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7314998 | /m/025yxyh | Getting It | Alex Sanchez | 2006 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | It is embarrassing enough that Carlos Amoroso is 15 years old and never even kissed a girl, but the object of his desire, Roxy Rodriguez — who is popular and gorgeous — has no idea that Carlos is even alive. After watching a television show about gay guys making over a straight guy, Carlos gets an idea: What if he got a makeover from Sal, the guy at school who everyone thinks is gay? Asking Sal to do him a favor is harder than it seems, because Carlos is worried that if any of his friends see him hanging out with Sal, they will think he is gay too. And in return for making Carlos over, Sal wants help starting a Gay-Straight Alliance at their school—not exactly something Carlos is dying to do. But over the course of the makeover, Carlos learns about life and love, and finally starts to "get it." |
7315524 | /m/025yy84 | Thirteen Bullets | David Wellington | null | {"/m/03npn": "Horror"} | Thirteen Bullets takes place in Pennsylvania in the year 2003, in a setting similar to the real world, but where vampires and other supernatural forces are rare but accepted phenomena. It is widely believed that vampires were all but wiped out twenty years ago by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley. The last vampire still in existence, Justinia Malvern, long imprisoned in a nearly abandoned sanitarium, has somehow managed to bestow her vampiric curse to the outside world and is working to free herself of human confinment. Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton is assigned to assist Arkeley hunt down the vampires running loose in rural Pennsylvania. |
7315703 | /m/025yyc7 | The Puppy Sister | S. E. Hinton | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The Davidson family adopts Aleasha, a black, white, and tan colored Australian shepherd puppy from a farm. Aleasha loves her new family and really feels happy playing with their young son, Nick though he is not very thrilled about the new dog. One day after returning from the vet's office, Aleasha sees herself in the mirror and realises that she is not an actual human member of the family, but a puppy. She decides to physically transform into a girl(human not dog) so she can fit in better with the Davidsons. Aleasha begins by practicing walking on her hind legs and trying to speak. She eventually manages to walk across the kitchen on two legs, but has trouble forming words due to the still canine shape of her mouth. One day, she surprises Nick by saying his name to him. He also discovers subtle changes in Aleasha's physical appearance—her ears are shorter and her muzzle is shrinking. Nick decides to keep this a secret until a later day. One day, Nick surprises his mother by showing her and Dad Aleasha's new verbal skills. Mom and Dad Davidson are amazed with Aleasha, but accept her changes. In the meantime, they decide to keep Aleasha away from the outside world until she completes her transformation. To cover up for the soon-to-be absent dog, the Davidsons begin telling people that they gave away their puppy and plan to adopt a little girl. They lied to nearly everyone. As time passes, Aleasha begins to struggle with her shift from canine to human. She eats meals with the family, but dislikes eating vegetables (until Mom tricks her by dropping stir-fry ingredients on the floor, knowing Aleasha's dog instincts would cause her to eat the food as it fell). When Aleasha is allowed to go trick or treating on Halloween, disguised as a werewolf like Nick, she gives in to her canine side by howling in fear upon being spooked by a man pretending to be a scarecrow at one house. At the same time, Aleasha is beginning to look like less like a dog and more like a furry child, leaving her in a very awkward halfway point through her transformation. By Christmas, Aleasha begins to gain more human abilities such as color vision. However, she is also no longer able to communicate with the family cat, Miss Kitty, as Aleasha's ears are now more human than animal. By spring(the season) Aleasha has finished her physical change and is now a seven-year-old girl with black hair and yellow-colored eyes. However, she still possesses some canine instinct. At a baseball game with dad and Nick, she catches a foul ball with her teeth. Few physical hints of her past canine form are also apparent—Aleasha will always have pointy teeth and ears, as well as very strong toes. However, she learns that no one ever completes changing throughout life, and also keeps one secret from her family—Aleasha can still smell love. |
7318527 | /m/025y_w0 | Man in the Holocene | Max Frisch | 1979 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The 74 year-old Mr. Geiser is bored in his Ticinese house during torrential rains. He is so bored that he tries to make a pagoda out of crispbread and categorizes thunder types into a taxonomy (rolling thunders, banging thunders etc.). His sole companion is his cat as his wife had died not long ago. There is a report of a landslide caused by the deluge, cutting off the valley. Fearing a large slide that would bury the village and man’s knowledge, Geiser reads in his encyclopedia, the Bible, and history books. At first he makes notes and tacks them to the walls; later he cuts paragraphs from the books and tapes them instead, noting sadly that the front sides of the encyclopedia’s pages are visible, but the back sides unfortunately are dissected and destroyed. Despite the weather, he hikes outdoors along diverging paths. While wandering, he notes his physical limits, and the limits of man’s knowledge and importance. He notes man's insignificance and meaninglessness (man's appearance in the Holocene era is a very recent event in evolutionary terms). The old man is exposed to the cycle of life and his mortality. Geiser has to admit that „der Mensch bleibt ein Laie“ (his man stays a rookie). He slowly loses his memory. He wonders if memory was necessary – "the rocks do not need my memory or not". Towards the end, Geiser suffers cerebral apoplexy that attacks his memory. |
7319547 | /m/025z0_w | To Light a Candle | Mercedes Lackey | 2004 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Vestakia, Kellen, Jermayan, and Shalkan return safely to elven lands. Kellen is still very weak from his dealing with the key stone. Before they arrive, Idalia decides she now wants to be with Jermayan because of a war that will eventually start with the Demons and because elf knights will live as long as she will with a war. Vestakia is scared that the elves will hate and try to kill her, but Jermayan promises that he will not let that happen. When they arrive, all the elves demand that Vestakia be removed, but Jermayan, Shalkan and Kellen threaten to leave if she is banned. Idalia uses wild magic and a potion to discover who she is and also heals Kellen. Shalkan tells Kellen not to look at his hands. Kellen has not seen his hands since he touched the key stone. Jermayan has already tried to heal them when Kellen was sleeping and had told him never to take the bandages off. Kellen looks anyway and sees that his hands are completely raw, with bones showing in some places. Idalia, Andoreniel, and the other members of the elf council pay the price to cure Kellen hands in return for what he has done for them. They all go home and get ready for a grand feast for Kellen, Jermayan, Vestakia. Before the feast begins, Idalia confronts Jermayan and tell him she loves him and wants to be with him for the rest of their lives. Jermayan wants to get married, but Idalia is not sure about that. When elves marry they get linked in a special way. Idalia fears that the link will tell Jermayan what she turned into to stop the rain. The feast begins and Kellen notices how beautiful Vestakia is. Even as a demon, the elves managed to make her demonic features less prominent. Idalia takes Vestakia away suddenly. Kellen then remembers he must be chaste and celibate for a year and a day or Shalkan will castrate him, as part of their previous deal. The next day Kellen and Idalia go to the war chamber and start making plans. The elves decided to take all elven children in the Seven Cities to the Elven stronghold. Kellen thinks they should do more, but the elves take their time at everything, including war. Kellen now goes to the House of Sword and Stone, to gain skill in knighthood. Idalia and Jermayan spend time together. Now when she does wild magic she does not ask for a price. She also realizes that the price of controlling the weather was her death. She thinks that there are two reasons why she does not have to pay the price. The first being that she will die soon due to the price, the second being that the price was a test, and she has already passed. Meanwhile back in Armethalieh, Cilarnen Volpiril is a top student high mage. His father is on the council with Lycaelon Tavadon. His father is the mage who recommended changing city limits to the very walls of the city instead of hundreds of miles outward. Cilarnen finds his sister having a party in the yard and sees the lady Amintia, who he falls in love with. Cilarnen asks his father permission to talk to her, but he refuses, saying it will take away from his studies. The elves move prince Sandalon and the other children to the elf fortress of the Crowed Horns escorted by ten elves and unicorns. Ice trolls and other creatures take them. Only one unicorn survives while all the children are kidnapped. The unicorn returns to Sentarshadeen alive and warns them. Kellen, impatient, tells the elves he going to rescue Sandalon. Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, Vestakia, Shalkan, and six elven knights, whom Kellen befriended while learning to become a knight, leave to go look for the prince. Back in Armethalieh, Cilarnen and his friends are making a magical item to help the shortage of food in Armethalieh due to the recent boundary change resulting in despondent farm-towns surrounding the city. Anigerel pretends to be their friend, but then gives them away to Lycaelon Tardavon, who has been waiting to get Cilaren's father kicked off the council of mages. Cilaren blames his father for giving him ideas, and other children of council members follow suit. Lycaelon adopts Anigerel as he says he has no son after what Kellen did. Anigerel helps Lycaelon get back their lands and cut off all contact with elves and other folk because they will try to warn them of the Endarkened. As they are discussing this an elf from Sentarshadeen comes to tell them of the Endarkened. They do not give him a chance to speak and say if he does not leave they will kill him. They then banish Cilarnen and do the same thing to him as they did to Kellen—send the Outlaw Hunt after him. Once he is outside he meets the elf, who says he will help him escape. Kellen, Idalia, Jermayan, Vestakia, Shalkan and the knights find the place where the children are hidden. Idalia has a cloak that makes people invisible and hides sound and smell and decides to go in and help them. The things that kidnapped them are half-elf half-goblin, made by the Endarkened, which is why they could get into elven lands and help get others in elven lands. She gets all the children out including Sandalon. However Sandalon's nurse Lairamo and Idalia cannot fit under the cloak. Lairamo takes the cloak grudgingly, leaving Idalia, and goes ahead. Idalia tries to be quiet but gets caught and falls off a cliff. Kellen decides he, Jermayan, and Shalkan will wait while Vestakia and the knights lead the children back to Sentarshadeen. Jermayan wants to run in but Kellen tells him to wait. Idalia, barely awake, sends a bat with wild magic to get help. It reaches one of the last dragons Ancaladar, who is happy that he has never found a bond with a wild mage or elf, because when a wild mage bonds with a dragon the person gets inhuman magical power. However, if the mage or elf dies then the dragon dies, which is why he is one of the last dragons. He has been in hiding because the Endarkened want him to join them. He decides since he is a creature of light he must help the wild mage at least, perhaps to the point of bonding. He finds Kellen and the two fight off the elf-goblin hybrids and save Idalia. When he heals her, the wild magic does not ask for a price, which is curious. They all get out and Ancaladar asks if he can go back to Sentarshadden with them. They agree to let him. They meet up with Vestakia and the others. Back in Armethalieh, the elf, Hyandur, helps Cilarnen escape and get outside the lands. On the way they see one of Cilarnen friends dead by the Outlaw Hunt. Cilarnen is in shock, first for what the city has done and second for travelling with an elf. Hyandur and Cilarnen reach Merryville, where Cilarnen is even more upset that he has to stay around centaurs. Hyandur leaves the next morning, abandoning Cilarnen in Merryville to go back to the elves. Cilarnen now has to work and live with the centaurs and is not happy about it. The group safely makes it back to Sentarshadeen. After they arrive Ancaladar wants to bond with Jermayan, making him the first elf mage in thousands of years. Jermayan at first want to decline, but then accepts. The elves decide to get their army and allies to attack the shadow elves. Kellen is upset with this. He thinks the demons are using the shadow elves as a distraction because if they really wanted the children they could have caught them after the heroes rescued them. The elves say that they can't leave this threat in their land. The elves decide to try moving the children to their fortress of crowed horns again. This time Kellen goes with them, while Jermayan and Ancaladar fly them. They reach the fortress safely. Kellen thinks it is great, but it has a weakness the elves do not think of: underground. He notifies master Tyrvin, who is the leader of the fortress. They go back to Sentrashadeen and they must all go to the city of Ondoladeshiron to meet with the rest of the elven troupes and get ready to fight the shadow elves. Kellen rides with the unicorn knights and finds friends with them. While Kellen is there he meets Atroist, another wild mage who lives in the wild lands near where the demons are. Kellen wants him and the other wild mages of the wild lands (there are more wild mages there than any other place because that is were they are needed most) to come help. Atroist does not want to leave the people because the demons would easily kill them. So Kellen comes up with a plan. He wants the elves to allow safe passage for the wild folk through their lands since the folk can go into the wild woods where they will be safe. Atroist agrees and says if the people are safe, all the wild mages will come and fight for them. They have to get permission first and petition the council. The council responds that they will debate it. While Kellen is there he meets the leader of the army, General Redhelwar. While the council debates, the elves go to war against the shadow elves. They go to their first shadow elf village, the place were they held the children. The elf army easily kills them with Vestakia's help. The elves at first are hesitant to kill them, because they are part elf. Kellen still thinks this is a distraction by the demons. Back in Merryville, Cilarnen is adapting to his new life. He likes the people he lives with; Gardner and his daughter Sarlin. He still tells himself these are only centaurs, and someday he will return to Armethalieh, though deep down he loves them and has become friends with them. One day an elf messenger comes and asks the centaur warriors to come to the elven lands and begin preparations for war as soon as possible. They accept, but no one tells Cilarnen why they are going to war. Before they go two wild mages arrive, a human male named Wirance and the first ever Centaur Wildmage named Kardus. Since centaurs can't use magic, Kardus' gift is knowledge. If he wants to know something he can have it answered, but there is a price like regular wild magic. Cilarnen leaves early because he is scared of the wild mages and thinks that they are evil. As he leaves he meets a man who thinks he is Kellen. The man turns into a demon and tries to attack Cilarnen. Cilarnen brings his magic up and blocks the attack. He is shocked that he still has his magic. The demon flies off and heads to the town to attack civilians. Wirance can't stop it and the centaur warriors can't hurt it. Cilarnen returns to see half of the village dead and uses his High Magic to fight and kill the demon. The wild mages are in shock and can't believe simple High Magic defeated it while their Wild magic did nothing. As they mourn the lost ones including Gardner, the wild mages want him to come with them and to tell Kellen about what he did. He agrees and while he leaves, Sarlin kisses him and tells him to come back. Demon Queen Savilla is very angry, wondering why a demon attacked a worthless center village without her approval, and how he died and what killed him. Kardus and Wirance take Cilarnen to elven lands so he can tell Kellen about this. Kellen is promoted for his success in the first battle and now has people at his command, but gives up Shalkan. Vestakia rides Ancaladar and finds the next shadow elf village. Near the elf city of Ysterialpoerin is a bigger cave system that has two entrances. It is the oldest elf city and the most closest on how elves used to live before the war with the demons. While the army travels to attack them, Kellen once again shows how amazing his Knight-Mage skills are. Once they get to Ysterialpoerin some shadow elves and Wargs kill the scouts and come and attack the army. Kellen realizes that they mean to go around the army and burn Ysterialpoerin, so he takes his men to go and stop them before they destroy the city and finds that the shadow elves have a new fire that can not stop burning by any means. When Kellen gets back and meets with Redhelwar, all the commanders have a meeting on what to do. Redhelwar divides the army into thirds, one to protect Ysterialperin and two for each cave entrance. Kellen wants him and Idalia to scout ahead under Idalia's invisibility cloak and draw a map to locate the shadow elf villages. One of the commanders, Belepheriel, gets in an argument with Kellen because Kellen is doing things differently than how elves in the past have done them. Kellen gets so angry he challenges him to a duel but Belepheriel declines and walks out. Redhelwar does not want Kellen and Idalia to go because he does not want to risk them. Kellen decides to go any way. While he sneaks off, Shalkan, the unicorn knights, and the elves under his command all catch him and want to help. They go get Idalia and help him get out of the camp. Kellen and Idalia go inside the caves and find booby traps that would kill hundreds of elves. Once Kellen gets to the end several Goblins come out of hiding and attack. After the fight, Kellen finds Idalia is missing. While searching for her, Kellen realizes that if large groups of people head into the shadow elf village the whole cave would collapse, killing more than half of the army. Kellen finds Idalia heading in the opposite way in a trance finding a Duergar, who draws any one in except Knight-Mages. Some crystal spiders stop Idalia from going to it while Kellen quickly kills it. The Crystal Spiders tell Idalia that all the shadow elves have left and there are traps everywhere, but so are the goblins and Duergars. The crystal spiders hate the shadow elves because they hunt their kind. The crystal spiders ask Idalia if they could wait one day before the army comes in. Idalia agrees and goes to inspect Kellen and notices that a goblin has poisoned him. She quickly heals him. When they get out they find the elf army ready to go in, but Shalkan said he would kill any one that goes in. Kellen tells Redhelwar about the crystal spiders, traps, and how the shadow elves are gone. Redhelwar is happy Kellen saved him from this mistake, even knowing he disobeyed orders. The other cavern they are now going in has to be emptied out, but instead of risking getting caught in traps they try to lure the shadow elves out. They have do have army in thirds. One is at Ysterialpoerin, one is outside the cave and one is hiding atop of cave to trap the shadow elves. One wild mage sacrifices his life to get the shadow elves to come out. The shadow elf army comes and attacks the elf army. Jermayan closes one cave to keep them out and the top army traps them. However there are Death Wings and wargs with them, along with more warriors than the elves thought. When some shadow elves slip past the elven army, Kellen quickly goes after them. All the shadow elves are dead but for the ones that slipped past the army. Now the army goes in the caves to kill the women and children shadow elves while the unicorn knights defend Ysterialpoerin. While they are in the caves they find only the children. The rest of the shadow elves have a secret exit were the women fled with the males to Ysterialpoerin. When they get there they kill many unicorns and their knights including the leader Petariel while his unicorn Gesade is very badly injured. The shadow elves start to set the city on fire. Jermayan and Ancaldar get Kellen and race towards the city to stop the fire. While Kellen finds Shalkan, he tells him he has to heal Gesade because he is the only virgin wild mage around. Kellen cures her but finds she has no eyes. He blames himself but Shalkan says it was the shadow elf and he could do nothing about it. Meanwhile Cilarnen has reached elven lands and is battling the harsh winter. The elves tell Kellen that Cilarnen is coming. Kellen is then so upset that his Armethalieh life is coming back he can barely think straight, and is drawn to tears because he hates and loves the city, as he hates and loves his father. Kellen then realize that the price for healing Gesade is to forgive Cilarnen. He has nothing personal against Cilarnen, he just hates the mages. When Cilarnen and Kellen first meet, Cilarnen tells him everything that happened to him. Kellen shows him around camp. Cilarnen meets Redhelwar there and tells him everything. Idalia, Jermayan, and Redhelwar find the news terrible because if the demons take control of the city they would have unlimited power to draw on. Redhelwar asks the wild mages to see inside the city. All the wild mages get together and make a mirror that will link up to see inside. They ask for two thirds of the army to help with the price because it is powerful. In Armethalieh, Anigerel is making new wards to help protect the city. Kellen and Cilarnen will watch over how the wild mages do the spell. They see Anigerel, everything he did, and how he is a spy for the demons. Queen Savilla senses they are tampering with her servant and tries to go through the mirror to kill Idalia. But Cilarnen makes a magic shield along with Jermayan and Kellen. With Shalkan giving Kellen power and Ancaladar giving Jeryman and Cilarenne power, they save her life. When it's over Savilla is close to death when Prince Zyperis walks in. The whole army can barely move with tiredness, with Kellen, Jermayan, Cilarnen, Shalkan, and Andcladar all passed out. They however know that Anigerel is the spy and they know what the plan is. The demons do not want to fight in this war yet. They want Armethalieh to go to war with the elves and their allies. The demons will kill the winner. |
7321945 | /m/025z339 | The Return of John MacNab | Andrew Greig | 1996 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Andrew Greig has rewritten John Macnab by John Buchan for the late 20th century. The plot follows the original closely. In John Macnab (1925), three bored successful friends in their mid-forties turn to poaching, under the collective name ‘John Macnab’, set up in the Highland home of a war hero and prospective Conservative MP. In The Return of John MacNab three rather downcast friends (a copywriter whose wife has died suddenly on a plane flight; an ex-Special Forces soldier with a marital crisis; and a jaundiced left-wing joiner) decide to revive Buchan’s novel. They target an estate owned by a Moroccan, another rented by a Dutch corporation, and the third, Balmoral, traditional home of the British royals in Scotland. The modern-day MacNabs are hijacked by Kirsty Fowler, a hard-living reporter and singer with a murky past. |
7322510 | /m/025z3y2 | Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy | Raymond Abrashkin | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Danny exacerbates a small electrical fire, altering an experimental crystalline semiconductor material Prof. Bullfinch was evaluating. Prof. Bullfinch is able to use this altered material to create ISIT (the Invisibility Simulator with Intromittent Transmission), a dragonfly-like probe which could be piloted with a Telepresence helmet and gauntlet gloves. The trio each tries out the device. Irene uses ISIT to birdwatch. Joe uses the device to observe a beehive from the inside. Danny discovers a bully nicknamed 'Snitcher' cheating by copying the word list to the school spelling bee and dishonestly winning himself a boombox. The ISIT is outfitted with a speaker which is subsequently used by Danny as a means to pretend to be the bully's conscience, in order get Snitcher to confess to his father. However, ISIT also causes problems, as soon afterwards Prof. Bullfinch is visited by General Gruntel. The general reveals (in very authoritarian language) he wishes to use ISIT as a tool to spy not only on enemy governments, but against Americans as well. General Gruntel attempts to seize the unit, but is rebuffed by Doctor Grimes. While going to get authorization to seize the ISIT, he leaves the professor's lab under guard. Danny, Irene, and Joe decide to take matters into their own hands and stealthily break into the lab to recover the probe. The probe's absence is realized which leads to Colonel Twist, the commanding officer of the two guards, to delusively believe the device has been stolen by a foreign power. As he is being confronted by Twist, the Professor realizes the trio of friends are responsible. He informs Danny that without destroying his notes detailing the creation of ISIT, either the Soviets or the US military could still recreate it. While the local national guard arrives to secure the house against foreign spies, Danny and the Professor make their way to the probe's controls and use it to cause a fire that destroys both the notes and probe. Dr. Grimes arrives with orders from the Governor for the military personnel to stand down and leave the Bullfinch residence. Bullfinch informs Grimes that the device and his notes have been destroyed, leaving him the only man to remember the blueprints by memory. Professor Bullfinch also tells Dr. Grimes and Danny that he will not recreate ISIT until the world is ready for it. |
7323501 | /m/025z56b | When They Lay Bare | Andrew Greig | 1999 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | A mysterious young woman moves into deserted Crawhill cottage on the estate of Sir Simon Elliot in the Scottish Borders. He fears she is the daughter of his mistress: "If it wasn't the child, Sim wondered, who was she and what the hell was she doing moving into Crawhill? And if it was her, what had she came back for, why had she not come to see him? Instead she had taken up residence in the cottage and waited. What did the lassie want with Davy?" The novel is based around a set of antique plates that the young woman brings with her, depicting the Border Ballads, "Twa Corbies" and "Barbara Allen". |
7323747 | /m/025z5kb | In Another Light | Andrew Greig | 2004 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The novel alternates between present-day Orkney and the 1930s in the dying days of the British Empire in Penang, British Malaya in South East Asia. After a near-fatal illness, Edward Mackay decides to find out more about his late father's mysterious past. Dr Alexander Mackay's secret is gradually revealed by his son's findings. On the sea voyage to the East, the young doctor meets an eclectic crowd including the Simpson sisters, who are of unattainable social class, "both beautiful, one a gazelle". The doctor is gradually accepted into Penang society, and makes regular visits to the sisters, one of whom is married. Following a mysterious accident and a secret holiday in the Sumatran highlands, he leaves the island under a cloud of scandal. Edward's investigations in the modern day are assisted by a trail of clues including a Buddha figurine and a double-one domino, and by an old lady, a blonde woman he bumps into in London, and an Orkney woman called Mica. |
