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4603131 | /m/0cc2r9 | Lady into Fox | David Garnett | 1922 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Sylvia Tebrick, the 24-year-old wife of Richard Tebrick, suddenly turns into a fox while they are out walking in the woods. Mr. Tebrick sends away all the servants in an attempt to keep Sylvia's new nature a secret, although Sylvia's childhood nurse returns. While Sylvia initially acts human, insisting on wearing clothing and playing piquet, her behaviour increasingly becomes that characteristic of a vixen. Eventually, Mr. Tebrick releases Sylvia into the wild, where she gives birth to five cubs, whom Tebrick names and plays with every day. Despite Tebrick's efforts to protect Sylvia and her cubs, she is ultimately killed by dogs during a hunt; Tebrick, who tried to save Sylvia from the dogs, is badly wounded, but eventually recovers. McSweeney's Collins Library imprint republished Lady into Fox in 2004. |
4604724 | /m/0cc615 | The Wandering Fire | Guy Gavriel Kay | 1986 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Six months have passed since the end of The Summer Tree, and Kim is waiting for the dream that will tell her how to summon the Warrior to aid them in their battle against Maugrim. Jennifer is pregnant with Rakoth Maugrim's child and, surprisingly, is determined to have the baby—aware that Maugrim wanted her dead, she is determined not only to live but to have the child, believing that it will be both an answer and a threat to him. She and Paul are menaced in their own world by Galadan; Paul, tapping the potent but unreliable power of Mörnir that lives in him since his three nights on the Summer Tree, takes the two of them back to Fionavar. They arrive safely but the crossing brings on Jennifer's labor. When the child is born she names him Darien and gives him to Vae and Shahar, the parents of Finn. Jaelle sends Paul and Jennifer back to their own world. In the spring, Kim and the others go to Stonehenge, where a dream has revealed to Kim she can call on Uther Pendragon to find out where Arthur is buried. She succeeds in raising Uther and extracting from him the name by which Arthur may be summoned. Using the Baelrath, she sends the others to Fionavar and herself to Glastonbury Tor, where she summons Arthur with the name Childslayer. Arthur is bound to answer to this name because of the May Babies, children he had ordered slain in an attempt to forestall Mordred's growing to manhood. Kim and Arthur rejoin the others in Fionavar. This time, Fionavar is in the midst of an unnatural months-long winter. Upon meeting Arthur, a flood of memories awakens in Jennifer and she recalls her life as Guinevere. Unable to break through the walls she created to survive her ordeal in Starkadh, Jennifer retreats to the temple of Dana, relieved that at least there is no Lancelot and so although she cannot love Arthur, at least she won't betray him. Meanwhile, Darien is growing up unnaturally quickly, like all andain, so Vae, Shahar and Finn move to Ysanne's cottage by the lake. Darien is a loving little boy and devoted to Finn—but he also hears voices in the storm and sometimes unknowingly flexes the power he inherited from his father, which makes his eyes turn red. On the Plains, the eltor are bogged down in the snow and harried by Galadan's wolves. The Dalrei do their best to protect the herds but come under attack by an army of urgach mounted on slaug. Diarmuid and his men, with Dave and Kevin, arrive in time to thwart the initial assault, but it is Tabor, mounted on Imraith-Nimphais, who finally saves them. Ivor worries that his son's bond with the deadly but beautiful magical beast will weaken Tabor's hold on the real world. Kim, Dave, Levon and a small band make their way to the Cave of the Sleepers and Dave blows Owein's Horn to wake the Wild Hunt. Owein and seven shadowy kings awaken, but there are nine horses. Just as the Hunt is about to rampage forth looking for their missing member, Finn arrives and takes his place on the ninth horse: this is his Longest Road, riding with the Wild Hunt. The entire company (except for Paul who remains with Darien) journeys to Gwen Ystrat, a location sacred to the goddess, arriving (by chance?) on Midsummer Eve, or Maidaladan, a night of potent sexual/erotic magic. Kim, Gereint, Jaelle and the mages discover that Metran, renegade first mage of Brennin, is making the winter on an island; since all the ports are frozen, they cannot get to him to stop him. Kevin is wounded during a boar hunt which he realizes marks him as belonging to the Goddess. That night, Midsummer Eve, Diarmuid and Sharra admit their love for each other; meanwhile, Kevin follows Cavall to the cave of Dun Maura where he sacrifices his life to the Goddess, allowing her to intercede and, with the magic unleashed from his sacrifice, end the winter that has been looming over Fionavar. Freed from winter, war begins. Kim and Brock journey to the mountains where they are attacked by brigands. The Dalrei are attacked by a vast army of the Dark, and only Dave's summoning of the Wild Hunt by blowing Owein's Horn turns the tide. However, the Hunt are as wild as their name, and when they finish slaughtering the armies of the Dark they turn on the Dalrei and the other armies of the Light. Ceinwen intervenes, and that night she takes Dave as her lover. Meanwhile Darien has used his powers to accelerate his growth and, now a young man, overhears Cernan ask Paul why "the child" was allowed to live. Angry, hurt by Finn's desertion, feeling unwanted and unloved, Darien decides to seek his father, Maugrim. Jennifer comes to terms with her past and has one day of joyous reunion with Arthur, both of them daring to hope that this time things will be different since there is "no third" (i.e. no Lancelot). Arthur, Loren, Matt, Paul and Diarmuid set sail for Cader Sedat, and Jennifer goes to Lisen's tower with Brendel to await their return. The ship, Prydwen, reaches Cader Sedat and the company discovers that Metran is fueling his unnatural winter by draining the life from hundreds of svart alfar, resurrecting them again and again using the Cauldron of Khath Meigol. Loren breaks the spell and kills Metran but in the process draws so much power that Matt dies. Below the castle, the company finds the Chamber of the Dead and Arthur, shouldering the full weight of his repeated penance, awakens Lancelot du Lac. Lancelot exercises his gift of healing and brings Matt back to life, though death has broken the binding between Matt and Loren and so Loren is no longer a mage. The company prepares to depart; Lancelot is reluctant to accompany them, knowing that his mere presence will cause yet more pain to Arthur and Guinevere, both of whom he loves so deeply. "Then Arthur spoke, and there was sorrow in his voice and there was love. 'Oh, Lance, come," he said. "She will be waiting for you.' " (WF, p. 244). And so the company, including Lancelot, prepares to depart for home. |
4607751 | /m/0ccc6g | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Pierre Boulle | 1952 | {"/m/098tmk": "War novel"} | The story describes the mistreatment of prisoners in the POW camp and how they tried to sabotage the construction of the bridge. Lt. Colonel Nicholson marches his men into Prisoner of War Camp 16, commanded by Colonel Saito. Saito announces that the prisoners will be required to work on construction of a bridge over the River Kwai so that the railroad connection between Bangkok and Rangoon can be completed. However, Saito also demands that all men, including officers, will do manual labor. In response to this, Nicholson informs Saito that, under the Geneva Convention, officers cannot be required to do hard work. Saito reiterates his demand and Nicholson remains adamant in his refusal to submit his officers to manual labor. Because of Nicholson's unwillingness to back down, he and his officers are placed in the "ovens"—small, iron boxes sitting in the heat of day. Eventually, Nicholson's stubbornness forces Saito to relent. Construction of the bridge serves as a symbol of the preservation of professionalism and personal integrity to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against Colonel Saito, the warden of the Japanese POW camp, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which to sacrifice: his patriotism or his pride. Boulle's view of the British officers was satirical. Colonel Nicholson is portrayed as the perfect example of the military snob, but Boulle also examines friendship between individual soldiers, both among captors and captives. The victorious Japanese soldiers cooperate with their prisoners, who strive to establish their superiority through the construction of the bridge. |
4608116 | /m/0ccctj | Doctor Zhivago | Boris Pasternak | 1957 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Imperial Russia, 1903. The novel opens during a Russian Orthodox funeral liturgy, or panikhida, for Yuri's mother, Marya Nikolaevna Zhivago. Having long ago been abandoned by his father, Yuri is taken in by his maternal uncle, a former Orthodox priest and philosopher. Formerly a wealthy member of Moscow's merchant gentry, Yuri's father, Andrei Zhivago, has squandered the family's millions through debauchery and carousing, and has been progressively bled dry by the corrupt lawyer Viktor Komarovsky. Komarovsky's connections extend to senior figures in both the Tsarist State and its Marxist opponents. Following his wife's funeral, Andrei learns the true nature of Komarovsky and confronts him during a railway journey. Moments later, a devastated Andrei commits suicide by jumping from the train. Almost within sight of this, Yuri is staying at the estate of Duplyanka, where his uncle is working on a book advocating land reform. During the Russo-Japanese War, Amalia Karlovna Guichard, a Russified Frenchwoman and the widow of a Belgian engineer, arrives in Moscow from the Urals. At Komarovsky's insistence, she enrolls her son Rodion in the Cadet Corps and sends her daughter Lara to a girls' high school. For her own support, Amalia purchases a dressmaking shop in a working class section of Moscow. Despite his ongoing affair with Amalia, Komarovsky begins paying court to Lara behind her mother's back. Although terrified of the consequences, Lara succumbs to his advances and they begin a discreet affair. Despite her intense resentment of Komarovsky, Lara becomes very adept at using her sensuality to manipulate her besotted lover. Meanwhile, Komarovsky's feelings for Lara begin to reawaken his long dormant conscience. Feeling deeply ashamed of what he has done to her, Komarovsky tells Lara that he wishes to marry her. Indignant, Lara refuses to permit this. Suspecting the worst, Amalia attempts suicide by drinking poison. Zhivago, along with his fellow medical student Misha Gordon, visit with a doctor and successfully save Amalia's life. Obsessed with freeing herself from Komarovsky, Lara spends three years working as a governess for the children of Lavrenti Kologrivov, a wealthy silk manufacturer with Marxist sympathies. Then, Lara's brother Rodion Guishar begs her to ask Komarovsky to lend him 700 rubles, to replace that same amount which he has stolen and gambled away. Infuriated, Lara instead obtains the money from Kologrivov and severs ties to her brother. However, when the children graduate, Lara resents that the Kologrivovs allow her to stay on out of charity. Believing that Komarovsky has ruined her life, she attends a Christmas party and shoots at him with a revolver. However, Lara instead wounds a senior Tsarist prosecutor. Komarovsky secretly uses his political connections to shield her from prosecution. While treating the prosecutor's wounds, Yuri learns of the death of his foster mother, Anna Gromeiko. Soon after the funeral, Yuri becomes engaged to and marries his foster sister, Tonya Gromeiko. Meanwhile, Lara marries Pasha Antipov, a railway worker and Bolshevik sympathiser. To Komarovsky's grief, the Antipovs leave in order to teach at a school in the Urals. In 1914, the Russian Empire declares war on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although he loves Lara deeply, Pasha feels increasingly stifled by her love for him. In order to escape, he volunteers for the Imperial Russian Army. Ultimately, Lt. Antipov is declared missing in action, but is captured by the Austro-Hungarian Army. After escaping from a POW camp, Antipov joins the new Red Army. He becomes notorious as General Strelnikov ("The Shooter"), a fearsome commander who summarily executes both captured Whites and many civilians. Meanwhile, Lara becomes a battlefield nurse in order to search for her husband. In 1915, Doctor Yuri Zhivago is drafted into the Army despite the recent birth of his and Tonya's first child. Wounded by artillery fire in Galicia, Yuri and his friend Misha Gordon are sent to a battlefield hospital where Lara works as a nurse. After his recovery, Zhivago stays on at the hospital as a physician. Following the February Revolution and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, revolutionary fervor and anarchy spread to the front-line troops. In order to convince local deserters to return to the trenches, Gintz, a newly arrived commissar for the Provisional Government, decides to address them unarmed and without an escort. Believing that he can appeal to the deserters pride as "soldiers in the world's first revolutionary army", Gintz is instead brutally murdered by them. Meanwhile, Lara and Yuri have fallen in love. Neither, however, is willing to admit their feelings for the other. As he prepares to return to his wife and child in Moscow, Yuri expresses dismay to Lara that "the roof over the whole of Russia has been torn off, and we and all the people find ourselves under the open sky". Following the October Revolution and the subsequent Russian Civil War, Yuri and his family flee by train to their estate at Varykino, in the Ural Mountains. During the journey, he meets with General Strelnikov, who informs him that Lara has returned to their daughter in the town of Yuriatin. Soon after, Lara and Yuri meet and consummate their relationship. While returning from an encounter with Lara, Yuri is abducted by Liberius, commander of the "Forest Brotherhood", the Bolshevik guerilla band. Liberius is a dedicated Old Bolshevik and highly effective leader of his men. However, Liberius is also a cocaine addict, loud-mouthed and narcissistic. He repeatedly bores Yuri with his long-winded lectures about the glories of socialism and the inevitability of its victory. After Yuri deserts and returns to Lara, Komarovsky reappears. Having used his influence within the CPSU, Komarovsky has been appointed Minister of Justice of the Far Eastern Republic, a Soviet puppet state in Siberia. He offers to smuggle Yuri and Lara outside Soviet soil. They initially refuse, but Komarovsky states that Pasha Antipov is dead, having fallen from favor with the Party. Stating that this will place Lara in the Cheka's crosshairs, he persuades Yuri that it is in her best interests to leave for the West. Yuri convinces Lara to go with Komarovsky, telling her that he will follow her shortly. Meanwhile, the hunted General Strelnikov returns for Lara. Lara, however, has already left with Komarovsky. After expressing regret over the pain he has caused his country and loved ones, Pasha commits suicide. Yuri finds his body the following morning. After returning to Moscow, Zhivago's health declines; he cohabits with another woman and fathers two children with her. He also plans numerous writing projects which he never finishes. Meanwhile, Lara returns to Russia for Yuri Zhivago's funeral. (I don't think that's right-she was already in Moscow on other matters and decided to visit Pasha's old flat. Much to her astonishment there was Yuri's coffin, on a table in the flat). She persuades Yuri's half brother, NKVD General Yevgraf Zhivago, to assist her search for her daughter by Yuri. Ultimately, however, Lara is arrested during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge and dies in the Gulag. During World War II, Zhivago's old friends Nika Dudorov and Misha Gordon meet up. One of their discussions revolves around a local laundress named Tanya, a bezprizornaya or Civil War orphan, and her resemblance to both Yuri and Lara. Much later, they meet over the first edition of Yuri Zhivago's poems. |
4608265 | /m/0ccd6b | The House of the Seven Gables | Nathaniel Hawthorne | 1851 | {"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06_wph7": "American Gothic Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/050z5g": "Chivalric romance", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The novel is set in the mid-19th century, with glimpses into the history of the house, which was built in the late 17th century. The primary interest of this book is in the subtle and involved descriptions of character and motive. The house of the title is a gloomy New England mansion, haunted from its foundation by fraudulent dealings, accusations of witchcraft, and sudden death. The current resident, the dignified but desperately poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, opens a shop in a side room to support her brother Clifford, who is about to leave prison after serving thirty years for murder. She refuses all assistance from her unpleasant wealthy cousin Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. A distant relative, the lively and pretty young Phoebe, turns up and quickly becomes invaluable, charming customers and rousing Clifford from depression. A delicate romance grows between Phoebe and the mysterious attic lodger Holgrave, who is writing a history of the Pyncheon family. Phoebe takes leave of the family to return to her country home for a brief visit, but will return soon. Unfortunately, before she leaves, Clifford stands at the large arched window above the stairs and has a sudden urge to jump upon viewing the mass of humanity passing before him and his recollection of his youth lost to prison. That instance, coupled with Phoebe's departure — she was the only happy and beautiful thing in the home for the depressed Clifford to dwell on — sends Clifford into a bed-ridden state. Judge Pyncheon arrives at the house one day, and threatens to have Clifford committed to an insane asylum if he does not disclose information regarding mystical "eastern lands" of Maine that the family is rumored to own. The deed however has been lost. Before Clifford can be brought before the Judge (which, it is implied, will completely destroy Clifford's sanity), the Judge mysteriously dies in the same chair as the historical Pyncheon who stole the land on which the house was later built from a settler named Maule. Hepzibah and Clifford escape on a train (then a very new form of transport) after the Judge dies. The townsfolk murmur about their sudden disappearance, and, upon Phoebe's return, the Judge's body is discovered. Hepzibah and Clifford return shortly, to Phoebe's relief. Events from past and present throw light on the circumstances which sent Clifford to prison, proving his innocence. Holgrave is discovered to be a descendant of Maule but bears the Pyncheon family no ill will, mostly due to his feelings for Phoebe. The romance ends with the characters leaving the old house to start a new life, free of the burdens of the past. |
4608269 | /m/0ccd6p | Return from the Stars | Stanisław Lem | 1961 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"} | The novel tells the story of an astronaut, Hal Bregg, who returns to Earth after a 127 year mission to Arcturus (In original Polish version Fomalhaut). Due to time dilation, the mission has lasted only 10 years for him, but on Earth he faces culture shock, as he finds the society transformed into a utopia, free of wars or violence, or even accidents. For Hal, however, this new world is too comfortable, too safe. Earth is no longer home, it is "another, alien planet". Humans themselves have changed, having undergone a procedure called betrization, designed to neutralizes all aggressive impulses. Hal mistrusts this approach, seeing the side effects of extreme risk-aversion as wrong. In particular, for an astronaut, he cannot agree with the opinion that space travel and space exploration are nothing but a youthful and dangerous adventurism. For Hal, this means that "... they have killed the man in man". He and the other returning astronauts are viewed with mistrust, seen as "resuscitated Neanderthals". They are alienated, outcasts, and subject to social pressure to undertake the betrization procedure. The other choice is to leave Earth again and hope that once they come back, in several centuries, Earth's society is more familiar again. In time, Hal's marries a local girl, Eri, and comes to see the world her way, even disapproving of his youth's love, space expeditions. When he learns that members of his former crew are planning a mission to Sagittarius, he seems not to care, content to leave the stars to others. Hal still remembers his past, recalls the moon Kereneia, a magnificent canyon "made of red and pink gold, almost completely transparent... through it you can see all the strata, geological folds, anticlines and synclines... all this is weightless, floating and seeming to smile at you". Yet he trades the chance to experience such sights and adventures for love and peaceful, quiet life. |
4608346 | /m/0ccd8s | The Silence of the Lambs | Thomas Harris | 1988 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The novel takes place in February 1983. Clarice Starling, a young FBI trainee, is asked to carry out an errand by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI division that draws up psychological profiles of serial killers. Starling is to present a questionnaire to brilliant forensic psychiatrist and cannibalistic sociopath, Hannibal Lecter. Lecter is serving nine consecutive life sentences in a Maryland mental institution for a series of brutal murders. Crawford's real intention, however, is to try and solicit Lecter's assistance in the hunt for a serial killer dubbed "Buffalo Bill", whose modus operandi involves kidnapping overweight women, starving them for about three or four days, and then killing and skinning them, before dumping the bodies in nearby rivers. The nickname was started by Kansas City Homicide, as a joke that "he likes to skin his humps." Throughout the investigation, Starling periodically returns to Lecter in search of information, and the two form a strange relationship in which he offers her cryptic clues in return for information about her unhappy childhood as an orphan. When Bill's sixth victim is found in West Virginia, Starling helps Crawford perform the autopsy. Starling finds a moth pupa in the throat of the victim, and just as Lecter predicted, she has been scalped. Triangular patches of skin have also been taken from her shoulders. Furthermore, autopsy reports indicate that Bill killed her within four days of her capture, much faster than his earlier victims. On the basis of Lecter's prediction, Starling believes that he knows who Buffalo Bill really is. She also asks why she was sent to fish for information on Buffalo Bill without being told she was doing so; Crawford explains that if she had had an agenda, Lecter would never have spoken up. Starling takes the pupa to the Smithsonian, where it is eventually identified as the Black Witch Moth, which would not naturally occur where the victim was found. In Tennessee, Catherine Baker Martin, daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, is kidnapped. Within six hours, her blouse is found on the roadside, slit up the back: Buffalo Bill's calling card. Crawford is advised that no less than the President of the United States has expressed "intense interest" in the case, and that a successful rescue is preferable. Crawford estimates they have three days before Catherine is killed. Starling is sent to Lecter with the offer of a deal: if he assists in Catherine's rescue and Buffalo Bill's capture, he will be transferred out of the asylum, something he was continually longed for. However, Lecter expresses skepticism at the genuineness of the offer. After Starling leaves, Lecter reminisces on the past, recalling a conversation with Benjamin Raspail, a former patient whom he later murdered. Raspail, during that therapy session, explained the death of a sailor named Klaus at the hands of Raspail's jealous former lover, Jame Gumb, who then used Klaus' skin to make an apron. Raspail also revealed that Gumb had an epiphany upon watching a moth hatch. Lecter's ruminations are interrupted when Dr. Frederick Chilton - the asylum's administrator and Lecter's nemesis - steps in. A listening device allowed him to record Starling's offer, and Chilton has found out that Crawford's deal is a lie. He offers one of his own: If Lecter reveals Buffalo Bill's identity, he will indeed get a transfer to another asylum, but only if Chilton gets credit for getting the information from him. Lecter insists that he'll only give the information to Senator Martin in person, in Tennessee. Chilton agrees. Unknown to Chilton, Lecter has previously hidden under his tongue a paperclip and some parts of a pen, both of which were mistakenly given to him by untrained orderlies over his many years at the asylum. He fashions the pen pieces and paperclip into an improvised lockpick, which he later uses to pick his handcuff locks. In Tennessee, Lecter toys with Senator Martin briefly, enjoying the woman's anguish, but eventually gives her some information about Buffalo Bill: his name is William "Billy" Rubin, and he has suffered from elephant ivory anthrax, a knifemaker's disease. He also provides an accurate physical description. The name, however, is a red herring: bilirubin is a pigment in human bile and a chief coloring agent in human feces, which the forensic lab compares to the color of Chilton's hair. Starling tries one last time to get information from Lecter as he is about to be transferred. He offers a final clue - "we covet what we see everyday" - and demands to hear her worst memory. Starling reveals that, after her father's death, she was sent to live with a cousin on a sheep ranch. One night, she discovered the farmer slaughtering the spring lambs, and fled in terror. The farmer caught and sent her to an orphanage, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Lecter thanks her, and the two share a brief moment of connection before Chilton forces her to leave. Later on, she deduces from Lecter's clue that Buffalo Bill knew his first victim. Shortly after this, Lecter escapes by killing and eviscerating his guards, using one of their faces as a mask to fool paramedics. Starling continues her search for Buffalo Bill, eventually tracking him down and killing him and rescuing Catherine. She is made a full-fledged FBI agent, and receives a congratulatory telegram from Lecter, who hopes that "the lambs have stopped screaming". |
4608748 | /m/0ccdv0 | Eye of Heaven | Jim Mortimore | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | October 1842 : archaeologists Horace Stockwood and Alexander Richards travel to Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. There, they befriend the natives, and when the son of their friend Tortorro falls ill, Stockwood helps to cure him. He then takes advantage of this act to convince the reluctant Tortorro to take him to the sacred Cave of the Sun's Inclination. The villagers find them there, and Stockwood panics and flees, taking the sacred rongo-rongo stick and abandoning his friends to the villagers. He hides in the tunnels which the natives use to hide from slavers, and emerges at night, to see a ceremony in which Tortorro apparently dies from nothing more than ostracism from the community. As Richards cries to him for help, Stockwood takes to his heels and flees back to his ship, pursued by the villagers. Panic-stricken and half-dead, he returns to England without Richards, but with the conviction that at the end, the moai, the great stone heads, walked across the island in pursuit of him... August 1872 : Stockwood's only friend now is Dr James Royston; for the past thirty years he has been the laughingstock of the scientific community, and he is now almost completely bankrupt. He places an advertisement in the Times, seeking funding for a return expedition to Rapa Nui, and this catches the Doctor's attention. After hearing Stockwood's story, the Doctor agrees to fund the expedition, and converts gemstones from distant planets to ready cash for his purposes. Before leaving, he catches Stockwood's underpaid butler, Fennell, trying to rob the house, and dismisses him. In Portsmouth, the Doctor purchases the Tweed, but while he is thus occupied the TARDIS is accidentally loaded aboard a ship bound for India. The Doctor is then attacked and taken prisoner by a dockworker. Leela becomes suspicious of Royston and determines to keep an eye on him, but Royston is just as suspicious of her; he is worried about Stockwood's sanity, and doesn't believe that the Doctor and Leela truly have his best interests at heart. He offers to join the expedition as a medical officer, despite Leela's objections. That night, Fennell breaks into Stockwood's home, and when Royston is forced to shoot him, Leela is convinced that he did so to prevent Fennell from being questioned about his accomplices. Stockwood decides to hide the body in order to avoid involving the police, which would delay his expedition. Royston's suspicions about the Doctor seem justified when they arrive in Portsmouth and find no sign of him, but Leela, while searching for the Doctor, is also attacked and kidnapped by the dockworker. With only hours to go before the Tweed departs, Royston suggests leaving the Doctor and Leela behind, but Stockwood -- although finding it difficult to explain his instinctive trust of Leela -- refuses to abandon his friends again. Royston reluctantly accompanies him into the city to search for the missing Doctor and Leela, but they are also attacked and knocked out by the dockworker. Along with the Doctor and Leela, they awaken tied to the pier as the tide comes in. Leela manages to free herself and the others, and the Doctor sends Royston and Stockwood back to the ship while he and Leela try to find out why the dockworker tried to kill them. When they find him, he refuses to answer their questions, and instead tries to shoot them. They flee back to the Tweed, while the dockworker, pursued by police, is shot at and dives into the water just as the ship departs. The Doctor and Leela pull themselves on board -- only to find that Captain Stuart has accepted payment from the enemy who has been trying to stop their expedition; Alex Richard's sister Jennifer, who has hated Stockwood with a passion ever since he abandoned her brother to his death on Rapa Nui. The Doctor convinces Richards to wait until they've reached Rapa Nui to take her revenge -- and convinces Leela not to kill her before then. Leela is still convinced that Royston intends to betray them, especially when she sees him privately offering money to Richards. Richards and Royston emerge from a locked cabin carrying soiled bandages, and Leela determines to find out who's inside. A cyclone blows the Tweed off course into the south seas and destroys their supplies of fresh water, and the crew must dock with a passing iceberg to replenish their supplies. Leela takes advantage of their distraction to break into the locked cabin, where she finds the dockworker, Stump, alive and delirious. Stump flees onto the iceberg, pursued by Leela, but as the iceberg begins to break up she retreats to the Tweed, leaving him to die. Royston explains that Stump, although shot by the police, managed to catch hold of a rope hanging from the Tweed and pull himself aboard as it left Portsmouth. Royston tried to save his life because that's what doctors do; besides, by offering to pay off Richards and save Stump's life, he hoped to convince her to let Stockwood go without killing him. The Tweed enters turbulent waters where a whale and a giant squid are battling to the death, and Leela and Royston are both swept overboard. As the Tweed pulls ever further away, Leela is forced to kill the squid herself and to tie