Id
stringlengths 3
44
| Code
stringlengths 7
10
⌀ | Title
stringlengths 1
220
⌀ | Author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | Data
stringlengths 3
10
⌀ | Genres
stringlengths 20
352
⌀ | Summary
stringlengths 11
32.8k
⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5537096 | /m/0drggp | Strike Zone | Peter David | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In this book a race of aliens who have fought with the Klingons for centuries, called the Kreel, find a large stash of advanced weapons hidden on a strange planet on the Kreel-Klingon border. They are established as scavengers. They had, in the continuity of the novel, plundered the destroyed colony that was Worf's childhood home. |
5537342 | /m/0drgw0 | Stalking the Unicorn | Mike Resnick | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Mallory, a private investigator from New York, spends New Year’s Eve in his office, with a bottle of whisky, and in a terrible mood. His business partner left for California with Mallory’s wife, having also blackmailed some of their clients. Since the infuriated victims head for the detective’s office, it seems that the night will end up tragically; yet, the plot suddenly takes an unexpected turn as in the room appears a strange creature, an elf called Mürgenstürm. Mürgenstürm, who comes from an alternative world, is in equally serious trouble. He was obliged to guard a valuable animal, the unicorn called Larkspur. He neglected his duty and the unicorn was stolen. Now, the elf’s life is in danger, so he wants to take advantage of Mallory’s service. As he has no other way out of trouble the detective decides to follow Mürgenstürm, and to search for the stolen animal. They enter the alternative New York through the gate in the basement of the very building where Mallory has his office. When the detective examines the scene of the crime, he encounters the eye-witness, a cat-girl Felina, who, despite her cat-like personality, will become Mallory’s loyal partner. She reveals that the culprit is a leprechaun, Gillespie, working for a perilous and powerful demon Grundy that is responsible for spreading evil in both New Yorks. At the same time, the Grundy finds out about Mallory’s investigation and tries to dissuade him from taking further steps. Nevertheless, Mallory does not abandon the investigation and in search of information about the unicorn visits various places in the alternative New York, such as the Museum of Natural History, full of dead yet regularly reviving animals, and Central Park, occupied by wholesalers offering completely useless goods. On his way Mallory meets Eohippus, a six-inch tall horse that helps him find the expert on unicorns, a former huntress still craving for adventure, Colonel Winifred Carruthers. Unlike Mürgenstürm, who gradually turns out to be more an accomplice in the crime than the victim, Carruthers and Eohippus are valuable allies. Due to Colonel, Mallory comes into contact with a magician, The Great Mephisto, and finds out the motives for the crime. In the unicorn’s head there is a ruby that would enable the Grundy to move freely between the two worlds and gain more power than he has ever had. After a long search Mallory reaches Gillespie’s flat on the 13th floor of a cheap hotel only to find out that the leprechaun ran away, the unicorn is already dead, and the gate between the two cities begins to close. In the meantime, Mallory’s partners, Colonel and Eohippus, are caught by Gillespie. Soon after that the detective receives an invitation to the auction at which the precious ruby is to be sold. The Grundy appears there too, and he seems to have all the cards. Yet, it turns out that Mallory, with the help of Felina, has already found and hidden the jewel, which gives him an advantage over the enemy. Grundy sets Mallory’s friends free and agrees to wait until the detective delivers the ruby. Mallory, who has no intention of letting the Grundy wreak havoc in both worlds, has the jewel transported to "his" New York just before the passage between the two worlds closes. Then he meets the Grundy only to inform him about it. Since the demon cannot be sure whether Mallory tells the truth he does not dare to kill the detective, but promises to have his revenge in the future. Mallory is content to stay in the alternative New York, where his work makes more sense. He is determined to continue his struggle against evil having the noble Colonel and of the mysterious Felina at his side. |
5538452 | /m/0drjdf | Charlotte Gray | Sebastian Faulks | 1999-02 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In 1942, a young Scot, Charlotte Gray, travels to London to take a job as a medical receptionist for a Harley Street doctor. On the train she talks to two men sharing her compartment, and one of them - who works for the secret service - gives her his card. Despite the war, social life in London is in full swing and the attractive, intelligent girl soon meets up with an airman, Peter Gregory. The temporary nature of life at the time is epitomised when she quickly loses her virginity and then her heart to him. The romance is heightened when Gregory is sent on a mission over France and news comes back to Charlotte that he is missing In action. Charlotte spent much of her childhood in France and speaks the language fluently - a talent that the secret service wishes to exploit in its effort to support the French Resistance. Charlotte decides to throw in her job - which she has no talent for anyway as the doctor informs her - and joins a Special Operations Executive (SOE)* training course. Once it has grilled her on methods of interrogation, dyed her hair a mousy brown and replaced her fillings, Charlotte is parachuted into France to complete a specified mission. But instead of doing her job and heading home, she sets out to find Gregory's whereabouts. When he speaks of fidelity and conflicting passions, he is not just referring to Charlotte's love of her missing man but of the Occupation by the Nazis that turned Frenchmen against each other as well as against Jews. |
5539996 | /m/0drljg | Bull Run | Paul Fleischman | null | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel is a collection of monologues by sixteen fictional characters and one real one, eight Northern and eight Southern, black and white, male and female, describing their personal experiences in the First Battle of Bull Run of the American Civil War in 1861. Issues such as race, gender, and economic, social, and regional tensions are depicted throughout the novel. This book gives a clear vision of what went on in the civil war from medical tents to bodies on the battlefield. |
5540595 | /m/0drmdy | Dragons of Ice | null | null | {"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"} | In Dragons of Ice, after leaving Thorbardin, the player characters head south into the polar regions, journeying along the glaciers in search of Icewall Castle. The characters encounter Ice Folk, ice-skate boats, and the Walrus-Men. Characters begin play at the ancient port city of Tarsis in the world of Krynn. After an attack by the Dragonarmies on Tarsis, the party is driven south to Icewall Castle, which is home to a white dragon and one of the legendary Dragon Orbs. After the Cataclysm, the seas receded from the port city Tarsis, so instead of finding a port the characters have found a land locked city 40 miles inland. The adventure series version of Dragons of Winter Night, book two of the Dragonlance saga, will follow part of the party from the first book, Dragons of Autumn Twilight. Returning playable characters available are Sturm Brightblade, Flint Fireforge and Tasslehoff Burrfoot and Gilthanas. Laurana and Elistan, previously appearing NPC's, are now also playable as characters. Additionally two Knights of Solamnia, Aaron Tallbow and Derek Crownguard, are available for players if required. Aaron will appear as an NPC with the party if he is not used by a player. The other characters from the first book leave from Tarsis in a different direction at the beginning of DL10 Dragons of Dreams. Chapter 1: The Fall of Tarsis Chapter 2: The Ice Reaches Chapter 3: The Ice Folk Chapter 4: Icewall Castle Chapter 5: Icemountain Bay Epilogue |
5540997 | /m/0drn1s | Ravager of Time | null | null | null | In Ravager of Time, the player characters are hired to search a fenland for a lord's son who slew his father, but the character become entangled in the plot of the evil that taints Eylea. The Lord Temporal Rughlor returned from the wider world to settle at Ffenargh Manor, Lorge, with a radiant young wife, Nuala. However, her beauty hid a will for evil and a hunger for the forgotten lore of an ancient wizard buried below Lorge. Rughlor discovered his wife’s evil and destroyed her and himself, and Lorge was abandoned. But Nuala’s treacherous beauty, even as a distorted tale, fascinated another scion of Ffenargh Manor, Miles D’Arcy, who, with the aid of a thief and one of Eylea’s strange relics, found and resurrected the sorceress. He completed her last terrible spell, causing his own doom, and embroiled a group of powerful adventurers in Nuala’s plot to gain allies for her bid for power in the Ffenargh. Nuala now plans to use these adventurers and her own new powers to overthrow the creaky clerical hierarchy of Eylea and rule the Ffenargh. The adventure includes statistics for new monsters, the slime golem, and the life-bane duplicates. |
5542108 | /m/0drpmv | Blackrock | Nick Enright | null | null | Blackrock was set in a fictional Australian beach side working-class suburb called Blackrock, where surfing was popular among youths like Jared. He had his first serious girlfriend, Rachel, who came from a much wealthier part of the city. One day Ricko, the local surfing legend, came back after an eleven-month odyssey, and Jared gave him a 'welcome home' get together. A few nights later it was Rachel's brother Toby's birthday party which was held at the local beach club.Unsupervised and with alcohol freely available, tragedy soon arrived - Jared witnessed a girl called Tracy being raped by three youths (Davo; Scott; and Toby, Rachel's brother). After which she was murdered by Ricko with a rock. And Jared did nothing to stop the attacks. Ricko and the community would soon be scrutinized by news bulletins across the nation. The locals reacted differently: The surfers continued their lives as if nothing had happened. Cherie, who also happened to be Jared's cousin, resorted to violent behaviours; Rachel had to face the news that her brother Toby was one of the accused. Jared was torn between the need to reveal what he saw for the sake of justice, and the desire to protect Ricko, Toby and the other rapists in the name of 'mateship'. His silence eventually led to the breakdown of his relationships, not only with Rachel, but also with his mother Diane, who was recovering from breast cancer. |
5542129 | /m/0drpnj | Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition | Sion Sono | 4/3/2002 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/07s9rl0": "Drama", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia"} | Suicide Circle: The Complete Edition tells in four different chapters the story behind a fictional mass suicide that takes place on the Shinjuku Station in 2002, on which 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a train. This event unleashes in Japan—and soon after, in the world—a chain of suicides that seems endless. Police officers try to stop it and understand why this is happening, and after several events they find a connection between the suicides and a website that belongs to a mysterious organization called Family Circle. Through this website, Family Circle enrolls young people and incite them to run away from home to serve the Circle "family rentals", a service that the organization provides to families who lost relatives to suicide. Parallel to this, alongside the police's quest, the book also follows the story of one of Family Circle's new members that witnessed the mass suicide, Noriko Shimabara, and how her own family slowly falls apart to the suicide wave, while her father tries to "rescue" her from the Circle. In the end, all the pieces come together as the true meaning behind the website is revealed. |
5542375 | /m/0drq3x | Betsey Brown | Ntozake Shange | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Betsey Brown begins with Betsey looking out over her neighborhood in St. Louis in 1959. She will go to her predominately African-American school and win a prize for her recitation of a poem. Later in the novel, she will switch schools as part of an effort to integrate the city's schools. Betsey has an identity crisis and runs away to the local hair dresser's. When she returns her mother and father fight and Betsey's mom leaves the home. During her mother's hiatus, a new caretaker comes into the Brown home and brings order with her. After some time, Betsey's mother returns home. Betsey's mother does not like the new caretaker. The caretaker does not show up for work one day because she was put in jail. Betsey grows up and takes over for the caretaker. First of all, Betsey's parents are wealthy members of the middle class. They do not live in a poor district. The father, Greer, works as a doctor and the mother, Jane, is a professional social worker. They live in a house which belonged to white people. Even though they are rich, they are still discriminated in the society and have to fight for equality. Greer is an activist who is not afraid of taking action and expressing his views. He participates in a demonstration and, against his wife's will, takes his children with him. This event proves that, despite his superb education and a respected job, he was not equal with white people. The thing which made him inferior was just the color of his skin. Betsey Brown was written in 1985, but it is set in 1959. Through this retrospective method of writing, Shange incorporated many crucial facts. The 1950s were very important as a result of radical changes in the legal system and in society. One of the most essential events, which is mentioned in the novel and which caused a huge outcry among not only African- Americans but many white Americans as well, was the true story of the lynching of a young black boy Emmet Till in 1955. His name is mentioned in the scene, in which children are supposed to go to a mixed school after the desegregation act was introduced in 1954. On the one hand, this act changed a lot in the legal system, but it did not change the mentality of many white people, for whom mixing black children with their white peers was still outrageous. African-American children were really afraid of being abused or treated unequally. The case of Emmet Till was the most horrible example of the dangers which might have been caused by white people. This constant fear was very legitimate because besides Emmet there were more than 2,000 families murdered and lynched over the years by whites in America. Betsey belongs to those black pupils, who were the first to go to the same schools as white children. She was afraid of this new situation, but after the first day at a new school, she noticed an essential thing which changed her attitude towards other people: namely that without being together, playing together and studying together, the word “equality” was meaningless. Before the act from 1954, there was a ubiquitous rule of being “separate but equal”, which meant that black and white communities could never get to know each other. Jane, Betsey's mother, teaches her children to have a positive attitude towards others, regardless of skin color or social status. She says that bad people are everywhere, even among African-Americans. This lesson shows Jane's children that everybody is the same and that the invisible boundaries between races and classes should be destroyed. Another thing described in this complex book is the reversal of the roles ascribed to particular members of the family. Jane stands for those women who, in the 1950s, started to change the stereotype connected with their gender roles. It was believed that women should stay at home, raise children, clean, cook, and be financially dependent on men. In this novel, Jane is presented as a self-confident woman, who has got her own career and who is not a servant for her husband, but his equal partner. She can afford to employ a nurse for her children, so she is not obliged to look after house and her offspring. She has got enough time for pleasures and thinking about herself. This new model of a woman represents the social change in the society and the new approach towards womanhood. What is more, this family is a perfect example of showing different attitudes of people at different ages toward those social changes. This family is like a microcosm, in which everybody stands for a particular approach. It is an extended family in which grandma's behavior is contrasted with the lifestyles of her daughter and son-in-law. Vida represents an older generation for whom equality was only a dream. She remembered the oppression and visible hatred of white Americans toward African-Americans. Her life taught her that it was extremely dangerous to stand out or to oppose the system controlled by white people. That is why Vida cannot accept Greer's traditionalism and persistence in fighting for a better future. Nobody can blame Vida for her conformism and surveillance. The situation in the 1950s must have surprised many people from her generation, who would not even dare to think that an anti-discriminatory act would be introduced during their lifetimes. Greer represents activists who later created the Black is beautiful movement and who openly admitted their pride of their heritage and traditions. He strongly believes in the purpose of this fight and the importance of those historical events he participates in because he realizes that his children will live totally different lives than his. |
5546479 | /m/0dry30 | Or Die Trying | Sean Williams | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | Following the events of Force Heretic II: Refugee, Jedi Knight Jaina Solo investigates the origins of the Human Replica Droid Bakuran Prime Minister Cundertol had infused his essence into. Her investigation leads her to the droid manufacturer ODT's headquarters on Onadax, in the Minos Cluster. There, she confronts Stanton Rendar (head of the factory and the brother of the infamous smuggler Dash Rendar) concerning the morality of granting immortality to sentients through droids and attempts to persuade him to surrender himself to the Galactic Alliance. However, Stanton and his associates unleash their droids on Jaina, creating a diversion which allows them to escape. The story ends with Jaina feeling bitter over the failure of the mission. |
5546772 | /m/0drynf | Q and A | Vikas Swarup | 2005 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Narrated in the first person, the novel follows the life of Ram Mohammad Thomas, an orphaned, uneducated young waiter. Prior to the start of the novel, Ram has correctly answered 12 questions on the fictional game show Who Will Win a Billion? (or W3B), and has won Rs. one billion (about $22 million). However, show host Prem Kumar and the producers, who do not have the money to pay him, have had the police arrest him for cheating; they had cast Ram because they figured an uneducated street child would not be able to answer more than a few questions at most, and they find the police more than willing to believe them. Ram explains to his sympathetic lawyer, Smita Shah, (who has rescued him from being tortured), just how he managed to answer twelve random questions: they related to real events that occurred in his life, with each question prompting its own flashback. As he says, "Well, wasn't I lucky they only asked those questions to which I knew the answers?". Ram goes on to tell her how by drawing from the experiences of his own short, yet turbulent and sometimes cruel life, he, a young, poor waiter, answered the twelve questions that led him to the jackpot. Through this device, the novel moves between Mumbai, Delhi and Agra (non-chronologically) as it highlights Ram's bizarre experiences, from his original upbringing by an English-speaking priest to his various jobs, which include working as house help for an aging Bollywood actress, in a foundry, an Australian diplomat who turns out to be in a spy ring, as a tourist guide in Agra and a waiter in a bar at Mumbai. His best friend is another young orphan named Salim, who plays a part in some of these adventures and dreams of becoming an actor, as it was foretold by a palmist at a fair. Ram was told by the same palmist that he would not live a very long life, but he doesn't believe in foretelling the future and dismisses it. Salim later becomes an actor after saving a Bollywood producer from assassination from a professional hitman. However, the key events of Ram's life come when he works as a tour guide at the Taj Mahal, which is when he meets a young prostitute named Nita. He falls in love with her and asks her pimp to let her marry him, but the pimp refuses. Meanwhile, Ram's friend Shankar is dying of rabies. He needs 400,000 rupees to buy a vaccination, and Nita's pimp demands the same amount. Shankar dies, and Ram steals the money from Shankar's uncaring mother. After learning that the pimp (who is also Nita's brother) will continue to demand even more money, he instead gives it to an English teacher whose son needs the rabies vaccine. The teacher later helps answer Ram's question about William Shakespeare when Ram uses his Friendly Tip Lifeboat. Ram tells his lawyer that he went on the show partly in a quest to win enough money to buy Nita's freedom from her pimp, and partly in a bid to get even with the show's host, Prem Kumar, who abused and exploited Nita, resulting in her being placed under intensive care in hospital. Prem also exploited the late Neelima Kumari, a former Bollywood actress and Ram's former employer. Ram had planned to kill him when he went for a bathroom break (show rules dictate that the contestant must be followed everywhere by the host so they cannot cheat). However, Ram decides against it and, in gratitude, Kumar tells him the answer of the last question, which was the only answer he might have not have answered correctly. |
5548191 | /m/0dr_st | The Night Listener | Armistead Maupin | 2000 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Gabriel Noone is a gay writer whose late-night radio stories have brought him into the homes of millions. Noone has recently separated from Jess, his partner of ten years. Noone's publisher sends him the galleys of a memoir apparently written by a 13-year-old boy, Peter Lomax. The author claims to have been the victim of sexual abuse and infected with AIDS. According to his memoir, his father started beating him at two and raped him at four; his mother videotaped the "sessions". When he was eight years old, his parents started pimping him and selling videotapes. When Pete was age 11, he ran away with the pornographic tapes, and his parents were jailed. A psychologist named Donna Lomax took the boy in and eventually adopted him. Noone contacts the boy and they start exchanging a series of phone calls that develop into a kind of father/son relationship. He begins to suspect that Pete does not exist and that he and his memoir are fabrications by Donna. Even a visit to their home is inconclusive, and the novel ends with Gabriel feeling that the value of the relationship to him is more important than whether or not Pete is real. Subplots in the novel revolve around Gabriel's relationships with his lover and his father. Important themes are the nature of father/son relationships, the power struggle involved in caring for and being cared for by another, the embellishment of truth, and the secrets we keep even in the most intimate relationships. |
5549298 | /m/0ds1ct | Lord Tyger | Philip José Farmer | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Ras Tyger has lived in the jungle for as long as he can remember. Raised by apes, he lives an idyllic existence as the lord of the jungle, gleefully hunting prey and feeding his prodigious sexual appetite with various female denizens of his jungle. Eventually, however, Tyger begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. He sees strange giant birds, black and without movement aside from their spinning wings atop their heads. He sees other apes raising their young and ponders why his childhood was so different. Always receiving more questions than answers, the more Tyger explores his universe, the more it begins to deconstruct before his very eyes. Ultimately, Tyger discovers that his entire life is a fraud, a construct. A crazed millionaire named Boygur has, in an effort to reproduce the Tarzan novels he loved as a child, purchased a young English nobleman (Tyger) and created a complex series of jungle environs for him to live within. He hires two dwarfs to act as his ape parents, and has two huge black helicopters (Tyger's "giant birds") patrol the area to keep outsiders out, and insiders in. Ultimately, neither Tyger nor Boygur get what they desire. Tyger cannot handle the harshness of his newfound reality, and Boygur is shocked and appalled when the jungle superman he's raised is far from innocent. At the end of the book, Boygur sadly notes that "things went their own way." |
5549309 | /m/0ds1dh | The Golden Wind | L. Sprague de Camp | 1969 | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel concerns the adventures of Eudoxus of Cyzicus and Hippalus on the first voyages by sea from Egypt to India. Following these, it deals with Eudoxus' efforts to circumvent the newly established Egyptian monopoly on trade with India by pioneering a new route around the west coast of Africa, which are ultimately defeated by misadventure and the sheer extent of the continent. |
5551154 | /m/0ds4gd | The Arrangement | Elia Kazan | 1979 | {"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"} | The Arrangement is the first-person story of Evangelos Arness, aka Evans Arness, aka Eddie Anderson, a second-generation Greek-American World War II veteran, a son of an Anatolian rug merchant who went broke after the 1929 Depression. He has come to use the name "Eddie Anderson" in his career as a self-loathing advertising executive and the name "Evans Arness" in his second career as a muck-raking magazine reporter, the career in which he ostensibly takes pride (Lincoln Steffens is his role model). His personal life is just as duplicitous: to outsiders he is happily married but is in fact a compulsive adulterer with his wife Florence's "don't ask - don't tell" tacit approval, one aspect of the titular "arrangement". His serial adultery ends when he begins a liaison with a female assistant at his advertising firm, Gwen Hunt, whose independent mind fascinates him; he becomes obsessed with her, perhaps even feeling true love towards her. He fails to lock a drawer with their nude photographs, perhaps subsconsciously wanting to be found out; a prying maid discovers them and shows them to Florence (and before that, it turns out, to their adopted daughter, now a university student). Florence persuades him to leave Gwen and to re-invigorate their life with a self-improvement regimen; both seem perfectly content though somewhat dull but after several months he crashes his car in an apparent suicide attempt. The rest of the novel deals with his inability to return to his old role as he attempts to find a new life in which he can be who he authentically is rather than who others desire him to be or whom he has sold people on his being. He has to returns to New York City where he had left his parents and brother after college to deal with his father's dying. After several false starts, in which the newly "authentic" Eddie is arrested for indecent exposure, burns down his parents' former house that had become a symbol of father's tyranny over the family, is shot by Gwen's jealous suitor, and is committed to a mental hospital, Eddie settles down with Gwen in Connecticut as a liquor dealer and starts to write short stories. |