7325751 | /m/025z7kn | The Wish Giver: Three Tales of Coven Tree | Bill Brittain | 1983 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The narrator Stewart Meade (nicknamed "Stew Meat"), meets a strange man named Thaddeus Blinn in a carnival tent. However, he notices something unusual about Blinn: his eyes glow like a cat's momentarily, implying that he is not really human.He's more magical Stew Meat sees that there a three children in the tent who he recognizes as Polly, Rowena, and Adam. Blinn sells each of them a card with a red spot on it, for only 50 cents each, explaining that all they have to do is to press their finger on the red spot and say their wish and it will come true – exactly as they tell it. Polly, a sharp-tongued girl whose habit of speaking her mind freely has left her with few friends, makes a wish on her card to be popular. She says that she wants people to smile at her on the street, and also for the two most popular girls at her school to invite her over to their house. The wish comes true, but in a completely unexpected manner – Polly is cursed to croak like a bull frog whenever she says something rude or spiteful to other people. Only when she has not made any complaints or insults for a while does the croaking subside temporarily. (Jug-A-Rum!) This curse causes her entire wish to be granted; her sudden croaking in the middle of class causes her to become the center of attention – and much grins and guffaws – at her school, and the two girls she had wished to invite her over do so, if only to ridicule her for her croaking. Polly is grateful for the invitation, but learns during her visit that the girls are snobbish and unlikable people. She realizes that if she had not spoken whispers to her classmates, she could have easily become friends with them. Rowena makes a wish of her own for Henry Piper, a traveling salesman she is infatuated with, but can only see three days a time, to "set roots down in Coven Tree and never leave again!" The wish is fulfilled word-for-word: Henry's feet become literally rooted to the ground, and he gradually transforms into a sycamore tree. Much like Polly does, Rowena learns something important from her wish's consequences; a frustrated Henry reveals to her that he never actually liked her, and only flirted with her so that her father would buy more of his items and that most of his travels to exotic locations were taken from brochures rather than genuinely travelling to the places. Rowena also grows close to Sam, a boy who works for her parents, as they search for a cure to Henry's condition. Later Rowena discovers she has been in love with Sam for a long time. Adam, who lives in a farm that receives little water, wishes for the farm to be filled with water so that his family would not have to work so hard to get water all the time. The next day, a friend of his father, who is a dowser, teaches him how to use a dowsing rod to locate water. Adam tries this method, and finds that his rod jumps at every spot on the farm. When they dig through the soil, a huge geyser shoots out. At first, Adam's parents are joyful of this newfound source of water, but the waterspout soon grows out of control, flooding the entire farm. The three independent stories each end with the involved child being reminded in some way of the fourth wish card Stew Meat has, and all three of them running to his store. Stew Meat wishes on his card for their wishes to be undone, and without any of the repercussions or side effects that they suffered. Polly's voice returns to normal, Henry turns back into a human, and the water on Adam's farm stops flowing. |
7326269 | /m/025z7w8 | Sinner | Sara Douglass | 1997 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The land of Tencendor has experienced an era of peace in the forty years since the Starman Axis defeated Gorgrael and united the peoples of Tencendor. Eventually Axis chooses to leave the mortal world with his wife Azhure, leaving his son Caelum to rule as the Starson. However, Caelum is a less than perfect ruler; insecure, arrogant and untried in this era of peace he struggles to maintain the balance between the various provinces as racial tensions rise. Matters worsen when Caelum finds himself engaging in an affair with his sister Riverstar, who eventually becomes pregnant and threatens to blackmail her brother with this fact. In a rage, Caelum then murders his sister and implicates his unpopular brother Drago with the crime. However, this Caelum's crime is not revealed until the third book, Crusader. The majority of the novel is narrated from Drago's perspective. Much of it focuses upon the fact that he has been literally stripped of his Icarii heritage - he is mortal. His is growing old, and weak, and the extent of his Icarii powers amount to making the bread rise. Azhure and Axis distrusted him because of the crime that he committed while an infant, a crime that he cannot even remember committing (allowing the antagonist of the Axis series, Gorgrael, to kidnap his brother, Caelum). The full details of Caelum's relationship with his sister is not fully unveiled until the third book, as "first blood", i.e., brother, sister, father, mother, are forbidden. However, Drago is an unpopular fellow, and when the finger is pointed at him, none are too surprised and have no problem in heaping the blame upon him. What actually transpired was that Drago walked in upon Caelum murdering his sister. Caelum instead, imposes a memory block upon Drago, and creates a false recollection of him brutally murdering his sister. The ancient and deadly WolfStar also returns to the world of Tencendor; seeking to cause the rebirth of his lover Niah within a powerful body. He selects Zenith as the perfect host, displacing her soul and replacing it with Niah's. However, WolfStar is not the only one to return; the newly empowered Faraday arrives and aids Zenith in expelling both Niah's soul and WolfStar's child from her body. Zenith finds Wolfstar, who is her biological grandfather, revolting, as she is constantly assaulted by images of the past whenever he is near, a rather unpleasant sensation which eventually causes her to lose control of her own body to her former incarnation. In order to escape punishment Drago flees with the help of his sister Zenith until he leaves the world through the Star Gate. However, Wolfstar pursues Drago. Meanwhile not all is calm in the North, Zared, Axis' mortal younger brother (they share the same mother, Rivkah) and ruler of the northern province has illegally eloped with Princess Leagh, sister to the sterile ruler of the western province. Proceeding from this Zared names himself King of Achar; an action which the other rulers view both as treason and a resurrection of the Acharites xenophobic past. Meanwhile Drago discovers an odd oasis in the universe outside the Star Gate, containing an insane Icarii woman, many children with the likeness of hawks and five dark and dangerous beings known as the Timekeepers who offer great power. This promise proves false however, when they steal Drago's life force and use it to shatter the Star Gate and destroy most of the world's magic in the process. |
7326453 | /m/025z81j | Pilgrim | Sara Douglass | 1998 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Upon arriving through the Star Gate, the Time Keeper Demons begin 'feeding' by expelling a grey miasma from their mouths which spreads across the land, corrupting and maddening any being not sheltered. They depart the vicinity of the now destroyed Star Gate and travel through the woods to Cauldron Lake. Meanwhile Faraday uses her new powers to bring Drago back to life. The newly resurrected Drago, Faraday, and Zenith then join Caelum's army in the woods surrounding the Barrows and set plans. Despite a pledge to help Caelum however possible, Axis, Azhure, and Caelum remain distrustful and loathing towards him with Axis even stabbing Drago. Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and a small contingent from the army resolve to travel to Star Finger to search through the ancient texts there for an answer. Zared is left in command of the combined armies tasked with preserving what he can of the land. Faraday and Drago leave on a pair of white donkeys with a feathered lizard from the woods to attempt to beat the demons to Cauldron Lake. There the voice that spoke to Faraday during her transformation, Noah, awaits. Isfrael and Shra confront the demons as they pass through the forest. Their combined power is a match for the still weak demons, but one of the newly acquired demonic mounts sneaks behind them and disembowells Shra. The demons are the first to arrive at Cauldron Lake and proceed to drain/kill it to expose the craft of the Enemy and a crystal forest. Surviving the reflective trap, the demons find a pool of blood and throw StarLaughter's dead child into the blood. It emerges as a toddler and possessing the warmth of the greatest of the demons, Qeteb. After their departure but still sensed by them, WolfStar comes forth from the waterways and places the his own dead child in the blood with similar results. Drago enters the craft and meets a dying Noah, the last of the Enemy. Noah tells Drago of how the Enemy separated Qeteb and journeyed through space to find a place to store the component parts. When they discovered the constituent parts of Qeteb could not be destroyed, four craft fled across the universe with them. Noah informs Drago that Qeteb must be reconstituted before he can be destroyed, that Tencendor must be destroyed before it can live again. Drago also learns that the land is highly magical and magic still exists for those who know how to find it. He also is informed that a Sanctuary exists somewhere in the waterways that can hold Tencendor's population when the land is destroyed. Drago sends the Lake Guard to scout out Sanctuary, Zared's army to Carlon to gather the Acharites, StarDrifter and Zenith to Star Finger to collect the Icarii, and extracts a half-promise from Isfrael for the Avar. As he instructs the leaders, it dawns on them that Caelum is not the StarSon mentioned on the Maze Gate, but Drago is. Isfrael helps the army construct cloth for portable tents so they can venture across the plains and the groups separate. Zenith still suffers hesitations about her relationship with StarDrifter. While a relationship between grandparent and grandchild is acceptable in Icarii culture, she cannot cope the idea of StarDrifter being her lover. They arrive at the Minaret Peaks to find the magic-reliant Icarii in dire straits, not only from the Demonic Hours, but a lack of food and basic survival skills. When Caelum and company enter an ancient tunnel to quickly transverse the Fortress Ranges, they fear a trap in the making. Only too soon are they prove right as the Hawkchilds kill the sentries behind them. The demons create an illusion of the hunt dream Caelum suffers from that Axis, Azhure, and Caelum all fall for. They survive to find all the others in the party destroyed and the Alaunt further ahead after running from the horror. Zared's army travels towards Carlon, but an army composed of animals and men that were maddened has been marshalled by the brown and cream badger. When the animals attack, Zared's army survives only thanks to two mysterious white figures that drive off many of foes. Unnoticed until later, the discontent Askam and four hundred men desert during the night. Unfortunately for them, the badger set up a trap and they are all dragged from under the shade into the demonic miasma to become like the mad animals. Under control of the badger, Askam and his men rejoin Zared's force as they ride. Although no other attack is forthcoming, when the last of the army is entering Carlon, Askam abducts Zared's wife Leagh. When the next Demonic Hour falls, she too is driven insane. Drago and Faraday travel north to Gorkenfort to meet their "ancestral mother." On the way, Drago expresses his love for Faraday. Although she knows that she loves him, she denies it as she fears that it would mean she would need to be sacrificed again. She also worries about the dreams of a girl calling for help that are trying to draw her to Star Finger. On the path, they find a senile white horse that Drago recognizes as Belaguez, Axis's old warhorse. They also discover that they are immune to the demons' feedings. The demons feel the resistances but cannot identify them. Although later confronted by a Hawkchild speaking for the demons, they do not connect the resistance with Drago. They are confused by him being alive, but are diverted from killing him as the white donkeys (revealed to be extremely powerful magicians and those that previously saved the army) destroy Askam's force and return Leagh to Zerad. Caelum, Axis, and Azhure are taunted by the Hawkchilds continually as they travel the mountain paths to Star Finger. Eventually, the Hawkchilds stage an attack and nearly destroy who they believe to be the StarSon. The former Star Gods and Alaunt manage to stave off the attack and get the wounded party to Star Finger. Drago and Faraday arrive at Gorkenfort. Shortly afterward Urbeth the icebear arrives to reveal that she is the being known as the Enchantress and the Mother of Races. Although she mothered the Acharites, the Charonites, and the Icarii, her eldest (the Acharite forerunner) rejected magic and she cast him out of her life. However, both he and the Acharites do have innate magic but it now can only be accessed if they die and are brought back to life. Drago and Faraday leave towards Star Finger but leave Belaguez for Urbeth who then transforms him into the star stallion and sends him south. Meanwhile, a mourning Zared is convinced to send part of the army and the whole Strike Force to the Murkle Mines where some 20,000 men, women, and child are holed up. When their ships are destroyed in the bay, the remains of the men convince the refugees to head towards Carlon. The demons learn of this progress and set a trap on the path that eventually drives all of the refugees into the madness of Demonic Hours. Only Theod survives and rides to Carlon on the reborn Belaguez to tell the tale. The demons arrive at the Lake of Life and kill it to access Qeteb's breath, DragonStar now gaining the body of an adolescent and breath. Again, WolfStar follows their example with the Niah-corpse and slips away. After giving StarLaughter a small amount of power, the demons decide to investigate Sigholt. When Rox crosses the bridge, it transforms into a spider-like shape and devours the demon releasing nighttime from terror. The demons and StarLaughter flee towards Fernbrake Lake. The Lake Guard have figured out the mystery of Sanctuary determining it must be a magical keep. As the other lakes each have a keep, Fernbrake's keep must have sunken to the waterways and show the way to Sanctuary. Some of the Lake Guard, StarDrifter, and Zenith travel to Fernbrake. There they not only discover the way to the keep, but that the Star Dance can be accessed through dance. When StarDrifter attempts to cross the bridge to Sanctuary, it rejects him as he is not 'he who is true.' They depart on the waterways to find Drago. At Star Finger, Axis, Azhure, Caelum, and the former Star Gods find a mysterious girl in the lower levels holding a book titled Enchanted Songbook. Unfortunately no one can reach her until Drago and Faraday enter the chamber. Caelum, who has now realized that he is only a decoy for the real StarSon, keeps Axis from killing Drago and sends them all from the room. When they are alone, Caelum asks for Drago's forgiveness for their past. More specifically, for Caelum framing Drago for RiverStar's murder. Caelum and RiverStar were secretly lovers and he killed her when she revealed she was pregnant. Drago, Faraday, StarDrifter's party, and the Alaunt depart on the waterways to Sigholt and then Sanctuary. At Sigholt, Drago retrieves the Wolven and the keep's cat population and learns of another way to access the pattern of the Star Dance, through hand movements. They open Sanctuary and begin the evacuation of the Icarii. Drago, Faraday, and the girl Katie travel to Carlon via Spiredore only to discover it besieged by the animal army and of the loss of the 20,000. With the help of the lizard and Katie, Drago removes the demonic madness from Leagh, in essence returning her from the dead and giving her access to her magic. They leave for the site of the ambush of the 20,000 and gather them together. Drago cures Goldman, Theod's wife Gwendylyr, and DareWing FullHeart of their madness and dispatches the rest so the demons cannot use them anymore. WolfStar appears at Fernbrake Lake only to be captured by StarDrifter and Isfrael to await trail. When the demons arrive, they free WolfStar only to torment him and hold him captive. They shatter Fernbrake and summon the craft to the surface as StarDrifter, Isfrael, and Goodwife Renkin mourn the death of the Mother. The demons invest both DragonStar and Niah with the movement of Qeteb and leave for Grail Lake and the Maze. Caelum departs for the hunt and for Drago to summon him. He has learned that the Enchanted Songbook shows dances to access magic and more or less successfully used one to destroy a Hawkchild. As he waits, he visits with Urbeth and her two daughters, the white donkeys turned icebear. The animal army stages an attack led by the patchy-bald rat and his minions from the sewers that leaves the population of Carlon in panic and the city on fire. With the help of his new magicians, Drago evacuates the remaining Acharites through Spiredore to Sanctuary. He sends the magicians off to the rest of Tencendor to collect the remaining populations which turn out to include animal and insect as well. Faraday confronts Isfrael with his stance that the Avar should keep to themselves by showing a vision of Barsarbe doing the same. The Avar and the rest of Tencendor descend into Sanctuary, but not before the Mother reveals herself to Faraday urging her to let herself love Drago. Mother then retreats to the Sacred Grove and closes the pathways. Drago enters the Maze and races on Belaguaz to the Dark Tower within. There he opens a gate and travels to Caelum to bring him to Spiredore and the hunt. The demons pass through the maze and fully resurrect Qeteb in the body that was once DragonStar. Malice sweeps across the land, destroying everything not already corrupted save for Caelum, Urbeth, her daughters, and the wooden bowl given to Faraday by the silver-backed Horned One. Qeteb starts the hunt and they eventually corner Caelum who they still believe to be the StarSon. However, rather than cowering in fear and then pain, Caelum dies with a smile on his face as all he sees is a field full of flowers. |
7327359 | /m/025z8y1 | RedRobe | Jon Courtenay Grimwood | 2005-10 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The book opens in Mexico City in the future, where sometime assassin Axl Borja is about to try to make one last hit, which goes drastically wrong when he takes three rounds to do the job. Losing his gun in the process, he is caught by the police, and throws himself on the mercy of the Cardinal Santo Duque - his former boss, a minister of the Vatican, and someone given to unusual methods of revenge. The Cardinal agrees to grant clemency if Axl returns to his service, an offer he can't refuse but one with serious consequences. Axl's mission is to track down the late Pope Joan (specifically, a data-holding bracelet of hers), who drained the Vatican's immense assets to buy aid and other kinds of support for the Third World before being apparently dismembered by a horde of the people she helped save. The Cardinal is interested in tracking down what remains of his organisation's money, but there's one problem; the only lead is in space, on the refugee-only space habitat Samsara. As a man responsible for much of the ringworld's population, the Cardinal can't send an agent officially, so he tortures and seriously injures Axl - fitting a ceramic neural-interface port into his head, removing both his eyes, and running him through a set of SQUID probes designed to pillage what's left of his memories. Axl's gun, a mostly-sentient Colt armed with explosive flechettes, incendiary phosphorus rounds, and all-purpose ceramic smart rounds and capable of full battlefield analysis and giving tactical advice when needed, has since changed hands a number of times, from a pimp to a gutter-boy to a voodoo priest to a cleric to the Cardinal himself. With his assistance its AI is uploaded to the networks and thus to Samsara, where it has to earn the favour of resident AI Tsongkhapa if it can help Axl in his mission. One of the most interesting features of the book is its soundtrack. Axl has a Korg music synthesiser implanted in his brain, capable of generating pretty much any kind of music, precisely tuned to what he experiences; it will create heavy basslines and drum 'n' bass music to go with a gunfight, for instance, while going completely silent in moments of great suspense and working out signature riffs for people Axl meets. This device, inactive at the start of the book, is fixed about halfway through and is used to add a sense of pacing to the action scenes towards the novel's end. Another recurring theme is battlefield medicine, reminiscent of the use of superglue in the Vietnam War. Axl's eyesockets are filled, first by a "plug-and-play" Red Cross-issue eye, so cheap it only works in black and white and very low-res; and later by a more complex eyeball capable of night-vision and with a digital counter in the corner to remind him of his deadline. |
7330500 | /m/025zcw3 | King Javan's Year | Katherine Kurtz | 1992 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The events of King Javan's Year span a period of approximately sixteen months, from June 921 to October 922. As the novel begins, the dying King Alroy Haldane commands that his twin brother, Prince Javan Haldane, be summoned to Rhemuth immediately. Although Alroy's former Regents seek to prevent the king from talking with his heir before his death, Alroy's youngest brother, Prince Rhys Michael Haldane, risks their wrath by sending a small party of knights to retrieve Javan from the abbey where he has spent the past three years. The Healer Oriel manages to keep Alroy alive until Javan's arrival, and the two brothers share a final conversation before the young king finally dies. The lords of state immediately attempt to pass over Javan in favor of Rhys Michael, believing the younger brother will be a more biddable king. However, Javan succeeds in disproving their claim that he took permanent religious vows, and he is proclaimed the legal heir during an Accession Council that afternoon. Javan is surprised to discover that several young knights and nobles at Court have already allied themselves with him, including his former squire, Sir Charlan Morgan, and two secret Deryni, Etienne de Courcy and his son Guiscard. The following night, Guiscard sneaks Javan out of Rhemuth to meet with Father Joram MacRorie and several other Deryni allies. Shortly thereafter, Javan's Haldane potential is fully activated by Joram, Dom Queron Kinevan, and Javan's old friend, Tavis O'Neill. Over the next month, Javan attempts to secure his position and establish his strength without revealing his magical abilities or overtly provoking the lords of state. By the end of June, Javan and Joram succeed in creating a new Transfer Portal in the castle. Javan's official coronation occurs on July 31, but the ensuing celebration is marred by an old rivalry between two powerful lords. Earl Hrorik II of Eastmarch accuses Earl Murdoch of Carthane of murdering his brother, an event that occurred three years earlier at Alroy's and Javan's thirteenth birthday. The two nobles engage in a duel to death the following day, and Hrorik mortally wounds Murdoch. Before his death, Murdoch urges his allies to move against Javan, believing the king is becoming too powerful to control. Several weeks later, Javan discovers his brother dallying with Lady Michaela Drummond in the castle garden. Javan orders Rhys Michael to stay away from Michaela, fearing that any child of Rhys Michael's will only weaken his own position on the throne since the lords of state will be more willing to attack him if the royal line is secured for another generation. Although Rhys Michael dislikes the great lords, he refuses to believe they present as great a threat as Javan believes. Nonetheless, he agrees to stay away from Michaela. At the end of October, while traveling as a deputy with one of Javan's legal commissions, Rhys Michael is attacked and abducted. Although the culprits are publicly identified as Ansel MacRorie and other Deryni bandits, the prince has actually been kidnapped by knights under the command of the great lords. After being "rescued" several days later, Rhys Michael is taken to Culdi to recover from his wounds. As planned by the great lords, the prince is reunited with Michaela, and the two are soon married by the end of November. By the time Javan discovers the plan by reading Archbishop Hubert's mind, he is far too late to prevent the marriage. When Rhys Michael and his new wife return to Rhemuth in early December, Javan can do nothing but acknowledge his new sister-in-law and welcome her to the family. Over the following months, Javan continues his potentially lethal dance of power with the great lords. In March, the former Regents command one of their Deryni collaborators to murder Oriel. Oriel survives the attack, but both Javan and Guiscard are forced to employ their arcane powers to defend the Healer. As the incident is investigated further, the great lords become increasingly suspicious of the king. Although he repeatedly attempts to free former Deryni Ursin O'Carroll, Ursin is murdered before Javan can succeed. The king decides to take the families of the deceased Deryni collaborators to Master Revan, hoping that the secret Deryni working with Revan will block the families' Deryni powers and they will be allowed to go free. Javan departs Rhemuth in early May, leaving his brother in command of the royal castle. The king's party arrives at the river several days later, but tragedy quickly erupts as the great lords make their final move against Javan. Episcopal soldiers disguised as renegade Michaelines attack both the cult and the king's party. When Tavis uses his powers to protect a young girl, the surviving Willimites realize that Revan's baptismal ceremony has been a fraud, and they quickly turn on their former leader. Revan and Tavis are slain almost immediately, but the Willimites themselves are struck down by the false Michaelines. Javan and his party fight bravely, but they are soon outnumbered by both the false Michaelines and the great lords who have betrayed the king. Guiscard falls first in the battle, but both Javan and Charlan are eventually killed. At the same time in Rhemuth, the remaining great lords launch a coup against Rhys Michael. Several lords and knights are quickly slain as Rhys Michael is captured, and special care is taken to ensure Oriel's death. The prince is informed that he will do as he is told and follow orders or he and his wife will be killed. The shock of the coup causes Michaela to go into premature labor, but their first son is stillborn. Over the next several months, Rhys Michael is constantly drugged to ensure his compliance with the wishes of the great lords. Javan's body is returned to Rhemuth, and Rhys Michael is formally crowned as King of Gwynedd. Eventually, the new king is reunited with his wife and informed that he must soon provide a royal heir or someone else will perform the action for him. Resigned to their fate, Rhys Michael and Michaela agree to start having children, but they secretly maintain the desperate hope of one day being free of the great lords. |