herself and Royston to the whale in order to survive. The whale is too seriously wounded to dive beneath the surface, and eventually dies, just as another storm approaches -- this time with a waterspout. Leela and Royston must climb inside the whale's mouth in order to ride out the typhoon... The Tweed reaches Rapa Nui in December, although there appear to be no natives present to greet them. Stockwood is torn with guilt over abandoning Royston and Leela, but it's no less than Richards had expected of him; she lives now only to see him torn with madness over the grave of her brother. The Doctor, meanwhile, studies the moai and finds that their mass is fluctuating, which means that they are absorbing and transmitting energy somehow; but before he can investigate further, the Tweed is attacked by a fleet of Peruvian ships, and he and Stockwood realize too late why they have seen no natives. The Doctor finds a group of Peruvian slavers herding the natives together and tries to intervene, but the slavers shoot him in the chest. Stockwood flees into the tunnels, where Richards and the ship's boy Jack Devitt are hiding along with the natives. The others from the Tweed are prisoners of the Peruvian captain DaBraisse, as is the recovering Doctor. Leela and Royston, having survived their ordeals, are rescued by Polynesian natives and taken to Rapa Nui. There, Leela whips up the natives' fighting spirit and prepares to lead them in an attack on the Tweed, intending to rescue Captain Stuart. But before they go, one of the islanders finally recognizes Stockwood, and brings forth his punishment -- the mad and emaciated Alex Richards, who has been kept alive in the caves for the past thirty years so the islanders may slit his throat before Stockwood's eyes. Leela then leads the islanders to the harbour while Stockwood and Jennifer Richards remain in the caves in shock. Having rescued Stuart from the Tweed, Leela then attacks DaBraisse's ship, where DaBraisse is forcing the Doctor to walk the plank. Stuart captures a Peruvian cannon and fires on DaBraisse's ship, and the other Peruvians are forced to retreat. DaBraisse, having survived the attack, retreats with them -- but not before mortally wounding Royston, who had just saved Leela's life. Leela realizes she was wrong to mistrust him. Leela and the Doctor take the dying Royston back to the island, where Leela stops Jennifer from killing Stockwood and the Doctor determines that there's nothing he can do to save Royston. But the islanders have no quarrel with Royston, and the old woman who killed Alex Richards tells the Doctor to take Royston to the Cave of the Sun's Inclination, where the god will heal him. In the Cave, the Doctor finds the largest of all the moai, and realizes that it's a silicon-based, voice-activated alien computer. Richards still has the rongo-rongo, but Stockwood has kept a rubbing of it, and the Doctor is able to use it to activate the moai and send Royston, Stockwood, and Leela through a matter transport beam. The rubbing is incomplete, however, and the Doctor requires the rongo-rongo to bring them back; but Richards is now obsessed with the thought of Stockwood's death, and when DaBraisse returns to the island, she tries to make a deal with him to kill the Doctor and Stockwood. DaBraisse simply orders his men to kill her and attacks the Doctor, who wins the resulting swordfight. DaBraisse falls over a cliff to his death, and the islanders drive off the leaderless Peruvians while the Doctor carries the dying Richards and the rongo-rongo to the cave. Stockwood, Leela and Royston find themselves in a vast metal city, and find that Royston's wounds have been healed by his trip through the transporter. Stockwood and Leela leave him to recover while they explore, and determine that the city is larger than the distance between London and Rapa Nui -- and is completely deserted. Royston recovers and stumbles through a nearby moai into yet another world, and Stockwood and Leela track him through a system of moai which leads them from world to world -- all of which appear to be deserted. They eventually catch up with Royston in the midst of a vast library, where they learn that the alien species which built this empire was devastated by war. Royston is overwhelmed with emotion at the evidence of deaths beyond counting. The Doctor arrives with the recovering Jennifer, but despite the wonders she is being exposed to, Stockwood's death is still her only priority. The Doctor manages to activate telepathic connections in the library, and the truth is finally revealed. The aliens were all but wiped out during a war, and used the moai to scatter their DNA in retrovirus form throughout the galaxy, intending to hide from their enemies within the bodies of other life forms and then return to repopulate their planet once the danger was past. But the plan went wrong when the isolated Polynesians on Earth, exposed to visiting Europeans, became infected with some disease to which they had no immunity -- possibly the same disease which affected Tortorro's son -- and passed it on to the alien species when they began travelling through the moai. Thus the alien empire was wiped out for a second time. The Doctor, however, realizes that Leela, a descendant of space travellers from Earth's future, is immune to virtually everything currently in existence -- and that he can therefore use her blood to inoculate the islanders and allow them to repopulate the alien empire. Richards stabs Stockwood and kills herself, and then Leela notices that the planet's sun is changing. The aliens, fearful of invasion after suffering from a devastating war, set up a doomsday device to turn their sun supernova if any species which did not contain their DNA structure set foot on their planet. The Doctor and his friends retrace their steps through the moai, back to Rapa Nui, healing Stockwood and saving the alien world. Stockwood then decides to remain on Rapa Nui to atone for his misdeeds by protecting the villagers against other slavers and "men of knowledge" such as himself. The Doctor and Leela set off for India to search for the TARDIS, and Royston returns to London on the Tweed. Over the following decades, the islanders use the moai to travel to the distant homeworld and reclaim their alien inheritance. Finally, in December 1902, as the last party of islanders departs from Rapa Nui, Stockwood accompanies them to see the last sight of his life, the most wondrous sight of all; a world reborn. |
4608769 | /m/0ccdwr | Forged in the Fire | Ann Turnbull | 2006 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Forged in the Fire is an epic love story in which love prevails over all. When Will is sent to prison during the plague, Susanna has no way of knowing whether her beloved is alive or not. Will gets sent to jail with two of his friends for starting a fight in the streets. Whilst in jail both his friends are infested with the plague and Will becomes deathly ill. Both of his companions die but Will is bailed out by a man called Edmund who is extremely wealthy and a friend of Nat, who during the story is always at Will's side. When Susanna finally finds out where Will is located she travels at once to London. There she finds Will happy and healthy in Edmund's home with his eldest daughter. This is the one and only blow to their love but is soon overcome. The two get married in the sight of God at a Quaker meeting. The London fire is the next huge thing to happen. The city is destroyed bit by bit, and now that Susanna is with a child she and Will must leave. But Will refuses to leave until he has finished his work, so he sends Susanna, with friends, to make it out of the city and into a farm where she is to camp for many nights. Finally Will with Nat manage to get out of the city and they are reunited at last. Will also makes up with his father who has never much cared for Will and Susanna's love. He gives them some money and they live happily ever after. A few years later they have a son and life happily goes on. |
4608904 | /m/0ccf31 | The Witch Hunters | Steve Lyons | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In Salem Village, Massachusetts, 1692, the Doctor and his companions become immeshed in the tragedy of the Salem witch trials. |
4609475 | /m/0ccfpg | The Hollow Men | Martin Day | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Hexen Village, England, in the early 21st century, has a crop of gifted children. However, murder and mental illness seem to be centered around them. The Doctor is kidnapped and taken to Liverpool and discovers the Hexen children could affect the rest of the country. Ace is left in the village to face the threats of animated scarecrows, human prejudice, revenge-violence and a strange black cloud. |
4609837 | /m/0ccg79 | Last of the Gaderene | Mark Gatiss | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | RAF Culverton, East Anglia, during the Second World War. Alec Whistler, a Spitfire pilot discovers a green crystal in the wreckage left by a bomb which destroyed the RAF base's Mess, killing his fiance... As a reward for his actions in The Three Doctors the Third Doctor has had his knowledge of the TARDIS's dematerialisation codes returned to him by the Time Lords. The Doctor has left Earth and is helping the rebels on the planet Xanthos. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Brigadier has received a call from his old friend Wing Commander Alec Whistler. Culverton Aerodrome has closed and been purchased by the mysterious Legion International, led by the sinister Bliss. Black-shirted troops guard the base and have begun to terrorise the local residents, and people have begun to disappear. Investigating the base with the young Noah Bishop, Whistler is captured by Legion. Noah escapes, but is injured by a huge worm-like creature living in the marsh behind the aerodrome. Escaping from Xanthos, the Doctor returns to UNIT HQ, realising this is the closest thing he has to home at the moment, though clearly unwilling to acknowledge this either to himself, Jo or the Brigadier. The Brigadier sends the Doctor and Jo to Culverton to investigate. Arriving in Culverton, the Doctor and Jo are met by Whistler's housekeeper, Mrs. Toovey. While the Doctor investigates the base, Jo stays at Whistler's house, where she is attacked by a Legion trooper who is searching for the green crystal which Whistler has had since the War and which he regards as his lucky charm. Fortunately, Mrs. Toovey has concealed it in Whistler's restored Spitfire in a lead box, masking its energy signature from Bliss's sensors. The kidnapped villagers begin to reappear, but acting curiously, and all grinning inanely. They are all carrying the embryos of the alien race the Gaderene in their mouths and are being controlled by the embryos. The village fete is opened by Scotland Yard's Inspector Le Maitre (the Master in disguise) During the fete the remaining villagers are given embryos leaving the village a ghost town. The Master has worked with the Gaderene to allow their invasion of Earth and despite Bliss's betrayal, still aims to help the invasion as he wishes to see mankind wiped out. Threatening Noah's life, the Master extorts the crystal from the Doctor. The crystal is the ninth and final key which will allow the Gaderene to cross over from their dying world to the Earth. Meanwhile, Whistler has escaped from his captors. As the Gaderene ready their invasion force, the UNIT troops storm the airbase with the Doctor assisting in the borrowed Spitfire. The UNIT troops pin down the giant worm (Bliss's brother, whose genetic make-up was damaged in the crossing from the Gaderene homeworld) while the Doctor and the Master fight in the midst of the dimensional transference beam. The Master kills Bliss with his Tissue Compression Eliminator and is caught in the beam as it collapses, destroyed by Whistler's crashing Spitfire. The Gaderene are all destroyed and the Master seemingly destroyed with them. Whistler survives, having ejected from the plane just in time and is reunited with his friend the Brigadier. The villagers with the implanted embryos are released and the embryos all die. The Doctor walks away, head bowed, expressing regret about the destruction. |
4609933 | /m/0ccgct | Catastrophea | Terrance Dicks | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Jo arrive at a planet named Kastopheria. Its natives are peaceful, golden-skinned giants who seem not to care that other races are exploiting their world for all it is worth. Said races are coming into conflict with each other, a problem the Doctor and Jo try to solve. The possibility of peace is disrupted by the war-mongering Draconians. In trying to quell the planet's problems, the Doctor risks uncovering a force that threatens the entire galaxy. |
4610143 | /m/0ccgpy | Critical Chain | Eliyahu M. Goldratt | 9/4/1997 | null | Goldratt claims that the current method of generating task time estimates is the primary reason for increased expense of projects and their inability to finish on time. The commonly accepted principle is to add safety (aka: pad or slop) to generate a task time length that will essentially guarantee the step gets completed. He asserts that estimates for a task are based on individuals providing values that they feel will give them an 80-90% chance of completing the step, these estimates are further padded by managers above this person creating a length of time to complete a task that is excessive - as much as 200% of the actual time required. It is this excessive padding that has the opposite effect - guaranteeing the task will run full term or late. As counter intuitive as this seems, he provides examples of why this is the case. This predisposes the people on the project to consume the time estimate by: # Triggering the "student syndrome" in the resource assigned to the task - they have more than enough time to do the task, therefore they start the task late using up all the safety. # Encouraging multitasking. The safety is added knowing that the resource will not be able to focus on the task and hence encouraged to multitask on multiple projects at a time, which significantly impacts all projects. # Not claiming early completion. In order to preserve the safety concept in future projects, resources do not report tasks completed early. Obviously, though, there is no way to hide a late completion. The book presents a primer for Theory of Constraints. This is done in the form of a lecture by a professor who has recently returned from a sabbatical at a large conglomerate that uses the Theory of Constraints. The discussion focuses on the current methods of measuring success at a work center (cost and throughput) and shows how they are contradictory to the success of the production line as a whole. The book enumerates the five principle steps of the Theory of Constraints: # Identify. Identify the bottleneck of the system. # Exploit. Exploit this bottleneck, making its throughput efficient by changing processes, equipment maintenance procedures, training, policies, etc. # Subordinate: Subordinate the throughput of all other work centers to this work center. # Elevate. Invest in this work center to increase its throughput - add equipment, manpower, etc. # Inertia. Start the process over on the line to determine the new bottleneck. This philosophy keeps the cost and throughput models at odds with one another since the subordination process necessarily decreases efficiency. Hence, evaluation criteria for properly managing a work center must change to properly reward the organization’s success. The book points out this conflict with respect to an axiom in the Theory of Constraints that states that if two concepts are in direct conflict, then there is an assumption as part of those concepts that is incorrect. To illustrate, the book uses an example of a steel mill with significant production problems, excess inventory and cost issues. It methodically assigns all the issues of the plant to the method in which success of a work center is measured. The errant assumption is efficiency being measured by tons of steel per hour. The flaw in the measurement is that not all material takes the same length of time to produce and not all work centers have the same throughput. It concludes the sources of the problems for the steel mill are: {| class="wikitable" | Issue | Causes |- | Yard inventory | * Over producing product to minimize set-up impact, * Producing excess high-throughput material * Instead of sitting idle, produce unneeded product. |- | Raw material shortage | * Over consumption of material to produce material in inventory |} After subordination, the key is to maintain a small buffer of material in front of the bottleneck to ensure it never stops producing due to lack of material. After laying this groundwork, the book turns to applying this to Project Management. After declaring the constraint to be the schedule's critical path, the book maps out a set of terms. The result is: {| class="wikitable" | Production term | Project term |- | Work center | Task |- | Product | Time |- | Pre-work center inventory | Work buffer from the feeding tasks of the critical path |- | Bottleneck work center | Bottleneck resource |- |} It proposes a method of schedule generation where all tasks are estimated at a reasonable time for completion. This would be a time estimate that would give the resource a 50%-60% chance of completing the task on time. The theory being that one task may take less than its estimated time but another may take more - on the average evening out. Since there is no safety, the conditions above that cause misuse of time on the task do not exist. Safety is not added to individual tasks. Safety is added to the project as a whole (at the end) or to the end of a sequence of tasks feeding the critical path. Using numerous analogies and examples, the concept of a resource buffer is introduced. This concept claims that one must ensure the resource bottleneck on the critical path is always busy and stays focused. They should be: * Kept on task. In other words, minimize multitasking * Be ready for the assignment; even if it means they are idle waiting for dependencies to complete. The book introduces increasingly complex situations to remove the non-practical classroom approach until it reaches two common project situations: * A bottleneck resource on the critical path and non-critical paths, * Multiple projects contending for constrained resources, The book emphasizes that the project manager has to understand that he or she is not working with absolutes. Resolution of these issues are not absolute. The time estimates are just that - estimates - they cannot be treated as absolute times. This is essential for the following two points. A project example is given with a single bottlenecked resource on multiple paths. Since this resource is over utilized on multiple paths its tasks need to be considered when determining the project duration. This results in the introduction of the term critical chain - the aggregate of the critical path and the constrained resource leveled tasks. Projects are going to use common resources. Organizations need to accommodate parallel projects while adhering to the Theory of Constraints concepts. This requires developing a prioritization scheme for the resource to determine the correct order to do work (i.e. proportion of the project buffer remaining). As before, once the scheme has been developed, the resource needs to be focused (not multitasking) on completing the task as soon as possible. The book closes by introducing a concept for a method for determining which projects should be selected for execution. It is based on looking at the investment in each project in terms of money-days. Money-days is the product of the investment in the project and its duration. |
4610283 | /m/0ccgyl | Mission: Impractical | David A. McIntee | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The Doctor and Frobisher run into Glitz, his henchman Dibber and a band of Ogrons trying to pull off the crime of the century. |
4610866 | /m/0cchrp | Company | Max Barry | 1/17/2006 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The setting for the novel is Seattle, at a company called Zephyr Holdings, although from the building it is difficult to discern the company's type of business. Apparently a defining characteristic of the company is its obscurity. In fact, in the novel no one has ever met the CEO. When Stephen Jones, a young recruit, reports for his first day in the Training Sales Department shortly after there has been a theft. Stephen is promoted from assistant to acting sales representative. However, Stephen believes the company is hiding something—something that would explain why people who are fired seem to disappear. And, he wonders, what exactly is the Omega Management System? |
4611702 | /m/0cckxl | The Inheritors | William Golding | 1955 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | This novel is an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a band of Neanderthals. It is written in such a way that the reader might assume the group to be modern Homo sapiens as they gesture and speak simply among themselves, and bury their dead with heartfelt, solemn rituals. They also have powerful sense impressions and feelings, and appear sometimes to share thoughts in a near-telepathic way. As the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that they live very simply, using their considerable mental abilities to connect to one another without extensive vocabulary or the kinds of memories that create culture. They have wide knowledge of food sources, mostly roots and vegetables. They chase hyaenas from a larger beast's kill and eat meat, but they don't kill mammals themselves. They have a spiritual system centring on a female principle of bringing forth, but their lives are lived so much in the present that the reader realizes they are very different from us, living in something like an eternal present, or at least a present broken and shaped by seasons. One of the band, Lok, is a point of view character. He is the one we follow as one by one the adults of the band die or are killed, then the young are stolen by the "new people," a group of early modern humans. Lok and Fa, the remaining adults, are fascinated and repelled by the new people. They observe their actions and rituals with amazement, only slowly understanding that harm is meant by the sticks of the new people. The humans are portrayed as strange, godlike beings as the neanderthals witness their mastery of fire, Upper Palaeolithic weaponry and sailing. All save the last chapters of the novel are written from the Neanderthals' stark, simple stylistic perspective. Their observations of early human behaviour serve as a filter for Golding's exercise in paleoanthropology, in which modern readers will recognize precursors of later human societal constructs, e.g., religion, culture, sacrifice and war. The penultimate chapter employs an omniscient viewpoint, observing Lok. For the first time, the novel describes the people the reader has been inhabiting through the first-person perspective. Lok, totally alone, gives up in despair. In the final chapter, we move to the point of view of the new race, more or less modern humans fleeing in their boats, revealing that they are terribly afraid of the Neanderthals whom they believe to be devils of the forest. This last chapter, the only one written from the humans' point of view, reinforces the inheritance of the world by the new species. The fleeing humans carry with them an infant Neanderthal, of whom they are simultaneously afraid and enamoured, hinting at the later hypothesis of inter-breeding between Neanderthals and modern humans. |
4613130 | /m/0ccp9_ | The Runes of the Earth | Stephen R. Donaldson | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Linden Avery is now in charge of a clinic for the mentally ill and is responsible, among other things, for caring for Joan Covenant. Roger, son of Thomas and Joan, comes to visit for the first time in many years and seeks to take Joan out of care, claiming that he wants to assume responsibility for the task himself. Roger also demands of Linden his late father's white gold wedding ring, which she does not relinquish. Linden remains suspicious of his intentions, but she is not able to prevent his forceful removal of Joan at gunpoint, and his abduction of Linden's adopted son, Jeremiah. Casualties mount as Joan is taken and — whilst attempting to intervene — Linden, Joan, Roger, and Jeremiah are plunged into the Land, where they must adjust to its new demands. On return to the Land, she discovers that the people have no knowledge of the Earthpower she had so cherished before and this knowledge has been denied them by the blight on the land known as Kevin's Dirt. Also this ancient lore is kept from them by the Haruchai, who have now taken upon themselves total responsibility for the Land's defense, discouraging the learning of Earthpower and a knowledge of the Land's history. They have become the "Masters” of the Land. Also, the Land has been beset by caesures (or "Falls") which are strange disruptions created from wild magic by Joan in her madness. Linden takes under her protection an enigmatic character called Anele, who turns out to have been the son of two people that Linden had known centuries before, which appears logically impossible. He is full of Earthpower, as a result of a pregnant Hollian (from the second chronicles) being brought back to life by Earthpower. Linden also finds an ally in a Stonedownor, Liand, who quickly comes to trust Linden implicitly when she introduces him to his past and the Land, showing him an expression of Earthpower beyond all his previous experience. The Masters threaten Anele (and indirectly, Linden) as she seeks to find ways of locating and rescuing her son, a quest she keeps to herself. When a strange storm attacks Liand's village, Mithil Stonedown, he and Linden and Anele take the opportunity to escape the Masters. Their escape is compromised when Stave, another Master, catches up with them. Initially they believe he has come to recapture them, but he actually brings timely warning of a huge pack of wolves (kresh) that is pursuing them. They are rescued by a company of Ramen, the traditional servants of the Ranyhyn horses, who seem to have made an odd alliance with the ur-viles. They are then led to the Verge of Wandering — a valley the Ramen come to every couple of generations. Here they meet Esmer, a powerful being who claims to be the son of Cail - an outcast Haruchai - and the mysterious Dancers of the Sea. Linden is unsure whether to treat Esmer as a friend or an enemy: He attacks and wounds Stave (as punishment for his ancestors' treatment of his father) but then proceeds to help Linden. He uses his strange powers to summon a caesure, allowing Linden and her companions to travel backwards in time to retrieve the lost Staff of Law. They emerge from the caesure in a Land which is still recovering from the Sunbane. After some initial frustration, they find (with some dubious help from Esmer) that the Staff is guarded by a group of Waynhim who - not being creatures of Law - are slowly sickening from its influence. Linden uses the Staff to cure the Waynhim, but she and her companions are suddenly attacked by Demondim (who they suspect have been summoned from the past by the mischievous and unpredictable Esmer) wielding the power of the Illearth Stone. Fearful that the coming battle will alter the Land's history, Linden creates a new caesure and returns herself, her companions, the ur-Viles, Waynhim, and Demondim to her own present. When they emerge, they find themselves in the neighborhood of Revelstone, which is now the stronghold of the Masters. The Haruchai attempt to fight the Demondim, but their efforts are wholly in vain. Stave is badly injured, and Linden and her companions are forced to retreat to Revelstone. Here Linden meets "The Mahdoubt", a mysterious old woman who describes herself only as "a servant of Revelstone". As the company is enclosed in the Lord's Keep with their foes outside, they see a small group rapidly approaching: her son, Jeremiah, and Thomas Covenant, who has seemingly returned to life. |
4613260 | /m/0ccpkk | When Jonathan Died | Tony Duvert | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jonathan is a 27-year-old artist living in Paris who befriends a single mother and her six-year-old son, Serge. When Serge is eight, his mother asks Jonathan to look after him for a week, which they spend together at Jonathan's country house in southern France. Jonathan and Serge become close friends. Jonathan, smitten with the boy, is distraught when Serge returns to Paris. They meet each other again when Serge is age 10, and their sexual relationship continues. While Jonathan and Serge are separated, the sexual side of Jonathan's desires begins to dominate his behaviour. He eventually seeks out other young boys; he is rejected by some and finds no real satisfaction in sex with the others. Serge, fatherless and miserable at home with his aloof and demeaning mother, decides to run away to be with Jonathan. He sets off to find him, but becomes overwhelmed by hopelessness, and when confronted with a busy road to cross at night, commits suicide by throwing himself under a fast-moving car. |
4613864 | /m/0ccqjg | Marrow | Robert Reed | 2000 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | When a massive, artificially-created structure enters the galaxy, a society of technologically advanced humans (capable of interstellar flight and functionally immortal) are the first to intercept and investigate it. Finding it to be an indestructible ship, they decide to convert it into a cruise ship, inviting alien races to join them in its massive, uncharted interior as it makes a slow circumnavigation of the Milky Way. After thousands of years, with over 200 billion creatures living in its upper levels, a group of explorers discover a planet hidden in the core of the Great Ship. As they explore it, however, an ionic blast cuts them off from the rest of the ship and destroys much of their technology. Because this planet, Marrow, is slowly expanding, the explorers reason that a new bridge can be built in another 5,000 years. They thus begin a civilization on the surface of Marrow. The descendants of these original explorers come to believe that the large superstructure has been built to contain the Bleak, a race of nearly unstoppable insect-like creatures. Calling themselves the Wayward, they take over the ship when the bridge is completed and attempt to steer it towards a black hole to destroy the Bleak. One of the original explorers sees a vision of the Builders of the ship fighting the Bleak, containing them within the heart of Marrow and constructing the ship around it as a prison. The Bleak, it is concluded, have twisted the Wayward into destroying the ship so that they may escape. They stop the Wayward's plan by undermining the ship's control and command systems to divert the engines' thrust just enough to skim past the black hole. The book ends with the suggestion that, with Marrow being a prison for the Bleak and the Great Ship an extension of that prison, the universe itself could be a further layer constructed by the Builders. |