5552573 | /m/0ds6h9 | The Book of Abraham | Marek Halter | null | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The book begins in 70 AD in Jerusalem during the siege of the city by the Romans just prior to the destruction of the Second Temple. Abraham, a Jewish scribe, his wife and two sons live in Jerusalem and have survived the siege. On the day when the Romans breach the city walls and set fire to the Second Temple, Abraham and his family successfully escape Jerusalem only to be stopped by a Roman platoon. The Roman soldiers incapacitate Abraham and rape and murder his wife. Abraham and his sons are later freed, but he is forced to surrender his scrolls to a Roman commander. At this point, Abraham begins a scroll that documents his family's journeys (the so-called "Book of Abraham", around which the story revolves) and lists his sons and their descendants. Each successive generation after Abraham dies adds on to the Book of Abraham, which continues to the point when the original scroll is lost and to the end of the book when Marek Halter's grandfather dies during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From Jerusalem, the family moves, over the course of nearly 2000 years, to cities such as Carthage, Hippo, Rome, Toledo, Cordoba, Narbonne, Troyes, Strasbourg, Constantinople, Amsterdam, Lublin, Odessa, and Warsaw. In both the fictional and factual parts of the book, the story coincides with many notable historical events, including the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Islamic conquests, the Inquisition, the Black Plague, the French Revolution, and World War II, as well as telling the story from the point of view of the Jews during the early to late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, and the early Twentieth century (i.e., showing the segregation and hardships faced by the Jews after their expulsion from Palestine). |
5556885 | /m/0dsdrc | The Art of Dreaming | Carlos Castaneda | 1994 | {"/m/016chh": "Memoir"} | The Art of Dreaming describes the steps needed to master control and consciousness of dreams. The Toltecs of Don Juan Matus' lineage believed that there are seven barriers to awareness, which they termed The Seven Gates of Dreaming. In The Art of Dreaming Castaneda describes extensively how a state called Total Awareness can be achieved by means of dreaming. According to Castaneda there are 7 Gates of Dreaming, or obstacles to awareness, which when overcome yield total awareness. Four of the Gates of Dreaming are discussed in The Art of Dreaming. What follows is not so much a technique in achieving lucidity, but rather the practical application of lucid dreaming. By acting a certain way while dreaming, one can cause psychosomatic changes in one's being, including an alternate way of dying. What follows is a point-form summary of the philosophy surrounding Toltec dreaming as a way of "Sorcery that is a return to Paradise". * 1st Gate of Dreaming (stabilization of the dreaming body): Arrived at when one perceives one's hands in a dream. Solved when one is able to shift the focus from the hands to another dream object and return it to the hands, all repeated a few times. Crossed when one is able to induce a state of darkness and a feeling of increased weight while falling asleep. Location in the body – in the area at the base of the V formed by pulling the big and second toes of one foot to the sides. * 2nd Gate of Dreaming (utilizing the dreaming body): Arrived at when one's dream objects start changing into something else. Solved when one is able to isolate a Scout and follow it to the realm of Inorganic Beings. Crossed when one is able to fall asleep without losing consciousness. It is also referred to the activity of dreaming together with other practitioners. Location in the body – in the inside area of the calf. * 3rd Gate of Dreaming (traveling): Arrived at when one dreams of looking at oneself. Solved when the dreaming and physical bodies become one. Crossed when one is able to control the Dreaming Emissary. Location in the body – at the lowest part of the spinal column. * 4th Gate of Dreaming (seeing): Arrived at when one is able to perceive the energetic essence of every dream item. Solved when one falls asleep in a dream, in the same position in which one has gone to sleep. Crossed when one wakes up in this reality, located not only in the physical but in the energy body. |
5559292 | /m/0dsjsh | The Last Unicorn | Peter S. Beagle | 1968 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The story begins with a team of human hunters passing through a forest in search of game. After days of coming up empty-handed, they begin to believe they are passing through a Unicorn's forest, where animals are kept safe by a magical aura. They resign themselves to hunting somewhere else; but, before they leave, one of the hunters calls out a warning to the Unicorn that she may be the last of her kind. This revelation disturbs the Unicorn, but she initially dismisses the thought. She encounters a talking butterfly who speaks in riddles and songs and initially dodges her questions about the other unicorns. Eventually, the butterfly issues a warning that her kind have been herded to a far away land by a creature known as the Red Bull. Fearing for the other unicorns, the Unicorn decides to leave the comfort and safety of her forest to find out what has happened to the others. During her journey, she is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses magical spells to create the illusion that regular animals are in fact creatures of myth and legend. The Unicorn finds herself the only true legendary creature among the group, save for the harpy, Celaeno. Schmendrick, a magician traveling with the carnival, sees the Unicorn for what she is, and he frees her in the middle of the night. The Unicorn frees the other creatures including Celaeno, who kills Mommy Fortuna and Rukh, her hunchbacked assistant. The Unicorn and Schmendrick continue traveling in an attempt to reach the castle of King Haggard, where the Red Bull resides. When Schmendrick is captured by bandits, the Unicorn comes to his rescue and attracts the attention of Molly Grue, the bandit leader's wife. Together, the three continue their journey and arrive at Hagsgate, a town under Haggard's rule and the first one he had conquered when he claimed his kingdom. A resident of Hagsgate named Drinn informs them of a curse that stated that their town would continue to share in Haggard's fortune until such a time that someone from Hagsgate would bring Haggard's castle down. Drinn also went on to claim that he discovered a baby boy in the town's marketplace one night in winter. He knew that the child was the one the prophecy spoke of, but he left the baby where he found it, not wanting the prophecy to come true. King Haggard found the baby later that evening and adopted it. Molly, Schmendrick and the Unicorn leave Hagsgate and continue toward Haggard's castle, but on their way they are attacked by the Red Bull. The Unicorn runs, but is unable to escape the bull. In an effort to aid her, Schmendrick unwittingly turns the Unicorn into a human female. Confused by the change, the Red Bull gives up the pursuit and disappears. The change has disastrous consequences on the Unicorn, who suffers tremendous shock at the sudden feeling of mortality in her human body. The three continue to Haggard's castle, where Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as "Lady Amalthea" to throw off Haggard's suspicions. They manage to convince Haggard to allow them to serve him in his court, with the hopes of gathering clues as to the location of the other unicorns. During their stay, Amalthea is romanced by Haggard's adopted son, Prince Lír. Haggard eventually reveals to Amalthea that the unicorns are trapped in the sea for his own amusement, because the unicorns are the only things that make him happy. He then openly accuses Amalthea of coming to his kingdom to save the unicorns and says that he knows who she really is, but Amalthea has seemingly forgotten about her true nature and her desire to save the other unicorns. Following clues given to them by a cat, Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea find the entrance to the Red Bull's lair. Haggard and his men-at-arms attempt to stop them, but they manage to enter the bull's lair and are joined by Lír. When the Red Bull attacks them, Schmendrick changes Amalthea back to her original form. In an effort to save the Unicorn, Lír jumps into the bull's path and is killed. Fueled by anger and sorrow, the Unicorn drives the bull into the sea. The other unicorns are freed and they run back to their homes, with Haggard's castle falling in their wake. Lír, who has been revived by the Unicorn and is now king after Haggard's death, attempts to follow the Unicorn despite Schmendrick advising against it. As they pass through the now-ruined town of Hagsgate, they learn that Drinn is actually Lír's father, and that he had abandoned him in the marketplace on purpose to fulfill the prophecy. Realizing that he has new responsibilities as king after seeing the state of Hagsgate, Lír returns to rebuild it after accompanying Schmendrick and Molly to the outskirts of his kingdom. The Unicorn returns to her forest. She tells Schmendrick that she is different from all the other unicorns now, because she knows what it's like to feel love and regret. |
5564728 | /m/0dssy_ | The Outpost | Mike Resnick | 2001-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The novel is divided into 3 sections: Legend, Fact, and History. In Legend, the characters tell stories of what they were doing before they arrived and about people they met and things they did. The storytelling is interrupted by an alien invasion of the system, to which the heroes react. The History section sees everyone gathered back at the Outpost to share their stories and find out the fates of the others. *Catastrophe Baker and the Dragon Queen *The Last Landship (Hellfire Carson) *The Greatest Painting of All Time (Little Mike) *The Short, Star-Crossed Career of Magic Adbul-Jordan (Big Red) *When Iron-Arm McPherson Took the Mound (Big Red) *The Night Bet-a-World O'Grady Met High-Stakes Eddie *Catastrophe Baker and the Siren of Silverstrike |
5566051 | /m/0dsw2r | Diplomatic Immunity | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2002 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Miles and Ekaterin are enjoying a much-delayed honeymoon while their first two children are approaching birth in their uterine replicators back on Barrayar. They have just left Earth to begin the journey home when Miles is dispatched by Gregor to Graf Station in Quaddiespace to untangle a diplomatic incident in his capacity as the nearest Imperial Auditor. There, he is unexpectedly reunited with the Betan hermaphrodite Bel Thorne, a former Dendarii captain and his good friend. A convoy of merchant ships and their Navy escorts are prevented from leaving the station, and a Barrayaran officer is missing, either murdered or deserted. While investigating, Miles uncovers a plot by a high-ranked Cetagandan to steal a cargo of extreme importance to the Cetagandans and hide its tracks by putting the blame on Barrayar. By the time Miles figures out what is going on, he and Bel have been infected by a highly lethal Cetagandan bioweapon. Miles almost dies (again) and barely averts an interstellar war between Cetaganda and Barrayar. |
5566829 | /m/0dsx98 | Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods | Suzanne Collins | 7/1/2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The Prophecy of Blood on a scroll given to him by Nerissa. Soon, a message from Vikus arrives in the laundry room with the announcement that the "Curse of the Warmbloods is upon us". Gregor and his father travel to Central Park and the entrance underneath and meet Ripred, who informs him that the Curse of the Warmbloods is a plague scouring the Underland, and that all warmbloods have united in order to find a cure. Gregor is uncertain that his mother will let him and Boots go, but Ripred encourages him by informing him his own bond, Ares, is a victim of the plague, and adding that if his mother does not comply, the rats will send an escort. Back at their apartment, Gregor's mother will not let them go, but Ripred's escort arrives in the form of hundreds of normal-sized rats in the walls. After being overwhelmed, his mother agrees to go on the condition that she come too (this is the first time she goes to the Underland). They meet the bat Nike, daughter of Queen Athena, in the laundry room and fly to Regalia, where delegations of cockroaches, rats, bats, and humans have gathered. The humans inform the other species that there is a cure for the plague, starshade, found deep in the Vineyard of Eyes. The rats agree to lend their assistance on one condition: that a yellow powder used to keep fleas, plague carriers, away be sent to the rats. A bat flies in from the Dead Lands, plague ridden, and fleas force the audience to retreat, but not before Gregor's mother is bitten. Gregor, Boots, Ripred, Nike, Temp, Solovet, and two rats named Lapblood and Mange agree to journey to the Vineyard of Eyes. When they enter the jungles, they are greeted by Hamnet, Luxa's long lost uncle, his Halflander(half Overlander, half Underlander) son Hazard, and a lizard, Frill. Hamnet agrees to be a guide, but only if Solovet does not come. The pack enters the jungle and run through several trials, such as flesh eating plants, which kill Mange, and quicksand, before arriving at the end and meeting Luxa and Aurora, who had been hiding with the mice the whole time. They make it into the Vineyard of Eyes, but ants destroy the field of starshade and kill Hamnet and Frill, leaving no hope of a cure. Temp mentions offhandedly that "unless this be, not the cradle, unless this be" making them realize there is still hope for a cure. Gregor realizes that Ares did not contract the plague from the mites, as thought, but in a laboratory, and it leads him to believe that the plague was invented by the humans. Luxa is horrified, but Ripred thinks it fits and orders that the first cures be sent to the rats. The plague was actually ordered by Solovet, Regent of Regalia and wife of Vikus, as a military weapon for killing. Back in Regalia, they have developed a cure, and Luxa exposes the project. Nerissa reveals to Gregor that had the quest never happened, the plague cure would never have been given to the gnawers, and so their journey was not in vain. Gregor's mother cannot return to the surface without risking carrying the plague to the Overland, and so the book ends with Gregor confiding in Mrs. Cormaci in order to enlist her help. |
5566839 | /m/0dsxbn | Gregor and the Marks of Secret | Suzanne Collins | 5/1/2006 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The story takes place in New York where 8-year-old Lizzie is preparing for camp and 12-year-old Gregor is preparing for his echolocation training in the Underland with Ripred. Mrs. Cormaci now knows about the Underland and gives Gregor some pasta to bring to Ripred. Gregor rides Nike, the princess of the bats to the city of Regalia. When under the palace, Ripred informs Gregor that there is one more prophecy that Gregor is in called the "Prophecy of Time". But whenever Gregor asks anyone about the prophecy, no one will answer. Gregor then finds that the Bane has been brought to his lessons, and grown to an even 8'. Ripred taunts the Bane repeatedly and is finally attacked by him. And it is also revealed that the Bane's real name is Pearlpelt and that Snare was Pearlpelt's father. Later, Gregor receives an invitation to a party from still traumatized Hazard and his soon-to-be bond and joker, Thalia. When Gregor returns with a camera, he goes to Ripred to tell him that he gives up on echolocation training, but once there, is attacked by Twirltongue and two other rats./ His rager skills kick in during battle, but suddenly give away when he loses his flashlight, revealing that he can only fight if he can see and needs echolocation more than he thought. He escapes and blocks the door and asks also traumatized Vikus from Solovet's betrayal about the strength of the door. When he says it will hold, a now relieved Gregor heads to the party with 3-year-old Boots. There, Gregor meets up with his mom. 12-year-old Luxa approaches Gregor and asks for a dance. Gregor agrees and afterwards takes one look down at Luxa and realizes he likes her. A crown landing right by them kills the moment and they both realize that it's the crown Luxa gave to the nibblers (Underland word for mice) in case they were in need of help. Gregor, his bond Ares, Luxa, and her bond Aurora go to the nibblers' colony and find one of Luxa's friend nibblers dead. They also find a strange symbol on the ground that looks like a lowercase "r". Later, a group of baby nibblers were brought to the palace from the river in a woven basket./ This causes Gregor, Ares, Luxa, Aurora, Howard, Nike, Boots, Hazard, and Thalia to inspect what is going on. A series of events happens including an earthquake, Luxa develops a crush on Gregor, the team reunites with Photos Glow-Glow and Zap, they find a nibbler named Cartesian, they discover Ripred being tortured in a pit and rescue him, their bats are nearly killed in wind currents, Gregor and Luxa strongly argue, and they find out that a now 12-foot Bane is planning on taking over the Underland. The team heads to a volcano and find that there is a colony of nibblers being herded toward it. They suddenly realize this and try to escape but fall to the ground, gasping for air. Gregor realizes that they are suffocating, and also that the nursery rhyme and song is actually a prophecy and that the part about the nibblers in a trap is happening right now./ The nibblers suddenly stay still and when Boots says that they are sleeping, Gregor finally tells her about dying. He then discovers that the queen in the prophecy is not Luxa, but the volcano. It erupts and engulfs the team in smoke. Gregor wakes up lying in a cave. He walks further in to the cave and find the team okay, but knows someone is dead when he sees their faces. He sees Hazard crying and finds Thalia lying in his arms, stone dead. Later, Ripred tells him that he must get his sword, but Gregor is confused at this since he has a sword, but Ripred says he needs Sandwich's sword. Before Gregor leaves to Regalia, Luxa asks why he helped her with the nibblers, and Gregor tells her that he did it because they saved her. The story ends with Gregor gazing at the sword in awe. |
5568656 | /m/0dszn8 | The Beast Master | Andre Norton | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/09zvmj": "Space western"} | It tells the story of Hosteen Storm, an ex-soldier who travels to a distant planet with his comrades, a group of genetically altered animals with whom he has empathic and telepathic connections. The team are hired to herd livestock, but Storm still harbors anger at his former enemies the Xik, and has sworn revenge on a man named Quade for actions against Storm's family in the past. In this novel and the following series, Norton explores aspects of Native American culture (specifically that of the Navajo) through metaphors in Storm's life and in the culture he adopts on his new home world. |
5569380 | /m/0ds_dd | Big Two-Hearted River | Ernest Hemingway | null | null | Part one In the story, Nick Adams arrives by train at the town of Seney to find that, because of a fire, "there was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country." Following the road leading away from the town, he stops to stand on a bridge where he watches the trout below in the river. He then he hikes up a hill. At a burned stump, he stops to rest, smokes a cigarette, and examines a grasshopper blackened by the fire. Later in the day he rests in a glade of tall pines where he falls asleep. When he wakes, he hikes the last mile to the edge of the river where he sees the trout feeding in the evening light "making circles all down the surface of the water as though it were starting to rain." Carefully he pitches his tent, unpacks his supplies, cooks his dinner, fills his water bucket, heats a pot of coffee, and kills a mosquito before falling asleep. Part two Early the next morning, Nick fills a jar with 50 dew-heavy grasshoppers he finds under a log in a "grasshopper lodging-house", eats breakfast, drinks sweetened coffee and makes a sliced onion sandwich. After checking and assembling his fly-fishing rod and tying on damp leader line, he walks to the river with a net hanging from his belt, a sack from his shoulders and the jar of grasshoppers from his neck. Wading in the water, he fishes the shallows where he lands a trout that "was mottled with clear, water-over-gravel color" that he releases. Moving into a pool of deep water, he lands a large trout, "as broad as a salmon", which he loses. After a rest, he moves away from the deep water to the center of the river and catches two trout that he stows in his sack. Sitting on a log, smoking a cigarette and eating his onion sandwich, he contemplates fishing the deep water of the swamp, but he decides to wait for another day. In the river, at the log, he kills, guts and cleans the two trout and then returns to his camp. |
5569548 | /m/0ds_lp | Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth | Gary Gygax | 1982 | {"/m/06c9r": "Role-playing game"} | The introduction, with instructions that the Dungeon Master read it aloud to the players, outlines that there is a treasure in the Yatil Mountains south of the Greyhawk realm of Perrenland. The player characters must investigate rumors of a lost treasure that scores of adventurers have perished attempting to find. The players must first traverse a wilderness area with 20 numbered encounters before arriving at the caverns. The encounters have names such as "Border Patrol" (encounter 1) and "Hill Giants" (encounter 10). After the wilderness are two lettered encounters: the "Gnome Vale", which includes a map for their lair, and "The Craggy Dells", where humans and orcs are capturing hippogriffs to sell. Next, the player characters reach the caverns. They consist of the "Lesser Caverns" with 22 encounters, and the "Greater Caverns" with 20 encounters, each with its own map. The lesser caverns include encounters such as "Stinking Cave" (encounter 5) which contains four trolls and "Underground Lake" (encounter 14). The greater caverns include encounters such as "Uneven-Floored Cavern" (encounter 5) where the player characters face an umber hulk and "Canyon of Centaurs" (encounter 9). The 20th and final encounter is titled "The Inner Sphere". Here, a "woman sleeps on an alabaster slab." She is "armored from toe to neck in gold chased plate mail." The woman is actually Drelzna, a fighter/vampire and the daughter of Iggwilv. After defeating Drelzna, the players are rewarded with treasure, and the adventure ends. |
5570623 | /m/0dt1d2 | The Sacred Art of Stealing | Christopher Brookmyre | 2003 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0vgkd": "Black comedy", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The plot of The Sacred Art of Stealing tells the story of American Zal Innez, a witty and intellectual art-loving thief, who is being blackmailed by crime boss Alessandro Estabol to do one last major job for him. As a warm up to their main heist, Zal and his team of fellow failed artists rob a Glasgow bank of approaching a million pounds. During the raid they use unorthodox methods such as firing itching powder at armed police, carrying fake guns, staging plays and drawing works of art for their hostages to keep casualties to a minimum. During this robbery Zal meets and falls for a woman police officer, Angelique de Xavia, heroine of Brookmyre's previous novel, who is under-appreciated by her bosses. Both police officer and thief become painfully aware of the strong attraction between them and a relationship is formed, despite the fact that they are both fully aware that they are on opposite sides. Zal knows Angelique is after him, and even counts on this knowledge to complete his final job, while Angelique is aware that Zal is playing her, even though she does not want to contemplate what that might imply about his real feelings for her. |
5571575 | /m/0dt3h3 | Poodle Springs | Robert B. Parker | 1989-10 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03xj9g": "Hardboiled"} | The start of the book finds Marlowe married to Linda Loring, the rich daughter of local tycoon Harlan Potter. Loring and Marlowe had met in The Long Goodbye and begun a romance at the end of Playback. From the beginning there are tensions, however, as Linda wants Marlowe to quit his job and get a decent position at one of her father's plants, which Marlowe refuses. The couple relocate to Poodle Springs (a mocking reference to Palm Springs), where they move into a grand mansion and Linda starts organising cocktail parties. Marlowe literally bumps into a local criminal named Lipschultz, who requests his services before Marlowe has even found office space in Poodle Springs. Lipschultz operates an illegal gambling house just outside Poodle Springs jurisdiction in Riverside. He has taken an IOU for $100,000 from one of his customers, a Poodle Springs photographer called Les Valentine. Lipshultz' boss, a local tycoon, has found out that the sum is missing from the books and has issued a 30-day ultimatum to retrieve the money or else. Lipshultz asks Marlowe to retrieve Valentine, who is unreachable. Marlowe accepts the job, asserting that all he can do is locate Valentine, not shake him down. Marlowe leaves and questions Valentine's wife, Muffy Blackstone, a rich socialite and acquaintance of his own wife, who tells him Valentine is out on a photo shoot. When Marlowe calls on Lipshultz again, he finds him killed in his casino office. From there, the trail leads to a double identity and a mastermind behind the scenes that is too close to home to be comfortable. |
5573719 | /m/0dt7d2 | The Type One Super Robot | null | 1986 | null | A boy, Humbert, goes to stay with his Uncle Bellamy. Once there he discovers a strange package that appears to hum to itself. Upon alerting his uncle to the package, Humbert is surprised to find that it contains a Type One Household Robot, designed to help around the home. The robot is swiftly named Manders by Uncle Bellamy, because he does everything that a man-does. Humbert and Manders get into all kinds of adventures, the most memorable of which is a kite flying expedition. The joy in the story for children is how Manders struggles to come to terms with human existence, for example; misunderstanding phrases like "getting along like a house on fire", not realising that a kite is not meant to take you with it, or trying to slice custard. |
5574100 | /m/0dt817 | The Abyssinian | Jean-Christophe Rufin | null | {"/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The Abyssinian tells the story of a young French physician who is sent as part of a diplomatic mission to Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia). Along the way he must face various perils while trying to win over his true love. |
