multiply, with a corresponding increase in the physical danger to the crew. Someone other than the Flight Director is responsible for this. At the very end, that someone is revealed to be a NASA engineer who fears that the crew, now on their way back to Earth, are bringing back a germ that could potentially kill millions of people—this although the crew clearly showed that the germ was sensitive to the antibiotics they had carried with them. The mission ends with the psychiatrically challenged commander sacrificing his own life to save the rest of the crew—and the marriage of the two mission specialists aboard their Earth Return Vehicle. |
3947088 | /m/0b830h | Beyond the Pleasure Principle | Sigmund Freud | 1920 | null | "Beyond the Pleasure Principle is a difficult text." As Ernest Jones, one of Freud's closest associates and a member of his Inner Ring, put it, "the train of thought [is] by no means easy to follow...and Freud's views on the subject have often been considerably misinterpreted." What have been called the "two distinct frescoes or canti" of Beyond the Pleasure Principle break between sections III and IV. If, as Otto Fenichel remarked, Freud's "new [instinctual] classification has two bases, one speculative, and one clinical", thus far the clinical. In Freud's own words, the second section "is speculation, often far-fetched speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection" - it has been noted that "in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud used that unpromising word "speculations" more than once". Freud begins with "a commonplace then unchallenged in psychoanalytic theory: 'The course of mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle...a strong tendency toward the pleasure principle'". After considering the inevitable presence of unpleasant experiences in the life of the mind, he concludes the book's first section to the effect that the presence of such unpleasant experiences "does not contradict the dominance of the pleasure principle...does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of the pleasure principle." Freud proceeds to look for "evidence, for the existence of hitherto unsuspected forces 'beyond' the pleasure principle."—in four main areas: children's games, as exemplified in his grandson's famous "fort-da" game; "the recurrent dreams of war neurotics...; the pattern of self-injuring behaviour that can be traced through the lives of certain people ["fate neurosis"]; the tendency of many patients in psycho-analysis to act out over and over again unpleasant experiences of their childhood." From these cases, Freud inferred the existence of motivations beyond the pleasure principle. In the first half of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, "a first phase, the most varied manifestations of repetition, considered as their irreducible quality, are attributed to the essence of drives" in precisely the same way. Building on his 1914 article "Recollecting,Repeating and Working Through", Freud highlights how the "patient cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and...is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of...remembering it as something belonging to the past:" a "compulsion to repeat." Freud still wanted to examine the relationship between repetition compulsion and the pleasure principle. Although compulsive behaviors evidently satisfied some sort of drive, they were a source of direct unpleasure. Somehow, "no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these activities having led only to unpleasure. In spite of that, they are repeated, under pressure of a compulsion". Also noting repetitions in the lives of normal people—who appeared to be "pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some "daemonic" power" Arguing that dreams in which one relives trauma serve a binding function in the mind, connected to repetition compulsion, Freud admits that such dreams are an exception to the rule that the dream is the fulfillment of a wish. Asserting that the first task of the mind is to bind excitations to prevent trauma (so that the pleasure principle does not begin to dominate mental activities until the excitations are bound), he reiterates the clinical fact that for "a person in analysis...the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disregards the pleasure principle in every way". Freud begins to look for analogies repetition compulsion in the "essentially conservative...feature of instinctual life...the lower we go in the animal scale the more stereotyped does instinctual behavior appear". Thereafter "a leap in the text can be noticed when Freud places the compulsion to repeat on an equal footing with 'an urge...to restore an earlier state of things'" - ultimately that of the original inorganic condition. Declaring that "the aim of life is death" and "inanimate things existed before living ones", Freud interprets an organism’s drive to avoid danger only as a way of avoiding a short-circuit to death: the organisms seeks to die in its own way. He thus found his way to his celebrated concept of the death instinct. Thereupon, "Freud plunged into the thickets of speculative