4616767 | /m/0ccw3w | Dragons of Autumn Twilight | Tracy Hickman | 1984-11 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book begins with the return of a group of friends, consisting of Tanis, Sturm, Caramon, Raistlin, Flint, and Tasslehoff, who had separated to pursue their own quests and pledged to return in five years. Kitiara Uth Matar, the half sister of the twins Caramon and Raistlin, was supposed to be there as well, but only sent a mysterious note. On the eve of their reunion, the Companions discover that the village where they are meeting has been taken over by a religious order called the Seekers. They are collaborating with the Dragon Highlords, who are preparing for the conquest of the continent of Ansalon. The Companions soon discover that the Seekers are searching for a Blue Crystal Staff. When Goldmoon, a plainswoman in the same pub as the companions, heals a Seeker with her staff, the Companions are confronted by Highlord forces and are forced to flee the village. The next day, the group is attacked by Draconians, reptilian creatures that serve as foot soldiers in the Highlords' army. The Companions are driven into the woods, where they are attacked by undead and rescued by a centaur. The group is charged to go to the ruined city of Xak Tsaroth to retrieve the Disks of Mishakal, an object containing the teaching of the True Gods that will be instrumental for the restoration of the faith in the True Gods. After a lengthy trip on the backs of pegasi and several encounters with the forces of darkness, the companions enter Xak Tsaroth and meet some gully dwarves, diminutive and stupid creatures. One of the dwarves, Bupu, leads them to the dragon Khisanth, who is killed by the holy power of the Blue Crystal Staff. When this happens, Goldmoon is consumed by its flame and presumed dead. However, they later find her resting at the foot of a statue of Mishakal (the Goddess of Healing), which now bears the Blue Crystal Staff, and Goldmoon is blessed with true clerical powers. The Companions leave with the Disks of Mishakal. Bupu gives an ancient spellbook (formerly belonging to the archmage Fistandantilus) to Raistlin. When they return to the village to regroup they find it occupied. The Companions are captured by the Highlord armies and are chained in a slave caravan along with an elf named Gilthanas, the son of the leader of the elven nation of Qualinesti. The group is freed by Gilthanas's brother, Porthios. They flee to Qualinesti, where Tanis is reunited with his childhood sweetheart, the exceptionally beautiful elven princess, Laurana Kanan. Laurana is still in love with Tanis and wants to marry him, but Tanis breaks her heart by telling her he is now in love with Kitiara. The Elven King Solostaran convinces the Companions to lead an attack on the slave-mine Pax Tharkas to free the slaves from the control of the local Dragon Highlord. The Companions journey through a secret passage underground to Pax Tharkas and devise a plan to free the slaves. Laurana, desperate to win Tanis back, secretly follows the Companions. When Tanis discovers Laurana has followed them he angrily rebukes her for acting like a spoiled child. Laurana resolves to try to prove she is more than that. The Companions infiltrate Pax Tharkas and Goldmoon heals Elistan, a dying Seeker, and converts him to the faith of the true gods. He becomes the first cleric of Paladine, and Goldmoon turns the Disks of Mishakal over to him. The Companions help the slaves break free. Laurana proves her worth in the battle by fighting bravely. The Dragon Highlord Verminaard and his red dragon Ember arrive to crush the revolt, but the insane red dragon Flamestrike kills Ember, while the Companions cut down Verminaard. A mysterious figure called "The Everman” later appears at a celebration following the freeing of the slaves, but flees after being spotted. According to Tracy Hickman, "The restoration of truth and faith are... to a great extent, the theme of this first book in the series." |
4616808 | /m/0ccw7n | Dragons of Winter Night | Tracy Hickman | 1985-07 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel begins with the Companions assembled in the major dwarven city of Thorbardin, where the refugees of Pax Tharkas are presenting the dwarves with the Hammer of Kharas, a legendary warhammer wielded by the dwarven hero Kharas, in return for refuge in the city. The refugees of Pax Tharkas, freed from the Dragon Highlord Verminaard, are on an intermittent stay before finding a new home in Thorbardin, ruled by the dwarves, who have agreed to house them temporarily. The Companions are sent to Tarsis, a supposed city by the sea, in order to find a permanent home for the refugees. Upon arriving, they discover that the city, which became landlocked after the Cataclysm, has turned from a thriving port into a ramshackle town. Whilst in Tarsis, the heroes meet the Silvanesti princess, Alhana Starbreeze and a small group of Knights of Solamnia led by Derek Crownguard. The heroes also learn of the existence of Dragon Orbs, ancient magical artifact capable of controlling dragons. The city is then attacked by dragons and completely destroyed. During the attack, the party is split: Tanis Half-Elven, Riverwind, Goldmoon, Caramon, Raistlin and Tika are rescued by Alhana Starbreeze while Sturm Brightblade, Flint, Tasslehoff Burrfoot, Gilthanas, Laurana and Elistan escape with Derek Crownguard and his knights. Tanis's group flees on the backs of griffins with Alhana to Silvanesti, the ancient elven homeland. They find it has been ravaged by a nightmare manifested into reality, brought on by King Lorac when he attempted to use a dragon orb. Most of the heroes present, but also Sturm, Flint, Tas and Laurana, experience visions of their death. The only two members of the party to "survive" and reach the Tower of Stars are Tanis and Raistlin. Eventually, Raistlin defeats the green dragon Cyan Bloodbane, who has been manipulating the dream onto the land, and the party escapes the dream. They retrieve the Dragon Orb held in Silvanesti. The group led by Sturm travels to Icewall Glacier, located in the far south, where Laurana killed the White Dragon Highlord Feal-Thas, and recovered a second Dragon Orb. While sailing towards the Knights' base on Sancrist isle, they are attacked by the white dragon, Sleet. Laurana drives off Sleet by shooting the dragon in the wing, but the heroes are shipwrecked on Southern Ergoth, an island south of Sancrist inhabited by native wild elves (the Kagonesti) and refugees from both the Qualinesti and Silvanesti nations. Upon making landfall, the group is confronted by a force of Silvanesti elves. The Silvanesti surprisingly knock Gilthanas unconscious, and a battle nearly breaks out between the two groups before Laurana is able to defuse the situation. The Silvanesti then bring forth a Kagonesti Elf named Silvara, who heals Gilthanas, and escort the group to Qualimori, the refugee city established by the Qualinesti elves. It becomes evident that tensions are high between the three groups of elves: the Silvanesti and Qualinesti are ancient rivals and refugees, and both nations consider themselves above the "wild" Kagonesti, who are native to Southern Ergoth and whose lands they are occupying. The reunion of the heroes with the Qualinesti does not go well. Laurana is publically snubbed and insulted by her family, and the Qualinesti imprison all of the non-elves in the group and seize the Dragon Orb. Realizing that the Qualinesti will not use the Dragon Orb for anyone but themselves, Laurana, with the help of Gilthanas, Silvara and an imprisoned human blacksmith, Theros Ironfield, steal the Dragon Orb and free the rest of the heroes. The group then flees Qualimori. Aggressively pursued by the elves, tension grows between Derek and Sturm when Sturm refuses Derek's order to attack the elves. The heroes eventually decide to split the party with Derek and Sturm taking the orb on to Sancrist while the rest of the group lures away the pursuing elves. Silvara guides this group to the tomb of the legendary hero Huma Dragonbane. There they meet the enigmatic, bumbling wizard Fizban (who was presumed dead). Silvara reveals the great secret that she is a silver dragon, and agrees to aid the party in forging Dragonlances, which will be necessary in turning the tide against the Dragonarmies. The focus goes back to Tanis's group travelling to the port city of Flotsam. The adventurers pose as a traveling magic show, with Raistlin the star magician, and are able to make some money and escape undue attention. En route, Raistlin gains power over, and masters the use of, the Dragon Orb he obtained in Silvanost. By this time, Sturm and Derek have reached Sancrist with the Dragon Orb. Derek brings charges of dishonor against Sturm for his failure to obey orders, but due to one of the leading knights, Lord Gunthar Uth Wistan, personally pleding his honor on Sturm's good character, Sturm is allowed to become a full Knight of Solamnia in the Order of the Crown. Sturm is also made third in command of the Solamnic Knight force being sent to defend the High Clerist's Tower in Solamnia behind Derek and the Knight of the Sword, Lord Alfred Markenin. The Tower guards a narrow pass in the mountains and is the primary avenue of defense for the rich city of Palanthas, but the citizens of Palanthas believe the Dragonarmies will leave them alone and thus provide little support, either in terms of men or supplies, for the defending Knights. The Whitestone Council is convened to try to form an alliance to fight the Dragonarmies. The council quickly descends into chaos between the "allies" as the elves threaten war against the knights unless the Dragon Orb is returned to them. Finally, to stop the bickering, Tas shatters the Dragon Orb by throwing it against the Whitestone. Amidst the confusion, Theros Ironfield demonstrates the power of a newly-forged Dragonlance by shattering the Whitestone with it. The stunned allies grudgingly agree to start working together. Back on the mainland, Laurana and Flint testify on behalf of Sturm Brightblade before the knights, leading to him being fully exonerated of all the charges Derek brought against him. Lord Gunthar is so impressed by Laurana that he asks her to travel to the High Clerist's Tower to bring the news that Sturm has been cleared and to deliver the new Dragonlances to the knights. Laurana feels that Gunthar is using Sturm to further his own ambition but still agrees to go for Sturm's sake. On the other side of Ansalon, Tanis and company are staying in an inn in the disreputable city of Flotsam. The city streets are dangerous: it has been overrun by the Blue Dragonarmy and a large portion of the army is present in the town, occupying every bar and inn. Tanis and Caramon, in an effort to blend in, steal the armor of two Dragonarmy officers. As Tanis wanders the streets, he is attacked by a deranged elf in a back alley. Suddenly, he is rescued by Kitiara, the fiery human woman that is Tanis's ex-lover and half-sister of Raistlin and Caramon. Kitiara has risen to the rank of Dragon Highlord, leading the Blue Dragonarmy. Tanis, stunned, lies to prevent the capture of the rest of the group and claims he is a new officer under her command. She escorts Tanis to her quarters and the two resume their love affair. Meanwhile, the Knights of Solamnia (along with Laurana, Flint, and Tas) have fortified the High Clerist's Tower. They are greatly outnumbered by the besieging Blue Dragonarmy and are low on supplies. Morale within the Tower is low; the vindication of Sturm has led to a split between the low-ranking Knights of the Crown and the higher ranks, led by Derek and Markenin. Derek's grip on reality also appears to be slipping. Finally, as supplies near their end, an increasingly desperate Derek orders a frontal assault on the encamped Dragonarmy, stating that they will flee before the charging knights. Sturm, believing this to be suicide, refuses the order and does not permit his Knights of the Crown accompany the attack. Derek and Markenin carry out the attack with most of the garrison and are promptly slaughtered. Bakaris, the ranking Dragonarmy commander, brings the headless body of Lord Alfred and a dying Derek up to the tower and starts to taunt the few remaining defenders when he is silenced by Laurana shooting him in the arm. The Blue Dragonarmy attacks the tower in force the next day but is repulsed by the few remaining knights. Still, Sturm knows this is only a temporary victory as now the enemy will bring their dragons up to attack the tower. Meanwhile, deep within the recesses of the Tower, Tas has found yet another Dragon Orb and realizes that the unusual architecture of the tower is designed as an elaborate dragontrap, designed to lure dragons into a center chamber in the tower and slay them. The dragons attack, overwhelming the defenders with dragonfear. Sturm manages to stall them for a short time but is killed by Kitiara. Inside the tower, Laurana successfully controls the Dragon Orb, which lures two blue dragons inside the traps, where the Knights slay them using their Dragonlances. Kitiara wheels her Dragon away and escapes the call of the orb. The Dragon Orb also drives all the attacking draconians insane, causing the advancing Blue Dragonarmy, which had been on the cusp of victory, to collapse into utter chaos. Afterwards, Laurana goes out to protect the body of Sturm and is confronted by her romantic rival, Kitiara. Kitiara informs Laurana that Tanis is with her, then departs. Sturm is buried in the chambers below the Tower, eulogized by a bitter and angry Laurana, and honored by all the survivors of all embodied by the Knights. The novel ends with Alhana Starbreeze burying her father in Silvanesti and departing back to her people, still refugees. |
4616840 | /m/0ccwb3 | Dragons of Spring Dawning | Margaret Weis | 1985-09 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | ===Into the Blood Se he Master of Past and Presen he Golden Genera ook he Tra eunite ook escue Missio erak haos and Escap ndings and Epilogue=== Exiting the city, Tanis and Laurana meet up with Fizban, Caramon, Tika and Tasslehoff. Fizban then reveals that he is really the god Paladine. Tanis also recognizes him now as the old man at the Inn who first spurred them into action by calling for the guards in Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Fizban tell the heroes that both the good and evil dragons will remain on Ansalon and that balance has been restored between good and evil. Fizban explains to Caramon that the spirit who has helped Raistlin at times (and who Raistiln made a bargain with in the Great Library) is the ancient evil wizard Fistandantilus. But he points out that Raistlin is not being possessed and chose his life and his actions all by himself. The companions separate. Tasslehoff to travel to Kenderhome, Caramon and Tika to travel to Solace and Tanis and Laurana to travel to Kalaman. In the epilogue, Raistlin travels to the Tower of High Sorcery in an abandoned neighborhood in the city of Palanthas, cursed and unoccupied since the end of the Cataclysm. He proclaims himself to be the master of past and present whose coming was foretold, is recognized by the spectral denizens of the tower, and settles into his new home. |
4619848 | /m/0ccz_4 | The Hemingway Hoax | Joe Haldeman | null | null | In 1921, Hemingway's writing career suffered a setback when his first wife, Hadley, lost a bag containing the manuscript and all the carbon copies of his first novel on a Parisian train. Since that time there has been speculation about the nature of the novel and whether the manuscript survived and may turn up one day. Seventy-five years later in 1996, John Baird, a Hemingway scholar (and possessed of a completely eidetic memory), is persuaded by Sylvester "Castle" Castlemaine, a grifter in Key West, to create a fake manuscript to be passed off as one of the lost copies. Initially reluctant, he goes along with this because, with some legal trickery, it may be possible to do it without attracting the attention of the authorities. However, instead he attracts attention from an altogether different quarter. Somewhere, or somewhen, there are entities who control the paths of destiny in the multiple parallel versions of our world that exist. Anything that affects the cultural influence of Hemingway is a threat to them. We eventually learn that many of the timelines are supposed to end in 2006 with a catastrophic nuclear war when two macho superpower leaders, both influenced by Hemingway's stories, refuse to back down in a crisis. If even a few timelines fail to reach this point, then the reverberations across the Omniverse will be fatal. We follow Baird as he carries out research in the Hemingway collection at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, and attempts to get aged paper and the exact model of typewriter that Hemingway used. He gets three surprises. First, Hemingway appears to him on a train back from Boston to Florida, and warns him to give up on the scheme. Second, the Hemingway, as he comes to call it, kills him by inducing a massive stroke when he refuses. Third, he wakes up on the same train - or is it the same? He is slightly different himself, with two sets of similar but conflicting memories. The Hemingway entity is surprised as well. Humans are supposed to stay dead. Instead this one shifted to a parallel timeline. Back in Florida, life continues roughly as before. Castle brings in a seductress to bedazzle the scholar even as he has an affair with his wife Lena. Here the themes of the novel begin to parallel those of Hemingway's own stories. Through multiple encounters with the Hemingway entity, and multiple deaths, Baird stays with the scheme, as much to defy this mysterious tormentor as anything else. Each new world, however, seems a little worse than the last, especially when it comes to Castle's personality. In the final universe, Castle is a psychotic killer whom they attempt to have arrested on an out-of-state warrant. The Hemingway entity comes to Baird and offers to show him what happened to Hadley's bag, in exchange for giving up on the hoax. Travelling back in time, they see the thief - it is Hemingway himself, but he speaks to Baird and the entity before vanishing. Without knowing how, Baird finds himself back in his own time, with the bag. At that point Castle, having escaped arrest, violently kills all his co-conspirators with shotgun blasts. The scholar's awareness persists, and he is able to reverse the flow of time and rearrange events so that the women survive, even as he shoots the grifter and takes a shotgun blast in the mouth, imitating the real Hemingway's suicide. Now, freed from his body, Baird has become like the entity that pursued him. He experiences Hemingway's memories, backwards from the end. Reaching the point where the young Hemingway, devastated and enraged by the loss of the manuscripts, crystallizes his masculine outlook and turns to face his future, Baird's awareness separates and comes to consciousness of his abilities. He moves back in time, steals Hadley's bag, allowing himself to be seen doing it in the person of Hemingway. He drops it off for himself to find in the present, before abandoning time for the spaces between. Thus, the "Baird entity" creates himself out of Hemingway's psychic trauma, and it is implied that he actually creates all the other entities we have encountered in the story. The novel ends with Hemingway writing the short story "Up in Michigan" in Paris in the 1920s, and suddenly experiencing an odd premonition of doom. |
4620413 | /m/0cc_vn | Ambush at Corellia | Roger MacBride Allen | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The New Republic are attacked by strange spies. Han Solo shoots and kills one only to find out that the spy is from his home planet of Corellia. Leia sends a message to Corellia about the attack and that they would like some help to find out who is behind the attacks. When they do not reply, Leia and Han Solo, along with their children and Chewbacca, head to Corellia. They are ambushed by Corellian Rebels and learn that the Corellian system has turned away from the Republic, building a new Corellian Republic. Han, Leia, and Chewbacca must escape Corellia and return safely home to Coruscant. |
4620455 | /m/0cc_xd | Assault at Selonia | Roger MacBride Allen | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Han Solo is a prisoner on his home planet of Corellia. His captor is his evil cousin, Thrackan Sal-Solo. The man plans to restore the imperial empire and bring himself great personal power. Han joins with a female alien named Dracmus against Sal-Solo's corrupt Human League. Han Solo wishes to escape to Selonia to warn his friends but he is not even sure he can trust Dracmus. Meanwhile, forces conspire to take control of Centerpoint Station, an ancient artifact/world with the ability to destroy solar systems. |
4620488 | /m/0cc_zg | Showdown at Centerpoint | Roger MacBride Allen | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Luke Skywalker and several of his Jedi Academy students travel to Centerpoint Station. This place contains a device capable of destroying planets. Various factions fight over the control of the Station. |
4623256 | /m/0cd45j | Plainsong | Kent Haruf | 1999-10 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Maggie is the link between many of the other characters and strands of the novel. She introduces Victoria to the McPheron brothers, and has a romantic relationship with Tom. The novel was adapted in 2004 into a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie on CBS. |
4623430 | /m/0cd4ln | The Voodoo Plot | Franklin W. Dixon | null | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"} | The story begins when the Hardy Boys are on a stakeout at an antiques shop. The owner is robbed, and blames the Hardy Boys for slacking off. They later find out that a fellow basketball player's grandfather, Stretch Walker, is under a voodoo curse. The Hardy Boys fly off to see 'Rattlesnake Clem', a man who believes the revolution to still be on, and he believes himself to be the Shadowfox. he is arrested for the robbery when the stolen goods are found in his garage. Later, the Hardy Boys find Stretch and help him untangle the mystery of a voodoo cult that wants his bar, Stretch's. The story ends when the antique shop owner turns out to be the thief, going under the guise of King George III, and a mystery developed early in the story is revealed, Fenton's sock was stolen for use on a voodoo doll. When Aunt Gertrude hears this, she remarks how dangerous the business is. |
4623763 | /m/0cd5hr | Zeta Major | Simon Messingham | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Fifth Doctor returns to the planet Morestra, which he had visited two thousand years ago. The ruling class has become a theocracy and is trying to return to stealing crystals from Zeta Minor. This energy-granting plan did not work so well long ago and is again causing problems now. The Doctor tries to deal with the fallout of this situation while his companions are sucked into Morestra court intrigue. |
4624135 | /m/0cd5zt | The Immoralist | André Gide | 1902 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | While traveling to Tunis on honeymoon with his new bride, the Parisian scholar Michel is overcome by tuberculosis. As he recovers, he re-discovers the physical pleasures of living and resolves to forgo his studies of the past in order to experience the present—to let "the layers of acquired knowledge peel away from the mind like a cosmetic and reveal, in patches, the naked flesh beneath, the authentic being hidden there." This is not, however, the Michel his colleagues knew—not a Michel that will be readily accepted by traditional society—and he must hide his new values under the patina of what he now reviles. Bored by Parisian society, he moves to a family farm in Normandy. He is happy there, especially in the company of young Charles, but he must soon return to the city and academe. Michel remains restless until he gives his first lecture and runs into Ménalque, who has long outraged society, and recognizes in him a reflection of his torment. Michel returns south, deeper into the desert, until, as he confides to his friends, he is lost in the sea of sand. Gide's story is filled by his descriptive prose, which evokes the exotic nature of Michel's inner and outer journey: "I did not understand the forbearance of this African earth, submerged for days at a time and now awakening from winter, drunk with water, bursting with new juices; it laughed in this springtime frenzy whose echo, whose image I perceived within myself." de:Der Immoralist es:El inmoralista fr:L'Immoraliste pt:L'Immoraliste ro:Imoralistul |
4625119 | /m/0cd7zw | Timewyrm: Genesys | John Peel | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In ancient Mesopotamia the Seventh Doctor and Ace together with Gilgamesh face a mythological Gallifreyan terror — the Timewyrm. |
4625350 | /m/0cd8c0 | Luna | Julie Anne Peters | 2004 | {"/m/02qg536": "Transgender and transsexual fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Luna follows the life of sixteen year old Regan as she keeps the secret of her older brother Liam's transgender identity. During the day, Liam is an average senior student with a job making, programming and fixing computers alongside his best friend Aly. But at night, Liam 'transforms' into Lia Marie, a girl. Later, he changes his female name to Luna, which means "moon", to reflect that his true identity could only be seen at night. After years of ‘transforming’ only at night, Liam confides in his sister that he wants to transition into a real female. Liam asks Regan to help him with his transitioning and, although she agrees, she finds herself worried about Liam and his safety. The novel follows Regan as she makes sense of her bother’s decision, replaying memories of moments where Liam ‘let Luna out’ and fearing the worst for Liam’s transitioning. Other problems arise for Regan as she is attending high school. She spends most of her life avoiding other students, in fear of letting the secret slip. But a new boy at school, Chris, becomes interested in her. Although Regan enjoys attention from Chris, she draws away from him, choosing to stay focused on Luna. As Luna is coming out more, her father starts to notice differences in his son and tries to push a more masculine role onto Liam. Regan’s father confides in her that he believes Liam is homosexual. Meanwhile, their mother remains oblivious to the rising tension in the household. Consumed by the workload of her wedding planning business, the mother is constantly out of the house and distant from her family. Despite the tensions and the negativity weighing on her choice, Luna fights for her right to be the person she feels that she was meant to be. Alongside her, Regan learns to stand her ground, to think more of herself, and discovers the person she wants to be. |
4625761 | /m/0cd8_9 | Mission to Magnus | Philip Martin | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Sixth Doctor and Peri find themselves being threatened by Anzor, an old school bully from the Doctor's time on Gallifrey, who locks the TARDIS in orbit above the planet of Magnus. On this planet, Anzor has been working with the female upper caste to his own ends, alongside the Doctor's old enemy Sil. When the Doctor investigates further, he discovers that the polar icecaps of the planet hide an even darker foe — the Ice Warriors. |
4627006 | /m/0cdbmd | The Lifted Veil | George Eliot | 1859-07 | {"/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | The unreliable narrator, Latimer, believes that he is cursed with an otherworldly ability to see into the future and the thoughts of other people. His unwanted "gift" seems to stem from a severe childhood illness he suffered while attending school in Geneva. Latimer is convinced of the existence of this power, and his two initial predictions do come true the way he has envisioned them: a peculiar "patch of rainbow light on the pavement" and a few words of dialogue appear to him exactly as expected. Latimer is revolted by much of what he discerns about others' motivations. Latimer becomes fascinated with Bertha, his brother's cold and coquettish fiancée, because her mind and motives remain atypically closed to him. After his brother's death, Latimer marries Bertha, but the marriage disintegrates as he recognizes Bertha's manipulative and untrustworthy nature. Latimer's friend, scientist Charles Meunier, performs a blood transfusion from himself to Bertha's recently deceased maid. For a few moments the maid comes back to life and accuses Bertha of a plot to poison Latimer. Bertha flees and Latimer soon dies as he had himself foretold at the start of the narrative. |
4629105 | /m/0cdgsg | The Temple of Dawn | Yukio Mishima | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The lawyer Honda visits Thailand on a business trip and encounters a young girl whom he believes to be his schoolfriend's second reincarnation. Eleven years later she travels to Japan to study and he befriends her in the hope of learning more. The main narrative takes place between 1941 and 1952. The last chapter is set in 1967. In 1941, Shigekuni Honda is sent to Bangkok as legal counsel for Itsui Products in a case involving a spoilt shipment of antipyretic drugs. He takes advantage of the trip to see as much as he can of Thailand. After touring many great buildings, he visits the Temple of Dawn and is deeply impressed by its sumptuous architecture, which to the sober lawyer represents "golden listlessness", the luxurious feel of anti-rationalism and of "the constant evasion of any organized logical system". Mentioning to his translator, Hishikawa, that he went to school with two Siamese princes (Pattanadid, a younger brother of Rama VI, and his cousin Kridsada, a grandson of Rama IV—both in Lausanne with their uncle Rama VIII), a short meeting is arranged with Pattanadid's seven-year-old daughter, Princess Chantrapa (Ying Chan), who claims to be the reincarnation of a Japanese boy, much to the embarrassment of her relatives, who keep her isolated in the Rosette Palace. Ying Chan almost immediately claims to recognise Honda, asserts that she is Isao and demands to be taken back to Japan with him. Honda questions her and satisfies himself that she is the genuine article, but is bothered at a later meeting by the absence of the three moles that helped him identify Isao. At the conclusion of the lawsuit at the end of September, Itsui offers him a bonus in the form of a travel voucher, which he uses to travel to India. He visits Calcutta, where he sees the Durga festival; Benares, where he witnesses open-air cremation; Mogulsarai, Manmad, and finally the Ajanta caves, closely associated with Buddhism, where he sees cascades that remind him of Kiyoaki's last promise to "see him...beneath the falls". He returns to Bangkok on November 23, at a time when relations with Japan are deteriorating, and is unpleasantly affected by the crassness and ugliness of the Japanese tourists at his hotel. A last visit to see Ying Chan at the Chakri Palace goes disastrously, when the translator lets slip that Honda is leaving for Japan without her, and Ying Chan throws a tantrum. Almost immediately after he returns to Japan, war is declared with the United States. The atmosphere is almost festive. Honda spends all his spare time studying Buddhist philosophy and pays no attention to the war. Even when confronted by bombed-out residential districts, he feels no emotion; in fact, his studies have left him even more indifferent to the outside world than before. At the end of May 1945, Honda encounters the former maid, Tadeshina, at the former Matsugae estate. Tadeshina reminds him about Satoko Ayakura, who is still at the Gesshu Temple to which she retired at the end of Spring Snow. (Honda has an impulse to visit Satoko but cannot obtain train tickets.) He gives Tadeshina some food, and in return she gives him a book she uses as a talisman, the Mahamayurividyarajni, or "Sutra of the Great Golden Peacock Wisdom King (or Queen)". A description of this sutra in Chapter 22 concludes Part One. Chapter 23 introduces Keiko Hisamatsu, Honda's neighbor at his new villa at Ninooka, a summer resort in the Gotemba area. In 1947, the new Constitution resulted in the sudden resolution of a lawsuit filed in 1900, as a result of which Honda earned a 36,000,000 yen fee for a single case. He uses part of this money to buy the property, which overlooks Mount Fuji. In the same year he won the case, he rediscovered (in an antique shop owned by Prince Toin) the emerald ring that the Thai prince, Chao P., had lost at the Peers School in 1913. At a housewarming party, two pseudo-artistic friends of Honda's are introduced: Mrs Tsubakihara, a mournful poetry student under Makiko Kito (who perjured herself for Isao's sake in Runaway Horses), and Yasushi Imanishi, a specialist in German literature who is obsessed with elaborate sadomasochistic fantasies set in "The Land of the Pomegranate". Many other guests arrive, in scenes which represent Mishima's caricature of post-war Japan; to Honda's disappointment, Ying Chan, another invitee who is now a student in Japan, does not turn up. During the night, Honda peeks into the guest room and is shocked to see two of his guests having sex while a third watches. This is the first indication of Honda's literally voyeuristic tendencies (which are intended to be emblematic of his approach to the world). The next day they visit the shrine of Mount Fuji; the day after, Honda learns from Keiko that Ying Chan turned up at his house a day late. Ying Chan and Honda meet for dinner at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo; Honda returns the emerald ring. Arriving back home he finds Iinuma, the decrepit father of Isao, waiting for him. During a confessional conversation, Iinuma tells him about a suicide attempt he made in 1945 and shows him the scar. As he leaves, Honda feels sorry for him and gives him 50,000 yen in an envelope. Honda decides to settle the question of Ying Chan's "inheritance" (the three moles on the midriff) once and for all. He tries to get Katsumi Shimura, a nephew of Keiko, to seduce Ying Chan, but he fails. Scenes elaborating on Imanishi and Tsubakihara follow, including Imanishi's excited reaction to Communist student demonstrations in Tokyo. Finally, Honda invites Ying Chan to a pool party at his villa. Now that Ying Chan is clad in a bathing suit, he sees no moles on her side. It is only while spying on her in the guest room that he finally sees the moles. To his amazement, she is sleeping with Keiko. His satisfaction with this ocular proof is short-lived: Imanishi falls asleep while smoking in bed and Honda's villa burns to the ground. Both Imanishi and Tsubakihara are killed, but the others in the house survive. Honda assumes that he has saved Ying Chan (who returns to Thailand) from karmatic fate, but his hopes are dashed in the final chapter. |