5575042 | /m/0dt9rc | World War Z | Max Brooks | 9/12/2006 | {"/m/02ql9": "Epistolary novel", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02psyd2": "Zombies in popular culture", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/09kqc": "Humour"} | Through a series of oral interviews, Brooks, as an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, describes the history of 'World War Z'. Although the origin of the zombie pandemic is unknown, the story begins in China after a young boy is bitten; he becomes the pandemic's 'patient zero'. The Chinese government attempts to contain the infection and concocts a crisis involving Taiwan to mask their activities. The infection is spread to other countries by the black market organ trade and by refugees, before an outbreak in South Africa finally brings the plague to public attention. As the infection spreads, the State of Israel is the only country to take the reports of zombies seriously, initiating a nationwide quarantine and closing its borders to everybody except uninfected Jews and Palestinians. Pakistan and Iran destroy each other in a nuclear war after the Iranian government attempts to stem the flow of Pakistani refugees. The United States of America does little to prepare; although special forces teams are used to contain initial outbreaks, a widespread effort never starts as the nation is sapped of political will by several "brushfire wars", and a placebo fraudulently marketed as a vaccine has created a false sense of security. When the world recognizes the true scope of the problem, a period known as the "Great Panic" begins. Following the fall of New York City, the United States Army sets up a high-profile defense at Yonkers, New York to restore American morale. The U.S. military uses obsolete Cold War tactics on the zombies, including anti-tank weapons and demoralization through wounding. These have no effect on the zombies, which "can't be shocked and awed", have no self-preservation instincts, and can only be stopped if shot in the head and killed. The soldiers are routed on live television, while other countries suffer similarly disastrous defeats, and human civilization teeters on the brink of collapse. In South Africa, the government adopts a plan drafted by ex-apartheid government official Paul Redeker, which calls for the establishment of small "safe zones", areas surrounded by natural boundaries and cleared of zombies. Large groups of refugees are abandoned, but kept alive outside the safe zones to distract the hordes of undead, allowing those within time to regroup and recuperate. Governments worldwide adopt their own versions of the "Redeker Plan", or relocate the populace to safer foreign territory, such as the complete evacuation of the Japanese Home Islands. As zombies freeze solid in the cold, many civilians in North America flee to the wildernesses of northern Canada and the Arctic, where some 11 million people, unprepared to deal with the cold Canadian winter, die from starvation and exposure. Seven years after the start of the zombie pandemic, a conference is held off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, on aboard the , where most of the world's leaders indicate they want to wait out the zombie plague, but the U.S. President successfully argues that the only way to survive physically and psychologically is to go on the offensive. Determined to lead by example, the U.S. military reinvents itself to meet the specific challenges involved in fighting the living dead: automatic weapons and mobility are replaced by semi-automatic rifles and formation firing, troops are retrained to focus on head shots and slow, steady rates of fire, and a multipurpose hand tool, the "Lobotomizer" or "Lobo", is designed to destroy zombie heads close up. In two north–south lines stretching across North America, the U.S. military leaves its safe zone west of the Rocky Mountains and crosses the continent in a three-year campaign, systematically destroying the zombies and reclaiming outposts of survivors (whether they want to be reclaimed or not). Ten years after the "official" end of the zombie war, millions of zombies are still active and the geopolitical landscape of the Earth has been forever transformed. A democratic Cuba has become the world's most thriving economy and the international banking capital. China has also become a democracy, following a civil war sparked by the collapse of the Three Gorges Dam and ending after a mutinying Chinese Navy submarine destroys the Communist leadership with submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Tibet, freed from Chinese rule, hosts the world's most populated city. Following a religious revolution, Russia is now an expansionist theocracy. North Korea is completely empty, with the entire population presumed to have disappeared into underground bunkers; it is unknown if they survived or have become zombies. Iceland has been completely depopulated, and is the world's most heavily infested country. The United Nations fields a large military force to eliminate the remaining zombies from overrun areas, defeat hordes that surface from the ocean floor, and kill frozen zombies before they thaw. Overall, there is a drastic reduction in the human population, which is alluded to have been brought to the brink of extinction, and many environments and animal species have been devastated, as much by desperate humans as by marauding zombies. |
5576466 | /m/0dtd6m | The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision | James Redfield | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | One of the characters of The Celestine Prophecy disappears while exploring a forest in the Appalachian Mountains. The book discusses ideas about other dimensions, past lives, conception and birth, the passage through death to an afterlife, hell and heaven. It also illustrates the author's vision of human destiny and the notion that fear of the future is endangering Earth's spiritual renaissance. In the story, each individual soul is part of a larger "Soul Group", which shares the mission of helping the evolution of the cosmos. At times, a soul from a given Group incarnates itself, choosing the conditions of its life according to its needs, while the other souls observe. Each soul creates a reality around itself, which later brings consequences upon it. These consequences take the form of life and afterlife, which vary according to the person's choices. On Earth, people speak of the prophecy written in the Book of Revelation as if it were coming true. Many fear that it will come partly true, in that a dictator (an Antichrist) will arise, but will not be thrown down. To counteract this idea, which is damaging to the spiritual renaissance, the protagonists hold their own, Utopian "World Vision" to the exclusion of its opposite, until it dominates the opposite at the book's climax. All of these ideas are experienced as if real by the characters. |
5576841 | /m/0dtdy4 | The Guardian of Isis | Monica Hughes | 1981 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Mark London is now president of the settlement. He has forced the people to abandon all technology and become a simple, agricultural community full of taboos. Upper Isis is now a forbidden zone, because, so they believe, the Guardian put a curse on the mountains, imprisoning the people in their own valley. One boy, Jody N'Kumo, grandson of one of the original settlers, breaks one of the most sacred taboos, and is banished to the land of Guardian, although everyone knows he is simply being sent to his death. However, Jody does not die, and discovers a place called Bamboo Valley. There he meets the Lady Olwen, who was the Keeper of the Isis Light in the times before the colony, and learns the truth about the history of Isis. |
5576973 | /m/0dtf29 | The Isis Pedlar | Monica Hughes | 1982 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The leader of the colony is Roger London, Mark London's son. London seems to be nothing like his father, however. Mike Flynn, a Galactic wanderer, spots Isis, and plans to corrupt the inhabitants to obtain the precious firestones. He promises them a Forever Machine, which will supply them with a lifetime of ambrosia, which means they will never have to work for their food again. His daughter, Moira, however, knows that he is simply lying, and tries to stop Mike's evil plans with the help of David N'Kumo, great grandson of Jody N'Kumo. When David and Moira succeed, Jody N'Kumo becomes president, instead of Roger London. Moira decides to stay on Isis, and Guardian, goes with Mike Flynn. Things look much brighter for a future for Isis. |
5578822 | /m/0dthzw | The Howling | Gary Brandner | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror"} | When middle-class Karyn Beatty is attacked and raped in her Los Angeles home, she suffers a miscarriage and a nervous breakdown. She and her husband, Roy, leave the city and go to stay in the secluded Californian mountain village of Drago whilst Karyn recuperates. Although the town offers Karyn a quiet lifestyle and the locals are friendly, Karyn is disturbed when she continues to hear a strange howling sound at night coming from the woods outside of their new home. This puts further strain on her marriage as Roy believes she is becoming more and more unstable, but Karyn is adamant that there is something in the woods. As tension between the couple mounts, Roy begins an affair with one of the local women, a shopkeeper named Marcia Lura. However, on his way home, Roy is attacked in the woods by a large black wolf. Though the wolf only bites him, Roy becomes ill for several days. He was bitten by a werewolf, and has now become one himself. Karyn eventually discovers that the town's entire population are all in fact werewolves, and becomes trapped in Drago. She contacts her husband's best friend, Chris Halloran, who comes up from Los Angeles to rescue her. Chris arrives with some silver bullets which he had made at her insistence. That night, the two of them fend off a group of werewolves (one of which is Karyn's husband, Roy) and Karyn is forced to shoot the black werewolf (revealed to be Marcia Lura) in the head. In the commotion, a fire breaks out at Karyn's woodland house which sweeps through the woods and the entire town of Drago is engulfed in flames as Karyn and Chris escape from its cursed inhabitants. However, as they flee, they can still hear the howling in the distance. nl:The Howling |
5580522 | /m/0dtm33 | Babywise | null | 2007 | null | Baby Wise describes an infant management plan built around feed/play/sleep cycles. The authors term their approach to feeding "parent-directed feeding", or PDF: The book includes instructions for the care of babies from birth through six months. It primarily covers infant sleep and feeding practices, and emphasizes parental control of infant training. The infant is presented not as the defining center of the household but as a "welcome addition", subject to larger household order. The material presented in Baby Wise is not radical or new, it is simply a re-articulation of various practical methods which are reminiscent of parenting styles advocated by other Evangelical child-rearing advisors. Ezzo and Bucknam describe their stance as a middle ground between feeding the baby on demand (when the baby indicates hunger) and feeding based on a strict clock schedule. In contrast to advice given by popular pediatrician William "Dr. Bill" Sears, the Baby Wise authors do not condone co-sleeping; Ezzo wrote, "The most serious sleep problems we've encountered are associated with parents who sleep with their babies." The sleep advice given by Baby Wise is similar to Richard Ferber's advice given in his popular book Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. The Ferber method of getting a baby to sleep includes putting the baby to bed when awake; the same as Baby Wise. The baby is expected to learn how to fall asleep alone. Both methods warn the parents against using aids such as a pacifier to ease the baby into sleep, and both methods describe putting the infant to sleep without prior rocking, cuddling or nursing applied for the sole purpose of calming the child into sleep. "Crying it out" is expected from the infant during the early training periods, until about eight weeks of age. A foundation of the book is that "great marriages produce great parents." Ezzo and Bucknam recommend that the new parents continue to schedule dates with each other and have friends over. Buyers of the book include mothers wearied by the demands of attachment parenting, in search of more time for their careers and pursuits. The book promises that following its plan "will not leave mom ragged at the end of the day nor in bondage to her child. Nor will Dad be excluded from his duties." |
5587290 | /m/0dty6n | Sten | Allan Cole | 1982 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Karl Sten is a young boy growing up on an industrial factory world called Vulcan. Sten's parents are little better than indentured servants, always wanting to raise their children somewhere else, but never able to "buy out" their contracts and leave. After Sten's family is killed in an industrial cover-up initiated by Vulcan's CEO, Baron Thoresen, Sten rebels against the laws of Vulcan and escapes to live on his own in the background of the factory world. For several years he runs with the Delinqs, a band of young outlaws that have also rejected the ideals of The Company. One day he saves an off-worlder, Ian Mahoney, from a security team. Mahoney is the head of Imperial Intelligence and is trying to gather information on a special project Baron Thoresen is running. Mahoney offers Sten and his gang a chance to leave Vulcan if they can get the information he needs. Unfortunately, during the mission they are discovered and Sten is apparently the only one who makes it back alive. True to his word, Ian takes Sten off the hellhole of his birth, but enlists him the military to keep him safe. During Imperial Guards training, Sten proves to be square peg for the traditional military, but perfect for the super secret CIA-type covert branch of intelligence that Ian heads, called Mantis. While in Mantis, Sten excels and becomes the head of Team 13, with Alex Kilgour, a heavy worlder from New Edinburgh, (who has a rather ill-tempered view of the Campbell Clan) as his second in command. Eventually, The Eternal Emperor assigns Team 13 to bring down the government of Vulcan so the Baron's secret project can be unmasked. Team 13 accomplishes this by organizing a rebellion, which gets out of control and almost tears apart the factory world in a heated frenzy. Sten and Team 13 finish the job up with sneakiness, judicious violence and a few well placed explosions. Sten confronts his parents killer, Baron Thorenson, and kills him by ripping his heart out with his bare hands. At the conclusion of the novel, while being dressed down for killing Thoresen against the emperor's orders, Ian promotes Sten to lieutenant. It seems the emperor had thought better of his order not to kill the baron but had not been able to get word to the team in the field. A great future seems to be in store for our hero. |
5592382 | /m/0dv5mm | Hira Singh | Talbot Mundy | null | null | Hira Singh is the story of a regiment of Sikh cavalry who are captured in battle in Flanders in the early days of World War I, escape from captivity and experience many adventures as they make their way back to India. |
5592507 | /m/0dv5yz | Seeing a Large Cat | Barbara Mertz | 1997 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The book opens at Amelia's favorite hotel, Shepheard's in Cairo, where her family reunites after a summer in various locations. The Emersons' son Ramses (now aged sixteen) and their adopted son David have been living in Egypt for six months, and their ward Nefret has been studying anatomy with Louisa Aldrich-Blake at the London School of Medicine for Women. The Emersons receive a dire warning about staying away from an undiscovered tomb, which of course inspires them to hunt all the harder for it. Meanwhile, a silly American debutante insists she needs protection from a stalker (selecting Ramses for the job), and a mummy swathed in modern clothing begins to lend verisimilitude to her otherwise unconvincing narrative. The characters of Donald and Enid Fraser from Lion in the Valley reappear in this novel. They are in Cairo, accompanied by a woman who claims to have communicated with an ancient Egyptian princess and unwittingly triggered Donald's obsession with finding the princess's tomb. The American Cyrus Vandergelt is another character who reappears from an earlier novel. This volume marks the death of the cat Bastet and the first whiskey Ramses is permitted to imbibe (although the two events are not directly related). The device of "Manuscript H" is used for the first time in this book to give a voice to Ramses, through whom the romantic and adventurous elements of the series are able to continue as his parents begin to age. In the course of the mystery, Amelia discovers that her old admirer and adversary, Sethos (the "master criminal") is not dead, as was thought to be the case earlier in the series. |
5594143 | /m/0dv8fz | The Parched Sea | Troy Denning | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Parched Sea is another name for the desert Anauroch in which the novel takes place. The Zhentarim, determined to drive a trade route through Anauroch, send an army to enslave the nomads of the Great Desert. Ruha, an outcast witch, tries to gain the trust of the Sheikh as tribe after tribe fall to the Zhentarim. The Harpers send an agent to counter the Zhentarim, and Ruha helps this stranger win the Sheikh's trust, so that he can overcome the tribes' ancestral rivalries and drive the invaders from the desert. |
5594391 | /m/0dv8qz | Face of the Enemy | Robert N. Charrette | 7/1/1999 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | As the League fights to prevent Remor incursions, Juliana Tindale and Kurt Ellicot join a group going to Chugen IV to study a newfound alien race, the Chugeni. Through a faked attack on the landing party, their shuttle crashes and the survivors move in with the natives to survive and await rescue. When they discover the attack was a hoax, they work to save the natives by proving that they are not the Remor. |
5594851 | /m/0dv9hv | My Uncle Napoleon | Iraj Pezeshkzad | 1973 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story takes place at the time of Iran's occupation by the Allied Forces during World War II. Most of the plot occurs in the narrator's home, a huge early 20th-century-style Iranian mansion in which three wealthy families live under the tyranny of a paranoid patriarch Uncle. The Uncle—who in reality is a retired low-level officer from the Persian Cossack Brigade under Colonel Vladimir Liakhov's command—claims, and in latter stages of the story actually believes that he and his butler Mash Qasem were involved in wars against the British Empire and their lackeys such as Khodadad Khan, as well as battles supporting the Iranian Constitutional Revolution; and that with the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces, the English are now on course to take revenge on him. The story's narrator (nameless in the novel but called Saeed in the TV series) is a high school student in love with his cousin Layli who is Dear Uncle's daughter. The story revolves around the narrator's struggles to stall Layli's pre-arranged marriage to her cousin Puri, while the narrator's father and Dear Uncle plot various mischiefs against each other to settle past family feuds. A multitude of supporting characters, including police investigators, government officials, housewives, a medical doctor, a butcher, a sycophantic preacher, servants, a shoeshine man, and an Indian or two provide various entertaining sequences throughout the development of the story. |
5595597 | /m/0dvbwf | Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions | Daniel Wallace | 10/1/1998 | null | A young man (William Bloom), at the deathbed of his father (Edward Bloom), tries to reconcile his memories of his dad with who he really is. Whereas he always saw his father as an irresponsible liar, he comes to understand his dad's exaggerations and their roots in reality. The book is written in a chronological (although they may not appear so at first) series of tall tales. Despite the novel's first-person narration, there is no present tense part of the book. The various stories are Will's retelling of tales that Ed has told about his life. The 'My Father's Death Take' chapters are William planning out his final conversation with his father in his head and how it will go, so that when the actual conversation takes place, he will be able to get to bottom of the truth and find a way of truly understanding his father. The book draws elements from the epic poem The Odyssey, James Joyce's Ulysses, and American tall tales. The story of Edward Bloom also includes at least seven of the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The subtitle "A Novel of Mythic Proportions" may be a reference to the dimensions of the Penguin edition, which make a Golden ratio. Conversely, the dimensions of the Penguin edition may derive from the subtitle. The Golden ratio dimensions carry through the bodies of type on each page, and are most apparent on the opening pages of each chapter. |
5596086 | /m/0dvcn_ | Beasts of No Nation | Uzodinma Iweala | 2005 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel is about an African boy named Agu who is forced to become a child soldier. His family lived in a small village. When war came, Agu’s mother and sister had to leave on a bus but Agu, his father, and a shoesman try to escape and Agu’s father is shot down and killed. Agu hides and is soon found by soldiers who coerce him to join their rebel force. In a bloody initiation, the commander forces him to kill an unarmed soldier. As Agu is forced to leave his childhood behind, he reminisces about the past: his family, his love of reading and school, his dream of becoming an important Doctor, and how he used to read the Bible every day. He thinks about how he and his friend used to play war and how this war is not the same. He fears that God hates him for killing others but he soon forces himself to believe that this is what God wants because “he is soldier and this is what soldiers do in war.” He befriends a mute boy named Strika and together they face the crimes and hardships of war: looting, rape, killing, and starvation. Agu loses track of time, understanding only that he was a child before that war but that he has become a man in a seemingly never-ending trial by fire. He wants to stop killing but fears in doing so will get him killed by the Commandant. During this time of war Agu and the army has very little to eat so they eat what they can; rats, small game, goats and some times other people. The food isn’t cooked enough for fear that others will see the fire and the water is known to have human feces in it. Agu and many other men for the army are forced to receive the commander's sexual advances; Agu knows it is wrong but fears to say no. Wishing and wanting to no longer be in the army finally comes true when Rambo, the new lieutenant, shoots and kills the commander. Sick and exhausted Agu and Strika join the disbanded soldiers to try to make their way home. Along the way, Agu's only friend and confidante, Strika, dies and Agu ultimately leaves his fellow soldiers. In time, Agu comes under the care of a missionary shelter/hospital run by a preacher and a white woman, Amy. Agu gets new clothes and all the food and sleep he wants, gaining back his health and strength. However, after living through a bloody guerrilla war, the Bible no longer holds any meaning for him. Amy invites Agu to share his thoughts and feelings. Agu tells her how he would like to be a doctor and save lives so he could redeem his sins. He also tells her all of the evils he had to do in war. |
5596254 | /m/0dvcwp | Unknown man No. 89 | Elmore Leonard | 1977-05 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The novel follows the exploits of Detroit process server Jack Ryan, who has a reputation for finding men who don't want to be found. A string of seemingly unrelated crimes leads Ryan to the search for a missing stockholder known only as "unknown man #89," but his missing man isn't "unknown" to everyone: a pretty blonde hates his guts, and a very nasty dude named Virgil Royal wants him dead in the worst way. This is very unfortunate for Jack, who is suddenly caught in the crossfire of a lethal triple-cross and becomes as much a target as his nameless prey. Along the way, Ryan butts heads with local police, including six-shooter-carrying Dick Speed. The book is perhaps best remembered for a sequence taken straight from The Godfather, where thug Virgil plants a shotgun in the meeting place of his victim, in this case, the fire escape of Bobby Lear's hotel room. Also of note is homosexual wannabe gangster Lonnie, whose "superfly" haircut was emulated by several of Elmore Leonard's other characters. |
5598680 | /m/0dvh7z | Facing the Flag | Jules Verne | 1896 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Thomas Roch, a brilliant French inventor, has designed the Fulgurator, a weapon so powerful that "the state which acquired it would become absolute master of earth and ocean." However, unable to sell his unproven idea to France or any other government, Roch begins to lose his sanity, becoming bitter, megalomaniacal and paranoid. The United States Government reacts by tucking him away at a luxurious asylum in New Bern, North Carolina, where he is visited by one "Count d'Artigas"—actually Ker Karraje, a notorious pirate of Malagasy origin. His heterogeneous crew is drawn from "escaped convicts, military and naval deserters, and the scum of Europe." Karraje and his crew lead double lives. Karraje goes around openly, under the alias of "Count d'Artigas", a pleasure loving, slightly eccentric but eminently respectable member of royalty. He is a regular visitor to the ports of the East Coast aboard his schooner Ebba. To outward appearances, Ebba has no other means of propulsion than its sails, but in fact it is pulled by an underwater tug. By this means, Karraje and his crew can pull up to becalmed sailing vessels without raising suspicion and board them without warning. They then rob and massacre the crews, scuttling the ships, adding to the statistics of "unexplained disappearances". Karraje hears of Roch and his invention, takes them both seriously, and decides to gain possession of them. Actually, his aim is rather modest. He has no intention to seize mastery over the world, but just to make his hide-out impregnable. He and his men successfully kidnap Roch from his American asylum, and then bring him to their hide-out—the desolate island of Back Cup in the Bahamas. Here a wide cavern, accessible only by submerged submarine, has been made into a well-equipped pirate base. It has its own electrical power plant, and is completely unknown to the rest of the world. During the kidnapping, however, Karraje orders his men to also take along Gaydon, Roch's attendant for the past fifteen months. The reader knows (and, as is later shown, Karraje is also aware) that Gaydon is actually Simon Hart, a French engineer and explosives expert. Hart had decided "to perform the menial and exacting duties of an insane man's attendant" in the hope of learning Roch's secret and, thereby, saving it for France, actuated by "a spirit of the purest and noblest patriotism." Hart is kept imprisoned at the pirate base, though in quite comfortable conditions. He can only watch in dismay as the pirate chief easily manages what four governments in succession have failed to do: win Roch over. Roch is given "many rolls of dollar bills and banknotes, and handfuls of English, French, American and German gold coins" with which to fill his pockets. Further, Roch is formally informed that the entire secret cavern and all in it are henceforward his property, and egged on to "defend his property" against the world which has wronged him so badly. Soon, the inventor is busy constructing his fearsome weapon, happily unaware that he is nothing but a glorified prisoner in the pirate's hands. The paranoid Roch does, however, keep to himself the secret of the detonator or "Deflagrator", a liquid without which the explosive is merely an inert powder. By holding fast to that last secret, Roch unwittingly preserves the life of his ex-keeper Gaydon/Simon Hart. Karraje suspects, wrongly, that Hart knows much more of Roch's secrets than he is willing to let on. It serves the purposes of the pirate chief, a completely ruthless killer, to let Hart live. The pirate engineer Serko, Hart's "colleague," hopes to win him over in prolonged friendly conversations. Hart's reticence is misunderstood as proof that he has something to hide. The pirates underestimate Hart, giving him a practically free run of their hide-out, since the only way out is via submarine. But after carefully studying the currents, Hart succeeds in secretly sending out a message in a metal keg, giving the full details of Karraje's operations and his impeding acquisition of the Fulgurator. The message gets through to the British authorities at their nearby naval base in the Bahamas, and the British Navy sends a submarine, , to find Hart. The submarine's crew makes contact with Hart, and take him and Roch on board, but the Sword is discovered, attacked and sunk by the pirates in a direct underwater submarine vs. submarine battle. The unconscious Hart and Roch are extracted from the sunken British sub by pirate divers, leaving the entire British crew to perish. Hart manages to convince the pirates that he had been kidnapped by the British sailors and had nothing to do with their "visit." He resumes his role as a tolerated prisoner with a free run of the pirate base. Meanwhile, Roch's weapon is completed and becomes operational. A hastily gathered international naval task force approaches the island, consisting of five warships dispatched by the world's five largest powers. The weapon, operated personally by Roch himself, works fully as advertised. Roch has no compunction in using it on British or American ships, and the first cruiser to approach the island is easily destroyed with only a handful of its crew surviving. Undaunted, the next ship approaches the shore, and the moment comes towards which the entire book was leading and from which its title was drawn: "A flag unfurls to the breeze. It is the Tricolour, whose blue, white and red sections stand out luminously against the sky. Ah! What is this? Thomas Roch is fascinated at the sight of his national emblem. Slowly he lowers his arm as the flag flutters up to the mast-head. Then he draws back and covers his eyes with his hand. Heavens above! All sentiment of patriotism is not then dead in his ulcerated heart, seeing that it beats at the sight of his country's flag!" Having at the moment of truth, rediscovered his patriotism, Roch refuses to fire on his country's ship. He struggles with the pirates who try to seize his phial and the Deflagrator. During the struggle Roch resorts to blowing up himself, his weapon, the pirates along with the entire island. The single survivor of the cataclysm is Simon Hart, whose unconscious body with the diary at his side is found by the landing French sailors. Hart is eventually revived, to be amply rewarded for his dedication to his country. He proudly bears witness to Thomas Roch's last-minute change of heart and self-sacrifice. French patriotism is the moral and material victor. |
