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5313833 | /m/0df0_v | The Door | Magda Szabó | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A childless woman writer, Magda, hires an older housekeeper, Emerence, who behaves oddly, but eventually they develop a kind of friendship. |
5314492 | /m/0df231 | Island of Death | Barry Letts | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Jeremy Fitzoliver and his friend Sarah Jane Smith encounter a 'New Age' cult; typical work for investigative journalists. They are surprised that the cult worships a demon like figure. The Doctor and UNIT also become interested in the cult. This situation soon reveals the involvement of government ministers, alien drugs, a remote island in the Indian Ocean and official conspiracies. Even the Royal Navy gets in on the action. It soon becomes a race against time to avert disaster. It has been suggested that this is a version of a third proposed radio play following on from 'The Paradise of Death' and 'The Ghosts of N-Space'. |
5315008 | /m/0df2tb | Ancestors of Avalon | Marion Zimmer Bradley | 2004-06 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | 2500 years BC, Tiriki, Priestess of Light and of the Earth-goddess Ni-Terat, and her husband Micail, Priest of Light and Prince of the Atlantean state Atharrath, have to save themselves from the destruction of Atlantis and are forced to board different ships to the Isles of Tin (Britain). When they finally reach the British coast, they are far away from each other and they both believe that the other one is dead. Tiriki and other Atlanteans who came with her, settle down in the swamplands surrounding the Holy Mountain (which is later going to be called the Isle of Avalon). She realizes that the cult of the Great Goddess is much stronger here than it was in Atlantis, so she and her companions start living with the indigenous people and build up a new religion, where the Atlantean knowledge and the Old Faith of the British people merge. Micail and Tjalan, Prince of Alkonath, on the other hand, try to rebuild the lost glory of Atlantis and start building a huge stone circle -which will later be known as Stonehenge - in order to turn the people of Britain to slaves by using its tremendous powers. When Tiriki and her followers finally come in contact with the other Atlantean settlement, conflicts arise immediately. de:Die Ahnen von Avalon fr:Les Ancêtres d'Avalon it:L'alba di Avalon pt:Os Ancestrais de Avalon |
5315051 | /m/0df2wt | Heart of TARDIS | Dave Stone | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Each Doctor has to deal with different ends of the same crisis involving a dimensional anomaly created by an American experiment, the Second accidentally materialising the TARDIS in a town that has been trapped in the anomaly while the Fourth is forcibly recruited to repair the equipment that created the anomaly. Although neither Doctor ever meets the other, the Fourth Doctor and Romana do travel to the Second's TARDIS to allow him to gain access when the anomaly renders the ship's interior inaccessible from the outside; when the Second Doctor enters, the Fourth Doctor and Romana subsequently hide under the console on the opposite side from the Second in order to escape detection, the Fourth stating that meeting himself would make things too complicated. |
5315277 | /m/0df3cg | Prime Time | Mike Tucker | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Detecting a mysterious sub-space signal in the Time Vortex, the Doctor and Ace land on the planet 'Blinni Gaar'. They soon discover that the native population are little more than zombies, addicted to the programmes of the dangerously powerful Channel 400. As the Doctor investigates, he finds that the television company has a sinister agenda that has nothing to do with entertainment. |
5315587 | /m/0df3y8 | The Light Princess | George MacDonald | null | null | A king and queen, after some time, have a daughter. The king invites everyone to the christening, except his sister Princess Makemnoit, a spiteful and sour woman. She arrives without an invitation and curses the princess to have no gravity. Whenever the princess accidentally moves up in the air, she has to be brought down, and the wind is capable of carrying her off. As she grows, she never cries, and never can be brought to see the serious side of anything. The court philosophers, when consulted, are unable to propose any cure that the king and queen will suffer to be used. She passionately loves swimming, and when she swims, she regains her gravity. This leads to the proposal that if she could be brought to cry, it might break the curse. But nothing can induce her to cry. A prince from another country sets out to find a wife, but finds fault in every princess he finds. He had not intended to seek out the light princess, but, upon becoming lost in a forest, he finds the princess swimming. Thinking she is drowning, he "rescues" her, ending up with her in the air, with her scolding him. He falls instantly in love and, upon her demand, puts her back in the water, and goes swimming with her. Days pass, and the prince learns that her manner is changed between the water and the land, and he can not marry her as she is on land. Princess Makemnoit, meanwhile, discovers that the princess loves the lake and sets out to dry it up. The water is drained from the lake, the springs are stopped up, and the rain ceases. Even babies no longer cry water. As the lake dries up, it is discovered that the only way to stop it is to block the hole the water is flowing from, and the only thing that will block it is a living man, who would die in the deed. The prince volunteers, on the condition that the princess keep him company while the lake fills. The lake fills up. When the prince has almost drowned, the princess frantically drags his body from the lake to take it to her old nurse, who is a wise woman. They tend him through the night, and he wakes at dawn. The princess falls to the floor and cries. After the princess masters the art of walking, she marries the prince. Princess Makemnoit's house is undermined by the waters and falls in, drowning her. The light princess and her prince have many children, none of whom ever lose their gravity. |
5315609 | /m/0df3_f | Palamon and Arcite | John Dryden | null | null | The story is of two knights imprisoned by Theseus after being found unconscious after a battle. Theseus locks Palamon and Arcite in a dungeon where the two knights can see into a courtyard or garden. One day Palamon, looking through the bars of his cell, sees Emily. Falling in love instantly, Palamon cries out, causing Arcite to ask his friend what is wrong. Palamon declares his new found love for Emily, and as Arcite listens, he sees Emily. Turning to Palamon, Arcite claims that because he first recognized her as mortal and not a goddess, Arcite has the right to woo Emily. Later, one of Arcite's friends begs Theseus to free his prisoner; Theseus agrees, but banishes Arcite. The love-struck knight returns, disguised as one of Theseus's servants. The story unfolds as each knight endures different challenges to prove his love for Emily. |
5316478 | /m/0df5my | Half-Broken Things | Morag Joss | 2003 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery"} | The lives of three very lonely people - pregnant Steph, on the run from her violent boyfriend; Michael, a petty thief who becomes her knight in shining armour; and Jean, a sixty-year old spinster nearing the end of her career as a house sitter - collide dramatically within the grounds of the illustrious Walden Manor, where together they seal themselves away from the outside world and build a new life together. The fantasy cannot last forever though, and events take a murderous turn when the first unexpected guest arrives. |
5317123 | /m/0df6pp | Bullet Time | David A. McIntee | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Sarah Jane Smith encounters the Seventh Doctor in Hong Kong. |
5317324 | /m/0df71z | The Shadow in the Glass | Stephen Cole | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart discovers an odd mystery. A plane being shot down in World War 2 was nothing out of the ordinary...but the fact the crash site is still being guarded decades later is. The Doctor moves in to investigate this oddness. |
5317537 | /m/0df7ht | Drift | Simon A. Forward | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | It is winter in New Hampshire. The US military is pursuing a survivalist cult while battling a series of unnatural blizzards. The storms are also holding a slow-building threat that could threaten the entire world if it is not stopped. |
5317770 | /m/0df83t | The True Story of the Three Little Pigs | Lane Smith | 1989 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book tries to show that the Wolf from The Three Little Pigs does not necessarily have to be "Big" and "Bad." The wolf justifies his journeys to the little pigs' houses as needing to ask for some sugar to bake a cake for his dear Granny's birthday, his "huffing and puffing" as him having a cold and "sneeze[ing] a great sneeze", and his eating of the pigs as not letting good meat go to waste, since the pigs die in the sneeze anyway. At the very end of the book, it is revealed that the wolf has been telling the whole story from prison telling the reader that "he's been framed", having been caught during his 'attack' on the third pig's house due to his rage after the pig insulted his granny and rudely dismissed his polite requests for sugar. |
5318187 | /m/0df8pr | The Algebra of Ice | Lloyd Rose | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Ace investigate a 'crop circle' in the Kentish countryside; they are helped by a maths expert, a web-magazine publish and the Doctor's friend, the Brigadier. However, this crop circle is made of ice and is not circular, instead being filled with square-sided shapes. It draws the Doctor and Ace into a new level of reality. |
5318297 | /m/0df8yr | Synthespians™ | Craig Hinton | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Peri land on Reef Station One, an isolated space station that has modelled itself on 1980s popular culture and encounter Autons. |
5318869 | /m/0df9_z | The Eleventh Tiger | David A. McIntee | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | It is China in 1865. Strife and rebellion rock the land. Trying to maintain order is the British Empire and the martial arts expert, the Ten Tigers of Canton. Adding to the confusion is the impossibility of many people already knowing Ian. |
5319045 | /m/0dfb91 | Empire of Death | David Bishop | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In 1863, Queen Victoria is insensate with grief after losing her husband, Prince Albert. A secret seance is planned. Concurrently, The Doctor and Nyssa are dealing with the death of their good friend, Adric. They are surprised when they are seemingly visited by the ghost of their dead friend. Everything, plus the secrets of a guarded, drowned village come together. |
5319397 | /m/0dfbx4 | Kiss the Girls | James Patterson | 1/11/1995 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Kiss the Girls begins in 1975 Boca Raton, Florida where the boy, Casanova, is killing his first four victims. Elsewhere in 1981 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a young Gentleman Caller kills his first two victims. Present time - Casanova takes a girl to the woods and leaves her to die. He wears a mask for death. An ongoing theme is that Casanova wears a mask to symbolize his mood. Alex Cross comes home to find his sister, grandmother, and other relatives waiting for him and is informed that his niece, Naomi "Scootchie" Cross - a student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina - is missing. In North Carolina Sampson and Cross meet Detectives Nic Ruskin and Davey Sikes, who tell Cross that the FBI and DEA are involved and that eight to ten women are missing, all from different states; all have received notes from someone calling himself Casanova. In Los Angeles, reporter Beth Lieberman is working on a serial killer story about “The Gentleman Caller”, who has just raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He threatens “bonus kills" to her if his letters are not published. Kyle Craig meets Beth in LA. Casanova plans to kill Kate because she had broken the rules, but she fights him and gets away. Kate manages to escape, running outside into a forest and jumping off a cliff into the river below. Cross and Ruskin find out she is alive, but she is too injured to speak. In North Carolina, Cross reads about the “Gentleman Caller” in the FBI serial killer files and one of the notes published in the LA Times mentions a black 2nd year law student, Naomi C. Alex tries to call Beth, but she hangs up on him. Cross calls her editor-in-chief, who reveals that Casanova and the Gentleman Caller are communicating as coast-to-coast serial killers. Casanova calls the "Gentleman Caller". Cross discovers Kate was drugged with Marinol, which leads them to believe that Casanova is a doctor or pharmacist. Kyle tells Cross and Kate that Beth Lieberman was murdered by the Gentleman Caller, who cut off her fingers. In her computer was a suspect for Casanova, a Dr. William Rudolph from Los Angeles. Kate and Alex go with Kyle to LA. Kate takes one look at Rudolph and is positive he is not Casanova. Cross knows for sure that there are two killers, which means that Rudolph is the Gentleman Caller. They follow Rudolph but he gets away from the authorities. They eventually catch up with him again the next afternoon. Rudolph has taken another woman and that night after hearing her scream, authorities rushes in, but Rudolph escapes. His apartment is searched and a picture of Rudolph with Dr. Wick Sachs from Durham is found. On the back it reads "Casanova". Cross and Sampson discuss a theory that the girls are being held in an underground house, built in an area that may have been part of the Underground Railroad. Sachs is a professor at Duke and Dean Lowell confirms Sachs is the campus skelton, known as "doctor dirt". Lowell also lets Cross know that Sachs had been a suspect when two students were murdered in the early 1980s. Later Ruskin and Sikes ask Cross for help in catching Casanova, whom they believe to be Sachs. Rudolph prowls Durham, reminiscing. He met Casanova at Duke and Casanova had known Rudolph had killed the young couple and kept the woman's tongue as a souvenir. Casanova shared with Rudolph his own experiences and the two formed a bond. When they reunite, they decide to work together to take down Cross, the homicide detective who was searching for both Casanova and The Gentleman Caller. Jay heads to Kate's house, where he sees Cross and Sampson. After they leave, Kate goes to bed, and is attacked by both Casanova and the Gentleman Caller at the same time. She is seriously wounded and taken to the hospital. Cross, Sampson, and the FBI are at her house. Cross notices that this attack is different from the first one and suspects both men worked together on this. The next day Sachs is brought in for questioning. Cross attacks him, noticing that Sachs is not very physically strong and is sure that Sachs is not Casanova. Later the FBI arrests Sachs, believing he is Casanova after finding physical evidence pointing to him. Sampson and Cross head to the forest again, taking a hand-written map given to them by an Underground Railroad historian and Duke professor. On it is an area not previously searched. As they walk, they hear women screaming. Following the screams they find the underground house. Outside, Casanova and the Gentlemen have been watching Sampson and Cross. They plan to take out Sampson first and then Cross. Cross finds Naomi but hears Sampson scream. He runs out to see Casanova and the Gentleman, both wearing masks, on top of his partner. Sampson has a knife stuck in his back. Cross takes his gun and fires, hitting one in the shoulder. The two take off running and make it to a nearby bar, steal a truck and take off. Cross takes a car and goes after them. In traffic, the two run out of the car, running in opposite directions and firing their guns. Cross follows one, they exchange gunfire, and he hits him in the chest. Cross runs to the man and removes his mask. It is Rudolph. He dies, telling Cross he will never catch Casanova. In the underground house, Cross looks for clues and thinks he knows who Casanova is. He keeps the information from Kyle Craig and decides to go on his own stakeout. He follows Davey Sikes, positive that he is Casanova. He thinks Sikes is looking for a new woman to kidnap. Cross snoops outside a house where Sikes has gone in. Sikes sees him and the two get into a fight. The woman was Sikes’s mistress and the FBI had known about the affair. Later, while visiting Kate, Alex goes jogging and finds a dead FBI agent. He runs back to the house where Casanova, who is Detective Nick Ruskin, hits him with a stun gun. With Cross down, Casanova heads for Kate, but Kate fights him and takes him down. He takes out his gun to shoot Kate but Cross gets up and shoots him in self-defense. |
5319623 | /m/0dfc79 | The Osterman Weekend | Robert Ludlum | 1972 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | John Tanner, the host of an investigative news show, is convinced by a CIA agent that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy, called Omega, that threatens national security. But then everything John Tanner thinks he knows about his closest friends is overturned, and he is set against them. But when Omega finally reveals itself, he realises that he has been manipulated from the very start. The novel was the basis for the film of the same title. fr:Le Week-End Osterman |
5319905 | /m/0dfcqb | The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel | null | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"} | Dürrenmatt uses a first-person narrative to insert himself into a frame story as a writer of detective fiction. However, the primary narrator is actually a character named Dr. H., a retired police chief who takes on the role of explaining to Dürrenmatt's first-person character the flaws of the detective literature genre. To do so, Dr. H. relates the story of one of his former inspectors, Matthäi, who, on his last day with the department, found himself called into an investigation of child murder. A suspect soon confessed to the crime, but knowing that the confession came only after the man was browbeaten in a relentless, 20-hour interrogation, Matthäi's keen police instincts told him that the man was not the real murderer. Matthäi felt that there was a serial killer at work, with the girl's murder being related to other child murders that had occurred in the area. However, he was alone in that assessment and the police closed the case. Having made a solemn promise to the parents of the murdered girl that he would find the culprit, Matthäi abandoned his previous plans and continued investigating the case as a private citizen. He was warned by a psychiatrist that the murderer he sought likely did not exist, and thus he might drive himself mad with his obsession in finding the man. Matthäi, however, was undeterred. Through shrewd detective work, and driven by a growing and near maniacal obsession with the case, Matthäi was able to construct a detailed profile of the likely killer, down to the very road the murderer would probably travel to and from his evil deeds. Matthäi purchased a gas station along the route, and then hired a housekeeper with a daughter named Annemarie, who matched the profile of the murdered girls. With Annemarie in place, living along the road as bait for the killer, Matthäi waited for the villain to come to him. Matthäi's plan seemed to come to fruition, as one day the girl reported having encountered a man matching the profile Matthäi had constructed of the killer. She even included details that tied the man's behavior to that of a man the original murdered girl had reported seeing prior to her death. Matthäi planned to apprehend the killer the next day, having the police surround the area where Annemarie said she was to meet the man again. They had lain in wait for him, but no one ever arrived. The failure proved to be utterly devastating for Matthäi. The police and all other outsiders were finally convinced that no other killer existed and that Matthäi's quest had been borne solely of his own madness. His relationship with Annemarie and her mother was destroyed through their discovery that despite the genuine love they had developed for him, he had seen Annemarie merely as bait for his trap. Unable to fathom how his intricate and detailed detective work had not resulted in a triumphant resolution to the case, Matthäi sank finally into insanity and alcoholism. Only years later, far too late to be of any use to Matthäi, was the truth revealed that his instincts and detective work actually had been entirely correct. The murderer had not arrived for his meeting with Annemarie on the fateful day simply because he had been killed in a car accident while on his way to the rendezvous. In the original film Es geschah am hellichten Tag, the story was directly that of the Matthäi character, rather than being framed through its retelling by Dr. H., as in Das Versprechen. At the end of the movie, Matthäi had demonstrated his concern for Annemarie by sending her and her mother away to safety before attempting to spring his final trap upon the murderer. The murderer arrived and was killed, thus vindicating Matthäi's persistence in pursuing the case and leading to a happy reunion with Annemarie at the story's conclusion. At the story's end, Dürrenmatt offers to the reader an implicit acknowledgment of the existence of the Es geschah am hellichten Tag version of Matthäi's story, by having Dr. H. explicitly mention that the tale of Matthäi would make a perfectly suitable entry into the genre of detective fiction, if only the ending were changed such that the killer arrived for his appointment with Annemarie and fell into Matthäi's trap. However, Dr. H.'s point in relating the tale is to demonstrate to the first-person narrator the folly of such fiction. The first of Dr. H.'s two main complaints about typical detective fiction is the idea that the criminal is always caught. He regards this as a relatively minor transgression, however, as even the most naive of readers would be aware that in real life, sometimes a crime is not solved. But the greater problem, to Dr. H.'s way of thinking, is the manner in which the solving of a crime is depicted in detective fiction. In such literature, the task of solving a crime is presented in a way that makes it akin to that of solving a mathematical equation. A properly formed equation can always be solved if enough of its variables can be computed and if the mathematician possesses enough skill to handle the equation's complexity. Detective fiction often depicts crime-solving in a similar light. Thus, a naive reader of such fiction might well conclude that, even in real life, if a detective fails to solve a crime, it is either because the perpetrator executed the crime well enough to avoid leaving the necessary clues — like an equation for which not enough variables could be computed — or because the detective was not clever enough to properly locate, assemble and analyze those clues to determine what had occurred — like a mathematician who lacks the skill to handle the complexity of the equation with which he is presented. In mentioning the idea of an alternate ending to Matthäi's story, Dr. H. is noting that with such an ending, the story would (and, in Es geschach am hellicten Tag, did) follow precisely the mathematical equation presentation typical of standard detective fiction. However, given the actual ending as related by Dr. H., Matthäi's failure to solve the crime arose solely because of an automobile accident — a completely random twist of fate that had nothing to do with either how the perpetrator committed the crime or any lack of competence on the part of Matthäi as an investigator. In fact, Dr. H. describes Matthäi as having been an investigative genius at a level unmatched even by fictional detectives. According to Dr. H., the sad story of Matthäi demonstrates that contrary to the mathematical precision usually presented in a detective novel, the outcome of true police detective work finds itself far more subject to random chance, coincidence and events entirely outside of the control of either the criminal or the investigator. |
5320616 | /m/0dfdy1 | Independence Day | Peter Darvill-Evans | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor wishes to return a communications device he had borrowed from the Mendeb system years ago. Being a time lord, he reasons he can put it back before nobody notices anything is wrong. However, when he arrives he comes to believe he is far too late to fix things; an invasion seems to have resulted because of his actions. |
5321169 | /m/0dffwq | The King of Terror | Keith Topping | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Suspecting the American multimedia company Intercom of nefarious activities, the Brigadier asks the Doctor and Tegan to investigate. At their Los Angeles HQ, the pair run into terrorists obsessed with an ancient prophecy and aliens who turn the city into a battle ground. |
5321463 | /m/0dfgg8 | As the Crow Flies | Jeffrey Archer | 1991-05 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story tells the tale of the Trumper retail empire, through the (often overlapping) points of view of several of the main characters. The narrative characters are Charlie Trumper, Becky Salmon (later Trumper), Daphne, Colonel Hamilton, Mrs. Trentham, Daniel Trumper, and Cathy Ross. Guy Trentham is a non-narrative character who links most of these viewpoints together. The story begins with Charlie, grandson of a barrow costermonger. His father usually spends his money on drink instead of his family. Charlie is the youngest of the family, and has three older sisters. His mother died while giving birth to him. For as long as he could remember, Charlie wanted to sell fruits and vegetables just like his granpa (as he puts it). Charlie's father is eventually given a white feather, and ends up enlisting in the British Army to serve in World War I. Charlie, having saved the money he earned helping his grandfather, buys the "biggest barrow" for his own enterprise, only to find that his granpa died. Charlie tries running his own business. He is eventually bailed out by the Jewish father of "Posh Porky" a baker, who loans him money to pay the rent. He is impressed with Charlie's ability to learn from his mistakes and feels he has the ability to be successful. However, when his father is killed in WWI, Charlie enlists to take his place, leaving instructions to Rebecca to sell everything and keep his share secure for when he returns. Charlie fights in WWI under Colonel Hamilton and Captain Guy Trentham. He befriends another recruit, Tommy, (who was a pickpocket and was given the choice of enlisting or serving time). Twice they charge the enemy lines. The first time, Charlie wakes up in a hospital with having lost a toe. The second time, Charlie, Tommy, Guy manage to get behind enemy lines. After some killing, they retreat to their own front. It is here that Guy Trentham shoots Tommy, because he had proof that Guy turned a coward under fire. Tommy had left a will giving everything to Charlie. The most important thing he receives is a painting, which was later revealed to have been stolen by Guy Trentham. Tommy is awarded a Military Medal, and Guy Trentham a Military Cross, which his mother promptly has custom engraved with his initials. After the troops are demobilized, Charlie returns to London. He makes enquires and is led to a shop in Chelsea. He is astonished to see a greengrocer shop bearing the words "Trumper, The Honest Trader, Established 1823." Rebecca Salmon continues the tale, with her own version of events. Her prized possession is a book of art given to her by Daphne, a girl of nobility and common sense (though not of brains). She decides she wants to work in the art field, and becomes an excellent student. She also learns a lot about the bakery trade from her Jewish father, who was both honest, smart, and had potential. When Rebecca's father dies, she approaches Charlie asking him to go into business with her. They agree on terms, and she goes off to study art history at university. She shares rooms with Daphne, only after her mother gives her approval. She finds it impossible to continue the business of Charlie's costermongering and her father's bakery, and sells it to the highest bidder. She puts the proceeds into investments that she was unable to access when Charlie's irresponsible sister, Kitty, tells that her Charlie had been killed in the war. A short time later, her ego gets the better of her when she finds a greengrocery shop for sale in Chelsea. She makes enquiries, and offers 100 pounds for the freehold. She only has 40 pounds at the time, and did not know where to go when the offer was accepted. She is rescued by Daphne, who has her lawyers draw up very strict terms. Rebecca hires somebody to manage the store until Charlie returns. When he does, she tells him everything. Charlie goes about the business of costermonger, rearranging the shop and doing great business. However, when at a foursome for dinner, he finds himself paired with Daphne, against Rebecca and Guy Trentham. Guy Trentham invites Rebecca to his country place for a weekend. Mrs. Trentham marks the event with several snide comments about her. Guy tells Rebecca he loves her, and promises to marry her just before he is shipped to India. With these words, he seduces and impregnates her. However, he fails to provide either a ring or an announcement of their engagement. At urging, she writes to Guy about the child, but gets no response. Eventually, Rebecca realizes she has been a fool, and a week after giving birth to Daniel, marries Charlie. Daphne is a member of the upper classes in England, though she went to school with Rebecca Salmon. She hardly remembers her, except that she gave a book of art to her and got free cream buns from her father. However, when approached by Rebecca about sharing rooms, she takes delight in finding out that Rebecca's mother was worried about her rather than the opposite. She took Rebecca in as a roommate, to the delight of her parents, who were worried about a single woman living alone. Daphne takes considerable interest in Rebecca's future, both as an academic, and as a businesswoman. She learns of Becky's foolish offer on the greengrocery shop, and after careful investigation of the opinion of several people about Charlie, she backs the deal on her own terms. When Charlie returns home after the war, Daphne realizes that Rebecca's faith in him was justified. She becomes determined to play matchmaker between them, and educates Charlie in social niceties. She eventually unites them, and makes her own marriage in her own social class. However, having gained great insight into retailing, she also knows the British banking system. She knows that the banking clan is snobbish, and does not back a successful businessman if he does not have a title. She very wisely suggests the Trumpers get a "front man" - a man with the right background who will open doors for them with his connections and class. Colonel Hamilton nicely fits the bill, even though he is not Daphne's first choice. Daphne also responds to Guy's letter in which he tries to explain the events leading to Rebecca's pregnancy. Daphne is totally insulted by his attempt, in which he assumes that she is gullible, and would believe the story that Rebecca forced herself on him. Colonel Hamilton was the commanding officer of Charlie and Guy Trentham's unit in the First World War, but he was discharged after the war. At loose ends, he initially encounters the post-war Charlie in his greengrocers shop while running errands for his wife. He invites Charlie to the company dinner, where he encounters Rebecca, Charlie's date. At the dinner, Rebecca suggests he become their "front man". While initially reluctant, he decides to observe the shop secretly before making a commitment. Once satisfied that Charlie is a hard worker and is generating business, combined with his lack of other employment options, he accepts the offer. While he knew he was in over his head when it came to business, his background and old school tie allowed him to get the loan for the Trumper company. He gets involved in the business, offering suggestions, but defers to Charlie's judgement. He does, however, agree to be chairman of the company. His background, new position, and the success of Charlie's business allows them to get additional loans to acquire additional freeholds on buildings in Chelsa Square. Daphne, after receiving Guy Trentham's letter, picks him to confide in. Colonel Hamilton advises her on how to respond, and also asks his wife what he should do. She advises him to either write to Guy, write to his commanding officer, or forget the whole mess. He opts for the second option, and also attempt to discuss the matter with Guy's father. He instead encounters Mrs. Trentham, who coldly insists Guy had nothing to do with Rebecca's pregnancy. He later learns that Mrs. Trentham bought a block of flats in Chelsa Square, solely to keep the Trumpers from getting them. In recap, Charlie marvels at the shop that bears his name, when Rebecca introduces him to the manager. He finds he has a flat above the shop, but spends most of the night rearranging the displays for better traffic. In no time at all he's back at costermongering, and building up a devoted base of customers. He starts on his program of acquisition, marries Rebecca, and also secretly starts taking university classes. He also attends Daphne's wedding to Percy and admires the paintings. Along with the painting Tommy left him, starts his lifelong interest in buying paintings. Upon Daphne and Percy's return, he finds out from Percy that Guy Trentham was forced to resign from the army, based not only on his actions with Rebecca, but