4629842 | /m/0cdj0s | Dreams of Empire | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Doctor and his companions land in what seems to be a medieval castle. In reality, it is a fortress/prison, the last stronghold for military forces. The TARDIS crew quickly finds itself in danger from outside threats and inside, not the least of which is seemingly self-animating suits of armor. |
4629955 | /m/0cdj8b | The Final Sanction | Steve Lyons | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | It is the second and so far final encounter between the Doctor and the Selachians, first introduced by Lyons in his previous Second Doctor novel, The Murder Game. The year is 2204. The Doctor is caught in human history. When the TARDIS is stolen and Zoe is kidnapped by a Selachian he is forced to intervene in a war. The Doctor most make a painful choice which is more important the flow of a time stream or the lives of his companions. |
4630000 | /m/0cdjc2 | Black Water | D.J. MacHale | 8/3/2004 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | This entire story is unsettling for the characters. Mark Dimond, now one of two acolytes (librarians for the Travelers' journals) is aghast to find that Andy Mitchell, the school bully, is a scientific idiot savant. Courtney Chetwynde, Mark's partner acolyte and one of Bobby's romantic interests, finds that she is no longer the phenomenal athlete of her earlier years. It starts off where The Reality Bug left. Bobby says goodbye to Aja Killian and flumes to Eelong. There, Bobby discovers a society wherein humans do only menial work, dominated and even enslaved by biped felines called Klee. The enslaved humans, called Gar by their oppressors, have begun a revolution called the Advent and are led by the almighty guardian who is mostly covered by a dark shadow, you can only see his distinct yellow eyes and feathers. At the arranged moment, radio broadcasts will be sent from the hidden Gar capital of Black Water through small amber cubes, demanding that the entire Gar population leave their squalid stables at once and march to their capital, where they can be free. Without them, the Klee cannot maintain their standard of living. Worse, Saint Dane is trying to stir up genocide. To do so, he has poisoned the crops gathered by the races of Eelong, urged the Klee to hunt and eat the Gar, and arranged for Black Water to be bombarded by toxic gases. It is discovered by the acolytes of Second Earth that the poison used by Saint Dane in these plans was taken from the territory of Cloral. The only antidote is likewise Cloran, having been developed by the Scientists of Faar. Eager to take an active role in the Travelers' quest, the children go to Cloral and collect the antidote. With them to Eelong goes the Cloran Traveler, Vo Spader. Because the poison, the antidote, and the acolytes are unique to their respective territories, the interrealitial tunnels called flumes undergo stress and strain in transporting them. On Eelong, Bobby has experienced the most degrading aspects of Gar life and learned from them. With the help of the Klee Traveler Kasha, he makes rendezvous with Gunny at Black Water. There, Kasha is exposed violently to Saint Dane's evil ways for the first time. This encounter creates a passionate dedication to her destiny. Travelers and acolytes work together to bring the antidote to Black Water, where it will be distributed throughout the city's irrigation system. When the Klee under Saint Dane's orders use the poison, it is made harmless. Thereafter, the Klee and Gar live as equals, each doing what they do best as well as contributing to one another's success. Mark and Courtney reluctantly return to Second Earth, while Bobby moves on to Zadaa in pursuit of Saint Dane. However, things do not go according to plan. The flume on Eelong is destroyed by the passage of non-Travelers through it, leaving Spader and Gunny trapped on Eelong. Bobby reaches Zadaa, but Kasha gets hit in the head with a boulder which kills her in the collapse of the flume on Eelong. Bobby, aided by the Traveler Loor, cremates the Klee's body and store her ashes. On Second Earth, Mark and Courtney are intact and home. They learn of what happened through Bobby's journals, although amazed that no time has passed on Second Earth since they left for Eelong. The book ends with Bobby Pendragon writing his 19th journal in Loor's home on Zadaa. |
4631391 | /m/0cdl2s | Dying in the Sun | Jon de Burgh Miller | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Los Angeles, 1947. LAPD detective Robert Chate is convinced that the man who calls himself 'The Doctor' has something to do with the murder of multi-millionaire movie producer Harold Reitman. The Doctor aids the police in their investigation, while looking into 'Star Light Pictures'. The Doctor is convinced there is a powerful threat hidden somewhere in the soon to be released film 'Dying In the Sun'. He decides to stop the release any way he can and faces opposition from the Hollywood power structure. |
4632423 | /m/0cdm94 | Cold Mountain | Charles Frazier | 1997 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel opens in a Confederate military hospital where the protagonist, Inman, is recovering from a recent battle wound. Tired of fighting for a cause he never believed in and longing for his home at Cold Mountain, North Carolina, he decides to desert from the Confederate Army and sets out on an epic journey home. The narrative alternates between the story of Inman and that of Ada Monroe, a minister's daughter recently relocated from Charleston to the rural mountain community of Cold Mountain. Though they only knew each other for a brief time before Inman departed for the war, it is largely the hope of seeing Ada again that drives Inman to desert the army and make the dangerous journey back to Cold Mountain. Details of their brief history together are told at intervals in flashback over the course of the novel. At Cold Mountain, Ada's father soon dies and the farm where the genteel city-bred Ada lives, named Black Cove, is soon reduced to a state of disrepair. A young woman named Ruby, outspoken and resourceful, soon moves in and begins to help Ada to overcome her circumstances and the two of them form a close friendship as they attempt to survive in this harsh war-torn environment. Inman's journey to return to Ada is perilous. He faces starvation, extreme weather, the constant harassment of the Home Guard sent to track down deserters, and the treachery of other desperate individuals. He is at times aided in his journey by strangers equally affected by the horrors of war. Frazier's narrative depicts a bleak landscape of America during the Civil War focusing on the emotional and psychological scars left upon combatants and citizens alike. |
4632754 | /m/0cdmmj | The Redwall Cookbook | Brian Jacques | 2005 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01kqty": "Cookbook"} | This book features numerous recipes for dishes mentioned in the Redwall series, and features illustrations by Christopher Denise. The plot follows Sister Pansy through one cycle of the seasons in Redwall Abbey, as she becomes the Head Cook. The cookbook is divided into the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. As befits the cooking of gentle woodland creatures, all of the recipes (with the exception of the obvious crustacean ingredient in Shrimp'n'Hotroot Soup) are completely vegetarian. Each recipe is preceded by a description of who is making the dish and how it is being prepared. There are also short warnings and anecdotes by the characters sprinkled throughout the text. |
4633635 | /m/0cdnv9 | Polaroids from the Dead | Douglas Coupland | 1996 | null | The book is split into three parts. The first part is Polaroids from the Dead, which is a collection of short stories inspired by a series of Grateful Dead concerts. The second is Portraits of People and Places, which is a collection of essays about people and places, including a letter to Kurt Cobain and a discussion of the Lions Gate Bridge. The last part is called “Brentwood Notebook” and is a discussion of Brentwood, California, a suburb of Los Angelus. It is also where Marilyn Monroe died, and where Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. The first part contains ten fictional stories. They have titles like “The 1960s Are Disneyland”, and "T or F: Self-Perfection Is Attainable Within Your Lifetime." The stories focus on both young and old characters and their experiences with Grateful Dead concerts. Interspersed within the text are large, full-page images of the Polaroids that inspired the story. Other images include a picture of Sharon Tate and Charles Manson, in reference to their mention in a story. This section was originally published in a slightly different form in Spin Magazine, in April 1992. ;List of Chapters : 1. The 1960s Are Disneyland : 2. You Are Afraid of the Smell of Shit : 3. You are Exhausted by Risk : 4. T or F: Self-Perfection Is Attainable Within Your Lifetime : 5. Tinkering with Oblivion Carries Risks : 6. You Don’t Own Your Body : 7. You Fear Involuntary Sedation : 8. You Can’t Remember What you Chose to Forget : 9. Technology Will Spare Us the Tedium of Repeating history : 10. How Clear Is Your Vision of Heaven? This section includes multiple essays and letters on a variety of topics. This section is nonfiction, excluding the last story. Some essays are recollections of places and events in Coupland’s life, such as an article on the Lions Gate Bridge, or a story about a visiting German reporter. Some are told as postcard recollections of places Coupland has visited. Others are essays about people, such as a letter to Kurt Cobain. The last piece is a collection of microstories about the 1992 American election's Super Tuesday. Many of these essays were published in other publications, such as Spin, Vancouver Magazine, Tempo, Artforum, and The New Republic. The essays appeared in slightly different forms. ;List of Chapters: : 11. Lions Gate Bridge, Vancouver, B.C., Canada: Originally published in Vancouver Magazine under the name “This Bridge Is Ours” : 12. The German Reporter: Originally published in Tempo : 13. Postcard from the Former East Berlin (Circus Envy) : 14. Letter to Kurt Cobain: Originally published in The Washington Post : 15. Harolding in West Vancouver: Originally published in The New Republic in February 1994 : 16. Two Postcards from the Bahamas. : 17. Postcard from Palo Alto: Originally published in The New Republic in May 1994. : 18. James Rosenquist’s F-111 (F-One Eleven): Originally published in Artforum in April 1994. : 19. Postcard from Los Almos (Acid Canyon) : Originally published in The New Republic in May 1994. : 20. Washington, D.C.: Four Microstories, Super Tuesday 1992 This part is a long extended essay discussing Brentwood, California. The essay is broken down into a chronological time periods, spanning a day from Morning, to Afternoon to Late Afternoon. The essay follows Brentwood from its inception to its notoriety with the death of Marilyn Monroe and the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. It also discusses the idea of post-fame, when fame becomes a liability to the famous. The essay incorporates information off billboards and menus into its text, including interesting historical documents as well. Portions of Brentwood Notebook was published in The New Republic in December 1994. |
4634530 | /m/0cdqff | Song of Lawino | Okot p'Bitek | null | null | Song of Lawino, which is a narrative poem, describes how Lawino's husband, Ocol, who is the son of the tribal leader of their specific Acoli tribe, has taken a new wife, Clementine. Although Ocol's polygamy is accepted by society, and by Lawino herself, it is apparent from his actions (as described by Lawino) that he is shunning her in favor of his new wife. Ocol is also said to have a fascination with the culture of the white colonialists, as does Clementine. As an example of this, Lawino says Ocol no longer engages, or has any interest in, the ritualistic African dance but prefer the ballroom style dances introduced by the colonising Europeans. This loss of culture on the part of Ocol is what disturbs Lawino the most. The poem is an extended appeal from Lawino to Ocol to stay true to his own customs, and to abandon his desire to be white.The book also castigates the treatment of christianity by pagans and advocates for the african culture which has been lost by the educated elite.Lawino bemourns her husband's lack of african pride and she goes on to romanticize about all that is black.This is illustrated widely in the text as the african woman Lawino appreciates the fact that "all that is black is beautiful."However it should be noted with great concern that Ocol becomes sentimental about the african culture alone and paints the western culture with a black brush. |
4634547 | /m/0cdqh4 | Caedmon's Song | Peter Robinson | 1990 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | One warm June night, a university student called Kirsten is viciously attacked in a park by a serial killer. He is interrupted, and Kirsten survives, but in a severe physically and psychologically damaged state. As the killer continues, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses, Kirsten confronts her memories and becomes convinced not only that she can, but that she must remember what happened. Through fragments of nightmares, the details slowly reveal themselves. Interwoven with Kirsten’s story is that of Martha Browne, a woman who arrives in the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby with a sense of mission. Finally, the two strands are woven together and united in a startling, chilling conclusion. |
4634742 | /m/0cdqmp | The Colony of Lies | Colin Brake | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The independent Earth Colony Axista Four was supposedly founded in the 2439 by Stewart Ransom, a noted humanitarian. Arriving on the colony one hundred years later, the Doctor, Zoe and Jamie find a near-civil war. 'Realists' have abandoned Ransome's 'back to basics' ideals and are raiding the remains of the colony ship to further their technological advancements. The 'Loyalists' are in danger of extinction. In a little-known underground bunker, aliens who claim to be the planet's first colonists are stirring. Hopeful colonists hope Random's daughter, Kirann, can be revived from cryogenic suspension and reunited the colony. This does not work out as expected. |
4639312 | /m/0cdzh8 | Raven's Gate | Anthony Horowitz | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Written by: Kalvin Meyer Matt Freeman is a fourteen year old boy who lives in Ipswich with his aunt, Gwenda Davis, who turns out to be an antagonist in Evil Star . He lives with her because his parents died in a car crash when he was eight years old. While living with his aunt, he breaks into a warehouse filled with electronic equipment with his friend, Kelvin Johnson. After they get caught, Matt is sent to Yorkshire on the L.E.A.F. (Liberty and Education Achieved through Fostering) Project, which involves sending troubled children into the countryside to get away from city temptations. Matt's foster parent is a woman named Jayne Deverill, who lives on a farm with a strange farmhand named Noah, who doesn't talk much. When Matt goes down to the nearby village of Lesser Malling on an errand for Mrs. Deverill he receives a warning from a strange man. The man warns him to get away from Lesser Malling before it is too late. So Matt tries to escape, and while trying to find some money he goes into Mrs. Deverill's bedroom and finds a copy of the police report detailing his parents' deaths and his clairvoyant powers. Matt tries to escape Hive Hall by stealing the bike of Mrs. Deverill's missing husband. He tries to ride away, but finds it impossible to escape, because which ever way he goes, he always ends up back at the same intersection in the forest he started at. He hears strange whispers and sees a light in the trees. After a while, He discovers Omega One, an abandoned nuclear power station, in the woods and meets the man from Lesser Malling again. The man introduces himself as Tom Burgess, gives Matt a charm that prevents him from going in circles like before, and tells Matt to meet him at his house. Matt visits his house the next day and finds Tom Burgess murdered, with the words "Raven's Gate" painted on the wall in green. Matt runs away as fast as possible, then finds the police and tells them what he saw. They go back to the house where a woman named Miss Creevy says that Tom Burgess has gone to tend to his sheep and visit someone far away. He shows the police officers the scene where he saw Tom Burgess's body, but finds nothing. The words painted on the wall have been painted over. To get information about Raven's Gate, he finds a book by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood, but the chapter on Raven's Gate is ripped out. When he searches on the Internet, an instant-mail box appears, and a man called Professor Sanjay Dravid talks to him, asking Matt who he is. Matt tells him his name, then the pop-up window disappears. The librarian tells Matt to go to the Greater Malling Gazette to find articles on Raven's Gate, and there he meets Richard Cole, a young journalist working there. Matt tells his story to him, but Cole doesn't believe him. And oddly, when he leaves the Gazette he finds Mrs. Deverill waiting for him with Noah. They forcefully take Matt back to Hive Hall. Later that night, Matt wakes up to see another light coming from Omega One, even though he found out from the gazette that it hadn't been used in 20 years. Matt knows something is going on and explores the woods. Near the power station he finds an old witchcraft ceremony going on with all the inhabitants of Lesser Malling involved. The power station lights are coming on and men are carrying materials into the building. Matt is noticed and Mrs Deverill summons some gruesome hounds from a fire to kill Matt. While Matt is being chased, he accidentally falls into a bog and begins to sink. Richard Cole arrives and rescues him, as Matt had used his power to call for help. The dogs arrive and Richard kills them by getting a can of gasoline stuffed with a handkerchief, lights it on fire, then throws it at the dogs setting them on fire. They then go back to Richard's house in York. Richard now believes Matt's story because he remembers Omega One and says there were sections of the story he "couldn't get out of his head". Since Matt suspects that there is something odd about Omega One, they meet with the engineer who designed and built it, Sir Michael Marsh, but find out nothing except for how a nuclear power plant works. Matt and Richard then go to visit Elizabeth Ashwood, the author of the book in the library. Elizabeth Ashwood is revealed to have died, but her daughter Susan is there. She advises them to go meet Professor Sanjay Dravid in London after Matt demands to know about Raven's Gate. She also tells them that she and Dravid are part of an organization known as the Nexus. Richard and Matt travel to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. Dravid tells Matt about the Old Ones. They were dark creatures who survived on human misery many years ago, and once wanted to rule the world, but were transported to another dimension by five children with supernatural powers. The Five, or the Gatekeepers, as they are also known, then built Raven's Gate to hold the evil creatures away. According to Dravid, Mrs Deverill and the villagers of Lesser Malling are part of a group of witches who seek the return of the Old Ones by opening Raven's Gate using witchcraft. Dravid tells Matt that he is a part of one of the five children who defeated the Old Ones, and has inherited their powers while Mrs Deverill and the citizens of Lesser Malling, who are all descendants of witches and warlocks, want to sacrifice him on the night of Roodmas, the day black magic is most powerful. Richard doesn't believe Dravid and begins to leave with Matt. But as Professor Dravid returns to his office to contact the Nexus and get his keys, he is attacked and walks out of his office with a cut in his neck and dies. Richard quickly takes his keys, but then is also attacked by dinosaur skeletons in the museum and at that moment dozens of skeleton dinosaurs turn to life and attempt to kill Matt and Richard. Richard is trapped by a diplodocus's rib cage and then crushed by a girder. Matt is recaptured by Mrs Deverill, who animated the dinosaurs to kill them. Matt wakes in the barn at Hive Hall, and to escape he slowly removes the floorboards in his room with a makeshift chisel. When Noah enters the room to take Matt to Mrs. Deverill, he falls through the hole made by Matt, which was covered by a rug, and dies because he fell on his sickle. Matt runs away to the road, and a car comes towards him. It is the nuclear scientist who built Omega One, Sir Michael Marsh. But then Matt realises that Sir Michael is a traitor, working with the inhabitants of Lesser Malling, and Sir Michael explains that he was the one who bought the power station's uranium in the first place. Matt is taken inside Omega One, and realizes that it was built where Raven's Gate once stood. Richard Cole survived the ordeal at the museum and has been recaptured by the witches. They are taken to the inner sanctum, where Matt and the villagers are held in a magical protective circle, but Richard is left outside it to die in the heat. Sir Michael Marsh reveals that he needs Matt's blood to complete the black magic ritual that will open Raven's Gate. Marsh is about to stab the knife into Matt when Matt focuses on his powers and surprisingly stops the knife. He defeats Marsh and frees himself and Richard. They escape to the lower levels of the power station but are followed by Mrs Deverill. She knocks out Richard and is about to kill Matt when Richard recovers and shoves Deverill into a pool of radioactive acid. Then they escape from Omega One by jumping into an underground river under the building. Back in the inner sanctum, the station's levels are at critical mass. The villagers panic and run out of the protective circle, killing them all and leaving Sir Michael Marsh alone. Marsh then realises there is a tiny drop of Matt's blood on the knife and stabs down with the knife, causing Raven's Gate to break and explode open. The King of the Old Ones climbs out of the portal and crushes Sir Michael to death. The power station then overloads and explodes, but all the heat and radiation is sucked into the gate, taking the Old Ones with it. The portal and the Gate are sealed and the Old Ones are once again trapped in their separate dimension. Matt ends up living with Richard in York. They get a visit from Fabian, a member of The Nexus, who has come to talk to him about a second gate in Peru. Richard doesn't want to go through all this again, but Matt explains he has no choice because he is a Gatekeeper and, as the Old Ones will break out again, it is his destiny to stop them. |
4639587 | /m/0cdzwf | The Green Man | Kingsley Amis | 1969 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | As the novel unfolds, Allington is beset by a number of difficulties, including his father’s death by stroke at dinner one night, and a drinking problem that causes hypnagogic jactitation and hallucinations; Maurice compounds his problems by pursuing an affair with his doctor’s wife, neglecting his daughter Amy (whose mother, Maurice’s first wife, was run down in a road accident) and attempting to seduce both his current wife and his mistress into a ménage à trois, which backfires when the two women take an enthusiastic interest in each other and effectively shut him out of the orgy. During this time Maurice begins to see ghosts around the inn – a red-haired woman, presumably Underhill’s wife, in the hallway, a small bird floating above his bathtub, the spectre of Thomas Underhill himself in the dining room – and yet has a difficult time communicating this to his family and friends, who assume that heavy drinking and the stress of his father’s death are causing him to hallucinate. Maurice’s own investigations take him to All Saints’ College, a fictional Cambridge college (modeled on All Souls’ of Oxford) of which Underhill was a fellow, and at which his papers are secreted. There he sees Underhill’s own record of having used his black arts to entice and then ravish young girls from the village. In the meantime Maurice has discovered his own notes of a drunken, and forgotten, midnight conversation with Underhill, during which Underhill begins to enlist Maurice’s help in his as yet undisclosed scheme. This involves Maurice’s unearthing of Underhill’s nearby grave, in which he finds an ancient silver figurine that Underhill requests be brought to another midnight meeting in the inn’s dining room. That afternoon, having left the scene of the failed orgy, Maurice finds himself in a strange time warp, as it were, in which all molecular motion outside his drawing room ceases. He finds himself in the presence of a young, suave man who it comes to be understood is God himself. The purpose of the visit is to warn Maurice against Underhill and ask him to aid in Underhill’s destruction, but during the conversation Amis has the young man elaborate an interesting sort of theology, explaining the Creation and God’s powers within it. The young man leaves Maurice with a silver crucifix, as a sort of counter-weight to the silver figurine. When the midnight meeting comes about, Underhill attempts to delight Maurice with a sort of holographic yet primitive pornography show; Maurice feels he is in damp, murky cave, on the walls of which are projected bizarre sexual scenes. As the show becomes more terrifying, Maurice realizes that Underhill has absented himself; when he hears his daughter crying out from the road in front of the inn, he realizes Underhill’s intentions. In the climactic scene, Maurice uses the crucifix to stun Underhill and runs outside, where he confronts the entity Underhill had used the figurine to conjure: the green man, a collocation of branches, twigs and leaves in the form of a large and powerful man. The thing is bent, evidently, on killing Maurice’s daughter Amy. By hurling the figurine back into the graveyard Maurice saps Underhill’s power and destroys the green man. Underhill’s purpose had been, apparently, to have Amy killed as a sort of experiment in lieu of the sexual depredations which are now forbidden him by his lack of corporeality. A final scene wraps up the novel’s loose ends: Maurice destroys the figurine, and he employs the modish, cynical and repellent parish priest (who makes God out to be, in the young man’s words, a “suburban Mao Tse-tung”) to exorcise Underhill and his green man. Maurice’s wife leaves him (for his mistress), but his daughter proposes, and he agrees to, a plan to move away from The Green Man and get a fresh start. Maurice is somewhat relieved, while recognizing that he will remain until his death trapped in all of the faults, petty and otherwise, that constitute him as Maurice Allington. |
4640253 | /m/0cd__v | Mr. Tickle | null | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Mr. Tickle's story begins with him in bed and making himself breakfast without getting up because of his "extraordinarily long arms". He then decides that it is a tickling sort of day and so goes around town tickling people - a teacher, a policeman, a greengrocer, a station guard, a doctor, a butcher and a postman. The book ends with a warning that Mr. Tickle could be lurking around your doorway, waiting to tickle you. |
4641452 | /m/0cf22c | The Riders | Tim Winton | 1994 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Riders tells the story of an Australian man, Fred Scully, and his 6 year old daughter Billie. Scully, as he is known, and his wife Jennifer have planned to move from Australia to a cottage they have purchased in Ireland. His wife and daughter are due to arrive in Ireland but at the airport only Billie arrives, traumatised and unable to tell her father what has happened or why her mother put her on the plane alone. The story then follows Scully and Billie as they travel around Europe retracing the steps of their previous travel, trying to find Jennifer and work out why she left them. |
4642309 | /m/0cf3k7 | The Night of Wenceslas | Lionel Davidson | 1960 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Nicolas is a 24-year-old Londoner, a witty wastrel and the novel's archetypal anti-hero. He hates his job in his late father's glass-making business, where he works under the odious Nimek in anticipation of making full partner one day. He dreams of inheriting untold riches from his Uncle Bela in Vancouver, which will put an end to his current servitude. His bossy Irish girlfriend Maura continually presses him to make something of himself. His one true love is his car, which he bought on an impulse, and its maintenance keeps him in permanent hock to the garage owner "Ratface" Ricketts. A note arrives from a lawyer called Stephen Cunliffe, stating that his Uncle Bela has died in Canada and left him a fortune. He goes to see Cunliffe, who forwards him a sum of £200 to tide him over until such time as he can begin to enjoy the fruits of his new estate. However, Nicolas manages to spend this allowance in a matter of days, and is soon back at Cunliffe's office to arrange a more stable income stream. However, Cunliffe now declares that Uncle Bela is very much alive, that he, Cunliffe, is in fact a moneylender, and that Nicolas owes him £200, with the MG as security. The distraught Nicolas is told that he can discharge his debt if he is willing to carry out a simple assignment in Prague. He is to bring back certain formulae for glass-making processes from a glass factory that used to belong to Pavelka, an associate of Cunliffe's who also happens to have been a wrestler in the past. After much cogitation, Nicolas travels to Prague. It is the city of his childhood, and he stays in a plush hotel on Wenceslas Square. He meets up with various bigwigs in the Czech glass-making industry, and is escorted by the statuesque Vlasta Simenova. |