7330565 | /m/025zcxv | The Years | Virginia Woolf | 1937 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | "It was an uncertain Spring." Colonel Abel Pargiter visits his mistress Mira in a dingy suburb, then returns home to his children and his invalid wife Rose. His eldest daughter Eleanor is a do-gooder in her early twenties, and Milly and Delia are in their teens. Morris, the eldest brother, is already a practising barrister. Delia feels trapped by her mother's illness and looks forward to her death. Ten-year-old Rose quarrels with twelve-year-old Martin and sneaks off by herself to a nearby toyshop. On the way back she is frightened by a man exposing himself. As the family prepares for bed, Mrs Pargiter seems at last to have died, but she recovers. At Oxford it is a rainy night and undergraduate Edward, the last Pargiter sibling, reads Antigone and thinks of his cousin Kitty Malone, with whom he is in love. He is distracted by two friends, the athletic Gibbs and the bookish Ashley. Daughter of a Head of House at Oxford, cousin Kitty endures her mother's academic dinner-parties, studies half-heartedly with an impoverished female scholar named Lucy Craddock, and considers various marriage prospects, dismissing Edward. She is sitting with her mother when the news is brought that Mrs Pargiter is dead. At Mrs Pargiter's funeral Delia distracts herself with romantic fantasies of Charles Stewart Parnell and struggles to feel any real emotional response to her mother's death. "An Autumn wind blew over England." Kitty has married the wealthy Lord Lasswade, as her mother predicted, and Milly has married Edward's friend Gibbs. They are at a hunting party at the Lasswade estate. Back in London, Eleanor, now in her thirties, runs her father's household and does charity work to provide improved housing for the poor. Travelling London on a horse-drawn omnibus she visits her charity cases, reads a letter from Martin (twenty-three and having adventures in India), and visits court to watch Morris argue a case. Morris is married to Celia. Back in the street, Eleanor reads the news of Parnell's death and tries to visit Delia, living alone and still an avid supporter of the Irish politician, but Delia is not at home. Colonel Pargiter visits the family of his younger brother, Sir Digby Pargiter. Digby is married to the flamboyant Eugénie and has two little daughters, Maggie and Sara (called Sally). "It was midsummer; and the nights were hot." Digby and Eugénie bring Maggie home from a dance where she spoke with Martin, who has returned from India. At home, Sara lies in bed reading Edward's translation of Antigone and listening to another dance down the street. Sara and Maggie are now in their mid-twenties. Maggie arrives home, and the girls tease their mother about her romantic past. "It was March and the wind was blowing." Martin, now forty, visits the house of Digby and Eugénie, which has already been sold after their sudden deaths. He goes to see Eleanor, now in her fifties. Rose, pushing forty and an unmarried eccentric, also drops in. "...an English spring day, bright enough, but a purple cloud behind the hill might mean rain." Rose, forty, visits her cousins Maggie and Sara (or Sally), who are living together in a cheap apartment. Rose takes Sara to one of Eleanor's philanthropic meetings. Martin also comes, and so does their glamorous cousin Kitty Lasswade, now nearing fifty. After the meeting Kitty visits the opera. That evening at dinner Maggie and Sara hear the cry go up that King Edward VII is dead. "The sun was rising. Very slowly it came up over the horizon shaking out light." The chapter begins with a brief glimpse of the south of France, where Maggie has married a Frenchman named Réné (or Renny) and is already expecting a baby. In England Colonel Pargiter has died and the family's old house is shut up for sale. Eleanor visits her brother Morris and Celia, who have a teenaged son and daughter named North and Peggy (another son, Charles, is mentioned in a later section). Also visiting is Sir William Whatney, one of spinster Eleanor's few youthful flirtations. There is gossip that Rose has been arrested for throwing a brick (this was a time of Suffragette protests). "It was January. Snow was falling. Snow had fallen all day." The Pargiters' family home is being sold and Eleanor says goodbye to the housekeeper, Crosby, who must now take a room in a boarding house after forty years in the Pargiters' basement. From her new lodgings Crosby takes the train across London to collect the laundry of Martin, now forty-five and still a bachelor. "It was a brilliant spring day; the day was radiant." The time is one month before the outbreak of the First World War, although no hint is given of this. Wandering past St Paul's Cathedral, Martin runs into his cousin Sara (or Sally), now in her early thirties. They have lunch together at a chop shop, then walk through Hyde Park and meet Maggie with her baby. Martin mentions that his sister Rose is in prison. Martin continues, alone, to a party being given by Lady Lasswade (cousin Kitty). At the party he meets teenage Ann Hillier and Professor Tony Ashton, who attended Mrs Malone's dinner party in 1880 as an undergraduate. The party over, Kitty changes for a night train ride to her husband's country estate, then is driven by motorcar to his castle. She walks through the grounds as day breaks. "A very cold winter's night, so silent that the air seemed frozen" During the war Eleanor visits Maggie and Renny, who have fled France for London. She meets their openly gay friend Nicholas, a Polish-American. Sara arrives late, angry over a quarrel with North, who is about to leave for the front lines and whose military service Sara views with contempt. There is a bombing raid, and the party takes its supper to a basement room for safety. "A veil of mist covered the November sky;" The briefest of the sections, at little more than three pages in most editions of the novel, "1918" shows us Crosby, now very old and with pain in her legs. She hobbles home from work with her new employers, whom she considers "dirty foreigners", not "gentlefolk" like the Pargiters. Suddenly guns and sirens go off, but it is not the war, it is the news that the war has ended. "It was a summer evening; the sun was setting;" Morris's son North, who is in his thirties, has returned from Africa, where he ran an isolated ranch in the years after the war. He visits Sara, in her fifties and living alone in a cheap boarding-house, and they recall the friendship they carried on for years by mail. North's sister Peggy, a doctor in her late thirties, visits Eleanor, who is over seventy. Eleanor is an avid traveller, excited and curious about the modern age, but the bitter, misanthropic Peggy prefers romantic stories of her aunt's Victorian past. The two pass the memorial to Edith Cavell in Trafalgar Square and Peggy's brother Charles, who died in the war, is mentioned for the first and only time. Delia, now in her sixties, married an Irishman long ago and moved away, but she is visiting London and gives a party for her family. All the surviving characters gather for the reunion. |
7331057 | /m/025zdd_ | Crusader | Sara Douglass | 1999 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Raging at the escape of the StarSon, Qeteb has the Hawkchilds scour the remains of Tencendor. Although they don't immediately find Sanctuary, a Hawkchild does find and return the wooden bowl given to Faraday by the Mother, though they do not know how to use it. Unaware of this oversight, the Mother, Ur, and the Horned Ones wait in the Sacred Groves, slowly dying. meanwhile, at sanctuary many are discontented and impatient, finding it more of a prison then a sanctuary. Axis walks to the bridge and begins talking to it, though halfway through it begins screaming and it dies, and Axis nearly falls into the chasm below until Drago saves him, and though Axis notices a some sort of power in him, he still stubbornly refuses to forgive him for Caelum's death, thinking he is still the malevolent man he was when he was a baby, who always wanted Caelum's inheritance. Drago then talks to Azhure, who also recognises he has some sort of power, and on departure recognises him as Dragonstar, not Drago |
7332448 | /m/025zfpk | Cythera | Richard Calder | 1998 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | Cythera is set in a near future Earth following an unsuccessful Third World Children's Crusade against the West, with children being subject to increasing levels of censorship. Film-maker Flynn has been imprisoned for making the subversive Dahlia Chan films, along with his leading lady Jaruwan. Thanks to the increasing power of the Net sentient 'ghosts' of media images have crossed from Earth 2 to Earth 1, and the novel follows the affair between human Tarquin and Dahlia Chan, their efforts to rescue Jaruwan and their ultimate quest for the freedom of mythical Cythera. |
7334321 | /m/025zhmx | The Sculptress | Minette Walters | 1993 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Olive Martin - a 28 year old, morbidly obese woman - was imprisoned for life after police found her cradling the shattered bodies of her mother and sister, having previously dismembered them and re-arranged their limbs into abstract shapes on the floor, a crime for which she was nicknamed 'the Sculptress'. Troubled journalist Rosalind Leigh, under pressure from her publisher to produce new material, reluctantly agrees to write a book about Olive and - whilst conducting interviews with the prisoner - gradually comes to believe that she is concealing something, maybe even her own innocence. In her quest to discover the truth Rosalind enlists the help of Hal Hawksley. He is an ex-policeman who investigated the case originally and is still haunted by some of its aspects. |
7337435 | /m/025zlk4 | P.S. Longer Letter Later | Ann M. Martin | 1998 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Tara is outgoing and impulsive and likes to write, while Elizabeth is shy, quiet and prefers writing poetry. Even so, they are best friends. When Tara moves to Ohio, the girls continue their friendship through letters back and forth to each other. They have to do this by writing, because Elizabeth's father does not like Tara, and Tara's parents think it is expensive to talk on the phone. The letters detail the changes in their lives – Tara must cope with moving, making new friends and dealing with her mother's pregnancy, while Elizabeth's family begins to fall apart. Tara makes another best friend in Ohio, whose name is Hannah. Tara calls her Pal Palindrome because her name is the same spelled backwards as forwards. It becomes her new nickname and everyone calls her "Pal". Tara also gets a boyfriend, Alex, who kisses her. Elizabeth's father starts to scare her when he is coming home later than usual, drinking, and going overboard on his credit cards after he loses his job and has no money. Meanwhile Tara is making new friends, joining clubs and getting involved in school activities. When Elizabeth's family has to move to an apartment because of the money problem, her dad decides to leave, and separates from her mother. It is through their alternating letters that readers learn how Tara and Elizabeth grow and change – and how they keep their friendship strong, even if it is long-distance. This book shows how hard a friendship can be when a person can't see her friend, but suggests that for someone who truly cares about something and works hard for it, anything can happen. |
7337483 | /m/025zlmx | Snail Mail No More | Paula Danziger | 2000 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Snail Mail address. After a year of snail mail following Tara*Starr's move to Ohio, the long-distance friends are ready for the more immediate gratification of e-mail: with e-mail, it doesn't take 3 or 4 days for a letter to get to the other. Therefore, they start to have an even closer relationship. Those two girls send emails about their fast changing lives. Tara* Starr is getting used to having a baby sister in the house, and how a social studies project ruined her relationship with her boyfriend Bart. Meanwhile Elizabeth's father is coming back to the dispointment of Elizabeth,her mother, and her little sister Emma. They face problems like Tara* Starr's sister premature birth. But the hardest of all was Elizabeth's father's fatal car crash. In the end, Tara* Starr's sister Scarlett was fine, and Elizabeth understanding that another chapter in her life was closed, but another chapter was beginning. Both girls' friendship improved. They were in 8th grade at that time. |
7337505 | /m/025zlp8 | Eleven Kids, One Summer | Ann M. Martin | 1991 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Eleven Kids, One Summer continues the story of the children of the Rosso family as they summer on a beach on Fire Island. The story also reveals that the youngest child, who had yet to be born in the previous book, is a boy named Keegan according to Mrs. Rosso's naming scheme. Each chapter entails a story featuring a child of the family as they find some sort of adventure during their vacation. |
7337595 | /m/025zlt1 | Yours Turly, Shirley | Ann M. Martin | 1988 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Shirley Basini is in fourth grade. Her scholastic performance is poor because she is dyslexic (which is why the title spells "Truly" as "Turly"). Her disability makes reading difficult for her. She ends up struggling with feelings of inferiority and fears of disappointing her parents, especially since her older brother is intellectually gifted. To hide her inner anxieties, she horses around in class, much to the displeasure of her strict teacher. To add pressure to the situation, if she does not do well in school this year, she will probably be held back. When Shirley's parents decide to adopt a Vietnamese baby boy as their own, Shirley is mildly happy that her parents' attention will no longer be focused upon her. When a mix up results in the possibility of having a slightly younger sister instead, Shirley becomes excited with the prospect of being able to teach and help someone learn how to speak English and help educate her about the American culture. Shirley's new younger sister, "Jackie", soon becomes devoted to Shirley. Jackie is eager to learn from her older sister and they become fast friends. When Jackie ends up excels in school and moves from the regular third grade class to an advanced one, Shirley begins to feel threatened and jealous. She fears that Jackie will no longer need her. For example, during a spelling bee Shirley is angered by the fact that Jackie can spell the required words, while Shirley struggles. When she stops making an effort at school, an unexpected challenge arises in the two sisters' relationship and forces Shirley to come to terms with her role as Jackie's sister and beginning to understand her own strengths. With extra help from the school resource room, Shirley begins to succeed in school in her own way. |
7337649 | /m/025zlwg | Here Today | Ann M. Martin | 2004 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman (Ellie) is an 11-year-old girl who lives on Witch Tree Lane and, along with the other people who live on the street, is hated by the other children in school. Holly and Ellie have been given a hard time by the popular girls in their school (the Sparrows), but since the death of late president John F. Kennedy it has temporarily stopped. Ellie's life is turned upside down when her mother decides to go into show business. Her mother has asked Ellie to call her Doris (after Doris Day). Ellie's mother has been overcome with grief for the newly widowed mother, Jackie Kennedy, but realizes that life is short so she goes to New York to "become established". As her life progresses, Ellie discovers she has more power than she thinks and can change her life no matter what the situation. When Doris moves to New York, Ellie is forced to take care of her family, as well as deal with life without Doris. Doris then decides to move to Hollywood, and Ellie has finally had enough. Even though life will not be the same, Ellie is still happy and content. |
7337687 | /m/025zlyx | The Meanest Doll in the World | Ann M. Martin | 9/1/2003 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | The novel revolves around the troubles that Annabelle Doll and Tiffany Funcraft get into when trying to hide from their owner, Kate Palmer. They hide in her backpack and get taken to school. There, they explore and eventually get into a backpack they think is Kate's but it is really the backpack of a different child, named BJ. The dolls are taken to BJ's house where they meet Waterfall, Melody, Yvonne, Penny, and Beth, the toys of BJ's sister, Callie. Annabelle and Tiffany are introduced to the meanest doll in the world, Princess Mimi (called by the toys Mean Mimi). Mean Mimi tries to boss them around too, but Annabelle and Tiffany escape back into BJ's backpack where, at school, they can get back into Kate's backpack and then home to their worried families. Little do they know that Mean Mimi has followed them. At the Palmers' house, Mimi mimics crying and tricks the Dolls and the Funcrafts into letting her stay with them. What they do not know is that Mimi is trying to torture them, too. She tries to wake up Kate so she will know about the mess she made, and think the dolls did it. Nora, Kate's little sister, sees Mean Mimi jump off Kate's bookshelf in a stunt to expose the life of dolls, and Mimi goes into Permanent Doll State. In which dolls cannot come to life ever again because they put the secret life of dolls at risk of being exposed. So at the end of the story, Mean Mimi, still in Permanent Doll State, is taken to Kate's school where she ends up in the lost and found. Mean Mimi remained forever unfound at the school. |
7337727 | /m/025zlzl | A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray | Ann M. Martin | 10/1/2005 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | Squirrel is a stray puppy who lives in a shed behind the summer home of a wealthy family, The Merrions, with her mother, Stream and brother, Bone. When Stream disappears, Squirrel and Bone must set off on their own. The puppies are picked up by highway travelers, but then abandoned and thrown out of a car window while the travelers were at a mall the following day. Squirrel and Bone are injured; Bone is taken away by other shoppers, leaving Squirrel, never to be seen again. Squirrel joins forces with another female stray, Moon, for a short time. Later, after being attacked by stray dogs at a gas station and being with each other for some time, healing each others wounds, the pair are struck by a car, killing Moon instantly and injuring Squirrel. This time, Squirrel is taken to the vet, where she is spayed and her broken leg is treated. She is renamed Daisy and adopted by a family for the summer(Their summer dog). In the autumn, Squirrel is once more abandoned. She continues to wander for years. Then Squirrel, now an old dog, wanders around to an old lady's house. Then the old woman, whose name is Susan, sees Squirrel and takes her in. At the end of the story, Susan, an old woman, finds Squirrel cold and starving in her backyard, and tries to coax her in. Susan had a dog named Maxie in the past. Squirrel, now an old lady herself, refuses to come over, and Susan has to gain her trust by leaving food out and gradually moving closer each day. When she finally gets Squirrel inside, she decides to keep her and renames Squirrel "Addie". Afterwards, Susan and Squirrel, both old ladies, enjoy the rest of their lives together. They lived happily ever after |
7338385 | /m/025zmk7 | Killer on the Road | James Ellroy | 1986-10 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Michael Martin Plunkett is a child genius who comes from a broken home: His father is a hustler and his mother is an alcoholic and drug addict who engages in a series of one-night-stands. After his parents divorce, Plunkett takes solace in a series of disturbing fantasies in which he re-assembles his classmates' body parts. The fantasies lead Plunkett to becoming a peeping Tom, and from the time he is seven until he turns eleven, he spends all of his free time spying on his neighbors and observing people having intercourse. Before he can graduate junior high, Plunkett's teachers, having noticed his withdrawn nature in class, send him to the school psychologist, who identifies Plunkett as disturbed but nonetheless passes him to high school after Plunkett emotionally manipulates him into a fit of rage. In high school, Plunkett, now realizing that there is something different about himself after his session with the school psychologist, seeks out some means of grounding himself psychologically. He becomes obsessed with a series of pulp comics and fixates on the main villain, "Shroud Shifter," a jewel thief obsessed with becoming invisible. Plunkett comes to the conclusion that his own goal should become "invisibility" in the sense that he can move through life as nondescript as possible. Plunkett steals from his mother to finance a series of wardrobes which will allow him to blend in with as diverse a number of people as possible; she punishes him, and in retribution, he switches her muscle relaxers with massive quantities of amphetamines. She suffers a psychotic break and slits her writs; Plunkett drinks her blood and then calls an ambulance, reporting the suicide. He is placed in the foster care of an LAPD officer, whom Plunkett sets about manipulating in order to gain knowledge of how to become a good criminal. He begins committing a series of fetishistic burglaries in which he breaks into women's homes, kills their pets, and steals from them after watching them engage in intercourse. Following the Tate/LaBianca Murders, Plunkett attempts to meet Charles Manson, only to improperly identify a generic hippie as Manson and break into an apartment where he is having sex. The hippie apprehends Plunkett, and Plunkett is sentenced to a year in prison. In prison, Plunkett works to perfect his body while studying under other criminals and learning their techniques. Doing janitorial work as a trusty, he encounters the recently incarcerated Manson; furious that the rambling, barely coherent Manson is being held up as a paragon of evil, Plunkett resolves that upon his release he will become the kind of killer truly worthy of that distinction. Upon his release from prison, Plunkett delves further into his fantasy life, which begins to spill over into his waking life as Shroud Shifter appears to him in a series of schizophrenic visions, encouraging him to commit more violent crimes. Finally, one night, Plunkett abruptly lashes out and kills a girl and her boyfriend who had invited him to their apartment to smoke marijuana. Plunkett successfully covers up his crime by making the murder appear to be the work of drug dealers; now fully entrenched in a version of his fantasy life that overlaps with reality, Plunkett embarks on a road trip across the western United States, picking up hitch hikers and brutally mutilating and murdering them, then selling their belongings to fences to finance his lifestyle. As time progresses and his body count rises, Plunkett perfects his techniques, outfitting a Dodge van with a series of hidden compartments and living amenities so that it can act as both his mobile home and murder factory. After hastily killing a man in the snow, Plunkett is apprehended by Wisconsin State Police Sergeant Ross Anderson, who reveals himself to be a serial killer responsible for three (later seven) brutal rape/murders of young coeds. Anderson and Plunkett become romantically involved and Anderson uses his influence to protect Plunkett as his own murders increase in number and brutality. FBI agent Thomas Dusenberg is tasked with identifying and apprehending Anderson and Plunkett. He eventually captures Anderson, who gives up Plunkett in exchange for immunity from the death penalty. After Plunkett sees his own photo on wanted posters, he reasons--using a chain of paranoid logic-- that Anderson's family identified him as a serial killer. Plunkett goes to Anderson's house, where he violently mutilates and murders his entire family. In the course of killing the last member of Anderson's family, Plunkett experiences a moment of lucidity during which he realizes that Anderson's family had no role in his being identified. Plunkett nevertheless desecrates all of Anderson's family's corpses, then goes to a motel where he identifies himself to the manager and waits to be turned in. Eventually, Dusenberg arrives with a strike team, and Plunkett surrenders. He only confesses to crimes in non-death-penalty states, assuring via an immunity deal that he will never be executed. He is sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, and placed into solitary confinement in Sing Sing Prison. Remaining in a catatonic state for an extended period of time, he finally breaks his silence by contacting a publisher and asking for assistance writing his memoirs (which make up the bulk of the novel). Dusenberg, troubled by Plunkett's motiveless murders, seeks solace in his family, only to discover that his wife has been having an affair. When he confronts her about it, she attempts to rationalize it before begging for forgiveness, all the while attempting to shift blame off of herself. Dusenberg sells his diary to Plunkett's agent for use in Plunkett's book, then commits suicide, leaving his entire estate to his children. In Sing Sing, Plunkett finishes his memoirs. Believing that he has reached the pinnacle of human existence, and robbed of further murder opportunities, he announces his intention to commit suicide by using his mental prowess to will himself into a state of brain death. |
7340745 | /m/025zp5w | The Boleyn Inheritance | Philippa Gregory | 2006 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The book begins in 1539, after the death of King Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour. Henry is looking for a new wife and settles on Anne of Cleves, daughter of John III, Duke of Cleves, whom he has only seen through the paintings sent to him. Jane Rochford is summoned to court by the Duke of Norfolk to be a lady-in-waiting at the court of King Henry VIII. Jane has unpleasant memories of court, because she is the widow of George Boleyn and sister-in-law to Henry VIII's second wife, Anne. George and Anne Boleyn were both executed in 1536 for "adultery, incest and plotting to murder the King." Katherine Howard is a young girl (the cousin of Anne Boleyn) living with her grandmother at Lambeth Palace, where she has grown accustomed to a lax, licentious lifestyle. She has taken a lover, Francis Dereham, and the two have sworn to be married. Katherine's uncle informs her that she will be brought to court if she can behave herself and she swears to herself not to let anything, including Francis, get in her way of success. Anne, who has heard of the less-than-pleasant fates of her would-be predecessors, is not sure about being the queen of England, but is eager to leave her family, as nobody really cares for her. Her arrival in England goes well until she is surprised by a drunken man (actually Henry VIII in disguise), who plants a sloppy kiss on her; she responds with an angry shove and curses him in German. Although she quickly tries to make amends once she is made aware of his identity, the King carries a grudge against her for the duration of their marriage because of this. Henry is also put off by Anne's looks, since she is dressed like a country bumpkin, and does not look at all like her portrait. Despite his misgivings, Henry goes ahead with the marriage, but he is already looking for a way out. Anne is at a great disadvantage during the first months of her new life as she hardly speaks any English, and she does not know Latin, the diplomatic language of the time. Due to her strict religious upbringing, she has not been taught how to play an instrument, sing or dance, and her mother has not made her aware of the facts of life. Despite this, Anne quickly befriends Jane Rochford, who is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Jane is as surprised as anyone at Anne's plain appearance and ill proficiency at English, but Anne is an honest, sweet young woman who wins over the English people, if not her husband. She makes an effort to befriend Prince Edward, and the princesses Elizabeth and Mary, even when it enrages her husband, and makes a point to learn as much English as possible. A few months after their wedding, Henry decides to rid himself of his new wife. Fearing for her life, Anne is all-too-eager to sign an annulment saying that she was previously betrothed to Francis of Lorraine and that her wedding was not consummated. She is given the title "Princess" and receives land, money, and the treatment reserved for the king's own sister. Meanwhile, Henry has noticed the beautiful fourteen-year-old Katherine "Kitty" Howard, who has becomes one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting, thanks to her uncle, Duke Thomas Howard of Norfolk. Infatuated, Henry quickly divorces Anne and marries Katherine, his "rose without a thorn". Katherine has in turn fallen in love with one of the king's favorite courtiers, Thomas Culpepper. At first, Katherine enjoys the perks of being a queen, although she finds the condescension of her stepdaughter Mary irritating (Mary is almost ten years older than she is and finds her frivolous). However, she quickly becomes aware of the drawbacks of being married to the King. Henry is no longer young and handsome; he is nearly 50 years old (her grandfather's age), weighs approximately 300 pounds, and has a festering ulcer on his thigh that permanently weeps pus and blood. Katherine's infatuation for Thomas Culpepper becomes harder and harder to hide. Encouraged by the Duke of Norfolk and Jane Rochford, who want Katherine to bear a child for the king (whom they now believe to be completely impotent), she begins an affair with the young courtier. She goes to bed with the king and once he is asleep, joins Thomas in another room, guarded by Jane Rochford. However, young Katherine's life takes a bad turn when her past returns to haunt her in the shape of her former betrothed Francis Dereham, who turns up at court in order to get ahead. Katherine gives him a position in her household but does not like him being so close. When her affair with Culpepper is exposed by the enemies of her family, her friends and family desert her to avoid implicating themselves, and her previous affairs are used as further evidence of adultery (which is now a treasonous offence). Although Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, tries to help her by telling her to state that she was engaged to Dereham, and therefore her marriage is invalid, Katherine is now so frightened and hysterical that she cannot understand him and continues to state that there was no engagement. She is found guilty of adultery and treason and is executed at only sixteen, along with her beloved Thomas Culpepper and many others involved. Jane Rochford tries desperately to get out of execution by feigning insanity, but cannot escape from the king's wrath this time. Henry changes the law so that anyone guilty of treason can be executed, mad or not. Jane is found guilty and is beheaded along with Katherine. Anne of Cleves, after being cleared of any blame, remains in her new home in England and outlives not only her supplanter, but Henry himself. |
7343803 | /m/025zq__ | Eight Lectures on Yoga | Aleister Crowley | 1939 | {"/m/070wm": "Spirituality"} | Eight Lectures on Yoga is divided into two chapters: "Yoga for Yahoos" and "Yoga for Yellowbellies". In the book, Crowley instructs students on the steps needed to approach mysticism through Yoga, and details the complications that arise along the path. One intent Crowley had in writing the book was to dispel the various myths surrounding Yoga in Europe at the time — most thought it to be an exotic, Eastern ritual of the ancient past. Lecture 1: Dissects the word "Yoga", as well as its various implications on the human mind. Lecture 2: Lists the eight limbs of Yoga, and explains the first, Yama, which is defined as control. Lecture 3: Details Niyama, the second limb of Yoga, and analogizes it to various planets. Lecture 4: Concerning Asana and Pranayama, the third and fourth limbs of Yoga, and correct posture while practicing. In this section, Crowley covers, in detail, the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific aspects of Yoga. These are divided into the remaining four chapters. |