5599047 | /m/0dvhwh | Beyond the Black Stump | Nevil Shute | 1956 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story concerns a young American geologist, Stanton Laird, working in the Australian outback in the field of oil exploration. Although he is in a very remote location - beyond the black stump - in a region called "the Lunatic" in Western Australia, he is part of a crew that has a well-appointed mobile facility. He is befriended by a local farming family, the Regans, and develops a relationship with their daughter Mollie. The Regans run an enormously profitable station, but their domestic lifestyle is, to say the least, unconventional, with the two Regan brothers at one time having Mollie's mother move from one to the other without bothering to get a divorce. The family is large, and even larger when counting the half-caste children produced by both fathers, and the children are taught by the Judge, an English exile and alcoholic, who gives the children an excellent education and keeps the finances of the station properly accounted for. Over the course of the explorations (which prove unsuccessful), he notes the unique lifestyle on what amounts to the Australian frontier, and falls in love with Mollie. The two wish to wed, but Mollie's mother insists that Mollie first see how the Lairds live in their Oregon town, Hazel, which was once on the frontier, but is no longer, though its citizens take pride in feeling that it still is. The two travel to Hazel. At first, Mollie gets along well in the Laird family home. But then Stanton's one-time love, Ruth, the widow of Stanton's best friend, returns to Hazel with her son. The son bears a tremendous resemblance to Stanton, and Stanton is moved to confess to Mollie both that the son may be his, and that he killed a girl in a drunken accident as a teenager. Mollie is unconcerned about the boy—such things are common where she comes from—but is concerned and judgmental about the accident, and about Stanton's lack of concern for the dead girl. As Stanton expected Mollie to care very much about the boy, and did not expect her to be so concerned about the girl, the two begin to realize they have a very different outlook on life. Eventually, Mollie comes to realize that she will never fit in in Hazel, and does not particularly want to. Her place is on the true frontier, in the Lunatic, not in Hazel. She returns to Australia, where she will likely marry a young neighbor, an emigrant from England, who has long loved her. Stanton is likely to marry Ruth, as Mollie suggests he should. Stanton has a wedding present for Mollie, though—his final report reveals that the neighbor's impoverished lands lie over great quantities of artesian water, which will allow the neighbor—and Mollie—to flourish. |
5603173 | /m/0dvrr3 | The War Machine | David Drake | 1989-11 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | After being forcibly divorced from his wife for political reasons, Spencer tries to force his way on board the ship she’s on. After being ejected, he gets drunk and implanted with a "feelgood" device that stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain. Spencer is saved from this addictive and lethal fate by an unknown Kona Tatsu (secret police) agent. They clean and care for him, then send him on a mission to the Daltgeld system. Working with Agent Suss Nanahbuc, Spencer is given command of a task force and told that Kona Tatsu (KT) agents are disappearing from the planet. Upon arrival, the ``Duncan`` splashes down to dock for repairs, and Nanahbuc heads out to learn the fate of the other agents. While docked, Spencer gets a visit from McCain, a KT agent hiding from the enemy. However, the enemy is aboard and kills McCain before they can analyze the data she found. The enemy turns out to be a small mercury-like blob that seems to react to its environment, weighs 16 tons, and can control the devices it infects. Spencer leaves the ship and closes it down tight, but it’s already too late. In the end, it turns out an alien artifact was recently discovered in an asteroid, and the captain of the mining freighter was "convinced" to take the artifact to the head of a local conglomerate, Jameson. The device, a helmet made of a mercury-like substance, takes over Jameson and uses him as a control center for taking over the system, with plans to leave it and spread throughout the galaxy. After losing his flagship to prevent an alien from leaving the system, Spencer and Nanahbuc locate the main asteroid of the enemy and head in with the task force to put an end to it for good. |
5604544 | /m/0dvvf9 | Riders in the Chariot | Patrick White | 1961 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The novel begins with the wild and mad Miss Hare, awaiting the arrival of a new maid to assist in the upkeep of her house, Xanadu, a large and sprawling structure that is slowly falling into decay because of a lack of care. The climax is a mock crucifixion of an old Jewish refugee (one of the four main characters) in the courtyard of the factory where he works. The owner of the factory fears to interfere, and a young aborigine says three times, that he does not know the victim. |
5606764 | /m/0dvzgn | When the Wind Blows | James Patterson | 10/28/1998 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book centers on Frannie Devin O'Neill, a veterinarian, whose husband was killed a three years before the story takes place. The action takes place in Bear Bluff, Colorado. She meets Kit Harrison, an FBI agent, when he rents a cabin in the woods behind her house. One night, after a friend's mysterious death, Frannie sees a small girl with wings, running in the forest. Her name is Max, and they learn about Max's missing brother, Matthew, and the sinister place where they grew up. Kit, Frannie, and Max find and break into the School. They find the rest of Max's "flock", two Chinese siblings named Wendy and Peter, a blind boy named Icarus, and Oz, all of whom have wings. The group leaves the school and Kit calls the FBI for help. They try to go back to Frannie's vet clinic, the Inn Patient, but they find it burnt down. They are caught by the "whitecoats" (who work at the School) and the flock's previous Keeper, a cruel man named Harding Thomas (also known as "Uncle Tom"). The whitecoats force Kit and Frannie to come with them at the threat of shooting the children and they agree. Max, however, manages to escape. The whitecoats take the adults and the rest of the flock to the home of Gillian, Frannie's friend who turns out to work at the School as well. The flock becomes excited when they see Gillian's son, Michael, who is one of the School's experiments. Gillian and Thomas try to get Frannie and Kit to tell what they've found out about the School, but neither cooperate. Michael guides them to where the flock is being kept. They find the flock, along with Matthew, and escape while Gillian holds an auction to sell the bird children to major corporations. Max, meanwhile, guides news helicopters to Gillian's house and they report on the bird kids and expose the whitecoats. Kit is shot nonfatally. Frannie, Max, and Matthew notice Gillian, Michael, Thomas, and Anthony Peyser (Gillian's husband and the leader of the School) escaping in a car. Max and Matthew fly after, with Frannie following in her car. The siblings dive-bomb the car and cause it to crash, killing everyone inside. During the explosion, however, Max is badly hurt. Frannie operates on Max at a hospital and she recovers, as does Kit. Kit and Frannie take the bird kids into hiding, however eventually they help the children find their parents. |
5606870 | /m/0dvzmg | Blades of the Tiger | Chris Pierson | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | While attempting to steal back an important work of art, Shedara discovers that the lord of the keep has been attacked and is dying. He mistakes her for a friend and mutters "The Hooded One" before he dies from his mortal but bloodless wounds. After returning to Armach-nesti and discussing the event with the Voice of the Stars, she is sent on another mission to retrieve the Hooded One, a statue of an evil Emperor of Aurim, Maladar the Faceless. Maladar's soul has been imprisoned in the statue and evil forces are at work to try to free him. Meanwhile, across the Tiderun, on the plains north of Coldhope Keep, Hult has discovered that the Uigan leader, their Bolya, has been ambushed. Chovuk and Hult look for the Boyla, and discover that he is still alive. Chovuk kills the Boyla, to be named the next Boyla. Hult later discovers that Chovuk has been learning evil sorcery from a black robed mage, known only as the Teacher. Chovuk fights the other contestant for the position of Boyla, and wins because he used sorcery to shape change into steppe-tiger. The tribes have a superstition that the steppe-tiger is the avatar of their god, and so embrace Chovuk as the new Boyla. Chovuk recruits the goblins, as well as an elf, Eldako, from the wild elf tribes to help him attack the Imperial League. They burn, sack, and massacre the towns and villages of the Imperial League north of the Tiderun, while they wait for the moons to sink below the horizon, so that the Tiderun will become dry. In the Imperial League south of the Tiderun, Forlo is returning from many long years of war, when he discovers that the capital has been damaged by an earthquake, and that the emperor and almost all of his immediate blood relatives are dead. He also finds out that the keeper of the peace is Duke Rekhaz. Forlo meets Duke Rekhaz, and Rekhaz wants Forlo to help command his army, so that Rekhaz can defeat any opponents vying for the throne. However, Forlo has a writ of dismissal from the now dead emperor, so he refuses to serve, which angers Rekhaz. Forlo returns home, to discover a pirate raiding in his waters, whom he had previously signed a treaty with. He discovers that the pirate raided the ship only because the ship was carrying artifacts that hadn't been taxed, and the owner of the ship was a rich merchant. In return for raiding the ship, the pirate gives Forlo a statue. After taking it home, he finds out that his wife is pregnant, and that they both feel the statue's menacing presence. He decides to have it moved into the family vaults under the keep. Shedara discovers that the statue was stolen from a merchant, and that it has ended up in the hands of Barreth Forlo. She attempts to steal the statue, but is trapped and captured by Forlo's guards. Forlo questions her, but she refuses to answer and he has her locked up in a tower. He learns that the Uigan are preparing to cross the Tiderun, and attack his fief. He calls for aid from Rekhaz, but Rekhaz questions his loyalty. Rekhaz agrees to give Forlo only six hundred men if he agrees to rejoin the army. Forced to act, Forlo agrees. Later, Grath, a friend of Forlo's and the current commander of the Sixth Legion agrees to help Forlo. He decides to send the Sixth Legion to help Forlo, but they still can't hold the fief. He then questions Shedara again, and agrees to give her the statue if she will contact Armach-nesti to send aid. She contacts Armach-nesti, but discovers that the evil forces intent on capturing the statue have murdered the Voice of the Stars and all her people. Forlo tells her she's free to go, but she still wants to help him, so she forces Maladar to send a gigantic wave over the barbarian horde. The barbarian horde is destroyed, and she manages to force Maladar back into the statue. A small remainder of the Uigan horde is still alive, as well as Eldako, the Boyla, and Hult. The horde doesn't present much resistance and are easily defeated by Forlo and his men, however, the elf escapes. The Boyla turns back into a human because the evil forces betrayed him, so he becomes mad. He fights Forlo in an attempt to regain his honor, but Forlo kills him. The Boyla's protector, Hult, decides not to avenge his master and instead follows Forlo. Forlo discovers that Grath was killed during the fighting and that the Uigan were sent as a diversion so that the keep would be unprotected. Forlo, Shedara, and Hult return to the keep only to discover that Essana has been kidnapped, the statue is missing and the only thing left behind is a dragon's scale. |
5611141 | /m/0dw6dn | The Riddle | Alison Croggon | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Maerad and Cadvan continue the search for the Treesong, the key to Maerad's destiny, while fleeing from Enkir, the First Bard of Norloch, who had broken Milana, Maerad's mother, and sold them both into slavery. Maerad and Cadvan sail with a friend called Owan d'Aroki to the Mycenean Greece-like island of Thorold. Enkir sends a sea serpent in pursuit, which the two Bards kill. Having arrived on the island, they enter the Bardic School of Busk. Maerad continues her Bardic training that had been stopped abruptly in Innail, learning about magery, illusions, and additional fighting skills, which improve readily. Cadvan studies records in Busk's extensive library, but finds nothing by which to explain the nature of the Treesong. Soon, Busk receives a messenger from Norloch who reveals that Enkir has claimed the authority of High King over all the Seven Kingdoms, and demands the Schools' undivided fealty. Busk, rather than submit to Norloch or be counted its enemies, pledge their "unwavering allegiance to the Light", rather than to Enkir; thus placing themselves beyond either possibility. Later, at a seasonal festival commemorating the Bards' New Year, Busk's First Bard Nerili succumbs to a 'darkness' within herself, which puts her into a trauma that prevents her creation of the ceremonial "Tree of Light". Cadvan intervenes, salvaging the ceremony; however, Nerili's experience suggests that the power of the evil Nameless One is increasing, and that it is more insidious than in his previous attacks upon humanity. Maerad and Cadvan decide to leave the School of Busk, as it is not safe for them to stay, and instead travel a long and arduous route into the island's mountainous interior, accompanied by the Bard Elenxi. Elenxi guides the two to his goatherd brother Ankil, who is Nerili's grandfather. Maerad and Cadvan adapt to an agrarian lifestyle, continuing Maerad's training in their spare time. In so doing, they learn that Maerad is capable of feats of transformation beyond the abilities of any other Bard, as demonstrated when she literally changes a boulder into a lion. Such abilities are attributed to her Elidhu (faerie) ancestry. At one point, Ankil reveals a story wherein one mortal king stole a song of the world's harmony from the Elidhu, splitting it in half, and by doing so brought misery. Cadvan assumes this man to be Sharma, who would later become the Nameless One, but is subsequently suggested to be wrong. When word reaches them that they are no longer safe, Maerad and Cadvan leave Ankil. Accompanied by Elenxi, they traverse an unfrenquented path to a port where they may sail with Owan to the mainland. En route, they are attacked by a Hull (a sorcerer corrupted by evil magic), who renders Elenxi insensate and holds Maerad's power under his control by use of an appropriately-named "blackstone", which copies her magic's energetic signature and enables him to manipulate it. In spite of this, Maerad uses her Elidhu power to change him into a rabbit. Cadvan thence captures and kills the rabbit, leaving him to corrode. Maerad and Cadvan then awaken Elenxi. The two of them take leave of Elenxi at the coast of Thorold, from which they then embark for the mainland. While they are on the ocean, Cadvan, Maerad, and Owan are attacked by a monstrous "stormdog"; a huge, ferocious, wild manifestation of the storm's fury, shaped vaguely like an enormous hound. In attempting to use her magic against it in Cadvan's aid, Maerad suddenly understands the stormdog's true nature, and therefore calms it rather than frighten it away. Thereafter the three humans make the journey safely to land. On the mainland, Cadvan and Maerad stay for some days and nights (possibly less than a week) at the Bardic School of Gent. Here, Maerad's training is not pursued as it was on Thorold; but they are treated as honored guests. Maerad soon befriends their host Gahal's daughter Lyla, who while not a Bard has skill in the art of medicine. Because her now dead suitor Dernhil was born at Gent, Maerad is often reminded of him. Owan leaves for Thorold, which is his home; days later, Maerad and Cadvan go north on the backs of their faithful horses, Darsor and Imi. Believing such a course to be against Enkir's expectations, they ride through Annar, briefly passing within reach of Cadvan's former School, Lirigon. In Annar, they encounter economic degradation, often openly in the forms of abject poverty, misery, and child labour. Near Lirigon, they encounter two Bards who believe Enkir's statement that any who do not swear fealty to him, and especially Cadvan and Maerad, are traitors to the Light. In the confrontation, Maerad kills one of these two Bards, Ilar of Desor. This act deeply disturbs Cadvan, who takes it as indication that he has failed to correctly train Maerad. When he speaks of this, Maerad's own emotional insecurity etc. causes her to be harsher toward Cadvan than she has been accustomed to be. Fear, pride, and resentment on her part increase over the next many weeks, causing a rift between herself and Cadvan. The Bards and their horses proceed to the mountains called Osidh Elanor, intending to go beyond them to find the secret of the Treesong. When they are among the mountains, they are attacked by the frost giant-like "iriduguls", who serve the Elidhu called Arkan the Winterking. Maerad cannot join with Cadvan mentally to combat these iridugul, who break the mountainside and by doing so bury Cadvan and Darsor. Imi flees in the opposite direction, while Maerad, horrified at the sight of Cadvan's apparent death, lies down in shock. When she awakens, Maerad eats, drinks, and plays a lament for those whom she considers dead on a flute-like instrument given to her by her Elidhu ancestor Queen Ardina. The playing of the pipes summons Ardina, who at Maerad's request heals some of her more life-threatening injuries, then takes her to the home of a northern tribeswoman called Mirka à Hadaruk, who lives as a recluse in the mountains with no companion but her dog Inka. Mirka nurses Maerad to health over several days, during which she reveals that she is a Bard, though not one trained in the Annaren/Thoroldian fashion; that she (Mirka) belongs to the seminomadic people called Pilani, from whom Maerad is descended on her father's side; and that to the north exist a people called the Wise Kindred, who may explain the Treesong. Maerad, having recovered from her injuries and left Mirka, travels to Murask, a Pilani settlement on the nearby Zmarkan Plains. There, she is accepted as guest by her father Dorn's twin sister, Sirkana à Triberi. Maerad stays in Murask for some days, unremarked by most of the people whom she meets, and eventually leaves in the company of one Dharin, a cousin of hers born to Dorn's other sister. Dharin and Maerad ride on a dogsled to the home of the Wise Kindred, an Inuit-like ethnicity of people who live on the volcanic islands north of Zmarkan. These people, in turn, redirect Maerad to the home of the necromancer Inka-Reb, who lives with a pack of wolves. Inka-Reb receives Maerad and calls her a liar when she claims to need his help to define and find the Treesong. Angered, she demands that he speak with her. He agrees, adding that she may be unaware of having spoken a lie. Inka-Reb then reveals that half of the divided Treesong is actually written on a lyre that Maerad has inherited from her mother, and that if either the Light or the Dark unite the two halves, the world will be ruined. Having told her this, and refusing to say more, he sends her away. Maerad and Dharin ride their dogsled toward the south, but are attacked on the way to Murask by the Jussacks, a tribe of Cossack-like hunters sent by the Winterking to seize Maerad. Dharin is killed and Maerad taken prisoner. The Jussacks transport her in their own dogsleds to the northeastern stronghold where Arkan's life and power are situated, where they hand her to Arkan. En route Maerad develops a friendship with Nim, the Jussack warrior deputed to take care of her, and loses three fingers to frostbite, reducing her much-cherished ability to play music. In Arkan's fortress, Maerad is given a life of illusory luxury, her corporeal needs attended by a servant woman named Gima, who views Arkan as her beloved master. Arkan and Maerad gradually develop a Beauty and the Beast-like relationship, wherein she feels sexually drawn to him and he to her. During her captivity, Arkan reads the writing on Maerad's lyre, revealing that the symbols are an ogham-analogous script containing the power of the Speech. He additionally reveals that they were created by the Bard Nelsor, who attempted to capture the Song's power without realizing the disasters this could cause. Nelsor is later suggested to have been Arkan's homosexual partner. Maerad is contacted during her captivity by Ardina, who has changed herself into a wolf and does not initially reveal her own identity. She gives Maerad a saying: "Triple-tongued is triple-named". This implies that in addition to the girl's human name, Maerad, and her Bardic name Elednor, she has another, Elidhu name, which Arkan does not know and therefore cannot use to control her as he uses the others. Ultimately, Maerad walks out of Arkan's stronghold and joins Ardina, who guides her to assume wolf's form. As wolves, the two escape, pursued by Arkan's stormdogs. Ardina delivers Maerad to the wolf pack who serve Inka-Reb and leaves her with them. Subsequently, the wolf pack take Maerad to Annar, where she travels, still a wolf herself, to her birthplace of Pellinor. There, she encounters Cadvan, who has survived the battle in the mountains and come to Pellinor at Ardina's advice. She resumes her human form, hears Cadvan's account of his own travels through Zmarkan (which he had pursued shortly in her wake), and reveals her own story to him. Cadvan speculates regarding the meaning of what she has learned, suspecting that her destiny involves undoing Nelsor's captivity of the Speech, which neither Light nor Dark should have achieved. The two of them plan to seek out Maerad's brother Hem, who is significant to her destiny. Will she ever find her destiny? |
5611604 | /m/0dw7d5 | The Mocking Program | Alan Dean Foster | 2002-08 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | A hard-boiled police procedural set in a highly imaginative megalopolis called the Montezuma Strip, which stretches along the old U.S.-Mexican border. When police inspector Angel Cardenas investigates the case of a male corpse found with most of its internal organs missing, the victim turns out to have had two identities - one as a local executive, the other as a Texas businessman. The plot thickens when the victim's booby-trapped house nearly kills Cardenas and his partner. The author makes use of a vast array of futuristic elements; notably, sapient apes led by gorillas and intelligent rogue computers that commit computer crimes. While the book does not state this, this is a continuation of a series of short stories featuring the same main character, written by Foster and initially published in genre magazines under the pen-name of James Lawson, and then collected under his own name in the Warner book Montezuma Strip (1995), ISBN 0-446-60207-8 |
5613748 | /m/0dwc8x | The Infinitive of Go | John Brunner | 1980 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | For the first significant test using a live person, a diplomatic agent is Posted to a foreign embassy from the USA. The test is an abject failure, with the agent demanding a countersign upon arriving at his destination, and then shooting himself and triggering a destructive failsafe in the package of documents he was carrying. It is assumed that the Posting affected the agent's sanity. Faced with termination of the project, Dr. Justin Williams, the inventor of the technology, arranges to have himself Posted from the same embassy back to his research laboratory. He finds himself in a world which is subtly different from his own. For one thing, Cinnamon Wright, his beautiful but cold African-American collaborator, is suddenly an ardent lover. Eventually she admits to him that, like the Cinnamon Wright from his world, she was Posted, and once worked for him in a world where he hated her, even though she was attracted to him. As the story progresses, they realize that when humans are Posted, their inner desires influence the outcome, tipping them into alternate universes. However, they are not prepared for outcome of the next Posting: A Dr. Eduardo Landini has to be Posted back from an orbiting satellite for emergency surgery following a mechanical accident. But the being who emerges is not a man. He is a humanoid descended from baboons, who claims to be Ed Landini, and tells the doctors attending him that he is guaranteed to be biologically compatible with humans, otherwise he would not be there. He reveals that in his world the Posting technology is well understood. However, only mystics and "Pilgrims" elect to be Posted, because they know they will go to another world. It was only his desperate situation that forced him to take the chance himself. The problem is this: the Poster links two congruent spaces, but it searches many universes to find the best match. When all factors are accounted for, including a person's state of mind and the state of the machine itself, the best match is more likely to be found in a machine from another universe. This is how a Dr. Landini arrived that is a man descended from baboons but speaking English and coming from a world with almost exactly the same history as the one on which he arrived. Although evolution took a different track on his world, the outcome was almost exactly the same as on the world where he arrived; had it been different, he would have gone to a different universe. The person who first comes to understand this is not a scientist, but a philosopher. For intelligent beings, the Poster acts as a sort of "equalizer" between universes, introducing worlds where the technology is new to worlds where it is understood. The world from which Landini came was one in which the technology was being pushed further. Posters were being built in large numbers and launched across huge distances of interplanetary space, since the further the distance in the transfer, the greater the difference between the universes linked by the Poster. However, Landini himself becomes the focus of trouble. Rumors about his appearance inspire revulsion among staff members at the facility, and as those rumors spread into the general population, politicians, pundits, religious leaders and rabble rousers begin exploiting the fears generated. Landini himself has no stomach for the attention, and openly shows his contempt for the behavior of the humans around him. Despite his training and education, he has significant personality problems that isolated him even from his own kind. One of the things he tells Justin and Cinnamon is that a typical outcome from contact via the Posters is that the inventors of the devices go insane. Justin begins to feel he is right. The world is spiraling out of control around him, and he has had to reconcile his initial feelings of triumph over the creation of the device with the knowledge that an infinite number of people in other universes invented it long before him. The final chapter has Myron Chester, the financier of the development effort (who was a ruthless power broker in Justin's original world) revealing a secret. He had suspected that Justin and Cinnamon had both been changed by being Posted because neither had mentioned their secret project-within-a-project: To discover what would happen if a Poster was used without another Poster acting as a destination. Once it became apparent that Posters linked different universes he began sending information rather than objects. Soon he accumulated a collection of books, newspapers and other media from other Earths, some fantastically different from the one he lived on. He is optimistic that once people begin being Posted this way, they will receive the Pilgrims Landini talked about, who go to help other universes. He believes that the Posters will necessarily send people to the universes where they can do the most good, because that is what their state of mind will require. One message he received says that in worlds where the inventors of Posting are among the first to be Posted, the outcome is usually good for those left behind. If this is not done, the outcome is usually very bad. Since both Justin and Cinnamon had been posted, this foretells a likelihood of a positive outcome in this reality. |