4643023 | /m/0cf4t7 | Proteus in the Underworld | Charles Sheffield | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Sondra Wolf Dearborn is a junior operative in the Office of Form Control. Her job is to monitor questionable and illicit form change techniques, enforce the Humanity Test, and prosecute illegal mods. She is a recent addition to the force, arriving just three years after the retirement of the legendary Bey Wolf, one of the greatest form change experts alive. She is assigned to a strange case by her superior Denzel Morone: several instances in which the Humanity Test has been successfully applied, but the "infants," if they could be called that, are feral monsters. Knowing that there is no way the specimens could have (or should have) passed the test, and also aware of her own limitations and inexperience, Sondra seeks advice from Bey Wolf, her distant relative. Bey Wolf resides on Wolf Island, a private resort he chose for the name and the isolation it provides. Having retired, he is pursuing his own research in animal Form Change, a fairly taboo subject. Sondra Wolf Dearborn arrives unannounced and uninvited, and he berates her before sending her off, telling her to visit the distant colony and inspect the Humanity Test equipment herself for possible flaws. He is ready to put her out of his mind when he receives another unwelcome visit, this time from Trudy Melford, president of BEC: Biological Equipment Corporation, the manufacturer of all Form Change tanks for the last 150 years. Trudy Melford is one of the richest and most powerful people alive, and a personal visit to a remote island is evidence of great urgency and need on her part. Bey Wolf, annoyed by Trudy's interruption, is nonetheless intrigued by her offer of a position at BEC to work on revolutionary new forms. However, his natural cynicism and detective's instincts tell him that the two visits in such a short time are connected somehow. Sondra Wolf Dearborn takes Bey Wolf's advice, after some initial stonewalling by her superior Denzel Morone, and heads for the outsystem. Generally regarded by Earth as a sparsely populated backwater, the Cloudlanders (referring to the Oort Cloud) have an inverse view of themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization, with Earth and the inner system a spent and tired cesspool of humanity. Sondra enlists the help of Bey Wolf's friend Aybee, a physicist and administrative genius, to further investigate the malfunctions and charter a flight to the Fugate colony, site of the first Humanity Test failure. Upon arriving at Fugate, Sondra is unnerved to find that Fugates are tens of meters tall, a form designed to allow cerebral growth unrestricted by the constraints of the mother's pelvis. The Fugates guide Sondra to the supposedly flawed equipment, then leave her alone at her request. Sondra performs every test she can imagine on the suspect Form Change tank, but is unable to find any software problems. She also rules out hardware flaws after inspecting the unbroken BEC seals. Having concluded her investigation, she suddenly realizes that she has been locked in the tank chamber and the atmosphere is becoming dangerously thin and cold. With no alternative, she sets up an emergency form change regimen in one of the tanks to put her in a cold-tolerant coma, and reluctantly steps inside. Meanwhile, Trudy Melford successfully lures Bey Wolf to Mars, the new headquarters of BEC. Bey is astonished to find that the entire Melford Castle (her family's personal estate) has been moved to Mars brick by brick, ostensibly for tax purposes. Trudy, acting as the gracious host, treats him to a lavish dinner and all but promises her body to him, if he will only accept a position at BEC. She even opens up her database to Wolf, giving him full access to all of BEC's past, present, and future undertakings. Fascinated, Bey spends hours browsing through theoretical form change research efforts currently in progress. This experience heightens his suspicions; the BEC engineers are ingenious, what problem could possibly be so important and so intractable that it warrants Trudy Melford's personal recruitment efforts towards him? Bey Wolf is beginning to realize that a very complex mystery is unfolding around him, and he has a hunch that the Humanity Test false positives are involved. He contacts Aybee and asks the Cloudlander to keep an eye on Sondra Dearborn, and even places a call to Roger Capman, another brilliant form change expert who has adopted a Logian Form: a supersentient methane breathing human form. Roger Capman, along with all other Logians, lives in floating cities deep in the atmosphere of Saturn. Logians have a stated policy of noninterference in human affairs, although Roger Capman maintains a special relationship with Bey. Roger expresses great interest in the situation but offers little information. Bey investigates further, and makes contact with the Mars Foundation, an organization founded by the original Mars colonists and continued by their descendants. Their goals are lofty: the terraforming of Mars, and their resources are truly enormous. For the past hundred years they have been shuttling comets to Mars and smashing them into the equator, gradually increasing the humidity and thickening the atmosphere. Their hope is that humans will eventually be able to walk on the surface of Mars without a suit. They think Melford has recruited Bey Wolf to help her perfect the new "surface forms" that have been spotted recently on Mars; humans who vaguely resemble kangaroos, and are already able to live unassisted on the Martian surface. The Mars Foundation's request is simple: snub BEC, refuse the contract, and they would match Trudy's offer. Bey had already discussed the surface forms with Trudy, and she had admitted that BEC was not behind the design, but she was interested in the possibilities (and profit) they presented. Assuming Trudy was telling the truth, there was a third party behind these new forms. Bey takes his leave and decides to venture out onto the surface, where he meets Georgia Kruskal, the genius behind the new Martian form. Bey recognizes in her intellect and ingenuity a kindred spirit, and he immediately asks Georgia for permission to contribute to her project. Aybee arrives at Fugate colony to discover Sandra in the form change tank. He and a puzzled Fugate revive her, and she claims to have survived a murder attempt. Her attempts to explain this to her supervisor back home fall on deaf ears, and he orders her back to Earth. Aybee encourages Sondra to make a stopover at Samarkand, because he has found a curious anomaly in the system traffic while looking for clues as to the identity of Sondra's attempted murderer: Trudy Melford's personal yacht recently paid a visit to Samarkand, a reclusive asteroid colony which has outlawed all form change. Why would the president of BEC visit a colony vehemently opposed to form change technology? Back on Mars, Bey is also the target of a murder attempt. A helical escalator is sabotaged and he falls thirteen meters, breaking a leg and an arm. He barely manages to summon help before passing out, and is brought back to Melford Castle. He persuades Trudy to send him back to his home on Wolf Island, where he programs a dangerously rapid regeneration procedure into his customized Form Change Tanks; in just under a week, he'll be out and walking again. He's now convinced a major conspiracy is underway, and all signs point to Trudy Melford. Sondra is of the same mind, and she manages to arrange a meeting with Trudy herself. Sondra and Bey confront Trudy, and they learn that she bore a child several years ago which failed the humanity test. Unable to relinquish her son to the organ banks, Trudy instituted a massive coverup and faked his death during a boating accident. She moved her corporation to Mars, not for the tax breaks, but to provide a safe and isolated haven for her illegal son. The visits to Samarkand were a diversionary tactic; if anyone got too close and suspected the truth, they would waste their efforts in a futile search of Samarkand's population. Trudy's ultimate goal was to undermine the legitimacy of the Humanity Test itself, by engineering defects into BEC equipment so that obvious non-humans would occasionally score a false positive. The murder attempts on Sondra and Bey were coordinated by her misguided underlings, attempting to win favor. Bey promises Trudy that he will reveal to the whole system that the Humanity Test is flawed. In fact, both he and Roger Capman nearly failed the test when they were infants. The Test apparently rejects certain those with a certain psychological profile. For generations, the human race has been culling what could have been some of its most brilliant minds! The revelation of Trudy's motives leaves another mystery unsolved: the enormous financial resources of the Mars Foundation. It is at this point that Bey Wolf confronts Roger Capman, who admits that the Logians have been interfering with human affairs after all. They have financed the whole terraforming operation on Mars in order to keep the human race from fragmenting and undergoing speciation. They foresee a time not far in the future when humans evolve into separate subspecies through isolation of populations. Bey realizes that this same fear has been at the back of his mind for years, but he had been unable to articulate it. Roger Capman makes another attempt to convince Bey Wolf to join him in Logian Form, but Bey Wolf realizes that he has many more years of life left to him as a human, and he intends to enjoy them and continue to contribute to human society. |
4644511 | /m/0cf6r7 | Harbinger | David Alan Mack | 7/26/2005 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The U.S.S. Enterprise is damaged after being the first ship to travel to the edge of the galaxy. They are traveling through the Taurus Reach and are surprised to find a new Federation facility, Starbase 47 A.K.A. Vanguard. Captain James T. Kirk is puzzled at this place for many reasons, including it being so near the xenophobic Tholian Assembly. Kirk has his ship dock for repairs. The Tholians, the Orions, and the Klingon Empire all believe there is much more to the establishment of this odd new starbase and there is. |
4647958 | /m/0cfcjv | Georges | Alexandre Dumas | 1843 | {"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel concerns the life of Georges, the son of a wealthy mulatto plantation owner named Munier, in the Isle de France (now Mauritius). While part-black, Georges appears to be very light-skinned, if not white. As a child, Georges witnesses an attempt by the British to gain control of the island. Because George's father is a mulatto, the other plantation owners refuse to fight alongside him. Instead, George's father leads the blacks and delivers a crushing blow against the invading forces. Refusing to acknowledge that a man of colour saved them, M. Malmedie and the other white plantation owners ignore the accomplishment. M. Malmedie's son Henry mocks Georges because of this, resulting in a fight between the two. Afterward, worried about any retaliation on the behalf of the plantation owner's father, George's father sends Georges and his old brother to Europe to become educated. In Europe, the brothers become separated when the older brother gets a job on a sailing ship. Georges becomes cultured, deeply educated and popular in Parisian circles. Through numerous tests of will Georges overcomes his weaknesses and becomes skilled in a variety of fields ranging from hunting to the art of seducing women. Upon his return, Georges has found that the plantation owners have forgotten who he is. In little time he becomes the toast of society, and a beautiful woman falls in love with him. He also discovers that his brother has become the captain of a slave-ship. However, Georges can't tolerate the injustice of slavery, so he conspires to lead a slave revolt. When this revolt fails, he becomes incarcerated and condemned to die. While he is brought to be executed, he is saved by a gang of pirates led by his brother. |
4648452 | /m/0cfd38 | The Man from St. Petersburg | Ken Follett | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book is set just before the outbreak of the First World War. It is an account of how the lives of the main characters were interwoven with the success or failure of secret naval talks between Britain and Russia. In these, Britain had to win the support of Russia in order to make any headway with its navy. As a result, Czar Nicholas’s nephew Prince Alexei was sent to London for high-level bilateral talks. Lord Stephen Walden is married to a Russian aristocrat called Lydia. His wife is also related to the young visiting Prince and Walden was one of the people taking part in the talks. When Prince Alexei arrived in London, his presence aroused the interest of not only the establishment, but tragically that of Feliks, an anarchist. Feliks, also a Russian, decided to eliminate Prince Alexei so that the Anglo-Russian negotiations would collapse. Having failed once to assassinate the Russian prince, Feliks looked for alternative methods. Eventually, he learned that Lydia, his ex-lover, was married to Walden. He visited the Waldens’ home and was able to get details of the Prince’s whereabouts. But his plot was foiled when Lydia, guided by her intuition, realised that Feliks had evil designs and told her husband about Feliks’ visit. As the drama unfolded, Walden’s daughter Charlotte got to know the effervescent Feliks. It was through her that he discovered once more about the hiding place of the Russian prince. It was about this time that Charlotte learned that her true father was not Walden, but Feliks. Lydia had been pregnant for two months before marrying Walden but this fact was unknown to Walden himself. The story moved up to a crescendo with the Russian prince being hidden in the country home of the Waldens. Yet again, Feliks, the assassin, wheedled this piece information from Charlotte. With her active support, Feliks hid himself right in the Walden home while the Special Branch was combing the entire village for him. At this point, Feliks decided it was time to make his move. He set the house on fire, which forced the prince to emerge to escaspe the flames. When the prince came out, Feliks shot him dead. But he himself lost his life in his attempt to save Charlotte who was trapped in the house by the inferno. When Walden later learnt of the paternity of Charlotte, he took it in his stride. For Feliks, it was a case of poetic justice. In the final chapter, Winston Churchil - at the time First Lord of the Admiralty and having recent experience as Home Secretary - arrives on the scene and formulates a comprehensive plan for damage control: Disposing of Feliks' body, hiding that such a person ever existed and regretfully informing the Czar that his nephew died in the fire but had already signed the treaty. Thus - in common with the conventions of Secret History - the whole affair remains hidden from public scrutiny and the First World War breaks out on schedule, and goes on with its four years of mass bloodshed. bn:দ্য ম্যান ফ্রম সেন্ট পিটার্সবার্গ es:El hombre de San Petersburgo fr:L'Homme de Saint-Pétersbourg it:L'uomo di Pietroburgo |
4649413 | /m/0cffqp | White Mughals | William Dalrymple | 3/29/2002 | {"/m/03g3w": "History"} | The book is a work of social history about the warm relations that existed between the British and some Indians in the 18th and early 19th century, when one in three British men in India was married to an Indian woman. It documents the interracial liaisons between British officers, such as Major-General Charles Stuart, and Indian women, and the geopolitical context of late 18th century India. Like From the Holy Mountain, it also examines the interactions of Christianity and Islam, emphasizing the surprisingly porous relationship between the two in pre-modern times. At the heart of White Mughals is the story of a love affair which saw a British dignitary, the East India Company resident of Hyderabad, Captain James Achilles Kirkpatrick, convert to Islam and marry Khair-un-Nissa, a Hyderabadi noblewoman of royal Persian descent. As the British resident of Hyderabad, Kirkpatrick is shown to balance the requirements of his employers, the East India Company, with his sympathetic attitude to the Nizam of Hyderabad. The very title of White Mughals indicates its subject: the late 18th- and early 19th-century period in India, where there had been ‘a succession of unexpected and unplanned minglings of peoples and cultures and ideas’. On one level, the book tells the tragic love story of James Kirkpatrick, ‘the thoroughly orientalised’ British Resident in Hyderabad and Khair, a beautiful young Muslim noblewoman. On another level, the story is about trade, military and political dealings, based on Dalrymple’s researches among letters, diaries, reports, and dispatches (much of it in cipher). Out of these sources he draws a fascinating picture of sexual attitudes and social etiquette, finding an ‘increasingly racist and dismissive attitude’ among the British ruling class towards mixed race offspring, after the rise of Evangelical Christianity. He paces the gradual revelations with a novelist’s skills, leading us on, after the death of Kirkpatrick, to ‘the saddest and most tragic part of the whole story’. The doomed lovers actually engender an optimistic coda, when their two children move to England. The daughter Kitty becomes a friend and muse of Thomas Carlyle, and re-establishes contact with her grandmother in India. |
4650467 | /m/0cfh0f | Avoidance | Michael Lowenthal | 11/1/2002 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jeremy is a 28-year-old man working at the summer camp where he spent a childhood summer and where he found a true sense of family after the death of his father. Jeremy now works at the camp as an assistant director. He becomes infatuated with Max, a disturbed 14-year-old. When Max confides in him that he has been sexually abused by the camp director, a victim of sexual abuse himself, Jeremy realises just how close he came to actually committing the same crime. |
4651123 | /m/0cfhsm | Fade | Robert Cormier | 1988 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In the summer of 1938, the young Paul Moreaux who lives in a town outside of Boston called Monument, discovers he can "fade". "Fading" is the term used for being invisible and becoming invisible to the world. His family has had this ability generation after generation. It is passed down from uncle to nephew. First bewildered, then thrilled with the possibilities of invisibility, Paul experiments with his "gift". This ability shows him things that he should not witness. His power soon overloads him, shows him shocking secrets, pushes him over the edge, and drives him toward some chilling and horrible acts from which there is no forgiveness, no forgetting, and no turning back. His depressing downfall impacts the reader. Paul discovers how cruel, evil, and disgusting the world can be. Paul sees so much by his gift. The ability to fade becomes a nightmare because he learns so much that he did not want to see or hear. |
4652940 | /m/0cfld0 | Diary of a Drug Fiend | Aleister Crowley | null | {"/m/05qfh": "Psychology", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06ms6": "Sociology"} | The main protagonists find themselves desperate after their drug supply diminishes. The particulars of their desperate addiction and cravings are documented in realistic detail. The pair, however, are saved from destruction by an adept Magician named King Lamus. This mysterious and charismatic figure frees Pendragon and Lou from their addictions through the use of Magickal techniques, aimed at mastering True Will and releasing the individual from sloth, self-destructive impulses and craving. |
4653750 | /m/0cfmph | Dream Boy | Jim Grimsley | 1995 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Nathan is an intelligent but shy, adolescent boy, who wants to escape from his abusive and violent father and fantasizes about a relationship with Roy, the boy who lives next door. Roy is a senior at the same high school as Nathan, and he drives the school bus. Gradually their relationship deepens and becomes sexual. Drunk one evening, Nathan's father tries to molest him. This is clearly not the first time it has happened and helps explain Nathan's desire to escape from his family. His mother avoids the issue, although she knows what is going on. Nathan is accepted into Roy's social circle and is invited to go on a camping trip with Roy and his friends Randy and Burke. During the trip, they discover an abandoned and possibly haunted plantation house and Nathan and Roy are discovered in a compromising situation. Burke later on rapes and hits Nathan with a chair handle. Readers are left to decide whether Nathan is killed or not, as he is seen returning to town and finding Roy. |
4654579 | /m/0cfp1r | The Decay of the Angel | Yukio Mishima | 1971 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A retired judge, Shigekuni Honda, adopts a teenage orphan, Tōru Yasunaga, whom he believes to be a dead schoolfriend's third successive reincarnation. The novel opens on Saturday, 2 May 1970, with a seascape off the coast of the Izu Peninsula. Tōru Yasunaga is an orphaned 16-year-old boy working in Shimizu as a signalman, identifying ships by telescope and notifying the offices at Shimizu harbour. He works a 24-hour shift every third day, from a high platform on the Komagoe shore, built on top of a strawberry farmer's water tank. Honda, walking along the shoreline, notices it in passing. Later, that night, Tōru is visited at his post by his friend Kinue, a mad girl who believes that she is incredibly beautiful and that all men are after her. Kinue tells him a long story about how a boy molested her on the bus. After midnight, at his house in Hongō, Honda dreams about angels flying over the Miho Pine Grove, which he had visited that day. At 9am, Tōru's shift ends and he takes the bus home to his apartment. He has a bath, and we see that he has the same three moles as Kiyoaki. In Chapter 7, it is explained that Honda's wife Rie has died and that Keiko, a happily single lesbian, has become a platonic companion for him. They have gone travelling together to Europe, and hold canasta parties. Honda is preoccupied with his dream life and with the past, and has trouble with his housekeeper and maids. In her old age, Keiko is devoted to the study of Japanese culture, but her knowledge is second-hand and superficial, and Honda calls it a "freezer full of vegetables". They visit the Miho Pine Grove, a tourist-trap Honda already saw and disliked. They have their picture taken, sticking their heads through holes in a board painted to make them look like Jirōchō and his wife Ōchō, who were bosses of Shimizu Harbour in the 19th Century. They see the giant dying pine, where, according to Zeami's Robe of Feathers, an angel supposedly left her robe, and had to dance for the fisherman who stole it in order to get it back. They also go to Mio Shrine. On the drive back home, they stop at the signal station Honda saw several days ago. He is strangely drawn to it, and they go inside to look around. Because Tōru is only wearing an undershirt, Honda sees the moles on his side. Back in the car Honda announces his intention to adopt the boy. In Keiko's hotel room on Nihondaira, Honda explains to her the significance of the moles and tells her the whole story of Kiyoaki's two previous reincarnations. She reluctantly accepts this story. Honda makes her promise to tell no-one, especially not Tōru. On 10 August, Tōru becomes aware that he is being investigated by detectives through a story of Kinue's, and later that month he is visited at home by the superintendent, who announces Honda's intention to adopt. By October, Tōru has moved to the house in Hongō and is receiving lessons in table manners and other social skills. Honda is eager to protect him from premature death and tries to inculcate the cynicism that Kiyoaki, Isao and Ying Chan lacked. Three tutors are employed for Tōru. In late November the literature tutor, Furusawa, takes him to a local coffee-house and tells him a political parable about the nature of suicide and authority. Tōru suddenly feels dislike for him and engineers his dismissal. Relishing the feeling of power this gives him, he casts around for a more amusing victim. In late spring of 1972, two friends of Honda try to arrange a marriage between Tōru and their daughter, Momoko Hamanaka. After dinner, Momoko shows Tōru photo-albums in her room and he makes up his mind to hurt her. The two families go on holiday to Shimoda; it is there that Honda realises that Tōru is secretly hostile to Momoko. As the demure relationship progresses, Tōru analyses Momoko and, while talking to her in the Kōrakuen Garden a year or so after their first meeting, he decides to make her jealous by acquiring a second girlfriend. At a go-go hall on his way home from school, he picks up a 25-year-old who calls herself "Nagisa" (Miss Brink) and they have sex a few days later. Nagisa gives him a medallion with her monogram on it. Momoko does not notice it until they go swimming together, and she gives the "N" an innocuous interpretation. It is only when Nagisa approaches Tōru in the coffee-house that her jealousy is aroused. Momoko throws the medallion into a canal and insists that Tōru must leave Nagisa. Tōru claims that he cannot do it alone, and dictates a letter for Momoko to send to Nagisa. In the letter, Momoko is made to lie that her family is in financial difficulties and that she needs to marry Tōru for his money. Momoko hopes to inspire guilt in Nagisa. After the letter is delivered, Tōru goes to Nagisa's apartment, snatches it from her, and takes it to Honda. The marriage is off. Several months later, in early October 1973, Honda and Tōru visit Yokohama, and at the harbourside have a conversation. Tōru realises that Honda has guessed that the letter was fake, and that he takes satisfaction in the guile his adopted son displays. Tōru is furious at being seen through so easily, and throws his diary into the water. At the end of 1973 he finishes school, and is accepted into university. In the spring of 1974, Tōru enters his majority and drops all pretences. He becomes violent with Honda and intimidates him into getting his way on everything, moving Kinue into a hut at the bottom of the garden, spending money freely and abusing the maids. On 3 September 1974, Honda is caught spying on couples in the park, and the incident makes the newspapers; Tōru moves to have him declared senile. On 20 December, Tōru goes to a Christmas party at Keiko's. To his amazement, he is the only guest. Keiko reveals Honda's true motivations for adopting him, and cheerfully explains that if he does not die in 1975, he must be a fraud. Tōru returns home and demands Kiyoaki's dream diary. On 28 December, Tōru tries to commit suicide by drinking methanol, but it only blinds him, and he survives. Honda discovers that Keiko has betrayed him, and he breaks off contact with her. Tōru loses all motivation and spends his days with Kinue in her cottage. Honda eventually concludes that Tōru was not, in fact, Kiyoaki's reincarnation. At about this time, Honda is afflicted by pains which he does nothing about for months. On 22 July 1975, just before a hospital appointment, Honda goes to Gesshū Temple for the first time since February 1914. Satoko, who is now the Abbess, admits him, but during their conversation he mentions Kiyoaki, and she claims that she never knew anyone of that name. Baffled and desolate, Honda replies "Perhaps then there has been no I." |
4654659 | /m/0cfp5w | America | E.R. Frank | 2002 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Born to a crack addict, America was given to a rich white family. They decided they didn't want him any more after his skin started to darken at five years old. The family's nanny, Sylvia Harper, adopted America. She had a "man-friend" named Clark Poignant, and a half-brother named Browning. Clark Poignant befriended America. After a year, America gets sent back to his biological mother by the state. Browning tells America to be as bad as he possibly can, so he will get sent back. America's mother lived in a shoddy house in New York City with America's two older brothers, named Brooklyn and Lyle. America's mother is never around, so five year old America has to live with his brothers- aged 7 and 9 - for two years. America, Brooklyn and Lyle become hooligans, vandalizing and stealing all over the place. However, their luck runs out when an elevator worker finds them scribbling America's numbers all over the elevator. America is sent to a hospital, and Brooklyn and Lyle are sent to a foster home. Soon, he is sent back to Mrs. Harper. Mrs. Harper has grown old and arthritic, and Browning has moved in to America's old bedroom, which they share. Clark Poignant died after he left. However, America has difficulty erasing stopping the bad behaviors and cussing he learned. He soon starts Grade 2, even though he is illiterate. Browning sees that America enjoys being bad and secretly encourages him to be bad. When America begins school, he meets Liza, who shares some of his bad behavior, and they develop crushes on each other. Browning's relationship with America continues to develop. He gives America a lighter with a naked lady on it, and gives him alcohol. He also gives America reading lessons with pornographic magazines. Eventually, Browning begins to molest America and has sex with him on occasion. America likes the feeling of Browning touching him and begins to promote his sexual relations. Then Browning introduces America to masturbation and both masturbate together in the room unnoticed. Then discovers that his mother had six children. He also learns her drug money at the time of each child's birth. America burns the chart and throws the ashes at Browning. Then, out of anger, America sets Browning's bed on fire with his lighter, killing him. America goes to New York and lives with a marijuana dealer named Ty (Charles Tyler). Ty is eventually arrested by the NYPD and America is questioned by a detective. During the interview, he confesses to the murder of Browning. He goes to court, but he is not convicted, so the judge sends him to Applegate. At Applegate, America befriends Wick, Marshall and Ernie, and is acquainted with the seemingly mentally retarded Fish. Ernie worries about America. America resists therapy and attempts to destroy a therapist's officer after he asked if America's uncle had done anything to him. Ernie is the only one who understands America's plight. Eventually, a distraught America climbs a tree and attempts to hang himself. But Ernie finds him hanging from the tree and saves his life. Shortly after, he is sent to Ridgeway. At first, America refuses to talk to Dr. B. Eventually He begins to open up to Dr. B. America decides to send a letter to Ernie to thank him for saving his life. When Ernie replies, he says he knows America killed a man, but he also knows America is a good person. He mentions Liza, who contacted Applegate looking for him. Three weeks after his sixteenth birthday, he meets Brooklyn. Later, Dr. B tells him America is ready to work in the kitchen. When he is in the kitchen, though, he wastes enormous quantities of carrots because they remind him of cooking dinners with Browning. When America is 17, Brooklyn enters detox again. America receives a letter from Liza. Dr. B informs America there is a spot open in a transitional home, where he will live with two other young people, Kevin and Ben, and a social worker named Phillip. America decides to go. At the home, America writes Liza and tells her she can come by if she wants. Dr. B informs America Brooklyn has eloped. Liza is finally re-united with America at the home. But America still thinks about what happened to Mrs. Harper and Lyle, and why Brooklyn eloped. He is unable to cook in the home because of painful memories coming up again. When America is eighteen, he receives a letter from Brooklyn, which tells him that they are brothers, and that they are associated. Dr. B teaches him positive self-talk to eliminate painful memories, but America still wants to see Mrs. Harper. He struggles to tell Liza he truly loves her, and is troubled by love. He visits Mrs. Harper in the nursing home, who is delighted to see him. Mrs. Harper dies several days after his visit. America and Dr. B cry together reading the letter from the nursing home. America feels forgiven by Mrs. Harper, and burns his fifty-seven pairs of shoelaces with his lighter and then he throws his lighter away, symbolism showing his painful memories are gone and he is able to live his life. The books ends with a dream about everyone who had a positive impact on America's life, lifting him up by the hand of God. America says he is found. |