7347490 | /m/025zv1c | The Bastard Prince | Katherine Kurtz | 1994 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The events of The Bastard Prince span a period of approximately six months, from late May to late December of 928. The novel begins after the invasion of Prince Marek Furstán-Festil, the bastard child of the last Deryni ruler of Gwynedd, King Imre, and his sister, Princess Ariella. Supported by his Torenthi relatives, Marek has occupied the town of Culliecairn and slain Earl Hrorik II of Eastmarch. Word of the invasion is quickly sent to Rhemuth, where King Rhys Michael Haldane has spent the first six years of his reign as an imprisoned puppet of his lords of state. When a Torenthi herald arrives at Rhemuth to challenge the king, the great lords realize that they must permit Rhys Michael to go to Eastmarch and personally respond to the invasion. Disguised as one of Queen Michaela's serving maids, Rhysel Thuryn quickly learns of the king's plans to accompany his army to Eastmarch. Rhysel meets with members of the Camberian Council and attempts to convince them to activate the king's Haldane potential before he leaves the following day. Despite his own objections, Father Joram MacRorie, Rhysel's uncle, eventually agrees to her plan. That night, Joram and Tieg Thuryn, Rhysel's brother, infiltrate the castle and meet with the king. Tieg unblocks the Deryni powers of both Michaela and her brother, Sir Cathan Drummond, and Michaela then assists Tieg, Rhysel, and Joram in activating Rhys Michael's arcane powers. After the ritual, Joram and Tieg capture Master Dimitri, a Torenthi Deryni collaborator who has been working for the great lords. The Camberian Council alters Dimitri's mind with their own set of commands before returning him to Rhemuth. The next day, Rhys Michael departs the capital with army, accompanied by Cathan, Earl Manfred MacInnis, Earl Rhun von Horthy, Lord Albertus, and Father Paulin Sinclair. Before departing the city, Constable Udaut is killed when Dimitri secretly uses his powers to spook Udaut's horse. Later on the journey, a swarm of bees mysteriously attacks the royal party and nearly kills Albertus. Several days later, Albertus questions Rhys Michael about the incidents, concerned about the rumored magical powers of the Haldane family. He orders Dimitri to probe the king's mind, but the Deryni is still under the compulsions of the Camberian Council. To protect the king, Dimitri kills Albertus and later allows himself to be implicated in the death. When Paulin attempts to confine Dimitri, he lashes out with his powers and destroys Paulin's mind before be overcome. Dimitri is tortured for several hours before he is killed by a mental death-trigger in his own mind. The royal army arrives at Lochalyn the next day, where it is joined by the levies of Duke Graham of Claibourne, Earl Sighere of Marley, and Earl Corban Howell of Eastmarch. In a private conversation, Lady Sudrey, Hrorik's Deryni widow, offers Rhys Michael her support and the use of her limited powers. The following morning, Rhys Michael agrees to meet with Prince Miklos of Torenth, who claims to have led the invasion on Marek's behalf. Accompanied by Sudrey, the king parleys with Miklos briefly, but Miklos breaks the peace by attacking Sudrey. Rhys Michael uses his own powers to protect himself and kill Miklos, but Sudrey is killed in the battle and Rhys Michael is wounded when a horse steps on his hand. Afterwards, the king claims that it was Sudrey who used magic in the battle, and later realizes that Miklos' companion was actually Marek himself. After Miklos' death, Marek withdraws his forces and returns to Torenth. Rhys Michael asks the northern lords to help him break free of the great lords, and Graham and Sighere agree to become Regents for the king's son, Prince Owain, if anything should happen to the king. Cathan prepares a codicil to the king's will, and all parties involved succeed in signing it without alerting Rhun or Manfred. The king departs for Rhemuth the next day, but the progress of the army is slowed by the worsening condition of his injury. The army is eventually forced to stop at Saint Ostrythe's Convent when the king becomes too ill to continue. Dom Queron Kinevan rushes to the king's side, but he does not arrive in time and Rhys Michael soon dies from poor medical treatment. As the army returns to Rhemuth with Rhys Michael's body, the Camberian Council informs the northern lords of the king's death and offers their assistance in securing the rights of the new Regents. In Rhemuth, Cathan is drugged and imprisoned, but Michaela and Rhysel succeed in activating Owain's Haldane potential. Over the next several days, the northern lords ride toward Rhemuth, eventually arriving on the morning of Rhys Michael's funeral. Accompanied by Queron, Tieg, Ansel MacRorie, and a band of armed men, Graham and Sighere confront the great lords inside the royal tomb. Rhun kills Manfred and flees with Owain, while Earl Tammaron takes Michaela hostage. As Cathan pursues Rhun, Michaela uses her powers to slay Tammaron. Cathan catches Rhun atop a tower and the two engage in a brief fight before Rhun is killed. Several months later, Michaela visits her husband's tomb in the royal crypt. Owain has been crowned as King of Gwynedd, and Cathan now serves on the Regency Council with her, Graham, and Sighere. Of the former Regents, only former Archbishop Hubert MacInnis remains alive, but he has been stripped of his office and imprisoned for his crimes. Although he did not live long enough to see it, Rhys Michael's actions succeeded in freeing the crown of Gwynedd for his heirs. |
7347634 | /m/025zv4g | Fly Away Peter | David Malouf | 1981 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Fly Away Peter is an Australian novel set before and during the First World War. The first part of the novel is set on the Queensland Gold Coast, and the second part on the Western Front. The central character of the novel is Jim Saddler, a self-contained young man with a profound understanding of the bird life of an estuary near his home. Ashley Crowther has recently inherited the farm which includes the estuary; despite the divide of class and experience, the two young men form a close bond when Ashley offers Jim a job as a warden, recording the comings and goings of birds in their 'sanctuary'. Jim also befriends Imogen, an older woman whose photography captures the beauty of the birds in the sanctuary; in particular the Sandpiper. This is an idyllic world of Sandpipers, plovers and ibises, but not without the seeds of change and disturbance. When the First World War breaks out, Jim feels obliged to join up, and travels to the Western Front, where his unique and sensitive perception gives the reader a window to the horrific experience of trench warfare. Malouf's description of the all-consuming 'system' of war and the gruesome realities of living and dying at the front are gut-wrenching in their detail. After an uneventful arrival at the front, a shell lands unexpectedly among Jim's friends behind the lines. Jim is coated by the blood of his friend Clancy, who is blown out of existence. Subsequently a young recruit Eric loses both legs. Jim sees many other friends die. He crosses paths with Ashley, who is an officer in a different division. He confronts his own sense of violence when assaulted by another man, Wizzer, who later dies in a shell-hole. He also sees the local farming communities trying to keep making their livelihood amid the mayhem, including an old man planting in the dirt of a blasted wood. Jim begins again to make a record of the crows as their barely interrupted migration patterns continue above the front. At the end of the novel, the reader enter Jim's subjectivity as he goes 'over the top' in an attack, is wounded and dies of his wounds. His exact point of death is not made explicit; his journey out of life is dream-like and poetic. On the Queensland coast Imogen grieves Jim's death, and reflects on the meaningless but beautiful continuity of life. |
7351102 | /m/025_0hs | Those Who Walk In Darkness | John Ridley | 6/8/1999 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction"} | In a world where, until a few short years ago, the streets were rocked by battles between colorfully clad men and women with astounding metanormal powers, the people have declared all-out war against these modern-day titans. Following the destruction of the city of San Francisco in a super-battle gone bad, the federal government has issued an executive order outlawing not only the use of super powers, but also the very people who possess them. For the beings known as Metanormals, it doesn't matter whether they were once superheroes, supervillains, or neither; if they commit crimes, save lives or just try to live normal lives without ever using their powers; they're all regarded as public enemies, and as such the legal prey of the murderous LAPD division G Platoon (presumably after SWAT's designation of D Platoon) known more familiarly as the Metanormal Tactical Unit, or "MTac." The main character is Soledad O'Roark, a rookie MTac whose single-minded hatred of the Metas is extreme even by the obsessive standards of her profession. Soledad earns the hated nickname "Bullet" on her very first call, when she uses an O'Dwyer Variable-Lethality Law Enforcement gun to blow away a rampaging pyrokinetic in the act of frying her squad. Soledad herself modified the high-tech gun, which comes complete with color-coded bullets designed to exploit the individual weaknesses of various common Metas. The gun saves her life and the lives of several of her partners, but the department brass still demotes her, and considers filing charges, for her failure to follow official procedure by using the unregistered weapon. Soledad's lawyer, Gayle, suspects a conspiracy. Michelle, an angelic winged woman who possesses a mysterious ability to either avert disasters or bring back the dead, lives in hiding with her telepathic husband, Vaughn, and a mentally disabled metal manipulator named Aubrey. When Michelle reveals herself in order to save the lives of an entire construction crew during a deadly street collapse, Soledad shoots the winged woman dead, dismissing the horrified reaction of one witness with a shrugged "She's not an Angel. Angels don't bleed. She's just another freak." The grieving Vaughn succumbs to his anger, which his gentle wife held in check for so long, and declares war against the MTacs. What Fire Cannot Burn continues to follow Soledad and fellow MTAC officer Eddi Aoki as they go undercover to investigate a serial killer targeting metanormals hunts in Los Angeles, a serial killer who might work for the police. |
7353390 | /m/025_2lw | Deathwatch | null | 1972 | null | The plot opens up with successful Los Angeles lawyer and hunter named Madec, who hires Ben, a timid college student to help him find bighorn sheep in the nearby Mojave Desert after receiving a rare permit to hunt them. Ben has experience working in the desert as he is studying to be a geologist, but he is also low on money, so he accepts. Things take a deadly turn when Madec accidentally shoots an old prospector, as he was a man of importance who does not have time to sit in jail. Ben thinks that the honest thing to do is for the two of them to report the accidental shooting, and although Madec tries to reason with him, Ben remains stubborn and refuses to comply with Madec. As a result, Madec gives Ben two choices. Madec could shoot Ben on the spot, or Ben could make an attempt to escape the desert by walking 45 miles to the nearest highway without clothes, food or water. Worst of all, Madec would make sure Ben wouldn't make it and that he would be watching him the whole way and aiming at him with his .358 Norma Magnum. Ben tries to climb a butte and signal for help while finding water on it, but is shot in the arm by Madec causing him to fall and injuring his back. Now time is running out as he begins to hallucinate, suffering from dehydration, hunger, sunburn, gunshots, and heat. However, Ben gets the upper hand when he finds water in a cave and eats a lizard and hunts some birds with the prospector's slingshot. Later, Madec attempts to scale the butte where Ben's cave is. However, Ben buries himself in the sand and breathes through the tubes of his slingshot. While Madec is on the other side of the butte, Ben unearths himself and creates a distraction by setting Madec's tent on fire. This brings Madec closer and allows Ben to, using the slingshot, shoot several buckshots into Madec with the slingshot that he found in the prospectors tent. Ben overpowers Madec, ties him up, and escapes the desert in his Jeep CJ. Ben travels back to the town with the old man and Madec. Madec offers Ben $10,000 to just forget everything, but that doesn't happen. They get back and Madec makes up a lie that everyone believes, making Ben guilty. The doctor in the town finds evidence in the bodies to prove that Ben was right. The doctor also found the slingshot, and says that Madec tried to throw it away when he first came into the hospital. This truth made Madec guilty. In the end, Ben only wanted to report the an accident. |
7358223 | /m/025_6xc | King Kelson's Bride | Katherine Kurtz | 2000 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The plot of King Kelson's Bride spans a period of two and a half months, from late June to mid-August 1128. The novel opens in Torenth, where Princess Morag Furstána, Duke Mahael II of Arjenol, and Count Teymuraz of Brustarkia discuss the marriage prospects of both King Liam Lajos II and King Kelson Haldane of Gwynedd. At the same time, the Camberian Council also discusses Kelson's potential brides while also worrying about Kelson's upcoming journey to Torenth. In Rhemuth, Kelson meets privately with Princess Rothana of Nur Hallaj after attending the wedding of his former squire. Despite professing his continuing love for her, Rothana once again refuses to marry the king. In her place, she urges Kelson to marry his cousin, Princess Araxie Haldane. In addition, she tells Kelson of the growing attraction between Prince Rory Haldane and Lady Noelie Ramsay. Although heartbroken by Rothana's refusal, Kelson agrees to consider her advice. Two days later, Kelson departs for Torenth. For the past four years, Kelson has held King Liam Lajos II of Torenth at his court in Rhemuth, both to protect the young king from his ambitious family and to teach him the art of statecraft. However, Liam has now reached his legal majority and must return to his own land to take up his throne. Kelson is accompanied by Duke Alaric Morgan of Corwyn, Duke Dhugal MacArdry McLain of Cassan, Bishop Denis Arilan of Dhassa, and Liam's uncle, Count Mátyás. The royal party stops briefly in Coroth, where Morgan's wife, Duchess Richenda, urges Kelson to abandon his pursuit of Rothana. The next day, the royal party progresses to the court of the Hort of Orsal, where both Kelson and Liam are attacked by a pair of mind-altered assassins. Although slightly wounded, neither king is seriously injured in the assault. Later that night, Kelson meets with Araxie and the two are formally engaged. As the royal party continues toward the Torenthi capital of Beldour, Liam confesses to Kelson that he is worried about the loyalty of his uncles Mahael and Teymuraz, though he is trusts Mátyás completely. Once in Beldour, Liam's trust is confirmed when Mátyás informs Kelson and Morgan that his brothers plan to kill Liam during the young king's coronation and place Mahael on the throne. Kelson agrees to help protect Liam, and Mátyás arranges for Kelson to take part in the magical ritual that will confirm Liam's power. For the next several days, Kelson practices the ritual with the assistance of Prince Azim, a relative of Rothana's and a member of the Camberian Council. When the ceremony finally occurs, Mátyás' prediction comes true and Mahael and Teymuraz attack Liam. However, Kelson and Mátyás successfully protect the young king, aided by Morag and the Torenthi Patriarch. Liam rips Mahael's mind and orders the traitor be impaled. During the conclusion of the ceremony, Kelson renounces his title of Overlord of Torenth and releases Liam from his vassalage, making the Kingdom of Torenth a sovereign and independent state once again. Afterwards, Teymuraz escapes from custody, and the lords of Gwynedd and Torenth later gather to discuss the threat he poses. That night, Morag captures Earl Sean O'Flynn of Derry and activates a latent magical link in his mind, allowing her to view his thoughts and experiences. Concerned about Teymuraz, Kelson decides to return to Rhemuth immediately through the use of Transfer Portals. After a brief stop to retrieve Araxie and her family, most of the royal party transports to Rhemuth that night. As the search for Teymuraz continues over the next several weeks, Kelson turns his attention to more domestic matters. When the Ramsay family arrives for the marriage of Sir Brecon Ramsay and Princess Richelle Haldane, Kelson seeks to further secure the Mearan alliance by arranging a marriage between Rory and Noelie. Although initially reluctant to approve the marriage, Noelie's parents agree after Kelson follows Araxie's suggestion and grants them the Duchy of Laas. Shortly thereafter, Kelson establishes a new home for the Servants of Saint Camber in Rhemuth, and Araxie proves to be instrumental in healing old wounds within the royal family. She persuades Kelson's uncle, Prince Nigel Haldane, to accept and acknowledge the presence of his grandchildren at Court, and later convinces Rothana to remain in Rhemuth and allow her son to be raised as a royal prince. In Torenth, Teymuraz attempts to plead his case to Morag. When she rebuffs him, he attacks her and rips her mind before killing her. With the knowledge he acquires from Morag, he gains control of the mental link with Derry. Several days later, he uses that link to wreak havoc in Rhemuth. After the double wedding of Brecon and Richelle and of Rory and Noelie, Teymuraz takes over Derry's mind and forces him to attack Mátyás. Araxie attempts to stop Derry, but Mátyás is severely wounded. Teymuraz once again escapes, but Morgan and Dhugal successfully Heal Mátyás' wound and save his life. Azim, Kelson, and Araxie remove the last foreign traces from Derry's mind, and Azim quickly leaves to pursue Teymuraz. One week later, Kelson and Araxie are married, and Araxie is formally crowned Queen of Gwynedd. |
7361323 | /m/025_9b6 | Clade | Mark Budz | 12/2/2003 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | In Clade, the Ecocaust, an environmental disaster, causes major problems such as rising sea levels and additional strains on human resources. Although civilization recovers from this disaster, they do so at the expense of their previous freedoms. "Polycorps" develop from governments and corporations. The wonders of biotech introduce a new class system where human beings have been socially engineered at the molecular level through a process called "clading." This "clading" process places entire socioeconomic or ethnic groups made to be biologically predisposed to live in particular communities. If a person enters a community that they have not been claded to, the consequences could be devastating, resulting in sickness or death. Although it is not intentionally racist, businesses and retail outlets using this clading process to keep away the riffraff, will simply screen out clientele below a certain prosperity level. Therefore, a black market exists enabling people to buy the right biotech to inhibit the "pherions" in their systems to be placed in a certain clade. The protagonist is a man named Rigo, a Latino from the San Jose clade who wants to move up in society. Rigo accepts a job at a biotech firm that develops special vegetation for a planned orbital colony. Although his friends look down on him with contempt for selling out, he still maintains a close relationship with his mother, lawless brother, and Anthea, his troubled girlfriend. At work, after Rigo fears being exposed to some dangerous pherions, he finds to his surprise that the company he works for eagerly wants to send some of the plants they've been working on into space; and they want Rigo to supervise the transfer. Something about the haste of the company leaves Rigo feeling fishy. The secrets of this story unravel one after another, leading to holes in the plot. |
7365657 | /m/025_gd2 | Kaaterskill Falls | Allegra Goodman | 8/10/1998 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Kaaterskill Falls spans two years (summer 1976- summer 1978) in the life of a small community in upstate New York. Most of the characters are summer residents, Orthodox Jews whose lives center around the local Orthodox synagogue. Others are year-round residents, both Christians and secular Jews, whose local roots run deep and who coexist in uneasy symbiosis with the summer people. Elizabeth Shulman, a thirtysomething wife and mother of five daughters, is growing restless with her prescribed role as a woman within the strict Kirshner sect. She conceives the dream of opening a kosher grocery to serve the summer residents of Kaaterskill. Her store is a smashing success, but Elizabeth's perceived laxity in adhering to its rabbinic certification earns the distrust of the Isaiah and Rachel Kirshner. Meanwhile, Elizabeth learns that she is pregnant for the sixth time. Elizabeth experiences a closing in of boundaries as Rabbi Isaiah Kirshner withdraws his permission for her grocery store and a new baby binds her once again to home. Ultimately, she takes a job as an assistant at a grocery store in Washington Heights (where the Shulmans live for most of the year) in order to learn the business. Another plot line revolves around strife within the Melish family. Middle-aged Andras Melish struggles with a sense of distance from his young, lively, somewhat dictatorial wife, Nina. He forges an unlikely clandestine friendship with the reclusive Una Darmstadt-Cooper. Meanwhile, teenage Renee Melish rebels against her mother's expectations for her and forms an unsuitable friendship with a gutsy Syrian girl, Stephanie Fawess. Renee also attracts the attention of a local boy, Ira Rubin. Still another plot line concerns the Kirshner rabbinic succession. The elderly, widowed Rav Kirshner is afflicted with Parkinson's Disease but remains reluctant to hand the reins of power over to his faithful but plodding son Isaiah. Isaiah's ambitious wife, Rachel, resents this, just as she resents her father-in-law's deep affection for his brilliant elder son Jeremy, who left the Kirshner sect to become a college professor. Rav Kirshner dies mid-way through the novel and Rabbi Isaiah launches a vigorous crackdown on perceived laxities within the sect. |
7367363 | /m/025_htt | Tea Party | Harold Pinter | null | null | Tea Party "revolves around a family engaged in a business of sanitary engineering." According to an account published in the New Yorker, the play concerns "a middle-aged self-made business man named Sisson" (whom Pinter later renamed Disson), who engages a young secretary, marries a beautiful young second wife, and takes his new brother-in-law into his business–all in the same day"; Mysteries abound. What is going on between the wife and her brother? Are they indeed brother and sister? Sisson has his doubts about that … . Why does Sisson feel that there must be something wrong with his eyes, although he knows that he can see clearly and his eye doctor has assured him that his vision is perfect? He forces his secretary to tie a chiffon scarf over his eyes, and then he is able to make a pass at her, in response to one of her many come-ons. Ordinary events assume a sinister tinge. Sisson's two sons, giving him the deadpan treatment that little boys have been inflicting on their elders from time immemorial, seem as eerie as characters out of a ghost story. Always the questions remain. Is there a conspiracy against Sisson. |
7367819 | /m/025_j98 | Death or Glory | null | null | null | The story begins on a human colony world of Volga, populated by ex-Russians, Americans and Germans. While there is a government of sorts on the planet, most disputes are settled Wild West style. All males own a weapon since there are plenty of bandits. Life is chaotic and, at the same time, simple. Everything changes when prospector Roman Savelyev (his personal blaster has the words "Death or Glory" engraved) finds a strange black box with a big red button in one of his mines. After musing on how clichéd his situation is, he cannot help himself and presses the button. The box disappears the morning after. Several days later, a giant starship suddenly appears and enters Volga's atmosphere to come to rest above the island where the box was found. Not long after the races of the Alliance trace the heavy gravitational tracks of such a huge ship having penetrated the Barrier and showing up in orbit. The aliens assume that the ship belongs to a disappeared ancient race they call the Departed Ones. They are followed by an armada of Imperishables who are also interested in the strange vessel. The Alliance dares to investigate the ship and use it as a weapon. However the results are disappointing: ship's only controls are "biosuits" — organic structures wrapping an organism to perform a full contact — and they are designed only for Humans. Pressed for time as Imperishable are soon to arrive, the Alliance comes to a plan of capturing as many Humans as possible and using them to defeat the attack. But although it's easy to destroy the planet, to capture human "savages" proves to be a difficult task: humans are able to hold off the invaders whose orders are to capture the homo not kill them. Eventually though, most humans are captured and brought to the strange ship. Alliance scientists use their captives to reactivate the ship's systems, especially weapons to use against the Imperishables. However, the humans are able to take over the ship using the neural connections of the "biosuits" and obliterate the alien fleets. Volga is destroyed in the same battle, and the alien ship jumps into deep space. On the ship, dubbed Volga by the humans for their destroyed colony, some parts of the crew (mostly the former colony administration) begin plotting against their captain (Savelyev) and his command crew for the control of the ship. As it turns out, the ship selects the command structure based on the person who pressed the red button who becomes captain. Those closest in mindset to Sevelyev are given high command positions. Most bureaucrats and thugs have very different personalities from the captain and are assigned to low positions (something they do not like). At the same time, Savelyev is attempting to figure out the ship's true nature, as he is the only one with unrestricted access to Volga's systems. Once the attempted coup is put down, Savelyev reveals to his friends that the ship is a parasite, adapting its controls to whoever calls to it. Each time a person uses a biosuit, they experience euphoria, but ship also takes something of the person. Eventually, the ship consumes the crew and begins to seek out a new race to command it. The origins of the ship are unknown. Savelyev speculates that it is either a product of some ancient race or of the galaxy itself to act as an antibody against invaders, in this case the Imperishables. Eventually, the Alliance catches up with the ship and propose a deal: humans help them drive the Imperishables out of the galaxy, and the Alliance "uplifts" all humans (whom they now call a latent race) to the status of full members of the Alliance. Savelyev, as the human representative, agrees to it, ensuring a place for humans among the stars. The three other novels which take place in the same universe are called Black Relay, Legacy of Giants, and No One but Us (the latter two are usually published together as War for Mobility). |
7371649 | /m/025_n5y | Starter for Ten | David Nicholls | 2003 | null | The story, told in first-person narrative, is set in 1985 and chronicles the misadventures of student Brian Jackson in his first year at an unnamed university. A somewhat obsessive collector of general knowledge, Brian has been a fan since childhood of the television quiz show University Challenge which he used to watch with his late father, and on arriving at university, he seizes upon the opportunity to join its University Challenge team. He is initially unsuccessful, but is selected after one of the other team members is forced to drop out because of ill health. The TV show's famous catchphrase — "Your starter for 10" — gives the book its title. Brian promptly falls for his glamorous teammate, Alice Harbinson, although the attraction is not mutual, and he may have more in common with a counterculturalist chum, Rebecca Epstein. Additionally, Brian finds himself caught between his new life, amongst the middle-class university set, and his old, with his working-class family and friends in the seaside town of Southend, Essex. |
7374597 | /m/025_q_g | Angel Rock | Darren Williams | 5/20/2002 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction"} | The novel is set against the backdrop of a fictional Australian bush town, Angel Rock, during the late 1960s. The story concerns the investigation of two seemingly separate incidents: the disappearance of two young brothers (of who only one has returned home safely), and the suicide of a teenage girl in a derelict house in Sydney. During the course of investigating the teenage girl's death, the detective sent to the town begins to believe that the two incidents might be linked in some way and he is forced to confront memories from his own past. |
7378352 | /m/025_vsn | Kleinzeit | Russell Hoban | 1974 | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Hoban's second novel for adults, Kleinzeit is a story detailing the eponymous title character's brush with illness and creativity. When Kleinzeit is fired from his job as an advertising copy-writer, he ends up in hospital with a ‘skewed hypotenuse’, being tended by the healthy and desirable Sister. Together, they embark on a strange adventure, in which Kleinzeit struggles to get better, attempts to master his creative urges, and holds conversations with a variety of abstract concepts. The central character shares many traits with Hoban himself, and the author has commented: ‘I think there's most of me in Kleinzeit’. |