also an affair with the adjutants wife. Charlie and Rebecca move into a house, and she gets pregnant again. Charlie has the little painting reframed, but is assaulted by Guy Trentham on the way home, who steals the painting. He also finds that Guy broke into his home, and caused his wife trauma which resulted in a stillborn daughter. Rebecca recovers, and Charlie focuses on business once again. One of his employees delivers to him a list of girls applying for work in his florist shop, with a note on one of them. She was unqualified for the position, but had been a maid for the Trentham family. She was discharged for having an affair with the second footman. Charlie employs her as a maid for his family, but her real job is to gather information on the Trenthams (as the maid is still with the footman). This information comes in handy when the art gallery in Chelsa Square is auctioned off. While Charlie and Rebecca develop a plan to thwart Mrs. Trentham, it ultimately fails, as she bids higher than them for the property. Just before she's about to win the auction, Charlie returns with a new, higher bid, and the bidding goes to very high levels. Mrs. Trentham wins, with a bid of twelve thousand pounds. When asked what he was doing by Rebecca, Charlie responds that he knew she would go up to ten thousand pounds, as it was her bank balance. Mrs. Trentham begins by stating she is not a snob, and retells the story from her perspective. She glosses over her rude manners towards Rebecca, stating only that she was the type of girl who brought out the worst in her. She is relieved when Guy brings another girl over a few weeks later. She similarly believes Guy when he tells her that he wasn't the father of Rebecca's baby, and we learn that she deliberately arranged for a meeting with herself instead of her husband (an M.P.) with Colonel Hamilton, as she scheduled it during a three line whip. She employs a private detective to dig up some information, and learns through him that Charlie is not denying the child was his, and his name is on the birth certificate. However, she does learn her son resigned his commission, and would have been cashiered if he hadn't resigned. Upon his return to their estate, he has the stolen painting. Mrs. Trentham arranges to hide the painting, sets up false clues regarding the assault, and sends her son to Australia. From there she spreads a rumour that he was offered a partnership in a cattle business that was too good to pass up. She continues to send him money. After the auction of the art gallery and auction house, she realizes she doesn't have enough money to pay in full, and sacrifices her deposit. She then learns about Guy's impending death, and sails to Australia to bring his body back home and arrange matters in Australia. With the threat of a general strike, Charlie resolves to keep business as usual, and buy a few more shops at low prices. However, he prepares for unrest (in the form of a general strike) with drills, and responds well. Mr. Fothergill, the owner of the art gallery, approaches Charlie, saying that Mrs. Trentham was unable to pay for his shop. Charlie agrees to buy the place, but only at the maximum his board would allow. It will be Rebecca's new job after she has completed her thesis for her master's degree (she had already been employed at Sotheby's, starting at the front desk and working her way up). Both attend the graduation ceremony for it, but to Rebecca's shock, Charlie has also been awarded a degree in mathematics, having secretly been attending classes for eight years. Things at the gallery are rough, as Charlie keeps trying to steal the best pieces for his own art collection. However, things are smooth enough that he and Rebecca take a trip to the United States. He instantly falls in love with Bloomingdale's, and spends the next several days taking notes about the entire operation. He is eventually noticed by security, who question him about his actions. He reveals who he is, and meets John Bloomingdale. The two talk about retailing and department stores, and become friends. In Chicago, he is similarly impressed with Marshall Fields and its owner. He resolves to build a store greater than either of those in London. Upon his return to England, he meets a Jewish refugee who had patiently waited outside his office for several weeks, even though Charlie was in America. The refugee is attempting to sell jewelry; all he has left from his flight from Germany. Charlie buys the man's jewels, and makes him the manager of the jewelry department in the process. He also realizes war is inevitable. He faces another problem in the form of his sister Kit, who was caught shoplifting. He declines to press charges, but bans her from the store. War starts, and the first shop to fall victim to the German bombs is Mrs. Trentham's flats. The second victim is Charlie's greengrocers store, which Charlie takes a personal affront to. He re-enlists in the army, but is summoned to Prime Minister Churchill's office. Churchill needs him for logistics; obtaining and distributing food for both the troops and the home front. Charlie studies the problems, and makes recommendations. When he realizes there are not enough men to drive trucks or work on farms, he tells the minister of food to get women instead. Daniel, his son, enlists, but does not go to the front. He was a mathematic student, and worked on a top secret project (cryptology, including the breaking of the enigma code). He notes that Daniel looks a lot like his father when in his captain's uniform. Charlie also learns of the death of Mrs. Trentham's father, and seizes the chance to buy the remaining shops in Chelsea Square before she can grab them. Unbeknown to anybody, from a very young age Daniel knew he was illegitimate. His mind, suited to solving puzzles, stored various bits of overheard conversation. While he grew to be a professor of maths, and helped in the code-breaking of the Enigma device during World War II, he also solved the puzzle of who his true father was, and decided to track him down. During summer holidays, he sets sail to America, telling his parents he is visiting math professors, but instead goes to Australia, where he finds his biological father was a deadbeat who died in jail. He isn't told he was hanged. Daniel also realized that Mrs. Trentham's hatred of the Trumpers stems from him, as Rebecca named Guy Trentham as his father at the time. While Mrs. Trentham was blocking the build of the large department store, as well as building dreadful flats with her property, Daniel decides to take matters into his own hand by dressing as Guy, knowing his similar appearance will force Mrs. Trentham into acknowledging him as her grandson. He successfully bargains with her, getting her to drop her objections to the store and drop the hideous flats, but is asked to give up any claim to the Hardcastle (Mrs. Trentham's father) estate in return. He does so, but feels uneasy about it afterwards. Mrs. Trentham is horrified to learn her father plans to leave everything to Daniel Trumper. Her father tells her he's studied him for some time, and his convinced he's of his blood, from his appearance to his mannerisms. However, he did not intent to let Daniel know of his fortune until he turned 30. Upon her father's death, Mrs. Trentham engages in a campaign to swindle her sister out of her legacy, as well as that of Daniel Trumper. She succeeds in both, and uses the estate to buy as much stock in Trumper's stock as she can, intending for her son Nigel to become chairman of the company. She later bargains to sell her property to Trumpers for even more stock. In the interim, she has Kitty, Charlie's sister, place the painting Charlie inherited from Tommy at the debut auction of Trumpers, then having a man claim it was stolen. Charlie and Becky figure out the painting was a masterwork, and was stolen during World War I. They feel it was likely that Guy Trentham planted it in Tommy's effects, as Guy would have known the value, and used it to blackmail Charlie if the true events of the war came to light. However, a bishop of the church gambles the Trumpers are fair players, and agrees to publicly state the one for sale was a copy in exchange for the real painting, allowing all sides to save face. Later, a young assistant named Cathy Ross spots the same man who declared the painting stolen property looking at a silver tea set. Becky contacts the police, and eventually finds it was stolen. They turn the situation into their advantage by playing the on the press, and showing that the Trumpers are showing concern for any item of dubious origin. Later, Charlie and Becky are informed of Daniel's provision under the terms of Gerald Hardcastle's will. They go to inform him of his lineage, but are first surprised by his announcement of his engagement to Cathy Ross, then by a call from their attorney, who informs them of the contract Daniel signed. In the meantime, Nigel Trentham is placed as a member of the board of directors of Trumpers after controlling enough stock through his mother's actions. The goal is for Nigel Trentham to replace Charlie as the chairman. Cathy grew up in Australia in an orphanage, never knowing her parents. Her single artifact from her past was a miniature M.C., which she wore as a necklace. She snooped around, then found there was an engraving on the miniature M.C. of the initials G.F.T. However, nobody in the Australian military had those initials. Her only hope was the war office in England. While she had an art degree, she was not accepted at Slade, and out of options, agreed to work in a hotel as a chambermaid for a year in exchange for passage to England. In her spare time, she tracks down her father as Guy Trentham. She also notes that Charlie Trumper was a member of that regiment. She finds the shops, and asks about getting a job in the art gallery. She interviews with Becky Trumper, and lands a job, first as a counter girl, then working in the art department. In the process, she learns of the feud between the Trenthams and the Trumpers. Invited to the housewarming party of the Trumpers, she meets Daniel Trumper, and the two become lovers. In the midst of it, she writes to Mrs. Trentham concerning her birth, and she replies, and later reveals to Daniel her period is two weeks late. However, Mrs. Trentham sent a letter to Daniel regarding Cathy, resulting in his suicide. Cathy was tramuatized by Daniel's suicide, and Charlie and Becky take her in Charlie also starts butting heads with Nigel Trentham in the boardroom, as Nigel's suggestions are usually ill-founded. Cathy becomes the Trumper's protégé, as they loved her as their son's chosen wife. Mrs. Trentham dies, and leaves her estate to Nigel. Nigel intends to use the money as colleratal to mount a hostile takeover of Trumpers. However, Sir Raymond Hardcastle had foreseen the possibility, and added a clause to his will allowing for two years to find a different legitimate heir before his estate was probated. Charlie and his staff work diligently to try to find one with no luck, until, close the to the closing date, Daphne overhears it, and tells both Charlie, Becky, and their attorney's that looking in England was a waste of time. They begin looking in Australia, and eventually piece together that Cathy Ross was the legitimate daughter of Guy Trentham and his wife (who he murdered and was hung for). However, Mrs. Trentham took elaborate measures to hide her. In a confrontation between Nigel and his attorneys, and Charlie and his, the key bit of evidence was the M.C. miniature worn by Cathy. Cathy says it was given to her by her father (her one clear memory of him), and Nigel claims he can prove it wasn't his brother's. The full M.C. was engraved with his initials by his mother, and insists that a miniature would have also been engraved. The medal is examined under a magnifying glass, and the attorney's admit the case is proven - Cathy's M.C. miniature bore the engravement. Without the estate's money to back his stock, Nigel is forced to sell and resign as a board member. Cathy becomes the new chairman of Trumpers. Charlie is named life president, but is eventually banned from the store, to let the next generation take over. As he has become a lord, he attends parliament, and suddenly gains a new hold on life, rising early and talking about agriculture committees. However, when a request came in for an order of Cuban cigars for Mr. Field from the U.S., neither Becky or Cathy knows which brand he smokes (Cuban cigars were now illegal in the U.S. after the trade embargo from Cuba; Charlie had substituted Trumper brands for the Cuban ones). They find out that Charlie's tales of parliament and committees were a fabrication. They eventually track him down to his origins - finding him selling fruits and vegetables out of a barrow with great success. Both laugh at the situation, but realize Charlie is happy doing what he always loved best. Cathy notes he's come a long way since his youth at the barrow, but Becky says it was really only a few miles - As the Crow Flies. |
5322210 | /m/0dfhqs | Last Orders | Brian Aldiss | 1/26/1996 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story makes much use of flashbacks to tell the convoluted story of the relationships between a group of war veterans who live in the same corner of London, the backbone of the story being the journey of the group to Margate to scatter the ashes of Jack Dodds into the sea, in accord with his last wishes. The title 'Last Orders' not only refers to these instructions as stipulated in Jack Dodd's will, but also alludes to the 'last orders (of the day)' - the last round of drinks to be ordered before a pub closes, as drinking was a favourite pastime of Jack and the other characters. The plot and style are influenced by William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. |
5324519 | /m/0dfndc | The Quantum Archangel | Craig Hinton | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Mel must work through personal problems in order to defeat Kronos, a powerful being seeking revenge on the Master. |
5324637 | /m/0dfnm8 | Bunker Soldiers | Martin Day | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The first Doctor and his companions are trapped in an ancient Earth city as a murderous army sweeps in ever closer. To complicate matters, something alien is awakening beneath the innocent defenders. |
5324697 | /m/0dfntb | Rags | null | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | On the windswept wilds of Dartmoor, a going-nowhere punk band pulls off the road while their driver, Doc, answers a call of nature by the standing stones. The van is struck by a Range Rover driven by a group of drunken upper-class students from Exeter, and the minor accident becomes a major brawl as the punks and toffs lay into each other, driven by class hatred. Doc, watching it all from the tor, sees an old bone dagger buried in the earth, and, driven by some unnatural feeling of hatred, he pulls it free and buries it the chest of one of the students. As the blood soaks into the standing stones, something which has slept for centuries wakes, and the fight becomes bloody and deadly. Soon all of the fighters are dead, but that's just the start of it. Drawn by the violence, thugs from a nearby village arrive with a cattletruck, and it isn't just the standing stone which they load into the back. The tour to end all tours is about to begin... The Doctor is taking advantage of a rare quiet time at UNIT to work on the dematerialisation circuit when the TARDIS sensors pick up a powerful energy surge from Dartmoor. He and Jo set off to investigate, and track the disturbances to a small village near Dartmoor prison. The cattletruck has driven over the moors to Princetown, drawing the attention of the local slacker Nick, his lover Sin Yen, and their friends Jimmy and Rod. Four players emerge from the back of the cattletruck, musicians like a cross between punks and wandering mummers -- and their songs are raw musical wounds of violence and hatred which sweep the crowd into a frenzy. A riot breaks out in the prison, and the cons at the work farm turn on their guards, dragging them in front of the cattletruck and brutally slaughtering them. Nobody lifts a finger to stop them, and the village constable is trampled and killed as the audience riots in celebration of the deaths. Even Jo is caught up in the madness of the moment... When the band stops playing, the riots stop as well, and the audience, shaken, withdraws to the pub. Night seems almost to seep out of the cattletruck rather than falling naturally, but when the Doctor tries to investigate he is driven off by the roadies -- thugs who are rumoured to be involved in Satanic rituals in the nearby villages. Journalists arrive in town to cover the murders, and reporter Charmagne Peters finds herself strangely drawn to the story. She once visited Romania as a young woman, and vowed to become a journalist after seeing the horrific conditions in which the sewer urchins of Belgrade lived. She can't explain why this particular story touches her so personally, but she vows to follow it to the end. The people in the pub fall silent as a mummer enters, handing out flyers to anyone who will take them -- anyone who seems to welcome what he's offering. To Nick's dismay, Sin is one of them. The flyers announce that the Unwashed and Unforgiving tour will be playing in Postgate on Tuesday, and the Doctor decides to attend as well. On the day of the performance, violence breaks out again. Three fox hunters choose the wrong pub to retire to for a drink, and as the band starts to play outside, three men take down the farming implements decorating the walls of the pub and use them as instruments of death. Once again the band's music has incited murder, and once again nobody flees in horror; in fact, the audience seems to welcome the rage, and Sin feels "chosen" by the fact that the lead singer vomited green bile all over her during his performance. Jo seems to have made friends with Nick's gang, and the Doctor asks her to stay with them and keep an eye on the band while he returns to UNIT to analyse the readings he's taken. But she must be careful. More and more people are joining the mummer's convoy, drawn by the message of hate that's being sent out... In the town of Cirbury, unemployed alcoholic Kane Sawyer learns that his arch-nemesis Simon King will be returning. Simon is now a big-shot BBC producer, and he's coming back to stage the Epic of Gilgamesh -- supposedly as a dry run for the Edinburgh Festival, but really to rub his success in the faces of those he left behind. The Sawyers have been shunned by the town for years, and when the young Simon saw Kane kissing his sister Cassandra at school, he and his schoolyard chums held Kane down and forced him to eat a jar of slugs. Cassandra has spent the last fifteen years waiting for Mr Right to come along, and Kane knows that he'll always be her lost love -- and that he'll never be good enough for her. Meanwhile, in Bristol, working-class Derek Pole's attempts to incite demonstrations for anarchy are failing from lack of interest, but he has something big planned nevertheless. Shadow Cabinet minister Jeremy Willis intends to help him, in order to embarrass the current government and ensure that his party wins the next election. The Unwashed and Unforgiving tour appears to play right into his hands; if he arranges for the convoy to remain in Bristol at the same time that Princess Mary arrives for a royal visit to the University, they can be used as scapegoats when Pole strikes against the parastic monarchy he's hated all his life... The Doctor considers asking the Brigadier to stop the tour, but for some reason he doesn't. Perhaps the Brigadier just seems a bit too smug, or perhaps something else is influencing the Doctor's decision. In any case, he does ask the Brigadier to send in an undercover agent to keep an eye on Jo, and after some consideration the Brigadier selects Mike Yates. However, he is too late; when the convoy stops at Glastonbury, the mummer wanders the crowds, spreading the word, and Jo falls under his spell as well. Only Nick remains sane, and worried; the convoy is full of losers who have forgotten how to dream, and the band is now doing their dreaming for them. And what violent dreams they are... As night falls, Rod wakes from a profound nightmare to see the mummer walking up to Glastonbury Tor, and he follows, knowing that it'll be the last thing he ever does. At the top of the hill Rod sees a vision of the dead rising from the land, and as he is confronted by the mummer -- the Ragman, the spirit of the Unwashed and Unforgiving Tour -- his last thought is of the horrors that will soon be unleashed. Meanwhile, the local policemen detailed to watch the convoy are relieved of duty, and return home... where they dismember their wives and children. The PM is facing pressure to end the nightmare tour, and after the "incident" at Glastonbury, he replaces the police escort with UNIT troops. This is done over the Doctor's objections; he has detected a secondary energy source somewhere in the country, and suspects that something is calling the tour to it. Any overt military presence might stop the force behind the tour from showing its hand. The convoy makes its way to Bristol, where they settle down in the Arnos Vale cemetery. The UNIT escort seals off the band and their followers, but the soldiers pay no attention to the homeless alcoholics who live near the cemetery -- and as the band starts to play again, the Arnos Vale winos pull gardening tools out of the sexton's shed and head for the Money Tree, a posh bar in the heart of the financial district. Nobody gets out alive. The police question the members of the convoy about the incident -- but for some reason, they don't question the band or the roadies. The Brigadier senses that there's something odd about that, but then forgets to follow it up; the Ragman's influence is growing stronger. Even Jo has been swept up in the spirit of hatred, and she cheered at the Arnos Vale gig when the lead singer vomited maggots out of his mouth, singing out the wild fury and sickness of the unloved and the unwanted. Mike fears that Jo has gone too far undercover, but she doesn't care. She's a part of the convoy now. Charmagne Peters has followed the tour to Bristol, and she slips into the cemetery to get some quotes from the audience. But there are no answers here, just raw, angry enthusiasm for the violence which has been let loose; soon the divisions between the classes will be torn down forever. Charmagne tries to catch a glimpse of what lies inside the cattletruck, but flees in horror when she sees a dead grey eye staring out through a crack at her. She later returns, determined to face down her fears and learn more, but that's a mistake; the roadies are waiting for her, and they fling her into the back of the cattletruck, where she finds herself in an impossibly open space. The back of the cattletruck stretches out across a moor, the same moor where she and her father used to play hide and seek, until one day she hid too well and he suffered a heart attack from the exertion of looking for her. Finally, she's found her father again, but it's not her father. It's the Ragman, and he has things to show her. The Doctor finally finds the source of the secondary pulse, amongst a group of standing stones in a field in Cirbury. The sound of bells draws him to the nearby church, where Kane Sawyer has entered with the vague intention of vandalising the building which doesn't want him. Or perhaps something else has drawn him here, as he realises when he finds his ancestor Emily's tomb in the crypt. The cleaning woman gleefully repeats the old tale to Kane and the Doctor; history or legend, it's said that Emily died in poverty, disowned by her father for being with child. The whole tale is in the library, in a book which should have been burned long ago. Kane knows the book she means; it terrified him as a child, searing images of horror into his mind and never letting go. He flees back to the library, where the book is still waiting for him; it tells the same tale Charmagne is seeing unfold in the back of the cattletruck, a tale of the magistrate's son and the mayor's daughter, who made love by the standing stones while penniless mummers huddled in the grass nearby. When one of the mummers approached, begging for coins, the boy struck him aside and the mummer cracked his head against a standing stone. From the blood and violence the Ragman was born, thrusting itself out of the stone and into the body of the dead mummer, tearing apart the boy and doing something even worse to the girl. When the townsfolk attacked the Ragman it killed many of them and then retreated back into the stone, to await the day when its message could spread to the world. The terrified townsfolk executed the other mummers, soaking the stone with their blood, and sent the bodies and the stone far away. But those who carried the stone away were driven mad by the journey, and they claimed that the Ragman would return one day. And he will. The book was written and illustrated by a madman... Kane's grandfather. The Doctor now knows that he's let things go too far, and he heads for Arnos Vale cemetery -- or tries to. The Ragman is now powerful enough to reach out from Bristol, creating images of horror and hallucinations which try to drive the Doctor off the road or otherwise delay him. Nevertheless, the Doctor makes it back to the cemetery, where he finds the UNIT troops getting tense; Corporal Robinson, whose parents were killed in a car crash caused by stoned hippies, can barely keep her rage at the convoy under control. The Doctor heads for the cattletruck, pausing only to tell Mike to watch over Jo... but that's a mistake, for Sin sees this and turns the mob against the traitorous Mike. Jo turns against him as well, and Mike is beaten nearly to death before Corporal Robinson arrives. She in turn nearly shoots Sin before the Brigadier can stop her and impose order on his troops once again. The Doctor enters the cattletruck, only to find himself lost on a hellish moor where the tarns are filled with blood and severed heads and limbs float along streams of gore. In the middle of a moat of blood, raised on an altar of dead flesh, a standing stone pulses with the same energies the Doctor detected at Cirbury; and here, the Ragman is waiting for him. The Ragman shows him things; an asteroid travelling through uncountable light years of space, bathed in alien radiation and given life without sentience, drawn to Earth and nourished by the planet's ley-lines, until the being within was given birth in an eruption of class-based violence and death. This is all it knows. The Ragman has raised the dead mummers of the Cirbury legend and cloaked their rotting bodies with the flesh of the punk band whose deaths woke it from sleep; with the hatred of the convoy to feed it, it will level all class distinctions and bring true equality to the people of the world... an equality of nothingness, of death. The Doctor now knows his enemy, but that isn't enough to defeat it; he's lost in the perceptual vortex of the Ragman's cattletruck, facing nightmares of his failures, seeing his old companions turn on him while his own ego takes the form of a monstrous spider and tears apart his TARDIS. In the end he is reduced to a shivering wreck, convinced that all of his old adventures were delusions; there are no Daleks, no Cybermen, no UNIT, just a mad old man huddled in an empty police box shell on the Ragman's tarn of death... The day of Princess Mary's visit to Bristol is the same day the supporters of the fox hunt have chosen to hold a rally -- and Jeremy Willis arranges to let the convoy out of the cemetery, claiming that they will start to riot if they are kept cooped up against their will. While UNIT and the Bristol police maintain a wary cordon between the travellers and the fox hunters, the cattletruck leaves the cemetery unnoticed and parks near the University. There, Pole is waiting for Mary to arrive; Willis believes that he intends to kidnap her and hold the monarchy to ransom, but in fact, he plans to assassinate her. However, as he steps out of the crowd, drawing his gun, Mary turns, takes it from his hands, shoots him five times and dances on the body, claiming that this is her birthright. In the furore that follows, Willis commits suicide when his link to Pole is found out. Mary claims not to remember any of it, but nobody believes her. Another wedge has been driven between the classes. Their work done in Bristol, the convoy sets off again, and splits in two; half of them follow the cattletruck to Cirbury for the summer solstice performance, and the rest go to Stonehenge. The Brigadier receives new orders at last; the government will not tolerate the vandalism of a national monument, and UNIT must keep the travellers out of the circle. Only Mike Yates thinks to wonder why the government didn't give any orders to intervene after the murders. He's still somewhat disoriented by the beating he took in the cemetery, and perhaps that's why he's the only one unaffected by the tension building up amongst the UNIT troops. Even Benton and the Brigadier seem to be affected by it; when Corporal Robinson urges them just to open fire on the convoy, neither of them questions this blatant insubordination. Yates suggests sending a squad to Cirbury, as the band has always been at the centre of the disturbances, but the Brigadier refuses, insisting that the enemy is here, at Stonehenge. Certain that something's wrong, Yates disobeys orders and takes a group of soldiers to Cirbury. Nobody even notices them go. In the middle of Simon King's production, Gilgamesh asks the audience who will challenge him, and the drunken Kane walks up on stage and pushes King into the audience. Something bad is coming, and Kane knows what it is; it's his ancestor. The magistrate's son did not father Emily Sawyer's child. Shaken by the encounter, knowing that he only returned to this dismal town to flaunt his success, Simon speeds out of town -- but just as it seems he's going to put it behind him forever, he sees the Ragman standing in the road ahead of him, and drives off the road into a standing stone. Nobody notices the explosion; the convoy has arrived, and the townspeople seem to accept their presence as natural. Nobody will listen to Kane's drunken warnings of evil, and when Nick finally challenges the Ragman, claiming that he brings only hatred and death, the Ragman literally cuts him dead with a look. But there's a shred of hope. In the cattletruck, the Doctor sees Jo appear before him and beg for help, and the telephone in the police box shell rings for him. A familiar voice on the other end wakes him to reality; even the Time Lords fear what the Ragman might do if left unchecked. There's a monster out there, and he has to fight it. He is given the strength to go on, and to find his way out of the perceptual distortions, out of the cattletruck, to fight the Ragman for the last time. Night has fallen over Cirbury; the night of the summer solstice, and the night of the tour's final performance. This time, they're tapping into more than just the hatred of the convoy; they're drawing power out of the ley lines which gave birth to the Ragman in the first place. As the band starts to play, the Ragman sends Jimmy to Stonehenge, where he drives his van into the monument, knocking a stone out of position, blowing up the van and himself, and finally sparking an all-out battle between the soldiers and the travellers, who have been aching to lay into each other for days. As the violence erupts at Stonehenge, the people of Cirbury turn on each other, tearing apart the village constables. Kane Sawyer arrives, having given in to his destiny at last, and Charmagne Peters emerges from the cattletruck, also under the spell of her ancestor. They are both descendents of Emily Sawyer's child, the child of the Ragman; and the fruit of their union will inherit a great levelled land where all are equal. Yates and his men arrive and try to gun down the mummers, but their bullets have no effect, for the players are already dead. The Ragman raises the corpses of 18th-century highwaymen, those who robbed the rich and were killed for it, and sets them on the UNIT men. Yates is shot in the shoulder as his men die around him. The force of the Ragman's hate is spilling out into the ley lines, and the people of the convoy see images of London falling, and of the royal family hung to die on an Offering Tree. Anarchy is loose, and soon all the world will be bathed in violence... But then the Doctor steps out of the cattletruck, bringing his confidence with him. Nick lies dead near the standing stones, killed for speaking against a message of dissent. The Doctor knows the Ragman for what he is; a being of foulness and corruption, who promises change but brings only hatred and death. And as long as he stands here, drawing power from the ley lines which gave birth to him, he's vulnerable. The Doctor forces Charmagne to look at the Ragman, and she sees him for what he really is; not her father at all, but a monster. Enraged, Charmagne picks up a pitchfork, and as she stabs at the Ragman Sin rushes forward to protect her saviour -- and is impaled before Charmagne realises what she's doing. Sin's last sight is of Nick's body, and she dies realising just what she'd given up. The crowd sees her die, and the Ragman's spell over them is broken -- and as they turn on the creature who brought them to this false night of violence, Kane realises that the Ragman is the thing that brought him down, kept him down, and prevented him from making anything of his life. Enraged, Kane attacks the Ragman, pushing him back against the standing stone. As the Doctor had realised, the Ragman is vulnerable to the powers he's released here, and both he and Kane are drawn into the stone and sealed there, trapped forever. The spell is broken, here and at Stonehenge, but it's too late for many; Kane Sawyer, Sin and Nick, Corporal Robinson, and all those murdered as the convoy made its way across England. The biggest question of them all remains unanswered; how could they ever have let things get this far? |