5615674 | /m/0dwgj3 | Inca Gold | Clive Cussler | null | {"/m/017rf8": "Techno-thriller", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | In 1532 a fleet of ships sails in secret to an island in the middle of an inland sea. There they hide a magnificent treasure more vast than that of any Pharaoh would ever possess. Then they disappear, leaving only a great stone demon to guard their hoard. In 1578 the legendary Sir Francis Drake captures a Spanish galleon filled with Inca gold and silver and the key to the lost treasure, which included a gigantic chain of gold and a large pile that of diamonds worth more than 200 billion dollars belonged to the last Inca king, a masterpiece of ancient technology so huge that it requires two hundred men to lift it. As the galleon is sailed by Drake's crew back to England, an underwater earthquake causes a massive tidal wave that sweeps it into the jungle. Only one man survives to tell the tale... In 1998 a group of archaeologists is nearly drowned while diving into the depths of a sacrificial pool high in the Andes of Peru. They are saved by the timely arrival of the renowned scuba diving hero Dirk Pitt, who is in the area on a marine expedition. Pitt soon finds out that his life has been placed in jeopardy as well by smugglers intent on uncovering the lost ancient Incan treasure. Soon, he, his faithful companions, and Dr. Shannon Kelsey, a beautiful young archaeologist, are plunged into a vicious, no-hold-barred struggle to survive. From then on it becomes a battle of wits in a race against time and danger to find the golden chain, as Pitt finds himself caught up in a struggle with a sinister international family syndicate that deal in stolen works of art, the smuggling of ancient artifacts, and art forgery worth many millions of dollars. The clash between the art thieves, the FBI and the Customs Service, a tribe of local Indians, and Pitt, along with his friends from NUMA, two of whom are captured and threatened with execution, rushes toward a wild climax in a subterranean world of darkness and death - for the real key to the mystery, as it turns out, is a previously unknown, unexplored underground river that runs through the ancient treasure chamber. |
5615710 | /m/0dwglw | Valhalla Rising | Clive Cussler | null | null | Dirk Pitt has to stop an evil CEO of an oil and natural gas company in the US from establishing absolute monopoly over oil resources and supplies. It is a typical Dirk Pitt novel dealing with a countdown, bribed officials, and ruthless evil leaders. Pitt also unravels the work of a brilliant, reclusive scientist who had made great advances in oil technology, traced the history and found the remains of a Viking settlement on the Hudson River, and discovered the remains of Captain Nemo's Nautilus and unriddled and improved its power system (a magnetohydrodynamic engine). |
5620868 | /m/0dwq_5 | The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 | Ron Suskind | null | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | The One Percent doctrine (also called the Cheney doctrine) was created in November 2001 (no exact date is given) during a briefing given by then-CIA Director George Tenet and an unnamed briefer to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in response to worries that a Pakistani scientist was offering nuclear weapons expertise to Al Qaeda after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack. Responding to the thought that Al Qaeda might want to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney observed that the U.S. had to confront a new type of threat, a "low-probability, high-impact event" as he described it. Suskind makes a distinction between two groups engaged in the fight against terrorism: "the notables", those who talk to us about the threat of terrorism (Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, et al.), and "the invisibles", those who are fighting terrorists (the CIA analysts, the FBI agents and all the other foot soldiers). The book advances the theory that Abu Zubaydah, a "top operative plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States" as Bush described him, was an insignificant figure. According to the book, Osama bin Laden apparently wanted Bush reelected in 2004, and therefore issued a video message which, in the U.S. media, was described as “Osama’s endorsement of John Kerry.” In the book, unnamed CIA analysts speculate that this can be attributed to the view that the controversial policies Bush advocated would help recruit mujahideen and would cause the image of the United States to decline globally due to aggressive foreign policy. The book also mentions a plot to attack the 34th Street – Herald Square subway station in New York City in March 2003. But, 45 days before an al-Qaeda cell, who had monitored surveillance of the station, were to release deadly cyanide gas into the tunnels, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other terrorist leaders scrapped the plan because it wasn't as deadly as 9-11 and therefore wasn't notable enough to compete with the impact of 9-11. Richard Clarke told ABC News he is wary of the report about the New York City subway plot. Clarke stated: "There's reason to be skeptical... Just because something is labeled in an intelligence report does not mean every word in it is true." He said the information describing the plot would have been just one of the hundreds of threats that would have been collected in 2003. According to Clarke, the specificity of the report also made it suspect, stating "Whenever you get reports that are this specific, they are usually made up." Clarke also called into question the notion that Ayman al-Zawahiri called off the attack, adding that he would be too isolated to have that kind of direct control over a plot inside the United States. He also believes the terrorists would have carried out the attack if the plot was as advanced as Suskind reported, stating "Frankly if there was a team in the United States that was ready to do this, they would have done it." An intelligence official who was briefed at the time that the authorities learned of the threat, and who wished to remain anonymous, told The New York Times that some in the intelligence community had been skeptical of the supposed plot, particularly of the idea that the plot had been called off by Mr. al-Zawahiri. The plot was said to involve the use of a relatively crude device for releasing the chemical gases. "This is a simple cyanide thing, two chemicals mixed together, and it releases cyanide gas..They'd be lucky if they killed everybody on one car — you can do that with a 9-millimeter pistol...None of it has been confirmed in three years, who these guys were, whether they in fact had a weapon, or whether they were able to put together a weapon, whether that weapon has been defined and what it would cause or whether they were even in New York", he told the Times. One former official told CNN that he agreed al-Zawahiri called off the attack but disagreed with Suskind that the terrorists were thwarted within 45 days of carrying it out. Two former officials told CNN the United States was familiar with the design of the gas-dispersal device and had passed the information to state and local officials, but added that the proposed timing of the attack was not as precise as Suskind wrote. A former CIA official told the New York Daily News that few top U.S. counterterrorism officials knew about the plot and many deny Suskind's claim that a panicky Bush White House sent "alerts through the government." One reason for the lack of alarm, according to the former official, was that soon after discovering Al Qaeda blueprints for a homemade cyanide sprayer, the feds learned Zawahiri had nixed the plot because "it wasn't big enough." The device was also an unreliable weapon of mass destruction. "Cyanide is sexy, but difficult to weaponize...They have fantasies of poisoning a water supply. You can't imagine how difficult that would be. Did they fantasize about a cyanide attack? Most likely", a senior counterterrorism official told the Daily News. New York Senator Charles Schumer told the Associated Press that while the threat was "serious enough to be taken seriously", the alleged plot was "never corroborated." Suskind also claims in the book that the al Qaeda's cell that would have carried out the attack is still in the United States. Intelligence sources, however, told CBS News that, as far as they know, there are no terrorist cells operating in the U.S. under the command of Zawahri or bin Laden. A counter-terrorism official who asked not to be named told the Washington Times, "A lot of information [in Suskind's book] is simply wrong." One inaccuracy, this official said, is the book's assertion that Abu Zubaydah, whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002, was not a key al Qaeda figure, and was insane. The counter-terrorism official said Zubaydah is "crazy like a fox" and was a senior planner inside al Qaeda who has provided critical information on how Osama bin Laden's group works. John McLaughlin, former acting CIA director, has also stated, "I totally disagree with the view that the capture of Abu Zubaydah was unimportant. Abu Zubaydah was woven through all of the intelligence prior to 9/11 that signaled a major attack was coming, and his capture yielded a great deal of important information." Sources with direct knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogation told the New York Daily News that while they concede Zubaydah knew about ideas but not operations and fed the CIA disinformation, he was lucid and difficult to crack. "He was tough and smart", said an agency veteran. |
5621134 | /m/0dwrh3 | War of the Worlds: New Millennium | Douglas Niles | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | After a remote Mars Rover (Vision) loses contact with Earth, a series of flashes appear on the face of Mars, once every Martian day (24 hours, 37 minutes). The flashes baffle scientists at first, until strange objects are discovered heading towards Earth. A space shuttle is sent out to investigate, and becomes the first casualty in the Martian attack on Earth. The first of the eleven objects sends out a 1 million volt electromagnetic pulse (EMP) which becomes known simply as the Pulse. The first pulse covers North America, and knocks out all computer circuitry and most sophisticated electronics. The second and third objects contain EMPs for Eurasia and Antarctica, effectively immobilizing the world. The remaining objects release canisters which plummet to Earth and strategically impact around major population centers. As planes crash and cars stop, Alex DeVane tries to get to NASA headquarters to deal with the Pulse and what it means. After the canisters hit, and bombing appears to have no effect, the United States Army sends out an infantry division to investigate and attack the aliens. The canister opens, and the Martians exit in armored saucers held up on tractor beam-like legs. They are also armed with lasers that burn through anything they touch. The ring of tanks, infantry, and artillery fire on the Martians, but to no effect. They destroy the group and continue the invasion. The U.S. Army rallies and fights bravely, but loses every battle. The Martians also have a poison gas weapon that lasts about 30 minutes, but is lethal. They destroy and kill for the sake of doing so, and seem to breathe in the death and destruction they are causing. Ironically, this smell leads doctors and scientists to speculate on the nature of the Martians, and the large amount of bacteria they seem to thrive upon. Although successful with nuclear weapon attacks, the Americans try a penicillin/antibiotic bomb, which seems to stop the landers after only a slight delay. Further experimentation by Markus DeVane later proves that any bread-based mold will quickly put down a Martian. This solution is communicated to the survivors, and the invasion is stopped. |
5621370 | /m/0dwrz1 | Generation "П" | Victor Pelevin | 1999 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel is set in Moscow in the Yeltsin years, the early 1990s, a time of rampant chaos and corruption. Its protagonist, Babylen Tatarsky, graduate student and poet, has been tossed onto the streets after the fall of the Soviet Union where he soon learns his true calling: developing Russian versions of western advertisements. But the more he succeeds as a copywriter, the more he searches for meaning in a culture now defined by material possessions and self-indulgence. He attempts to discover the forces that determine individual desires and shape collective belief in this post-Soviet world. In this quest, Tatarsky sees coincidences that suggest patterns that in turn suggest a hidden meaning behind the chaos of life. He first senses this hidden purpose when reading about Mesopotamian religious practices. Tatarsky’s quest is enhanced by the consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and vodka. His quest is further aided by another form of spirits: through a Ouija board, Che Guevera writes a treatise on identity, consumerism, and television. Eventually, Tatarsky begins to learn some truths—for instance, that all of politics and the “real” events broadcast on television are digital creations. But he can never quite discover the ultimate force behind these fabrications. When at last he reaches the top of the corporate pyramid, Tatarsky learns that the members of his firm are servants of the goddess Ishtar, whose corporeal form consists of the totality of advertising images. The firm’s chief duty is to make sure that Ishtar’s enemy, the dog Phukkup, does not awaken, bringing with it chaos and destruction. After a ritual sacrifice, Tatarsky becomes the goddesses’ new regent and, in the form of a 3-D double, her bridegroom. In the novel’s last chapter, Tatarsky’s electronic double becomes a ubiquitous presence on Russian TV. Tatarsky, who had tried to look past the false images presented on TV to see a true umediated reality, has himself been transformed into an illusion. |
5622375 | /m/0dwtg7 | Wild Energy | Marina and Sergey Dyachenko | 2006 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The heroine, Lana, lives in a synthetic city and works as a pixel. Every evening millions of people, working as pixels, perform a 20-minute light show for the other citizens. They wear colourful robes and during each sunset they receive commands in the form of music through headphones. Each command means a certain type of movement, so that by moving/dancing, different parts of their clothes are exposed to the sun rays, thus reflecting the sunlight in different colours. All this can be seen on a huge screen in the synthetic city, where all citizens watch it. After every light show all pixels receive a packet of energy which allows them to survive until their next dose. If a pixel makes a mistake during a show, so that the picture appears distorted, they are punished by not receiving an energy packet. If they haven't stored anything from their previous doses, they will not survive the next day. Lana's best friend, Eve, makes such a mistake and is not given a packet. Lana does her best to save her but doesn't succeed. In the synthetic city there is a rumour spread that some people don't need these packets of synthetic energy and can live on their own, by the energy their hearts and spirits produce. These people are chased by the energy police: they are slaughtered in the factory (a mystic place about which little is known) and their energy is used for maintaining the lives of the synthetics by turning it into energy packets. Lana is determined to find the Wild people and try to live by her own energy (the phrase "I'll find it or die" becomes the motto of the book and Ruslana's project). She finds them in a place called Overground. Overground is located on the roofs of abandoned or ruined skyscrapers, high, where no one can reach the Wild. They have created their own world and culture, possess wings as means of travelling, and have their own language, similar to that of birds. Lana stays with them for a while and finds friends. Lana turns out to be a powerful generator of wild energy, for which she is chased by the energy police. Being in Overground she exposes also her friends to danger. One day, while she is away, the energy police, in search for her, attack the Wild from Overground. When Lana returns, her home is devastated. She sets off to find and destroy the factory where her friends have most probably been taken. On her way she meets the people-wolves, living in the woods, where she stays and learns how to summon the forces of nature, which will help her destroy the factory. During those rituals she is helped by a small drum, given her as a present by an old man from the synthetic city. She gathers a group of devoted young wild "wolves" and they go to fight with the factory and its devastating energy. The first attempt is not successful, the young wolves die, but she manages to enter the factory and is caught by the factory's host, who calls himself "The Heart of The Factory". Lana becomes his hostage and while she is there, it is implied that the factory's host might be Lana's father. Lana manages to escape and saves her Overground friends. They go back to the people-wolves, where they gather a team for a second time. Another fight with the factory follows. The characters' weapons are different musical or noise producing instruments, including drums and trembitas. The factory's power is deafening silence. All sounds, all rhythm is lost when approaching the factory. Its anti-rhythm is usually stronger than any other life energy or rhythm. Lana's task is to defeat this anti-rhythm and, by summoning lightning, which must simultaneously strike all the weakest parts of the factory to destroy it. The friends manage to do this and enter the factory, but once inside, the factory's anti-rhythm almost kills them. They survive because "The Heart of The Factory" helps them by taking their place in the dangerous anti-rhythm zone. He dies and Lana and her friends remain safe and sound. The Wild go back to their homes and Lana becomes the new "Heart of the Factory". |
5624292 | /m/0dwy1k | Stolen | Kelley Armstrong | 2003 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The story begins with Elena travelling to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to follow up a lead the Pack have come across on believe.com which purports to be able to prove the existence of werewolves. However, when she meets her contact, a young witch named Paige Winterbourne, she has information that Elena finds extremely disturbing. Not only does she claim to know about werewolves, but more specifically about her. It is clear that the posting on the website was a lure designed to bring Elena to Pittsburgh because of problems other supernaturals have been having with a group headed by Tyrone Winsloe. Elena is skeptical, having given no credence up to this point that other supernatural beings such as witches and vampires could exist. The claims of Paige and her mother, Ruth, sound like conspiracy theories that Elena finds hard to believe. Unable to sleep, she goes out that night for a run, but is followed by a stalker with military training. Elena evades him only to discover that he has colleagues and that they are trying to capture not only herself, but also the Winterbournes. In the fight, Elena kills one of the men, Mark, and the three women find themselves confronting a half-demon able to teleport whom Elena nicknames 'Houdini', who works for Tyrone Winsloe. Ruth casts a spell which traps him temporarily and the three women make their escape. Elena calls Jeremy and, the next morning, the two of them attend a meeting of the Inter-racial Council. There they are told about a shaman who had been kidnapped and taken away from his home in Virginia to a compound run by Tyrone Winsloe and Lawrence Matasumi. With his abilities of Astral projection, the shaman is able to not only determine that he is not the only captive, but also to contact the shaman on the Inter-racial Council, Kenneth. Following the discussion about how to handle matters, Jeremy declines to return to the meeting after dinner. His priority is first and foremost to the Pack and its safety. Whilst he is prepared to join forces with the Council if necessary, it is only a temporary measure as the Pack has always fought its own battles. That night Clay arrives. The three werewolves are attacked by men working for Winsloe, but they are all killed. The Pack are suspicious because the only people who knew they were in the area where the members of the Council. So, the following day, when they arrive at the meeting, they do so with the head of one of the men in a bag. They decline any offer to align themselves with the Council and leave. On the way back, Elena is kidnapped and taken to the compound. There she becomes involved with many of the other residents, being 'befriended' by Leah and Sondra, as well as helping Doctor Carmichael in the infirmary. She discovers Ruth has also been kidnapped. The witch is particularly interested in another prisoner, Savannah Levine. However, 'poltergeist activity', that many of those in the compound associate with Savannah, plays a role in the death of Ruth. Sondra Bauer becomes obsessed with turning herself into a werewolf and injects herself with some of Elena's saliva. Her body reacts as if she has been bitten, and she is taken to the infirmary. While there, Bauer kills Carmichael and Elena is forced to sedate her. Bauer is transferred to the cell beside Elena's. Tyrone Winsloe takes an interest in Elena, wanting her to wear skimpy clothing as well as watch, and participate in, his 'hunts'. Prisoners such as Patrick Lake and Armen Haig are killed during these and it becomes clear that Elena is next. Winsloe brings her photographs that he claims are of Clay and that Clay is now dead. An apparent system malfunction provides the opportunity for Elena, Sondra, Leah and Savannah to attempt escape. Bauer loses control and is killed by the guards. Leah and Savannah get left behind when an elevator door closes on Elena. She makes a run for it, Changing into a wolf, and is chased by dogs. Clay finds her and takes her back to Jeremy and the others who are in New Brunswick, Canada. After telling her story, the group devise a plan to free the others from the compound and to put a stop to Ty Winsloe and his associates. Clay, Paige, Adam and Elena enter the compound first. They kill the dogs and disable the vehicles before entering the building itself. Tucker and the guards are killed or disabled before they enter the cell block. There they find Savannah. Curtis Zaid is revealed to be Isaac Katzen when he attacks Paige and the others. Katzen is killed. Leah is shown to be the one really responsible for the poltergeist activity. She attempts to snatch Savannah, but is prevented and escapes. Clay and Elena track Winsloe and kill him. |
5624402 | /m/0dwy5b | Dime Store Magic | Kelley Armstrong | 2004 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Set nine months after the events of Stolen, or as Paige observes at the beginning of the novel "nine months, three weeks and two days", Dime Store Magic begins with Paige receiving complaints from the Elders about Savannah, clearly not for the first time. The Elders hate trouble and object to anything that might draw attention to the Coven. The same day Paige receives a petition for custody of her ward from Leah O'Donnell, a half-demon involved in events at the compound the previous year. Paige meets Leah and her lawyers, Gabriel Sandford, at the Cary Law Offices in East Falls. There she recognises Gabriel as a sorcerer. It is revealed that the custody claim comes not from Leah, but Savannah's father, Kristof Nast. Nast is the head of the Nast Sorcerer Cabal in Los Angeles, California. After she gets home, Paige is confronted by Victoria and the other Elders who are concerned because Leah's intent to use Paige's status as a witch in the custody battle threatens to expose the Coven. Paige persuades them to give her three days to clear matters up. She then arranges a meeting with Grantham Cary Jr., the local lawyer. It is decided to request that Nast submit to DNA testing to prove his paternity claim. Sandford, as Paige expected, refuses on behalf of his client. In order to force her to submit, Leah and associates begin a dirty tricks campaign that includes placing a hand of glory on her property and setting up satanic altars in the fields behind. Paige comes under investigation by the town sheriff's department and also the social services. At this point, Lucas Cortez turns up on Paige's doorstep and offers his services. His offer is refused as witches do not trust sorcerers. The media set up camp outside Paige's house and, on a drive into town to pick up a takeaway, Paige's car is deliberately run into by Grantham Cary Jr because she refused his offer of paying his fees by sharing his bed. Furious, she confronts his wife at his house and then returns home. Cary leaves a message on her answering machine asking her to come to his office to talk. However, when she gets there it is to discover Leah is there too. The half-demon uses her powers to throw Cary out of a window, framing Paige for his murder. Paige is taken to the police station, from where she is released by Lucas Cortez, despite Paige's protests. They then go to a Coven meeting, but receive little support from the other members. Angry, Paige agrees to talk to Lucas and he provides her with background information on the Cabals. The next day Paige receives a call telling her to come to the funeral home to pick up her file from Cary's people. Thinking this is strange, as it is currently Cary's visitation, Paige nonetheless agrees and she and Savannah go to the home. However, whilst they are there Nast employees stage a scene that involves bodies raising from the dead and illusions. Paige and Savannah are rescued by Lucas. The police arrive but are forced to let them go. Events continue to escalate with other incidents occurring. The Coven get increasingly anxious, and Social Services turn up to check on Savannah. However, the interview does not go well as Savannah is upset - at least until she discovers that she has begun to menstruate. Cortez grows concerned because the menses ceremony associated with a witch's first period can be vital to ensuring her loyalty to her Cabal and he believes that this will increase the urgency of any action Leah and her colleagues take. Paige also grows curious about the differences between witch and sorcerer magic. She starts to realise that there were once several grades of spell: primary, secondary and tertiary. However, at some point the higher level spells were lost or deliberately destroyed, only a few surviving in old grimoires that the Coven Elders refuse to let the other witches use. These grimoires are kept by Savannah's aunt, Margaret. When they visit her to borrow her car, Paige takes the grimoires. She, Savannah and Lucas then drive to Salem, Massachusetts. There, the two witches argue. Savannah insists on the ceremony her mother wished to use, not the Coven approved one Paige underwent. Paige finally agrees to Savannah's wish, but the ceremony requires them to get certain ingredients which requires them to go to the cemetery. Afterwards, Paige shares the knowledge of the grimoires with Lucas and they become lovers. The next day Paige's house is fire-bombed, and she and Savannah are kidnapped by the Nast Cabal. Nast presents his claim to Savannah. Savannah agrees to it provided she can have Paige do the originally planned ceremony and also that Paige can stay. Kristof Nast accepts. They then meet Greta and Olivia Enwright. They are supposed to be teaching Savannah, however during this lessons they force her to sacrifice a boy and drink his blood. Savannah is deeply upset. Nast denies any knowledge. Sandford observes that the Cabal Witches had expected Greta's daughter to succeed her, not Savannah, and that the ritual might have been a form of revenge. Paige is secured and gagged so that she can't spellcast. Sandford brings her to the notice of Lucas' family and one visits her. He orders her death by sundown. Friesen takes her away to kill her, but Paige manages to escape. When she returns to Nast's house, it is to find all hell has broken loose in her absence. Savannah has called a demon as she attempts to raise her mother from the dead. Nast is killed trying to save his daughter. Lucas tells Paige a spell that will permit her to look like Eve Levine temporarily. They use this to get Savannah out of the house. |