7383230 | /m/0bkqgs | Star-Begotten | H. G. Wells | null | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The protagonist of the story Joseph Davis, who is an author of popular histories, becomes overtaken with suspicion that he and his family have already been exposed and are starting to change. |
7384912 | /m/02601qw | Tides of War | Steven Pressfield | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Through the course of his career as a mercenary, Polemidas had come into contact with most of the pivotal figures of the era including Socrates, the statesmen-general Pericles and Nicias, and Spartan general Lysander. Polemidas describes his travels, most prominently his upbringing in Sparta and his family estate outside Athens, to Athens during the Plague, the Athenian marines during the disastrous Sicilian Expedition, and Athens’ eventual defeat at the battle of Aegospotami. However, it was the character of Alcibiades who loomed most large over the narrative, just as he had the greatest impact on the Peloponnesian War. Undefeated during his career as a general and admiral, Alcibiades’ life played itself out like an epic tragedy with the tensions between his genius and the hubris that was his ultimate downfall. The political shifts that occurred during the war, manifesting through partisan public opinion, act almost to make Athens herself a character in the novel. While most of the dialogue is Pressfield’s own creation, for long speeches and character development he used many ancient sources, particularly adapting quotes appearing in Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War and to a lesser extent several of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato. it:I venti dell'Egeo |
7386834 | /m/02603zr | The Inheritance of Loss | Kiran Desai | 2006 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story is centered on two main characters: Biju and Sai. Biju is an illegal Indian immigrant living in the United States, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather. Sai is a girl living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather Jemubhai, the cook and a dog named Mutt. Desai switches the narration between both points of view. The action of the novel takes place in 1986. The novel follows the journey of Biju, an illegal immigrant in the US who is trying to make a new life; and Sai, an Anglicised Indian girl living with her grandfather in India. The novel shows the internal conflicts in India between groups, whilst showing a conflict between past and present. There is the rejection and yet awe of the English way of life, the opportunities for money in the US, and the squalor of living in India. Many leading Indians were considered to be becoming too English and having forgotten the traditional ways of Indian life, shown through the character of the grandfather, the retired Judge. The major theme running throughout is one closely related to colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism: the loss of identity and the way it travels through generations as a sense of loss. Individuals within the text show snobbery at those who embody the Indian way of life and vice versa, with characters displaying an anger at the English Indians who have lost their traditions. The Gorkhaland movement is used as a historic backdrop of the novel. The retired judge Jemubhai Patel is a man disgusted at Indian ways and customs, so much so, that he eats chapatis with a knife and fork, hates all Indians including his father whom he breaks ties with and wife who he abandons at his father's place after torturing her, and is never accepted by the British in spite of his education and adopted mannerisms. |
7386904 | /m/0260447 | The Valley of Bones | Anthony Powell | 1964 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Early in 1940 Jenkins joins his regiment in Wales as a second lieutenant. We are introduced to his commanding officer, the officious Captain Gwatkin, and the alcoholic Lieutenant Bithel. The battalion is moved to Northern Ireland where Gwatkin disastrously muddles instructions during an exercise and there is a snap inspection by General Liddament. En route to a training course at Aldershot Nick makes friends with David Pennistone. At Aldershot, Jenkins meets Odo Stevens and also Jimmy Brent who gives an account of his affair with Jean. Stevens gives Nick a lift to spend weekend leave at Frederica Budd's house, where his wife Isobel, Robert Tolland and Priscilla are all staying. Robert Tolland's leave is suddenly cancelled. Meanwhile Stevens has made a hit with Priscilla. On rejoining his regiment at Castlemallock, Nick finds Gwatkin in unrequited passion for a barmaid, and engaged in a running battle with the preposterous Bithel. Jenkins is instructed to report to the DAAG at Divisional HQ, who turns out to be Widmerpool. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent |
7386932 | /m/026045m | The Vivisector | Patrick White | 1970 | {"/m/04fqp": "K\u00fcnstlerroman", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Hurtle Duffield is born into a poor Australian family. They adopt him out to the wealthy Courtneys, who are seeking a companion for their hunchbacked daughter Rhoda. The precocious Hurtle gains artistic inspiration from the world that surrounds him, his adoptive mother, Maman, and Rhoda; the prostitute Nance, who is his first real love; the wealthy heiress Olivia Davenport; his Greek mistress Hero Pavloussi and finally the child prodigy Kathy Volkov. He becomes famous and his paintings are in great demand. However, he is unimpressed by the monetary and status gain this brings and continues to live a spartan life, beholden to nobody - even the Prime Minister. In his final years he is drawn closer to his sister Rhoda, and after a stroke causes partial paralysis, is assisted by his protoge Don Lethbridge to produce a huge, final magnum opus to God--the Vivisector. |
7387737 | /m/0kv6gh | Eloise at Christmastime | Kay Thompson | 1958 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The movie begins with a shot of the Hotel Lobby, with a large pink gift box leaning on the display table, in the middle of the room. The hotel manager, Mr. Salamone, asks one of the staff to take the box to the package room. Two of the staff take the gift box to the package room. When they leave, the box is opened and we see Eloise crawling out. Eloise is on a mission to find any presents in the package room from her mother, who has taken a trip to Paris. When Eloise does not find any packages from her mother, she then leaves the room in a large mess. She skips towards the lobby, and pushes into a long line at the check-in desk and interrupts a conversation between Mr. Salamone and two patrons, wishing to upgrade their current hotel suite to a park-side view room. Eloise asks Mr. Salamone if there have been any packages from her mother in Paris, and he replies that there hasn't. He pushes her away, telling Eloise that he is currently very busy. Eloise pushes in the line again, offering Mr. Salamone some unnecessary assistance. Mr. Salamone declines, pushing Eloise away from the hectic line. Eloise leaves, but is instantly back in a flash, when she notices a suspicious man waiting in the queue. She thinks that this patron is a spy, but Mr. Salamone declines, and instantly changes the subject so that Eloise can leave the line. He requests Eloise to look out for the hotel's Christmas Tree Delivery, which is due to be at the Plaza any moment. He tells Eloise to inform him when the delivery arrives. Eloise leaves the line, and tells the "spy" that she is keeping her eye on him. The main focal point of the story deals with the impending marriage between Rachel Peabody, the hotel owner's daughter, and a bachelor named Brooks Oliver, who was chosen by Rachel's family to be her husband. Eloise eventually learned that Oliver is into doing something suspicious. She also found out that Rachel had taken a liking to Bill, a room service waiter and one of her friends, four years earlier. When Mr. Peabody became aware of his daughter's relationship with Bill, he then sent his daughter to a university, hoping to break his daughter's ties with the waiter. Eloise then intervened with the relationship, much to the disappointment of Rachel's father. She then succeeded at restoring Bill and Rachel's romance with each other; Oliver is then arrested for forgery, and Mrs. Thornton, who was in danger of being evicted, is granted a permanent stay at the Plaza. And to top it off, Eloise's mom arrives and they rejoice. |
7387847 | /m/026052w | The Skinner | Neal Asher | 2002 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | The Skinner tells the story of three individuals who have journeyed to the 'line-world' (a world on the 'line', or border, of the Human Polity) of Spatterjay, a hostile mostly aquatic world with ferocious native lifeforms. The planet Spatterjay is host to a complex virus that permeates throughout all life forms (including humans), propagated by a kind of leech which uses the virus to keep its prey alive whilst it feeds upon them. The virus optimises life forms it infects for survival changing them, often rapidly, in response to environmental pressures. Humans need to consume food that is untainted by the virus (known colloquially as "dome grown") if they are not to be changed by the virus into something quite different. The Skinner is one such human who has "gone native", undergoing an horrific transformation. |
7391041 | /m/02607hx | Wolfskin | Juliet Marillier | 2002 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Eyvind is a young Viking man who wishes to be a Wolfskin (a berserker warrior of Thor) like his brother. Somerled, a quiet boy of the same age, befriends Eyvind and binds him to loyalty with a blood oath. After becoming a Wolfskin, Eyvind voyages to the Isles of Light with Somerled, his brother Eirek, Somerled's brother Ulf (the leader of the expedition) and many others. The Vikings quickly establish a peace treaty with the native island folk and build a settlement. Then Ulf is murdered sadistically, suspended by ropes from a cliff's edge to die of exposure, leaving his position to Somerled- who immediately breaks the treaty. He sends out the Wolfskins to destroy the small army mustered by the natives in retaliation. Eyvind, seeing that the army is composed of the very young and the very old, suffers a breakdown brought on by the moral crisis. The native princess and priestess, Nessa, finds him and cares for him, healing his wounds and coldness of spirit. Alone in a hidden cave, with only an old priestess for company, the two young people fall in love. But Eyvind is soon faced with another crisis: he must face Somerled with newfound proof that the current ruler killed his own brother. In the Viking hall, Eyvind's accusations are smothered with violence and he is imprisoned, despite the efforts of his few remaining friends to help him. Finally, Nessa creates and brings to the hall a harp made out of Ulf's bones, with Ulf's voice (magically restored) as the final voice of truth that cannot be ignored. Somerled is banished from the Isles, bound by an oath to Eyvind to live as long as possible, and Eyvind stays in the Isles. |
7391337 | /m/02607_g | John Macnab | John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir | 1925 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Three successful but bored friends in their mid-forties decide to turn to poaching. They are Sir Edward Leithen, lawyer, Tory Member of Parliament (MP), and ex-Attorney General; John Palliser-Yeates, banker and sportsman; and Charles, Earl of Lamancha, former adventurer and present Tory Cabinet Minister. Under the collective name of 'John Macnab', they set up in the Highland home of Sir Archie Roylance, a disabled war hero who wishes to be a Conservative MP. They issue a challenge to three of Roylance’s neighbours: first the Radens, who are an old-established family, about to die out; next, the Bandicotts: an American archaeologist and his son, who are renting a grand estate for the summer; and lastly the Claybodys, vulgar, bekilted nouveaux riches. These neighbours are forewarned that 'John Macnab' will poach a salmon or a stag from their land and return it to them undetected. The outcome is that the men's boredom is dispelled with the assistance of helpers (including a homeless waif, 'Fish Benjie' and an athletic journalist, Crossby), and Archie Roylance marries Janet Raden, daughter of the grandee. |
7394094 | /m/0260c7d | The Village By The Sea | Anita Desai | 1982 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | The Village by the Sea is set in a small village called Thul in Western India(14 kilometres from bombay) and focuses on a family trying to make ends meet. The main protagonists are Lila, the eldest child who is 13 years old, and her 12-year-old brother Hari. They also have two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. They live with their mother, who has been chronically ill and is bed-ridden. Their father is an alcoholic, which forces Hari and Lila to manage the family (as surrogate parents). There is much stress on them due to the constant demand of meeting the need of money. Although their father was earning money, he used to spend it to buy alcoholic materials. With two younger sisters to take care of, life for Lila and Hari is too hard. Hari decides that he has had enough and leaves for Bombay to find work. Lila is left alone to take care of her family, and struggles to do so. Help comes from an unexpected source, the rich De Silvas who have a bunglow or summerhouse- Mon Repos next to their hut. Meanwhile, Hari is new in the great city of Bombay and all alone. A kind restaurant proprietor, Jagu, takes pity on him and welcomes him to work in his restaurant. There, Hari builds a strong friendship with Mr. Panwallah, the lovable watch repairer whose shop is just beside Jagu’s. Through his experience with Mr. Panwallah and Jagu and the chain of events that take place in Bombay, Hari realizes that he could actually make a career as a watchmaker. Meanwhile, Lila, Bela and Kamal admit their sick mother in town hospital through the help of the De Silvas. Their father turns over a new leaf, and accompanies their mother throughout her 7-month treatment. When Hari returns to the village soon-after, he finds the environment of his home totally changed. As Hari reunites with his sisters, they all begin sharing stories with each other detailing the changes that took place after Hari left. Hari also explains the watch repair skills he learned in Bombay and reveals his plans to start a small repair shop in the village. Together; Lila, Hari, Bela, and Kamal all form a plan to use Hari's saved money (which he made and brought back from Bombay) to start a small chicken farm as a start up business for the family and financial support base for Hari's future repair shop. As Hari goes to the village to buy chicken netting fence and tools to build a chicken pen, a traveler converses with him and marvels at Hari upon learning his plans. As the novel ends, the traveler highlights Hari and his sister's resolve to adapt and change in a growing and ever developing world. Anita Desai has explicitly described in her very own style of writing,and she shows how Hari in the dilapidated conditions of the Sri Krishna Eating House finds warmth and affection through Mr Panwallah-owner and watch mender of the Ding-Dong watch shop. Mr Panwallah instills confidence in Hari and comforts him when he is terribly home sick. He even gives Hari a vivid and inspiring future and teaches him watch mending. This shows that even in one of the busiest, rickety and ramshackle cities such as Bombay there is still hope, love and affection He also goes back to Thul with the help of Mr panwallah and Jagu insisting to buy the bus ticket. Jagu's generosity by giving him some extra money to be brought back to his family. |
7397309 | /m/0260g2k | Prisoner's Base | Rex Stout | null | {"/m/028v3": "Detective fiction"} | During one of the periodic disagreements Wolfe has with Archie, a young woman with a suitcase rings Wolfe's doorbell. Wolfe is busy in the plant rooms, so she meets with Archie but refuses to identify herself. She asks to rent a room and remain incommunicado at the brownstone for a week. So as to annoy Wolfe, Archie grants her request, contingent on Wolfe's approval, and locks her and her suitcase into a third floor bedroom. After Wolfe returns to the office, Archie fills Wolfe in. As expected, Wolfe not only refuses to grant the young woman's request but tells Archie to put her out immediately. Archie gets Wolfe to allow her to remain for dinner, which she eats upstairs. After dinner, a lawyer named Perry Helmar arrives at the brownstone, without an appointment. He wants to hire Wolfe for $10,000 to find one Priscilla Eads: Helmar is her guardian and she has disappeared. Helmar needs to locate her before her 25th birthday, which is one week away. Archie immediately suspects that she's upstairs and, asking Helmar for her photograph, confirms his suspicion and surreptitiously alerts Wolfe. Wolfe shoos Helmar without committing himself to the job, and finally speaks with Miss Eads. He gives her the choice of renting the room for one week for $10,000 – the amount he would forego if he turns Helmar down – or leaving the brownstone immediately – in that case, Wolfe will accept Helmar's job but will give her until the next morning before he starts looking for her. Miss Eads opts to leave. The next morning, Inspector Cramer arrives and informs Archie that his fingerprints have been found on luggage belonging to Priscilla Eads and – Miss Eads having been found murdered in her apartment – wants to know what his fingerprints were doing there. The body of Miss Eads' maid, Margaret Fomos, has also been found, in a vestibule 35 blocks away. It appears that Miss Eads was the murderer's main target, and that Mrs. Fomos was killed to get the keys to Miss Eads' apartment. With no fee in sight, Wolfe refuses to involve himself. Archie, infuriated by Wolfe's attitude, storms out of the brownstone. He blames himself for the Eads death, and resolves to start his own investigation. Archie crashes a meeting of the officers of the Softdown corporation – Miss Eads had been scheduled to inherit a controlling interest in Softdown's stock on her birthday, so Archie starts there. He allows the officers to assume he's a police detective and starts gathering information. Among other items, Archie learns that the corporation's officers will receive title to the stock that would have gone to Miss Eads had she lived. Just then, Archie's local bête noire, Lieutenant Rowcliff, arrives, discovers Archie, and arrests him for impersonating a police officer. Rowcliff goes much too far, though, when he arrests Wolfe as a material witness and brings him to the District Attorney's office. Wolfe, in a rage, bullies the DA and the police into releasing both him and Archie, whom Wolfe now claims as his client. Proceeding with the investigation, Archie encounters Sarah Jaffee, a young widow, a childhood friend of Miss Eads', another significant stockholder in Softdown, and self-described nut. Archie earns her gratitude by removing her dead husband's hat and coat from her apartment – Mrs. Jaffee has been unable to do so since his death in Korea a year earlier. Wolfe makes use of her gratitude by convincing her to enjoin the Softdown officers from exercising ownership of the stock before it is determined that none of them obtained the stock by committing a crime – specifically, the Eads and Fomos murders. Mrs. Jaffee would prefer to have nothing to do with Softdown, but considers herself in Archie's debt and therefore agrees. Wolfe uses the threat of the injunction to force the corporate officers to meet with him at the brownstone. Mrs. Jaffee attends the meeting. So does Miss Eads' ex-husband, Eric Hagh, and his lawyer; it turns out that Hagh has a credible claim on Miss Eads' inheritance. Later that night, well after the meeting has adjourned, Mrs. Jaffee phones Archie from her apartment to ask if her keys have been found in Wolfe's office – she's lost them and had to have the doorman let her in. Archie is immediately worried, because of the role played by apartment keys in the Eads and Fomos murders. He tells Mrs. Jaffee to put the phone down but leave the line open, and to flee her apartment right away. Archie doesn't hear her leave, so he rushes to her apartment and finds her dead, strangled in the same fashion as were Miss Eads and Mrs. Fomos. Feeling guiltier yet, Archie assists the police in their ongoing search for the murderer. The police finally decide that their best course is to re-enact the meeting of the corporate officers at Wolfe's office. Wolfe agrees to cooperate, but uses the occasion to his own purpose: the exposure of the murderer and the murderer's motives. |
7400239 | /m/0260k2x | The Deadly Isles | Jack Vance | null | null | A young scientist with family ties to a vast fortune survives a murder attempt by a stranger while working in French Tahiti, and allows the assailant and the police to believe the attempt was successful. Incognito, he follows the would-be murderer aboard an island-hopping passenger/cargo schooner bound for the Marquesas, intending to find the man out. |
7401456 | /m/0260l7d | Restoration | Rose Tremain | 1989 | {"/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel"} | The novel tells the story of Robert Merivel, a physician. After supervising the recovery of one of the dogs of King Charles II, he is appointed surgeon to all of the king's dogs. He then joins in all of the debauchery of King Charles' court. The king then arranges a marriage of convenience between Merivel and one of his mistresses, Celia Clemence. This is done purely to fool the king's other mistress Barbara Castlemaine. Merivel is given an estate named Bidnold in Norfolk, and Celia is installed in a house in Kew where the king can visit her secretly. In Norfolk, Merivel abandons the practice of medicine, and lives a dissipated life in which he tries to take up painting with the help of an ambitious painter named Elias Finn. Things start to change when Celia is sent to Bidnold by the king after displeasing him. One night he drunkenly makes advances to her, and is promptly reported to the king by Elias Finn. The result is that the king confiscates the Bidnold estate from Merivel. Merivel then joins his old student friend John Pearce at the New Bedlam hospital, also in Norfolk. (New Bedlam is fictitious and should not be confused with the real Bedlam in London). This is a hospital for the mentally ill, run by Quakers, of whom Pearce is a member. In earlier parts of the novel, Pearce has condemned the sinfulness of Merivel's lifestyle, and Merivel now joins the hospital with the best of intentions, and hoping to rediscover his medical vocation. However, things go wrong when he has an affair with a patient named Katharine and makes her pregnant. This coincides with the death of Pearce. He is expelled from the hospital, and travels with Katharine to be with her mother in London. In London, which is then experiencing the Great Plague, Merivel continues practising medicine. Katharine has a baby girl, but dies in childbirth. During the Great Fire of London in 1666, he rescues an elderly woman from a burning house. It is this which regains him the king's favour, and at the end the king allows him to live at Bidnold with his daughter. The title of the novel refers both to the Restoration period during which it occurs, and to the novel's ending when Merivel returns to Bidnold and the king's favour. |
7402039 | /m/0260lqk | The Road | Cormac McCarthy | 9/26/2006 | {"/m/0488wh": "Literary fiction", "/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/0hc1z": "Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | An unnamed father and his young son journey across a grim post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a major unexplained cataclysm has destroyed civilization and most life on Earth. The land is filled with ash and devoid of living animals and vegetation. Many of the remaining human survivors have resorted to cannibalism, scavenging the detritus of city and country alike for flesh. The boy's mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, gave up hope and committed suicide some time before the story began, despite the father's pleas. Much of the book is written in the third person, with references to "the father" and "the son" or to "the man" and "the boy". Realizing that they cannot survive the oncoming winter where they are, the father takes the boy south, along empty roads towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and in a supermarket cart. The man coughs blood from time to time and eventually realizes he is dying, yet still struggles to protect his son from the constant threats of attack, exposure, and starvation. They have a revolver, but only two rounds. The boy has been told to use the gun on himself, if necessary to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals. During their trek, the father uses one bullet to kill a man who stumbles upon them and poses a grave threat. Fleeing from the man's companions, they have to abandon most of their possessions. As they are near death from starvation, the man finds an unlooted underground bunker filled with food and other necessities. However, it is too exposed, so they only stay a few days In the face of these obstacles, the man repeatedly reassures the boy that they are "the good guys" who are "carrying the fire". On their journey, the duo scrounge for food, evade roving bands, and contend with horrors such as a newborn infant roasted on a spit, and captives being gradually harvested as food. Although the man and the boy eventually reach the sea, their situation does not improve. They head back inland, but the man succumbs to an illness. Before he dies, the father tells the boy that he can continue to speak with him in his imagination after he is gone. The boy holds wake over the corpse for days, with no idea of what to do next. On the third day, the grieving boy encounters a man who says he has been tracking the pair. The man, who has a woman and two children of his own, a boy and a girl, convinces the boy that he is one of the "good guys" and takes him under his protection. |
7402486 | /m/0260l_x | The Moth Diaries | Rachel Klein | 2002 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | At an exclusively girls' boarding school, Rebecca, a sixteen year-old girl, records her most intimate thoughts in a diary. The object of her growing obsession is her roommate, Lucy Blake, and Lucy's friendship with their new and disturbing classmate, Ernessa. Around her swirl dark rumors, suspicions, and secrets as well as a series of ominous disasters. As fear spreads through the school and Lucy isn't Lucy anymore, fantasy and reality mingle until what is true and what is dreamed bleed together into a waking nightmare that evokes with gothic menace the anxieties, lusts, and fears of adolescence. At the center of the diary is the question that haunts all who read it, "Is Ernessa really a vampire?" or has the narrator trapped herself in the fevered world of her own imagining? |