5324874 | /m/0dfp5v | M*A*S*H Goes to Maine | H. Richard Hornberger | null | {"/m/01z4y": "Comedy"} | Hawkeye Pierce returns to live in Crabapple Cove, Maine near the town of Spruce Harbor. Having left the Army, Hawkeye is established to be working for the Veterans Administration. In May 1954 he is laid off. At this point, Hawkeye doesn’t have much money in the bank, is 31 years old, and has three children: Billy, Stephen and Karen. The day he’s released, Trapper John McIntyre comes to visit and sets Hawkeye’s future in motion. Trapper John, a Lieutenant in the medical organization of Maxie Neville in New York City, arranges for further thoracic training for Hawkeye, first in the East Orange VA Hospital in New Jersey, then at St Lombard’s in Manhattan from July 1954. After two years Hawkeye breezes through the Thoracic Boards. At the end of his training in June 1956, two Spruce Harbor locals, Jocko Allcock (the man who was responsible for Hawkeye being fired by the VA) and “Wooden Leg” Willcox (the local fish magnate) come to visit Hawkeye to set him up in practice—by betting favorably on the outcome of his operations. The first operation with Trapper John’s assistance (upon Pasquale Merlino) is a success, and thanks to his superior training Hawkeye becomes the local surgeon. As time goes by, Hawkeye is given more patients by the local general practitioner of note, “Doggy” Moore; goes into private practice with ex-Spitfire pilot Tony Holcombe and plots the eventual reuniting of the Swamp Gang. By 1959 Hawkeye has lured Trapper John, Duke Forrest, and Spearchucker Jones into his net, and thanks to the proceeds of the “Allcock-Willcox” syndicate, a new “Finestkind Fishmarket and Clinic” is set up along with the new Spruce Harbor General Hospital. Duke returns to Georgia from Korea, and takes a course in urology. Hawkeye Pierce then invites him up to Spruce Harbor, Maine to join him and a new friend, Tony Holcombe in private practice. Duke immediately turns up in Maine with his bloodhound, Little Eva, and joins Hawkeye in persuading Spearchucker to become the local neurosurgeon. Duke and his family move into Crabapple Cove next to Hawkeye and Mary Pierce. Pierce's home, "Port Waldo", is (real-life) Waldoboro, and the FinestKind Clinic is just up Route 1 in Rockland. "Crabapple Cove" is Broad Cove, in Bremen, just down the Medomak River from Waldoboro Village. Richard Hooker (Hornberger) owned an old farmhouse on Heath Point. The reader will note Wreck Island, Thief Island, and other Muscongus Bay landmarks in the book. It is possible that the Pierce family is modeled after the (real-life) Spear family, who had a number of different branches in the area, in the 1950s. |
5326809 | /m/0dfs7q | Jurassic Park | Michael Crichton | 1990-11 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange small lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond—founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen—for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica. Upon arrival, the preserve is revealed to be Jurassic Park, a theme park showcasing cloned dinosaurs. The animals have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in prehistoric amber. Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are lysine-deficient females. Hammond proudly touts InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems. Recent events in the park have spooked Hammond's investors. To placate them, Hammond means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic about the park's prospects. Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is especially emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system. Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design. Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathus forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population, rather than the distinctive pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display. In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's computer system, Nedry manages to shut down its security systems and quickly steal fifteen frozen embryos, one for each of the park's fifteen species. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at the auxiliary dock deep in the park; however, during a sudden tropical storm, he exits his stolen vehicle to get his bearings and is killed by a Dilophosaurus. Without Nedry to reactivate the park's security, the electrified fences remain off, and dinosaurs escape. The adult and juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex attack the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park. Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, in between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive. The park's upper management—engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond—struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order, restoring the computer system by shutting down and restarting the power, resetting the system. Unfortunately, a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into greater disarray. During their time trying to restore the park to working order, they fail to notice that the system has been running on auxiliary power since the restart; this power soon runs out, shutting the park down a second time. Furthermore, since the auxiliary generators didn't create enough electricity to power the fences, they weren't reactivated when the system was reset, meaning all the fences—including the holding pen containing the park's Velociraptors, quarantined due to their intelligence and aggression—had been offline the whole time. Escaping their enclosure, the raptors kill Wu and Arnold and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Meanwhile, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the Visitor's Center by rafting down the jungle river, carrying news that several young raptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland. While Ellie distracts the raptors, Grant manages to turn the park's main power back on. After escaping from several raptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually secure their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the raptor stowaways. Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Grant, Ellie, and Muldoon set out into the park to find the wild raptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, taking a walk around the park and contemplating making a park improving on his previous mistakes, hears the T-Rex roar and falls down a hill where he is eaten by a pack of Procompsognathus. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code enabled a measure of dichogamy, in which some of the female animals changed into males in response to the all-female environment. In the conclusion, before boarding helicopters the group tell the Costa Rican Air Force that the dinosaurs had been killing people. The Air Force then say that the island is dangerous and releases napalm over the island, destroying the island and the dinosaurs. It is implied that Malcolm has died. Grant asks Muldoon of Malcolm's condition when they depart via helicopter, Muldoon's nonverbal response is merely shaking his head and on the second to last page it says that the Costa Rican government wouldn't permit a burial for Hammond or Malcolm -->. Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to leave any time soon. |
5326923 | /m/0dfshp | Byzantium! | Keith Topping | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Byzantium is an ancient Greek city near the Black Sea. Romans, Greeks, Zealots and Pharisee are all part of its mix. The Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki arrive for general sight-seeing. However, each soon has to face the possibility of being stranded in this place and time, alone and surrounded by political upheaval. |
5328289 | /m/0dfvj8 | The Lost Boy | Dave Pelzer | null | null | The book continues after the ending of the previous book, A Child Called "It" with David Pelzer, 9 years old, running away from his home in Daly City, California. He ends up in a bar, getting cared for by some of the patrons. One of them calls the police, bringing David home to his abusive mother. David's teachers eventually contact the authorities, causing David to be put together with a social services worker named Ms. Gold. Before the trial of whether or not to permanently remove him from his mother's custody, David becomes confused about whether he may have deserved the treatment his mother gave him. Ms. Gold, on the other hand, assures him it had nothing to do with him, and that his mother is sick. After the trial, he is put into a home for the mentally challenged under the care of a woman he calls Aunt Mary. He does not fit in with the other children, he is quite active and disruptive due to being cut off from normal household living and behavior for so long. He soon receives a visit from his mother and brothers. His mother asks how David was doing, calling him "The Boy", shocking Aunt Mary. While Aunt Mary answered a short phone call, his mother swears to David that she will get him back. His brother brought back David's bike, which was mistreated and broken. He is so distraught by the bike's condition that he cried for hours. He decides to fix the bike on his own. One day, he decides to ride his bike and go down his old road. His family sees him riding on the road, and contacts his foster family. He is punished, but it is nothing compared to his former treatment. Later in the book, David meets a person who he thinks is his friend, until he starts using him to do illegal things. One of those times is when they plan to set one of his teacher's classroom on fire. The fire gets out of control, and David tries to stop it. His "friend" later tells the teacher that it was all David. As a result he is removed from his foster home, and sent to Juvenile Hall. He eventually is released, and is placed in multiple foster homes across California. In his sophomore year of high school, he is placed into a class for slow learners. He then decides that he is more interested in earning money than school, because he will be out of foster care in less than a year. When he is out of foster care, he enlists in the US Air Force. Surprisingly, his own mother knew the news and she congratulated him at his Air Force graduation. As he talked to his mother and began to cry, he then hopes that his mother will say the three special words that he has always wanted her to say. "I love you." It was not said and he believes she is just playing with his emotions, as he has longed for these three words for years. He believes that he wanted to see his mother but that was also not a good idea. He soon realizes that the mother's love that he has always been searching for was in the arms of his foster mother, Alice. The story ends with him beginning his career in the airforce so he can learn how to treat others. From then on it continues to the book A Man Named Dave. |
5328392 | /m/0dfvqy | The Hawk Eternal | David Gemmell | 10/19/1995 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Caswallon, a Farlain clansman, watches the Aenir tear apart Ateris of the lowlands. Gaelen, an orphaned Lowlander child thief, saved by Caswallon from the Aenir. He is tended of his wounds by Oracle, who tells him about the clans. Caswallon, Maeg, and Oracle discuss the Aenir threat and Gaelen. Gaelen continues to heal, learns clan history from Oracle. Caswallon adopts Gaelen as his son. After Gaelen is healed, Caswallon and Gaelen wander the Farlain woods, and Caswallon teaches Gaelen how to survive as a clansman (hunting, fighting, etc). However, they discover that the Aenir have been following them in the woods, so they attack the trio of Aenir and run off. We are introduced to Taliesen, who speaks with Oracle. Maggrig goes to see Caswallon and Maeg. Gaelen goes out to meet the other boys of the Farlain clan, but because he is a Lowlander, Agwaine and his friends do not accept Gaelen and they plan to play a joke him. However, Gaelen is protected and befriended by Layne, Lennox, Gwalchmai, and he prepares for the Hunt with them. Caswallon talks to Leofas, an influential older clansman, to convince him that Aenir are a threat. Caswallon is concerned because the Aenir have been invited to watch the hunt, and we are introduced to the beast. The Hunt begins, and Gwalchmai beats Agwaine in finding the clue. While Gaelen’s group and Agwaine’s group compete in the Hunt, the clansmen have been notified of the beast, and the Hunt has been cancelled. However, their groups are not found in time, and three of Agwaine’s group members were slaughtered by the monster. The five boys first meet the Hawk Queen, and she helps them defeat the beast but is also killed. Gaelen is confused when the Queen tells him they will meet again. The Queen and the boys are buried, and everyone reflects on the current events. Caswallon and Cambil argue on who will become the next Hunt Lord, Gaelen or Agwaine. Oracle reveals his story to Caswallon: In other kingdom, he revealed the secrets of the Gates to another man in order to align with him, the man betrayed him and brought his Aenir to the current world. Life went on, Lennox became stronger, others recognize Gaelen’s natural leadership. The Games occur, all the boys compete in their events. A year drifts by, Gaelen begins to have a crush on Deva, Caswallon gets angry when Cambil invites Aenir to Summer Games. Taliesen the druid searches for the Hawk Queen. Aenir plan to use the invitation to scout the clan lands, and prepare to participate in the Games. The Games begin, and many of the clans are not happy with Cambil’s decision to allow the Aenir to participate. Cambil realizes his mistake, as an overall Aenir victory moves from possibility to probability. Only the Farlain have a chance of defeating the Aenir, but the evil Aenir wound Gaelen before the final race. Agwaine is forced to run against the top Aenir runner, and after an Aenir cheating scheme is foiled, Agwaine wins the race. Lennox wins the throwing challenge, and the Farlain squeak by with the Game victory. They celebrate and get drunk at the Whorl Dance. Another winter passes by, and in the spring the Aenir begin their horrible attack on the clans. The Haesten clan is massacred as the few survivors stream into the mountains, while the Pallides escape just in time and head towards the Farlain. Meanwhile, in the Farlain Taliesen tells Caswallon that the Aenir are coming, and the war horn is sounded. However, Cambil will not believe that the Aenir would attack, and he and a few others decide not to escape with Caswallon. Cambil and his followers (including Kareen) pay with their lives, although Agwaine escapes at the last moment. Gaelen, however, was alone in the mountains when the Aenir attacked. Deva’s scream pierces the woods, and Gaelen runs and saves her from the Aenir. It is evident that the Aenir have attacked, and after defeating a few scouts the pair head north in search of the rest of the Farlain clan. Gaelen and Deva continue north, narrowly escaping another Aenir camp. Deva tells Gaelen that he cannot marry him, because a fortune teller has told her she is to marry a king and be the mother of kings. Meanwhile, Caswallon continues to march to the Gates with the Farlain, and sends out many scouts to watch for the Aenir and for other clansmen. Caswallon speaks to Taliesen, whose plan it is to bring the clans through the Gates to a time many thousand years ago. Oracle dies of old age. Meanwhile, Maggrig, Hunt Lord of the Pallides, realizes his people have few options, and prepares to make a last stand against the Aenir. The Pallides defeat the Aenir army that is following them. The Farlain defeat another Aenir army by raiding their camp in the night. Gaelen and Deva are finally reunited with Caswallon and the Farlain. Both the Farlain and the Pallides clan enter through the Gate into a land from thousands of years ago. Caswallon and Maggrig plan an attack on the Aenir, and Caswallon sends Gaelen and his friends to search out the mountains looking for more warriors. Gaelen sets out with Lennox, Layne, Gwalchmai, Agwaine, and two other boys, but Lennox is sent back after they find a baby in the woods. Gaelen’s party continues to travel west, but they are attacked by wolves, and Layne is killed. Caswallon is sent to a future world to seek the Queen and ask her help in fighting the Aenir. However, Taliesen tragically dies after a 1,000 years of life, and the Gates close, so Caswallon cannot come back to his realm. Gaelen’s party find the Haesten party after 5 days of travel, but they are sad to hear that almost all the men have been killed in a final raid against the Aenir. Gaelen speaks with the girl Lara, who tells him that they have 800 women that are willing to fight. Gaelen immediately develops a crush on Lara. Maggrig, the Pallides Hunt Lord, hears that the Gates have been closed, and is despaired. However, he makes alliances with some minor clans to fight the Aenir. Caswallon hears that the Gates have been closed, and he is told that in order for him to return to his realm he must study for 11 years to learn how to reopen the Gates. Now with the Haesten women as well as some Pallides stragglers, Gaelen leads the bigger group of warriors to Axta Glen, the planned battle site with the Aenir. Gaelen and Lara fall for each other, and they make out one night. Meanwhile, Maggrig and his army of Pallides and Farlain make their last stand against the Aenir. While the clansmen fight with vengeance and the arrows make their mark, but the Aenir looked poised for another victory. However, at a crucial time Gaelen arrives with his army, and then the Hawk Queen arrives with her army and horses. With their new found numbers, the battle turns, and the Aenir are finally defeated. After the war, Gaelen introduces his new girlfriend to everyone, and the Queen seeks Gaelen. Gaelen and Lara agree to follow the Queen to her realm, because they have little left in their realm. Gwalchmai and Lennox agree to follow Gaelen. Gaelen is very happy to see Caswallon again, but he is confused at why Caswallon looks 10 years older than he did. Caswallon explains to Gaelen that he studied with a druid for 11 years in order to return to his realm, but how when he came back to his world no time had passed. Caswallon and Maeg reunite, and Gaelen, Lara, Gwalchmai, and Lennox say goodbye to their clansmen and follow the Queen to their new realm. Agwaine ruled the Farlain for 27 peaceful years. However, Deva continued to wait for the king she was to marry, but after seven years of waiting, Caswallon revealed to her that Gaelen was the future king she was to marry, and Deva broke down in tears. Deva eventually married a widow and raised children. Lennox and Gwalchmai both led good lives in the Queen’s realm, but Gwalchmai was killed in battle. Gaelen and Lara lived contently and had five children, and after the Queen died Gaelen became the new king. |
5330580 | /m/0dfz4v | Fear of the Dark | Trevor Baxendale | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | It is 2382. Archaeologists land on Akoshemon's only moon, along with the Doctor and his companions. They uncover an entity that was seemingly there when Akoshemon destroyed itself in violence; it glories in death and destruction and tries to start more. It seems to have the ability to mentally influence people. |
5331097 | /m/0dfzw9 | The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail | Jerome Lawrence | null | null | The play does not present events in chronological order; rather, the play features Thoreau remembering earlier parts of his life, not necessarily in the order they occurred. The play opens with Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his old age, recalling the memories of his friend, Henry. The play quickly shifts to Henry's current time in jail because he refused to pay the tax to support the war, where he meets Bailey, a homeless man falsely accused of arson. After meeting Bailey, Thoreau reflects on his recent past. Henry taught Bailey to spell his name by b-a-beanpole-turn the corner-comb-tree. Henry, who would have graduated from Harvard, but refused to pay the one dollar fee to receive his diploma, becomes a schoolmaster and attempts to teach a class against the school's curriculum, but Deacon Ball, a logical, respected teacher, makes him flog the children, after which he quits. After leaving the school, Henry and John (Henry's brother) start an outdoor school, but soon all of the children are pulled out of classes by concerned parents. Ellen, the sibling of one of the former classmates, went to the school to find out more about Transcendentalism, which her father claimed the school was based on. After the school is disbanded and the children leave, Henry takes her on a boat ride. He tells her about Transcendentalism, and about how he loves her, but it becomes very awkward and he tells her to go to church with John. John is in love with Ellen, and proposes to her, but later Ellen tells him that her father wouldn't allow her to marry either of the Thoreau brothers. Soon after, John dies from blood poisoning caused by a shaving cut, and Henry tries to cope with the loss. |
5331428 | /m/0df_b_ | Warmonger | Terrance Dicks | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor and Peri arrive on a small planet, but as soon as Peri steps out, she is attacked by a wild animal and her arm is almost severed. The Doctor takes her in the TARDIS to the hospice on the planet Karn to see the best surgeon in the galaxy, Doctor Mehendri Solon. When they arrive, the hospice’s advisor, the Reverend Mother Maren (of the Sisterhood of the Flame) convinces Solon to reattach Peri's arm, which he does successfully. The head of security, Commander Aylmer Hawken tries to stop the Doctor leaving, but Maren convinces him not to, as she is wary of Time Lords. Lord Delmar, the owner of the hospice also warns Hawken against interfering with The Doctor, in case it stops the peace conference which the hospice is hosting from proceeding. The conference is to make alliances between the smaller empires, and has been set up by a warlord known as "The General". Solon’s assistant Drago starts harassing Peri, and after The Doctor complains, Drago later suggests to Solon that Peri and The Doctor be killed, but Solon dismisses his worries and goes to work on "project Z". overhearing this, Peri follows Drago to a room full of dead bodies made from parts of different species. She leaves the room, but Solon notices Peri's interference and injects her with a poison, but tells The Doctor that her body is rejecting the arm, and she needs the Sisterhood's elixir of life. The Doctor fetches it, but Solon secretly keeps it and gives Peri the antidote. The Doctor then threatens to reveal what Solon just did to Lord Delmar and takes Peri out of the room. When the ambassadors arrive for the peace conference, Lord Delmar invites the Doctor to watch, but as the Doctor is about to refuse, he recognises the General's mind as that of a Time Lord, and decides to bug the room. Listening in on the meeting, they discover that The General is gathering the small empires into a huge army to take over the galaxy. After his plan to steal the elixir of life fails, the General reveals himself to be Morbius and kidnaps Peri. Peri escapes Morbius's ship by pretending to have an infectious skin disease, and she is put in an escape pod and launched into space, but a ship from the planet Sylvana finds her and takes her back to Sylvana. Sylvana's nearest planet Freedonia joins Morbius and attacks Sylvana and invades it, causing Peri to join a group of guerrillas. While Solon continues his experiments, the Doctor goes to Gallifrey to warn the Time Lords about Morbius. The Time Lord President Saran and Borusa refuse to become directly involved, but order the Doctor to unite the largest empires in the galaxy into one army to defeat Morbius. The Doctor then manages to persuade a number of Draconians and Sontarans to join his army. The Time lords send him Ensign Vidal, a Gallifreyan, to act as his advisor, a flagship and the title of Supreme Coordinator of the Alliance. As the campaign grows, Ogrons, Ice Warriors and Cybermen join the Doctor's forces. After Sylvana is recaptured, Peri is reunited with the Doctor. Eventually Morbius begins defending the area around Karn, which is where The Doctor plans to defeat him finally. The Doctor leads his army into a ground battle, but Maren initially refuses help in defending the elixir of life but eventually accepts. Morbius then withdraws all his troops from the planets they are protecting and brings them to Karn. After the Doctor's forces are nearly destroyed, a second army arrives, comprising foot soldiers from the planets that the Doctor liberated from Morbius. Morbius's army is destroyed, he is captured, tried and sentenced to death. The survivors of the Doctor's army return to their home planets while Morbius is imprisoned awaiting execution. Solon unleashes his zombies on Saran and Borusa, but they easily overpower them, and Solon is imprisoned. To avoid a paradox, the Doctor goes to free Solon from his cell, but finds one of Morbius's commanders has already done so, following them to the execution room, he finds Solon removing Morbius's brain. After Solon leaves, the Doctor puts Morbius's body in the vaporisation chamber, and waits for Saran and Borusa to arrive. They then vaporise Morbius's body. The Doctor quietly leaves with Peri. The hospice is abandoned, the Sisterhood retreat to their temple and Solon resumes his experiments until, years later, the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrive on Karn. |
5331499 | /m/0df_fr | Amorality Tale | David Bishop | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In the East End of London, the Doctor and Sarah get involved with gangsters and face a horror hiding in the Great Smog of 1952. |
5332765 | /m/0dg13p | Among the Barons | Margaret Haddix | 2003-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | At Hendricks School for Boys, Luke Garner has managed to adjust to his new life as Lee Grant, having adopted this fake name when he came out of hiding. Things change when the Grants, a prominent Baron family who donated the name of their son when he died in a ski accident, decide to send the real Lee's brother, Smithfield (a.k.a. Smits), to the school and visit "Lee". Smits is troubled by the death of his brother, and tells Luke, the new Lee, his stories of times he and the real Lee spent together. But when Smits wants to get rid of his bodyguard, he sets the school on fire. After the fire, Luke is sent to search Smit's room and discovers two fake IDs in Smits' room: one with Smits' picture labeled Peter Goodard, the other had no picture and was labeled Stanley Goodard. Luke is soon caught up in a complicated web of lies in a world where he is completely unprotected from anything that will prove he is an illegal third child. He has no idea who he can trust, especially Smits and his bodyguard, Oscar Wydell, and as a member of the Grant family in name, Luke is in an incredible amount of danger. Furthermore, the Grant family selfishly desires to express their grief over the real Lee's death by faking "Lee's" death and send Luke back into hiding once again. The return of "Lee" (with a few changes made by the Grants' services) and Smits is celebrated by a party at the Grant's house. At the party, Oscar attempts to assassinate the President, who started the war, and Luke who is saved by Trey. The President was in a different location at the time. Smits's parents are both killed by a falling chandelier. Smits, Luke, and some of Luke's friends escape, dropping Smits and Luke off at Luke's house. Trey grabs some documents which he thinks are important and which he will use in Among the Brave. Smits and Luke are then welcomed back by Luke's family. Smits stays with Luke's family as a sort of fourth son that they had never been able to have. Luke then leaves with more unanswered questions. He feels that he did something right for Smits even though he didn't do anything much for his cause. The book ends with Trey, Nina, Joel, and John at Mr. Talbot's home, seeking answers and safety, and Luke leaving off at his house. vi:Ở giữa Bọn Tư Bản |
5336100 | /m/0dg63x | Climbers | null | null | null | The novel concerns the adventures of “Mike”, who, recovering from a failed marriage, falls in with a clique of hard core northern rock climbers and becomes immersed in an intense and inward looking life style in which climbing is so important that “real life” is all but excluded. Mike is initially fascinated by this rather strange group of people and is in awe of their focus and technical competence on the rock. Their obvious incompetence in more mundane areas of life only seems to increase their glamour. For a while Mike loses himself in this closed little world but in the end seems to become disenchanted with its narrowness. The overall tone of the book is very much one of disappointment and alienation. The pivotal event is the death of the enigmatic “Sanky” who falls 30 feet from the 5b crux of a climb he has soloed without difficulty many times in the past. His friends cannot believe he has died on an undistinguished climb that was well within his technical competence and seem to have difficulty understanding the obvious fact that a 30 foot ground fall is more likely to result in death than a twisted ankle. The descriptive passages in the book are very good and the locations are easily recognisable by anyone who has climbed in the Peak and Pennines. Harrison does find beauty in this sometimes harsh and occasionally post industrial landscape but in keeping with the general tone of the book his eye is sometimes rather jaundiced. Describing the pleasant view from the top of Stanage Edge he chooses to focus on the cement factory at Hope. Set down in the (mostly) picturesque town of Holmfirth he devotes his descriptive powers to Lodge’s supermarket, the one truly hideous building in the town. In several interviews Harrison has said that he was pleased with the book. It may however bewilder a few science fiction fans and threaten the illusions of a few self-styled gritstone heroes. |