5624476 | /m/0dwy93 | Industrial Magic | Kelley Armstrong | 2004 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | The story starts with the attack upon Dana MacArthur, daughter of a Cabal employee. Dismayed by her inability to persuade other witches to form a new coven because of their disapproval of her relationship with Lucas Cortez, Paige Winterbourne is not entirely happy to find his father - Benicio Cortez - on her doorstep with news of the new case. Lucas and Paige decide to travel to Miami to visit his father and introduce Paige to the family, as well as to hear further details about the attack. They discover that Dana's is only one of a series of similar attacks upon the children of Cabal employees. That night another child, the son of Benicio's bodyguard is killed. The father, Griffin, asks Paige and Lucas to investigate. Concerned about Savannah, they arrange for her to stay with the werewolf Pack. They then arrange to meet up with Jaime Vegas, a necromancer. Jaime manages to contact Dana, who is believed to be in a coma, getting what details she can from her about the attack. In the process she discovers the girl is dead. Investigation leads them to the home of Everett Weber. They are unable to find him, but do find a lot of encrypted computer files. Paige breaks the code to reveal a list of the children of Cabal employees. They track down Weber, but before they can persuade him to come with him peacefully, a Cabal SWAT team cause a hostage situation. Paige is injured and Everett taken into custody. The trial results in Weber's swift execution, but almost immediately another child is killed - the grandson of Thomas Nast. Jaime, Lucas and Paige go out to the swamp where Weber would be buried to contact him. They meet Esus. He gives them details about the man who hired Weber. When they continue to investigate, they start to be plagued by a ghost, but Jaime struggles to contact it. Eventually, they discover that the ghost is that of a vampire. Their search leads them to the home of Edward and Natasha, two immortality-quester vampires. Natasha has been killed, she is the ghost, and Edward is looking for revenge. They set a trap, but it backfires. Lucas is shot, and both he and Paige find themselves in the land of the dead. There Paige meets Savannah's mother, Eve, who guides her. The Fates offer them a choice, and their decision returns them to the land of the living, where they find the werewolves have begun to search for them. A trap is set for Edward at a charity ball, but it goes wrong. Jaime is kidnapped and Benicio ignores the plan in order to save his son. Jeremy, Savannah and Paige help to save everyone. Benicio executes Edward. |
5624540 | /m/0dwycj | Operation Hell Gate | null | 2005-10 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller"} | Jack Bauer has a bit of a problem with a recent mission. Subsequently he must accompany the prisoner, FBI agent Frank Hensley (who was later revealed to be an Iraqi agent) and other government officials. The plane crashes and all chaos breaks loose - Frank Hensley frames Jack Bauer for the murder of two FBI agents, Ryan Chappelle has trouble helping Jack from LA, and a weapon has been stolen that could potentially release a virus deadly to the whole of America. Jack Bauer must use all his skill and recruit the help of some Irish women (Caitlin) in order to break down a highly complicated conspiracy that leads to the government. |
5624552 | /m/0dwydk | Haunted | Kelley Armstrong | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | Haunted, the fifth in the Women of the Otherworld series, is a novel written by Kelley Armstrong featuring Eve Levine. Half-demon, black witch and devoted mother, Eve has been dead for three years. However, whilst the afterlife isn't too bad, Eve is desperate to find a way to communicate with her daughter, Savannah, now the ward of Paige Winterbourne and Lucas Cortez. The Fates, though, have other plans, and they call in a favour. An evil spirit called the Nix has escaped from hell. Feeding on chaos and death, she is an expert at persuading people to kill for her. The Fates want Eve to hunt her down before she does any more damage. The Nix is a dangerous enemy, however. Previous hunters have been sent mad in the process. |
5624580 | /m/0dwyh9 | Chaotic | Kelley Armstrong | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Half-demon Hope Adams loves her job. Granted, working for True News tabloid isn’t quite the career her high-society family had in mind for her. What they don’t know is that the tabloid job is just a cover, a way for her to investigate stories with a paranormal twist, and help protect the supernatural world from exposure. When Hope’s “handler” sends her and a date to a museum charity gala, Hope suspects there’s more to it than a free perk. He’s tested her before. This time, she’s ready for whatever he throws her way. Or so she thinks...until she meets her target: werewolf thief, Karl Marsten... |
5624655 | /m/0dwymg | Broken | Kelley Armstrong | null | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03npn": "Horror", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | In this story the half-demon Xavier calls in a favour - steal Jack the Ripper's From Hell letter away from a Toronto collector who had himself stolen it from the British police files. It seems simple, but in the process Elena accidentally triggers a spell placed on the letter which opens a portal into the nether regions of Victorian London. With thieving vampires, killer rats and unstoppable zombies on the loose, Elena and the Pack must find a way to close the portal before it is too late. To add to the confusion, Elena herself is pregnant with Clay's child (actually twins). The story begins with Elena worrying about her current pregnancy. She has concerns about what effect her werewolf nature will have on the unborn child, something with no recorded precedent in Pack knowledge. Clay and Jeremy, also concerned, have imposed a number of restrictions on her actions too, which Elena accepts but is also frustrated by. She is, therefore, not entirely displeased to hear from Xavier Reese who offers her a deal: he will hand over information about a rogue mutt the Pack have been seeking in exchange for the Pack's help in stealing an artefact from a sorcerer - the From Hell letter. The deal is agreed to and, after the mutt has been dealt with, Jeremy steals the letter. As they leave, however, Clay squashes a mosquito and smears Elena's blood on the document. This activates an inter-dimensional portal, which releases individuals previously entrapped there during the Victorian era. Now zombies, these track Elena, putting her and her unborn offspring at risk. Attempting to rescue her, the Pack kill these zombies, but to their shock they keep returning. In addition, cholera has infected the Toronto water-supply and the city's rats have become diseased and aggressive. Modern individuals disappear through the portal by accident, whilst murders take place that lead them to suspect that they have released Jack the Ripper himself upon an unsuspecting public. |
5624798 | /m/0dwyxh | Such Is My Beloved | Morley Callaghan | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Such Is My Beloved takes place in a city experiencing the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The main character is Father Stephen Dowling, a young, exuberant priest searching for the meaning of God’s love. Dowling decides to try to help two young prostitutes, Ronnie and Midge, turn their lives around. The priest goes to great lengths to try to help them, such as giving them money and clothes, while trying to find them jobs. As the story progresses, Dowling becomes increasingly involved in the girls’ lives. He exhibits agape for the prostitutes and does everything he can to help them redeem their lives. His relationship with the prostitutes is condemned by his rich, self-righteous parishioners and his bishop. In the end, the girls are arrested for prostitution and sent away. Dowling feels that he has failed the girls and becomes grief-stricken. His anguish over the girls’ fate causes him to lose his sanity and subsequently he is removed from the church and sent away to an insane asylum. In the end, Dowling has a beautiful moment of clarity in which he sacrifices his own sanity to God to spare the girls’ souls. The novel closes on his realization of the purely Christian love he bears for Ronnie, Midge and for all of humanity. |
5625157 | /m/0dwzh2 | Next of Kin | Eric Frank Russell | null | {"/m/05h0n": "Nature", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Leeming is every sergeant's worst nightmare — immune to discipline and punishment, and given to random acts of defiance, such as wearing his cap backwards on parade for no particular reason. Thus when a mission to fly a prototype spaceship behind enemy lines comes up, he is the ideal candidate to fly it. The ship is untested but should be able to outrun anything else in the galaxy. It carries no arms but is an ideal spy vessel for discovering the movements of the ships of the Lathians and their allies. Since the odds of returning alive are pretty slim, it is also an ideal way of dealing with Leeming. For his part, Leeming is ready to jump at any alternative to life in barracks and the stockade. He is equipped with a survival kit designed by a top bureaucratic committee, so it contains an exquisite miniature camera that is of no conceivable use if he needs to survive on an alien world, as well as the usual inedible food. For a while the mission goes well, and Leeming relieves some of the boredom by listening in on routine ship-to-ship messages. He overhears conversations in a language that sounds exactly like English, but used to make bizarre statements, such as "Mayor Snorkum shall lay the cake", "What for the cake will be laid by Snorkum ?", "I shall lambast my mother!". Leeming starts tossing in his own comments, resulting in an aggrieved response "Clam shack?" Later, the ship malfunctions and Leeming is forced to land on an alien world, which turns out to be inhabited by the speakers of quasi-English. They are a dour, reptilian race who make ideal prison guards. On being locked up, Leeming is told by the guard "We shall bend Murgatroyd's socks" to which he can only reply "Dashed decent of you". Leeming winds up in one half of a POW camp, of which the other half is inhabited by members of another allied race. Unfortunately they have never seen a human and so do not trust him. To find a way out, he learns the alien language and tries to get the other prisoners to trust him. He begins to cultivate an imaginary friend whom he calls Eustace. He convinces the guards that Eustace can go anywhere and spy for him, and also that every human has a Eustace who can do the same. In addition, Eustaces can wreak revenge on those who harm their partners. Events help him here, in that one guard he threatens with Eustace is shot for allowing a mass escape attempt of the other prisoners. Furthermore, Leeming alleges that the Lathians, the leaders of the enemy alliance, also have invisible companions called Willies, although these are far inferior to Eustaces. He tells the aliens to ask human prisoners on other planets two questions : "Do the Lathians have the Willies ?" and "Are the Lathians nuts ?", a 'nut', according to Leeming, being someone with an invisible companion. Naturally the answers all come back as positive, and Leeming's captors are convinced that if they start accepting human prisoners they will have thousands of invisible Eustaces running wild across their planet, spying and causing mayhem. They immediately release Leeming and smuggle him home, at the same time withdrawing from their alliances and convincing other races to do the same. The enemy alliance collapses and the Lathians have to make peace. The plot has obvious similarities to E. H. Jones's The Road to En-Dor – an account of that author's escape from the Yozgad prisoner of war camp in Turkey during World War I. |
5628002 | /m/0dx3h9 | The Lion's Game | Nelson DeMille | 1/6/2000 | null | The book opens with Corey, his new FBI boss Kate Mayfield, CIA agent Ted Nash and FBI agent George Foster (both introduced in the previous Corey novel, Plum Island), awaiting the arrival of a defecting Libyan terrorist, Asad Khalil, at John F. Kennedy Airport. However, even before the Boeing 747 from Paris has landed, it becomes apparent that something is unusual about the flight. |
5629681 | /m/05znqj7 | Beastly | Alex Flinn | 10/2/2007 | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02vzzv": "Urban fantasy", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | Kyle Kingsbury has good looks. He truly has it all. He is very arrogant and rude. One day in class, a witch, Kendra, who has ugly features, appears and challenges his royal status. At the dance, Kyle uses a chance to humiliate Kendra in front of schoolmates. Kendra reveals herself to be a witch and punishes him for his cruelty by condemning him to live as a beast. However, because of his one act of kindness (he gave a rose to the girl who was working the ticket booth) she gives him two years to find somebody who he loves and who loves him back, and when he does, the girl must prove her love with a kiss. She gives to him a mirror with which he can see whomever he'd like, then vanishes. Kyle's shallow father, a famous news reporter, is ashamed of his son's new appearance (He is said to look like a dog and a bear, with fur all over). He purchases Kyle his own apartment where he proceeds to live with their housekeeper, Magda. His father also sends Kyle a blind tutor, Will. The two later become friends. Will and Magda suggest that he takes up gardening, and Kyle builds a greenhouse where he plants many roses that become dear to him. After one year has gone by, he decides to change his name from 'Kyle', which means handsome, to 'Adrian', which means 'the dark one'. When he is about to lose all hope of ever returning to his human form, a drug addict stumbles upon his green house rose garden. Angered, Adrian hollowly threatens to drop him out the window. Desperate for his life, the cruel man offers his daughter - Lindy - to take his place. They make a deal and Adrian prepares Lindy a room filled with books and new clothing. Despite his efforts, Lindy (who is the girl that had been working the ticket booth at the dance) is still very upset that she is to be forced to live in the house, calling Adrian 'Kidnapper' and 'Jailer'. Hearing her call him this Adrian gets upset. After several days of solitude, Lindy finally comes out of her bedroom in the middle of the night and bumps into Adrian. Adrian explains how he is her age, and that he was just lonely and offers to let Will tutor her. One night there is a thunderstorm, which she is terrified of, and they stay up and watch The Princess Bride and eat popcorn. In doing so, he showed his tenderness and things begin to change between them. They begin studying together under Will's supervision, and spending more time with each other. Adrian makes a deal with Kendra that if he is able to get Lindy to kiss him before the last year is up, she will also return Will's sight to him and allow Magda to go home to her family (Her family does not live in the U.S due to not having green cards). Adrian then invites Lindy up to a cabin he has during Christmas break, with Will and Magda along. They have enormous fun with snowball fights and sledding. But Lindy misses her father and realizes he is in trouble when she sees him through the magic mirror. Understanding her feelings, Adrian allows her to go, because of his love he can't have her captive. Lindy leaves. Adrian is heartbroken when she doesn't return to him and misses her incredibly. He soon realizes that Lindy was again sold for drugs and soon would be raped. Adrian rushes to her aid, even revealing his beastly looks on a subway train. He breaks down the door and is injured by the-would-be rapist, who is terrified by his appearance. He scatters away and Lindy rushes to Adrian's side. Adrian professes his love for her as she does in return. He is mortally wounded and asks for a kiss from Lindy. Lindy does so. Adrian then transforms back to his original self. Confused, Lindy tries to find Adrian for she didn't see his transformation. Kyle then tells her of their memories together to assure her he is Adrian. Lindy is overjoyed and hugs and kisses him. Will gets his vision back and gets a job as an English teacher at Kyle's and Lindy's school. He also goes back to college in order to become a university English professor. As for Magda, she is revealed to actually be Kendra in disguise and that because of the spells she cast when she was younger, she was told she must stay and care for Kyle for the rest of her life. It was Kyle's wish for her to be reunited with her family that frees her from her obligation. Kyle returns to school with Lindy and they date. People are confused by his new personality and his dating Lindy, who has red hair and crooked teeth. But Kyle reassures Lindy that he loves her despite what everyone says. Lindy and Kyle go to prom together, and they live happily ever after. |
5630795 | /m/0dx7fs | The Great War: Walk in Hell | Harry Turtledove | 8/3/1999 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"} | The United States and Confederate States are locked in a stalemate (1915-1916), as both of their offensives have stalled; the U.S. in Kentucky pushing south, the C.S.A. in Maryland pushing north. The Confederacy must also deal with their black population rising up in rebellion, and a change in administration. However, the war begins to turn in the favor of the U.S. as the Kentucky offensive, led by George Armstrong Custer, manages to conquer enough of Kentucky to readmit it to the Union after 54 years as a member of the Confederacy. He uses the new barrels (what we know as tanks) to break through. The Confederacy, conversely, has begun to lose its gains in southern Pennsylvania, and to be pushed back into Maryland. Washington D.C., in Confederate hands since 1914, is still in their possession, but as their hold on Maryland weakens, the C.S. is faced with the possibility of losing the old U.S. capital as well. Meanwhile, Flora Hamburger, a Socialist from New York, gains a nomination from her party, installing her in the House of Representatives. Faced with a shortage of eligible white men, the Confederacy is forced to consider a bill that would allow blacks to serve in the C.S. Army, even though a number of them had rebelled against the same government that is now offering citizenship to volunteers. The novel ends as Theodore Roosevelt is re-elected President of the United States and the war is moving more into Confederate territory. |
5630892 | /m/0dx7r4 | American Empire: The Victorious Opposition | Harry Turtledove | 7/29/2003 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | The book covers the period March 5, 1934 (the day after Jake Featherston's inauguration as President of the Confederate States) to June 22, 1941 (the commencement of Operation Blackbeard). The United States is able to end a war with Japan, but is beginning to prepare for a fourth war against its southern neighbor. In the Confederacy, Featherston and his Freedom Party enact sweeping changes to all aspects of life, including purging and expanding the Army, abolishing the Supreme Court, and using camps to kill off Whig and Radical Liberal politicians before using them to eliminate the black population of the Confederate States. As these changes are taking place, representatives of the former Confederate states of Kentucky and west Texas (Houston) begin calling for a return to their rightful nation. Though this is done, Featherston is still not satisfied, and wants more territory that the U.S. had taken in 1917 (Sequoyah, and parts of Sonora, Virginia, and Arkansas). After his offer is refused by U.S. President Al Smith, Featherston issues the order to attack the United States in an effort to regain the Confederacy's lost lands, as part of his ultimate plan to defeat the U.S. |
5631897 | /m/0dx920 | I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You | Ally Carter | 2006 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | The story follows 15-year-old Cameron (Cammie) Ann Morgan, a sophomore at Gallagher Academy For Exceptional Young Women, a school for "very gifted girls," but actually a school for espionage spies in training. She faces her fourth year of real spy training. While on her first mission required for her Covert Operations class, she meets a "normal" boy called Josh, he notices her despite her reputation as a "pavement artist" and that she is trying to be invisible. No one sees Cammie when she doesn't want to be seen, which is one of the things she likes about him. She does not tell him who she really is though, or where she goes to school, due to Gallagher's reputation of being a school for snooty heiresses. Soon Josh and Cammie develop a steady relationship, with Cammie always sneaking out of the school, with the help of her best friends and roommates Liz Sutton and Bex Baxter. Macey McHenry, an authentic heiress and senator's daughter, also becomes her friend despite a rocky start at Gallagher. Cammie lies to Josh many times to keep her cover, claiming that she is home schooled, has a cat and has lived in exotic places, but her true identity is revealed after Josh's friend, Dillon, sees Cammie walking toward the academy with the rest of the girls and attempts to break into Gallagher Academy to prove that it is Cammie's real school. After a heated confrontation, Cammie tells Josh the truth—besides information about being a spy—and then they break up. |
5635740 | /m/0dxgtv | Ugly Rumours | null | null | null | During the Vietnam War, two Special Forces soldiers attempt to avoid combat duty. |
5635764 | /m/0dxgw6 | The Third World War: The Untold Story | John Winthrop Hackett Junior | 1982 | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/098tmk": "War novel"} | By the mid-1980s the Soviet Politburo comes to the consensus that the country's economy is stagnating and its military may not retain superiority over the West for much longer. It would therefore be in the interests of the Soviet Union to invade Western Europe with a short, sharp blow, and then sue for peace from a position of strength. The Politburo deliberates two options involving a sudden barrage of nuclear weapons against Western targets, but realizing the risk of nuclear war they decide to opt for a third strategy involving conventional forces. The catalyst for conflict comes in July 1985, when an American Marine unit intervenes against a Soviet incursion into Yugoslavia. In response, the Warsaw Pact mobilizes and subsequently launches a full scale invasion of Western Europe on the 4th of August 1985 (the anniversary of the start of the First World War). Soviet forces thrust through West Germany towards the Rhine, and also land forces in northern Norway and Turkey. Attacks are also carried out using long range strategic bombing, naval forces and even killer satellites in space. The Soviet juggernaut quickly loses steam. Stiff resistance by NATO, aided by France and Sweden, eventually foils the Soviet invasion, and Warsaw Pact forces get no further West than the German town of Krefeld in the Ruhr by around August 15. Norway is also invaded, causing Sweden to enter the war when it refuses to allow overflight rights to the Soviet air force. From mid-August the capacity of the Soviet Union to wage war is significantly undermined by desertion of some of its demoralized allies, internal dissent at home and its own forces mutinying. Outside Europe the Americans bomb Cuba, the Chinese invade Vietnam and overthrow its government, Egypt invades Libya, Japan seizes the Kurile islands, and the Soviet Navy and merchant fleet is permanently neutralized. To prove to the world that they are still a force to be reckoned with, the Soviets launch a nuclear missile strike against Birmingham, England. The West retaliates with a similar strike on Minsk, which accelerates the collapse of Soviet control in its satellite states. A coup d'etat led by Ukrainian nationalists overthrows the Soviet Politburo, which leads decisively down the path to the end of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The ruins of Birmingham and Minsk are eventually turned into war memorials fronted by immense causeways, with the memorials respectively called Peace City West and Peace City East. German reunification is opposed by both sides after the war, and does not have any particular support in the Germanies themselves as they have developed separate national identities. In The Untold Story a separate chapter is devoted to an alternative, more pessimistic scenario, written in the form of radio transcripts and newspaper editorials. NATO forces are unable to defend West Germany, and after the Netherlands falls, the West sues for peace. Despite not being occupied, Britain is forced to accept a set of conditions which allows the Soviet Union to effectively control its military, economy and political institutions. This chapter is not included in the Macmillan edition. |
5636107 | /m/0dxhhr | Carbonel: the King of the Cats | Barbara Sleigh | 1955 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The plot concerns a girl named Rosemary who buys a broom and a cat from an untidy woman in the marketplace. When the cat starts talking to her she learns that she has encountered a witch, selling up to start a new career. Moreover, the cat, Carbonel, just happens to be King of the Cats, presumed missing by his subjects ever since the witch Mrs. Cantrip abducted him. Unfortunately he cannot return to his throne until the enslavement spell Mrs. Cantrip cast on him is undone, so Rosemary, together with her friend John, have to learn a little witchcraft and to track down Mrs. Cantrip for her at best ambivalent help. |