7405295 | /m/0260p6s | In the King's Service | Katherine Kurtz | 2003 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The events of In the King's Service span a period of nine years, from 1082 to November 1091. The novel begins as members of the Camberian Council congratulate Lord Sief MacAthan on the birth of his son, Krispin. However, when Sief returns to Rhemuth later that night, he discovers that the child is actually the bastard son of King Donal Blaine Haldane, who fathered the child on Sief's wife, Lady Jessamy MacAthan, in an attempt to breed a Deryni protector for his sons and heirs. When Sief angrily attacks the king with his powers, Donal is forced to kill the Deryni lord with his own arcane abilities. The Camberian Council later investigates Sief's death, but they are unable to confirm their suspicions regarding the paternity of Jessamy's son. In August of the following year, Jessamy welcomes Alyce and Marie de Corwyn, the daughters of Earl Keryell of Lendour to the royal court. Alyce and Marie spend several months in the service of Queen Richeldis before leaving Rhemuth to continue their education at Notre Dame d'Arc-en-Ciel, a royal convent where they meet Lady Zoë Morgan, the daughter of one of Donal's military aides, Sir Kenneth Morgan. Over the next several years, Alyce, Marie, and Zoë remain at the convent and pursue the common studies of ladies of noble birth. In October 1086, rebellious Mearans attempt to assassinate Price Richard Haldane, the king's younger half-brother. Although the plot is unsuccessful, Earl Keryell is slain and his eldest son and heir, Lord Ahern, is seriously wounded. Alyce and Marie return to Rhemuth to tend to their injured brother, and the three siblings escort their father's body back to Cynfyn shortly thereafter. While Ahern adjusts to his new role as Earl of Lendour, Lady Vera Howard reveals to the sisters that she is actually Alyce's twin sister. Alyce and Marie return to Rhemuth in February and soon secure a place for Vera in the royal household. Torenthi raiders strike across the border into Corwyn in the summer of 1088, and Ahern, as hereditary Duke of Corwyn, travels to Coroth to deal with the situation. Donal joins Ahern several weeks later, and the young earl impresses the king with his natural leadership skills. Meanwhile, in Rhemuth, Marie is poisoned and killed by Lady Muriella, a lady-in-waiting to the queen who is jealous of Marie's developing relationship with Sir Sé Trelawney. Alyce escorts her sister's body to Coroth, and later returns to Rhemuth after the funeral. Several months later, Ahern is summoned to court to advise the king on the increasingly tense situation in Meara. In April 1089, Ahern accompanies Donal when the king mounts a military campaign to put down a growing rebellion in Meara. Ahern further distinguishes himself during the campaign, but he becomes seriously ill while returning to Rhemuth in June. Kenneth rushes to fetch Alyce and Zoë, but Ahern soon dies, shortly after marrying Zoë. With Ahern's death, Alyce is now the sole heiress to the Duchy of Corwyn. An assassination attempt on the king in November fails, but Kenneth is badly wounded in the attack. After Alyce nurses Kenneth back to health, Donal decides to marry the two and announces the betrothal in January 1090. The following day, tragedy strikes the castle when Krispin's dead body is discovered in a well. Donal commands Alyce to probe the dead boy's mind, and she succeeds in identifying the murderers, one of whom is a priest and the brother of a bishop. Although Donal executes the murderers, the fact that he does so without the consent of the Church results in excommunication for both the king and Alyce. Donal eventually resolves the rift, and Alyce and Kenneth are married in June. Donal decides to once again attempt to father a Deryni protector for his sons, and convinces Jessamy to assist him after he chooses Alyce as his next target. Donal keeps Kenneth away from Rhemuth for much of the summer and autumn, but Jessamy's death in November creates an additional delay in the king's plan. Prior to her death, Jessamy reveals the details of the plan to Lord Siesyll Arilan, a member of Donal's council who is also a member of the Camberian Council. Donal finally attempts to bed Alyce in late January of 1090, but Alyce stops him. Alyce and Kenneth inform the king that Alyce is already pregnant, and the pledge their son to the king's service, promising that their child will be raised to be the Deryni protector Donal has sought. In September, Alyce gives birth to her first child, Alaric Anthony Morgan. Several weeks later, Siesyll covertly confirms that the child is not Donal's. |
7405449 | /m/0260pdm | Le lion | Joseph Kessel | 1958 | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Patricia has a rare gift to communicate with animals, and thinks she can control everything. She is popular with both animals and people. The story is narrated through a French man on a visit to Kenya. The plot of the story revolves around the friendship between Patricia and a lion called King, whom Patricia raised since he was a cub. Ouriounga, a teenage Maasai, who wishes to marry Patricia, decides to prove his worth by killing a lion to gain her respect, as is custom in his tribe. However the lion he chooses is King. Patricia's father shoots King in order to protect Ouriounga from certain death. With her idealistic view of the African savanna crushed, Patricia finally gives in to everyone's demands and leaves with the narrator to attend a boarding school in Nairobi. |
7405572 | /m/0260ph0 | Childe Morgan | Katherine Kurtz | 12/5/2006 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The events of Childe Morgan span a period of approximately two and a half years, from late December 1093 to late March 1096. In the Gwyneddan capital of Rhemuth, Sir Kenneth Morgan and his wife, Lady Alyce de Corwyn, bring their son, Alaric Morgan, to the court of King Donal Blaine Haldane. At Twelfth Night Court in January 1094, Kenneth is created Earl of Lendour and named primary regent for Alaric's future inheritance of the Duchy of Corwyn. After court, the Camberian Council discusses the emerging danger posed by Zachris Pomeroy, a rogue Deryni who is encouraging the current Festillic Pretender to press his claim for the throne of Gwynedd. In the spring, the Morgan family travels through Lendour and Corwyn while Kenneth acquaints himself with his new lands and reviews the regency of his son in Corwyn. While returning to Rhemuth in late summer, they encounter the remains of a Deryni who was burned at the stake by the people of a small village. The incident is a sobering and disquieting reminder of the remaining antagonism that many people in Gwynedd still bear toward Deryni. As the next Twelfth Night Court approaches several months later, Donal receives word of the death of the Crown Prince of Torenth. Concerned about Zachris' prior involvement with the dead prince, the Camberian Council investigates the matter, but is unable to discover any new or useful information. In June 1095, Alyce and Kenneth assist the king in a brief magical ritual. With Donal's eldest son and heir, Prince Brion, attaining his legal majority on his fourteenth birthday, Donal takes the opportunity to prepare his son's mind for the eventual assumption of the full Haldane potential. Afterwards, Alyce and Alaric travel to Culdi, where the pregnant Alyce plans to spend the summer in the company of her secret twin sister, Countess Vera McLain of Kierney. The day after Alaric's fourth birthday, at the king's request, Alyce and Vera conduct an ancient Deryni ritual to bestow magical names upon their children. The ritual is briefly interrupted by the clandestine arrival of the king himself, who takes an active part in Alaric's ritual and further binds the boy to his plans. Alyce and Vera relocate to Kenneth's familial estates in October, and their close proximity to Rhemuth allows Donal to make another surprise visit in November. Heart-broken by the accidental death of his youngest son, Prince Jathan, Donal sets a final set of mental triggers in young Alaric to enable the boy to activate Prince Brion's full Haldane powers in the future. However, due to Alaric's youth, Donal also gives similar power to Alyce, allowing her to activate his heir's abilities if necessary. During the return to Rhemuth, Donal falls ill, and his condition quickly deteriorates despite the best efforts of the royal physicians. King Donal Blaine Haldane dies on November 14, 1095. Alyce delivers her second child, a daughter named Bronwyn, on December 12, but she fails to regain her strength afterwards. Nevertheless, she is determined to activate Brion's powers as quickly as possible, and she orders Kenneth to bring the new king to her. Kenneth reluctantly complies, but Alyce, in her weakened state, is unable to fully activate Brion's arcane abilities. The strain of the attempt is ultimately too much for her, and Lady Alyce de Corwyn de Morgan dies in the arms of her husband on December 29, 1095. After Alyce's funeral, Kenneth and Alaric return to Rhemuth for Brion's coronation, but the ceremony is delayed by the death of the Archbishop of Valoret. The remaining bishops travel to Valoret to elect their new leader, a process that is finally completed in early March. Brion decides to travel to Valoret to meet the new archbishop, despite concerns for his safety by several of his ministers. Additionally, the Camberian Council has become increasingly concerned that Zachris Pomeroy may attempt to kill the new king. After arriving at Valoret and witnessing the enthronement of the new archbishop, an assassination plot is discovered by Jamyl Arilan, a Deryni secretly working for the Camberian Council. Jamyl is forced to reveal himself to Kenneth, and the two successfully disrupt the plot before Brion can be harmed. During a battle in the cathedral itself, Kenneth is saved from Zachris' magic by the timely intervention of Sir Sé Trelawney, a mysterious childhood friend of Alyce's who kills the rogue Deryni with a single arrow. Afterwards, Kenneth tells nobody of Jamyl's Deryni heritage or Sé's presence in Valoret. Upon returning to Rhemuth, the final preparations for the coronation are made, and King Brion Haldane is crowned on March 24, 1096. Sé briefly appears to pledge his service to Brion, and Kenneth once again dedicates himself and his son to the protection of the Haldane line. |
7407099 | /m/0260r4b | The Voyage of QV66 | Penelope Lively | 1978 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The characters travel in a boat (the QV66 of the title) with the intention of reaching London Zoo so that they can discover what Stanley is. They have a number of adventures along the way, including being joined by a parrot, several characters losing their way in a balloon, and Stanley himself getting locked in a bank vault. It is eventually revealed that Stanley is a monkey. |
7407567 | /m/0260rrm | The Soldier's Art | Anthony Powell | 1966 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | At the start of 1941, Jenkins is stationed at divisional HQ and allocated to lowly F Mess with the obnoxious Captain Biggs. During an exercise Jenkins has dinner with General Liddament who recommends him to Finn. Widmerpool is humiliated by Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson, and plots revenge. Stringham turns up as Mess Waiter for F Mess. On leave in London Nick has an unsuccessful interview with Finn for a liaison posting with the Free French forces. He has a drink with Chips Lovell who desires a reconciliation with Priscilla, despite her affair with Odo Stevens. Moreland, now living with Audrey Maclintick, dines with Nick. Audrey, Priscilla and Stevens arrive to join the party, but Priscilla leaves in distress. Later that night Jenkins is told that a bomb falling on the Café de Madrid has killed almost everyone, including Chips. Nick sets off to the Jeavons's to inform Priscilla, only to find the house also bombed, Lady Molly and Priscilla being killed. On return to divisional HQ, Jenkins finds Stringham has been transferred to the mobile laundry. Stringham and Nick try to cover up for Bithel's drunkenness, but their efforts are foiled and Widmerpool has Bithel dismissed from the army. Farebrother brings news of the disaster awaiting Widmerpool in consequence of the latter's machinations. Jenkins fails to persuade Stringham to leave the mobile laundry before it is posted to the Far East. Captain Biggs hangs himself in the cricket pavilion ("And him so fond of the game."). Jenkins receives orders to report to the War Office. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent |
7410102 | /m/0260txj | Inferno | August Strindberg | 1898 | {"/m/012jgz": "Autobiographical novel"} | The narrator (ostensibly Strindberg, although his narrative variably coheres with and diverges from historical truth), spends most of the novel in Paris, isolated from his wife (Frida Uhl), children, and friends. He associates with a circle of Parisian artists and writers (including Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch), but often fears they are ridiculing and persecuting him. In his isolation, Strindberg successfully attempts alchemical experiments, and has his work published in prominent journals. He fears, however, that his secrets will be stolen, and his persecution mania worsens, believing that his enemies are attacking him with 'infernal machines.' He also dabbles in the occult, at one point casting a black magic spell on his own distanced daughter. Throughout his studies and adventures, Strindberg believes himself guided by mysterious forces (attributing them sometimes to God, Fate, or vaguer origins). When returning to Sweden to see his daughter, Strindberg is introduced to German mythology and the teachings of Swedenborg, which both influence his fatalistic beliefs and delusions. Through this newfound imagery, Strindberg sees his life as a living hell, hence the novel's title. |
7410353 | /m/0260v54 | Books Do Furnish a Room | Anthony Powell | 1971 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Jenkins returns to his old university library during the vacation in the Winter of 1945/6 to undertake research for a book about Robert Burton. He goes to see Sillery, who has a new secretary, Ada Leintwardine. Quiggin is starting a literary magazine called Fission, which is to be funded by Erridge ... except that Erridge dies suddenly. Erridge's funeral at Thrubworth is disturbed by the late arrival of the Widmerpools, Quiggin, Sir Howard & Lady Craggs (née Gypsy Jones). Pamela Widmerpool causes a disturbance by leaving during the service. Later at Thrubworth Park, Jenkins is invited by Quiggin to join the staff of Fission; Pamela causes further trouble, and on leaving is noisily sick into a large Chinese urn. At the party to launch Fission, Nick first meets the importunate novelist X Trapnel (based on the real-life Bohemian dandy, Julian MacLaren-Ross); Trapnel eventually takes a fancy to Pamela. Early the following year there are problems at Fission's publishers, Quiggin & Craggs. Trapnel has become infatuated with Pamela. Jenkins, dining with MP Roddy Cutts (husband of Susan Tolland) at the House of Commons, meets Widmerpool (now also a Member of Parliament). All three go to Widmerpool's flat where it becomes apparent that Pamela has absconded with Trapnel. Some time later Jenkins visits Trapnel and Pamela at their seedy flat, and while there Widmerpool arrives to confront the adulterers. Later in the year Pamela leaves Trapnel, and in doing so throws the precious manuscript of his novel into the nearby canal. On a visit to his old school, Jenkins meets Le Bas, and the reunited Widmerpools. *Adapted in part from material published by the Anthony Powell Society with consent |
7411317 | /m/0260vvv | A Christmas Memory | Truman Capote | 1956-12 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | "A Christmas Memory" is about a young boy, referred to as "Buddy," and his older cousin, who is unnamed in the story but is called Sook in later adaptations. The boy is the narrator, and his older cousin — who is eccentric and childlike — is his best friend. They live in a house with other relatives, who are authoritative and stern, and have a dog named Queenie. The family is very poor, but Buddy looks forward to Christmas every year nevertheless, and he and his elderly cousin save their pennies for this occasion. Every year at Christmastime, Buddy and his friend collect pecans and buy whiskey — from a scary American Indian bootlegger named Haha Jones — and many other ingredients to make fruitcakes. They send the cakes to acquaintances they have met only once or twice, and to people they've never met at all, like President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This year, after the two have finished the elaborate four-day production of making fruitcakes, the elderly cousin decides to celebrate by finishing off the remaining whiskey in the bottle. This leads to the two of them becoming drunk, and being severely reprimanded by angry relatives. The next day Buddy and his friend go to a faraway grove, which the elderly cousin has proclaimed the best place, by far, to chop down Christmas trees. They manage to take back a large and beautiful tree, despite the arduous trek back home. They spend the following days making decorations for the tree and presents for the relatives, Queenie, and each other. Buddy and the older cousin keep their gifts to each other a secret, although Buddy assumes his friend has made him a kite, as she has every year. He has made her a kite, too. Come Christmas morning, the two of them are up at the crack of dawn, anxious to open their presents. Buddy is extremely disappointed, having received the rather dismal gifts of old hand-me-downs and a subscription to a religious magazine. His friend has gotten the somewhat better gifts of Satsuma oranges and hand-knitted scarves. Queenie gets a bone. Then they exchange their joyful presents to each other: the two kites. In a beautiful hidden meadow, they fly the kites that day in the clear winter sky, while eating the older cousin's Christmas oranges. The elderly cousin thinks of this as heaven, and says that God and heaven must be like this. It is their last Christmas together. The following year, the boy is sent to military school. Although Buddy and his friend keep up a constant correspondence, this is unable to last because his elderly cousin suffers more and more the ravages of old age, and slips into dementia. Soon, she is unable to remember who Buddy is, and not long after, she passes away. As Buddy says later: "And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing me from an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven." |
7411539 | /m/0260vzz | The Venus of Konpara | John Masters | null | null | The novel is set in the late nineteenth century, during the British Raj, and follows the adventures of a Rajput prince who is heir to a fictional kingdom based in Deori (roughly comparable to modern Chhattisgarh). He has just returned from his education in England. As a sign of his Anglicisation he plans to build a dam and a cricket pitch on disused land in Konpara, a backward and neglected part of his realm. However, when work begins, a fragment of an ancient statue is recovered. Such is its beauty and sensuousness that it is nicknamed the "Venus of Konpara". He decides to excavate the area in search of other remains. Meanwhile, he has been seduced by a Dravidian dancing girl, who becomes his live-in lover and who seems to have a mysterious control over the local people. The prince's uncle, however, plans to displace him as successor to the throne and works in tandem with other mysterious hidden factions to disrupt the investigations. The local British administrator assists the prince, though with some reservations. The administrator is deeply resentful of his liberated wife, an artist who works in an avant-garde style similar to Manet. Her creativity disturbs his rigid and sexually repressed personality. As excavations proceed it becomes clear that there are systematic attempts to misdirect the dig, and even to threaten the lives of the central characters, who are attacked by the local Gond tribesmen. The British administrator is drawn into the plot against the prince, and the dancing girl is abducted. All ends happily for the main characters after the administrator is killed when he pricks himself with a poisoned arrow meant for the prince. The dancing girl is rescued and marries the prince. The administrator's widow marries another character who admires her work, and she becomes a famous artist. |
7415233 | /m/0260yrb | The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean | null | 2006 | null | This book covers lean manufacturing principles and thinking, lean leadership moves, the road map for lean transformation, common pitfalls of lean journeys, building an operating system, lean accounting, lean material management, lean in service organizations, and how individuals can apply lean to improve themselves. It concludes with interviews of lean practitioners at Chrysler, Ross Controls, DTE Energy, RSR Corporation, and Nemak. |
7415895 | /m/0260z53 | Temporary Kings | Anthony Powell | 1973 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Around 1958, a decade on from the preceding novel, Books Do Furnish a Room, Jenkins attends an international literary conference in Venice, where the death is announced of French author Ferrand-Sénéschal. Dr Emily Brightman introduces Jenkins to Russell Gwinnett, a prospective biographer of X Trapnel with a faintly alarming manner. Gwinnett naturally wishes to meet Pamela Widmerpool, and he produces a press report linking her with Ferrand-Sénéschal's death. Next day the conference visits the Bragadin Palace to view a ceiling painted by Tiepolo. Here Pamela is encountered with American film director Louis Glober gazing at the ceiling. Gwinnett is introduced to Pamela. Widmerpool arrives, and a row between the couple ensues with accusations flying. On the Sunday Nick visits painter Daniel Tokenhouse and lunches with Ada Leintwardine and Glober. Further viewing of Tokenhouse's paintings is interrupted by the abrupt arrival of Widmerpool on mysterious business. It is evident that Glober has designs upon Pamela. Nick dines with Gwinnett, who recounts a surprising earlier rendezvous with Pamela. Later at a bar Nick meets Odo Stevens (now married to Rosie Manasch) and Pamela, who foretells trouble for Widmerpool. Back in England later that year Nick visits Bagshaw who recounts the mystery of Pamela's nakedness in his house while Gwinnett was staying there. Later still Nick dines with Gwinnett, and attends an army reunion where he hears a further account of Stringham's death; Farebrother predicts Widmerpool's imminent arrest for spying. Moreland conducts at a Mozart concert party given by Odo and Rosie Stevens in Summer 1959. Glober is there with Polly Duport (actress daughter of Bob Duport and Jean), as are Mrs Erdleigh with Jimmy Stripling, Audrey Maclintick and the Widmerpools. There are violent scenes between Glober, Pamela and Widmerpool on leaving the party. Pamela is warned by Mrs Erdleigh that she is near the edge. Moreland collapses after the concert. Late in 1959 Nick reflects on the subsequent death of Pamela, apparently from an overdose while in bed with Gwinnett, and also visits the dying Moreland in hospital. |
7416108 | /m/0260zfc | The World Next Door | null | null | {"/m/0mz2": "Alternate history"} | The book takes place in the mid-1990s, at two interlinked alternate realities. In one of them, the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated into a major nuclear exchange. What was left of the United States disintegrated into numerous virtually-independent enclaves, though President John F. Kennedy is still alive in a bunker somewhere. Most of the plot centers on Lake Placid, New York and along parts of route 86 where an oasis of civilization was painstakingly built, threatened by a well-organised band of rapacious robbers who claim to be the New York State National Guard. Meanwhile, the "world next door" which avoided nuclear war in 1962 is going to experience it thirty years later because Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms went wrong in the worst possible way. This war would be much worse than the one in 1962 because nuclear weapons had had thirty years more to become even more highly destructive. Characters from the first ("1962 War") world keep experiencing in dreams the lives of their analogues in the world threatened now with war. In the end of the book (and pretty much the end of the second world) quite a few people are transported across and given refuge in the "1962 War" world, where meanwhile the "National Guard" robbers had been dealt with rather ruthlessly. (The book's plot is constructed so as to lead the reader to condone the cold-blooded killing of unarmed prisoners, since otherwise the prisoners in question would have escaped and perpetrated terrible atrocities.) |
7416749 | /m/0260zwt | The Brief History of the Dead | Kevin Brockmeier | 2006 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/08sdrw": "Adventure novel"} | The story is set partly in the City and partly in the realm of the living, where Laura Byrd is stranded in Antarctica. The City segments focus on several different people in The City; as the book progresses, increasing numbers of the City's residents seem to just disappear, leaving friends and their relatives in mystery. The lethal virus slowly kills off each person in the living realm which results in the abrupt fluctuation in The City - each day, more and more people miraculously disappear (and areas of the City itself also begin to vanish) until the only remaining residents are those who were known to Laura Byrd. Chapters set in The City alternate with chapters dealing with Laura's struggle for survival in the Antarctic and her gradual realization that she may be the last person left alive on Earth. |
7418400 | /m/026105s | Dark Wraith of Shannara | Terry Brooks | 2008 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/03qfd": "High fantasy"} | Dark Wraith of Shannara began with Jair Ohmsford having a recurring dream in which he relives a section of Indomitable where he managed to become the slain "Weapons Master" Garet Jax. He talked to his sister, Brin, about how he used the Wishsong to do something real (as all he had been able to do before was illusion). She asked Jair to promise not to use the Wishsong again as she feared that he would lose himself in the magic, and not be able to return to who he is if he became Garet Jax again. Jair promised to refrain from using the Wishsong again. Jair left, but that night, he was visited by the shade of Allanon, who told him that Kimber Boh and Cogline were captured by Mwellrets and their master, the Croton Witch. Allanon tells him that they seek to gain information about how to return Paranor to the world from Cogline, who had previously been a Druid. Upon restoring Paranor, they aimed to learn the secrets of the power of the Druids. Jair reluctantly decided that he had to rescue Kimber and Cogline. After meeting Slanter, they both left for Darklin Reach. Upon arriving, Jair and Slanter discovered the tracks made by the Mwellrets and their prisoners. They were also found by Whisper, who tracked Kimber to the cave in which she was trapped. They found her with a broken leg and unable to travel, so they took her back to Hearthstone, where her and Cogline had lived, to recover. Jair learns from Kimber that the Croton Witch tortured Cogline until he told her how to restore Paranor, and she has forced him to accompany her to Paranor to work the magic. Soon after they left, Slanter and Jair were confronted by a Koden. Slanter was thrown against a rock and knocked half-blind and dazed, so Jair is forced to break his promise to Brin. He used the Wishsong to become Garet Jax once more, and he quickly slayed the Koden. Eventually, Jair and Slanter found the Mwellrets and the Croton Witch, who are forcing Cogline to use magic to bring back Paranor. Although Jair and Slanter attempted to stop them, it was too late: Paranor was restored. Jair was once more forced to become Garet Jax. Jair, as Garet, destroyed the Mwellrets, and attempted to engage the Croton Witch in combat to the death—but the protective mist of Paranor that slays any who come into contact with it quickly destroyed the Croton Witch. (The mist was the final defense of Paranor; if the castle fell, then it would kill every living thing inside of it.) The mist attempted to destroy Jair and Slanter as well, and so they were forced to take Cogline and run. Jair, with the speed and power of Garet Jax, was able to lead them to safety, and managed to transform back to Jair Ohmsford. After Kimber and Cogline's reunion, Kimber asked Jair to stay with her. He decided to forego the request and leave with Slanter, saying that he had to find out about himself first. |
7418957 | /m/02610m5 | The Illustrated Mum | Jacqueline Wilson | 1999 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | This story is set in London in a small flat. Dolphin and her older sister Star live with their mother Marigold, who has many colourful tattoos. Marigold has a drinking problem and sometimes acts "crazy". Dolphin loves Marigold and thinks she is wonderful and unique while Star is embarrassed by Marigold's tattoos and erratic behaviour. Dolphin feels like an outsider at school; she is bullied by some classmates and feels her teacher is unkind to her. She also struggles with her dyslexia. Star appears to be more popular, and Dolphin dislikes the fact that Star has an older boyfriend. Dolphin later befriends Oliver, a shy and studious boy who spends the lunch period in the library to avoid being teased. Marigold buys tickets to see her favourite band Emerald City, with the intention of finding Micky, Star's father, who Marigold still claims to love. Both girls are surprised when she returns that night with Micky. He was unaware he had a daughter and is thrilled to meet Star, and she adores him in turn. Dolphin dislikes him because she feels that he abandoned Marigold. Micky sends both the girls presents, and Star goes to spend a weekend with him. Marigold hoped to reconcile romantically with Micky and is upset to hear that he has a girlfriend living with him. Micky hears of Marigold's behaviour and invites both Star and Dolphin to live with him. Dolphin stays loyal to Marigold and refuses to leave her so Star leaves to be with Micky. After Star leaves, Marigold has a mental breakdown and paints herself white using toxic paint. Dolphin has to phone her an ambulance and finds out that due to her mental illness she may be in hospital for some time. With Marigold in hospital ill and tired, Oliver encourages Dolphin to contact her real father, who she knows nothing about, except that his name is also Micky and he worked as a swimming instructor. She manages to track him down and he's pleased to meet her. Dolphin hopes he will look after her, but he has a wife and daughters already and wants to do things properly, getting in touch with child services so Dolphin can be in foster care for a while. Dolphin is initially terrified of going into a foster home having heard Marigold's horror stories from her own childhood, but she stays with a kindly older woman and several younger children and her father takes her to visit Marigold, who is on medication for bipolar disorder. Star appears at the foster home after returning to the flat to find both Marigold and Dolphin gone. Star stays in foster care with Dolphin and although they argue at first, they reconcile and go to visit Marigold together. The story ends with Dolphin deciding that even though Marigold is in hospital and she and Star in foster care, they are still a family. |