5337106 | /m/0d0h9_ | The Butterfly Tattoo | Philip Pullman | 1992 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | This book is split into three parts: the first deals with Chris' first meeting of Jenny, the second with his search for her, and the third with the tragic ending. The first sentence gives away the doomed nature of the book: Chris Marshall met the girl he was going to kill on a warm Oxford evening.... The seventeen year old main character, Chris, works for a lighting company in Oxford, England. While rigging up a party he inadvertently rescues a beautiful young woman in a white dress from upper class thugs. Smitten, he looks for her, but she has disappeared into the night, leaving the white dress in a boat shed. Before she goes, however he finds out that her name is Jenny, and that she had gatecrashed the party. The thugs' leader, Piers, recognised her and was threatening to turn her in, unless she slept with him. He then searches for her for many weeks, and eventually finds her squatting in an empty house with two friends (not, as he fears, lovers). He asks her out on a date, and she accepts, much to his joy. After this, he goes to his father's house (his parents have divorced three weeks ago; their emotionless parting chills him), and meets his mistress, his secretary Diane. She asks him how his mother is, hoping that she hasn't forced her to suicide by taking her husband away from her. Chris tells her that she has a boyfriend, called Mike, and she is feeling much better. His father mentions that they are going abroad for a weekend together, and asks him if he would house sit for them. Of course, Chris agrees, and plans to bring Jenny there for a romantic weekend, as his father would be having in Paris. After another date (in which they ironically see Romeo and Juliet) Chris asks Jenny to spend the weekend with him at his father's house after they kiss passionately in the park. She says that she will be there. Meanwhile, we hear about Jenny's past at the hands of her abusive father. She comes from Yorkshire (and still retains a Northern accent), and after suffering at his hands very literally leaves home on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. The story is set a year later. On the night which she was supposed to arrive, she does not come. And so, crestfallen and love sick, Chris goes to bed. The next morning Jenny arrives, and after having tea on the porch they go into his father's bedroom and make love. He is a virgin, while she is much more experienced, and he notices she has a tattoo of a butterfly above her left breast (hence the title). The next day, when she leaves Jenny finds that the house in which she and her friends had been illegally squatting has been the victim of a police drugs raid. Her hippie flatmates are taken into custody for possession of cannabis, and, despite her innocence, Jenny flees the scene, since she does not trust the police as they failed to help her over her father's abuse. Because of this, not knowing Chris's address or even his last name, she loses contact with him. We then learn about the shady past of Chris' boss, Barry. He used to belong to the Carson gang, an outfit of petty thieves trying to pull a big heist. They tried to get the contents of a Securicor van, but they failed, and in the ensuing chaos one of the thick witted Carson brothers killed one of the security guards. With the police chasing them, they recklessly tackled another van, this time succeeding and killing two more men. Barry felt his conscience pricking him, and after making off with the thousands of pounds from the van turned the Carson brothers in to the Law. He gave evidence in court and one of the three Carson brothers were killed in the gunfight to take them, the other was sentenced to twenty five years in jail. Barry Springer changed his name by deed poll to Miller, and he, his wife and his small son were relocated from London to Oxford under the Witness Protection Act. The one remaining Carson brother, Edward, was not like his brothers; while they were dim witted thugs he was like a modern day Moriarty, and set his sights on ruthlessly hunting down Barry, and avenging his brothers... While Chris, frantic and love stricken, searches Oxford for Jenny, she finds work with a friend as a waitress. Her boss, who reminds her like most of the men she meets of her father, seeks to take advantage of her, and she tries to avoid him as much as possible, spending all her spare time searching for Chris. Fate, it seems, is against them; for the obnoxious boss Jenny works for so disgusted Chris when he came looking for a job that he vowed never to go there again, and although they catch tantalising glimpses of each other occasionally, they do not find each other, and as Jenny's love begins to cool, Chris' only intensifies. At this point Barry, Chris' boss, shows him a "chalet" which he has bought by the canal, and wants to fix up. When Chris asks him why he has it, he feeds him a kaleidoscopic version of the truth about his dealings with the Carson gang, shifting the drama to Ireland and the IRA. He then pays Chris to fix it up, and enthuses about an infra red light switch out at the front, so that the light will go on if anyone comes near it. Through a remarkable coincidence, after Jenny quits her job as a waitress since her boss' attentions prove too much for her she ends up babysitting for Chris' boss' eleven year old son, Sean. He is the epitome of innocence as he explains the cosmos to her, and teaches her to play chess. When she kisses him goodnight, she finds herself kissing him like a lover; she stops when she realises, and downstairs feels revulsion at what her father has made her become. After she’s put him to bed the phone rings and Jenny answers, hearing “Tell him Carson’s getting warm.” She only tells Barry about the call when he is driving her home. Barry goes completely white and tells her about the shed. Things start spinning out of control as Chris continues to ache for Jenny. Right then he decides to return to the shed to get the knife he’d forgotten. As he approaches the chalet he sees his Jenny and Barry exiting the chalet together. Being in a dark mood he immediately believes Barry has found himself a new play thing. The truth, is less shocking; Barry had simply asked the girl to do some painting and hang a few curtains to make the place more livable. Chris turns away, in tears, before either of them sees him. Lying in bed Chris realizes he should have confronted the two and makes up his mind to do just that the next day. That morning, unsure of what he’s going to say, he goes to the warehouse. Barry isn’t there, but a police officer called Fletcher in an expensive white Mercedes is. He tells Chris he is looking for Barry Springer, a dangerous criminal---the man Chris knows as his boss. After a little pushing Chris agrees to betray his one time friend and set him up to be captured at the shed later that night. Jenny again babysits Sean that night. As Sue is about to leave the house she tells her Barry might be a little late because he’ll be checking on Chris at the chalet. For the first time Jenny has hopes of seeing Chris again as Sue confirms it’s indeed her lover in the shed. Chris, deliberately betraying a friend, is restless and decides to bike around town. He runs into Dave who is celebrating his birthday at a local pub. After some random drunk talk Dave tells Chris about Carson in the white Mercedes at the warehouse earlier. The boy immediately realizes his stupid mistake. His anger had blinded him so much he never saw the obvious. In panic he asks one of the girls at the party to call Barry at his house. But he is out, while Jenny receives the message on his new answering machine: “For God’s sake keep away from the shed. Carson’s on his way there.” Without hesitation she takes Sue’s bike and races to the shed to save Chris. Chris goes home to call Barry, then races towards the shed when Sue tells him about Jenny. Riding his bike like a demon he arrives at the woods and jumps off his bike to run toward the chalet. He hears the low grumble, as if produced by a giant beast, behind him. Terrified, he realizes it is the white Mercedes. In full sprint he runs to the shed. He enters the clearing, and as he calls out for Jenny he hears the deafening report of a gun, six times. Carson leaves, Barry arrives, and Chris enters the chalet to find his beloved Jenny on the bed, soaked in her blood and riddled with bullets. She had written on the wall in her own blood, "DAD." Her dad, at the inquest, covers his face with his hands. Chris understands that to be a father for whom Jenny wanted to be next to her as she died. Chris is happy that she was able to say it before she died. |
5337827 | /m/0dg8v2 | Arashi no Yoru Ni | Yuichi Kimura | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | A goat named Mei wanders into a barn one night, seeking shelter from a storm. In the barn, the goat meets another refugee. The two can neither see nor smell each other, but nevertheless they huddle together, fending off the cold, and begin to talk. Eventually, they establish a friendship. The two decide to meet later and will recognize each other by using the password "one stormy night". The next day, when they meet, Mei learns that his companion from the night before was a wolf named Gabu. Despite their natural predisposition as enemies, they share a common bond and begin meeting regularly. However, Mei's flock and Gabu's pack eventually find out about their relationship and forbid the friendship. Mei and Gabu, hoping to preserve their friendship, cross a river during a storm. They hope to find an "emerald forest" free from persecution. However, Giro, the leader of Gabu's pack, holds a grudge against goats and views Gabu as a traitor to all wolves. Giro and his pack begin to hunt down the two companions. Gabu and Mei reach the summit of a mountain where they stop and rest, exhausted from fighting their way through a snowstorm. Mei, knowing that Gabu has not eaten in days, offers to sacrifice himself as food. Gabu agrees initially, but soon realizes that no matter how hungry he is, he cannot eat his friend. Gabu hears his pack approaching and faces them, ready to defend his goat friend to the death. As Gabu is about to go face the wolf pack, there is an avalanche. The next morning, Mei digs through the snow blocking the cave and sees the "emerald forest" they had been searching for in the distance. Gabu is missing, but Mei finds him in another cave. Gabu has lost his memory of their friendship and all the events that preceded the avalanche. While waiting for the moon to come out, Gabu taunts Mei that he plans on eating him. Mei, saying that he wouldn't have minded being eaten by Gabu before, accuses the wolf of not being the Gabu he previously knew. Angrily, Mei shouts that he wishes that he had never met Gabu on "one stormy night". On hearing these words, Gabu's memory returns, and they happily reunite. In the end, Mei and Gabu both enjoy watching the moon as it rises. |
5339073 | /m/0dgbts | The Front Runner | Patricia Nell Warren | 1974 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Although the title refers to another character, The Front Runner is the story of Harlan Brown, the track coach at fictitious Prescott College, a new, small, progressive, experimental private liberal arts college sixty miles from New York City. The story begins in late 1974 and ends in early 1978, with occasional flashbacks giving information about Brown's past. When the story begins, Brown is thirty-nine years old, an ex-Marine, a graduate of Villanova University (where he both ran and coached track), and a rigidly closeted homosexual. Six years earlier he was forced to leave an important head coaching position at Penn State University because of untrue accusations of sexual misconduct from a male student on his track team. Although Brown had been sexually attracted only to men all his life, he had suppressed that attraction successfully, married a girl he impregnated while in college, and lived a wholly straight life, with only occasional furtive, traumatic excursions into the gay underground of pre-Stonewall New York City. The student whose accusations drove him from Penn State was himself secretly gay, made sexual advances toward Brown, and then turned on Brown when those sexual advances were rejected. The episode also ended Brown's unhappy marriage; his ex-wife and two adolescent sons appear only briefly in flashback. Although the reason for his leaving Penn State was not widely publicized, the rumors in the track world made it impossible for him to find work in that field. He tried unsuccessfully to find other work he was qualified for; finally he moved to Greenwich Village and supported himself for two years as a high-priced hustler. He was very successful at hustling because he was - by his own account - very good looking, in perfect physical condition, and extremely well-endowed sexually. But his heart was not in it; he longed to return to the track. When Joe Prescott, the founder and president of Prescott College, needed a new athletic director, he managed to find Brown in Manhattan and offered him the job, which he accepted. He immediately stopped hustling, returned with determination to the closet, and threw all his energy into coaching; at the college, only Joe Prescott knew the truth about his sexual orientation and his past. The story opens in December 1974; Prescott tells Brown that three star runners, who have been expelled in their senior year from the elite track program at the University of Oregon because they are gay, want to transfer to Prescott and train with Brown. Although Brown is wary because of the Penn State experience, he is eager to work with such talented runners, so he agrees. All three new runners - Vince Matti, Jacques LaFont, and Billy Sive - are extremely attractive and sorely test Brown's straight act; but Vince and Jacques are more or less a couple, and Billy is the one he falls for. He manages to suppress his attraction for a few anguished months, but he and Billy soon become lovers, and after the boys graduate and take teaching positions at Prescott, Billy moves in with him. The difficult, drawn-out process of their coming out as a couple (and Harlan's as an individual) in the intensely homophobic world of amateur athletics takes up most of the book, throughout which the sport - and particularly Billy's determination to qualify for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal - plays as large a part as the characters' homosexuality. Harlan and Billy do eventually come out fully as a gay couple, and Billy overcomes practically insurmountable opposition and hostility to run in the Olympics. He wins the gold medal in the 10,000 meter race and is within meters of winning the 5000 meter race as well when an anti-gay assassin shoots him in the head and kills him. Harlan is devastated, but fortunately he and Billy had stored samples in a sperm bank a few months earlier; their close lesbian friend Betsy Heden offers to bear Billy's child, so hope and a new life emerge from the tragedy. |
5339269 | /m/0dgc78 | The Bisexual Option | Fred Klein | null | {"/m/05qfh": "Psychology"} | The book shows bisexuals that they are not alone and discusses where people may fit on the sexual orientation continuum. It also aids in explaining who bisexuals are and why they have problems in heterosexual as well as the mainstream gay/lesbian communities. |
5342117 | /m/0dghll | In Search of a Distant Voice | Taichi Yamada | 4/6/2006 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Kasama Tsuneo is a young Japanese immigration officer, mid-way through the preparations for an arranged marriage. While raiding a house in the early-morning hours, one immigrant escapes and Tsuneo takes chase through a neighbouring graveyard. As Tsuneo thinks he has the escapee cornered, he is overcome by a huge wave of euphoric emotion. Paralyzed by it, he's immobile and the suspect escapes. Tsuneo recovers, completely perplexed. To his bosses he explains that the suspect tripped him and ran away. That same night, on the verge of sleep, he is again flooded by a huge wave of paralyzing emotion, this time sadness. As it passes, he hears a female voice saying "Who are you?" in the darkness, which then disappears. Over the next days, Tsuneo starts to hear this voice more, and eventually it responds to him and he begins a dialogue with it. It claims to be the voice of a woman, very lonely, and that with all her energy she somehow "projected" herself into the world, and Tsuneo was the one to answer. Initially Tsuneo thinks it is the voice of "Eric", someone he knew whilst living in America, but in time accepts that this is not so. Tsuneo becomes increasingly fascinated by the voice and their dialogues, and wonders whether he is suffering from auditory hallucinations. Because of his erratic behaviour, he is given time off work and must see a doctor. His arranged marriage is also called off for similar reasons. As the voice continues to speak to him, he asks that he may tell her his story, which has been hinted at throughout. Tsuneo tells the voice how, after his permit runs out in America, he narrow escapes being caught by immigration officials, and one day meets Eric in a city square. Forty-something Eric seems to take pity on Tsuneo, and offers him a job in his shop selling light fittings, and lodgings. However, as time goes by Eric makes passes at Tsuneo, who, definitely opposed but unsure of how to rebuff Eric - who in any case has been so kind - passively submits to Eric's wishes. Tsuneo desperately wishes to escape the relationship, but can see no way out. He attempts to escape under the guise of "taking a short break to the sea", but Eric questions why he is taking his passport, and is forced to leave it behind. Instead, while on his trip Tsuneo makes a hoax call to the police, claiming that Eric is in possession of and dealing a large amount of drugs. Tsuneo hopes that while eric is detained and questioned, he will have a window to escape the country and get back to Japan. However, when the police try to take Eric in there is an accident and Eric is killed. A while after Tsuneo has related his story to the voice, he asks if the woman behind the voice will meet with him. She reluctantly agrees, and they set a date and time. However when Tsuneo goes to meet her she is not there, and only leads him down the garden path. Tsuneo is angry with her. She is hurt but apologizes, and says that she will contact him again in 6 months time. If at that time he still wishes to meet her, despite her claim she is unimaginably ugly, then she will concede. Six months pass, during which Tsuneo still has bouts of intense and irrational emotion, sadness and happiness reminiscent of bipolar disorder. When the voice contacts him again, he does still wish to meet, and a time is set at which to meet her outside a museum. When Tsuneo goes to the museum at the appointed time, the voice directs him towards a tree, behind which a blind girl of about eighteen stands. When she speaks, "Hello Mr Kasama", Tsuneo knows he has been misled again, and expresses his anger towards the voice. It tells him that in future whenever he thinks of her he must remember her in the form of this girl. This is the last Tsuneo hears of the voice. The blind girl tells him that a month beforehand, an 'honest' sounding woman paid her 10,000 yen to stand here, at this time, to wait for a Mr Kasama. |
5344537 | /m/0dgm10 | Gonna Roll the Bones | Fritz Leiber | 1967 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story centers on Joe Slattermill, a poor miner whose home life is a never-ending source of frustration. His wife works at home as a baker to supplement the family's income, while his elderly mother lives with them and regularly voices her disapproval of his lifestyle. His only outlet comes in the form of occasional visits to the local gambling parlors, where he routinely loses all his money, gets drunk, and has sex with prostitutes; he then returns home, beats his wife, and winds up spending the night in jail. On his latest trip, though, he finds that a new club has opened--"The Boneyard"--and decides to try it out. Joe possesses a remarkable skill for precision throwing and can make dice show whatever number he wants when he rolls them. Joining a high-stakes game of craps, he uses this talent to win several thousand dollars before confronting the table's "Big Gambler," a pale figure hidden beneath a dark hat and long coat. This man bankrupts all the other players with his own brand of precision throwing, and Joe loses all his money upon accidentally rolling a double-six. Instead of ending the game at this point, however, the Big Gambler offers to bet all his winnings, plus the world and everything in it, against Joe's life and soul. By now, Joe has come to believe that he is facing off against Death incarnate. Joe rolls the dice and gets snake eyes, losing the bet. He prepares to kill himself by diving into the table, having learned that it is an entrance to some kind of deep shaft filled with intense heat, but instead leaps across and tackles the Big Gambler. The latter's body crumbles on impact and Joe is thrown out of the club, though he manages to steal a handful of casino chips before this happens. Out on the sidewalk, he finds that he has held onto a piece of the Big Gambler's skull, which looks suspiciously like a piece of pastry. Tasting it, he realizes that it is in fact made of bread—the same bread his wife was putting in to bake when he left the house that night. The table he jumped across was connected to her oven as a channel for its heat, and she had created the Big Gambler as a means of humiliating him. The stolen chips prove to be communion wafers, as evidenced by the cross imprinted on each one. Now free of his wife's influence and with a pocketful of food, he goes home "the long way, around the world." Oddly, the story was adapted as a children's book, written by Sarah L. Thomson, illustrated by David Wiesner, and published in 2004 by Milk and Cookies Press. |
5348576 | /m/0dgsfd | The Loveday Loyalty | Kate Tremayne | 3/6/2006 | {"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Against the dramatic scenery of Cornwall, the turbulent criminal underworld of London and the climactic events of the French revolution. In this seventh novel in the series, life with the Lovedays is not confined to England and France. America has won its independence but the Lovedays have connections in Virginia and the new penal colony in Australia has become the residence of one Loveday who took a chance too many. Loyalty to and pride in the Loveday name has held the family together through unstable times, but with the fierce rivalry that exists between family members, will loyalty be enough to honour the family's heritage? |
5348821 | /m/0dgss7 | Serious Money | Caryl Churchill | null | null | The plot follows Scilla and Jake who are enjoying the pleasures and the comforts of the upper class. But the story climaxes when Jake Todd turns up murdered during the first few scenes due to his underground trading. Scilla takes it upon herself to find her brother's killer and the money he was dealing. She later finds out that he was being investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry. Though she does not find the killer, she finds the American business woman Marylou Banes with whom Jake was dealing. Marylou Banes offers her a fresh start. The story takes place around the stock market troubles in Britain. Aside from that a second story follows Billy Corman's and Zac Zackerman's attempt to take over the Albion company from Duckett. In between this takeover Corman attempts to get Jacinta Condor and Nigel Ajibala [who are the foreigners with an interest in his takeover] to buy shares in his company. They support Corman but decide to give their bid to Duckett in the end. The plot ends with Greville Todd in jail, Corman appointed as a Lord, and Scilla happily working for Marylou Banes. |
5353295 | /m/0dg_l0 | My Brother Sam Is Dead | Christopher Collier | 1974 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | Timothy Meeker is a young man who lives in the town of Redding, Connecticut around the time the American Revolution begins. Tim does not exactly care about politics, but his father, Eliphalet ("Life"), is a loyalist to Great Britain, much like the rest of the town. His entire family welcomes his brave and high-strung teenage brother, Sam, when he returns from Yale. However, his father is outraged when he learns that Sam has joined the Continental Army to fight against the British. Unlike Tim, Sam is not afraid to voice his opinions, and this causes him to eventually be forced out from the family tavern (their home and business). After this, Sam steals his father's Brown Bess to use as a weapon during battles. Sam leaves Redding to fight, and things become harder, gradually separating the family. Sam occasionally returns, although when this happens, Tim is the only one who talks with him. In one instance, Tim delivers a "business letter" to New York for a "moderate" neighbor named Mr. Heron, against his father's wishes, since he does not trust Heron. Betsy Read, Tim and Sam's friend, opens the letter, only to find it is a "test note" that says: If you receive this message, then the messenger is reliable, meaning that the future letters will be spy reports on soldiers. Tim throws away the note. Meanwhile, prices of food and drinks go up and the redcoats even show up in Redding to take weapons and fight the few Patriots there. After seeing the bloody battle, in which one of Tim's friends, an innocent slave named Ned, is decapitated, and another friend, an innocent child named Jerry Stanford, is captured by the British, Tim begins to have stronger feelings about the Patriots. While on a trip with his father to sell beef to loyalists in New York, they are stopped by a band of cowboys who presumably abduct him. Tim goes home, and the next year finds his father has died on a prison ship due to an outbreak of cholera. After this, Tim's mother, Susannah, begins to drink heavily. Sam returns, only to reveal he has been framed for stealing cattle and he is going to be executed by his own army in a warning to soldiers who may do the same thing if faced by extreme hunger. The story then cuts to 1826, where Tim reveals he has survived the Revolution, and that he has written the entire story to tell what life was like in the war. He expresses his condolences about Sam, and then reveals he has a happy life. |
5353546 | /m/0dh01x | Micah | Laurell K. Hamilton | null | {"/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Micah apparently takes place approximately one month after the events of Incubus Dreams. (Tammy Reynolds, one of the characters in the series, is four months pregnant in Incubus Dreams and five months pregnant in Micah). As usual, Anita must juggle several problems simultaneously. * First, in her role as an animator, Anita must travel to Philadelphia on short notice to substitute for Larry Kirkland, who must remain in St. Louis because of complications in his wife Tammy's pregnancy. Although the assignment—reanimating a recently deceased federal witness in order to testify in an organized crime investigation—initially seems routine, Anita quickly begins to suspect that there is more to the case than she and Larry have been told. * Second, Anita continues to deal with her various personal problems, in this case her relationship with Micah, who accompanies her on the trip. Anita must come to terms with Micah's decision to reserve a nice hotel room for the two of them without telling her, and must help Micah get over two of the defining problems in his life: first, the trauma narrowly surviving a wereleopard attack that left several members of his family dead; and second, the trauma of accidentally harming a previous girlfriend during sex, due to his unusually large penis. * Third, Anita continues wrestle with her recent increase in power, first attempting to deal with the ardeur, a metaphysical effect that causes Anita to need to have sex every few hours, and second, wrestling with the vast increase in her own powers as a necromancer, which are now so powerful that her attempt to raise a single person threatens to raise every corpse in the cemetery. As usual, Anita is able largely to resolve each of these problems by the end of the novella. * The initial plot point—the animation—is not resolved until the very end of the novella. Although Anita initially wrestles with her increase in power, she is ultimately able to confine her power to a single corpse, raising only the witness, Emmett Leroy Rose. However, Anita then learns that although Rose technically died of a heart attack, the heart attack itself occurred after the defense lawyer in the investigation, Arthur Salvia, framed Rose for murder. Rose therefore considers Salvia his murderer and will not rest until he has killed Salvia. In the ensuing fracas, Anita is knocked unconscious, and Salvia is killed. * With regard to Anita's personal problems, she and Micah make some progress. Anita decides to accept that Micah surprised her with the romantic hotel, and listens to him share the traumas of almost being eaten alive by a wereleopard and of being rejected by various women. Anita sympathizes with Micah's survivor's guilt, and, in a conversation very similar to her conversation with Richard in Incubus Dreams, explains to Micah that some women don't like well-endowed men, but other women, such as Anita, do. |
5353754 | /m/0dh0cm | Shadowslayers | null | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Legends tell of the coming of the dragon-god Derrezen, a monster powerful enough to crush all of humanity beneath his claws. The forgotten child of Niiran’s goddess Ameterra, he has spent centuries in an arcane prison. But now he has awakened, driven by hatred and intent on recreating the world in his image. Only the combined efforts of two powerful wizards have protected the human empire of Blackwood until now. But when one of them finally falls in battle, the realm is more vulnerable than ever before. Kajeel Shadowslayer awakens in the realm of the afterlife, the wounds from her final fatal battle with Derrezen still fresh. She must journey into her own past to seek a weapon stronger than magic that can finally stop the Dragon’s rampage. But can even Blackwood’s greatest sorceress breach the boundaries of death itself? Kajeel’s husband Garyl stands as the empire’s last chance against its oldest foe. Cursed long ago for unspeakable crimes, Garyl’s decades-long search for redemption may be reaching its end. But first he must set aside his grief and meet the Dragon head on – a battle that he knows he will ultimately lose. The two Shadowslayers must reach beyond the borders of life and death, past and present, and ultimately must sacrifice that which is most dear to them in order to succeed. The final emotional struggle will determine not only the fate of Blackwood, but of the entire world of Niiran. |
5354117 | /m/0dh0xp | The Old New Land | Theodor Herzl | 1902 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c082": "Utopian and dystopian fiction"} | The novel tells the story of Friedrich Löwenberg, a young Jewish Viennese intellectual, who, tired with European decadence, joins an Americanized Prussian aristocrat named Kingscourt as they retire to a remote Pacific island (it is specifically mentioned as being part of the Cook Islands, near Raratonga). Stopping in Jaffa on their way to the Pacific, they find Palestine a backward, destitute and sparsely populated land, as it appeared to Herzl on his visit in 1898. Löwenberg and Kingscourt spend the following twenty years on the island, cut off from civilization. As they pass through Palestine on their way back to Europe, they discover a land drastically transformed, showcasing a free, open and cosmopolitan modern society, and boasting a thriving cooperative industry based on state-of-the-art technology. In the two decades that have passed, European Jews have rediscovered and re-inhabited their Altneuland, reclaiming their own destiny in the Land of Israel. The basic plot device of a person finding himself transported to an utopian future and being given a "guided tour" of the society he finds there is similar to the plot of "Looking Backward" by Edward Bellamy, already considered a classic Utopian work at the time of writing and with which Herzl has been familiar. |
5354328 | /m/0dh16j | Petals on the Wind | V. C. Andrews | 1980 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | A continuation to the previous book Flowers in the Attic, the story starts off with Cathy, Chris, and Carrie traveling by bus to Florida after escaping Foxworth Hall. Carrie, still weak from the effects of the poison that killed her twin, is taken ill on the journey. The children are then discovered by Henrietta "Henny" Beech, the mute housekeeper of a local South Carolina doctor and widower, Paul Sheffield. Henny takes the children to the doctor's home so he can help Carrie. At first the children refuse to reveal their identities, but Cathy, sensing he genuinely cares and can help them, tells Dr. Paul their horrifying story of being locked up for three years, and being poisoned by their mother and grandmother. He convinces them to stay and receives custody of them. Though the three thrive under Paul's care, fulfilling their dreams -- Chris goes to premed and medical school, and Cathy joins a local ballet school then, later, one in New York -- Cathy is still bitter and bent on revenge against her mother, seeing her as the root of every problem in their lives: everything from Cory's death and Carrie's deformation to her and Chris' incestuous obsession with each other. While still in love with Chris, Cathy tries to get over her feelings for him and rejects his advances, saying she loves him only as a brother. Over time, Cathy falls in love with Paul, they become lovers, and make plans to be married, much to Chris' dismay. Part of this is due to Cathy's need to repay Paul sexually for taking them in and another part is to get over Chris. Paul confesses to Cathy that his wife, Julia, had murdered their son, Scotty, after he had an affair. This only increases her desire to be with him so that he won't be lonely. One day, Paul's sister, Amanda, visits Cathy after a ballet performance and leads Cathy to believe Paul's wife isn't dead. She also states that she knows Cathy miscarried Paul's child, referring to an incident about a month after Paul took them in where Cathy was hospitalized when she began bleeding profusely—she was told it was due to her irregular menstrual periods. Cathy realizes if she did miscarry, it was Chris' child, not Paul's. She confronts Paul, who admits his wife had still been alive when he first took them in (though in a permanent vegetative state from a suicide attempt years ago), but she died around the time he and Cathy became lovers. He also insists Cathy did not miscarry, but Cathy realizes she has now revealed to Paul the truth about her and Chris committing incest while they were imprisoned. Paul assures her he loves her, but she reveals that she felt so hurt and betrayed by what his sister told her that she married a man in her dance troupe, a fiery dancer named Julian Marquet who had been pursuing her from the moment he met her. Cathy knows she has made a mistake in marrying Julian, but feels she has to stay with him. Julian is possessive of Cathy and jealous of her relationship with both Paul and Chris. He abuses her, cheats on her, and forbids her to see Paul or Chris. Cathy even has to sneak away to see Chris graduate from medical school. When she returns to Julian, he breaks her toes so that she cannot perform. Chris comes to her rescue, and wants her to leave. However, Cathy is pregnant with Julian's child and wants to make her marriage work, even though both Paul and Chris insist that she must get away for her own safety. In the midst of this conflict, Julian is rendered paralyzed in a car accident. Even though Cathy tells him about the baby and that she loves him, he commits suicide in his hospital bed when he learns he will never dance again. Cathy, though guilt-ridden, is free. After the birth of her son (named Julian Janus Marquet, and called Jory -- J for Julian, the rest for Cory), Cathy once more becomes determined to destroy her mother's life. She moves with Carrie and Jory to Virginia, not far from Foxworth Hall. Under the guise of collecting Julian's insurance, she hires her mother's husband, Bart Winslow, as her lawyer, with the intention of seducing him and eventually revealing her true identity as Corrine's daughter. Meanwhile, Carrie meets a young man named Alex and they have a rich courtship. However, when Alex tells Carrie he plans to be a minister, Carrie becomes frightened, having remembered her grandmother Olivia's lectures about the devil's spawn. Soon after, Carrie attempts suicide by eating doughnuts poisoned with arsenic. In the hospital, Cathy relays to Carrie that Alex has said he will not become a minister since it bothers her so much. But Carrie reveals the real reason for her suicide attempt: she tells Cathy she saw their mother on the street and ran up to her, only to be angrily rejected by Corinne—this further convinced Carrie that she must be bad and evil. Carrie then dies from the damage of her suicide attempt. Cathy is devastated, and becomes even more enraged and intent on revenge against her mother. Chris finds out about Cathy's plan and gives her an ultimatum: she must give her plans or he will have nothing to do with her. Cathy refuses to listen and continues her plan to seduce Bart Winslow. Though initially focused solely on revenge, she and Bart fall in love and begin a prolonged affair. Cathy also sneaks into Foxworth Hall one evening, and begins looking for her grandmother, who by this time is an invalid due to a stroke. Cathy taunts and lashes her grandmother, but eventually starts to feel guilty and runs from the mansion. While Cathy and Bart continue their affair, she becomes pregnant with Bart's child, an act she believes will be a crushing blow to her mother, who, according to her grandfather's will, must forfeit her vast inheritance should she ever borne children. As Bart and his wife cannot have children, he is torn between his desire to be a husband to Corinne and his wish to be a father to Cathy's unborn child. Cathy returns to Foxworth Hall a second time on Christmas and visits the room that she and her siblings were locked up in; she describes the room as being as they have never left. She discovers a hidden room in the attic and smells a strange smell that she compares to something dead. She waits until the stroke of midnight and then takes her revenge on her mother by exposing the truth to Bart and a crowd of guests at her mother's Christmas Party at Foxworth Hall. Bart whisks Cathy and Corinne away from the party to the library; at first he thinks Cathy is lying, but he listens to her story and confronts Corinne. Corinne confesses to Bart but then exposes her side of the story, claiming to be a victim of her father, whose vicious plot was to ensure his grandchildren died trapped in the attic. She claims that she gave the children the arsenic to simply make them sick, whereupon she could take them out of the house and get them away and lie to her parents that they had died at the hospital. Cathy does not believe her and Bart is visibly disgusted by what she has done and the secrets she kept from him. Cathy demands to know what happened to Cory's body, as she checked the records and there were no death certificates issued for a boy of his age in that month. Corinne says she stashed the body in a ravine but Cathy accuses her of lying again and says she found a small room off the attic which had a strange musty smell. Chris arrives at the house and bursts into the library. Corinne mistakes him to be her first husband, come back to haunt her. Cathy's mother suffers a mental breakdown in which she suddenly believes that Cathy is twelve again and has somehow escaped the attic to confront her. In her madness, she sets fire to Foxworth Hall. Cathy, Chris and their mother escape, but Olivia is trapped and Bart runs to save her. Both end up dying in the fire. Cathy's mother is committed to a mental institution. It is later revealed that in a twist of fate, although Corinne has forfeited her father's inheritance, all that money has reverted to her now-dead mother, who stated in her will that her daughter was to receive everything. Chris tells Cathy why he came to Foxworth Hall to find her: Henny had a massive stroke, and in the process of trying to help her, Paul suffered a massive heart attack. Cathy returns to Paul and finally marries him. Cathy gives birth to a second son, whom she names Bart Jr.. Life is happy for Cathy, but due to complications from four heart attacks, Paul dies soon after. On his deathbed, Paul encourages Cathy to be with Chris, who has loved her and waited for her all these years. Cathy is amazed that Chris still loves her and still wants to be with her. It is at that moment when Cathy realizes that Chris was the right man for her all along and she still loves him as well. They move to California, where Cathy and Chris take the name "Sheffield" and plan to raise Cathy's two sons together, although Cathy secretly dreads what will happen to the children if their secret relationship is ever revealed. She also ends the book stating that she has been having strange thoughts about the attic in their house, and even put two twin beds up there. She wonders if she is somehow becoming her mother. |