4656302 | /m/0cfrnd | Punk Farm | Jarrett Krosoczka | 4/26/2005 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Krosoczka's book tells the story of five farm animals— Sheep, Pig, Chicken, Goat and Cow—who are an underground rock band, perform a punk cover of "Old MacDonald had a Farm" while Farmer Joe is asleep. |
4657570 | /m/0cftm2 | Struggle for the Land | null | null | null | As its foreword, the book features a poem by Jimmie Durham. The preface is by Winona LaDuke and poems from John Trudell's Living in Reality appear as preludes to each section. Russell Means' 1982 platform for president of the Oglala people is included as an appendix. Maps of Indian land claims/treaty areas are included. The book is dedicated "for my mother." The mostly previously published essays collected provide a history of Native American struggle for decolonization provided through the examples of the Haudenosaunee in upstate New York, the Lakotas on the northern Plains, the Lubicon Cree in northern Alberta, and the Navajo and Newe (Western Shoshone) in the upper Sonoran. The case is made that uranium mining, coal stripping, hydropower generation, and water diversion are ecocidal as well as genocidal, and that the ecological damage poses a threat to all North Americans. Churchill also discusses the Native North American diaspora caused by their displacement. : "Not only the people of the land are being destroyed, but, more and more, the land itself. The nature of native resistance to the continued onslaught of the invading industrial culture is shaped accordingly. It is a resistance forged in the crucible of a struggle for survival." —from the introduction |
4657767 | /m/0cftxf | Point Blanc | Anthony Horowitz | 9/4/2001 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/06wkf": "Spy fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | After getting into trouble with a drug dealer and the police, Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the deaths of billionaires, Michael J. Roscoe in New York and General Viktor Ivanov on the Black Sea. Each of them had a son attending Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps run by a South African scientist, Dr. Hugo Grief, and both died under mysterious circumstances. This may seem like a coincidence, but Alan Blunt is suspicious, and sends Alex to investigate. Alex's cover is that of the son of a supermarket magnate, Sir David Friend. Alex initially spends a week as a member of Friend's family and is required to memorise as much detail as possible about his cover. However, during his stay with the family, he receives a hard time from David's daughter Fiona. Alex even finds himself shot at by Fiona's friends when they go out shooting, only for Fiona to claim that it was 'just a bit of fun'. The next day, when Alex and Fiona are out horse riding, Fiona falls off her horse in the middle of a railway tunnel. Alex goes back in on his horse and just about manages to retrieve Fiona and jump off a bridge into a river before they are run over by a high speed train. Which causes Fiona to apoligize for her harsh behavior. Grief's assistant Mrs. Stellenbosch, arrives at the Friend's house by helicopter. Smithers meets with Alex undercover as a farmer and provides him with some equipment and gadgets (including an electric saw disguised into a Sony Discman, an mini grenade disguised as an ear stud, a bulletproof ski suit, infrared ski goggles, and a single-shot tranquilizer gun disguised as a Harry potter book ). Stellenbosch is about to take Alex to the academy, but Fiona, due to the fact she doesn't know he's a spy but becomes suspicious, is about to expose him but is shot with the tranquilizer from Alex's book. Alex is taken to a hotel in Paris, where his dinner drink is drugged. His bed is then transported where Mrs. Stellenbosch has Alex stripped to his underpants, photographed, examined, and measured. After the examination, Alex's clothes are put back on and he is returned to his hotel room, without him ever realising what had happened. Upon arriving at Point Blanc, Alex meets the founder Dr Grief and later a student who goes by the name of James Sprintz as well as a group of other boys he gets to know through the week such as Hugo Vries, Tom McMorin, and Joe Canterbury. James thinks something is wrong with the academy because the other boys were rebellious before and then suddenly became complacent. One day, after James reveals to Alex his plan to escape the academy. After sneaking out of his room using the Discman, Alex witnesses a boy being forcibly dragged downstairs and is convinced it is James. Yet Alex later sees James unharmed in his bedroom. The following day at breakfast, James' attitude towards his plan to escape seems to have changed. Alex climbs a chimney to examine the forbidden second and third floors. He discovers that the second and third floors are accurate replicas of the ground and first floors respectively (for instance, replicas of the boys' rooms, with TV screens monitoring their behaviour downstairs). Alex signals MI6 using the CD device provided to him by Smithers. This signal is received by the MI6 office, where Alan Blunt and Mrs. Jones debate whether to move in on the academy immediately. Blunt decides to prepare a unit on stand by. Following later Alex finds some boys locked in a basement jail, including James and the son of Michael J. Roscoe, Paul. Alex learns that James was indeed dragged downstairs and was replaced by a replica. Alex reveals the truth to James and Paul, his identity and the reason why he was sent to Point Blanc. Mrs. Stellenbosch is told of this after someone overhears it via a bug planted in the cell and knocks Alex unconscious, has him handcuffed to a chair, and turns him over to Dr. Grief, who then reveals his plan to take over the world, named "Project Gemini". In the 1980s, Grief cloned sixteen copies of himself in his home country of South Africa (where he greatly supported the apartheid regime). While the real boys are at Point Blanc, a plastic surgeon named Baxter surgically alters Grief's 14-year-old clones to resemble them. Soon, the clone and the real boy are swapped. The replica rooms are used by the clones to imitate the boys' behaviour so the parents will not notice that they have been swapped. When the parents die and pass on their inheritance, Dr. Grief will take the assets from the clones. Eventually, he will be the most powerful man in the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief imprisons Alex, planning to dissect him alive the next day for a biology class. Alex uses his exploding ear-stud to escape his cage. He improvises a snowboard (using an ironing-board) to escape, but Grief sends his guards on snowmobiles with machine guns to take him down. During the pursuit, one snowmobile crashes into a tree because it could not fit through a small gap that Alex squeezed through. Another guard is knocked in the head by Alex's 'snowboard' and ultimately falls. Alex almost makes it to the bottom of the mountain but a machine gunner previously prepared by Grief is waiting for him. Just as the man is about to fire, a train approaches in the way. Alex jumps on top of it but loses his balance, falls and passes out. Alex is taken to a hospital in Grenoble, where a visiting Mrs Stellenbosch is told that Alex has died. However, it is revealed that Alex is alive, and MI6 then sends him out again with a team of SAS soldiers (among them is Wolf, an SAS soldier introduced in Stormbreaker) to help liberate the school. In the school, the SAS team take out several guards and go down to the basement to attempt to save the imprisoned boys. An on-going fire-fight ensues as the team encounter more guards. Wolf demands Alex to stay back. Alex goes into the dining room and sees Dr Grief about to escape in helicopter. However, Mrs Stellenbosch appears who is surprised and disappointed that Alex is still alive. Despite Alex's efforts to fend her off, she overpowers him and pins him against a wall. She pulls out a gun and just as she points it at Alex, Wolf appears. Wolf is shot three times by Mrs Stellenbosch but manages to shoot the woman himself with his machine gun. Mrs Stellenbosch falls out a window. Alex prevents Dr. Grief escaping by driving a snowmobile up a ramp and crashing it into Grief's helicopter, jumping off at the last second. Alex is debriefed by MI6 and Mrs Jones tells him that all fifteen clones have been arrested. Alex later goes home where Jack Starbright informs him that his school headteacher wanted to see him. Alex goes to his school and to the headteachers office and is startled to find a clone that resembles him, who avoided capture and escaped. Indeed Dr Grief earlier told Alex that he produced sixteen clones. The clone tries to shoot Alex, causing a fire in a laboratory. Alex runs up to the roof, only to be followed by the clone. The two fight ending with one of them falling into a hole following an explosion. It can be presumed that it was the clone who fell, however this is not made clear. |
4659671 | /m/0cfxh0 | The Book of the Dun Cow | Walter Wangerin, Jr. | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The novel begins with the introduction of the hero, Chauntecleer, a rooster in command of a company of hens, and the land surrounding his coop. The story takes place at a time when humans have not yet made an appearance upon the Earth (a time before the Book of Genesis). Animals have been put on earth before man in order to protect the world from an ancient evil Wyrm, which is trapped at the center of the Earth. Chauntecleer, while not a bad ruler, is a flawed character, somewhat quick to anger, and self-important. The novel's initial chapters define several important characters as well as the origins of the main antagonists in the book, Wyrm and Cockatrice. While Chauntecleer spends his days dealing with a rogue rat that has invaded his coop, and trying to become accustomed to a newcomer, Mundo Cani, a depressed dog that is always crying out in anguish, the reader is shown another country from across the river. There is where the author introduces the evil in the book. For in the land away from Chauntecleer's there lives another rooster named Senex. He is a rather a weak ruler, and his barnyard subjects don't think anything of him. What troubles Senex the most is his lack of a son, which he mourns greatly over. One day though, he is spoken to by Wyrm, who communicates to him through dreams. Wyrm instructs Senex to have faith in him, and to wait for him to deliver Senex a son of his own. Senex does exactly what his visions request, and soon he manages to lay an egg, defying the natural order of mating. Eventually the egg hatches, though what appears from it is a horror beyond words. An evil monster named Cockatrice is born. It is a creature with the head, wings, and legs of a chicken, but a thin, gray, scaly, serpent body. He kills Senex, and claims the kingdom for himself. A sycophantic toad serves as Cockatrice's voice and turns the basilisk eggs for him. He becomes an evil tyrant and begins to rape all of the laying hens under his rule, in order to give birth to an army of wicked basilisks; poisonous snakes that he uses to crush any opposers to his will (Toad is killed with them) and destroy the country. A few of the animals manage to escape the land, and flee into Chauntecleer's kingdom, where they live happily for a while, trying to forget the nightmares of their past. Finally there seems to be peace in the book. There comes a time of spring, when everyone in the land is filled with joy. Chauntecleer has even bred three sons to his name with an escapee from Cockatrice's land, one of his hen victims, named Pertelote. Unfortunately he is plagued with terrible prophetic visions all the while. He dreams about the river next to his land, rising up and engulfing everything in an apocalyptic manner. The Dun Cow, one of God's messengers, brings an enigmatic riddle to him about the ways he can defeat the trio of evils: Cockatrice, his basilisk army, and Wyrm himself. During the day he tries to find happiness, but everyone is immediately struck with unbearable sorrow when the rooster's three sons are found lying dead by the river. The same egg-eating rat that Chauntecleer drove away is discovered dying, holding part of a venomous serpent (a basilisk) in his mouth. Chauntecleer soon discovers the story of Cockatrice, hearing it from his wife, who was a refugee from the land under Cockatrice's dictatorship. Eventually Chauntecleer learns that Cockatrice is attempting to make war on the world of animals, to make way for the coming of his true father, Wyrm. Chauntecleer takes action and bands together all of the animals in his land. All sorts of farm and woodland animals come together to fight the terrible evil that is at hand. They wait for a time, building up their forces, beginning to wonder if this evil really exists. Before long there is a surprise attack on a goofy wild turkey named Thuringer, who dies from a basilisk's bite. However, Mundo Cani saves the remaining turkeys. Thus begins the war between the basilisks and the animals of the land, a war reminiscent of the battle of Armageddon. The animals suffer massive casualties, but in the end manage to drive the basilisks to death. Unfortunately Cockatrice has not yet been dealt with, so the brave Chauntecleer dons a pair of war spurs (the weapon of choice for a bipedal bird) and goes onto the blood-soaked battlefield to confront his enemy. The battle between the two leaders is fierce and merciless. Cockatrice and his enemy do battle in the sky, and Chauntecleer eventually is forced to wrestle with the evil king on the ground. Chauntecleer manages to gain the upper hand, though not by much, and defeats the evil Cockatrice. He throws the monster's head into the river, and Wyrm announces his presence. Chauntecleer faints from weakness, and is brought back to the coop, which has by now been transformed into a fortress, where they try to resuscitate their fallen, but victorious, hero. Trouble is still ahead, though, for although all of the animals thought the war over, there enters the final evil. A great crevasse in the land breaks open, as Wyrm attempts to enter the world. During all of the turmoil Chauntecleer stirs inside the coop, and, delirious from exhaustion, he sees the dog and thinks him a traitor. He scolds him fiercely, rebuking him and instructing him to leave. In response, the other animals all agree that Chauntecleer is delusional, and that Mundo Cani should not be forced to leave. The dog turns to them and tells them that he knows what he must do, and takes off without any further words. The animals are confused by all of this, and only Chauntecleer, still in delirium, shouts for Wyrm to emerge so that they can fight. Just as Wyrm is about to creep from his prison onto the earth, he is confronted by a certain small dog. Mundo Cani comes to the crevasse, wielding the horn of the Dun Cow as a weapon, egging the ancient evil out of its crevasse by insulting it, insinuating that Wyrm is a coward not to face a small dog such as he. Wyrm falls for the trap, and when he sticks out his bright white eye, that he might see his opponent, the dog leaps onto his eye and impales it with the horn in his mouth. This causes Wyrm to fall back into the crevasse, collapsing the earth and sealing both Wyrm and Mundo Cani in a dark world below the crust. The entire world is safe again, though horribly shaken. The animals all find it difficult to fit back into their normal lives, especially Chauntecleer, who after bottling his emotions for a while, breaks down in front of his wife. He cries out in pain, knowing that the last thing he said to Mundo Cani before his great sacrifice, were words of scorn and hatred. His wife seeks to comfort him, saying that his penance is to honor Mundo Cani and to ask for his forgiveness. |
4659963 | /m/0cfxzf | The Possibility of an Island | Michel Houellebecq | 2005-01 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | There are three main characters, Daniel, and two of his clones. Daniel is a successful comedian who can't seem to enjoy life despite his wealth. He gets bored with his hedonist lifestyle, but can't escape from it either. In the meanwhile he is disgruntled with the state of current society, and philosophizes about the nature of sex and love. His two clones live an uneventful life as hermits, in a post-apocalyptic future. They live in a time where the human species is on its last legs (alternatively, on its first legs: hunter-gatherer tribes), destroyed by climate change and nuclear war. The two clones are confronted with the life of the first Daniel and have different views about their predecessor. Scattered around are the remnants of tourist resorts, cities and consumer items and some natural humans living in small tribes without any knowledge of the past or of civilization. |
4661661 | /m/0cf_b1 | The Matarese Countdown | Robert Ludlum | 10/13/1997 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Like the legendary phoenix, the Materese are rising from the ashes and are regaining their former power. The new leader of the Matarese is an enigmatic figure named Jan van der Meer Matareisen, according to himself the only legitimate grandchild of Baron Guillaume de Matarese, the founder of the Matarese group. With the help of another shadowy figure known as Julian Guiderone a.k.a. "son of the shepherd boy," who seems to have survived the events recounted in "The Matarese Circle" nearly twenty years ago, they are hatching a new and diabolical plot to plunge the civilised world into total chaos. Only one man, a CIA operative known as Brandon Scofield a.k.a. Beowulf Agate, can stop them, but he has been retired for nearly twenty years. Brandon Scofield is once again sent into the field together with a CIA case officer, Cameron Pryce, but this time the enemy is more dangerous. fr:Le Complot des Matarèse |
4664414 | /m/0cg3ml | The Last of the Jedi: The Desperate Mission | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Empire has risen. The Jedi Order has been destroyed. As far as the Emperor is concerned, the Jedi are all but extinct. But on the remote planet of Tatooine, one Jedi Master remains: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Devastated by the loss of his fellow Jedi—and the betrayal of his former apprentice Anakin Skywalker -- Obi-Wan has been left with one last task: To watch over and protect a young child named Luke. Obi-Wan finds out that a former Jedi apprentice has survived, Ferus Olin. Obi-Wan must make a painful decision: whether to stay on Tatooine or go on one last desperate mission—right into the heart of the Empire. When Obi-Wan decides to search for Ferus Olin, a known padawan that left the Order, he gets wrapped up in the problems of the planet Bellassa under the influence of the Empire. Will Obi-Wan help this desperate planet or will he rescue Ferus and go? |
4664651 | /m/0cg460 | Path to Truth | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Anakin Skywalker is no longer a boy, but not yet a man. Almost thirteen, he has begun to travel on the path that will lead him to glory ... and infamy. In the mysterious caves of Ilum, Anakin must create his lightsaber after confronting the demons of his past—and his future. Once the lightsaber is completed, Anakin joins his Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, on a mission that will cut to the heart of his fear, anger, and power. When Anakin was a young slave on Tatooine, everyone lived in terror of a creature named Krayn, who kidnapped slaves for his own profit—and killed anyone who got in his way. Now Krayn's evil has grown to a dangerous degree, threatening peace and safe passage throughout the galaxy. Anakin and Obi-Wan must stop Krayn. But can Obi-Wan also stop Anakin from seeking vengeance against an old enemy? The path to truth is a clear one. Anakin's path is not. This is the first book of the Jedi Quest series. |
4664731 | /m/0cg4bj | Star Wars Jedi Quest 1: The Way of the Apprentice | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Set between Episode I and Episode II, JEDI QUEST traces the emergence and education of Anakin Skywalker as a young Jedi devoted to the Force—and tempted by its dark side. Fourteen-year-old Anakin Skywalker is strong in the ways of the Force. His lightsaber skills are exceptional, his piloting is legendary. He should be an ideal Jedi apprentice. And yet, there is so much he still has to learn. It is up to Obi-Wan Kenobi to teach him these things. But on a mission to a planet threatened by a toxic disaster, Obi-Wan and Anakin are separated. Anakin and three other apprentices—one of them his rival—must work together in order to survive. Anakin's instructions are clear ... but are they right? Anakin Skywalker's destiny will determine the future of a galaxy. These are the events that form his fate. |
4664801 | /m/0cg4g9 | The Trail of the Jedi | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Anakin Skywalker knows that Obi-Wan Kenobi did not choose him as an apprentice. Instead, it was the dying wish of Obi-Wan's own Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, that brought them together. Now Anakin is beginning to doubt his Master's commitment ... and Obi-Wan is starting to wonder if he will ever be as good a Master as Qui-Gon. With these things in mind, Master and apprentice head out on a training exercise that soon turns into a struggle to survive. A squad of bounty hunters has been hired to capture the Jedi—and they will stop at nothing to do it. Anakin and Obi-Wan must avoid the traps and ambushes ... and try to discover who is behind the deadly Jedi hunt. |
4664865 | /m/0cg4mx | The Dangerous Games | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | When Obi-Wan Kenobi and his gifted Padawan are dispatched to the Galactic Games on a peacekeeping mission, an illegal Podracing competition catches Anakin's eager eye. As a Jedi Padawan, Anakin is supposed to abandon his past life in service to the Force, but his racing days and old rivalries return at high speed. Anakin squares off against Hekula, son of Sebulba, who has inherited his father's worst traits.At the same time, Obi-wan is investigating some fixed races in the games. |
4664920 | /m/0cg4pm | The Master of Disguise | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Young Padawan Anakin Skywalker and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi face off against a slippery foe in the fourth book in the Jedi Quest series. This adversary is as cunning as he is evil, and will stop at nothing in his embrace of the dark side. How will the Jedi defeat this villain of powerful wealth—a villain that they cannot find? |
4665068 | /m/0cg51_ | The Demon Awakens | Robert Anthony Salvatore | 2/28/1998 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | } In the story The Demon Awakens, Elbryan Wyndon and his childhood friend Jilseponie Ault (who is usually called Pony) whose lives are irrevocable changed by the destruction of their home town Dundalis, and Avelyn Desbris who is a vary pious man that enters a group of monks that go to a monastery by the name of St. Mere Abelle to study and serve under god. So while Elbryan and Pony try to sort out their lives Avelyn comes to terms with the all-to human brothers of the church and the myriad injustices he watches them cause. After the destruction of Elbryan’s home town he is taken in by the Touel’alfar and to their home Andur’Blough Inninnes (The Forest of cloud) and teaches him to not just train his body but his mind in the ways of philosophy and to be a formidable ranger. While Elbryan is training his childhood friend Pony can’t even remember her past and is trying to ease the pain of her forgotten past. While all this is happening Avelyn has problems of his own and soon has to leave the church in a most unexpected way. It is not till years later when they all meet each other and fight an evil like no other by the name of Bestesbulzibar who is a mighty demon that was reawakened by the humans weakness to rule all the realm with an army of goblins, powries (dwarfs), and Fomorian Giants and not only that the church is after Alvelyn to. So now this ragtag group of friends and with the help of some unlikely allies must stop the demon and save the entire realm from its impending doom. |
4665075 | /m/0cg52p | The Shadow Trap | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Mawan is a world torn apart by war. Its population has taken refuge underground, and the surface has become the battlefield for three greedy crime lords. Into this chaos venture Jedi peacekeepers, but they may be heading into a deadly trap. |
4665082 | /m/0cg530 | The Demon Spirit | Robert Anthony Salvatore | 1/30/1999 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Even with the destruction of the dactyl, all is not well in the kingdom of Honce-the-Bear. The servants of Bestesbulzibar still roam the land, creating havoc while, at St.-Mere-Abelle, the centaur Bradwarden is held captive. It is up to Elbryan and Pony, with help from friends, to attempt a rescue while fighting the enemy. It is during this time that Elbryan teaches Pony Bi'nelle dasada, the sword-dance of the Touel'alfar, the short winged elves of Corona. It is also at this time that Father Abbot Markwart, head of the Church of St. Abelle, begins his spiral downward. In this novel the reader meets Andacanavar, a northern ranger from Alpinador. Also, the character of Marcalo De'Unnero becomes more fully developed. |
4665158 | /m/0cg596 | The Moment of Truth | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | To fulfill their duties to the Republic, a Jedi must remain focused, and not be distracted by personal conflicts. The tense Master-Padawan relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker puts this resolve to the test. The normally headstrong Anakin is plagued by feelings of doubt and guilt for not preventing the death of a Jedi Council member. Obi-Wan has his reservations, seeing himself as a less-than-perfect mentor to a less-than-perfect student. The two must put aside their conflicts if they are to undertake a daring rescue mission to the last free planet of the Uziel system. Their lives, and an entire planet, depend on it. |
4665267 | /m/0cg5jj | The False Peace | Alicia Buelow | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Obi-Wan Kenobi and his apprentice Anakin Skywalker are tasked to protect the Galactic Senate from a threat that could throw the galaxy into dark chaos. With Senators endangered, peace and justice are at risk. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine is vested in the Jedi's success, but to what result? |
4665321 | /m/0cg5nd | The Final Showdown | Judy Blundell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Granta Omega is an evil mastermind who has one goal: to help the Sith destroy the Jedi order. Now, Omega has escaped to the planet of Korriban, graveyard of the ancient Sith and home to their most powerful secrets. It's up to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to intercept this madman before his sinister power grows out of control. Accompanying the pair on this mission is Anakin's rival, Ferus Olin. The competitive Anakin sees the search for Omega as a contest to be won. But such thoughts are unbecoming of a Jedi, and as the quest plunges deeper into the dark side, Jedi disciplines may be all that stave off the inevitable outcome of this showdown: Death. |
4666268 | /m/0cg7n6 | Caramelo | null | 9/30/2002 | null | Each summer, Celaya and her family return to her grandmother's home in Mexico City. At the house, Celaya meets Candelaria, the maid's daughter, who she secretly admires for her beauty. Here we also meet other members of her family, including the Awful Grandmother, Aunty Light-Skin, and the Little Grandfather. We learn about their stories. For example, the Little Grandfather lived in Chicago for a time and was injured during the Mexican Civil War. Aunty Light-Skin had an affair with an unnamed movie star. Through it all, the ties between families are bound together by the silken rebozo that stays in the family. The narrative turns to a story of Celaya's adolescence. Her family lives in Chicago but decides to move to San Antonio. Unfortunately for the father, his new job as an upholsterer is not well-paid, nor is he respected at work. Celaya learns to deal with a new home and classmates who pick on her. She meets Ernesto, who romances her and eventually brings her to Mexico City, ostensibly to marry. Instead, he runs away and Celaya must be rescued by her father. The Little Grandfather dies. Celaya's father grows old and infirm. |
4670516 | /m/0cgfsp | Obsessed | Ted Dekker | 2005 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | “Obsessed” by Ted Dekker tells a story of Stephen Friedman, successful Realtor, a Jewish immigrant and an orphan who had tried to find out who his parents were for a long time and at last gave up. An unexpected letter from a friend and a newspaper article offer help: Stephen discovers that his mother was Rachel Spritzer, a woman who had been through the nightmare of World War II concentration camps, and recently died. Stephen also learns that she was quite wealthy and had some property, including a priceless historical artifact – a stone of David, one of the five stones believed to be used by David to defeat the giant Goliath. Also, it may be that she knew where the other four stones are. Stephen becomes obsessed with the idea to find the remaining stones. He heads to his mother's old house, where he believes the clues are hidden. However, the house is bought by someone else, snatched right out of Stephen's hands. The new owner is Roth Braun, a German, the son of Gerhard Braun who was the Nazi Commandant of the concentration camp, Torùn. Roth Braun knows about the stones and about Stephen plans. And he also has plans of his own. The story goes on as Stephen makes one desperate attempt to get into his mother's house after another. Braun's thugs do their best to keep him away. Another storyline takes us back in time to the WWII camp, telling about two pregnant women, Ruth and Martha (Stephen's mother) and their struggles with the ruthless commandant who kills on a whim and plays games with the prisoners by giving and taking away their hope. There is some mystery here, and, although the two storylines seem unconnected, they eventually come together. |
4672551 | /m/0cgkd_ | Fear | L. Ron Hubbard | 1940-07 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/0l67h": "Novella"} | University professor James Lowry is a disbeliever in spirits or witches, or demons, so much so that he publishes an article in a newspaper denying the existence of them. He is warned of the possible repercussions by his friend Tommy Williams. That same spring evening his hat disappears. Lowry discovers that four hours of his life have gone missing. Lowry is pursued by an omnipotent evil force that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: "...if you find your hat you'll find your four hours. If you find your four hours then you will die..." Lowry is suspicious that Tommy may be having an affair with his wife, Mary, even in his dreams of demons. Lowry goes about his day-to-day life, but increasingly begins seeing demons, ghouls and odd things about him. He wakes up in the middle of the night to shadows that are leading him out of his bedroom and out into his garden which has transformed into a vast creepy slope. At this point, he is led down a long winding staircase in the middle of his lawn that seems to disappear. He goes out looking for the four hours of his life that he has lost and his hat (which he seems to have lost at the same time). He finds both the hat and realizes what he has done in the four hours in a final twist of the book, where the reader comes to realize that he had a psychotic break early on (the missing 4 hours) and most everything that you've read never even happened. It's chilling to discover the truth of what happened during those four hours, as the reader has been led to like the protagonist, when he has been the antagonist all along. |