7419290 | /m/02610rn | Wolfcry | Amelia Atwater-Rhodes | 2006-09 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | The book starts off with Oliza relating her troubles in being heir to the throne of a divided nation. Though the avians and serpiente have put down their weapons, prejudice and hatred still run strong between the two kinds. Oliza's choice of mate will define which of the two is "preferred" in Wyvern's Court. The three obvious choices for Oliza's mate are a serpent dancer, Urban, a raven named Marus, and the preregrine falcon Nicias. After a fight breaks out in the serpent dancer's nest, Urban is found beaten in the avian part of the city. Oliza is abducted by lion mercenaries. Oliza manages to escape. Half-starved and exhausted, she roams the forest where she is eventually rescued by a female wolf shapeshifter who takes her to the local pack. One of the men in the pack speaks Oliza's language. He refuses to disclose what caused Betia's fleeing from the pack. Oliza meets with the leader and instantly notices the tension between him and his ambitious son and heir, Velyo. It is made clear that Velyo truly runs the pack. When Oliza gets tired he offers to escort her to her room, where he tries to rape her. She manages to run and meets up with Betia. The two of them flee from both the pack and the lion mercenaries. Betia manages to return to human form out of concern for Oliza. The two travel on towards Wyvern's Court when they are stopped by a band of mainly white-haired serpents, a fight erupts but abrubtly ends when the leader of the group noticed Oliza's Ahnleh necklace. The group identifies themselves as the Obsidian Guild, a band of mainly white vipers and serpiente outlaws. They have lived apart from the rest of serpent society and they still honor ancient laws such as Ahneh. In accordance with that law they agree to take in Betia and Oliza. At Oliza's request, the leader of the Obsidian Guild relates the story of the fallout between the two leaders of the Dasi. He tells her that Kiesha was Maeve's lover before Leben, who Maeve seduced in an attempt to keep him from destroying her people. Kiesha was distraught by what she saw as Maeve's betrayal, even though the white viper was forced to do it. She refused to forgive Maeve even after Leben left and Maeve was devastated. In an attempt to lessen some of the pain, she turned to Ahnmik, the dark opposite of Anhamirak, but also the god of sleep and numbness. Kiesha and the other serpents then exiled her for practicing black magic. Maeve was taken in by the Rsh, the lower priests and priestesses of the Dasi cult, she slowly regained the will to live and took a mate. Her descendants survive as the Obsidian Guild, and they are in no hurry to reconcile with the other serpiente. Oliza is stunned to learn of this and intrigued by the idea of Maeve and Kiesha as lovers. Later in the evening, the Guild tries to convince her to perform a melos dance, one of the more sensual ones usually not performed among serpiente dancers unless they have already chosen a mate. Oliza at first tries to decline but Betia convinces her by giving her a melos scarf, a symbol of praise and a request to dance. Incidentally, the threads on the melos are gold, which in serpiente culture indicates the bond between mates, though Oliza brushes that off as Betia's ignorance of her culture. The two are soon strong enough to travel and go to a pack of wolves led by Kalisa, who Oliza is familiar and friendly with. However, before they can join Kalisa's pack, they run into Velyo and Betia runs off in terror when she sees him. Oliza recalls his attempt to rape her and doesn't take long in becoming furious with him, especially because she now has a very good idea of why Betia became feral and wouldn't go near her old pack. In spite of who he is, Velyo takes Oliza to her parents, who explain that while they were worried they believed she had left of her own free will. A note was found in the palace, in Oliza's handwriting, saying that her responsibilities are too much and she doesn't want anyone to come looking for her if she leaves. Oliza now begins to really worry about the loss of her hawk form, and how avians will react once they find out their queen is no longer one of them. Oliza returns to Wyvern's Court to find that the three men who beat Urban have been given an insanely light punishment because her mother feared they would otherwise be turned into martyrs. Before she can deal with that, however, the leader of the Obsidian Guild escorts Betia into Wyvern's Court. Betia looks tired but is happy to see Oliza, speaking her name as the first word she has said since becoming feral. Oliza then postpones everything she has to do and takes Betia into the dancer's nest. There she notices Marus who, to her shock, appears to have moved in. Betia convinces her to dance a melos with the entire nest watching, after which they fall asleep curled up together. The next morning Urban apologizes to Oliza for being forward in courting her, saying he had no idea and then pointing at Betia with his eyes. Oliza is embarrassed and points out that she is in line for the throne, and a royal pair bond has to produce heirs. She then takes Betia to the market, where they have a shocking meeting with several avian merchants who are convinced that the three men convicted of harming Urban are not guilty. Oliza begins to understand why her mother was hesitant to punish them. Next in line for a meeting is Velyo, who takes one look at Oliza holding Betia's hand and hisses at her "I don't care what your preferences are, you're a royal heir to the throne. You need a king, Wyvern. Send her away." Oliza gets furious at him, but begins to question the exact nature of her relationship with Betia. She then goes to a meeting with the three convicts and leaves Betia in the library with Nicias and her cousin, Hai. The three men are a blatant example of the differences between serpiente and avians. Poiting out to Oliza that what serpiente see as careless flirting and a meaningless kiss is experienced as sexual assault by their avian alistairs and sisters. Oliza is deeply troubled by this because she finds herself able to understand their motivations for attacking Urban. She tells them she will not change their punishment and will talk with them later. After this she goes to the library to see Hai, who has offered to combine her falcon magic with Oliza's dormant powers of Anhamirak to bring back Oliza's wings. The spell succeeds and Oliza regains her hawk form, but as she reaches out to Hai to try to do the same for her cousin, the combination of their magics accidentally creates a sakkri'a'she. A vision of the future. Oliza can feel Nicias step in with his magic to keep the spell under control before she is lost in visions. In the first she speaks with her future self, who explains that after choosing Urban as a mate, he was killed within a day and Wyvern's Court ravaged by war. The next vision presents her with a furious Obsidian, who curses her and she flees into a new vision. Here she walks the market, and is told by a local that after she chose Marus as mate, the avians decided she preferred them and murdered out the entire dancers' nest. The woman also tells her that in this future Oliza was murdered, presumably by her avian aunt's mate, though officially it was suicide. She then sees her aunt, Sive, sitting on the throne and learning of Danica's death. In blind panic, Oliza asks the visions to find her a future where she finds love and takes a mate without it leading to war between her people. She then finds herself in what looks like Wyvern's Court, but it is riddled through with falcon magic. A young child by the name of Keyi runs around, continually saying that she wants "to chase the butterflies." A man approaches her, asking if she's been sent by Hai. Oliza says no and asks him what happened. She recognises him as a Burmese python of the Obsidian Guild, who she danced with one time while she was there. He explains that he became Oliza's mate, and they had a child together. Keyi's magic was too powerful to be controlled. She killed Oliza and the falcons came to put a stop to her. They murdered all the serpiente and avian adults, took their children back to the separate lands to educate them there and get them to start hating each other again, and left Keyi and her father in an illusion which is kept in place by Nicias and Hai as well as anyone else the falcons allowed to live. Keyi sees shadows of the people who once were, and chases imaginary butterflies and rainbows. Oliza is horrified and exits the vision. She finds herself on her knees in the library, the details of her visions already starting to fade. She starts crying and asks Nicias and Hai to leave her alone with Betia. She then tells Betia that she had a child, Betia responds by asking if she was in love. Oliza realizes that the problem in the last vision was that while she found love and took a mate, they weren't the same person. Betia kneels in front of her and tells her that she will never leave unless Oliza asks her to. They kiss, Oliza is hesitant at first, but then becomes sure of her feelings. Oliza goes to the courtyard and confronts the mercenaries, telling them she was the one who hired them to kidnap her, she just didn't remember it. Their leader confirms it. Oliza also remembers several hours that seemed to have been lost between her talking to Hai in the library the night before her kidnap, and her coming to her senses again elsewhere. She realizes that the dance she spun to calm herself down must have triggered the same visions she just experienced, with Hai's magic acting as a catalyst. Then she didn't remember because both her and Hai's powers have precious little control, but this time Nicias was there to keep the vision in check. The actual visions are already gone from her memory now, but the essence is still there, and she remembers what she has to do. She flies to the dancers' nest and pulls Betia aside. She then kneels in front of her and asks Betia to be her mate, Betia tells her wolves mate for life and Oliza answers that wyverns do so too. Betia accepts and Oliza asks Nicias and Urban to gather her people in the marketplace. There, she makes a speech explaining to them that they are not ready to become one again. She would be honored to lead them, but now is not the time for a wyvern to take the throne. She renounces her claim as Arami and heir to the Tuuli Thea and appoints her cousin, Salem, as the new Arami of the serpiente and her aunt Sive as the new heir to the Tuuli Thea of the avians. Her people are shocked, but willing to accept. Oliza's parents are accepting, though her mother tries to tell her that hope can do more than she gives it credit for. Oliza responds by saying that she knows she did the right thing, and that she will go to stay with friends and she'll be with her mate. Her parents are slightly shocked when Betia steps forward, but Zane gives them his blessing and tells Betia to look after his daughter. Oliza and Betia walk into the woods, on their way to the Obsidian Guild. They have a confrontation with Velyo who says Oliza only did everything so she could be with her "fling." Betia steps in and tells Oliza that Velyo has no idea what it means to sacrifice for his people. Velyo becomes furious and threatens her, but Oliza punches him and reminds him that as a half-cobra, she has full use of a cobra's deadly poison and could kill him in a few seconds. Velyo turns into wolf form and moves away with his tail between his legs. The book ends with Oliza and Betia falling asleep together in one of the tents of the Obsidian Guild, happy together. |
7422264 | /m/02613lt | The Way the World is | null | null | null | The first part of the book goes through the familiar territory of the scientist's 'Standard Model' of the universe from the Big Bang to the development of human life on Earth. Whilst discussing these the book gives an overview of quantum theory and indeterminism, which Polkinghorn believes represent a challenge to metaphysical naturalism. The book asserts that aspects of human experiences cannot be reduced to physics and biology. The remaining chapters consider core Christian beliefs, New Testament history and how they fit into this perspective. |
7422517 | /m/02613xs | Hearing Secret Harmonies | Anthony Powell | 1975 | {"/m/06nbt": "Satire", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In Spring, almost another decade on, the Jenkinses act as host to a caravan of hippies led by Scorpio Murtlock, allowing them to camp on their land. One of the band is Fiona Cutts (daughter of Roddy Cutts, thus a niece of Isobel's). Murtlock is keenly interested in the nearby Devil's Fingers standing stones. Widmerpool is appointed Chancellor of a new university, and is promptly daubed with paint by the Quiggin twins (Amanda and Belinda, daughters of JG Quiggin and Ada Leintwardine); Widmerpool is thereby converted to the current counter-culture. Nick visits Matilda Donners, and is shown the photographs of the Seven Deadly Sins tableaux of 30 years before. The Donners Memorial Prize is established. A year or so later Nick is a member of the committee who award the annual prize to Russell Gwinnett for his biography of X Trapnel. Widmerpool brings the Quiggin twins to the presentation dinner where he makes an impromptu speech, and the twins disrupt proceedings with a stink bomb. At a Royal Academy dinner Nick gets an account of Dr Trelawney and of Murtlock's boyhood from Canon Fenneau. Widmerpool asks the Canon to put him in touch with Murtlock. By Spring 1970 there are hints of Widmerpool and Murtlock joining forces. At midsummer conservationists muster at the Devil's Fingers and there are reports of naked dancers there the previous evening. Gwinnett describes Murtlock's attack on Widmerpool during a pagan sex ritual at the Devil's Fingers that night. Spring 1971 sees a family wedding reception at Stourwater. Fiona Cutts, released from Murtlock's grip, appears newly married to Gwinnett. Widmerpool, leading a run by Murtlock's cult, arrives at the reception and pays embarrassing public penance to the bride's grandfather for a misdemeanour at school. Murtlock appears and ruthlessly extracts Widmerpool and cult members from the proceedings. The final chapter sees Jenkins in Autumn 1971 lighting a bonfire and reflecting on a recent revival in Mr. Deacon's pictures--Edgar (to his friends) has now been rediscovered as "E. Bosworth Deacon". Nick has recently attended the art gallery which is selling the Deacon paintings and where he met a now invalid Bob Duport, Polly and Signora Flores (Jean). While there he gets an inside account from Henderson (formerly one of Murtlock's followers) of life in the cult. Bithel (also part of the cult) arrives with news of Widmerpool's death on a naked run with Murtlock's followers. |
7423595 | /m/026153b | Little Grunt and the Big Egg | Tomie dePaola | null | null | The Grunt Tribe live in a big cave next to a volcano. When Little Grunt is told that the Ugga-Wugga Tribe is coming over for Sunday brunch the next day Mama Grunt orders him to find some eggs so that she can make an omelette. Little Grunt searches high and low and there are no eggs to be found anywhere. Just then he stumbles over the biggest egg he has ever seen. He carefully drags it home so that it doesn't break and shows it to his family. They are very impressed. The egg is left in front of the fire when all the Grunts go to bed. During the night they all wake up to a cracking and breaking noise and, in the hearth, they find a baby dinosaur amongst the broken egg shells. Little Grunt keeps the dinosaur, who he names "George", as a pet and so begins a strong friendship. |
7424093 | /m/02615h1 | The Man-Eater of Malgudi | R. K. Narayan | 1961 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | This story revolves around sun which is the life of an Indian printer named Nataraj. Nataraj lives in a huge ancestral house in Malgudi, a fictional town in south India. This place is near Mempi hills which is very calm, pleasant and beautiful. He leads a contented lifestyle, with his own circle of friends, such as a poet, a journalist named Sen, and his one employee, Sastri. Like his other novel, Talkative Man, R.K. Narayan introduces a character who enters the life of Nataraj and the town of Malgudi. The character, Vasu, is a taxidermist who comes to Malgudi in search of the wildlife in Mempi hills near Malgudi. His introduction begins with his arrival at Nataraj's printing press, where he demands the printing of 500 visiting cards. This arrival begins the relationship between Vasu and Nataraj. While Nataraj wasn't sure whether Vasu is a friend or an enemy, he likes the company of Vasu because being around him is fun. Vasu is a bully, and is once compared to a Rakshasa (a Demon) by Nataraj and Sastri. Vasu takes up residence in the attic of Nataraj's press by chance and convinces Nataraj that he would stay there as a guest(self declared) only for a few days until he gets put up some place else. Little known to Nataraj, Vasu sees the place very suitable for his activities as a taxidermist plans otherwise. Vasu is a 'pahelwan' (muscleman), proud of his strength. As the story continues, Vasu encroaches on Nataraj's life, every now and then bullies away his friends, his customers, shoots someone's pet dog and many other animals and birds near the dwelling place, poaches wildlife from Mempi hills, creates stench in the neighborhood through his activities as a taxidermist, when Nataraj questions this, Vasu files a complaint with rent control authority on Nataraj as a self declared tenant, entertaining women in the attic, disturbs the peace of Malgudi, whom the narrator refers to as "the man eater of Malgudi" As in Talkative Man, the end comes with the commemoration of a function. This time, it is for the release of a poetry book on Krishna by his poet friend. Rangi informs Nataraj that Vasu wants to kill Kumar, the elephant, which Nataraj had brought down from Mempi Hills to treat an ailment as a favour to one of his friends. Muthu- tea shop owner helps Nataraj, when Nataraj happens to meet him under unexpected circumstance, owing to Vasu's adventures. Now Nataraj comes to know of the plans of Vasu to shoot Kumar, the temple elephant, for his collection and business. The protagonists frantically try to stop him, but in vain. As Nataraj decides to talk to Vasu for once and for all, he finds Vasu sleeping, but the next morning he discovers that Vasu is dead. The autopsy takes place with the verdict being that he was not poisoned and there were no signs of any physical injury. The case is closed, but the reputation of Nataraj's press is ruined and his friends and other people start avoiding him. Later, Nataraj learns through his friend Sastri that Vasu was not murdered, but died in an attempt to smash a mosquito sitting on his temple. He had damaged one of his nerves with his powerful hand and died instantly. Now Nataraj was rid of Vasu, and the story ends on the note that all demons-rakshashas, devils and monsters-are the downfall of themselves. The narration is very humorous and lively all along and alone. |
7425376 | /m/02616v0 | Finite and Infinite Games | James P. Carse | null | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/037mh8": "Philosophy"} | With this philosophy text, Carse demonstrates a way of looking at actions in life as being a part of at least two types of what he describes as "games", finite and infinite. Both games are played within rules, as agreed upon by the participants; however, the meaning of the rules are different between the two types of games. The book stresses a non-serious (or "playful") view of life on the part of "players", referring to their choices as "moves", and societal constructs and mores as "rules" and "boundaries". He regularly employs familiar terms in specilaized ways, but casts them as associated with finite or infinite play & players. Boundaries are "rules" that one must stay within when playing a finite game, in contrast with horizons, which move with the player, and are constantly changing as he or she "plays". In short, a finite game is played with the purpose of winning (thus ending the game), while an infinite game is played with the purpose of continuing the play. Finite games have a definite beginning and ending. They are played with the goal of winning. A finite game is resolved within the context of its rules, with a winner of the contest being declared and receiving a victory. The rules exist to ensure the game is finite. Examples are debates, sports, receiving a degree from an educational institution, belonging to a society, or engaging in war. Beginning to participate in a finite game requires conscious thought, and is voluntary; continued participation in a round of the game is involuntary. Even exiting the game early must be provided for by the rules. This may be likened to a zero sum game (though not all finite games are literally zero sum, in that the sum of positive outcomes can vary). Infinite games, on the other hand, do not have a knowable beginning or ending. They are played with the goal of continuing play and a purpose of bringing more players into the game. An infinite game continues play, for sake of play. If the game is approaching resolution because of the rules of play, the rules must be changed to allow continued play. The rules exist to ensure the game is infinite. The only known example is life. Beginning to participate in an infinite game may be involuntary, in that it doesn't require conscious thought. Continuing participation in the current round of game-play is voluntary. "It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely" (p. 4). Carse continues these conceptualizations across all major spheres of human affairs. He extends his themes broadly over several intellectual arenas that are largely otherwise disparate disciplines. He describes human pursuits as either dramatic (requiring participation) or theatrical (participation is optional). This distinction hinges on an agent's decision to engage in one state of affairs or another. If motherhood is a requirement and a duty, there are rules to be obeyed and goals to be achieved. This is motherhood as tragic drama. If motherhood is a choice and a process, it becomes ennobling theater. Carse spans objective and subjective realms and bridges many gaps among different scholarly traditions. |
7426266 | /m/02617zj | The Anomalies | Joey Goebel | 2003 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | In a small town in Kentucky, five outsiders have come together: an eighty-year-old woman who walks around in cowboy boots and a Sex Pistols t-shirt; a beautiful woman in a wheelchair; a young Iraqi searching for the American soldier he wounded in the First Gulf War; a precocious young girl; and an extremely articulate African American, who seems to be constantly on drugs but in reality makes his way through life completely sober. Wherever the five "freaks" show up, people laugh at them. The passion that unites them is music, their shared dream is to conquer the world with their music, and together they form the power-pop new-wave heavy-metal punk-rock band known as The Anomalies. In the words of their lead singer, "The only way to make this a better place would be for God to drop the bomb." Alone they are only outsiders, but as a group they might just be the bomb that God does not want to drop… |
7426483 | /m/026184q | The White Castle | Orhan Pamuk | 1985 | {"/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The story begins with a frame tale in the form of a preface written by historian Faruk Darvinoglu (a character referenced in Pamuk’s previous book, The Silent House) between 1984 and 1985, according to the fictional dedication to the character’s late sister at the beginning of the frame tale. Faruk recalls finding the story that follows in a storage room while looking through an archive in the governor’s office in Gebze, among old bureaucratic papers. He takes the transcript, fascinated by its presence in such a place. During his breaks from work, he begins trying to find a source for the tale, hoping to authenticate its events and author. He is able to connect the author to Italy, but is unable to make any further progress. An acquaintance tells him that manuscripts such as the one he found could be found throughout the many old, wooden houses of Istanbul, mistaken for ancient Korans, and left venerated and unread. With some encouragement, he decides to publish the manuscript. The preface ends with Faruk noting that the publisher chose the title of the book, and a remark on the nature of modern readers will try to connect the dedication to his sister to the tale that follows. The story proper begins with an unnamed narrator being captured by the Turkish fleet while sailing from Venice to Naples. When the captain hesitates, the ship is taken, and the narrator and his fellows are captured. The narrator, fearing for his life, claims to be a doctor. Using basic anatomy, he’s able to bluff successfully, but he is still imprisoned when the ship arrives. During his imprisonment, he is brought before the pasha, who has fallen ill. He admits finally that he is not a doctor, but nonetheless manages to cure the pasha. Though he is still a slave, he begins to gain preferential treatment among the slaves and prison guards. When prisoners from Spain arrives, he tries to get word of home, to no avail. The pasha commissions him work on a fireworks display for his son’s wedding. He is surprised when the man he is to work with looks the same as him. The narrator works with Hoja, believing that he’ll have nothing useful to share with Hoja. He is surprised when Hoja tries to tout a poorly translated copy of Almageist, which receives a lukewarm reaction from the narrator. The two work on the fireworks display and the narrator’s insights onto contemporary science goes a great deal to assist his doppelganger, leading to the display’s success. After the wedding, the pasha offers the narrator his freedom under the condition that he convert to Islam. When he refuses, a mock execution is staged to pressure him. When he refuses even then, the pasha commends him and ridicules him for his stubbornness, before turning him over to Hoja’s custody. While living with Hoja, the narrator is the subject to Hoja’s cruelty, ambitions, and inquiries. Using the narrator’s knowledge of astronomy, as well as tales from Italy, he’s able to entertain the young sultan. Hoja reveals his goal of gaining the sultan’s favor in order to obtain the position as court astrologer. As Hoja becomes interested in the narrator’s past, the two try to swap stories of “why” they are the way they are. While the narrator is able to do so, Hoja is unable to, as he is unable to find any flaws within himself. As the narrator continues to write about his past, Hoja becomes increasingly malicious and taunts the narrator over his past misdeeds, and claims that while he cannot admit his faults, because the narrator can, Hoja can claim superiority over him. When the plague breaks out, he uses the narrator’s fear of it to torment him further. When it appears that the plague has killed him, the narrator runs away. Hoja, still alive, reclaims him. Hoja continues trying to learn about the narrator’s past. After the plague subsides, Hoja obtains the post of imperial astrologer. Competing over the influence of the sultan’s mother and his youthful impatience, he sets out to create a great weapon that will prove his brilliance, and that of the Ottoman Empire's. They work on the weapon for the next six years. During this time, the narrator is shocked at how much Hoja knows about his past, and his mannerisms, and can imitate him perfectly. The narrator has nightmares about his loss of identity. The weapon is completed in time for a siege on Edirne, with the goal of a taking a the titular white castle, the castle Doppio. The narrator learns from a distance that the weapon has not only failed, but that the Poles that they were attacking have obtained reinforcements from Kazakhstan, Hungary, and Austria. Fearing for his life, Hoja abandons the narrator and vanishes. The narrator goes into hiding as well. The book closes with the narrator, now in his seventies, talking about his life after the failure at Edirne. He is married, with children, and has done quite well financially while he worked as royal astrologer, though he resigned his post before the intrigue got him killed. He has accepted that travelers that he sees are not coming to see him. He ponders what became of ‘Him’, who’d escaped to Italy. A traveling author, Evliya Chelebi, seeks him out, hoping to learn about Italy, as he’d once owned an Italian slave. The narrator agrees, and the two men share stories over the course of two weeks, before departing. The narrator tells us that it is this incident that inspired him to record the previous events of his life. |
7428038 | /m/02619v1 | Nothing But Blue Skies | Tom Holt | 2001 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy", "/m/01z4y": "Comedy", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The plot of the book concerns a Chinese Dragon, Karen, who falls in love with a mortal, Paul, and so decides to become mortal herself in the hope that they get together. However, she is not any ordinary dragon; she is the daughter of the adjutant-general to the Dragon King of the North West. Naturally her father is worried and comes to look for her, but he falls foul of the Weathermen, who consider dragons their sworn enemies. The Weathermen though fall foul of a government plot to cause a drought in Britain as a pretext for invading Australia. Actually, this is also a cover for the real reason. Paul is really the runaway son of an Australian global media tycoon, who wants to lure the dragons to his outback hideaway. Here he uses a machine to disarm their abilities in order to use their 'third eye' as a super-efficient mode of multimedia communication. |