5354400 | /m/0dh18m | If There Be Thorns | V. C. Andrews | 1981 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The book is narrated by two half-brothers, Jory and Bart Sheffield. Jory is a handsome, talented fourteen-year-old boy who wants to follow his mother Cathy in her career in the ballet, while nine-year-old Bart, who is unattractive and clumsy, feels he is outshone by Jory. By now, Cathy and Chris live together as husband and wife. To hide their history, they tell the boys and other people they know that Chris was Paul's younger brother. Cathy and Chris have a passionate and very sexual relationship, described by Jory who has accidentally witnessed encounters between them. The more they fight, the more they make up with affection. Cathy is a loving mother to her sons, but shows favortism in Jory while she looks at Bart with shadowy eyes. Unable to have more children, Cathy secretly adopts Cindy, the two-year-old daughter of one her former dance students, who was killed in an accident, because she longs to have a child that is hers and Chris's. Initially against it, Chris comes to accept the child. Lonely from all the attention Jory and Cindy are receiving, Bart befriends an elderly neighbor that moved in next door, who invites him over for cookies and ice cream and encourages him to call her "Grandmother." Jory also visits the old lady next door, and she reveals that she is actually his grandmother. Jory initially doesn't believe her, and avoids her at all costs. The old woman and Bart, on the other hand, soon develop an affectionate friendship, and the woman does her best to give Bart whatever he wants, provided that Bart promises to keep her gifts—-and their relationship-—a secret from his mother. Her butler, John Amos, also seems to befriend Bart, but soon John Amos begins to fill Bart's mind with stories about the sinful nature of women. John Amos reveals that the old woman is truly Bart's grandmother, Corrine Foxworth. He also gives Bart a journal belonging to Bart's biological great-grandfather, Malcolm Foxworth, claiming that this journal will help Bart become as powerful and successful as that man. Bart is enveloped by the journal and begins to pretend that he is his great-grandfather, who hated women and was obsessed with their degradation. Bart becomes destructive and violent towards his parents and siblings; he kicks Jory in the stomach and cuts off Cindy's hair. Bart's family notices the change in the boy, but only Jory suspects that the changes are due to the mysterious woman next door. At the same time, Jory becomes suspicious of his parents' relationship. Although amazed by their love, which he describes as intense and heartful, he notices that they resemble each other and wonders why his mother would marry Paul, who was much older, before Chris. After Bart becomes ill and nearly dies, Jory finally tells Chris about his suspicions about the lady next door. They go to confront her, but Chris discovers that the woman is his mother, who pleads with him to love and forgive her. Chris is indifferent to her pleas and orders her to stay away from him, Cathy, and the children, especially Bart. However, he decides not to tell Cathy that their mother is living next door to them. At the same time, Cathy is injured in a ballet accident and is told that she will never dance again. From her wheelchair, she begins to write out the story of her life. Bart filches his mother's manuscript pages and is enraged to learn the truth about his parents: Cathy and Chris are brother and sister, and his "grandmother" locked them in an attic for years, feeding them poison to gain an inheritance. The news causes Bart to cling to the only person who has not yet lied to him: John Amos. Bart proudly calls his parents sinners and "devil's spawns". Jory finds out the truth when his paternal grandmother visits and confronts Cathy about her relationship with "her brother Christopher". Jory is shocked and disgusted, but soon forgives them after he learns of their tragic past. Cathy also discovers the truth about the woman next door when Bart accidentally says that the woman gives him anything he wants and she goes to confront the woman. The old woman admits that she is indeed Cathy's mother, She expresses remorse for her crimes against Cathy, Chris and the twins, and begs Cathy to forgive and love her again. Cathy is enraged and attacks her. Before she can storm out, John Amos knocks Cathy and Corrine unconscious. Working on John Amos' orders, Bart, who now believes he is a vessel for his great-grandfather's vengeful spirit, helps to lock Cathy and her mother into the cellar, where John Amos plans to starve them to death. In the course of this, Bart realizes how much he loves his mother and grandmother, despite their sins, and tells Chris where the women are. But before they can be reached, the house next door catches fire. Bart goes in and unlocks the cellar door. Corrine orders Bart outside, and Corrine goes back into the cellar and saves Cathy, but Corrine's clothes catch fire as soon as she gets outside. Chris runs to her and helps put out the flames, but her heart gives out and she dies. John Amos dies in the house as well. The epilogue, resumed with Cathy as narrator, describes Cathy's emotional forgiveness of her mother at the woman's funeral. Cathy and Chris, for the sake of their three children, realize that they must never allow their secret relationship to be revealed. Bart seems to have recovered from the worst of his madness, but still dwells on the power wielded by his great-grandfather, whose millions he now stands to inherit. |
5354438 | /m/0dh19_ | Seeds of Yesterday | V. C. Andrews | 1984 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story begins fifteen years after the events in If There be Thorns. Cathy and Chris arrive at the house of their son, Bart, which was entirely built to replicate Foxworth Hall (which burned down in Petals on the Wind) to celebrate Bart's twenty-fifth birthday. They are planning on moving to Hawaii after the birthday celebration. When they arrive, they meet Joel, who they soon learn is their uncle, Corrine's brother, who was long thought dead. He claimed he spent several years in an Italian monastery, and contacted Bart after learning of Corrine's death and now works as the head butler at Bart's request. They soon learn that he is feeding Bart false information about God and punishment. Bart also begins to look at Joel as a father figure; a fact that troubles Cathy greatly. Bart is still bitter towards his mother and Chris for their incestuous relationship, so their stay is not pleasant. He has grown into a handsome young man, who is extremely jealous and power hungry, and bitter that Chris is the guardian of his money until his twenty-five birthday. Eventually Jory and Cindy move into Foxworth Hall, which adds to the tension in the household. Jory, who is almost thirty, has been married to Melodie, his childhood sweetheart and ballet partner, for nine years. They announce that Melodie is pregnant with their first child, and Cathy is happy of becoming a grandmother. When they move in, however, Bart exhibits jealousy towards Jory, whom he always believed was Cathy's favorite child. Bart also shows an unhealthy interest in Melodie. Days later, Cindy, who is now sixteen, arrives and it becomes clear that Bart still has disdain towards her. Cathy tries to make the best out of the situation until Bart's party. The happiness ends during Bart's birthday party, when Jory gets into an accident, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down and unable to dance again. Melodie cannot deal with Jory's disability and withdraws from Jory. She turns to Bart for comfort and passion, and the two begin an affair. Although he believes he loves Melodie and she reciprocates his feelings, Bart soon realizes it is an empty relationship and he is just a replacement for Jory. Despite this, the affair continues, and Cathy is enraged when she finds out about it and tries with no success to keep them apart. Jory finds about the affair, and although angry, he tries to reconcile with Melodie, but she rejects him. Melodie goes into labor on Christmas Day, although she tells no one, and gives birth to twins, Darren and Deirdre, whom Cathy says resemble her twin brother and sister. Left with two children to care for, as well as a disabled husband, Melodie abandons Jory and the children. Cathy tries to console both her sons and tries to keep a firm hand on the pretty and free-spirited Cindy, who has a knack for finding boys. Bart, under the influence of Joel, hypocritically bans Cindy from premarital sexual acts under his roof even though he repeatedly slept with his brother's wife. In one incident Bart beats up a boy, Lance, when he finds Cindy having sexual intercourse with him in her room; in another, he comes across Cindy and another boy, Victor, making out in a car and again assaults the boy. Cindy later mentions to her mother that in her fear she kneed Bart in the crotch to make him stop but his rage was so great that he didn't even flinch at the supposedly crippling pain. This shows Bart's belief that what Cindy was doing was truly evil and his determination to stop her. When confronted about his hypocrisy a number of times throughout the story, Bart never attempts to justify his actions but instead responds with anger and resentment. After a long period of torment from Bart, and later Joel who disapprove of her ways, Cindy leaves to go to a school in New York. Cathy and Chris hire a beautiful nurse, named Antonia "Toni" Winters, to help Jory recuperate. She soon starts an affair with Bart. Bart is deeply infatuated with Toni, who seems to be in love with him. Cathy notices a change in Bart as a result of his relationship with Toni, such as withdrawing from Joel. Cathy, however, discovers that Jory has feelings for Toni and that he deserves her love more than Bart. Eventually, Toni sees the dark side of Bart after he becomes possesive to her, and she ends their relationship. Soon after, Toni falls in love with Jory and they begin a relationship, which brings Jory out of his depression from his divorce with Melodie. Cindy later comes home for a visit and tells Cathy of how she ran into Melodie in New York, who had apparently remarried immediately after her divorce from Jory was final and resumed her dancing career. Bart builds a chapel, in which he commands the family to attend Sunday sermons, presided over by Joel. Cathy and Chris eventually become disgusted by the "fire and brimstone" sermons and tell Bart that they will no longer attend. Bart secretly starts bringing the twins to the chapel, where they are made to pray for forgiveness for being the "Devil's Issue", which Cathy overhears, reminding her of Cory and Carrie. She confronts Bart with this, and tells him to leave the twins alone, telling Toni never to let them out of her sight, unless she knows they are with Jory or herself. After catching Bart bring the twins back to the chapel, Cathy decides it is time to leave, after two years in Foxworth Hall. Chris agrees it is time to leave and take Jory, Cindy, and the twins with them. Cathy tells Bart of her plans, and tells him that while she loves him, she cannot deal with the kind of person he has become. A furious Bart acts as if he wants nothing more and says her leaving him again is proof that she never understood him. Hours later, Cathy is waiting for Chris to come home from work so they can leave, but he never shows up. Joel comes and quite happily tells them that he heard on the radio of a car accident, in which a man was killed. Cathy's worst fear is confirmed later when she finds out that that man was Chris. She realizes how similar it was when their father was killed. With the loss of Chris, a big part in Cathy dies and she loses the will to live. Bart soon realizes how much he really loved Chris and gives a moving eulogy at his funeral, and soon after finds his place as a televangelist who travels the world. Bart and Cindy also make peace with each other. Toni and Jory have gotten married, and Toni becomes pregnant; Jory tells Cathy that if they have a boy they will call him Christopher, and if it is a girl they will call her Catherine. Despite all these good things and the family becoming closer than before, Cathy is depressed and longs to see Chris again. On her last night, Cathy goes up to the attic and sits by the one of windows and, after decorating the attic with paper flowers, dies. As she passes away, she remembers Chris, her mother, grandmother, and siblings, and how she lost her innocence to the world. Jory and a servant find a letter in Cathy's hand that she wrote, saying that no one needs her more than Chris does, that her final manuscript (the one she wrote during the course of Seeds of Yesterday and would later become that same novel) is in her private vault and anyone can do with it what they will, and that it was never too late for Bart to realize that he had the right father. It is determined that Cathy died of natural causes, but it is likely that she died of a broken heart. |
5354586 | /m/0dh1hv | The Three Evangelists | Fred Vargas | 1/5/2006 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The "three evangelists": Marc Vanderloos, Matthias Dellamarre and Lucien Devernois, and Marc's uncle, the cashiered police commissioner Armand Vanderloos, make their first appearance in this book. One morning, the retired operatic soprano Sophia Siméonidis discovers, in her garden in the quiet Paris street rue Chastle, a beech tree that she has never seen before. There is nothing to indicate where it came from. Sophia is alarmed, but her husband Pierre is indifferent. Eventually she calls on her neighbours, the odd household of Marc, Matthias, Lucien, and the elder Vanderloos, and asks their help. They dig out the tree, but find nothing underneath it. Sophia disappears. Pierre remains unconcerned; he believes she has gone to visit an old lover, Stelyos. But Juliette, the evangelists' other next door neighbour, expresses concern; she is sure that Sophia, her best friend, would never have gone off without telling her, and especially not on a Thursday evening, when all the neighbours regularly meet for a convivial meal at Juliette's restaurant, Le Tonneau (The Barrel). One night Alexandra, Sophia's niece, arrives with her little boy Cyrille, running away from a failed relationship and expecting to stay with Sophia. Shortly afterward, a burned corpse is discovered in an abandoned factory, unrecognisable but with it is a small piece of basalt, which was Sophia's lucky charm. Alexandra has no alibi, she stands to inherit a third of Sophia's substantial fortune, and her habit of driving aimlessly around at night makes her a principal suspect. Already troubled by the enigma of the tree, and increasingly desperate to divert the attention of the police from Alexandra, the three evangelists and Armand Vanderloos start to investigate, exploiting Armand's continuing contacts with his former colleagues. |
5354657 | /m/0dh1ly | Garden of Shadows | V. C. Andrews | 1986 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Garden of Shadows starts with a tall, plain Olivia being rescued from spinsterhood by the smart and handsome Malcolm Foxworth. She thinks she has found "the one" since this is the first man to ever show interest in her due to her height and plain appearance. They soon get married and Olivia leaves her family home in New Haven, Connecticut and moves to Malcolm's father Garland's manor, Foxworth Hall, in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Olivia starts to discover the dark secrets about Malcolm that start to kill her love for him. She discovers he is still tormented by his beautiful mother Corinne’s abandonment of him when he was five and that it was Olivia's plain looks and money that attracted him to her due to his mistrust of beautiful women. At a party to celebrate their wedding, Malcolm talks to and flirts with all the beautiful socialites, ignoring Olivia. While he is attracted to beauty and seems like he might consider an affair with one of them, it is obvious he does not trust them enough to marry and have a family with them. Olivia feels betrayed and humiliated, but hopes things will change as they begin their life together. When exploring the house, she discovers "The Swan Room," a room that belonged to Malcolm’s mother and has been kept as a shrine to her. In the room is a very large, ornate bed carved into the shape of a swan. When Malcolm discovers her in the room, they finally consummate the marriage, an act that could be considered more of an attack than an act of love; Malcolm saying his mother's name the entire time. Olivia wants to scream but doesn't, trying to save their humiliation from the servants. Nine months later, Olivia gives birth to a boy, Malcolm Jr., who is generally referred to as “Mal” so it would be easier to distinguish between him and his father. Malcolm is kind to her at times, giving her hope that things might improve between them. But for the most part, she feels unimportant and ignored. Two years later, she gives birth to a second son, Joel. Malcolm is upset as he wanted their second child to be a girl and that Joel is not healthy. He and Olivia are also told she cannot have any more children. Malcolm ignores the boys and Olivia because he can’t have a perfect daughter to raise to love him and stay with him always. Shortly after Joel is born, Malcolm’s father, Garland, comes back to Foxworth Hall with his new wife, Alicia. Olivia is disgusted to see that Alicia is only nineteen and very beautiful, and Malcolm is enraged to discover she is pregnant, thinking that her child will inherit part of Garland's fortune. Alicia makes numerous friendly overtures to Olivia, but Olivia keeps herself distant from her. Alicia gives birth to a son, whom she names Christopher. However, Malcolm becomes obsessed with Alicia. In one incident, Malcolm follows her to the lake and attempts to seduce her. Olivia witnesses this and is hurt. When Alicia spurns his advances, Malcolm is convinced that she is leading him on and vows to make her pay dearly. Olivia knows of Malcolm's lust towards Alicia and is humiliated and heartbroken, but she blames Alicia for making herself attractive to Malcolm. On the night of Christopher’s third birthday, Garland catches Malcolm trying to rape Alicia, has a heart attack, and dies in the fight that follows. Things are very somber in the house, although Malcolm seems to be feeling some guilt and avoids Alicia. After some time though, he begins to show interest in her again. A month or so later, Alicia confesses to Olivia that Malcolm has been visiting her in her bedroom and forcing himself on her, threatening to throw her and Christopher out on the street penniless if she doesn't let him. She also tells Olivia she is pregnant with Malcolm's child, who was still desperate to have a daughter. Olivia is humiliated and jealous. This is the moment when she hardens herself and begins to slowly transform into the vicious grandmother from Flowers in the Attic. Olivia decides that the only thing to do is hide Alicia up in the attic while she is pregnant; meanwhile Olivia will feign being pregnant as well. Once Alicia secretly has the baby, Olivia will take and pass the baby off as hers. Malcolm will give Alicia Garland's inheritance, and she and Christopher will leave. Alicia reluctantly agrees and says goodbye to Christopher and goes into hiding in the attic. Olivia has the servants removed so no one has a clue what is going on, and hires new ones. While locked away in the attic, Malcolm continues to see Alicia and takes advantage of her loneliness. So, to make her less attractive to Malcolm, Olivia coerces Alicia into cutting off her beautiful chestnut hair, which Olivia leaves on Malcolm’s desk to show that she now is the one in control. Over the months that pass, Olivia begins to think of Christopher as another son and is heartbroken when Alicia, after giving birth to a daughter, leaves quietly, taking Christopher with her. However, Olivia is soon enraged when she discovers Malcolm has named his new child Corinne after his mother and plans for her nursery to be next to his study. He acts like an only parent to the young Corinne, often overriding attempts by Olivia to raise her to be a proper young woman. Olivia still does what she can to be a mother to Corinne, and takes joy in their relationship. In the years that pass, Corinne grows up into a beautiful but spoiled young girl, and Malcolm continues to be emotionally distant from his sons and Olivia—he often criticizes the boys to Olivia, and is upset that they have no interest in his business. Malcolm Jr. dies in a motorcycling accident that resulted in him riding off a cliff near Foxworth Hall. Later, John Amos, Olivia's cousin, is hired as the butler and also serves to incorporate religion in the household. Soon after, Joel leaves on a tour of Europe with a professional orchestra against his father's wishes and is famed in several European newspapers. Olivia is proud of Joel for rebelling against his father, but Malcolm is indifferent and acts like he doesn't care. Unfortunately, Joel meets his end in an avalanche. His parents are informed of his death in a telegram that also revealed that his body was not recovered. Devastated over the loss of their sons, Olivia and Malcolm turn to religion and bond slightly until Olivia receives a letter from Alicia, who is dying from breast cancer. Alicia had remarried soon after leaving Foxworth Hall, but her husband died a few years later, and she became bankrupt during the Great Depression, so she and Christopher having been living in poverty. Alicia is pleading with Olivia to give Christopher a home and put him through medical school. Only because of how kind Olivia was to Christopher while Alicia was in the attic, Alicia wants Christopher to live at Foxworth Hall. Olivia convinces Malcolm to agree to this, and Christopher comes to live with them. When they meet for the first time, Corinne and Christopher fall deeply in love. Everyone is blinded from this love, however, as they all adore Christopher. But later, John Amos begins to suspect incest, although Olivia brushes it off as jealousy. She and Malcolm seem truly happy and content with their family. After Christopher's graduation from college (and Corinne's high school graduation) Christopher receives a letter of acceptance to Harvard. Olivia is the first to see it, and is very happy and rushes to find Christopher. She hears voices in the swan room and takes a quick peek that reveals Christopher and Corinne making love. They are banished and disinherited. Malcolm has a stroke as well as a heart attack afterward, and he is forced to use a wheelchair. Olivia comes to devote herself to Malcolm's health. Olivia also reveals the truth to John Amos that Christopher was not only Corinne's half-uncle but also her half-brother. She also tells of the sins and events that led to it. Malcolm is a changed man after the discovery of Chris and Corinne's scandal. Finally, he breaks and asks Olivia to hire a private detective to find out what happened to Corinne. The P.I. returns and informs Olivia that they live in Gladstone, PA under the name of Dollanganger. Christopher had dropped out of medical school and works in public relations, and Corinne is a housewife. She is also told of their four children: Chris, Cathy, and the twins, Cory and Carrie. All four children are perfectly healthy, bright, and beautiful, and well-known to their town as the Dresden Dolls. She does not tell Malcolm about the children because Olivia believes that he will want to see his grandchildren and be bewitched by the children's beauty, especially the girls. Years later, Corinne writes a letter to Olivia, seeking shelter and telling of Christopher's death by a car accident. Olivia is heartbroken of Christopher's death, but John Amos tells her that it was God's work. He also convinces her to allow Corinne and the children to come to Foxworth Hall, but the children must be hidden from the world forever if she wants to end the sins within Foxworth Hall. Olivia writes back to Corinne and says she is welcome back. Olivia tells Malcolm of Corinne coming home, but again doesn't tell him about the children. When she sees them for the first time, Olivia is attracted to the children's beauty and how much Chris and Cathy remind her of Christopher and Corinne, but she refuses to love them, as they are the "devil's spawn". The book ends with Olivia silently vowing to keep her heart hardened against the children, and to hide them from the world forever. |
5354661 | /m/0dh1m8 | Have Mercy on Us All | Fred Vargas | 2001 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | Joss, a middle-aged former Breton sailor, begins to succeed in reviving the old family trade of town crier in modern-day Paris. Business is good, since people gladly pay five francs to hear their rants and nonsensical messages in parks and squares; every so often, ominous cryptic messages announcing the return of the plague will also be part of the day’s requested cries. At the same time, chief inspector Adamsberg is surprised as a distressed woman describes that all her apartment building’s doors, except one, have been marked with a large inverted “4” in black ink with the inscription “CLT.” This graffiti continues to turn up throughout the city, and residents of apartments with unmarked doors are turning up dead, showing signs of rat-flea bites and blackened flesh. Inspector Adamsberg must lead an investigation that takes him through a juxtaposition of 15th-century Europe and modern-day France...or does he? fr:Pars vite et reviens tard (roman) it:Parti in fretta e non tornare |