4673909 | /m/0cgn4d | Nightmare Academy | Frank E. Peretti | 7/9/2002 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Twin siblings and Veritas Project members Elijah and Elisha Springfield are sent to investigate the Knight-Moore Academy when a missing boy mysteriously reappears with his mind wiped clean of almost all of his memories. The only two things he can say are "I don't know" and "Nightmare Academy". When the young man dies mysteriously, the Springfield family is tasked with the investigation of what happened to the boy and what exactly the Nightmare Academy is. Elijah and Elisha are sent to Knight-Moore and discover that sinister happenings abound on the campus, such as campus raids and frequent fights. During the course of the investigation the teens lose contact with their parents and Elijah is taken to a mysterious mountain after someone starts a fight with him. Elijah's sister has to find a way to save her brother without help from her parents before he is murdered or loses all of his memories. |
4676329 | /m/0cgs_h | Sunrise Alley | Catherine Asaro | 2004 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | After barely surviving a ship wreck, Turner and Sam set out on a series of adventures to try to discover who the mysterious "Charon" is (the former jailer of Turner) and what/where exactly "Sunrise Alley" is. Unsure of whom to trust, the characters manage a series of escapes, eventually discovering the truth behind Turner's existence and his captor. Both characters explore the notion of humanity and machine intelligence, and eventually come to blur the distinction, with the apparent realization that humanity and machine technology will inevitably merge. In the process they also fall in love. |
4676402 | /m/0cgt5c | Last Seen Wearing ... | Hillary Waugh | 1952 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | "The police examine her past for any motive that might make her wish to disappear, or any reason why someone might want to kill her. They find her body after a long and frustrating search. As they sift all the evidence again and again, the identity of her killer slowly begins to emerge, like a photograph taking on recognizable features in the developing fluid" (Ian Ousby). The novel, which minutely chronicles the work of the police, is told exclusively in chronological order. No piece of information is ever held back. At any given point in time, the reader knows just as much as the police — neither more nor less. The time narrated is 5½ weeks, from 3 March 1950 to 11 April 1950. (1) In broad daylight, at lunchtime on a cold winter's day, 18 year-old Marilyn Lowell Mitchell from Philadelphia disappears from her college campus situated in a small town in Massachusetts, 66 miles away from Boston. She has left all her things in her room, and her diary is found in one of her drawers. Her parents are informed, and eventually, on the following day, the police are called in. (2) Right from the start of the investigation, chief of the local police Frank W. Ford's principle is "Cherchez le boy". In other words, the police think Lowell (or "Mitch", as she is sometimes called) might be pregnant, with or without her trying to contact a doctor willing to perform an abortion (illegal in 1950), or that she has just run off with some man. Both her fellow students and her parents declare all these speculations impossibilities and claim that Mitch is not that sort of girl; that she has had dates, but with no-one in particular; that she has never gone any further than "necking" and "soul-kissing"; and that she is definitely still a virgin. Her diary gives the police no clue whatsoever to prove the opposite. (3) The police, however, pursue this line of investigation further. ("Look at her face. [...] It spells S-E-X to me.") Accordingly, they make a list of all the 47 males mentioned in the girl's diary, including even such unlikely figures as movie stars and local policemen, and consider all of them potential suspects. They also keep a watch on those shady doctors in town who might be willing to perform an illegal abortion, but the latter move does not lead anywhere. (4) The process of elimination begins, based on the hypothesis that the diary could be deliberately misleading as far as her relationships to men are concerned. The 47 males are categorized into seven groups and then either questioned or eliminated right away: # famous actors and Winston Churchill # "casuals", i. e. men mentioned only once without any comment (a policeman she asked for directions; relatives; etc.) # men she mentions only once but comments on (including some teachers, such as Harlan P Seward, her history teacher, and an older man called Charles M. Watson, who once dined at the same place as she and her friends) # boys she has nothing to do with (for example her date's roommate) # boys from back home (whom she has not written to or dated) # boys she has dated (including blind dates) # boys she "really has something to do with". (5) As on the morning of her disappearance Marilyn Lowell Mitchell was seen walking along a nearby lake (an artificial one, with a river that runs through it and a dam), Ford, based on one of his hunches, has the lake drained, but no piece of evidence is found. (6) When the police investigations slow down a bit as no results can be produced, Ford is confronted with John Monroe, a private investigator hired by the architect Carl Mitchell, the girl's father. Monroe, who Ford does not mind co-operating with, does not get anywhere either, but he nevertheless keeps developing his own theories. To one of Ford's colleagues, Mitchell has become "the disappearingest girl I ever saw". This is the part of the book where several false leads are introduced: * The police receive an anonymous letter saying that Marilyn Lowell is alive and well, just visiting friends. The police immediately suppose that it was written by some "crank", which soon is revealed to be true. * After having been seen spying on the college students, someone who later turns out to be a young journalist out for a scoop, is chased by the police and brought down to the station. * After the disappearance of the freshman has been extensively covered by all the newspapers, a report comes in saying that a lady claims she was sitting next to the missing girl on a Greyhound bus bound for Chicago. It is especially her clothes that exactly fit the description. * A decapitated body is found in Boston Harbor. However, the post-mortem establishes that it belonged to a woman who had given birth to a child. (7) On Friday, 17 March 1950, a college student, while crossing a bridge, happens to notice a small object lying at the bottom of the shallow river. This object turns out to be Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's hair clip. This seems to be evidence enough that the girl drowned in the river, and the search for her body is resumed. Eventually, it is found. At first it is generally assumed that the girl has — for whatever reason, but most likely in connexion with her unwanted pregnancy — committed suicide by jumping off the bridge. Ford, however, does not think so. Right at the time of the inquest he proves that this is wrong by having a large block of ice dropped into the river and subsequently by following its course. After this experiment it is a fact that the body was dumped where it was found and that it could not possibly have been washed ashore there. From now on, the student's disappearance is regarded as a murder case. What is more, it is found out during the post-mortem that the girl was six weeks pregnant — a fact her family did not know anything about. (8) Seen in this new light, Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's diary is re-examined — first by McNarry, the District Attorney, a man who "couldn't find M in the alphabet", then again and again by Ford. Now that the police know that she was pregnant, her words "I'm late again" acquire an altogether different meaning: They refer to her having missed her period for the second time in a row rather than to having to catch up on her assignments. (9) It is generally assumed now that he who is the father of her unborn child is also Marilyn Lowell Mitchell's murderer. Ford's hunch is that it is a local man ("There's no way of tracing the body back to somebody so we've got to trace somebody to the body"). Consequently, the police scrutinize the lives of those suspects who live in town, among them Seward. People from outside town are not completely eliminated though, for example the rather mysterious figure of Charles M. Watson, a travelling salesman. (10) Also, Ford re-examines the diary, especially the entries dating back to six weeks before she was murdered — the time of conception, i. e. when she must have slept with her murderer — and realizes that it must be coded. Finally he breaks the code: It consists of three exclamation marks in a row. Each time this symbol appears at the end of a sentence the girl must have met her lover. The three exclamation marks appear for the first time in an entry on Friday, 16 December 1949. Christmas holidays that year started on the following Sunday, but as Marilyn Lowell Mitchell had no classes on Saturday, she left the college one day ahead of her classmates. The three exclamation marks can be found for the last time on 27 February 1950. Between that period, the code was used 23 times ("They sure went at it hot and heavy."). Interestingly, the girl met her lover on Saturday, 17 December 1949 (and then again on 3 January 1950) — a Saturday she told her parents she had stopped over in New York at a friend's place before finally going home to Philadelphia, which, however, turns out not to have been the case. (11) The process of elimination continues. The list of suspects has been narrowed down to 17 men. The police focus their attention on Seward when they find out that on 16 December 1949 he left town on the same train as Marilyn Lowell Mitchell. Now they check up on Seward's past, his family, and the circumstances under which he lives now. Among other things, they find out that he has a record as a lifelong womanizer. Also, they have his house searched by his maid, a Mrs Glover. However, 35 year-old Seward seems to have changed his ways: Mrs Glover cannot report having witnessed any "immoral" situations or any traces thereof. Taking into consideration that keeping such things a secret in a small town, where there is hardly any anonymity (cf. Stephen Dobyns' The Church of Dead Girls, a novel in which, almost half a century later, a very similar atmosphere is created), the police come to the conclusion that Seward is "either innocent or smart". (12) The number of suspects is further narrowed down by the fact that two conditions must be true for the murderer: He must have been in New York on 16 December 1949 and in the college town on 3 March (to dump the body). There are other conditions as well — for instance, he must own a car or at least have access to a car (again to dispose of the body). Nevertheless the police do have doubts as to the conclusiveness of their work so far ("You'd better remember we don't even know if he's the guy. Hell, what if his folks do say he didn't get home until late Saturday, what will it prove? Do you think a jury will say he's her lover because Lowell puts three exclamation points in her diary on that day?"). (13) Seward is shadowed round the clock now, but not directly approached by the police. They let him stew for a while, waiting for him to make a mistake or at least act conspicuously. While shadowing him they are faced with a girl coming out of Seward's house late one night. It is 20 year-old Mildred Naffzinger, an employee at the local drug store and "a little tart who knows her way around". She denies any connexion with Seward, but, after a long time of questioning, finally gives in, telling the police that Seward is her on-and-off lover (he dropped her when he began his affair with Mitchell, now he has taken it up again). Just as he persuaded Mitchell not to mention his name anywhere, including her diary, he has worked out a special code for arranging his secret meetings with Mildred (and obviously another code for his meetings with Mitchell, some code they could use right in the classroom without anybody noticing). (14) Eventually the police search Seward's house and garden while he is safely teaching at the college and find Mitchell's handbag. The police are going to arrest him the moment he leaves the classroom, and it will turn out that he had a secret affair with her, made her pregnant and eventually, panicking, broke her neck when she told him that she was pregnant, that she would go public and that she expected him to marry her (which, among other things, would have ruined his career). There is obviously no twist or surprise ending, as in that case all or at least most of the meticulous police work described in the novel would have to turn out wrong or in vain. There is no "lucid, astounding explanation presented to the group of suspects gathered in the library — but the accumulation of enough evidence to point to a suspect, justify an arrest and stand up in court" (Ousby). The novel has never been filmed; in a film version, the killer, Harlan P Seward, would only be a minor character. He never personally appears in the novel: He is never directly approached, let alone cross-examined by the police, and he is not driven to committing any follow-up crimes either. |
4677736 | /m/0cgwm_ | The Curse of the Pharaohs | Barbara Mertz | 1981 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The Emersons are at home in England, aching to return to Egypt, but finding no excuse to return until Lady Baskerville asks them to finish the excavation started by her husband, who died mysteriously just before opening a tomb in Luxor. No one else will continue as rumors of a curse on those who desecrate the tomb fly through the region. Leaving their son Ramses at home, the Emersons arrive at the Baskerville compound near the Valley of the Kings to find sick employees, over-eager reporters, and an assortment of other characters trying to either get into the tomb, or keep the Emersons out. Three recurring characters are introduced; Cyrus Vandergelt, Karl von Bork and Kevin O'Connell. Vandergelt is a wealthy amateur American Egyptologist, and over the years becomes Professor Emerson's closest friend. Bork is an expert in hieroglyphs who appears in a number of stories, usually assisting other Egyptologists. O'Connell is a reporter who eventually becomes a valuable outlet for the Emersons and their adventures. |
4679704 | /m/0cgz9d | Love Monkey | Kyle Smith | null | {"/m/02yq81": "Comic novel", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Tom Farrell is a man in his thirties who resides in New York City in 2001 (before, during and after the September 11 attacks). The novel is a slice of life story, briefly visiting several months of his life as he works as an editor of the weekend edition of the New York City newspaper, Tabloid. Although his friends and relatives advance in life (marriage, kids, etc.), Tom believes he is not. He makes around $86,000 a year, but the most expensive item he owns is a several thousand dollar couch (doesn't own a high priced item like a home or car, for example). The novel tracks Tom as he moves through his life, with each chapter being a day in his life during the year 2001 (not all days covered, and not all chapters start new days). Throughout the book, Tom dates several women, including the woman he really fancies, Julia. Unfortunately for him, Julia is living with another man, and is ten years his junior in age. Julia also works at Tabloid, but while Tom is an editor, Julia is just starting out. Tom's days are filled with drinking, watching TV (lots of cartoons), working at Tabloid, and trying to deal with his deep desire to be in a relationship with Julia, who seems somewhat determined to not have said relationship. On his ride through 2001, Tom interacts with some of his friends, including Bran, Karen & Mike, Rollo, and Shooter (among others). |
4681195 | /m/0ch0h_ | Curse of the Starving Class | Sam Shepard | null | null | The play opens with Wesley putting pieces of a broken down door into a wheelbarrow. Ella, his mother, enters and they begin to discuss the events of the night before that lead to Wesley’s father, Weston, breaking down the door. Wesley begins a monologue narrating exactly what he saw and heard happen from the night before. Wesley then leaves and Ella begins to give a motherly talk on what happens during menstruation and what cannot be done during the cycle. Ella is on stage alone for the beginning of the talk, but her daughter, Emma, walks on stage mid-talk and joins the conversation as though she has been there all along. Ella then asks Emma what she is holding and Emma reminds her that these are her poster for the 4-H project on how to properly cut up a frying chicken that she has been working on quite some time. Emma goes to the refrigerator and begins to look for her chicken. Ella begins to act antsy and Emma realizes that Ella has boiled her chicken. Emma begins a rant about how she raised the chicken and hand fed it every day, then killed and cleaned it and her mother has gone and boiled it. Ella tries to feign innocence and Emma storms out. Wesley enters and decides that Emma’s project is pointless and that she ought to be focusing on more important things. Emma returns, still furious, and the three begin an argument about the starving class and whether or not they are part of it. During their argument, Wesley goes to Emma’s posters and begins to urinate on them. Ella points this out to Emma and Emma storms off, insisting that she is going to take the horse and run away. Ella tells Emma that the horse is crazy and that she is too young to leave home but Emma refuses to listen. Ella tries to get Wesley to go down and stop Emma from taking the horse. Wesley refuses to stop Emma, and Ella begins to tell him about her plans to sell the house. Wesley is not happy with his mother’s decision, and she continues to try and ask him to go stop Emma. Wesley still refuses to go after his sister, and Ella tells him that she is planning to use the money from the house to go to Europe and that he and Emma can come if they want. When Wesley tells her that there will not be enough money from the house to move to Europe Ella gets angry that Wesley is ruining her dream. Wesley then leaves and Emma returns, covered in mud after being thrown from the horse and dragged through the mud. Ella does not tell Emma that she plans to sell the house, but Emma tells Ella that she dreams of moving to Mexico and becoming a mechanic. Ella goes to the back part of the house and Emma goes the refrigerator. Emma asks the refrigerator why it doesn’t have any food because they aren’t part of the starving class. She reassures the refrigerator that soon there will be little eggs, butter, and other foods tucked away inside of it. She then becomes angry with the refrigerator and slams it shut. When she turns around she finds that there is a man standing in the room with her. The man tells her that he was going to knock but that there was no door. Emma explains that her father broke the door down the night before in a drunken rage. The man tells her that his name is Taylor and that he is looking for her mother. She wants to know what he wants her mother for and he tells her that he is in the real-estate business and is helping her mother sell the house. Emma is enraged that her mother is selling the house and Taylor tries to convince her that selling the property is in their best interest. Emma tells Taylor that her family has violent tendencies caused by some family members having nitroglycerin, which is a very explosive element, in their blood. Wesley then enters and sets up a small enclosure in the kitchen. He exits again and returns with a lamb, which he puts in the enclosure. Ella finally enters and says that she is going on a business luncheon with Taylor. Emma yells at Ella and exits. Ella leaves with Taylor, telling Wesley to take the lamb with the maggots back outside. Weston enters, drunk, with a large bag of groceries. Weston talks to the lamb briefly, and then begins putting the groceries, which turn out to only be desert artichokes, in the refrigerator. Wesley enters and they discuss Weston’s laundry and the best way to help the lamb with the maggots. Act two opens on Wesley and Emma in the kitchen, where Wesley is building a new front door for the house. Emma and Wesley discuss whether their mother will come back, or whether she will run off to Mexico with Taylor. Wesley and Emma then argue over who is going to go add water to the artichokes that are boiling on the stove. Wesley doesn’t want to do it because he is making the door and Emma doesn’t want to do it because she is remaking her posters. Wesley says that Emma doesn’t want to do it just because she’s “on the rag”, so she throws down her markers and gets up to add the water. Wesley then explains to Emma that it’s not typical homebuyers who are going to purchase the house, but that it’s land developers. He compares it to a zombie invasion and takeover, where the zombies build their own city. He then suggests that they move away to some place safe, like Alaska. Weston enters, even drunker than he was before. Emma is frightened by him, but Wesley tells her to stay calm. Weston asks where Ella is, and then goes into a rage when Wesley and Emma tell him where she went. Weston then tells them that he’s already found someone who will buy the land and pay in cash. Emma, angry, leaves. Weston begins to tell Wesley about how he began to see the ‘poison’ in his own father, and how Wesley can see it in him. Weston tries to explain the poison to Wesley by comparing it to the way to you poison a coyote by putting strychnine in the belly of a dead lamb. Wesley then tells Weston that Ella has also found a buyer for the house and Weston goes into a rage, and then collapses on a table and falls asleep. Ella returns with groceries that Taylor has bought for the family and throws out the artichokes. Wesley deduces that Taylor is the one who sold Weston with worthless desert property in the first place. Ella talks about the curse that is plaguing their family. She tells Wesley that just when you think the curse has been beaten, and it has retreated back into the smallest cells of their genetics, it will suddenly reappear in full force. Ellis, the owner of the “Alibi Club” walks into the house and sees Weston on the table. He tells Wesley and Emma that he has already purchased the house from Weston and shows them the cash. He pulls out the $1,500, telling them that is the amount that Weston owes to some “pretty hard fellas”. Wesley takes the money, offering to deliver it to the people his father owes money to. Ella tries to take the money from Wesley, but he tells her there’s not enough to go to Europe on. Taylor then enters and Ella tells him what’s happened. Taylor says that any deal Weston makes is void because he is considered incompetent by the state. Taylor declares that he will go to court and have the deed taken back and then buy the property from Ella, then leaves the house. Sergeant Malcolm from the police department enters and tells Ella that Emma has been arrested for riding a horse into the “Alibi Club” and shooting the place full of holes. Ellis says that Weston must have sent Emma down there and takes back his $1,500 and runs off to his club, swearing he will get revenge on Weston. Ella goes downtown to get Emma out of jail. This act opens with Weston, who is now clean, and sober. He has done his laundry, which is all nicely folded on the table, and the lamb is back in the kitchen. He tells the lamb a story about an eagle who was diving very close down to the ground trying to steal the testes of the lambs he was castrating. In the end he was cheering for the eagle. Wesley, who has been listening to this story, then asks what happens next. Weston becomes grumpy and refuses to tell the rest of the story. He asks what happened to Wesley, who had clearly been beaten up. Wesley tells him that he ran into a brick wall. Weston tells Wesley that he has decided to stay and fix up the house instead of leaving, no matter who holds the deed. Weston says that when he woke up that morning, after sleeping on the table, that he felt like a new man and walked around their property naked to reclaim ownership. He then came inside and took a bath, made a big breakfast, drank some coffee, and did everyone’s laundry. He tells Wesley to go clean up, and he’ll make him a big breakfast. While Wesley is bathing, Weston yells into him that he agrees that becoming an avocado grower for the Grower’s Association. Ella enters and she and Weston discuss Emma’s shooting up of the club. Weston is proud of Emma, saying that it takes guts to do something like that at her age. Ella begins to yell at Weston for pulling a Jekyll and Hyde act by changing overnight. He tells her it was the night’s sleep on the table that fixed everything. Ella pushes all the laundry to the floor and lies on the table. As she is falling asleep, and Weston is talking to her about the benefits of sleeping on the hard table, Wesley walks into the kitchen, naked, and takes the lamb outside. Wesley re-enters, wearing his father’s old clothes. He tells Weston that he has butchered the lamb for food. Weston yells at him, telling him that they didn’t need the food, because the refrigerator is full for once. Wesley then begins to gorge himself on all of the food in the refrigerator. Weston tries to calm Wesley down, and to wake Ella up, but cannot seem to do either. He declares to them that he is a whole new person, and Wesley finally stops eating tells Weston that the men who are after him are going to kill him. At first, Weston can’t remember who all he has loaned money to, and begins to rant about how this is his home and nobody ought to be able to take it from him because he has nowhere else to go. Wesley tells him to take the Packard and escape to Mexico. Weston leaves. Emma enters, carrying her riding crop. She asks Wesley why he is wearing their father’s clothes. He tells her that as he put them on he could feel his own essence slipping out of him, and his father’s essence coming into him. Wesley asks her how she got out of jail and she tells him that she made sexual overtures at the guard. She then pulls out a wad of cash and tells him that she’s taking their mother’s car and going into crime. As she leaves, Ella wakes up, mistakes Wesley for Weston, and tells him to go after Emma because she’s too young to leave on her own. Weston tells Ella to let Emma go and then there is a bright flash and a loud explosion from outside. Emerson, a small well dressed thug, enters giggling about the explosion. His partner, Slater, enters after him, playing with the skinned lamb carcass. Since Ella is still under the impression that Wesley is Weston, Emerson and Slater also mistake Wesley for Weston. Wesley tries to tell them that Weston is his father. They tell him that they have blown up the car, with Emma in the car. The men tell Wesley, who they are still calling Weston, that he is to pass on the warning to his father and they leave. Ella believes that Emma has left on the horse, and is not overly concerned about her. Looking at the lamb carcass, she asks Wesley to help her remember the story Weston always told about the eagle. They finish the story, saying that a tom cat had come to sniff around in the testes and the eagle picked it up. The tom cat and the eagle start fighting in midair, with the cat clawing out the eagle’s chest, and the eagle trying to drop it. However, the tom cat won’t let go because if it does it will fall and die. Instead, it chooses to bring the eagle down, even if it means certain doom for the cat as well. The play ends with Ella and Wesley staring at the lamb carcass. |
4683449 | /m/0ch44y | The Scales of Injustice | Gary Russell | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Whilst the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw investigate another incursion of Silurians, the Brigadier must discover what the secret Governmental organisation C-19 has in store for UNIT. |
4683624 | /m/0ch4jh | City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder | Herman Wouk | 1948 | null | Set in the spring and summer of 1928, City Boy spins the tale of an 11-year-old Jewish boy from the Bronx, New York. The novel first follows Herbert Bookbinder through the final days of school at New York Public School 50, and then through a summer spent at Camp Manitou, a summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains operated by his school's principal. Herbie's city world is one of endless daydreams and small urban pleasures: playing in empty lots, going to the movies on Saturday, arguing with friends around a forbidden campfire, eating "fraps" (sundaes) in Mr. Borowsky's candy store, and going out to dinner at Golden's Restaurant. Herbie is an exceptionally bright but fat little boy, a seventh grader and a star pupil. Although a poor athlete, Herbie yearns to be a "regular guy" among his schoolboy peers and constantly struggles against the consequences of his own quick wit and natural clumsiness with his rival, Lennie Krieger, the son of the business partner of Herbie's father, Jacob Bookbinder. Both blessed and cursed with a highly-active imagination, Herbie is also on the verge of adolescence, and the story revolves around his continuing quest to win the heart of the fickle, red-haired Lucille Glass. Herbie, his parents, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Felicia, dwell in an aging Homer Avenue apartment house. Jacob Bookbinder is founder and part owner of an industrial ice-making plant, known to Herbie and his cousin Cliff Block as "The Place," a location that plays both a significant role in Herbie's fate and an adult sub-plot that frames the climax of the story. Herbie contrives to have himself (and his sister, his cousin Cliff Block, and his rival Lennie) sent to Camp Manitou (run by the principal of P.S. 50, Mr. Gauss, as a source of summer income) when he learns that Lucille Glass will be there. The second half of the novel skewers the summer camp scene of the 1920s even as it sets up a succession of abject failures and spectacular successes for Herbie. Herbie and Cliff contrive to burglarize "The Place" to finance a well-intended camp project, and that crime is the device by which all the sub-plots come together in Dickensian fashion, at a cost to Herbie's bottom if not his psyche. Wouk fashions a moral to the tale without preaching, but the boy's victory in the quest for Lucille proves tenuous at best. |