modern biology, even into philosophy, in search of corroborative evidence" - looking to "arguments of every kind, frequently borrowed from fields outside of psychoanalytic practice, calling to the rescue biology, philosophy, and mythology". He turned to prewar experiments on protozoa - of perhaps questionable relevance, even if it is not the case that 'his interpretation of the experiments on the successive generations of protozoa contains a fatal flaw'. The most that can perhaps be said is that Freud did not find "any biological argument which contradicts his dualistic conception of instinctual life", but at the same time, "as Jones (1957) points out, 'no biological observation can be found to support the idea of a death instinct, one which contradicts all biological principles'" either. Freud then continued with a reference to "the harbour of Schopenhauer's philosophy"; but in groping for a return to the clinical he admitted that "it looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price". Freud eventually decided that he could find a clinical manifestation of the death instinct in the phenomenon of masochism, "hitherto regarded as secondary to sadism...and suggested that there could be a primary masochism, a self-injuring tendency which would be an indication of the death instinct". To then explain the sexual instinct as well in terms of a compulsion to repeat, Freud inserts a myth from Plato that humans are driven to reproduce in order to join together the sexes, which had once existed in single individuals who were both male and female - still "in utter disregard of disciplinary distinctions"; and admits again the speculative nature of his own ideas, "lacking a direct translation of observation into theory....One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray"'. Nevertheless with the libido or Eros as the life force finally set out on the other side of the repetition compulsion equation, the way was clear for the book's closing "vision of two elemental pugnacious forces in the mind, Eros and Thanatos, locked in eternal battle". |
3947476 | /m/0b83jb | Oxygen | Randall Ingermanson | 2001 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | As the novel begins, Dr. Valerie ("Valkerie") Jansen is on a field trip on the slope of Mount Trident on the Alaska Peninsula. In real life, this volcano has not erupted for many years—but in the novel, Mount Trident vents sulfur dioxide into the air, and this gas settles into the valley where Valkerie is encamped. She barely survives the experience, at one point taking the air from the tires of her Jeep, which is the only air available for her to breathe. The next morning, the Chief Administrator of NASA, together with one of NASA's senior physicians, lands on the slope of Mount Trident in a helicopter. They are looking for Valkerie, because they wish to interview her for a position as an Astronaut Candidate. The conversation that follows is very confusing to both sides, chiefly because Valkerie is convinced that Mount Trident is about to erupt and all three must evacuate at once. Eventually, however, Valkerie climbs aboard the helicopter with the two NASA officials. Eventually she is summoned to Houston, Texas, and reports for training at NASA's headquarters complex. A hot dispute between the NASA Administrator and Nate Harrington, the Mars Mission Director, results in her beginning a training regimen that is more grueling than usual, leading her to believe that Harrington wants her dropped from the program on any pretext he can invent. But in fact the NASA brass are very much impressed with her academic record and her seemingly unique ability to cope with "five-sigma" days—days remarkable for a series of dire, often life-threatening crises. (Her breathing the air in her Jeep tires to survive the fumarolic venting incident is a case in point.) As for Mr. Harrington, he has never wanted anything more than to have the NASA administrator respect his prerogatives as Mars Mission Director—and furthermore, he is distracted by a series of events that have nothing to do with Valkerie or her candidacy. Nate's distractions include: a serious budget problem that has forced NASA to sell exclusive broadcast rights to a major television network, a clear threat from a prominent US Senator that he "has the votes" to terminate NASA's flagship program, a compromise of project security that darkly suggests a terrorist plot against NASA (and requires him to have an FBI agent as a semi-regular on the NASA campus)--and a controversy involving the crew selection for Ares 10, which is to be the first crewed mission to Mars. NASA's psychiatrists have abruptly demanded interviews with all members of the Ares 10 crew—Josh Bennett, Kennedy Hampton, Alexis "Lex" Ohta, and Bob "Kaggo" Kaganovski. Bob in particular fears that the psychiatrists want to remove him from the crew—because he has never felt entirely secure in his position, mainly because he does not have the devil-may-care abandon that is part of the "astronaut stereotype" and which Kennedy displays in overabundance. So when the psychiatrists call him in for an interview, he tells them that he would gladly obey any