5355263 | /m/0dh2c2 | The Black Book | Ian Rankin | 1993 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Rebus finds himself with a number of problems on his hands. His wayward brother, Michael, has returned to Edinburgh in need of accommodation - with only the box-room in Rebus's flat available. While out drinking, he meets an old army friend, Deek Torrance, who admits to being involved in shady activities, telling Rebus he can get his hands on 'anything from a shag to a shooter'. Rebus spends so long out with Deek that he misses dinner with his girlfriend, Doctor Patience Aitken. Furious, she locks him out of her flat, forcing him to sleep in his own flat, on the sofa. At work, a new operation ('Moneybags') is started, aimed at putting one of 'Big Ger' Cafferty's money-lenders out of business. However, Rebus (who despises Cafferty) would rather go after the leader himself. Finally, Rebus's colleague Brian Holmes is put into a coma after being attacked from behind in the carpark of his favourite restaurant, the Elvis-themed Heartbreak Cafe. Rebus interviews Eddie Ringan, the Elvis enthusiast who owns the restaurant, and Pat Calder, Eddie's gay (and business) partner, but they prove to be of little help. Brian's girlfriend, Nell Stapleton, tells Rebus that Brian had a 'Black Book', a small notebook in which he kept interesting snippets of information. She suggests that Brian was attacked because of something in it. She also feels guilty, since she had argued with Brian just before he went to the restaurant. When Rebus recovers the book, one entry in particular catches his interest. Five years ago, a mysterious fire burned Edinburgh's seedy Central Hotel down. Although all the staff and customers were accounted for, an unidentified body was found in the remains. The entry in the black book talks about a poker game that took place on the night the fire happened. However, it is written in cryptic shorthand, with obscure nicknames instead of the real names of the poker players. Rebus's first action is to discuss the autopsy of the unidentified body with the pathologist Dr Curt, who still remembers it in grisly detail. The autopsy revealed that the deceased had been shot through the heart, as well as having suffered a broken arm sometime in the past. Meanwhile, Operation 'Moneybags' is set to get into swing, with Rebus supervising one of the surveillance teams. Under his command is Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, at this time a new recruit to the force. Rebus turns to an old friend of his, Matthew Vanderhyde, an elderly blind man who helped him in Hide and Seek. In the 1950s, Vanderhyde used to go to the Central Hotel for rallies for Sword and Shield, a hardline offshoot of the Scottish National Party. He was there the night it burned down, having a drink with a friend, Aengus Gibson, also known as 'Black Aengus'. Heir to the Gibson brewing business, Aengus was a wild drunk at the time of the fire, but has since reformed. He was not on the list of people who was at the hotel due to his family's influence. The day after a night of arguments with Michael and the students, Rebus discusses Cafferty with Siobhan. Siobhan mentions the 'Bru-head Brothers', Tam and Eck Robertson, a pair of criminals who disappeared at around the same time as the Central fire. Rebus then realises that the one of the names in the Black Book refers to them, and another to Cafferty himself. When Rebus returns home, he receives grim news about his brother, who has just been found hanging by his legs from the Forth Rail Bridge. Michael is in shock and has to be taken to hospital. Fearing for the safety of his brother, Rebus decides that he needs serious protection. Remembering Deek Torrance's words 'anything from a shag to a shooter', Rebus decides to get in touch with his old friend. The following day, while overseeing the dull minutae of the Operation Moneybags surveillance, Rebus and Siobhan hear welcome news - Brian Holmes has recovered consciousness. While he cannot remember anything about his assailant, he does tell Rebus that the final name in the Black Book refers to Eddie Ringan, the chef of the Heartbreak Cafe, who told Brian about the poker game. Rebus returns to the Heartbreak Cafe, and demands to know what happened on the night of the fire. He knows that Eddie was moonlighting at the Central, which is why he never appeared on the list of people who were there. Eddie, an alcoholic, flies into a drunken rage, hurting his assistant Willie in the process. But as Rebus turns to leave, Eddie suggests visiting a pub in Cowdenbeath. Armed with two sketches of the Robertson brothers as they might appear today, Rebus visits several Cowdenbeath pubs, asking customers if they recognise them. He has little luck, although a drunk old gambler claims he recognises one of the pictures, causing Rebus to suspect that one of the brothers may be working as a bookmaker. The next day, Rebus learns that Eddie has disappeared after a night out. Pat Calder insists to Rebus that Eddie always returns home safely, despite his alcohol problem. Willie, the assistant chef, is of little help. Rebus suspects that Eddie may have been warned off, or worse. Meanwhile, Rebus's superiors are annoyed at the effort he is putting into the Central Hotel case. Undaunted, Rebus approaches Aengus Gibson, who admits being at the hotel on the night of the fire with Vanderhyde, but insists that he left hours before the fire actually began. Rebus, however, is suspicious. Later that night, Rebus meets up with Deek Torrance, and arranges to buy a handgun from him. Chief Superintendent 'Farmer' Watson demands an explanation for Rebus's continued interest in the Central Fire, giving him twenty-four hours to come up with something concrete. Later that day, Rebus goes to Pat Calder and Eddie's flat to fill out an official missing person report. Calder reveals that Willie had cracked up trying to cope without Eddie, making a scene before leaving the restaurant. With few options left open to him, Rebus decides to talk to Morris Gerald Cafferty at his upmarket home in Duddingston. The two men's mutual loathing results in a tense confrontation. While Cafferty reveals relatively little, he does admit that the Robertson Brothers used to work for him as 'general employees', but left his service years ago. As Rebus leaves, he is certain that Cafferty was behind the attack on Michael. Meanwhile, Siobhan is out getting extra camera film for the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and walks past the Heartbreak Cafe. Smelling gas, she enters and discovers Eddie Ringan's body with the head inside the oven, an apparent suicide. Dr Curt's examination of Eddie's badly burned body turns up some suspicious findings. The deceased's liver was in good condition, even though Eddie was a persistent heavy drinker. There are also strange injuries inside the mouth. That night, Rebus meets with Deek Torrance in North Queensferry to buy the handgun, a Colt 45, which he hides in his car. Mulling over the cases, Rebus visits a Catholic church and confesses to the priest that he has bought a gun. The priest advises him to throw it into the sea. Rebus decides to do just that. Returning to St Leonards, Rebus is confronted by his immediate superior, Chief Inspector Lauderdale, who demands Rebus surrender his car keys. Rebus realises that his colleagues have been tipped off about the gun. But worse is to come, as the gun turns out to be the same one used in the Central Hotel shooting five years ago. Rebus is suspended from duty. After attending Eddie Ringan's funeral, Rebus has a suspicion of what happened. After checking the reservations book for the Heartbreak Cafe, he finds out that none of the customers remember Willie making a scene and storming out. His suspicions confirmed, Rebus goes to Eddie and Pat's flat, and finds the still living Eddie Ringan hiding there. He and Pat had rendered Willie unconscious by forcing alcohol down his throat, and used his body to stage a suicide attempt. Rebus arrests Eddie, but while taking him back to the station, stops in front of Cafferty's mansion. Eddie is clearly terrified of Cafferty, and admits that he helped burn down the Central Hotel, after a blood-splattered Aengus Gibson ran into the hotel kitchens. Siobhan, having checked the medical records of a Dundee hospital, reveals that Tam Robertson had broken an arm twelve years ago. The corpse found in the remains of the Central belonged to him. Rebus confronts Aengus Gibson, demanding to know what happened at the night of the fire, but is forced to leave by Aengus's father. Returning to Fife, Rebus visits a bookmaker owned by Eck Robertson, living under a false name. Eck says that Aengus shot Tam for cheating during the poker game. Back in Edinburgh, Aengus Gibson has committed suicide. When Rebus reads Aengus's journal, it becomes clear that he thought that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Tam Robertson. The journal also reveals that it was Cafferty who forced the gun into his hand, getting Aengus's fingerprints on it. After the shooting, Aengus went berserk, starting the fire to hide the evidence. Determined to trap Cafferty once and for all, Rebus uses his contacts to set up a sting operation, with child molester Andrew McPhail being used as the unwitting bait. Cafferty is caught red-handed attacking McPhail outside the Operation Moneybags surveillance, and is arrested. With Cafferty in jail, the police are able to take a closer look at his operation. A farm in the Borders is raided, where Cafferty used to personally execute his enemies. Deek Torrance is amongst those arrested there. In exchange for leniency, Eddie Ringan agrees to testify against Cafferty. In the final chapter, Rebus accuses Nell Stapleton of being the one who knocked Brian Holmes out. Although he doesn't have any evidence, he does note that she had a motive after the arguments she'd been having with Brian. |
5355319 | /m/0dh2fh | There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom | Louis Sachar | 1987 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | This book is about Bradley Chalkers, a troubled fifth grade boy who has serious behavior problems. Bradley made a friend name Jeff he came from the white house but they don't get along as well. Bradley invariably lies and bullies classmates. Bradley also performs poorly in his studies. He does not complete his homework and constantly lies to his mom telling her that he always gets A+ on his papers, when he gets F- all the time. As a result, he gets held back a year, making him the oldest pupil in the fifth grade. He does not appear to have a happy house life. His father often bullies him and his sister teases him. With the exception of his mother, Bradley's family is largely unsupported and does little to attempt to undo. This all changes when his school gets a counsler named Carla Davis she changes Bradley's life but in the end has to leave the school because of angry parents. fi:Takapulpetin poika |
5356295 | /m/0dh3y8 | Man on Fire | A. J. Quinnell | 1980-09 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In Italy, wealthy families often hire bodyguards to protect family members from the threat of kidnapping. When Rika Balletto urges her husband Ettore, a wealthy textiles producer living in Milan, to hire a bodyguard for their daughter Pinta, he is doubtful but agrees. After some searching, he finally settles for an American named Creasy. Creasy, once purposeful and lethal, has become a burnt-out alcoholic. To keep him occupied, his companion Guido suggests that Creasy should get a job, and offers him to set him up as a bodyguard; thus he is being hired by the Ballettos, where he meets his charge, Pinta. Creasy barely tolerates the precocious child and her pestering questions about him and his life. But slowly, she chips away at his seemingly impenetrable exterior, his defenses drop, and he opens up to her. They become friends and he replaces her parents in their absences, giving her advice, guidance and help with her competition running; he is even spurred to give up his drinking and return to his former physical prowess. But Creasy's life is shattered when Pinta is kidnapped by the Mafia, despite his efforts to protect her. Creasy is wounded during the kidnapping, and as he lies in a hospital bed Guido keeps him informed of the goings on. Soon enough, Guido returns with the news that the exchange went bad, and Pinta was found dead in a car, suffocated on her own vomit. She had also been raped by her captors. Out of hospital, Creasy returns to Guido's pensione, and outlines his plans for revenge against the men who took away the girl who convinced him it was all right to live again; anyone who was involved, or profited from it, all the way to the top of the Mafia. Told by Guido he can stay with in-laws on the island of Gozo in Malta, Creasy accepts the offer, in order to train for his new mission. While on Gozo, Creasy trains for several months, getting into shape and re-familiarizing himself with weaponry. But, to his surprise, he also discovers he has another reason to live after his suicidal mission against the Mafia; he finds himself accepted by and admiring the Gozitans, and falls in love with Nadia, the daughter of his host. Soon enough, he is fit and leaves for Marseille where he stocks up on supplies, weapons and ammunition; from there he travels back to Italy, and then the war between Creasy and the Mafia begins. From low-level enforcers to the capos in Milan and Rome, and all the way to the head Don in Sicily, Creasy cuts through their organization, murdering anyone who had something even remotely to do with Pinta's kidnapping. After Creasy reveals to Rika that Ettore allowed her to be kidnapped for the insurance money, Ettore commits suicide. Finally, after killing the Don, a severely wounded Creasy is taken to hospital, but pronounced dead; a funeral is held and Creasy is thought to be gone. But, unknown to all, Creasy was in fact alive, and makes it back to Gozo where he is reunited with Nadia. |
5356511 | /m/0dh4bh | Web of Dreams | V. C. Andrews | 1990-02 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The novel opens with Annie Casteel Stonewall returning to Farthinggale Manor for the funeral of her father, Troy Tatterton. Annie, hoping to finally put the past to rest alongside her mother Heaven, feels drawn to the suite that used to be occupied by her great-grandmother, Jillian. Annie soon discovers a forgotten diary hidden away in a back drawer in Jillian's suite. The diary was written by Leigh VanVoreen, Annie's grandmother and Heaven's mother. Surprised by the discovery, Annie begins to read the tragic story of Leigh. 12-year-old Leigh VanVoreen was the beloved daughter of cruise-ship magnate Cleave VanVoreen and his beautiful Boston socialite wife Jillian. Leigh's life was happy until her mother left her father for the much younger Tony Tatterton, the handsome and wealthy owner of Tatterton Toys. When Jillian married Tony, she and Leigh moved into Tony's estate, Farthinggale Manor. Leigh's only friend on the estate was Troy Tatterton, Tony's 4-year-old brother, and they spent a lot of time together. Eventually, Leigh was placed in an exclusive private school for girls. During her summer vacation, Leigh served as the model for what would be a new line of toys for Tatterton Toys: a portrait doll. During the portrait-doll modeling sessions, Tony had Leigh model nude and started making advances towards her, as Jillian had stopped sleeping with him. Leigh told Jillian what was happening, but Jillian told her she was being stupid to worry and that it was nothing. Leigh went to her father to originally help her,but he remarried a woman who didn't like Leigh and Leigh realized he didn't care about her anymore. After the doll was complete, it was presented to Leigh on her birthday. Tony raped Leigh one night while Jillian was away, when she was about to go asleep. She was going to call her close friend but was to ashamed of what happened. The next morning he acted like nothing had happened, but she was fearful and didn't want to stay in her room, where the attack had happened, so she hid in Jillian's room with the door locked. But he had a spare key and he raped her the second night, and when she tried to scare him off by saying she'd tell Jillian, he told her Jillian thought Leigh wanted him to have sex with her, and then raped her again. When Jillian came home, Leigh tried to tell Jillian that Tony raped her, but Jillian didn't believe her. She accused Leigh of lying, saying that Tony had told her Leigh was the one making sexual advances during the modeling sessions and that she had tried to get Tony to have sex with her. Leigh was shocked and saddened by her mother's decision to believe Tony over her own daughter. After a few weeks, Leigh discovered she was pregnant by Tony and confronted her mother with this fact. Jillian,acted as though convinced that Leigh had seduced Tony on purpose, called her a slut. It was then that she realized Tony was right, and Jillian was making Leigh a mistress to Tony, not caring about Leigh anymore. Leigh told Jillian that she knew Jillian had also had premarital sex and that she had essentially pimped her out to Tony to avoid having sex with him. After the fight, Leigh stole some of Tony's money that he kept in a strongbox and fled Farthinggale Manor with a few meager possessions and her portrait doll. Leigh decided to go live with her grandmother Jana in Texas. After leaving Boston, she purchased a train ticket in Atlanta, but missed her connection and was stranded. A stranger named Luke Casteel cheered her up. After he inquired about Leigh's portrait doll, she admitted that it was indeed modeled after her, and that she had named it Angel. Luke told her that 'Angel' was a better name for her than Leigh. He then proceeded to refer to Leigh as Angel after that. Leigh confided in him about the circumstances of her pregnancy and her tragic story and he drove her to a motel so she could rest. He then returned with some food for her, and when Leigh asked him to stay because she had never been in a motel room alone, he agreed. When she woke up in the middle of the night, Luke was instantly at her side, reassuring her that he'd always protect her. He then told her that he had fallen in love with her and wanted to be the father of her baby. Assuming she dreamt this, Leigh went back to sleep. After waking up in Luke's arms, she asked him about it. He passionately talked about his plans for the future if the two of them were together and Leigh fell more and more in love with him. Although they had only known each other for one day, they got married and returned to Luke's West Virginia mountain home, where her young age was not so unusual. After meeting Luke's parents, Annie and Toby, Leigh worked hard around the shack and ignored the stares of the local townsfolk. For his part, Luke was madly in love with her and had plans to build a house in town for her and the baby. Whenever Luke would drink, Leigh would fear for his health and tell him off, which he liked because she put him straight. He promised to make her happy because she was the love of his life. Leigh's diary ends when she starts experiencing labor pains while out for a walk with Luke. She writes about how they went up the mountain and how Luke talked about their plans for the future. He told her that she was his one and only and that no man could ever love any woman more than he loved her. She responded by kissing him and asking him to go back to the cabin with her so he could hold her. As they walk back, Leigh records that she stopped and stared at the stars, telling Luke that when she went to sleep tonight she wanted to feel like she was going to sleep in heaven. These are the last words in the journal, sadly ironic because the reader/Annie knows that Leigh does go to sleep 'in heaven', due to her death in childbirth, and that it is this death which turns Luke into the heartless man he is in Heaven. In the present, Annie finds a note from a private investigator Tony hired, stating that Leigh died in childbirth due to inadequate medical care. The note also states that the child survived and that it was a girl. The implication is that both Tony and Jillian knew about Heaven long before she came to Farthinggale, but preferred to leave her to be brought up as a hillbilly rather than face what they had done to Leigh. Saddened by what she has read, Annie puts the journal back in the drawer as she hears Luke calling her name. She goes to him and they leave Farthinggale to its ghosts. |
5357217 | /m/0dh61j | Dawn | V. C. Andrews | 1990-11 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | 14-year-old Dawn Longchamp leads a humble, rootless existence with her parents, Ormond and Sally Jean Longchamp, and her moody older brother Jimmy, who is 16-years-old. Moving around a lot, Dawn's family does not provide much stability for her, but what her lifestyle lacks in stability, her home life makes up for in love. This erratic lifestyle seems to change when Dawn and Jimmy are able to enroll in an exclusive private school when Ormond gets a job there. It is here that Dawn's talent for singing is discovered. Her brother does not enjoy the school, feeling the weight of class differences bear down upon him. Dawn, although optimistic, does not fare much better, and is sternly ordered by the headmistress to be on her best behavior as she is of lesser social status than her classroom peers. On her first day, she also incurs the wrath of the most popular and affluent girl in the school, Clara Sue Cutler, after accidentally ratting her out on her smoking. Clara Sue then proceeds to pull mean-spirited pranks on Dawn and openly refers to her as white trash. Deeply offended, Dawn finally stops trying to like Clara Sue after this insult. However, Clara Sue's older brother, the handsome and charming Philip Cutler, does not share his sister's loathing. Phillip is kind to Dawn, and immediately shows an interest in her. He compares her beauty to that of his mother, Laura Sue Cutler, and is easily entranced. Jimmy is wary of Phillip, but does not overtly oppose Dawn's involvement with him. A shy girl who has had a sheltered upbringing, Dawn is somewhat taken aback by Phillip's immediate romantic overtures, even though she does find him attractive. Phillip urges her to date him, and after constant persuasion from him, Dawn agrees. Meanwhile, Dawn's mother, Sally Jean, has discovered that she is pregnant. This strains the Longchamps' finances, which are already tight, but Dawn is still overjoyed at the prospect of a little sibling, hoping that the baby will look more like her. Sally Jean gives birth to a little girl named Fern, but does not recover her health after the labor. She attempts several holistic ways of recovering her health but to no avail. She remains bedridden for the duration of Dawn's school year. At school, Dawn is excited by the musical opportunities now opening up to her. Her enjoyment of music culminates in her solo song, Somewhere over the Rainbow, at a school concert. Although nervous because of a prank pulled earlier by Clara Sue and her clique, Dawn draws emotional strength from the pearl necklace Sally Jean gave her earlier in the evening, which she claims are a Longchamp heirloom. Dawn's world comes crashing down after her solo performance at the school concert. Her beloved mother, Sally Jean, passes away that night. With the shock of this barely registered, what comes on the heels of Sally Jean's death truly changes Dawn's life forever. A security guard at the hospital where Sally Jean died recognizes the family, and also notices something peculiar in Dawn's appearance. He goes to the authorities, who perform an early morning raid of the Longchamp residence. Through these officers, it is revealed to Dawn that she is not Ormond and Sally Jean's biological daughter, but that she was kidnapped by them as a newborn baby, and that she is actually the daughter of Randolph and Laura Sue Cutler. Dawn is taken back to Cutler's Cove, Virginia, an offshoot of Virginia Beach. Ormond is arrested for child kidnapping. With no nearby relatives to come to their aid, Jimmy and Fern are placed in foster care. Dawn refuses to believe that Ormond kidnapped her, but the authorities prove her identity through a unique birthmark she shares with the description of the kidnapped baby. Dawn is appalled at the realization that the terrible Clara Sue is her sister; even worse, her boyfriend, Phillip, is actually her brother. These concerns fade into the background after her first meeting with Grandmother Cutler at the family's hotel, also named Cutler's Cove. Grandmother Cutler does not seem overjoyed about the return of her long-lost grandchild. She informs Dawn that she will be known by her "true" name, Eugenia, and that she will work in the hotel as a maid in order to prove that she is trustworthy. Dawn is shocked and upset by this cold treatment. She tries appealing to her real parents, Randolph and Laura Sue, but they are just as powerless as her. Randolph, though charming and handsome, has little willpower and prefers life to be as smooth as possible. Laura Sue is enchanted by Dawn's prettiness and resemblance to her, but refuses to make any effort to help her, as she is completely cowed by her mother-in-law. Dawn is also put at risk by Clara Sue's malicious tricks. Infuriated by Dawn's return, she does her best to make sure Dawn is fired by stealing jewellery and other items from the hotel guests. Dawn finds some comfort in the housekeeper, Mrs. Boston, who knew Sally Jean and Ormond Longchamp when they worked at the hotel. She cannot believe that her parents stole her, as they were always honest, hard-working people. Mrs. Boston hints that there is more to the "kidnapping" than meets the eye. Dawn's life is further brightened by a secret visit from Jimmy, aided and abetted by Phillip. Jimmy confesses that he has been in love with Dawn since they were children, but never dared show it because he felt he was sick for thinking of her that way. Dawn admits the attraction is mutual, but they find it hard to overcome their upbringing as brother and sister. This happy interlude comes to an end when Clara Sue finds Jimmy in the basement, where Dawn hid him. She tells Grandmother Cutler, who goes to the police and has Jimmy taken back to his foster parents. Dawn is heart-broken that Jimmy has to leave and is furious with Clara Sue. Jealous of her obvious affection for Jimmy, Phillip corners Dawn in her bathroom and rapes her. Desperate to get out, Dawn visits Mrs. Dalton, the woman who took care of her just after she was born, and learns that her "kidnapping" was staged by Grandmother Cutler because Randolph was not her biological father, as her mother had extramarital affairs, and didn't want a non-Culter child to receive benefits from the family. The Longchamps were paid with family jewels, including Dawn's pearls, to keep them quiet and to provide for Dawn and Jimmy. Outraged, Dawn confronts Grandmother Cutler about this. The old woman eventually agrees that she was the instigator and makes Dawn a deal: if Dawn will go to a singing school in New York, she will get Ormond out of prison. Dawn agrees but on one condition: that she be referred to by Dawn, not Eugenia. The book ends with Dawn going to New York. |
5357347 | /m/0dh69w | Secrets of the Morning | V. C. Andrews | 1991-06 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Secrets of the Morning picks up where Dawn left off, with Dawn Cutler arriving in New York City after leaving her family’s hotel, Cutler's Cove, located in Virginia. Her family is filled with untrustworthy liars who only care for themselves. When Dawn arrives at the boarding house, she meets the owner, Agnes - an aging actress who remains obsessed with the stage. Agnes immediately thinks bad of Dawn due to a letter from Grandmother Cutler saying Dawn is promiscuous and spoiled after years of having her way at the hotel. After much effort, Dawn earns Agnes's trust. Dawn forms a strong bond of friendship with her roommate, a dancer named Trisha. Dawn and Trisha both attend a performing arts school, Bernhardt School For The Arts. During Dawn's first year in the boarding house, she meets more residents and makes several new friends. Dawn is enrolled in special lessons with her piano teacher, a very famous opera singer named Michael Sutton. Michael is holding auditions for six people to be admitted to his singing class. Dawn is selected to be in this prestigious class at the beginning of her senior year. As time goes on Dawn feels attracted to Michael, who takes advantage of her and seduces her. After spending many forbidden weeks together, Dawn falls in love with Michael but feels guilty for betraying Jimmy. After Thanksgiving break ends, she discovers, much to her dismay, that she is expecting Michael's child. Michael said that he would marry Dawn and take her with him on tour, but instead he flees the country. Dawn, mistakenly believing that he is taking her with him, goes to his apartment to discover he is gone. She finds out that Michael was just subletting the apartment from an old man and the gifts he bought for Dawn were just empty boxes. Then after leaving the apartment in shock, Dawn thinks she sees Michael, and she runs into oncoming traffic to catch him. Right after realizing that it wasn't Michael, she is struck by a taxi. Dawn wakes up in the hospital after four days. Dawn's doctor then tells her that luckily she and her baby are all right. Grandmother Cutler comes a few days later and tells Dawn she is sending her to The Meadows, Grandmother Cutler's childhood home, where her sister Emily is going to take care of her until after she delivers the baby. Upon arriving, she meets Luther. A handyman and hard worker, Luther picks her up from the station, and drives her to the isolated dilapidated plantation. Emily is waiting for them and with her is her younger sister Charlotte. Charlotte is mentally disabled, but quite friendly. Emily is very harsh to Dawn and tells her she is an embarrassment to her family thus her reason for being sent to The Meadows is to avoid scandal. Emily keeps Dawn in a little stuffy room with no windows and just enough kerosene to last her one week. Emily doesn't allow the electricity to be used because of its expense. Emily is a trained midwife and she makes Dawn submit to an embarrassing and rough examination. Emily then gives Dawn two outfits to wear all the time. Emily takes all of Dawn's things and does not return them. Emily forces Dawn to do all the chores in the old plantation. Emily also puts vinegar into the food, claiming that the vinegar is to make them mindful of the bitterness of life and sin. Dawn makes it through the next few months with only simple-minded Charlotte as a companion. The times Dawn and Charlotte are alone Charlotte reveals she had a child and tells Dawn sometimes Emily lets the child visit. Emily told Charlotte that her baby was born with horns, because it was the spawn of the Devil. Dawn is intrigued and one night sneaks out to the west wing, a place where Dawn is forbidden to venture. She finds a nursery and is startled there by Emily. The two argue and the fight nearly becomes physical. Dawn storms off and trips over a lamp cord, and the resulting fall starts her into labor. Dawn gives birth to a baby girl, whom she names Christie. After giving birth, she holds her daughter once and then the baby is whisked away so she can rest. When Dawn wakes up she asks for her baby, Emily tells her baby was born too small leading Dawn to believe the baby has died. Secretly, Grandmother Cutler has planned an adoption of Dawn's baby and while Dawn sleeps, the baby is taken to her new adoptive parents. When she wakes up again, Emily gives Dawn back her clothes and tells her that Luther is going to take her to the bus station so she can leave. To her surprise, Jimmy shows up to get her after becoming concerned that Dawn had not responded to his letters and Trisha told him what had happened to her. Jimmy interrogates Emily into revealing that Grandmother Cutler had given the baby up for adoption. Dawn tries to apologize to Jimmy for her betrayal, but Jimmy forgives her because she was taken advantage of. They set out to find Dawn's baby starting with Grandmother Cutler. To their shock Grandmother Cutler had just suffered a deadly stroke and is in the hospital. Dawn and Jimmy go see her to question her regarding the whereabouts of Dawn's baby. They find out that Grandmother Cutler is paralyzed from her left side but they see her for only five minutes and Dawn starts asking her “Where’s my baby?” Grandmother Cutler just murmurs so Dawn gets closer to her and listens to what her grandmother tells her, “You’re my curse” and then dies. At the reading of her grandmother's will, Dawn finds out that her grandfather is really her biological father, because her mother had been raped by him years earlier and that is what led to the kidnapping plot. A portion of his will that he had specified only be read after the death of his wife revealed this and the fact that he left a significant amount of his fortune and over half ownership of Cutler's Cove Hotel to Dawn. After hearing about her real father, Dawn confronts her mother about it, but her mother refuses to talk. Dawn is disgusted with her mother and says she wouldn't care if the hotel burned to the ground. Dawn and Jimmy then leave to go get Christie, her daughter. |
5357383 | /m/0dh6g1 | Twilight's Child | V. C. Andrews | 1992-02 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Dawn and Jimmy arrange to find out what happened to Dawn's daughter Christie, who was given up for adoption by Grandmother Cutler. Thanks to the hotel lawyer, Dawn and Jimmy quickly get Christie back, as the adoption process was not legal. Dawn and Jimmy make plans to marry. Although she dislikes the hotel and would rather become a singer, Dawn takes up the running of Cutler's Cove. Randolph, Dawn's stepfather and half-brother, is haunted by the death of his mother, and starts to drink excessively. The only thing that makes him happy is Christie, but he begins to wander away from the hotel, often forgetting where he is and begins pretending that his mother is still alive. Dawn marries Jimmy, and her brother Philip acts as best man. Philip, who has obsessed over Dawn since prior to finding out they were related, acts strangely during the wedding, muttering the vows under his breath as if he were marrying Dawn. As Randolph is not at the ceremony to give Dawn away, Bronson Alcott, a friend of Dawn's mother, does instead. On their wedding night, Dawn and Jimmy finally consummate their relationship. However, the honeymoon is cut short when Randolph is found dead at his mother's grave several days later. Dawn takes full ownership of the hotel and begins spending more time on the hotel than with her family. With her husband dead, Laura Sue resumes her old relationship with Bronson Alcott and they quickly marry. Bronson later confesses to Dawn that Clara Sue is his daughter, conceived during an affair that began after Dawn's "kidnapping". Soon after, Dawn discovers that she is pregnant with Jimmy's child. Because Bronson wishes to have a relationship with Clara Sue, Dawn decides that her sister should go and live with him and their mother, and has Clara Sue's things moved to Bronson's house. When Clara Sue comes home and finds out about Dawn's decision, she becomes angry and attacks Dawn, causing her to miscarry. Clara Sue is ostracized by nearly everyone for this act, her mother being the only exception. The miscarriage has a devastating impact on Dawn and Jimmy. Dawn resorts to the hotel to ease her grief, withdrawing from Jimmy and Christie, and it takes a long time for them to recover from this tragic event. Phillip announces that he is engaged to a classmate, Betty Ann Monroe. Clara Sue purposely embarrasses the family at his graduation ceremony by bringing one of her sleazy boyfriends along. Phillip marries Betty Ann, but still obsesses over Dawn, to the point that he has Betty Ann dye her hair blonde, wear Dawn's nightgown and perfume, and goes to the same place where Dawn and Jimmy went on their honeymoon. Clara Sue returns to torment Dawn: she says the hotel should be hers, because Dawn is an illegitimate child, but Dawn reveals that Clara Sue is also illegitimate and doesn't have any Cutler blood, which drives Clara Sue away in anger. Since her miscarriage, Dawn has been unable to become pregnant. Dawn and Jimmy's frustration grows when Betty Ann becomes pregnant and gives birth to twins, Melanie and Richard. Philip tells Dawn that this works out perfectly: Melanie can be for Betty Ann and Richard for Dawn. Dawn is disturbed by this statement, but does nothing because she can see Philip is trying to lead a normal life. After the birth of the twins, Jimmy decides to visit his father and stepmother in Texas. While he is away, a drunken Philip almost rapes Dawn, telling Dawn that he could get her pregnant unlike Jimmy. Fortunately, they are interrupted when Christie starts crying and Dawn sends him away, reminding him that he is now married and should try to love his wife. He tries to apologize to her, but she tells him to forget it happened. Jimmy tells Dawn that he has found out what happened to his baby sister Fern, who was adopted when his father was arrested for "kidnapping" Dawn. He found out that Fern was adopted by Clayton and Leslie Osbourne, who changed her named to Kelly Ann. Dawn and Jimmy visit the Osbournes to make sure that Fern is okay. Although they are not allowed to tell Fern who they are, she already knows about her adoption and follows them back to the hotel. She tells them that Clayton sexually abused her, so Jimmy and Dawn obtain custody of her. Fern initially seems sweet and helpful, but soon proves untrustworthy, stealing things from the hotel, smoking in the basement with older boys, and acting promiscuously. She also makes Christie and Gavin, her little half-brother, strip and try to touch each other. Jimmy continually takes her side and Fern seems to enjoy driving a wedge between her brother and sister-in-law. Dawn is upset because she cannot understand how the sweet baby she used to care for has become this resentful, deceptive teenager. Christie's father, Michael, reappears in Dawn's life again. He asks to see Christie, and Dawn reluctantly agrees. He then claims to be remorseful for his actions and asks for a second chance, which Dawn rejects, saying nothing can ever take her away from Jimmy. Michael's real intentions are revealed; he asks $5,000 from Dawn to help him get back on his feet. If she refuses, he will fight for custody of Christie. With the help of the hotel lawyer and a private detective, Dawn is able to scare Michael away. Meanwhile, Clara Sue is killed in a truck accident with another boyfriend. Laura Sue has a mental breakdown following Clara Sue's death and loses bits of her sanity. When she comes upon a magazine article that mirrors Fern's accusations, she realizes that Fern has been lying about being sexually abused. She calls Jimmy and they confront Fern about the magazine. Fern breaks down and admits that she made up the whole story, but argues that her adoptive parents were always disappointed in her and she thought Jimmy and Dawn would treat her better as they were her 'real' family. Dawn tells her that they do want to treat her better but that can only happen if Fern works on her attitude and stops stealing and lying to them. Fern promises that she will do better but Dawn wonders if she can really change. Sometime later, Dawn learns from Luther that Emily has died from heart failure. Everyone is happy to hear of her death, due to her religious obssesion and abuse. As they sit around talking, Dawn finds out that Luther was the one who got Charlotte pregnant years ago. He tells her that he had sheltered her from her father and sister after they beat and starved her, and in the process, he developed feelings for her. Since Emily didn't leave a will, Charlotte receives the plantation. The book ends with Dawn telling Jimmy that she is pregnant. |