5637899 | /m/0dxlxt | The Voyage Out | Virginia Woolf | 3/26/1915 | {"/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Rachel Vinrace embarks for South America on her father's ship and is launched on a course of self-discovery in a kind of modern mythical voyage. The mismatched jumble of passengers provide Woolf with an opportunity to satirize Edwardian life. The novel introduces Clarissa Dalloway, the central character of Woolf's later novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Two of the other characters were modeled after important figures in Woolf's life. St John Hirst is a fictional portrayal of Lytton Strachey and Helen Ambrose is to some extent inspired by Woolf's sister, Vanessa Bell. And Rachel's journey from a cloistered life in a London suburb to freedom, challenging intellectual discourse and discovery very likely reflects Woolf's own journey from a repressive household to the intellectual stimulation of the Bloomsbury Group. |
5638151 | /m/0dxmhb | Conrad's Fate | Diana Wynne Jones | 2005 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Conrad Tesdinic lives in Stallery, a small town in his world's version of the English Alps, formed as in Series Seven worlds the British Isles are still connected to the European mainland. In the mountains high above Stallery lies Stallery Mansion, a possibilities mansion, grand and imposing house, home to the Count and his family. Conrad's father is dead; his sister Anthea left home to go to university; his mother, Franconia, is a rather eccentric feminist author, and her books are sold exclusively in her brother's bookshop, where she and Conrad also live. Conrad's uncle tells him that someone up at Stallery Mansion is pulling the possibilities – that is, changing the details of the world. Judging from the affluence of Stallery, this person is making a great deal of money by doing so, perhaps by playing the stock market; but this is adversely affecting the rest of the world. At first only small details change – the colour of the postboxes, the titles of books – but the changes keep getting bigger and bigger. Conrad is going to die. According to his uncle, this is because of his bad karma, which, if he does not kill the person pulling the probabilities, will result in he himself being killed within a year. Conrad's uncle and his group of magician friends work a strange spell on a cork, giving it, and Conrad, who has possession of it, the power to summon a Walker at will. A Walker is a being who will give him what he needs to defeat the person he should have eliminated in a past life. Conrad needs to be sure who this person is before he summons the Walker, however, so instead of moving forward in school with his friends, he is sent to work at Stallery and study its inhabitants, one of which is the person Conrad needs to defeat. Conrad soon finds that he is not the only one snooping around the mansion. He befriends his fellow servant-in-training, Christopher "Smith" (really Christopher Chant), who is searching for his friend Millie. Together, they discover that she is trapped in one of the possibilities. Conrad and Christopher must stop the person behind all the mischief, rescue Millie, and fix Conrad's fate, all without spilling soup on the Countess although Conrad's bad Karma isn't helping along the way. |
5638829 | /m/0dxnkm | Spadework | Timothy Findley | 8/30/2001 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel centers on the story of a few summer months in 1998 in Stratford, Ontario against the backdrop of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. The novel is told by a third-person narrator, who selectively changes from the point of view of one character to another, but it is Jane Kincaid, a property maker for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, whose perspective dominates throughout. Jane Kincaid is an immigrant from the United States, more specifically from a quintessentially southern town somewhere in Louisiana, aptly called Plantation. She left the United States to begin a new life as an artist, in essence, to escape her family (which nonetheless provides her with a modest but stable income from an inheritance)—she even shed her birth-name Aura Lee Terry when she met her husband Griffin, an up-and-coming young Shakespearean actor. The two lead an entirely ordinary, reasonably happy suburban existence, with a seven-year-old son (Will), a dog (Rudyard) and a housekeeper/nanny (Mercy Bowman). But even in the beginning, the neat threads of this ordinary life begin to unravel around the attractive and ambitious young theater talent Griffin. His personal beauty and desirability lead Jane to suspect that other women, specifically Griffin's stage partner Zoë Walker, 21 and herself a stunning figure, may be after him. Much of what follows in some way hinges upon Griffin's personal attractiveness, although many other things happen that also put pressure on Jane's youthful obliviousness to the world's cruelty and proclivity to cause pain even in the moments of greatest happiness. Troy Preston, an old high-school boyfriend, serves as harbinger of this pain: he shows up out of the blue, having pilfered his talents and lost his promise, and sexually assaults Jane, ejaculating on her dress and face. A few hours later Jane hears that he has died in a car accident. While this episode haunts her throughout the narrative, she never speaks about it to anyone, not even her psychiatrist. The town is also menaced by a rape-murderer, who kills two women before he kills himself with an overdose of drugs. Furthermore, Jane receives a strangely aloof letter from her mother telling her that her sister Loretta has committed suicide. Failed communication between people intensely close to each other is at the core of the quotidian tragedies that unfold in this novel. A telephone line cut by the spade of an over-eager gardener serves as the physical manifestation or symbol for this failure to connect. This cut telephone line (which seems as anachronistic as the letter from the mother in an age of email, short messages and mobile phones) prevents two crucial phone calls: one from Griffin to his director Jonathan Crawford and one from Jesse Quinlan to his nephew Luke, the gardener who cut the phone line and his anchor in life. Jesse seeks help and when he fails to reach Luke in that crucial moment, he descends further into drugs and becomes a stranger to himself, a rapist and murderer. Griffin was to give Jonathan an answer to his ultimatum either to begin a sexual affair with him or to lose his chances for the desired break-through in his acting career. Soon after, Griffin is informed that he will not get the coveted lead roles in the next season, which devastates him and leads him to agree to another meeting with Jonathan. Finally, Griffin gives in to his ambition and Jonathan's advances which are somehow more sophisticated, as the narrator points out, than the usual sleazy proposals to enter stardom through the gate of sexual favors. Jonathan, who thinks of himself as "a sculptor of talent" (128) genuinely desires Griffin and there is an element of pedagogical eros in their relationship; the older man sincerely believes that Griffin will grow as a man and as an actor if he submits to his power: "I want to teach you how to accept the fact of being desired" (139). Griffin does submit and he does leave his family – without explanation. Jane is the last to find out that Griffin's affair is not with a younger woman but with an older man. Jane develops her own overpowering desires that are quite independent from Griffin's escapades: when the telephone repairman, Milos Saworski, a polish immigrant with limited command of English, enters her house, she is completely overwhelmed by what she experiences as his unearthly beauty. When Griffin leaves, her pursuit of the "angel-man" becomes more determined and she becomes a living contradiction to Jonathan's assessment of women as sexually mostly passive and incapable of such aggressive pursuit. She asks Milos, himself married and a young father of a dying infant, to model for her in the nude, a proposal which he accepts with knowing innocence and an entirely masculine submission that mirrors the scene between Jonathan and Griffin. Jane's gaze upon Milos' beauty exactly parallels Jonathan's desire for Griffin. While sexual desires unravel families and love relationships in this novel, it is the love between fathers and sons that disrupts these momentarily beautiful but cruel and ultimately destructive desires. Griffin's precocious son Will is estranged from both of his parents; Milos' baby eventually dies because of his father's inaction (his wife has kept the newborn baby out of the reach of doctors for religious reasons); Jonathan's son, twenty one and full of promise, is killed by revolutionaries in Peru. The news of this murder is brought by Jonathan's former wife in person and it leads him to see that the affair with him is just as wrong for Griffin as his own marriage had been for himself; he releases Griffin and sends him back to his family. A few months later, in April, the novel comes back to Jane, Griffin and Will, a happy family unit watching a procession of Swans released from their winter domicile indoors. With the help of her mother's money, Jane has bought the house and made it the home she desired. The novel has come full circle to the peacefulness of the beginning, but this renewed peacefulness seems less precarious because it has been tempered by essential conflict and near break-up. The novel thus ends on a surprisingly hopeful note with a vision of spring and new life. |
5639472 | /m/0dxpl2 | Sweet Silver Blues | Glen Cook | 1987-08 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | In this first novel, Garrett is approached by the Tate family to investigate the untimely death of Denny Tate, an old army buddy of Garrett's from their time spent in a war in the Cantard. Although Denny's death was an accident, he had acquired a large fortune in silver through insider trading. In his will, Denny left the fortune to the woman he loved, Kayean Kronk. The Tates try to hire Garrett to locate and deliver the fortune to Kayean, who is assumed to be living somewhere deep in the Cantard, but having lived through the war, Garrett wants no part of the ordeal. Things start to get ugly as different parties try to steal Denny's fortune. In part as a debt to his old army buddy, and in part to be reunited with Kayean Kronk (a teenage fling of Garrett's), Garrett reluctantly heads off to the Cantard with his half-elf friend Morley Dotes and the Roze triplets. Denny's cousins, Rose and Tinnie Tate, try to tag along on the trip, but are sent back when Garrett and Morley find out. When they arrive in Full Harbor, Garrett, Morley, and the Roze boys begin their search for Kayean Kronk, but as time goes by, one thing becomes more and more obvious: Kayean is involved with vampires. A centaur by the name of Zeck Zack claims to be able to help, but instead turns out to be working with the vampires. After forcing the truth out of Zack, Garrett and the gang head out into the heart of the Cantard to find Kayean, who has become a vampire bride. In a desperate battle, Garrett rescues her from the vampire lair and returns her to the Tates, upon which he receives a portion of the inheritance as his fee. With his new riches, Garrett purchases a house and moves in with the Dead Man, a dead, but not inactive Loghyr, starting a partnership that will last for the rest of the series. Meanwhile, Morley, with Garrett and Saucerhead Tharpe along for the ride, delivers a sleeping vampire to the head of the criminal underworld of TunFaire. The vampire kills him, opening the door for a new leader to take over. Garrett's role in the rise of the new Kingpin, Chodo Contague, plays a major role in later novels in the series. |
5639796 | /m/0dxq3b | Bitter Gold Hearts | Glen Cook | 1988-06 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The novel starts with Garrett being approached at his house on Macunado St. by a young woman named Amiranda Crest. She explains that her employer is the Stormwarden Raver Styx, whose son Karl daPena has been kidnapped. They want Garrett to organize the exchange between them and the kidnappers. The Domina Willa Dount, in charge while the Stormwarden is away, explains to Garrett that they only need him as a decoy, and apparently, Garrett's work is over. But when Garrett is attacked on his way home by a band of ogres, his interest in the matter is piqued. When the kidnapper's demands rise, Garrett is brought back in to give his expertise on the matter. It soon becomes apparent to Garrett that the members of the Stormwarden's family are all involved in the affair to some extent, as is a band of ogres led by a mysterious individual named Gorgeous. The link between the ogres and the dePenas appears to be a prostitute by the name of Donni Pell, who had both Karl daPena and Gorgeous as customers. Apparently, she orchestrated the kidnapping of Karl by convincing Gorgeous and his band of ogres to help. The transfer of funds with the kidnappers goes off without a hitch, but when Amiranda Crest is murdered and Karl daPena is found after allegedly committing suicide, Amber daPena comes running to Garrett for help. With the help of Morley, the Roze boys, and Kingpin Chodo Contague's skull crackers Crask and Sadler, Garrett storms Gorgeous' hideout, capturing Gorgeous and some of his cronies. The ogres, when faced with torture, offer some information into the kidnapping, and Chodo orders Donni Pell to be found and delivered to Garrett. When the Stormwarden returns to town, she comes first to Garrett to find out just what happened to her family. Garrett then manages to orchestrate a meeting between all the guilty parties, and in a masterful display of deductive reasoning, Garrett implicates Karl daPena Jr., Karl daPena Sr., Amiranda Crest, the Domina Willa Dount, Donni Pell, Gorgeous, and others all in a convoluted kidnapping scheme gone horribly wrong. With the truth out, the situation gets ugly fast, and Garrett and company flee the scene, letting city investigators clear the mess. At the end of it all, the Dead Man, in his infinite wisdom, sheds some light on the few remaining mysteries in the case. |
5639888 | /m/0dxq96 | Cold Copper Tears | Glen Cook | 1988-10 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | This story begins with Garrett being approached by a beautiful young woman by the name of Jill Craight. She hires Garrett to help find out who has been breaking into her apartment and why. Immediately after, a Magister Peridont comes to Garrett to try to get him to investigate the disappearance of some religious relics; Garrett respectfully declines. After getting attacked by a gang called the Vampires, Garrett goes to his old friend Maya, leader of a gang herself, for advice. Maya informs Garrett that Jill was a former member of the Doom, Maya's gang, and that she is a chronic liar. Sensing Garrett needs help, Maya invites herself along for the rest of the adventure. Garrett and Maya continue their investigation, but unfortunately, Garrett has no leads and isn't even quite sure what to investigate. Garrett's one clue is some mysterious coinage tying together Jill and the Vampires. Garrett asks Magister Peridont about the coins, then heads over to the Royal Assay office for help. After learning nothing new, Garrett heads home, where he is visited again by Magister Peridont, who informs him that Miss Craight was in fact his mistress, and now she is missing. The story gets more complicated when Garrett visits Chodo Contague, whose house gets attacked by magical forces. Chodo Contague involves his henchmen more earnestly in Garrett's case, and Garrett and Maya take their search for Jill to the Tenderloin, the red-light district of TunFaire. When they return home, they find the same magical forces that attacked Chodo's mansion trying to tear apart Garrett's home. After taking care of them, the Dead Man intervenes, letting Garrett know that there is another dead Loghyr involved in the magical attacks. Eventually, Garrett and the Dead Man manage to tie together the roles of the Church, the missing relics, the dead Loghyr, and Jill Craight. After discovering that Jill is hiding out in a church complex, Garrett and Morley break in and kidnap Jill and another of her lovers, a high status member of the Orthodox church. Garrett assembles everyone of importance at his house, and he and the Dead Man uncover the motives of all the parties present. Eventually, the relics are recovered, the other dead Loghyr is disposed of, and Garrett lives to tackle another adventure. |
5639952 | /m/0dxqg0 | Old Tin Sorrows | Glen Cook | 1989-06 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | This Garrett novel is a traditional whodunit. Garrett is approached by his old marine sergeant, Blake Peters, who calls in an old army debt to get Garrett to investigate the mysterious illness afflicting his current employer, General Stantnor. Garrett moves into the Stantnor mansion, to find that only a handful of individuals still inhabit the property and keep it from crumbling into ruin. As Garrett begins his investigation, an unknown individual begins murdering the few remaining members of the household. When some of the recently murdered individuals come back from the dead and attack the living house guests, Garrett calls upon his good friend Morley Dotes for backup. As the focus of Garrett's investigation switches to solving the ongoing murders, he continues to be distracted by two elusive beauties seen around the house: one is the general's daughter Jennifer, but the other can only be seen by Garrett, who suspects that she may in fact be a ghost. While Garrett escapes multiple murder attempts on his own life, other members of the household are not so lucky, and the list of potential suspects grows shorter and shorter. Morley, meanwhile, suspects the general's illness is not a result of poison but possibly of the supernatural. As the pieces start to come together, Garrett and Morley hire an exorcist by the name of Doctor Doom, and with the remaining house staff gathered, they confront the sick general in his quarters. It is revealed that the general murdered his wife, Eleanor, and the ghost that Garrett has glimpsed is in fact her. Eleanor's ghost, as revenge for her murder, has slowly been stealing the life away from the old general. Additionally, Garrett and company deduce that all the murders were in fact committed by the general's daughter, Jennifer, in an attempt to keep the family estate intact after her father's death. In the aftermath, both the general and Jennifer die, and Garrett takes as his only payment a hauntingly beautiful painting of Eleanor, to remind him of the events. He hangs it up in his study, and it becomes apparent that Eleanor's ghost has followed him and now haunts the painting. |
5640025 | /m/0dxqlx | Dread Brass Shadows | Glen Cook | 1990-05 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Tinnie Tate comes to visit Garrett at home and is stabbed in the middle of the street by an unknown assailant. Garrett and Saucerhead run down the would-be assassin, but before they can interrogate him, he is killed by a crossbow-wielding band of hooligans. The only clue as to the villain's motive is mention of a book. Meanwhile, a woman named Winger visits Garrett; she is also looking for a book. When a third individual, a young woman named Carla Lindo Ramada, comes by in search of a book, at least she can shed some light on the mystery. They are looking for the Book of Dreams (or Book of Shadows), a magical tome that allows the user to take on a hundred different identities. As word gets out about the power of the Book of Shadows, several parties become involved, each trying to obtain the book before the others. Among those involved are Gnorst Gnorst, head of Dwarf Town, Chodo Contague, Kingpin of TunFaire, Lubbock, a fat wannabe wizard and Winger's employer, and The Serpent, a witch partially responsible for creating the Book of Shadows. As his desire for the Book of Shadows grows, Chodo Contague turns on Garrett, and in an attempt to save their own lives, Garrett, Winger, Crask, and Sadler strike an uneasy alliance to overthrow Chodo. In a confused battle at Chodo's mansion involving all the parties, Crask and Sadler manage to take over from Chodo, and Garrett and Winger escape alive. When Garrett returns home, he finds that Carla Lindo Ramada has escaped with the Book of Shadows, which had been hidden at Garrett's home the entire time. He and Winger manage to track Carla down, take back the book, and destroy it before any more evil can be committed in its name. |
5640108 | /m/0dxqr0 | Red Iron Nights | Glen Cook | 1991-09 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Garrett is relaxing at the Joy House with Saucerhead and Morley Dotes, when Belinda Contague, daughter of Kingpin Chodo Contague, stumbles into the bar. She is attacked by a wizened old man who spits butterflies from his mouth and tries to kidnap Belinda in his black stagecoach. As strange as this is, Garrett moves on to his next job, tailing a religious crackpot by the name of Barking Dog Amato. This job, however, takes a backseat when Captain Westman Block comes knocking at Garrett's door. Block needs Garrett's help to solve a series of grisly murders, in which upper class young ladies are being strung up and gutted in strange, ritualistic killings. Garrett soon realizes that the attempted kidnapping of Belinda Contague is connected to the murders. Garrett and Morley then go pay the owner of the coach a visit, and in a bungled sleuthing attempt, Garrett ends up killing the serial killer. Figuring that the case is closed, Garrett finds time to spend on Barking Dog Amato, but before he can get going, Captain Block comes by to inform Garrett that there has been another murder. It seems that there is a curse associated with the murders, so that killing the murderer does not prevent the rise of a new serial killer. Even when Garrett and Block find the new killer, the curse spreads again. Meanwhile, Garrett finds out that Chodo Contague suffered a stroke during his encounter with the Serpent in Dread Brass Shadows, and Crask and Sadler are ruling the crime world in his stead. Belinda Contague, fearing Crask and Sadler, seeks out Garrett for help; Belinda is also in danger of being slain by the cursed serial killer. When Block and Garrett, along with Relway, an up-and-coming member of the Watch, find the new bearer of the curse, he escapes yet again. Ultimately, after a final plot twist, the curse is broken, and Belinda Contague overthrows Crask and Sadler and takes over as ruler of the underworld, using her father as a figurehead. Finally, as a gag gift, Morley gives Garrett an annoying talking parrot, which takes a major role in later Garrett novels. |
5640170 | /m/0dxqts | Deadly Quicksilver Lies | Glen Cook | 1994-03 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | With Dean out of town, the Dead Man asleep, and only the Goddamn Parrot for company, Garrett finds himself wishing for something new. When Winger drops by with a job investigating a woman known as Maggie Jenn, Garrett bites. Maggie, meanwhile, hires Garrett to find her missing daughter, Emerald. Everything seems to be going just fine until Garrett is attacked in the street, knocked out, and thrown in the Bledsoe's mental ward. When Garrett escapes, he discovers that the man who put him there goes by the name of Grange Cleaver, also known as The Rainmaker. As Garrett tries to find out more, everyone urges Garrett to be careful, as The Rainmaker has quite a nasty reputation. As usual, Morley gets involved, but when he and Garrett try to capture The Rainmaker, he manages to get away. Meanwhile, Garrett continues his search for Maggie Jenn's daughter, only to find that Maggie has disappeared. In fact, Morley and Garrett discover that she may not actually be a woman at all and could actually be The Rainmaker! When the Outfit gets involved in The Rainmaker's business, the city Watch has no choice to get involved as well. Garrett gets off free of charges, but The Rainmaker is still nowhere to be found. As word of a long buried treasure gets out, even more parties climb into the fray, leaving Garrett bruised and battered again. In a typical novel-ending plot twist, Grange Cleaver dies, things settle down, and Garrett is left to mull over the possibilities. |
5640249 | /m/0dxqzl | Petty Pewter Gods | Glen Cook | 1995-11 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | TunFaire is in a state of unrest; with the sudden end of the war in the Cantard, returning former soldiers are at odds with the half-breeds and immigrants who have taken their places in society. Garrett, however, has his own problems to worry about - he gets knocked out, brought before a group of small-time gods known as the Godoroth, and forced into working for them. The goal: find the "key" to the one remaining temple up for grabs in TunFaire, and do so before the Shayir, the Godoroth's rivals. The Shayir find out about the Godoroth's plans. The Shayir capture Garrett and give him their side of the story. Only with the help of a renegade Shayir called Cat does Garrett manage to escape. As the civil unrest escalates into full-fledged street warfare, the Godoroth and Shayir elevate their search for Garrett, and Cat, who has her own agenda, is apparently the only one Garrett can trust. When the battle between the Godoroth and Shayir spills over into the world of the living, causing madness in the streets of TunFaire, the more powerful gods of the city decide it is time to intervene. After an epic battle between gods, Garrett hopes the trouble is over, but the Dead Man thinks there is still a missing piece or two to the puzzle. Eventually, the Dead Man deduces that there was yet another party behind the struggle between the Godoroth and Shayir. When everything settles down and is sorted out, the remaining gods go back to their own business, leaving Garrett to go back to his beer. |
5640299 | /m/0dxr1p | Faded Steel Heat | Glen Cook | 1999-06 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | This ninth installment in the Garrett series sees Garrett visited at home by three lovely young ladies, Tinnie Tate, Giorgi Nicks, and Alyx Weider, daughter of Max Weider. Alyx explains that she has been sent by her father to get Garrett to investigate an apparent extortion attempt on the Weider business by The Call, a group of human rights activists headed by Marengo North English. Meanwhile, Colonel Block and Deal Relway strike a deal with Garrett: Garrett will attempt to infiltrate The Call, reporting back to Block and Relway on their activities, while Relway and Block will try to help solve the extortion attempt on the Weiders, as well as ensure the safety of the Weiders and Tates during the ordeal. In typical Garrett fashion, things start to get complicated when Garrett is attacked by a group of thugs while poking around the Weider brewery. After cleaning up and meeting with Max Weider, Max decides it may be best for Garrett to come to Ty Weider’s and Giorgi Nicks' engagement party the following night. When Garrett returns home, the Dead Man concurs, pointing out that it will allow Garrett to investigate the motive of his assailants, as well as help him infiltrate the upper echelons of The Call's society. With Belinda Contague as his date for the evening, Garrett stumbles into a party that turns dark quickly. By the end of the evening, two of Max Weider's children have been murdered, Max Weider's wife has died, and multiple shapeshifters have been discovered, incapacitated, and arrested. To make matters worse, Belinda Contague gets kidnapped by Crask and Sadler as the evening is winding down. Garrett quickly hightails it to the Palms, where he has Morley hire an expert tracker, a ratgirl by the name of Pular Singe. With Pular's help, Garrett and Morley track down Crask and Sadler, freeing Belinda and dealing the mafia skull-crackers a serious blow. When Garrett returns home, he's shocked by what he finds: Dean and the Dead Man are gone! The next day, with help from Colonel Block, Garrett tracks down and arrests Crask and Sadler, who are barely alive from their wounds. With this out of the way, Garrett starts his search for information on the shapeshifters, starting by visiting his friend at the Royal Library, Miss Linda Lee. After getting nowhere fast, Garrett heads back to the Weider's estate, where he and Colonel Block manage to sort out just how and why shapeshifters infiltrated the Weider household. With Tinnie Tate in tow, Garrett heads out to the estate of Marengo North English, where he continues his search for the shapeshifters. North English, who gets injured in a surprise attack against The Call, has little to offer, but Garrett and Tinnie still manage to uncover one shapeshifter in the midst. With the help of Morley, Belinda Contague, and Marengo North English, Garrett hatches a plan to reunite all the guilty parties back at the Weider manor in an all inclusive finale. In the end, Garrett manages to solve the intertwining mysteries of the Weider murders, the shapeshifters, and The Call, and he even unearths an embezzlement scheme that has bankrupted North English and The Call. After a little more detective work, Garrett and company manage to ferret out the last remaining shapechanger in TunFaire, ending the string of murders and impersonations and bringing a small amount of peace to the city. The Dead Man, who returned home with Dean, actually helped mastermind the finale at the Weider’s estate, where he had overseen the night’s events from his hiding place in a large tank of beer. |