order given him by Josh, the assigned mission commander—not mentioning that he always reserves the right to act as he sees fit if he thinks that Josh, or any other commander, has issued a wrong order. But the psychiatrists are not suspicious of Bob at all, but rather of Josh. Specifically, their protocols inform them that having one man, even the mission commander, dominate the crew is a recipe for disaster. Bob's interview, added to an earlier interview given by Kennedy, only add to their disquiet. During their deliberations, they then run a computer-based decision-analytic model on two possible crew complements—one including Josh, and the other removing Josh as mission commander and assigning Valkerie Jansen to the flight. To everyone's surprise, a crew complement that includes Valkerie scores very high on their decision-analytic indices. Thus the psychiatrists issue their final "recommendation," which carries the force of an order: Josh Bennett is to be dropped from the crew, Kennedy Hampton is to be promoted to mission commander, and the crew will gain a new mission specialist: Valkerie Jansen. Valkerie feels doubly guilty about accepting the assignment. First, she sees herself as usurping the place of another, more experienced astronaut (Josh). Second, she is afraid that a prior association will return to haunt her—specifically, her relationship with a fellow student at Yale University who killed himself in a laboratory explosion he had caused because of his notion of Christian duty. (This bombing incident took place during the heyday of Operation Rescue--and furthermore, the presence of a religious-motivated picket line at NASA's main gate only adds to her apprehensions about having her Christian associations revealed.) Josh is ignorant of her fears concerning her Christian associations, but recognizes that she might feel guilty over supplanting him. So he takes her on a training flight to the Kennedy Space Center and there tells her that her primary duty is to Project Ares, which will shut down completely if she does not accept the assignment. He gallantly offers to take personal responsibility for her remaining training. With this assurance, she returns to Houston and tells Nate Harrington that she will accept the assignment. In January 2014, Ares 10 launches into space. The launch is very violent, because the mission controllers decide to launch in the face of a crosswind that exceeds NASA's stated limits. This causes damage to multiple habitat systems, including the telemetry bus, the Ku-band antenna, and a solar panel. Valkerie develops serious doubts about continuing the mission, especially when she catches Kennedy in a lie about a chemical fluid spill (he says that he spilled juice from a snack container, but Valkerie knows better) and then appears to threaten her with the non-regulation acetylene blowtorch he has brought aboard. Bob is actually no more eager to continue than Valkerie. But Kennedy insists on continuing the mission and browbeats his crew into telling Houston that they are all agreed. Subsequently, they perform trans-Martian injection, thus committing themselves. Three months later, they have repaired their data telemetry bus, and Kennedy and Bob perform an EVA to repair the Ku-band antenna, a repair that would have been pointless before. After completing the repair, they proceed to inspect the dual solar panels to see whether they can repair the damaged panel. Bob discovers some stray exposed wires that do not appear on anyone's schematics of the habitat. He proceeds to test them with a multimeter--and by a fateful error, sets the multimeter to measure resistance rather than electromotive potential ("voltage"). As a result, he inadvertently bridges a circuit between the wires—and thus causes an explosion. Someone has, quite simply, planted a bomb on board, and Bob has triggered it. The explosion blows away the otherwise intact solar panel, compromises the hull, and dazes Bob and fills his arm with what turns out to be stainless-steel shrapnel—a detail whose full significance the astronauts will realize only much later. Valkerie, standing by in the EVA suit room, immediately suits up, places the unconscious Lex Ohta into a rescue bubble, hastily repairs the hull breach, and releases the remaining oxygen from the fuel-cell tanks. Only then can she open the airlock to admit Kennedy, who at first insists that Bob is dead. Valkerie, believing that Kennedy acted carelessly, goes outside to fetch him in. Presently Bob recovers enough to discover that Valkerie's repair was incomplete, and simply asks her to help him make a more complete repair. But as a result of the original hull breach and Valkerie's incomplete repair efforts, the crew no longer has enough oxygen on board to survive the transit to Mars. Neither will they have sufficient power for all ship's systems from the remaining solar panel when they reach Mars. When NASA—represented by a very shaken Josh Bennett as CapCom—fails to inform them of this fact in a timely fashion, the astronauts bleakly conclude that they can no longer trust NASA. Josh Bennett refuses to give up on the crew. He remembers that an Earth Return