5357407 | /m/0dh6hs | Midnight Whispers | V. C. Andrews | 1992-11 | {"/m/039vk": "Gothic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Christie Longchamp is the daughter of Dawn and Michael Sutton. Christie is a promising musician whose mother owns and operates the prestigious Cutler's Cove hotel. They live nearby with Christie's stepfather Jimmy and her nine-year-old half-brother Jefferson while her Uncle Philip, his wife Bet and their twin children, Richard and Melanie, reside in the family section of Cutler's Cove. The story commences on Christie's sixteenth birthday. A grand party is being held at the hotel for her extended family and school friends, but to Christie, the only person whose arrival matters is her stepfather's seventeen-year-old half-brother, Gavin. Fern, Jimmy's younger sister and the problem child of the family, also arrives unexpectedly, mainly to upset Dawn and Jimmy (showing she has not changed since Twilight's Child). She presents Christie with a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Christie throws it into her closet, appalled by her aunt's insinuations and promiscuousness. Despite Fern's wild and drunken behaviour, the party is a great success, and the evening concludes with Gavin confessing his love for Christie. The next day, Christie and Jefferson return home from school to find that Cutler's Cove has burned to the ground after a boiler in the basement exploded. Jimmy, who was in the basement, was trapped and Dawn tried to save him, but they both perished in the blaze. It is revealed that Philip and Bet are now their legal guardians, and they proceed to move into Christie's house to establish themselves as the new heads of the Cutler empire. Although Aunt Bet explains to Jefferson and Christie that they must all compromise and sacrifice, Christie notices that it is only she and Jefferson who are being asked to make sacrifices. Aunt Bet has all of Dawn and Jimmy's belongings removed or seized by Aunt Bet if she likes them or not. She and Christie begin habitually quarrelling after Aunt Bet picks on Jefferson for anything he lacks to be perfect in, and Richard frames him for naughty deeds just to get him in trouble. Christie pleads with her uncle to allow Jefferson and herself more freedom, but Philip sides with his wife, as he has had little willpower since Dawn's death. After some time, Laura Sue dies, which adds to Philip's deteriorating mental state.. Gradually, Christie notices her uncle is lavishing her with affection and trying to have intimate, personal conversations with her. Christie grows increasingly disturbed and worried by her uncle's behavior, especially after he gives her lingerie and she catches him watching her bathe, but it is not until her Aunt Bet finds the forgotten copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover and punishes her that her suspicions evolve into fear. Later that night, Uncle Philip, overcome by desire and fury at never having been able to possess her mother, enters Christie's room and rapes her, mixing her up with her mother as he does so. Heartbroken and confused, Christie packs a bag for her and Jefferson in the middle of the night and buys them bus tickets to New York, in search of her mysterious biological father. But her father is now a rundown, drunken singer, and in no way fits the image Christie had of him. In her disappointment, she leaves and calls the only man she still believes in, Gavin. When Gavin arrives, Christie confesses what her uncle has done, and in his fury and disgust he refuses to allow her to return home. Together they decide to hide out at 'The Meadows', the mysterious, ancestral plantation where Christie was born. Her Aunt Charlotte, a simple but sweet woman, is now the owner with her husband, Luther, and gladly they take them in. Gavin and Christie begin to explore the grounds, and gradually they learn many of the family's secrets that have remained buried inside the house, such as the fact Grandmother Cutler was raped by her father, the torture Dawn suffered at the hands of Emily when she was pregnant with Christie, and Emily used Luther as a slave for impregnanting Charlotte. Gradually, the isolation pulls them closer together, until they finally consummate their relationship, with Christie asking Gavin to take away her shame by making her love for him feel right. Then Fern and her boyfriend Monty arrive. Fern takes over the household and bullies the family, making Christie her slave as revenge for constantly being met with disapproval by Christie's parents. She has no interest in why Christie and Jefferson are hiding out at The Meadows, assuming that Christie finally got bored of being a good girl and ran away. Even when Christie tells Fern what Philip did to her, she torments Christie by saying that she must have seduced him. But when Jefferson becomes terribly ill with tetanus, Christie is forced to come out of hiding to save her brother's life, and in an instant her uncle comes to reclaim her. Fern and Monty leave immediately when Jefferson becomes ill, fearing getting into trouble. Christie is terrified of Philip, but she is so afraid for Jefferson's life that she has no choice but to return with him. Gavin tries to stay with her, but Philip forces him out and takes his niece back to their house. Locked in her room by Aunt Bet and finding her beloved Sweet 16 party dress shredded by Richard, Christie is miserable and frightened. Although she has lived in this house for almost her whole life, she no longer feels safe or at home there. Enraged by how her relatives have intimidated her, Christie tips the twins' bowls of chowder onto their laps and tells Aunt Bet what Phillip did to her. This appears to drive Aunt Bet over the edge. On the brink of insanity, Philip drives Christie and imagines the place where he took her mother years ago, and again tries to rape her while calling her Dawn the whole time. Christie manages to fight him off, and runs to her grandmother's husband, Bronson Alcott, who finally learns what Philip has done. Philip is found to be mentally ill, and is taken away. Aunt Bet can't face the shame of the public, so she and the twins move out of Christie and Jefferson’s house and go to live with her parents. The novel concludes with Jefferson's recovery. Christie and her brother live in Bronson's house and Christie is pursuing her dream of becoming a concert pianist while maintaining a long-distance relationship with Gavin. It appears that the Cutler 'curse' has finally been broken. |
5357463 | /m/0dh6mm | Ruby | V. C. Andrews | 2/1/1994 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Ruby is a young teenager who has lived her entire life with her grandmother Catherine, a traiteur (a Cajun folk healer) because her mother had died giving birth to her. They live in Houma, a small swamp village in Louisiana. Ruby is an artist and has already sold some of her paintings to a gallery in New Orleans from their roadside stand for tourists. Her grandfather Jack lives in a separate shack, having been thrown out by her grandmother when Ruby was just a baby. Ruby begins a relationship with Paul Tate, who belongs to one of Houma's richer families. Paul's parents don’t approve of the relationship and Ruby thinks that it is because she is poor. Only after Grandmere Catherine sees that the relationship is getting serious does she tell Ruby the truth - that Paul is her half brother. Ruby's mother, Gabrielle, was raped by Paul's father, Octavius, just before she graduated. In 1950s Louisiana, Gabrielle could not abort the baby legally but her father Jack blackmailed Paul's father, Octavious to take the child in order to keep it secret from the town and was forced to give it up to Gladys Tate, Octavius's wife, while her father was paid to stay silent. Sad and angry at this, Ruby does what is right and breaks up with Paul, with whom she was falling in love. Soon after, Ruby's grandmother gets sick and passes away. After her death Ruby admits the truth of their shared maternal parentage to Paul, explaining that to be the reason that she ended their budding romantic relationship. Shortly before Grandmere Catherine's death, she tells Ruby the truth about her parents: Ruby's mother become pregnant as a result of an affair with a rich Creole man named Pierre Dumas. Pierre was married, so he and Gabrielle agreed that the child would stay and live with Gabrielle in the bayou. But Grandpere Jack made a secret deal with Pierre's father to sell the child to the Dumas family for a large amount of money, while Pierre's barren wife, Daphne, would pretend to be pregnant. Grandmere Catherine knew that it was going to be twins, but she never told Jack or Gabrielle. When the time came, she gave the first baby to Grandpere Jack and kept the second baby, Ruby. When Jack saw Ruby he wanted to sell her, too, yelling that they could get twice the amount of money for two babies. At this, Catherine threw him out and told him to never come back. Exhausted by giving birth to two babies, Gabrielle survived long enough to see Ruby and name her, then died. Grandmere Catherine's only wish was for Ruby to find her real father. She had been selling Ruby's paintings in the hope that Pierre Dumas would see the signature and become curious. After Catherine's death, Ruby has no one left in the bayou now except Grandpere Jack. She overhears him making a deal with his drinking buddy Buster Trahaw that she can be his common-law wife. Terrified, Ruby runs away to New Orleans to find her father, knowing only that he lives in the Garden District. With the help of a woman she meets on the bus, Ruby finds her father's address and goes to his house. Standing at the door she meets Beau Andreas. He takes her into the house, mistaking her for her twin sister Giselle, who has grown up in the lap of luxury. Although Beau and Daphne are both taken in by the resemblance, Pierre immediately recognises that Ruby is not Giselle. After Ruby explains what has happened, he agrees that she can come and live with them. Ruby is accepted immediately by her father but not by her twin sister or stepmother, Daphne. The Dumases concoct a story that Ruby was kidnapped as a baby from the hospital. Ruby is thus brought into Creole society. Giselle, threatened by Ruby's intelligence and similarity, is extremely cruel to her and deliberately gets her in trouble, which does not improve Daphne's opinion of her. Beau Andreas is Giselle's boyfriend, but Ruby and Beau become romantically close, eventually sleeping together when Ruby sketches Beau's portrait. This drives a further wedge between Ruby and her sister. All the while Daphne is doing anything she can to get rid of Ruby because she is a constant reminder to her of Pierre's affair. Giselle gets a new boyfriend, Martin Fowler. They get into a car accident, which cripples Giselle and kills Martin. This sends Pierre into a depression. He starts drinking heavily and locks himself away in his study, gazing at a picture of Jean, his younger brother, who was brain damaged after an accident. Discovering Ruby's naked sketch of Beau, Daphne has Ruby imprisoned in a mental hospital as a nymphomaniac, but Ruby escapes with the help of an inmate, after meeting her uncle Jean. She manages to tell her father what Daphne did to her. She reassures him that Jean is not a hopeless case, but the family must stop lying. She wants to be able to tell the truth about where she came from, and tell Giselle about their real mother. Pierre agrees that they must all be more truthful with each other, but decides that it is best for the twins to go away for school in Baton Rouge in order to let the dust settle. |
5357590 | /m/0dh6_0 | To Live Again | Robert Silverberg | 1969 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book describes a world where all great scientists, economists, thinkers, builders and so on can store a "backup" of their personality (if they can afford the expensive procedure). Most of those who can afford it record their personality once every six months. These personalities can then be transplanted (upon the person's actual death) to other people, "living" alongside with the Host, providing him or her with a new insight on life, and on their field of expertise. . As the possession of extra personalities can be a mark of prestige, it has become fashionable in high society to buy and possess as many personalities as they have money for. Occasionally, the personalities of strong minded individuals can overwhelm the personalities of their hosts, resulting in the destruction of the host body's personality. |
5358718 | /m/0dh8kp | The Sleep of Reason | Martin Day | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor poses as a psychiatrist to investigate strange goings on at a mental health hospital. |
5359189 | /m/0dh969 | Psycho | Robert Bloch | 1959 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Norman Bates is a middle-aged bachelor who is dominated by his mother, a mean-tempered, puritanical old woman who forbids him to have a life away from her. They run a small motel together in the town of Fairvale but business has floundered since the state relocated the highway. In the middle of a heated argument between them, a customer arrives, a young woman named Mary Crane. Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $40,000 from a client of the real estate company where she works. She stole the money so her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, could pay off his debts and they could get married. Mary arrives at the Bates Motel after accidentally turning off the main highway. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to have dinner with him at his house—an invitation that sends Mrs. Bates into a rage; she screams, "I'll kill the bitch!", which Mary overhears. During dinner, Mary gently prods Bates about his lack of a social life and suggests that he put his mother in a mental institution, but he vehemently denies that there is anything wrong with her; "We all go a little crazy sometimes", he states. Mary says goodnight and returns to her room, resolving to return the money so she will not end up like Bates. Moments later in the shower, however, a figure resembling an old woman surprises her with a butcher knife, and beheads her. Bates, who had passed out drunk after dinner, returns to the motel and finds Mary's corpse. He is instantly convinced his mother is the murderer. He briefly considers letting her go to prison, but changes his mind after having a nightmare in which she sinks in quicksand, only to turn into him as she goes under. His mother comes to comfort him, and he decides to dispose of Mary's body and go on with life as usual. Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Lila, comes to Fairvale to tell Sam of her sister's disappearance. They are soon joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to retrieve the money. Sam and Lila agree to let Arbogast lead the search for Mary. Arbogast eventually meets up with Bates, who says that Mary had left after one night; when he asks to talk with his mother, Bates refuses. This arouses Arbogast's suspicion, and he calls Lila and tells her that he is going to try to talk to Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure who killed Mary ambushes him and kills him with a razor. Sam and Lila go to Fairvale to look for Arbogast, and meet with the town sheriff, who tells them that Mrs. Bates has been dead for years, having committed suicide by poisoning her lover and herself. The young Norman had a nervous breakdown after finding them and was sent for a time to a mental institution. Sam and Lila go the motel to investigate. Sam distracts Bates while Lila goes to get the sheriff—but she actually proceeds up to the house to investigate on her own. During a conversation with Sam, Bates says that his mother had only pretended to be dead, and had communicated with him while he was in the institution, Bates then tells Sam that Lila tricked him and went up to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then knocks Sam unconscious with a bottle. At the house, Lila is horrified to discover Mrs. Bates' mummified corpse in the fruit cellar. As she screams, a figure rushes into the room with a knife—Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam enters the room and subdues him before he can harm Lila. At the police station, Sam talks to a psychiatrist who had examined Bates, and learns that, years before, Bates had murdered his mother and her lover. Bates and his mother had lived together in a state of total codependence ever since his father's death. When his mother took a lover, Bates went over the edge with jealousy and poisoned them both, forging a suicide note in his mother's handwriting. To suppress the guilt of matricide, he developed a split personality in which his mother became an alternate self, which abused and dominated him as Mrs. Bates had done in life. He stole her corpse and preserved it and, whenever the illusion was threatened, would dress in her clothes and speak to himself in her voice. The "Mother" personality killed Mary because "she" was jealous of Norman feeling affection for another woman. Bates is found insane, and put in a mental institution for life. Days later, the "Mother" personality completely takes over Bates' mind; he literally becomes his mother. |
5359347 | /m/0dh9d6 | Strangers on a Train | null | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a psychopathic playboy who proposes an idea to "exchange murders": Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno's father; neither of them will have a motive, and the police will have no reason to suspect either of them. Guy does not take Bruno seriously, but Bruno kills Guy's wife while Guy is away in Mexico. Bruno informs Guy of his crime, but Guy hesitates to turn him in to the police. He realizes that Bruno could claim Guy's complicity in the planned exchange murders; however, the longer he remains silent, the more he implicates himself. This implicit guilt becomes stronger as in the coming months Bruno makes appearances demanding that Guy honor his part of the bargain. After Bruno starts writing anonymous letters to Guy's friends and colleagues, the pressure becomes too great, and Guy murders Bruno's father. Subsequently, Guy is consumed by guilt, whereas Bruno seeks Guy's company as if nothing had happened. He makes an uninvited appearance at Guy's wedding, causing a scene. At the same time, a private detective, who suspects Bruno of having arranged the murder of his father, establishes the connection between Bruno and Guy that began with the train ride, and suspects Bruno of Miriam's murder. Guy also becomes implicated due to his contradictions about the acquaintance with Bruno. When Bruno falls overboard during a sailing cruise, Guy identifies so strongly with Bruno that he tries to rescue him under threat to his own life. Nevertheless, Bruno drowns, and the murder investigation is closed. Guy, however, is plagued by guilt, and confesses the double murder to Miriam's former lover. This man, however, does not condemn Guy; rather, he considers the killings as appropriate punishment for the unfaithfulness. The detective who had been investigating the murders overhears Guy's confession, however, and confronts him. Guy turns himself over to the detective immediately. |
5359566 | /m/0dh9p1 | Halflife | Mark Michalowski | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Having landed on the planet of Espero, the Doctor and Fitz leave Trix in the TARDIS whilst they investigate a distress signal. As she grows bored, Trix decides to leave, but is surprised to find an amnesiac Fitz lying unconscious outside the TARDIS. They find themselves in the path of a wavefront of grey goo, and Fitz surprises Trix by being quite keen to investigate the mystery. The Doctor, meanwhile, has been befriended by Calamee, a member of the planet's ruling family. The amnesia he has been suffering from has grown worse, and he — like Fitz — has forgotten everything that has happened prior to the start of the novel. He is directed to the home of a mysterious off-worlder named Madam Xing, who restores his most recent memories and confirms that the memories lost (prior to The Burning) have been permanently deleted, rather than merely suppressed. The Doctor refuses to allow Xing to restore the memories by using a viroid unit, but does take the unit with him as he leaves. As he goes, he discovers that he is being observed via anachronistic technology. Fitz and Trix head to the city, and watch as a mob of citizens attack a "night beast" — an unknown creature that has arrived on the planet. Fitz tries to prevent the attack, but is over-powered by the mob, who kill the beast. Fortunately, they are led to safety by a woman named Farine, but Trix wanders away when she sees a young boy watching them. The boy offers her a device that will allow her to disguise herself much more effectively, changing her entire body on a genetic level. Trix takes him up on the offer, only to find that the "device" is actually an alien symbiote named Reo, who takes complete control of her body. Fitz is taken to the palace by Farine, who turns out to be Princess Sensimi of the ruling family. As they head to the cellars to visit a captured night beast, the TARDIS arrives and the Doctor and Calamee step out: the Doctor has been persuaded to warn the authorities about the wavefront. He explains that it is altering living beings on a genetic level, and manages to convince the others to join him in searching for the source of the wavefront. Finding the source, the Doctor and Fitz discover that it is a crashed living spaceship called Tain, a warship from a race called the Makers who are involved in a war with a race called the Oon. Tain had removed the Doctor and Fitz's memories of finding the ship, but because of a trojan virus in his systems he was unable to do the job properly. The trojan created the night beasts as soldiers against Tain, but he was able to interfere in their development to make them docile. Unfortunately, in his panic he activated the Gaian Wave, a self-defence mechanism that genetically alters the inhabitants of a planet so that they are all genetically part of the ship: its enemies will be unable to defeat it without destroying the entire planet. Trix and Reo find them, and as Tain agrees to sacrifice himself to save the planet, Reo transfers his consciousness into the ship. Trix collapses, her body unable to look after itself without Reo's control, and Tain manages to link with her and keep her alive. But this leaves the Doctor with a dilemma: if he carries out Tain's wishes and destroys him to save the planet, Trix will die. Fortunately, Fitz saves the day: remembering that his current body was "remembered" (Interference: Book Two) he advises Tain to do the same. Tain separates himself from the ship in a new body, and destroys Reo's consciousness inside the ship. Tain then returns his consciousness to the ship, and cures Trix. |
5359850 | /m/0dh9z1 | Emotional Chemistry | Simon A. Forward | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The TARDIS crew arrive in the Kremlin Museum, looking for a locket that may help to reveal the nature of Sabbath's plans. However, they find the museum being ransacked by two soldiers from the future. One is overpowered, and the other escapes to the future, taking the Doctor with him. In the present day, Colonel Grigoriy Bugayev (of the Russian branch of UNIT) is investigating the thefts, and suspects corrupt businessman Vladimir Garudin. He also knows of the Doctor, and thinks that his companions may be able to help him. Unfortunately, he doesn't search Trix properly, and fails to discover that she has stolen the locket the Doctor was searching for. The Doctor and the future soldier arrive in 5000 with a painting of a Russian noblewoman, which his captor insists on taking to his commander, Lord General Razum Kinzhal. Kinzhal himself has been captured by enemy forces, but manages to complete a daring escape that leaves him in the Arctic wilderness with his second-in-command, Angel, who loves him dearly. In 1812, as Alexander Vishenkov prepares to head off to face the French with his friend Captain Victor Padorin, he is given the diamond locket as a token of affection by Dusha. He loves her dearly, but is troubled by lustful feelings he has started to have for her younger sister. Dusha, meanwhile, worries about her two sisters, whom the notorious lecher Padorin seems to have set his sights on. As Trix and Fitz are escorted to Bugayev's HQ, he tells them that the collection of artefacts they were raiding seem to have a strange effect on the public; in part, they were displayed to study that effect. They are interrupted, however, when the convoy is attacked by a group of apparently possessed locals. Fitz finds himself possessed by the same force, and compelled to leave the safety on the convoy. The future soldier, meanwhile, recovers and forces Trix to aid his escape. As she drives them away from the convoy, she is surprised by a woman on horseback and crashes the vehicle. The Doctor and his soldier stumble across a bunker where a group are plotting to betray and execute Kinzhal. As the soldier grows more enraged by this, a mysterious fire breaks out from around the picture and kills everyone in the bunker. The Doctor is intrigued by this apparent pyrokinetic ability. Fitz is marched by his controlling force to the office of Victor Garudin, and then released: it is clear that Garudin himself was controlling them. He is after the Doctor's TARDIS, and fearing for his life Fitz admits that he will sell the Doctor out happily if he is rewarded suitably. Garudin shows Fitz his own personal time machine, Misl Vremnya or "Thought Time", which allows Garudin to watch history through any person's eyes. The soldier travelling with the Doctor succumbs to his injuries, but the Doctor manages to deliver the portrait to Kinzhal. He demands to know why the Lord General is stealing treasures from the past, and how the painting causes fires. Unseen by all but Angel, the Lord General's new aide tries to avoid the Doctor catching sight of her. Trix awakes to find herself on the planet Paraiso with a woman named Aphrodite, and her soldier recovering in a villa. Using the diamond necklace, Aphrodite is able to use her pool to travel back to 1812 with Trix. Once there she greets Dusha as her mother. Unknown to the two of them, Fitz and Garudin are watching the reunion through Padorin's eyes: Garudin has to leave, but allows Fitz to stay, confident that he doesn't possess the metal discipline to control a person in the past. Trix, meanwhile, tricks Aphrodite into allowing her to go back to Paraiso apparently to fetch the Doctor to help them. Instead, she intends to steal the diamond necklace that allows Aphrodite to visit her mother. Fitz is rescued by Bugayev. However, this is part of Garudin's plan, who intends to use him as a spy on the investigation. Unfortunately, Fitz ruins this plan by convincing Bugayev to rescue Garudin's secretary as well: she is happy to betray her employer, and shows the Colonel evidence that Garudin has been using "Thought Time" to control the military leaders of the age. Bugayev can now justify a full scale raid on the industrialist's headquarters. Kinzhal admits to the Doctor that the artifacts that have been collected all amplify powerful emotions because they have been in contact with Dusha. He sent his men to gather them, but cannot travel in time himself: he and Dusha are star-crossed lovers, aliens who are forbidden from seeing each other by their own people. The Doctor agrees to help create a mental bridge between the two lovers using the time travel technology, but unfortunately the device he needs has been lost in the 21st century and possibly developed in a time machine. The Doctor returns to the 21st century and is held by Bugayev, reunited with Fitz. However, once he realises that Angel, Garudin's secretary and Dusha's sister all look exactly the same, he decides to go back and visit Dusha to see what he is not being told. Unfortunately, Fitz is still under Garudin's influence, and he intends to control the Doctor as well. As Trix arrives on Paraiso, she finds her soldier and the locket missing, and assumes he must have taken it back to his time. She heads to 5000 to try to retrieve it, but unfortunately, she was mistaken: the soldier has returned to 1812 to force Aphrodite to take him home, being unable to work the controls of the time machine pool. Fortunately, the Doctor and Fitz arrive and convince Aphrodite and the soldier to return to Paraiso. Once there, they work out where Trix has gone. Aphrodite explains that Dusha and Kinzhal are two halves of the same being, exiled for breaking their society's laws and having a child. United, the creature is more like an intelligent star, which means that if they are reunited, the Earth will be destroyed by their natural form. Trix arrives too early, and ends up having to pose as Kinzhal's aide whilst she awaits what she assumes will be the return of the locket. In the meantime, the Doctor and Fitz arrive to offer a solution to the lover's separation to Kinzhal. However, he refuses, not wanting to take the risk that something will go wrong. However, at that point they are attacked and, although they defeat the attackers, Angel is mortally wounded. She offers her body to Dusha, knowing she can heal it, and the two lovers can be together without reforming as a star. Moved by her sacrifice, Kinzhal agrees. The Doctor arranges for Dusha to arrive in the future in Angel's body, and also obtains the diamond he needed to find the true nature of Sabbath's masters. The empty locket is returned to Aphrodite on Paraiso, who vows to remain there, satisfied that her parents have been reunited. As Burgayev's raid on Garudin's headquarters is successful, the industrialist commits suicide, and the time travel equipment is confiscated and destroyed. The Doctor, Fitz and Trix are free to carry on their journey and attempt to defeat Sabbath's masters. |
5359895 | /m/0dh9_2 | Gilligan's Wake | null | null | null | Each of the seven castaways narrate an autobiographical story—almost totally unrelated to the events of the show—in order of their mention in the show's title theme. Their stories intersect with a character named John "Jack" Gilbert Egan, a former Marine and CIA operative, whose own life is the meta-narrative which ties the novel together. Each chapter features an important person or object in the lives of the castaways whose name is an anagram of "Gilligan"; additionally, a character whose name is a variant of "Susan" and Maxwell House coffee appears or is referred to in each story. |
5359944 | /m/0dhb2k | Timeless | Stephen Cole | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor takes a huge risk to restore the collapsing multiverse. |
5360089 | /m/0dhb6q | The Last Resort | Paul Leonard | null | null | This story begins with Fitz and Anji working for the Good Times Inc. Company. They are working undercover for the Doctor, who is shocked to discover a company that is selling holidays in time. The climax of the story results in the destruction of billions of universes. The Doctor and Sabbath realise all time travellers must be stopped, to prevent these events from happening again. However, at the end of the book a man reveals he has a time-travel machine and proceeds to begin interfering in time once again......... |
5360165 | /m/0dhbbj | Reckless Engineering | Nick Walters | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The story is set in an alternate universe and features Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the cover is based on a famous photo of Brunel standing in front of the launching chains for the SS Great Eastern. Set during the 1840s, the Doctor and his companions arrive during the Industrial Revolution in England, and learn that an inventor has been ordered by an alien force to construct a machine known as the Utopia Engine, a machine that will cause the entire planet to rapidly age. Anybody below the age of puberty will survive, but those above it will age to death. Brunel, who has unknowingly been supplying parts for this engine, unites with the Doctor to destroy the engine after learning of the post-apocalyptic future the Doctor has foreseen. |
5360378 | /m/0dhbl4 | Time Zero | Justin Richards | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | A story arc about the Multiverse collapsing begins in this novel, ending in Timeless |
5360660 | /m/0dhbx6 | History 101 | Mags L Halliday | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Set in the Spanish Civil War, the book (Halliday's first novel) explores the construction of history and the experiences of George Orwell. The Doctor, Fitz, and Anji, after viewing Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" at the 1937 Paris exhibition, realise time has been changed. They travel back to Spain in order to uncover what affected the artist's vision of this terrible event. |