5640361 | /m/0dxr4s | Angry Lead Skies | Glen Cook | 2002-04 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Garrett is at home when Playmate comes by to visit, with a kid by the name of Kip Prose in tow. It turns out that Kip has made friends with creatures that cannot quite be described (Garrett thinks of them as "silver elves"), but because of his relationship with these creatures, other parties are trying to kidnap Kip. Despite his protests, Garrett gets drawn into the mess. While searching Playmate's stables for clues, Garrett and company are attacked by another group of indescribable assailants. Luckily, Morley, Saucerhead, and Pular Singe are close by, and they manage to wake Garrett and Playmate after the scuffle. Kip Prose, however, is gone. The gang gives chase but is unable to locate Kip, though they do manage to get knocked out by the assailants a few more times. With Kip missing, Playmate and Garrett head off to talk to the members of Kip's family, hoping they might be able to find some clues as to his whereabouts. Despite some promising leads, Playmate and Garrett are unable to locate Kip, although they do encounter an "elf" named Casey, who assures them Kip is in no immediate danger. When Playmate goes missing, Garrett and Pular Singe head out to track him down, with the Roze triplets tagging along for backup. Pular tracks the scent to the "elf" Casey's apartment, where more mysterious "elves" make an appearance. The trail eventually takes Garrett, Pular, and the Rozes into the country outside TunFaire, where they find more of the "elves", their space ships, and an unconscious Playmate and Saucerhead Tharpe, as well as the bratty Kip Prose. Garrett decides it is time to involve the Watch, who can hopefully clean up the mess. Meanwhile, a ratman named John Stretch, who turns out to be Pular Singe's brother, attempts to kidnap Pular for his own purposes. While Garrett and John Stretch come to an agreement, Colonel Block and Deal Relway try to manage the situation with the remaining "elves". Garrett concerns himself with striking a deal between Kip Prose, Max Weider, and Willard Tate, in which the involved parties agree to manufacture "Three Wheels", a revolutionary new method of transportation for the citizens of TunFaire. As a final twist, the "elf" Casey escapes, thwarting the attempts of Garrett and the Watch to discover the true nature of the "silver elves". Though Relway is angry and suspicious of Garrett, Garrett is on top of the world, with his new stake in the Three Wheel business booming and the Goddamn Parrot missing in action. |
5640424 | /m/0dxr8y | Whispering Nickel Idols | Glen Cook | 2005-05 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Things seemed to be going pretty well for Garrett one morning until he finds a strange kid named Penny Dreadful hanging around his house, gets summoned to a meeting by Harvester Temisk, Chodo Contague's lawyer, and nearly has his door knocked down by an ugly thug wearing green plaid pants. Garrett meets with Temisk, who fears there are unnatural events occurring associated with Chodo Contague, who may not be as paralyzed as he appears. Garrett agrees to look into the matter that evening, at a birthday party being held by Belinda Contague for her father. At the party, when Chodo is introduced to the guests, a number of people mysteriously burst into flames, and in the confusion that follows, Belinda and Chodo somehow get separated. The whole mess seems to have some connection with the Ugly Pants Gang, who continues to harass Garrett at his home and on the streets. In addition, Garrett is getting more attention than he likes from subordinate mob bosses who suspect that Garrett knows where Chodo Contague is hiding. Garrett can only escape the warring mafia factions for so long, and eventually he is captured, poisoned, and blackmailed by one aspiring leader named Teacher White. With the help of his friends and the psychic powers of the Dead Man, Garrett survives the worst of the ordeal. While he rests and recuperates at home, the Dead Man organizes efforts geared towards unraveling the mysteries of the Green Pants Gang, the mafia factions, and the spontaneous combustions. Compiling the efforts of Garrett's many friends, the Dead Man deduces that the Green Pants Gang is actually a religious faction from outside of TunFaire, and Chodo Contague had at one point worked with the gang to help him rise to the top of the mafia Outfit. With some clues from the Dead Man, Garrett, Morley, and company track down and capture Harvester Temisk, who had been hiding out with Chodo Contague. More clever deductive reasoning by the Dead Man reveals a few final plot twists: Penny Dreadful is in fact Chodo Contague's other daughter, Chodo was partially responsible for the previously unexplainable spontaneous combustions, and the Green Pants Gang actually knows the secret to drawing dark emotions out from within the body. With the help of Garrett and the Dead Man, Chodo's condition improves, so that he is no longer completely physically and mentally impaired. As a finale, Morley Dotes drops by Garrett's house, with none other than Mr. Big, Garrett's much-despised parrot which had gone missing for some time, perched on his shoulder. |
5640550 | /m/0dxrmz | Pendragon Book 8 | D.J. MacHale | 5/8/2007 | {"/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | Bobby and Courtney arrive on Third Earth only to find that it has changed quite noticeably. Patrick, the local Traveler, arrives and takes them to the library to find out about their friend Mark, whom they believe is on First Earth. Startlingly, information pertaining to Mark originates from both First Earth and Second Earth. Both sources tell of him disappearing. In the flume, on First Earth November 1, 1937, Courtney and Bobby run into a dado (a type of android) in ragged clothing. Bobby tells Courtney to escape while he fights it off. Soon the dado backs into the tunnel and into an oncoming train. The dado is torn in half. Bobby takes the pieces to the flume and sends it back to Quillan. Then Bobby goes to First Earth to find Mark but he knows that Ibara needs him so he goes there and leaves Courtney behind. Bobby is in Ibara, the next territory he must save from Saint Dane's plans. Though the people there live simply, by growing or fishing for their food and living in grass huts, there are signs of advanced civilization, including artificial lights and other technological advances. No one, whether out of ignorance or desire to conceal, can explain these anachronisms. Bobby meets the Jakills, a group of teens outside of the main social group, who are determined to discover the truth of Ibara's unusual character. Leading them is Siry, Remudi's son. Bobby agrees to join the Jakills after proving his skills against a group of Flighters (humanoids that attack Ibara relentlessly). Together the Jakills and Bobby steal a ship and set off to find the truth. They eventually land in a city known as Rubity, a city far away from Rayne. Bobby, Siry, and a few of the Jakills explore Rubity. After a while, Bobby discovers that Ibara is a manifest future version of Veelox/an island on the territory Veelox and that Rubity is Rubic City, 300 years after Bobby failed to stop Saint Dane from causing chaos there. The Flighters attack them as they find this out, however, and only Bobby and Siry make it back to the ship, which they find is burning. They believe that most of the Jakills are killed, apparently leaving only Bobby and Siry alive. They escape from the enraged Flighters, only to meet Saint Dane in the now abandoned Lifelight pyramid. Aja Killian's journal is interrupted by Saint Dane. Bobby then finds out that the Jakills' name comes from Aja Killian [aJAKILLian] and that Flighters were the people who didn't leave Lifelight [liFeLIGHTERS]. Saint Dane reveals that he is bringing an army of tens of thousands of dados to Ibara to make Veelox's second turning point a disaster. Bobby and Siry barely escape on Skimmers, which are high speed boats from Cloral, brought by Saint Dane. The two of them get back to Ibara and tell the ruling Tribunal what has happened. The Tribunal then reveals that the ship that the Jakills stole was one of ten ships that they were going to use to repopulate Veelox. After sending them out early, the ships are destroyed by Flighters, and the threat of the impeding army looms on the horizon. Bobby and Siry travel to Veelox to obtain maps of Ibara from Aja Killian. They then go to Zadaa to borrow a dygo, then to Denduron in order to unearth the explosive tak. When they leave, the Traveler Alder goes with them. Bobby then goes to Quillan alone in order to get the black dado-killing rods for extra protection. After a gigantic battle with archers firing tak at the dados, it appears that the battle is won. When a second wave of dados arrive, Bobby throws almost all the tak they have left in an underground tunnel and lures the army over it. As he is about to detonate the tak, Saint Dane catches up with Bobby and has a fight with him, in which he reveals that there is a "King of the territories", and that he wants to be it. When Bobby asks who the king is now, Saint Dane merely says, "And now you see the truth..." Siry arrives in time to prevent Bobby from being killed, and Bobby blows up the tak bomb. The dado army is destroyed but as they begin to celebrate, Bobby decides that the time has come to go after Saint Dane. Bobby goes with Siry and Alder to take the various things they had taken from the other territories back to their places of origin. After they leave, Bobby destroys the flume with a tak arrow, trapping both himself and Saint Dane on Ibara. Bobby hopes that this means Halla is safe. In the final chapter, however, Saint Dane and his accomplice Nevva Winter speak on top of the Lifelight pyramid. By unearthing the tak, Bobby has doomed Denduron. Just as Saint Dane had said long ago, Denduron would be the first territory to fall. It is revealed that Saint Dane has more power in realizing the future of Halla than thought, and that Telleo is actually Nevva Winter in disguise. |
5641294 | /m/0dxsyx | The Magician | Sol Stein | 1971 | {"/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The story takes place in Ossining, New York. Ed Japhet is sixteen years old, and he is a bright, articulate boy. His father Terence teaches at his school. Ed's hobby is performing magic tricks, hence he is the "magician" of the title. One evening, Ed performs in front of the school on prom night, and aggravates school hoodlum Urek. Urek and his gang wait for Ed that night as he is about to go home with his dad and girlfriend. Urek attacks Ed and nearly kills him. Urek is eventually arrested on a charge of serious assault. At first this looks like a straightforward case. But Urek's dad happens to have a lawyer named Thomassy, who has made it his life's work to defend the low-lifes and the criminals of the area - and to get them off the hook. When Thomassy started his promising career as a lawyer he joined a firm with WASP surnames deliberately. They took him on and he became their most brilliant lawyer. However, the senior partner told him that as an Armenian he would never get promoted, at least while he was alive. Thomassy, stung, left and decided to follow a controversial path defending the most undesirable characters in society. He sends a birthday card every year to the old senior partner, as if to say, "You still alive?" As the story unfolds, the reader becomes uncomfortably aware of how an event can be interpreted by the law. It seems as though Ed has the advantage, he is talented, with a nice family and girlfriend, horribly attacked and nearly killed by a brute. But Thomassy manages to play the attack down: he discredits witnesses, intimidates others, and portrays Urek as acting only in self defense. Now the reader is unsure who the actual "magician" of the title really is. Also involved is German Jewish Psychiatrist Koch, who has taken an interest in the case. His involvement gives the reader an opportunity to see Urek in more depth, as previously he is portrayed as a mindless, violent and inarticulate monster. Nothing can excuse what he has done, but Koch offers more insight as to why he did it. The book ends on a violent note. Urek walks free from the assault charge and proceeds to attack Ed again, this time by hiding in Terence's car and leaping out at Ed. Ed, newly trained in Karate, can now defend himself against the thuggish Urek, with devastating results. Terence Japhet knows exactly whom to call. The book is written in the third person narrative style, but interspersed at intervals throughout the story are "comments" provided by the key characters. They are written in the style of statements, but the reader never knows to whom they are directed. |
5641451 | /m/0dxt47 | Tex | S. E. Hinton | 1979 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book opens with Tex McCormick who is a happy go lucky 14 year old who loves horses, his brother Mace, living in a small town and Jamie the girl next door. Tex is growing up mostly with Mace in a small country home. Their mother died years before and their father goes off for months at a time leaving Mace, a senior and a star basketball player and Tex at home. At the start of the book Tex comes home to find the two brothers horses sold. Negrito, Tex's horse, was always more of a human friend to Tex, so he is sad. However Mason had to sell the horses to guarantee Tex and himself would have enough to eat over the winter. This action by Mason, sets Tex against his brother most of the book. But the McCormick brothers aren't alone. Living in the significantly larger ranch house next door (about a half a mile) are the Collins's, the family includes Mason's best friend Bob, Tex's best friend Johnny and the younger sister who Tex loves, Jamie. The Collins's however are forbidden to see Mace and Tex because the patriarch of the Collins family, Cole thinks they are a bad influence. After a turn of events involving Tex and Mason's father, Tex runs away to the city with a family friend and eventually learns that just living life and staying with his brother is the best thing for him. |
5646914 | /m/0dy258 | Rain of Gold | null | null | null | The novel begins with the main character, Lupe Gomez, as a young and overall naive girl, who lives with her mother, Doña Guadalupe and her other sisters and brother in a ramada in the "Rain of Gold" valley. The family makes a living by selling breakfast to the local miners and washing their clothes. There is a group of colorful miners and most of them have problems with drinking and gambling. The village suffers repeated raids by various factions of the Mexican Revolution and ultimately the brazen Doña Guadalupe manages to protect her daughters and son without incident. Eventually Lupe encounters a man she simply calls "my colonel", a charismatic and romantic figure that Lupe seemingly falls in love with. For much of the beginning of the first chapter of the story she compares the things she enjoys in life to the Colonel, unaware of the fact that he is married to another woman and is nearly two decades older than she is. Swayed by the religious devotion of the Gomez family, the Colonel has them look after his young wife, Socorro who is pregnant with a child. While away on an escort mission of mined gold the Colonel is attacked and killed, Subsequently the rebel fighters who slay him return to the box canyon and dominate the residents. They are a suspicious group and accuse Lupe's brother Victoriano of stealing gold from the mine and they try to hang him as an example to others. He is saved by his mother who hands him a gun after she told the rebels that she was giving him his last prayer, but before Victoriano is able to escape, he shoots and kills La Liebre, the leader, who was attempting to kill Guadalupe. Afterwards, La Liebre's second in command orders Guadalupe to be hanged, but is stopped by the town's people gathering in a mob to stop them. Shortly after the violence the towns people start to leave the city en masse to escape the violence of the Mexican revolution. |
5648330 | /m/0dy3_f | When Heaven Fell | William Barton | 3/1/1995 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/026ny": "Dystopia", "/m/01smf2": "Military science fiction"} | Earth has been taken over by the Master Race, a galaxy-spanning empire of artificial intelligences, and the best of Earth’s survivors are recruited into the aliens' army. Athol Morrison has served for 20 years, and heads back to Earth for a brief vacation. There, he runs into old friends, and finds it easy to give into his old feelings with his childhood girlfriend, Alexandra (Alix) Moreno. However, Alix and the rest of Athol’s friends are involved in a rebellion against Earth’s Master. They ask Athol to help and to join them, and so he helps to train them. However, concerned that any rebellion will provoke a genocidal response from the Masters, he betrays the rebellion to the local government, making sure that Alix and Davy Intäke are spared. Conflicted about what he has done, but feeling as if there was no choice, Athol rejoins up with his new command. Soon afterward comes war with the Hu, the most advanced race yet encountered—they developed hyperspace travel either on their own or stole it from a Master facility. Despite the Hu winning a series of early victories, the Master Race grinds the Hu down in a near-genocidal campaign that leaves the Hu homeworld in ruins. After that war is over, Athol and one of his concubines visit his alien comrade Shrêhht on her home planet. There, he is invited into another rebellion, one composed of all of the slave races, that has been plotting against the Master Race for over 100,000 years. He returns to Earth a second time and learns that he and Alix have a daughter, Kaye Moreno, and takes her off-planet to be trained as a soldier herself. Later, the Master Race's empire is attacked by a new foe that the conspirators believe drove the Master Race out of the Andromeda Galaxy and has arrived to finish them off. Athol, now a general, and Kaye ponder whether now would be the right time for the conspirators to revolt against the Master Race and welcome the newcomers, although he worries that if the Masters fall, the subject races will be the "slaves of slaves" forever. |
5653498 | /m/0dydyn | Mediated | Thomas de Zengotita | null | null | Mediated aims at creating awareness rather than offering ready-made solutions to remedy the intrusion of too much media in our industrial societies. Rather than writing yet another pamphlet against the media, the author chooses to focus on the mechanisms and the processes of our mediated society. The basis of his analysis is that the opposite of reality is not phony or superficial, it is optional. We choose between options to determine who we are, to make statements to the world about who we are. People, he argues, have always done so, but the difference with today's situation is that we have a lot more options. In terms of options, comparing the modern world with the post-modern world is like comparing a breeze with a hurricane. The media forces at work since the fifties have contributed to expanding our options greatly, making the self "aware" of the possibilities to be who it deems worth being. We have become method actors, constantly flattered. Deception is luring as it is the inherent condition of the "flattered-self". So we seek new ways of satisfying our selves. These are the true forces at work behind what de Zengotita calls the "virtual revolution". |
5654742 | /m/0dygzp | Coots in the North | Arthur Ransome | 1988 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | The Death and Glories are bored because the salvage business is in decline on the Broads. They see a boat being loaded for delivery to the Lake in the North where the Swallows, Amazons and Ds have their adventures and decide to go along for the ride. They get left behind at a stop on the way but make their way to the lake and find that the lorry has already left for Norfolk and they have no way to get home. They meet the owner of the boat who takes them to find the Ds. They encounter the Swallows, Amazons and Ds sailing on the lake and make an attempt to rescue Nancy after her boat capsizes. At this point the story as published ends, though notes indicate that Ransome was struggling to develop a suitable plot line and a way of arranging for the Death and Glories to get home without their impoverished parents having to pay the fare. Various scenarios are mentioned, including the salvage of Captain Flint's houseboat when its anchor chain breaks in a squall. In gratitude Captain Flint pays for their return journey and gives them a reward. |
5656005 | /m/0dykhc | A Rumor of War | Philip Caputo | null | {"/m/017fp": "Biography", "/m/0d6gr": "Reference", "/m/04rjg": "Mathematics", "/m/06mq7": "Science"} | In the foreword, the author states his purpose for writing this book. As he clearly states, this is not a history book, nor is it a historical accusation. The author states that his book is a story about war, based on a personal experience. The book is divided into three parts. The first section, "The Splendid Little War", describes Lieutenant Philip Caputo's personal reasons for joining the USMC, the training that followed, and his eventual arrival to Vietnam. Lt. Caputo was a member of the 9th Expeditionary Brigade of the USMC, the first American regular troops unit sent to take part in the Vietnam War. He arrived on March 8, 1965, and his early experiences reminded him of the colonial wars portrayed by Rudyard Kipling. The 9th Expeditionary Brigade was deployed to Da Nang, formerly Tourane, on a "merely defensive" condition, primarily to set a perimeter around an airstrip that ensured arrival and departure of military goods and personnel. The first skirmishes against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong made it clear to Lt. Caputo and his comrades that their earlier impression about Vietnam war as small and unimportant are all wrong. In the second part of the book, "The Officers in Charge of the Dead", Lt. Caputo is reassigned from his rifle company to a desk job documenting casualties. His new position in the Joint Staff of the brigade was a change that did not suit him, because he was proud of his rifle company duties and had a certain desire to return to basic infantry command. This distance from the Main Line of Resistance gave Lt. Caputo a different perspective of the conflict. Lt. Caputo described senior officers as being more worried about trivial matters than strategy. For example: movies being played in the open at night, risking potentially devastating mortar attacks. Lt. Caputo also witnessed enemy corpses being treasured as hunting trophies, and shown off to generals. He also describes American corpses carrying evidence of Viet Cong torture. In the third part, "In Death's Grey Land," Lt. Caputo is reassigned to a rifle company. He describes the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong as fierce and skilled fighters and as having earned the grudging respect of American soldiers. Lt. Caputo describes his fellow Marines as having stopped wishing for epic, World War II-style battles; they had learned to detect boobytraps, to counter-snipe, and to comb the jungle in search of enemy bunkers and their rations. Lt. Caputo took part in these operations, until troops under his command miscarried orders and shot two suspects deliberately. Lt. Caputo assumed full responsibility for the incident and faced a court-martial. Eventually, he was relieved of his command and the charges were dropped. Lt. Caputo was then reassigned to a training camp in North Carolina and eventually received an honorable discharge from the service. In the Epilogue, almost ten years after the end of his tour of duty, Philip Caputo returned to Vietnam as a war journalist for a newspaper. Old memories of his war experiences and his comrades flood his mind as he witnesses the fall of Saigon to the troops of North Vietnam. Caputo left Vietnam on April 29, 1975. A postscript published in 1996 details some of the anxieties Caputo experienced while writing the memoir, and the difficulties he had handling his fame and notoriety after its publication. |
5656985 | /m/0dym9n | Black Sheep | Georgette Heyer | null | {"/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | The novel is set in Bath, Somerset and centres around two main characters: Miss Abigail Wendover and Mr Miles Caverleigh. When attempting to enlist Miles' help in preventing a clandestine marriage between his nephew, Stacy, and her niece, Fanny, Abigail finds herself attracted to the black sheep of the Caverleigh family. After rejecting Miles' first proposal, following a series of Heyer-esque twists and turns, Abigail is finally swept off her feet when Miles abducts her and the novel ends with the two on their way to get married. |
5659240 | /m/0dyqsc | Inconstant Star | Poul Anderson | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | There are two parts to the novel, Iron, and Inconstant Star. In “Iron”, Saxtorph and the Rover, hired by the wealthy Crashlander Laurinda Brozik, set out to explore a newly discovered red dwarf star. When they arrive, they are challenged by a Kzinti warship. Separating the crew onto the shuttles, the Rover is captured and landed on one of the moons. The first shuttle sets on Prima, the first planet, and is held fast by a planet-sized organism that begins dissolving the shuttle. They broadcast for rescue, and are refused help by the Kzin. Meanwhile, helpless to rescue their friends, Robert, Dorcas, and Laurinda make a plan to steal a tug and escape back to friendly space with the news of the Kzin base. Dorcas pilots the tug, and takes out the ship guarding the ‘’Rover’’. Robert and Laurinda land, fight off a Kzinti shuttle, and recover the Rover. They are able to rescue Juan and Carita, and destroy the base with a guided asteroid. In “Inconstant Star”, Saxtorph and crew are hired by Tyra Nordbo to redeem her father’s honor, as he was accused of collaboration with the Kzin during their occupation of Wunderland. To do so, they must use notes he had left behind and follow a ship that had left 30 years prior to investigate a concentration of gamma rays. They travel to the coordinates, and find a massive artifact made of an unknown metal. A hole in the spherical artifact is pouring out lethal radiation. As the study it, they learn it is a weapon of the Tnuctip. It is a shell around a “captured” black hole, one that had been holed by a meteorite and is thus releasing the Hawking radiation. They then deduce the route of the original Kzin ship, and head off to the Father Sun, the star of the Kzin homeworld. En route, they locate the Sherrek, where Tyra’s father Peter had worked free of his Kzin captors. They rescue him and head back to the artifact. Another Kzin ship, Swordbeak, also finds the old ship. They, too, head to the artifact, and catch the Rover by surprise. Just when all looks lost, Robert and Dorcas conceive a plan to use the artifact's radiation against the Kzin warship. In a last act of defiance, a dying Weoch-Captain activates the artifact’s hyperdrive and heads out into unknown space. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.