Vehicle is on its way to Mars at the same time, and proposes to accelerate it to intercept Ares 10, so that the crew can use it as a lifeboat. Engineer Cathe Willison computes a solution for the intercept—but then points out that the oxygen will only last if two of the crew sacrifice themselves. Valkerie, however, proposes another solution: observing that Lex, who is still in a coma, is consuming less oxygen, she proposes that two other astronauts go into drug-induced comas, with one astronaut remaining awake to accomplish the rendezvous and then reawaken the rest of the crew. NASA's doctors conclude that Valkerie could in fact synthesize enough sodium pentathol to accomplish this plan. But this raises the question of which astronaut will remain awake. That question is more than academic—because a review of surveillance tapes made inside the habitat prior to launch identifies six people only who could have planted the bomb—the four members of the crew, Josh Bennett, and Nate Harrington. No one suspects Nate or Josh (not yet), and so the astronauts suspect one another—and furthermore, Kennedy is deliberately manipulating his crewmates' emotions, even to the point of crudely demanding sexual favors from Valkerie (which she refuses to grant). Two further items of evidence eventually decide the issue in Valkerie's favor. One, Josh Bennett discovers that Kennedy in fact manipulated NASA's psychiatric brass in order to have Josh removed from the crew. Two, a computer simulation predicts that if Bob is the one to stay awake, he'll use up all the oxygen. Bob, ever reserving his right to act at discretion, secretly prepares a dose of sodium pentathol to use on Valkerie after she has sedated Kennedy. But at the last minute, Valkerie tells him that she forgives him for not trusting her. He cannot bring himself to rebel against Valkerie, and so allows her to sedate him. Valkerie now faces a problem with which she almost cannot cope: total isolation, with no one to converse with—not even Houston, because she must power down the radio to conserve energy. She spends most of the time in prayer, but mostly crying out to God to "send her an e-mail" and give her a reason to believe. As the ERV continues its approach, Valkerie asks for and receives permission to revive Bob so that he can help her pilot the habitat to a rendezvous with the ERV. Unhappily, the ERV is approaching far too fast. Valkerie's attempt to match velocity with it ends in failure, and worse—she uses up more fuel than they can spare. With the ERV speeding past the habitat, Bob and Valkerie suddenly remember that the ERV carries a crew re-entry vehicle with its own engine. They issue orders to detach it from the ERV and bring it to a slow rendezvous—and then Valkerie makes another spacewalk to cut loose its oxygen tank and bring it aboard. Bob, in turn, receives instructions to build a Sabatier scrubber—an ultra-low-power device for removing carbon dioxide from the ship's air. They then reawaken Kennedy, who must regain his strength to perform the landing—and then decide that the only way they can land is to abandon the original mission profile calling for a Martian orbital capture, and instead dive straight down to the Martian surface. This is an incredibly risky maneuver, one which they almost do not complete because they are about to use an aerobrake deployment system that is non-functional. (Another failure of trust is responsible for this predicament, which they avoid only by some last-minute deduction of NASA's true intentions.) They intend to land in a camp that previous missions have already established—but they end up landing too far away. However, they manage to pool their remaining oxygen to give to Bob and Kennedy, so that they can retrieve a pressurized powered rover to rescue Valkerie and Lex. When the men return, they find the women unconscious and seemingly dead—but Valkerie has found Bob's hidden dose of sodium pentathol and uses that to put her and Lex into a coma once again—so that they survive, but Valkerie suffers multiple rib fractures when Bob attempts cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Finally, the astronauts realize the significance of the stainless-steel shrapnel with which Bob had been wounded in the initial explosion. None of the ship's systems was made of stainless steel—in fact, the lack of any material but plastic was a source of great frustration to Valkerie when she first attempted to seal the hull breach. Valkerie and Lex realize that the stainless steel must have come from a bacterial culture vial that Josh Bennett had received from a former girlfriend in Antarctica—and that the vial contained a radiation-resistant bacterium, the same one that in fact had contaminated some of the ship's systems after the explosion. Now the astronauts realize what has happened to them: Josh Bennett, fearing cancellation of Project Ares and the disbanding of NASA, sought to "seed" a radio-resistant bacterium on Mars for the astronauts to "discover." To accomplish this, he did plant a bomb on board, designed to detonate with the deployment of the aerobrakes. But the damage to the habitat on the rocky launch ultimately caused the bomb to detonate in transit. This also explains Josh's brittle emotional state—he realizes that his attempt to give the astronauts something to discover very nearly killed them instead. Bob ultimately tells Josh that Valkerie has figured it out, and that they all forgive him for what he did, knowing as they do that he never meant them any harm. The last scene is a set-up for the sequel: Bob, who is now enamored of Valkerie, proposes marriage to her before a worldwide six-billion-strong television audience that has tuned into watch "the first two astronauts to walk on Mars." |