5360718 | /m/0dhbyz | The Crooked World | Steve Lyons | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor accidentally brings the concept of reality to a world based on cartoon physics. |
5360871 | /m/0dhc69 | Hope | Mark Clapham | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Doctor tries to push the TARDIS to its limit, but is forced to land when it begins to break up. They land on the surface of a frozen sea of acid on the planet Endpoint, in the distant future. When the ice begins to break up, The Doctor, Fitz and Anji, flee to the nearby city of Hope, only to see the TARDIS sink to the bottom of the sea. On the city, a policeman investigating a decapitation explains that the planet is toxic, so the humans had to evolve to survive, but recently a serial killer has been decapitating people. The policeman then tells them to go to a casino for help. When they arrive The Doctor buys entry with a apple core (which is long extinct) from his pocket. Inside the casino, a group of cyborgs, calling themselves the Brotherhood of the Silver Fist, burst in and demand that the casino's owner, Silver, speaks to them. Silver, himself a cyborg, enters and drives the brotherhood out of the casino but not before talking to The Doctor. After learning that The Doctor can time travel, he offers to recover the TARDIS if The Doctor catches the murderer, which The Doctor agrees to. While Fitz and Anji rest in the casino, The Doctor finds a used tranquilliser dart at a crime scene and deduces that the murders are part of a plan committed by a visitor to Endpoint. While Fitz tries to infiltrate the Brotherhood, Anji finds apple trees being cloned from the core. Silver explains that he was born in the 30th Century, and was enlisted into the military and given his implants to prolong his life from the birth defects he suffered. In 3006, he was sent to the future to collect technology to help in a war, but was unable to return, and became a businessman on Endpoint. The Doctor learns that the people of Endpoint produce a hormone called Kallisti, which has similar effects to adrenalin, and the killer has been taking heads to give himself a permanent supply. The Doctor uses himself as bait, and when the killer attacks him, he overpowers him, only to discover that the killer is an inbred human. Then, other humans surround The Doctor and tranquillise him. Back at the casino, Anji asks Silver if he could clone her boyfriend Dave Young. Silver agrees, but demands that Anji provides him with data from the TARDIS so he can build his own time machine, which Anji agrees to. When his staff tell him that The Doctor has disappeared, Silver explains that he fitted The Doctor with a tracer, and he locates him on the sea bed. Silver then dives down to rescue The Doctor. On sea bed, where The Doctor is being held in a bunker, the humans explain that they regard the people of Endpoint as mutants, and they believe that humans should be the dominant race, so they have been experimenting with Kallisti to improve humans. Suddenly, Silver attacks the bunker and kills the humans. Fitz contacts The Brotherhood and turns them against each other, but then the image of their cyborg Queen appears and orders Fitz's release. Fitz releases the Queen, who is actually one of Silver's staff, Miraso. She explains the The Brotherhood was created by Silver to control rebels and keep the public's faith in Silver. In the Bunker, The Doctor and Silver find technology capable of reversing the pollution. When activated, the sea turns into water, and the air becomes breathable again. Fitz discovers that Silver has mutants with silver skin hidden in his casino and goes to investigate while Anji trades the data on the TARDIS so that the clone of Dave can be made. The Doctor places Kallisti into the liquid computer of Silver's brain, allowing him to create Kallisti himself. The humans explain that their bunker has a hypertunnel, which can be used to quickly travel throughout space. Fitz tells The Doctor about Silver's mutants, and, with Miraso's help, breaks into Silver's office. Silver explains to Anji that he intends to use Dave's clone (Dave II) to give the human race some genetic variety. He explains that he plans to create a new race, Silverati, who all have the enhanced Kallisti, and are loyal to Silver. After conquering the empire, he plans to create time machines to spread his power further. The Doctor and Fitz are imprisoned after learning of Silver's plan. The Doctor gives Anji the TARDIS key and blows up the cell door with an explosive from his pocket. The Doctor turns Dave II into a Silverati disloyal to Silver. Dave II takes them to the hypertunnel and helps them fight Silver. Anji shoots Silver in the eye and he flees through the hypertunnel. The Doctor explains that he took the data on the TARDIS from him when they were fighting. Dave II reprograms the hypertunnel to leave Silver and his army stranded on a dead planet. The Doctor turns Dave II back into a human and Anji leaves him to create a new life for himself on Endpoint, before she leaves in the TARDIS. |
5360914 | /m/02p97r5 | The Scapegoat | C. J. Cherryh | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | An unarmed human starship and its crew of fifteen hundred is destroyed by a technologically less advanced alien race, later called elves by the humans because of their resemblance to the mythical creatures. Other unprovoked attacks follow. All attempts to negotiate fail; the elves fire without communicating. Eventually, the overmatched enemy is driven back to his homeworld, but the conflict does not cease. The Alliance, one of the three human power blocs, ends up mired in a twenty-year-long war. In all that time, humans get no closer to understanding why the elves fight or how to make peace. A few districts remain puzzlingly neutral, but when humans try to establish relations with one of them, it instantly joins the enemy side. In addition, not a single elf is captured alive; except for the very young, they have the ability to stop their hearts at will, and use it. Then one day, Second Lieutenant John deFranco takes a prisoner, one who deliberately allows himself to be captured. The creature speaks English, learned from a human prisoner, and calls himself the saitas. He tells deFranco he has come to try to end the war. The elf is passed along to Alliance scientists, but cannot communicate with them. He asks to speak to deFranco, a fellow soldier. As they talk, deFranco learns that the elves do not comprehend the concept of a treaty, written down on a piece of paper, and do not trust it; their way of thinking is too alien. The saitas explains that he has come to be killed, so that his death will carry away the mistakes of the war. He is willing to sign the human treaty, but the elves require a human saitas. The elf hopes that deFranco will be that one. Meanwhile, all along the front, the elves attack with the little they have left. One of deFranco's friends becomes a casualty. When deFranco realizes what the prisoner wants, he tries to leave, but the meeting place has been locked from the outside by his commanders and a grenade pointedly left inside. In the end, deFranco finds it within himself to join the saitas in completing his mission. When the recording of their deaths is broadcast, the fighting ends. An elvish delegation arrives and takes away deFranco's body for burial. The humans in turn take the elf's body to be interred on Downbelow, the Alliance world. |
5364400 | /m/0dhjpb | Soft City | Jonathan Raban | null | {"/m/014dsx": "Travel"} | Soft City records one man's attempt to plot a course through the urban labyrinth. Holding up a revealing mirror to the modern city, it is used as the locale for a demanding and expressive personal drama. Jonathan Raban’s soft city is the malleable material from which identity is formed. “It invites you to remake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in . . . Decide who you are, and the city will again assume a fixed form around you.” This soft city is the mythic city, where illusion, dream, aspiration, and nightmare are all fixed into place; it comes into focus as it is passed through and acted upon by an individual or a collective. Where is the ‘Soft City” now? – Feb 2007 Introduced by Tim Waterman Hosted by Andrew Stuck, Rethinking Cities Ltd. |
5364408 | /m/0dhjpp | Hide and Seek | Ian Rankin | 1991 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus finds the body of an overdosed drug addict in an Edinburgh squat, laid out cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, with a five-pointed star painted on the wall above. Some of his colleagues are inclined to categorise it as the routine death of a "junkie", but Rebus is perturbed by some unusual facts of the case: a full package of heroin in the dead man's room, and some mysterious bruises on his face and body. Rebus takes seriously a death which looks more like a murder every day, and he begins to investigate the true circumstances of the death. As part of his investigation, Rebus finds the young woman named Tracy who knew the dead man and heard his terrifying last words: "Hide! Hide!" It emerges that the dead man was a photographer who took and hid some sensitive photos in a specialist private members' club - Hyde's - where highly-connected people in society watch illegal boxing. Rebus is able to arrest Hyde's owner and several high profile members, but to his outrage and disgust all the prisoners die suspicious deaths: the powers-that-be are covering it up to prevent scandal. Shortly after Rankin moved to London, there was a real-life case of male prostitutes bribing lawyers and judges, similar to some parts of the book: "questions were asked in parliament" and two lawyers began to investigate the police investigation. "To everyone's surprise, this inquiry found that the allegations were false. Police officers involved in the case found themselves demoted..." |
5364744 | /m/0dhk34 | Tooth and Nail | Ian Rankin | 1992 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Rebus is drafted in by Scotland Yard to help track down a cannibalistic serial killer called the Wolfman, whose first victim was found in the East End of London's lonely Wolf Street. His London colleague, George Flight, isn't happy at what he sees as interference, and Rebus encounters racial prejudice as well as the usual dangers of trying to catch a vicious killer. When Rebus is offered a psychological profile of the Wolfman by an attractive woman, it seems too good an opportunity to miss. |
5365144 | /m/0dhk_c | Strip Jack | Ian Rankin | 1992 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | A police raid on an Edinburgh brothel captures (seemingly by accident) popular young local MP Gregor Jack. When Jack's fiery wife Elizabeth disappears, and two bodies are found, suspicion falls on a famous local actor Rab Kinnoul. Detective Inspector John Rebus is sympathetic to the MP's problems, and interviews a member of Jacks' social circle, Andrew MacMillan, who is locked up in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his own wife many years before. It becomes increasingly evident that somebody has 'set up' Jack, with the intention of stripping him of his good name, political standing and maybe even his life. |
5365942 | /m/0dhm7z | The Stranger | Chris Van Allsburg | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | One fall day, while Farmer Bailey is riding down the road in his truck, he runs over something or someone. At first, he thinks he has hit a deer, but when he gets out to see what he hit, he finds that he has accidentally run over a man. The man tries to flee but loses his balance and falls down. Farmer Bailey takes him to his house, where he and his wife, Mrs. Bailey, discover that the stranger cannot talk. The Baileys call a doctor to examine him. The doctor arrives and takes the stranger's temperature with his mercury thermometer. As the doctor holds it up to his mouth, the stranger blows on it and the mercury freezes. The doctor thinks that his thermometer is broken. Although the stranger isn't seriously hurt, he can't remember who he is or where he's from. The doctor advises the Baileys to give the stranger shelter until he's fully recuperated. They do, and he fits in well with the family and even helps about the farm. One night the stranger comes out to have dinner with the Baileys. They are having soup, and the stranger notices steam rising from his plate. He lightly blows on the bowl, and the steam drifts away. When he blows, Mrs. Bailey feels a draft. Mr. Bailey enjoys having the stranger as his guest, but he also notices how peculiar the weather has been. The stranger goes for a walk in the forest and notices some rabbits and hares. They would usually flee from humans, but they walk toward the stranger. It still feels like summer on Mr. Bailey's farm, and the summer warmth makes his pumpkins grow bigger than normal. The stranger too notices this. He wonders why the trees on the Bailey farm are still green while all the other trees on the other farms are red and orange. One day, however, the stranger blows on a green leaf. When it turns orange, he realizes it's time for him to leave the Baileys. On his last evening at the house, the stranger gets hugs from all the Baileys before he leaves. They come outside to wave goodbye to their friend, but he's disappeared. With the stranger's departure, fall has come to the Bailey's farm, and the trees are now all red and orange. Etched in frost of the farmhouse windows is the old phrase, "See you next fall." |
5366420 | /m/0dhmw1 | Mortal Causes | Ian Rankin | 1994 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Set during the Edinburgh Festival, this novel starts with a brutally executed corpse being discovered in Mary King's Close, an ancient subterranean street. The body has a tattoo identified with "Sword and Shield", a long-thought-defunct Scottish Nationalist group with links to sectarianism in Northern Ireland. The victim turns out to be the son of notorious gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and the plot moves towards the unthinkable prospect of a terrorist atrocity in a tourist-filled Edinburgh. |
5367876 | /m/0dhr5g | Let it Bleed | Ian Rankin | 1996 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus and Frank Lauderdale start the book with a car chase across Edinburgh, culminating with the two youths they are chasing throwing themselves off the Forth Road Bridge and in Rebus being injured in a car crash. Rebus' upset over this allows Rankin to show the character in a new light, revealing his isolation and potentially suicidal despair. After the unconnected suicide of a terminally ill con, Rebus pursues an investigation that implicates respected people at the highest levels of government, and due to the politically sensitive nature of what he is doing, faces losing his job, or worse. He is supported by his daughter Sammy, allowing their distant relationship to be built upon. The title refers to the Rolling Stones album Let it Bleed. |
5369028 | /m/0dhspn | Involuntary Witness | Gianrico Carofiglio | 2002 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | At the beginning of the novel, Italian lawyer Guido Guerrieri splits from his wife and somewhat loses track of his life. He moves into a flat where he knows no one, drinks a bit, and generally doesn't take very good care of himself. Then he gets involved in a controversial trial. Abdou Thiam, a Senegalese immigrant who sells fake handbags on the beaches of Bari has been accused of the kidnap and murder of a young Italian boy. A witness claims he saw him in the area, though Thiam, who has been seen several times in the company of the boy, denies it. When searched, Thiam is found to have possession of a photograph of the boy, though he claims they were good friends, and that the boy gave it to him. Thiam is arrested for the crime and bound over for trial. A friend of Thiam approaches Guido Guerrieri and asks him if he will represent the African, and he accepts. Initially Guido wants to opt for the shortened procedure, whereby the prosecution evidence is shown only to a judge, with no questioning or trial. The result will be a certain conviction, though a reduced sentence for opting for the abbreviated, less time-consuming procedure. Thiam protests his innocence, and initially gives up hope, before a suicide attempt in his cell. A short or long sentence, either will be the end of him for the crime of killing a child. So, Guido is open to the possibility of the longer process, with witnesses and a jury. The sentence will be permanent, but there is at least a chance of acquittal, even though it is very slim. Thiam agrees, and the trial begins. it:Testimone inconsapevole pl:Świadek mimo woli (powieść) |
5369370 | /m/0dht1n | Black and Blue | Ian Rankin | 1997 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus is working on four cases at once trying to catch a killer he suspects of being the infamous Bible John. He has to do it while under an internal inquiry led by a man he has accused of taking bribes from Glasgow's "Mr Big". TV journalists are meanwhile investigating Rebus over a miscarriage of justice. Rebus travels between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and then on to Shetland and the North Sea. |
5369692 | /m/0dhthv | The Hanging Garden | Ian Rankin | 1998 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus is investigating a suspected war criminal. Rebus helps a traumatised Bosnian prostitute and tries to intercede in a territory war between upstart gangster Tommy Telford and 'Big Ger' Cafferty's established gang. Telford is known to have close links with Newcastle gangster named Tarawicz -"Mr Pink Eyes"- a Chechen people-smuggler. Rebus' daughter Sammy is knocked down in what looks like a deliberate hit-and-run. A Japanese gangster is killed by someone trying to frame Rebus, using his Saab car. |
5369993 | /m/0dhtzv | Dead Souls | Ian Rankin | 1999 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | While investigating a poisoner at Edinburgh Zoo, Detective Inspector John Rebus sees a known paedophile photographing children. After a chase ending in the sea lion enclosure, Rebus decides to 'out' the man, in spite of assurances that he is trying to reform. As a campaign against the man starts, Rebus hears that the son of an ex-girlfriend has gone missing and starts investigating his disappearance from a nightclub with a mysterious blonde. A convicted killer comes back from the U.S. having served his time in prison, with an agenda he wants to pursue. Rankin incorporated the novella Death Is Not the End as the missing person plot-line of this novel. |
5370670 | /m/0dhvsm | Set in Darkness: An Inspector Rebus Novel | Ian Rankin | 2000 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The Scottish Parliament is about to reopen in Edinburgh after 300 years. Detective Inspector John Rebus is in charge of liaison, as the new parliament is in his patch. While on a tour of Queensberry House, which is to be incorporated into the new Parliament, a fireplace where legend has it a youth was burned to death is opened up and another, more recent murder victim is found. Then, a prospective MSP called Roddy Grieve is found murdered, and Rebus is expected to find instant answers. The title comes from the poem "The Old Astronomer to his pupil" by Sarah Williams. |
5370904 | /m/0dhw23 | Resurrection Men | Ian Rankin | 2001 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus is thrown off a murder inquiry, just days after the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, for throwing a cup of tea at DCS Gill Templer. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - this is his 'Last Chance Saloon'. He is put with a team of officers in similar circumstances and together they are given an unsolved case to work on. This turns out to be one in which many of the team are already involved, and they all have their own secrets that they wish to keep hidden. Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for Edinburgh gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty, and newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke, while working the case of the murdered art dealer, is brought closer to Cafferty than she ever expected. As always the cases are all linked and Rebus must use his trusted friends to uncover the truth before the truth uncovers him. The title is a reference to the body-snatchers of the 19th century, who were known as 'resurrectionists' or 'resurrection men'. sv:Botgörarna (roman) |
5371299 | /m/0dhwnk | A Question of Blood: An Inspector Rebus Novel | Ian Rankin | 2003 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | At a private school two teenagers are killed by an ex-Army loner who then turns the gun on himself. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, 'There's no mystery...except the why'. In searching for these answers, Rebus finds himself drawn into a shattered community and a link with his own past. He becomes fascinated with the killer who had friends and enemies aplenty, from politicians to goths, and who left behind a web of secrets and lies. Meanwhile, Rebus faces his own trials: DS Siobhan Clarke has been stalked by a petty criminal who is found burnt to death in his own home and Rebus is fresh out of hospital with his hands heavily bandaged. sv:Blodsband (roman) |
5371971 | /m/0dhxgt | Mad Dogs and Englishmen | Paul Magrs | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | A race of alien poodles alters a 20th century fantasy epic to aid their civil war. The Doctor infiltrates a groups of writers known as the Smudgelings, Anji experiences some very, very special effects in 1970s America and Fitz meets an old friend. The book also features a jolly hotel chef and dogs with opposable thumbs. |
5375460 | /m/0dj0lv | The Falls | Ian Rankin | 2001 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | A student vanishes in Edinburgh, and her wealthy family of bankers ensure Detective Inspector John Rebus is under pressure to find her. A carved wooden doll in a coffin found near her East Lothian home leads Rebus to an Internet role-playing game that she was involved in. DC Siobhan Clarke tackles the virtual quizmaster, and thus risks the same fate as the missing girl. "You okay, John?" Curt reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. Rebus shook his head slowly, eyes squeezed shut. Curt didn't make it out the first time, so Rebus had to repeat what he said next: "I don't believe in heaven." That was the horror of it. This life was the only one you got. No redemption afterwards, no chance of wiping the slate clean and starting over. Rebus said "There is no justice in the world." "You'd know more about that than I would", Curt replied. sv:Fallen (roman) |
5375672 | /m/0dj0xy | Fleshmarket Close | Ian Rankin | 2004 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Detective Inspector John Rebus has no desk to work from, as a hint from his superiors that he should consider retirement, but he and his protegee Siobhan Clarke are still investigating some seemingly unconnected cases. The sister of a dead rape victim is missing; skeletons turn up embedded in a concrete floor; a Kurdish journalist is brutally murdered; and the son of a Glasgow gangster has moved into the Edinburgh vice scene. The book uses two new settings: a sink estate divided between racist thugs and refugees (based on Wester Hailes), and a small town whose economy is dominated by an internment camp for asylum seekers (based on Dungavel). it:Indagini incrociate sv:Adress Fleshmarket Close |
5375711 | /m/0dj0_b | The Naming of the Dead | Ian Rankin | 2006 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | An underlying thread throughout the book is that of familial relationships; the book opens with Detective Inspector John Rebus attending the funeral of his brother Michael, who has died suddenly from a stroke. The parents of Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke arrive in Edinburgh as part of the protests, demonstrations, and scuffles that surrounded the G8 summit at Gleneagles, keeping the police busy. Clarke defied her parents by becoming a police officer; she now wants to feel like a daughter. Rebus is nearing retirement ("nobody would blame you for coasting"), and becomes sidelined until the apparent suicide of MP Ben Webster occurs at a high-level meeting in Edinburgh Castle. It emerges that Webster was campaigning against the arms trade, and Richard Pennen of Pennen Industries, a dealer in weapons technology, comes under suspicion. At the same time, a serial killer seems to be killing former offenders, helped by a website set up by the family of a victim. Clues have been deliberately left at Clootie Well (duplicated from the Black Isle to Auchterarder for the purposes of the plot), a place where items of clothing are traditionally left for luck. Siobhan Clarke is placed in charge of the investigation, although she is outranked by Rebus, and finds herself having to compromise with Edinburgh gangster Morris Cafferty (for whom one of the victims was working as a bouncer) in hunting down the identity of the riot policeman who apparently assaulted her mother at a demonstration. Cafferty is also getting older, though his insecurity is balanced somewhat by his having had a biography ghost-written by local journalist Mairie Henderson. She is enlisted by Rebus and Clarke to help solve the crimes. The new Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police, James Corbyn, is keen to put any potential controversy from the investigation of these sordid crimes on hold until the focus of the world's media has moved on. He puts Rebus and Clarke under suspension when they disobey him and they need to rely on Ellen Wylie for help. David Steelforth, the London-based Special Branch (SO12) Commander who is overseeing the policing of the G8 summit, seems to be holding back Rebus' work at every turn. Rebus and Clarke blow the cover of one of his agents who is photographing demonstrators. Former preacher Councillor Gareth Tench seems to Rebus to be involved due to his apparent closeness to one of the suspects, Niddrie thug Keith Carberry. The book is set in real time; within it, some real events occur, such as the 7/7 London bombings, the 2012 Olympic bid and George W. Bush falling off his bicycle whilst waving at police officers: " 'Did we just do that?' Siobhan asked quietly." The title refers to: the ceremony Clarke's ageing left-wing parents attend, where the names of a sampling of the dead from the Iraq War are read out; the list of victims created by Rebus and Clarke as they try to unravel the crime; and also to John Rebus' evocation of grief in naming the many of his own friends and family who have died in the course of his life. By the end of the book, Clarke realises that she has grown closer than ever to understanding Rebus: "It's not enough, is it?" she repeated. "Just...symbolic...because there's nothing else you can do." "What are you talking about?" he asked, with a smile. "The naming of the dead," she told him, resting her head against his shoulder. (p410) She increasingly fears that she is becoming more like him: "obsessed and sidelined, thrawn and distrusted. Rebus had lost family and friends. When he went out drinking, he did so on his own, standing quietly at the bar, facing the row of optics." |
5375984 | /m/0dj1b0 | Commentariolus | null | null | null | Copernicus offered seven postulates: #Celestial bodies do not all revolve around a single point #The centre of Earth is the centre of the lunar sphere—the orbit of the moon around the Earth #All the spheres rotate around the Sun, which is near the centre of the Universe #The distance between the Earth and the Sun is an insignificant fraction of the distance from the Earth and Sun to the stars, so parallax is not observed in the stars #The stars are immovable; their apparent daily motion is caused by the daily rotation of the Earth #Earth is moved in a sphere around the Sun, causing the apparent annual migration of the Sun; the Earth has more than one motion #Earth's orbital motion around the Sun causes the seeming reverse in direction of the motions of the planets. |
5378763 | /m/0dj6b3 | The Hiding Place | Corrie ten Boom | 1971-11 | {"/m/0xdf": "Autobiography", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | The book opens in 1937, with the ten Boom family celebrating the 100th anniversary of the family watch and watch repair business, now run by the family's elderly father, Casper. The business took up the ground floor of the family home (known as the Beje). Casper lived with his unmarried daughters Corrie (the narrator and a watchmaker herself) and Betsie, who took care of the house. It seemed as if everyone in the Dutch town of Haarlem had shown up to the party, including Corrie's sister Nollie, her brother, Willem, and her nephews Peter and Kik. Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church brought a Jewish man, who had just escaped from Germany, as a guest. The man's beard had been burned off by some thugs, a grim reminder of what was happening just to the east of Holland. In the next few chapters, Corrie talks about her childhood, her infirm but glad-hearted mother, and the three aunts who once lived in the Beje. She talks about the only man she ever loved, a young man named Karel, who ultimately married a woman from a rich family. Eventually, both Nollie and Willem married. After the deaths of Corrie's mother and aunts, Corrie, Betsie, and their father settled down into a pleasant, domestic life. Then, in 1940, the Nazis invaded Holland. Due to the family's strong Christian beliefs, they felt obligated to help their Jewish friends in every way possible. The Beje soon became the center for a major anti-Nazi operation. Corrie, who had grown to think of herself as a middle-aged spinster, finds herself involved in black market operations, stealing ration cards, and eventually, hiding Jews in her own home. Corrie suffered a moral crisis over this work; not from helping the Jews, but from what she had to do to accomplish this: lying (even though she didn't want to), theft, forgery, bribery, and even arranging a robbery. The Dutch underground arranged for a secret room to be built in the Beje, so the Jews would have a place to hide in the event of the inevitable raid. It was a constant struggle for Corrie to keep the Jews safe; she sacrificed her own safety and part of her own personal room to give constant safety to the Jews. Rolf, a police officer friend, trained her to be able to think clearly anytime in case the Nazis invaded her home and started to question her. When a man asked Corrie to help his wife, who had been arrested, Corrie agreed, but with misgivings. As it turned out, the man was a spy, and the watch shop was raided. The entire ten Boom family was arrested, along with the shop employees, though the Jews managed to hide themselves in the secret room. Casper was well into his eighties by this time, and a Nazi official offered to let him go, provided he made no more trouble. Casper does not agree to this, and was shipped to prison. It was later learned he had died ten days later. Corrie is sent to Scheveningen, a Dutch prison which was used by the Nazis for political prisoners, nicknamed 'Oranjehotel'--a hotel for people loyal to the House of Orange. She later learns that her sister is being held in another cell, and that, aside from her father, all other family members and friends had been released. A coded letter from Nollie revealed that the hidden Jews were safe. Corrie befriends a depressed Nazi officer, who arranges a brief meeting with her family, under the pretense of reading Casper's will. She was horrified to see how ill Willem was, as he had contracted jaundice in prison. He would eventually die from his illness in 1946. Corrie also learned that her nephew, Kik, had been captured while working with the Dutch underground. He had been killed, though the family did not learn of this until 1953. After four months at Scheveningen, Corrie and Betsie were transferred to Vught, a Dutch concentration camp for political prisoners. Corrie was assigned to a factory that made radios for aircraft. The work was not hard, and the prisoner-foreman, Mr. Moorman, was kind. Betsie, whose health was starting to fail, was sent to work sewing prison uniforms. When a counter-offensive against the Nazis seemed imminent, the prisoners were shipped by train to Germany, where they were imprisoned at Ravensbrück, a notorious women's concentration camp. The conditions there were hellish; both Corrie and Betsie were forced to perform back-breaking manual labor. It was there that Betsie's health started failing. Throughout the ordeal, Corrie was amazed at her sister's faith. In every camp, the sisters used a hidden Bible to teach their fellow prisoners about Jesus. In Ravensbrück, where there was only hatred and misery, Corrie found it hard to look to Heaven. Betsie, however, showed a universal love for everyone. Not only for the prisoners, but, amazingly for the Nazis. Instead of feeling anger, she pitied the Germans, sorrowful that they were so blinded by hatred. She yearned to show them the love of Christ, but died before the war was over. Corrie was later released, due to what later proved a clerical error. Though she was forced to stay in a hospital barracks while recovering from edema, Corrie arrived back in Holland by January 1945. |
5380713 | /m/0dj8xv | The Ultimate Evil | Wally K. Daly | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Sixth Doctor's TARDIS is working perfectly, leaving him with nothing to do. When Peri suggests a holiday, the Doctor decides to visit the peaceful country of Tranquela. But an evil arms dealer, the Dwarf Mordant has been busy fomenting hatred there, so they will break a truce with their enemy, the people of the continent of Ameliora. But when even the Doctor becomes affected, can anything stop Mordant's plans? |
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