4684897 | /m/0ch770 | Armageddon's Children | Terry Brooks | 8/29/2006 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The world, now ravaged by nuclear war and plague, lies in ruins, overrun by Demons and other monsters, with the remaining humans forced into tightly controlled fortress-like compounds. A group of children, the Ghosts, hide out in the ruins of downtown Seattle. Their leader, Hawk, is a multi-talented, and unaware that he is a gypsy morph, a magical creature. He has prophetic dreams in which he leads a large group into a new "promised land". He secretly sees Tessa, a girl from the nearby compound at Safeco Field, though they are forbidden to be together by compound law. A young Ghost girl named River, sneaks out of the hideout. Hawk tracks her, and finds that she has been secretly visiting a man that turns out to be her Grandfather—a mad homeless man whom everyone else knows as the Weatherman (because of his incoherent meteorlogical ramblings). He is sick with a plague and Hawk grudgingly agrees to take him back to the hideout to have him cared for. Later, Hawk goes to bring medical supplies as part of a trade to one of the competing tribes, the Cats, but while he is away the rest of the gang is attacked by a mutant resembling a giant centipede. The beast is destroyed by Sparrow and Cheney, but Cheney is mortally wounded. Hawk, arriving just after the battle, cradles Cheney and mysteriously the dog's life is restored. Confused, Hawk sets out to visit Tessa, but is captured by guards at the Safeco compound. He and Tessa are sentenced to death for breaking the law of the compound. Meanwhile, deep in the Oregon woods in the Elven kingdom known as The Cintra, exists Arborlon, the largest Elven city in the world, hidden away from men. Long ago in "the time of Faerie", Elves had conquered the demon hordes that ruled the planet, sealing the forces into another world called the "Forbidding". The linchpin of the barrier that keeps the demons in the Forbidding is the Ellcrys, a sentient tree that resides in the Cintra. The Ellcrys is protected by the Chosen, teenaged guards specially selected by the tree herself. The Ellcrys telepathically tells two of these guardians (Kirisin and his cousin Erisha, the Elven King's daughter) that a force is coming that will forever change the world. The Ellcrys tells them that they must find the three seeking Elfstones and use them to locate the Loden Elfstone—which the tree can be sealed within for protection and transport. The King behaves suspiciously when they tell him of the Ellcrys' message, and refuses to act. Erisha and Kirisin then try to sneak into the library to find out more information about the Elfstones, but are caught. Elsewhere, there are two remaining Knights of the Word. Angel Perez, who is pursued by the demon Findo Gask and his henchwoman Delloreen. After narrowly escaping death in an encounter with Delloreen after rescuing a group of children, Angel is confronted by a Tatterdemalion, a messenger of the Word, named Ailie. Angel is told of the existence of Elves, and instructed to head north and seek the Loden Elfstone. The other Knight is Logan Tom, who is charged by the Native American O'olish Amaneh, also a servant of the Word, to find the gypsy morph and give him the bones of Nest Freemark's right hand, and shows Logan how, by casting the bones, they will point in the direction of the gypsy morph. Using Nest's bones as a guide, Logan eventually reaches the Ghost hideout in Seattle. He tells the Ghosts his story, and they come to realize that the gypsy morph must be Hawk, who had just left to meet Tessa. Far to the south, Findo Gask has felt the magic emanating from Hawk when the dog Cheney was healed and identified it as the gypsy morph's as well. Logan is able to gain entrance into the Safeco compound and give Hawk the bones of Nest Freemark. Although Hawk does not instantly realize who he is, he soon recalls his mother, her life and death. But he still doesn't know what he is supposed to do to fulfill his vision. Unfortunately, Logan is unable to save Hawk from his sentencing--Hawk and Tessa are thrown from the top of the compound. Elsewhere in the city, Owl and the Ghosts are preparing to abandon Seattle, Sparrow sees what she believes is a demon invasion army coming in from the ocean. |
4689986 | /m/0chh9d | The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years | Aitmatov | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel begins with Yedigei learning about the death of his longtime friend, Kazangap. All of Kazangap's crucial relatives have been forewarned of his impending death, and it is decided to set off to bury him the next day. To the consternation of his son, Sabitzhan, who is indifferent toward his father's burial, it is decided to travel across the Sarozak to the Ana-Beiit cemetery in order to bury Kazangap. The procession promptly leaves the next morning, and experiences that took place throughout Yedigei's lifetime, as well as various Sarozak legends, are recollected. Initially, Yedigei recalls how he had fought in World War II but had been dismissed from duty due to shell shock. As a result, he was sent to work on the railway. Through his work, he met Kazangap, who convinced him to move to what would become his permanent home, the remote Boranly-Borannyi junction, from which he gained his namesake. Kazangap and Yedigei become dear friends, and Kazangap eventually gives Yedigei the gift of a camel, named Karanar, which becomes legendary across the Sarozak because of its strength and vitality. At the end of 1951, Abutalip and Zalipa Kuttybaev move to Boranly-Borranyi junction with their two young sons. They initially have a hard time adjusting to living on the Sarozek because of the harsh environment; however, they eventually become adjusted. Before relocating, both had been school teachers. Abutalip also fought in the war and had been taken prisoner by Germans, but he escaped and fought with the Yugoslav partisan army. Nevertheless, upon his return to the Soviet Union he still retained the stigma of having been a prisoner and was often relocated because of political reasons. To leave a personal account of his experiences for his children and also to maintain his faculties amid the desolate Sarozak, Abutalip takes to writing about his time as a prisoner of war, his escape, and fighting for the partisans; he also records the various legends told to him by Yedigei. Unfortunately for him, these activities are discovered during a routine inspection of the junction and reported to higher authorities. The denizens of Boranly-Borrannyi and Abutalip are interrogated by the tyrannical Tansykbaev, and he is deemed counterrevolutionary. In due Soviet process, he is taken away and unheard of for a long time. Later, Kazangap travels to the nearby Kumbel to visit his son. There he finds a letter meant to inform Zaripa of Abutalip's death, but thinks it best to merely tell her that she has a letter rather to inform her of her husband's death. Yedigei later accompanies Zaripa to Kumbel in order to receive the letter; coincidentally, Joseph Stalin also died on the same day, but Zaripa was too overcome with grief to pay notice to the news. Zaripa decides that it is best to forestall conveying the news of Abutalip's death to her children. Yedigei thereafter becomes the paternal figure in her children's lives and grows to love them more than his own daughters. Abutalip's last request was for Yedigei to tell his sons about the Aral Sea, so Yedigei spends much time telling them about his former occupation as a fisherman. As a result of his frequent reminiscing, Yedigei recalls the time he had to catch a golden sturgeon to quell the desires of his wife, Ukubala's, unborn child, but decides not to share it. He eventually becomes fond of Zaripa from spending so much time with her and her children, but she does not return his affection and moves away one day when Yedigei travels to another junction to fetch his wandering camel. In consequence, Yedigei projects his anger onto Karanar by maiming him until he runs away again, only to later return famished and dilapidated. Years later, after internal reforms within the Soviet Union, Yedigei pressures the government to inquire into Abutalip's death in order to clear the names of his sons. Abutalip is declared "rehabilitated", and Yedigei also learns that Zaripa has remarried and has once more begun working as a school teacher. Near the end of the story, the group that set out to bury Kazangap has nearly reached the Ana-Beiit cemetery. However, they are hindered in their journey by a barbed wired fence erected in the middle of their route. Resolved to go around it, they travel along it toward another road only to reach a check-point manned by a young soldier. To their dismay, they are told that access beyond the fence is prohibited, but the soldier calls his superior to see if an exception can be made. It is then that Yedigei learns that the superior is named Tansykbaev, but discovers that this is a different man from the one previously known. However, the new Tansykbaev is also encrusted in a patina of hierarchical obedience and interpersonal tyranny; unmoved by the procession's request, he denies them entry and also informs them that the Ana-Beiit cemetery is to be leveled in the future. During their return, everybody in the group, with the exception of Kazangap's son, Sabitizhan, decides that it would be against tradition to return from a burial with a body. They decide to bury Kazangap near a ravine on the Sarozak, and some of the men vow to also be buried there themselves. Yedigei, most adamant among them, makes them promise to bury him next to Kazangap, as he is the oldest and the most likely to die next. Everybody leaves after the burial, but Yedigei remains with Karanar and his dog, Zholbars, to ruminate over the day's circumstances. He decides to return to the check-point in order to vocalize his anger at the guard, but a series of rockets are launched into space from within the fenced area before he reaches the check-point, sending Yedigei, Zholbars, and Karanar running off into the Sarozak. Shortly after learning the news of Kazangap's death, Yedigei observes a rocket launching from the launch site north of the Boranly-Borranyi junction. Launches, though infrequent, are not unusual to Yedigei, but this one in particular is because he had no prior knowledge of it. Generally, such occasions heralded pompous celebration, but this one had not. This launch, and the circumstances surrounding it, have been kept secret from the public, and an American launch from Nevada occurs at the same time. Both are destined for the joint Soviet-American space station, Parity, currently orbiting the earth. There were already two cosmonauts on board the Parity space station before the launch; however, they had mysteriously curtailed all contact with the aircraft carrier Convention, afloat between San Francisco and Vladivostok, which serves as a base of operations for the Soviets and Americans. Once they arrive, the two cosmonauts sent to Parity discover that their predecessors have disappeared completely. Before leaving, they left a note stating that they had made contact with intelligent life from the planet Lesnaya Grud. Together, they decided to keep their findings private out of fear for the political turmoil that might occur. The inhabitants of Lesnaya Grud had traveled to Parity and transported the two cosmonauts to Lesnaya Grud. From there, the cosmonauts send a transmission back to Parity describing the planet. It is much larger than Earth, nobody has any concept of war, and there is an established and functional world government. Furthermore, Lesnaya Grud suffers from the problem of "internal withering," where portions of the planet turn to uninhabitable desert. Although this problem will not be critical for many millions of years, the inhabitants of Lesnaya Grud are already trying to decide what to do about it and how to possibly fix it. In response to the cosmonauts' actions, the officials on Convention decide to prohibit them from ever returning to earth. Moreover, they all vow never to mention what took place. In order to ensure their decision, the Americans and Soviets threaten to destroy any foreign spacecraft that comes into earth orbit, and both nations launch missile-equipped satellites to secure their threat. The aircraft carrier Convention is then handed over to neutral Finland, and the operation is shut down. |
4691204 | /m/0chk8q | The Descent | Jeff Long | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A group of new-age trekkers in Nepal are trapped in a cave by a snowstorm and stumble across a mutilated, mummified corpse, covered with cryptic tattoos in both English and undecipherable symbols; the party interprets the former to mean that the body was that of a RAF pilot who had crashed on the other side of the Himalayas in the 1940s. How the pilot had made it across the mountains is a mystery, but a diagram among the tattoos suggests that the cave the party is trapped may be part of a larger network, one that might have an outlet elsewhere. As the blizzard shows no signs of letting up, the party pushes deeper into the network, discovering the remains of a slaughtered ancient army, displayed almost trophy-like, and a trail of gold coins. Becoming separated, the members are relentlessly killed by an unseen enemy, until only the mountain guides, Ike and Kora, remain. Several years later, at a UN military base in Bosnia, multinational soldiers are guarding a forensic team excavating a huge mass grave, which satellite imagery shows being disturbed every night. The soldiers first assume that Serb soldiers are trying to destroy the evidence of their atrocities; a US Army Aviation officer named Elias Branch leads a reconnaissance-helicopter flight to gather evidence. After a crash, he finds his navigator brutally assaulted, is menaced by an unseen enemy, and is himself badly injured by his unit's supporting fire. Found scarred and half-mad, he raves about being attacked by "demons;" during his recuperation, he begins to exhibit dramatic physical changes, and begins taking an interest in local cave systems. Near the edge of the Kalahari, a young nun Ali van Schade is about to leave a leper encampment at which she had been working. To her horror, she discovers that the lepers had saved her life by trading one of their own to be (in her place) mutilated and enslaved by an unknown presence, servants of a god they call "Older-Than-Old." A few years later, Branch, monstrously deformed, is leading the world's armies in exploring a vast network of caves that he has been instrumental in discovering, underlying the whole of the Earth's surface. The "Descent" of the title refers not only to the literal act of descending, but is also the term the narrative applies to a large-scale military-led colonization of the planet's interior that begins at this point. Referred to as the "sub-planet," the labyrinth contains an entire separately-evolved ecosystem, and offers rare fleeting glimpses of elusive albino humanoids. Scientists theorize these are trogloxenic hominids descended from Homo erectus; classified as Homo hadalis (as in Hades), they are commonly referred to as "hadals," or, pejoratively, "Haddie." While presently degenerate and brutal, the archaeological evidence suggests the "hadals" had once possessed a high level of civilization, having reached the Iron Age as far back as 20,000 years ago. The beings had apparently occasionally emerged throughout human history, and had (rather viciously) mentored human civilization, thereby giving rise to the human concepts of Hell and demons. After melting invisibly away from human encroachment for several months, the hadals spring a trap: a massive, coordinated worldwide ambush of the armies exploring and occupying the sub-planet. The attack is enormously successful; world casualties number a full quarter-million. Though an enormous initial shock, the dismay wears off quickly and humanity is essentially undeterred; the Descent recommences, in even greater force. Cities are built in the upper crust, three miles deep, while social instability grows and interest in space exploration diminishes. Meanwhile, a mysterious Jesuit priest, Father Thomas, is assembling the Beowulf Circle, an informal group of scholars dedicated to the study of the sub-planet, with the eventual aim of discovering whether "Satan" (by which they do not necessarily mean a literal person, but some kind of long-term unified authority directing the activities of the hadal race) might actually exist. A member of the Circle persuades Ali to join the group; she is attached to an expedition funded by the Helios corporation, an unprecedentedly deep trek through a newly-discovered fissure which traverses the floor of the entire Pacific Ocean basin. During their increasingly bloody journey through the cave system, the expedition scientists are guarded by untrustworthy Helios mercenaries and guided by Ike, the Himalayan tour guide from the first chapter, who had spent a decade as a slave of the hadals before being recovered by Branch's soldiers. On the way, the expedition uncovers the decaying evidence of a once-great hadal civilization, which may correspond to lost civilizations from human folklore, such as Atlantis or Mu. Meanwhile, on the surface, a plot emerges within Helios to sterilize the sub-planet with a potent bioweapon and thereby open it to human settlement and exploitation. At the same time, the Jesuit's scholarly organization discovers that the hadals may have a mysterious method of transferring human consciousness from body to body, allowing for effective immortality for a select few; after the members of the Beowulf Circle begin to be brutally murdered one-by-one, the two storylines gradually converge. |
4692607 | /m/0chmhj | The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace | Martin Moran | 2005 | {"/m/016chh": "Memoir"} | The Tricky Part tells the story of the relationship and its effect on Moran, who grew up as a homosexual. It describes Moran’s sexual awakening, and how he and a chubby friend of his called George, go with Bob to get the camp ready. Bob pulls Moran into his sleeping bag the first night they are alone (with George asleep beside them) and abuses him. A year later, Moran discovers that a friend of his, Kip, another 13-year-old, is also being abused by Bob. The abuse continues through puberty and adolescence and Moran tries to tell Bob that he wants it all to stop. Bob's response is to invite the boy into bed with him and his cowgirl-friend Karen. Bob is finally arrested and jailed for his sex crimes. Moran's desperate coming-of-age is described with candor and humor and sets out the paradox that what is, in nearly everyone’s eyes, a seriously damaging experience, can be the very thing that gives "rise to transformation, even grace". The book condemns adult–child sex. Moran is ambivalent about the touching and other sexual acts. He tries to commit suicide twice, but eventually finds his feet in Off Broadway and Broadway theater. Moran has also developed and performed The Tricky Part as a one-man play. fr:Un truc à part |
4692828 | /m/0chmtq | Last Man Running | Chris Boucher | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor is irritated when Leela attacks the buzzing TARDIS console with her knife, convinced there is a hostile insect inside. When the TARDIS materializes in a pine forest, he sets off for a quiet walk by himself, leaving her locked inside; but moments after leaving the safety of the ship he is targeted and pursued by a predator, something like a giant bird louse. He is forced to climb a tree to escape, but the predator begins to climb the tree as well... Meanwhile, Leela experiments with the TARDIS console and works out how to open the doors and follow the Doctor. A police squad from the Out-systems Investigation Group has landed nearby in pursuit of an outlaw weapons technologist, a runner from justice. But as the squad advances into the jungle they stop receiving signals from their ship, and Rinandor and Pertandor must return to find out what's happening. They find that the ship has vanished into thin air -- and before they can report back they are attacked by a squad snake, a group organism which attacks with crippling sound waves. Meanwhile, the rest of the group finds the crash site of the runner's ship, but no sign of the ship itself; they are then attacked by flying reptiles which instantly kill Investigator Monly. The others escape, but the group's leader, Kley, now knows that the group was not told everything they need to know about this planet. She'd been told that the group had been fully briefed before she joined them, yet nobody else has been told that the runner is a "toody", one of the second-class citizens of the system from the Second Planet. Rinandor and Pertandor stumble through an invisible boundary between the jungle and the pine forest, and thus meet Leela. Leela uses her hunting skills to kill the squad snake, saving their lives, but Rinandor remains suspicious of her and demands to know why she's on an interdicted world. Leela easily slips away from them and soon finds the Doctor, who is still trapped by the bird-louse predator. Leela also kills this predator and takes the Doctor back to Rinandor and Pertandor, who are forced to concede that they can't survive on this world without Leela's help. They assume that the Doctor is also a toody -- probably a duelling agent who's brought Leela to this world to train illegally. Trying to find the rest of their group, they instead find a pool blocking their path -- and, impossibly, the equipment packs they discarded during their flight from the snake are on the island in the centre of the pool. Pertandor foolishly tries to swim across to fetch the packs, and is attacked by an aquatic predator. Once again Leela fights and kills the creature, which the Doctor suspects was engineered by a guiding intelligence -- as has this entire situation. They are reunited with the rest of the OIG squad, and the Doctor learns that they're hunting a weapons technologist and that their expedition is woefully underequipped and underinformed. Leela hears a noise nearby and slips away to investigate, and watches from hiding as three humanoid warriors emerge from a shaft in the ground nearby. The Doctor finds them but is ignored, and theorizes that they're here to provide a challenge for Leela. Unfortunately, the OIG team arrives and tries to confront the three warriors, who instantly react when weapons are drawn. In the ensuing fight two of the warriors are gunned down, the officer Sozerdor is killed, and Leela kills the third warrior in hand-to-hand combat. The shaft seals itself up, and the Doctor theorizes that they're in a weapons development facility -- and that more than just budgetary reasons are behind the OIG team's lack of preparation. He suggests waiting to see what happens next, but then the ground opens up beneath their feet... The Doctor awakens in darkness, taunted by the voice of the runner. The Doctor refuses to discuss his arrival on the planet, and is then rescued from his force-field prison by Kley's second-in-command, Fermindor, who claims that he awoke alone in this underground complex. They follow pulses of hypnotic light to a recycling centre, where the remains of the two ships from the surface have been reduced to their component molecules -- and where Fermindor's attention is instantly drawn to the undamaged TARDIS, which is circling the plasma stream. His fellow investigator Belay also arrives, having freed himself somehow, and like Fermindor he instantly asks the Doctor about the TARDIS -- confirming the Doctor's suspicion that they have been 'programmed' by the runner to seek more information on the TARDIS. Overpowered by their programmed instincts, they both leap into the plasma stream before he can stop them, and are blown apart. The runner, meanwhile, sends a false distress call back to the OIG team's homeworld, where Director Drew makes the unprecedented decision to send a three-ship rescue team despite the drain this will cause on the OIG's budget. This act is largely dismissed as a publicity stunt by the media, whose attention is fully occupied by a forthcoming death duel on the public sports channel; the fight between a firster and toody will carry the extra baggage of symbolising the underlying resentment and prejudice between the First and Second Planets. Drew's deputy Feerlenator suspects that there's more going on than he knows -- but even he doesn't realize that Drew is involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the domination of the First Planet. Leela is rescued from her force-field prison by a clone of the Doctor who tries to elicit information about the TARDIS from her. The real Doctor finds them, and the clone attacks him; but as it is an imperfect copy it is killed by the hypnotic pulses of light. The Doctor and Leela follow the corridor to the facility's control centre, where Leela finds she is able to use the system to generate predators and artificial environments for battle. The Doctor realizes that mental feedback from the machine is amplifying and honing her aggressive tendencies. They are then confronted by the runner -- Monly, who claims that he slipped away from the group when they first landed and replaced himself with a clone who was killed to divert suspicion. Monly generates four clones of Leela, who march the Doctor and the real Leela to the real control centre. All this time, they -- and the rest of the OIG team -- have been trapped in force-field cubicles and fed sensory illusions. Monly continues to taunt the Doctor, but the Doctor quickly realizes that "Monly" is really a clone. A second Monly emerges from another cubicle, but the Doctor isn't fooled twice. The real runner is finally forced to show himself -- and it's Sozerdor, who has come to this world to manufacture weapons for the conspiracy back home. Sozerdor traps Leela in a force field and threatens to crush her unless the Doctor reveals the secrets of the TARDIS, but the Doctor manages to convince the confused Monly clones that Sozerdor is insane. They attack Monly, who guns them down -- but the distraction enables the Doctor to rescue Leela. Sozerdor flees while the Doctor and Leela release the others from their cubicles; Kley, Fermindor, Rinandor and Pertandor seem none the worse for their experiences, but Belay seems to be on the verge of losing control. The Doctor explains that they're in a testing facility abandoned by the extinct Lentic Empire; soldiers were placed in these arenas and tested to destruction, the idea being to breed the perfect super-soldier from the last survivor. Now Sozerdor intends to generate an army of Leela clones -- the ultimate warrior, distilled to perfection by the Last-Man-Running scenario. Sozerdor's distress call and Drew's machinations have resulted in three ships arriving in orbit around the planet -- to provide their clone army with transport back home. The Doctor and Leela transport themselves and the OIG team to the surface, where clones of the OIG team have been sent out to lure the rescue party into a false sense of security. Leela tries to scout ahead to find out what's happening, but Belay follows and is seen, provoking a gun battle between the clones and the rescue team. Belay, trying to defend himself, loses his sense of his own identity when he sees himself and his friends shooting at him, and accidentally guns down the rescue party before being shot by Rinandor's clone. The other OIG teams manage to defeat their own clones, and on the Doctor's advice, they take the rescue shuttles back to the orbiting ships and advise the commander of the rescue mission to bomb the planet from orbit. Leela fights her clones as they emerge one by one from the transmat system, and although the strain on her sanity is nearly too much for her to handle the Doctor is there to see her through. They return to the Lentic facility to confront Sozerdor, and are able to trap him in a force field; Leela then activates all of the controls she can find, drawing on the facility's power until the defenses are too weak to shield against the orbital strafing. The power drain also releases Sozerdor from his force field, but before he can shoot the Doctor or Leela, the recycling facility shuts down -- thus cutting off the plasma stream around the TARDIS -- and the lights go out. Sozerdor is disoriented in the darkness, but Leela unerringly locates the TARDIS -- and she and the Doctor escape while the OIG rescue mission bombs the facility, bringing it down around Sozerdor's head. |
4692973 | /m/0chn4v | Matrix | Robert Perry | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | It features the Seventh Doctor and Ace. It also includes appearances by the Wandering Jewhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/cult/news/drwho/2004/01/01/13704.shtml and Jack the Ripper. Part of it is set in an alternate timeline, featuring parallel universe versions of Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. The villain is the Valeyard. |
4697278 | /m/0chx3n | Petey | Ben Mikaelsen | 9/15/1998 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | In the 1920s, at a hospital in Bozeman, Montana, a boy named Petey is born. His mother is devastated when she sees his twisted figure. Petey looked nothing like a normal baby should. The doctor who took care of Mrs. Corbin's childbirth tells her that Petey is an idiot and that he should be institutionalized. Devastated, she and her husband spend two years and much money to find a doctor who can give them good news, but all diagnose their son as an idiot. The Corbins decide to give up on their hope and let Petey go to the Insane Asylum in Warm Springs, Montana. The story then switches its point of view to following Petey's life in the asylum. Crowded, unsanitary, and terrible, the institution appears awful to Petey. When nurses care for him, they do it lazily and improperly, some even abusing him. A male nurse named Esteban begins to work at the institution and quickly befriends Petey. Whenever he can, Esteban talks to Petey and brings him chocolate, as Petey is "his favorite". Esteban understands (unlike most people) that Petey is not an idiot and that it is just his body that is different. Esteban believed that Petey could think like anyone else, but that he was trapped in his twisted body. Esteban was right all along. The boss at the asylum fires Esteban for telling civic leaders from Butte that Petey isn't an idiot. At the age of 11, Petey is transferred into the Men's Ward. Soon after, he notices a family of mice living in his room. They are his only joy until a new person, named Calvin, moves into Petey's room. Mildly retarded, and club-footed, Calvin quickly becomes Petey's best friend, and the two spend all their time together. After befriending Joe, a nurse, Petey and Calvin have some sort of father figure in their lives. As Joe ages, the disease in his muscles becomes worse and he leaves Warm Springs. When Joe was there, the Insane Asylum started to show very old movies like cowboy movies. For Christmas, Joe gives each Calvin and Petey candy and a toy pistol. He also gives Petey a plaque that has an old bible verse on it. Calvin and Petey, age 20, still play like kids. They make shooting noises and play like little 5 year olds. They always end up in a fit of giggles. After Joe, another nurse named Cassie is frequently kind to them and often tells Petey he is handsome. Unfortunately, she leaves for New York because her husband returning from World War II. Petey and Calvin then meet Owen twenty years later. Both men are around forty years old when Owen befriends them. He took them out often and was kind. He soon leaves because he is too old. Cut to part two which takes place many years later in 1990. Petey is now around seventy years old and living in a nursing home in his hometown of Bozeman, Montana. He is constantly tormented by local teenagers who often pelt him with snowballs because he is disabled. A kind boy named Trevor Ladd witnesses one of these attacks and intervenes, eventually befriending him. A remarkable friendship builds between the two that teaches Trevor about trust, dignity, respect, growth, understanding, wisdom and love that ultimately make Trevor appreciate life more. They are friends until Petey becomes very ill. They don't become only friends, but Trevor asks Petey to be his grandfather. Petey tells Trevor to go have fun without him while he is still in the hospital. |
4699435 | /m/0ch_50 | The Little Endless Storybook | null | 2001 | null | The story involves Barnabas, Destruction's dog on strict orders to watch over Delirium, looking for Delirium after she disappears. He visits each of the Endless in turn to see if they've seen Delirium, but none of them have any clue where she is. At the end, Barnabas finally finds her by collecting all of the sigils of each of the Endless and conjuring her. |
4704394 | /m/0cj6vm | All Fall Down | James Leo Herlihy | 1960 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | When the hedonistic Berry Willert deserts his pregnant lover, Echo O'Brien, his younger brother Clinton's blind faith in him shows signs of waning, while his parents are disgusted by his actions. |
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