3948679 | /m/0b853j | The Tenants of Moonbloom | Edward Lewis Wallant | 1963 | null | The story documents the emotional awakening of Norman Moonbloom, an isolated, apathetic man in his thirties who, having recently ended a career as 'perpetual student', is now reluctantly in the employ of his brother Irwin as a property agent. Irwin's tenants occupy a series of dilapidated apartments in some of the poorer areas of Manhattan, and Norman's life consists of attempting to collect their rent while constantly making them empty promises about much-needed repairs. At first, Moonbloom resolutely insulates himself against his troublesome tenants, with their incessant complaining and idiosyncratic ways. Little by little, however, his defenses begin crumbling as they talk to him, argue with him, and impart to him their secrets and hopes. These unaccustomed intimacies bring on a seismic shift in Norman's personality, eventually inspiring him to defy his brother (who wants the apartments left exactly as they are) by undertaking all the promised repairs himself. As he goes from apartment to apartment, painting, plastering, and further immersing himself in his tenants' lives, the meek little rent collector finally comes to life. |
3948986 | /m/0b85hd | Inexcusable | Chris Lynch | 10/25/2005 | null | The novel begins with Keir arguing with Gigi about the events which occurred the night before. It continues with Keir's first-person narration of his senior year in high school. Keir is crushed when he learns that Gigi has accused him of date rape. He goes on to tell Gigi that he loves her, and would never do such a thing. One of Keir's main problems is his home life. His father treats him more like a friend than a son. The big question throughout the novel is this: "Could a self-proclaimed "good guy" be capable of such a heinous act?" Keir goes over the events of his senior year that led to this night, and how this could have happened. The novel never mentions Gigi's point of view, so her feelings and thoughts are not taken into consideration through the use of dialogue. As the novel unfolds, Keir becomes more unpopular because of his substance abuse, school behavior, and his infamous tackle on the football field giving him the nickname "Killer." Keir's self-image dissipates after he accidentally paralyzes an opponent, participates in bullying classmates, and then tries cocaine. First, he leans on Gigi because she listens to him and doesn't judge him. Once he learns about Gigi and her new boyfriend, he is angry and leans on his two sisters, Fran and Mary. Keir's older sisters have mixed feelings about his behavior. He leans on Fran the most because she sees the "good" in Keir despite his terrible actions. One night close to graduation, after a night of partying and substance abuse, Gigi decides to accompany Keir on a visit to Fran's college and they end up in her dorm room alone. In addition to all of this, Gigi tells Keir that her boyfriend could not go to the dance and she needed him to come with her to the dance. When they were both in that cabin there were two beds and when Keir saw how beautiful Gigi looked he went to her bed and something inexcusable happened. Then, the setting reverts back to the opening with the two arguing about what happened while they were sleeping next to each other. |
3949059 | /m/0b85nq | Albert Angelo | B.S. Johnson | 1964 | null | Albert Angelo tells the story of Albert Albert, a substitute teacher who longs to be a professional architect. He has had to resort to teaching to make ends meet, as he is not an accomplished enough architect to make a living from it. Living in a flat in the Angel in London, he finds himself teaching in increasingly tougher schools, and part of the story concerns his struggle with difficult pupils in class, mirroring Albert's struggle with life in general. Through the reproduction of some of their essays, we also learn the pupils' opinions of Albert and their attitudes towards him, which are often hilarious. Albert devotes much thought to his ex-girlfriend Jenny, with whom he is still very much in love and who he feels betrayed him. He reminisces about her frequently. His friend Terry, whom he accompanies to late-night cafes, was also 'betrayed' by a woman, and their friendship is built upon this common experience. The story is at times humorous and at others incredibly serious. As is usual in a Johnson novel sexuality is openly and frankly discussed. Johnson's writing technique allows us to view Albert's character from many angles. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.