7431745 | /m/0261f8_ | Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme | Molière | null | null | The play takes place at Mr. Jourdain's house in Paris. Jourdain is a middle-aged "bourgeois" whose father grew rich as a cloth merchant. The foolish Jourdain now has one aim in life, which is to rise above this middle-class background and be accepted as an aristocrat. To this end, he orders splendid new clothes and is very happy when the tailor's boy mockingly addresses him as "my Lord". He applies himself to learning the gentlemanly arts of fencing, dancing, music and philosophy, despite his age; in doing so he continually manages to make a fool of himself, to the disgust of his hired teachers. His philosophy lesson becomes a basic lesson on language in which he is surprised and delighted to learn that he has been speaking prose all his life without knowing it: :« Par ma foi ! il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela. » Madame Jourdain, his intelligent wife, sees that he is making a fool of himself and urges him to return to his previous middle-class life, and to forget all he has learned. A cash-strapped nobleman called Dorante has attached himself to M. Jourdain. He secretly despises Jourdain but flatters his aristocratic dreams. For example, by telling Jourdain that he mentioned his name to the King at Versailles he can get Jourdain to pay his debts. Jourdain's dreams of being highclass go higher and higher. He dreams of marrying a Marchioness, Dorimene, and having his daughter Lucille marry a nobleman. But Lucille is in love with the middle-class Cléonte. Of course, M. Jourdain refuses his permission for Lucille to marry Cléonte. Then Cléonte, with the assistance of his valet Covielle and Mme Jourdain, disguises himself and presents himself to Jourdain as the son of the Sultan of Turkey. Jourdain is taken in and is very pleased to have his daughter marry foreign royalty. He is even more delighted when the "Turkish prince" informs him that, as father of the bride, he too will be officially ennobled at a special ceremony. The play ends with this ridiculous ceremony, including Sabir standing in for Turkish. |
7432071 | /m/0261fnc | Jelly's Last Jam | George C. Wolfe | null | null | The play opens with the recently deceased Morton in a state of limbo, looking back on his life. He is reluctantly guided by the mysterious 'Chimney Man' who forces him to recall the more painful moments of his life when he attempts to ignore or embellish them. Born into an old and wealthy Creole family in New Orleans, the young Morton rebels against his upbringing going into the streets and absorbing the rhythms of the vendors and poor blacks, meeting blues musician Buddy Bolden. When his Creole grandmother discovers his new lifestyle she disowns him. Forced to go on the road, Morton becomes a prominent composer and musician, and the self-proclaimed creator of Jazz. However, his sadness over his family's rejection causes him to stress his Creole ancestry and claim that there are 'no black notes in my song.' Eventually his pride and racism cause him to betray his best friend and the woman he loves. In his later years, as the Jazz culture continues to grow, Morton is largely forgotten and reduced to dealing with crooked music publishers and gangsters, eventually dying of a knife wound in the colored wing of a Los Angeles hospital. At the moment of his death, Morton at last admits to his heritage - "Ain't no black notes in my song/I was wrong/ I was wrong." At this moment, the shadows of the people in his life surround him to congratulate him, and Morton takes his place in history among the other Jazz legends. |
7434443 | /m/0261jn0 | Venus in Furs | Leopold von Sacher-Masoch | 1870 | {"/m/02js9": "Erotica", "/m/01qxvh": "Romance novel"} | The framing story concerns a man who dreams of speaking to Venus about love while she wears furs. The unnamed narrator tells his dreams to a friend, Severin, who tells him how to break him of his fascination with cruel women by reading a manuscript, Memoirs of a Suprasensual Man. This manuscript tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he asks to be her slave, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways. At first Wanda does not understand or accede to the request, but after humouring Severin a bit she finds the advantages of the method to be interesting and enthusiastically embraces the idea, although at the same time she disdains Severin for allowing her to do so. Severin describes his feelings during these experiences as suprasensuality. Severin and Wanda travel to Florence. Along the way, Severin takes the generic Russian servant's name of "Gregor" and the role of Wanda's servant. In Florence, Wanda treats him brutally as a servant, and recruits a trio of African women to dominate him. The relationship arrives at a crisis when Wanda herself meets a man to whom she would like to submit, a Byronic hero known as Alexis Papadopolis. At the end of the book, Severin, humiliated by Wanda's new lover, loses the desire to submit. He says of Wanda: |
7438794 | /m/0261q7z | Reminiscences of a Stock Operator | Edwin Lefèvre | 1923 | null | The book tells the story of Livermore's progression from day trading in the then so-called "New England bucket shops," to market speculator, market maker, and market manipulator, and finally to Wall Street where he made and lost his fortune several times over. Along the way, Livermore learns many lessons, which he happily shares with the reader. |
7439984 | /m/0261rp1 | Sweetblood | Pete Hautman | null | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/03mfnf": "Young adult literature"} | :"There are only two races that matter: the Living and the Undead. :And with every year that passes, the numbers of Undead grow. It is inevitable." So says 16-year-old Lucy Szabo. She has a theory: hundreds of years ago, before the discovery of insulin, slowly dying diabetics were the original vampires. Lucy, a diabetic herself, counts herself among the modern Undead. As Sweetblood, Lucy frequents the Transylvania room, an internet chatroom where so-called vampires gather. But Draco, one of the other visitors to Transylvania, claims to be a real vampire--and Lucy's not entirely sure he's kidding. As Lucy becomes more involved with the vampire subculture, the rest of her life comes to seem unimportant. Her grades plummet, her relationship with her parents deteriorates, and her ability to regulate her blood sugar worsens dramatically. Then she meets Draco, face to face, and he invites her into his strange world. Lucy realizes that she needs to make some difficult choices--if it isn't already too late. |
7446606 | /m/0261_8v | A Bad Case of Stripes | David Shannon | 1998 | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | A girl named Camilla Cream loves lima beans but doesn't want to eat them because she wants to fit in. One day she wakes up to discover stripes on her body. Her parents then call the doctor, who then issues his verdict: she can still go to school. Unfortunately, once there, the other kids taunt her by calling out colors so that her color changes. She is then sent home because the faculty is worried the stripes are contagious. The doctor also bring in other doctors to examine the case. He gives her bitter pills to take before bed. However, after taking a pill, she wakes up to find herself transformed into a pill. The doctor calls in experts, and by this time, Camilla is recognized by the media as the "amazing transforming kid". While the experts talk to each other, thinking if it's a virus, bacteria or fungus, the infections grow on Camilla, and this continues until Camilla's face is not recognizable and grows roots, berries, crystals, feathers, and a long furry cat tail. When a spiritual counselor confronts Camilla, telling her to "become one with her room" she does exactly that, and melts onto the walls of her bedroom, taking control of the bed, the dresser and two picture frames as her face. Then, an old woman visits her and offers her lima beans. At first she rejects, still feeling self conscious, but before the woman leaves she has second thoughts. The lady then throws the beans inside her mouth. The walls then swirl and Camilla forms into a girl again. |
7447281 | /m/026200k | Black Water | Joyce Carol Oates | 1992-05 | {"/m/04rlf": "Music", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The book begins with Kelly Kelleher in a car that is plunging into mucky, swampy, "black water." We learn the events that led up to the accident in flashbacks as she is drowning: Kelly Kelleher attends a Fourth of July party hosted by her friend Buffy St. John and her lover, Ray Annick. She is planning to stay with them for the weekend. Buffy is the "more worldly" of the two young women; the irony in this is that it is completely out of character for Kelly to get herself into such a situation. Ray has invited "The Senator" about whom Kelly wrote her graduate thesis. He immediately is interested in her sexually; he pays attention solely to her as the party drags on, and they discuss their common political beliefs. He follows her to the beach where he kisses her, and then invites her to come to his hotel with him on the ferry. As she packs her bags, Buffy tries to convince her not to go or to go later but Kelly thinks that this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance and goes with him, despite the fact that he has been drinking and that she is not entirely sure that she is "ready" for any sort of relationship. The Senator is drunk and takes the "old" Ferry Road instead of the "new" one; he is driving recklessly and drives directly through a guardrail into a marsh. We find later that, had he made the turn, the car probably would have fallen into the water a short distance down the road at an old bridge. The car sinks passenger side-down. At this point, The Senator uses Kelly's body to jettison himself upwards,out of the driver's side door. She tries to hold on to him to pull herself free; he kicks her, leaving his shoe in her hand. Kelly, badly injured and delirious, continually imagines that he will come back to "save" her, and also that he has gone for help. She repeatedly imagines seeing him outside of the car, or that she feels the car shaking as he tries to get her out. She trusts The Senator until the very end of her life, certain that he will save her; it is possible that, because of this, she misses out on highly important lucid moments in which she could possibly save herself. In reality, The Senator has stumbled to an outdoor phone booth, carefully staying out of sight of passing cars, to call Ray Annick. He tells Annick that Kelly became emotional and pushed the wheel because she was drunk, thus causing the accident, and that she is already dead. Meanwhile, Kelly is following an ever-shrinking bubble of air to the top of the car. She panics and imagines that she is rescued and sent to the hospital where the "black water" is pumped from her stomach; this parallels an episode from college in which a suitemate tried to kill herself and had to have her stomach pumped. Kelly gets her imagery of the experience from the description of the other girl. The reader also learns about Kelly's own bout with suicidal thought and depression, triggered by the end of a relationship; Ironically, she has decided that she wants her life, that she wants to live, and this was part of the reason she decided to leave the party with The Senator in the first place. She also repeatedly imagines her parents, and how she will explain to them that she is a "good girl" and argues that The Senator and his wife are separated, his children grown, and that their affair is causing no harm. She remembers an article she wrote arguing against the death penalty in which she details the more gruesome and torturous aspects of different methods of execution; this underscores the cruelty and horror of her death. As she grows closer and closer to death, her hallucinations become more vivid until she is imagining her parents, very old, watching her being pulled from the water in horror. She imagines herself as a child reaching up to be carried. The book ends with a line that is repeated throughout the book: "As the black water filled her lungs, and she died." |
7454068 | /m/02627h4 | Venus in Copper | Lindsey Davis | 1991 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02p0szs": "Historical fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0hwxm": "Historical novel", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The story begins in Rome during late spring, AD 71. Falco is in the Latumiae Prison, accused by Anacrites of having stolen imperial lead (Shadows in Bronze). Bailed out by his mother, Falco is heading across the city to visit Helena Justina when he is beaten up by his landlord's bullyboys for defaulting on his rent. When he finally arrives at the senator's house near the Capena Gate, he finds Helena in a reception room. Marcus decides to resume working as an independent, despite the fact that this means he is unlikely to be able to earn enough money to buy himself into a higher rank so that he can marry Helena. Hyacinthus arrives at Falco's apartment in Fountain Court to inform him of possible clients. Falco agrees to visit the Hortensii, who live on the Pincian Hill. There, Sabina Pollia informs him that all of the Hortensii (Crepito, Felix, Novus and their wives) live together in the one house. Former slaves in the same household, they have now earned their freedom and set up in business together. Novus is the only one currently unwed and he is due to marry Severina Zotica. Sabina Pollia informs Falco that she believes Severina plans to murder Novus. Falco investigates the claims. At the same time he also begins to hunt for a new apartment in which to live. During the course of the investigation, Falco is once more arrested and imprisoned in the Latumiae. Two days later he is brought before Titus Caesar. Anacrites brings forth his charges regarded the lead. Falco is freed, provided he repays whatever is owed for the lead to the Emperor, and is asked to undertake more work for the Palace. He agrees to be available provided he is paid for previous missions that have already been completed. This is agreed to by Titus and he is invited to dinner. As a present, the Emperor's son promises him a turbot. Returning to the house of the Hortensii, Falco discovers that Novus is dead on the privy after a banquet. He has been poisoned. Severina comes under suspicion. Falco continues to investigate, but can find no real lead. Sabina wants to pay him off and considers him a failure, when the news arrives that Viridovix, the Hortensii's gaulish cook, is also dead. He too had been poisoned. The arrival of the turbot becomes the cause of an impromptu party amongst friends and family of the Didii. Helena arrives, complete with baggage with which to move in with Falco, only to discover that she had not been invited to the party. Distraught, she attempts to leave and is prevented by Falco. Then Titus and the Praetorians arrive to sample the fish. At the end of the party, Helena remains behind. Continuing to investigate the Hortensii, Falco is beaten badly by thugs working for Appius Priscillus. He is finally helped to Petronius', who sends for Helena. Helena takes him home to their new apartment. When he finally recovers, he continues to investigate. He returns from the Hortensii in time to see the apartment block in which they are living collapse. Believing Helena to be inside, Falco and others begin to dig. Helena arrives just as all hope seems lost. Falco discovers that the Hortensii had owned the apartment block and that Severina had poisoned Novus as revenge for being responsible for the shoddy building which collapsed on and killed her lover. She had also ordered the demolition of his apartment in an apparent attempt to kill Helena, but he is unable to prove anything. Falco and Helena move back into Fountain Court. |
7455725 | /m/02629pb | Monday Mourning | Kathy Reichs | 2004 | {"/m/0lsxr": "Crime Fiction", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | The plot of the story revolves around Temperance trying to decipher the clues left behind by the skeletons of three girls found in a pizza parlor basement, which has a colourful history. Temperance's forensic expertise tells her that the people were buried after 1955, but homicide detective Luc Claudel is convinced the bones are pre-1955, and dismisses the case. Temperance's frustration at Claudel for not investigating the case grows and she decides to take it on herself. From simply the remains of the three girls, she follows the clues which include a frightened old lady, a crazed man with a S&M fetish, and finally a girl who has been subjected to so much sexual torture, she develops a taste for it herself. |
7458987 | /m/0262dy_ | Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea | Robert K. Massie | 2004 | {"/m/05h83": "Non-fiction"} | The book begins in the lead-up to the declaration of hostilities between Germany and Britain, whereas Massie's previous work ended with the beginning of the war. All the significant naval strategies and battles of World War I are covered, including the Battle of Coronel, where a German squadron led by Admiral Maximilian von Spee destroyed a weaker British cruiser squadron under the command of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock; the ensuing Battle of the Falkland Islands where von Spee's force was annihilated by a superior British squadron; the Battle of Dogger Bank (1915); Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign; and a detailed multichapter narrative of the Battle of Jutland and its aftermath. Other chapters describe German submarine warfare and events triggering America's entry into the war. There are also chapters dedicated to central personalities such as British Admirals John Jellicoe and David Beatty and the German Admirals Franz von Hipper and Reinhard Scheer. The book ends with an account of the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow. A number of maps and photographs are included. |
7459430 | /m/0262fgj | Gambit | Rex Stout | null | {"/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/028v3": "Detective fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction", "/m/0c3351": "Suspense"} | Sally Blount's father, Matthew Blount, has been arrested for the murder of Paul Jerin, a chess master. Blount had arranged for Jerin to play twelve simultaneous games of blindfold chess at his club. Well into the contest, Jerin complains of physical discomfort and cannot continue. Shortly thereafter, Jerin dies of what tests show to be arsenic poisoning. During the contest, Jerin had been sitting by himself in a small library off the chess club's main game room. He had nothing to eat or drink except a pot of hot chocolate, brought to him by Blount. After Jerin fell ill, he was diagnosed by a doctor who was playing in the contest; the doctor called for an ambulance but Jerin died at a hospital. Not only had Blount brought the hot chocolate to Jerin, he had washed out the pot and the cup after Jerin complained that he didn't feel well. Blount is charged with murder. The only people to enter the library where Jerin sat, other than Blount, were four messengers, who relayed the moves between the main game room and the library. The messengers apparently had no good opportunity to put arsenic in Jerin's chocolate. Dan Kalmus is Blount's corporate lawyer, and represents Blount after he has been jailed without bail. Blount's daughter Sally is convinced, however, that Kalmus is in love with Blount's wife Anna, and that he won't be inclined to give Blount his best legal efforts. Furthermore, Blount's specialty is business law, not criminal law, and he might not have the needed background. But Sally is certain that her father is innocent, so she hires a reluctant Wolfe to investigate on her father's behalf. Neither Wolfe nor Archie seems to have his heart in the case because the circumstances point so clearly at Blount. And Wolfe learns from the police that their own inquiries discovered no connection between the messengers and Jerin, whereas Blount was unhappy that Jerin had been seeing Sally. Because none of the messengers could have a motive to kill Jerin, and because he has assumed that Sally is correct that her father didn't, Wolfe conjectures that Jerin was poisoned not because the murderer had it in for Jerin, but to get at Blount, whose apparent motive would surely get him arrested. Wolfe's hypothesis, then, is that Jerin was a pawn, sacrificed in a gambit to get rid of Blount. Wolfe speaks with each of the messengers as the best alternative suspects, to try to determine which of them might have wanted Blount, not Jerin, out of the way. Each of the four has a possible motive: Sally thinks Kalmus is in love with her mother, Farrow would like to take over Blount's firm, Yerkes wants Blount's vote in a board election but won't get it, and Hausman resents Blount for going easy on him in chess games but winning anyway. Wolfe learns that there is, in Blount's words, "a certain fact" known only to Blount and to Kalmus that will demonstrate his innocence. The fact turns out to be that Blount really did put something in Jerin's chocolate, but it was sedative in effect, not poisonous. This puts a very different face on things, and as a result Wolfe and Archie, independently, are able to infer both the murderer's identity and how the arsenic got into Jerin. |
7463087 | /m/02pcf78 | Glasshouse | Charles Stross | 2006-06 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction"} | It is the 27th century. The culture featured in the novel is based on the culture portrayed in the last chapter of Accelerando, "Survivor" (full chapter here). Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy using the wormhole technology copied from the alien routers, forming a plethora of societies and 'polities'. Robin, a human male, is recovering from a memory excision process in a rehabilitation centre. Though he remembers nothing of his past life(s), he suspects that he lived through traumatic times as a participant in the series of wars that raged many years before. Suspecting that he has been targeted for assassination by persons unknown, he agrees to sign-up with a radical, isolated social experiment that will attempt to recreate the forgotten "Dark Ages", the late 20th and early 21st centuries. On being transferred to the polity in which the program is being held, he discovers that he has been given the body of a woman, Reeve. As the experiment unfolds, she begins to suspect that all is not what it seems, and that the founders of the experiment are engaged in a very sinister conspiracy. Slowly, she realises that her role is not as clear-cut as she originally thought, which leads her to question, and then struggle against the program. In the context of the novel, "glasshouse" refers to a military prison. The polity in which the bulk of the story takes place was formerly a high-security facility for war criminals. The term was first used to describe the glass-roofed military detention barracks based in Aldershot, UK, in the mid-19th century. Stross also refers to the Glasshouse as a type of panopticon, a prison constructed in such a way that the guards in the center can see everything the prisoners are doing, but the prisoners can never tell if the guards are watching. Philosopher Michel Foucault used the model to represent the way humans tend to conform to and internalize societal ideals based on this kind of omnipresent gaze, an idea Stross exploits in the novel. |
7467622 | /m/0262ng7 | Under the Skin | Michel Faber | 2000 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | The protagonist is Isserley, an extraterrestrial sent to Earth by a rich corporation on her planet to pick up unwary hitchhikers. She drugs them and delivers them to her compatriots, who mutilate and fatten her victims so that they can be turned into meat—human ("vodsel") flesh is a delicacy on the aliens' barren homeworld. The novel is darkly satirical. It touches on political themes around big business, intensive farming, and environmental decay; and reflects on more personal questions of sexual identity, humanity, snobbery, and mercy. |
7471298 | /m/0262sc5 | A Theory of Relativity | null | null | null | When Ray and Georgia McKenna-Nye are killed in a horrific car crash, leaving their daughter Keefer Kathryn an orphan, the couple's respective families both believe they are the right people to raise the girl, and consequently file for custody. This book is essentially about the events surrounding the ensuing legal process which will decide Keefer's future. Keefer's maternal family are the McKennas, a Catholic family of Irish descent, and of modest means, living in rural Wisconsin. Prior to their deaths, Ray and Georgia had lived nearby and the family are fairly close. The paternal family, meanwhile, are the Nyes, born again Christians living in Florida who, though much more financially better off than the McKennas, do not appear to be as close. The McKennas are initially given guardianship of Keefer after managing to file their case first. However, Georgia's parents, Mark and Lorraine, realise that they may be too old to adopt the girl, so Georgia's brother, Gordon, is encouraged to seek custody of his niece. There are problems here, though, as Gordon is single, while he and Georgia were adopted, and adopted children do not have the same rights under Wisconsin law as blood relatives. As a result of these factors, Gordon's petition is eventually turned down by a Wisconsin judge and interim custody granted to the Nyes with a view to Keefer eventually being adopted by her father's relatives. Gordon is given permission to appeal the decision and quickly decides to do so. The driving force behind the Nyes plan to adopt Keefer are Ray's parents, Raymond Senior and his wife Diane. However, they do not personally seek custody of Keefer either, and because of circumstances, their children are also unable to. So, their niece (Ray's cousin) Delia, and her husband Craig, file for custody. Delia already has a teenage daughter, Alex, from a previous marriage, but she and Craig believe they are unable to have children. They also live in Wisconsin, and are seen by the social services as having a more suitable family structure for raising a young girl. While Keefer is living with Craig and Delia, the McKennas launch a campaign to have the law changed in a bid to prevent other adopted people from facing similar problems in the future. Their efforts bring them to the attention of local politician Phil Kay, who champions their cause in the Wisconsin legislature, and the relative changes are passed unanimously. Shortly before the appeal is to be held, it emerges that Delia is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, and has also become pregnant. She is unable to take her medication during her pregnancy and is not coping very well with having to look after a young child. At the appeal, the judge advises the two families that it would be better for everyone concerned, and particularly Keefer, if they were able to sort things out between themselves rather than through the courts. Taking this on board, Gordon decides to give up his bid to adopt Keefer, but only on the proviso that Delia and Craig stay in the area until Keefer is at least five. An agreement is reached and the adoption process begins. However, shortly after giving birth to a boy, who is named Hugh, Delia suffers a severe brain haemorrhage and is placed on a life support machine. When the McKennas learn what has happened, they go to the hospital to offer Craig their support. He is at first reluctant to accept this, but as Delia's condition deteriorates, he begins to realise the full gravity of the situation. He and Gordon then have a heart to heart in which they discuss Keefer's future. The final chapter of the book catches up with Keefer as a ten year old, and she narrates the events of the intervening years. She is adopted by Gordon after Delia dies. Delia's daughter, Alex, goes to live with her father, while Craig raises Hugh with Gordon's help and advice, and the two become good friends. Gordon and Alex then meet again some years later when Alex becomes a counsellor at Keefer's school. They have a relationship and the story concludes with Alex giving birth to a daughter. |
7477469 | /m/0262ygr | Gila Monsters Meet you at the Airport | null | null | {"/m/0dwly": "Children's literature"} | A young boy from New York City must confront apprehensions about his new life as his parents move West. He soon finds his fears that the region is populated by baseball-hating buffalo chasers are unfounded, and that he can indeed find room to sit among the cactuses. |
7482096 | /m/02631sd | Wives and Concubines | Su Tong | null | {"/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | Lotus is attending college when her father's tea business goes bankrupt and he commits suicide. She chooses to become a concubine in the rich Chen household in order to avoid having to work. From the beginning, she does not fit into the household with its three other wives. Initially, the first mistress Joy ignores her, the second mistress Cloud befriends her, and the third mistress Coral acts with outright hostility. Coral goes so far as to interrupt Lotus's wedding night with the lie that she has taken ill. In spite of this, Lotus is favored by Chen. Shortly after her arrival, Chen's elder son Feipu, who is older than Lotus, comes home. He favors Lotus's company and she begins to fall for him, especially because he plays the flute so well and movingly. Meanwhile, one evening when they are playing mahjong, Lotus notices that Coral is flirting with a doctor. Swallow, Lotus's special servant, hates her and neglects her duties whenever possible. One day, Lotus accuses Swallow of stealing her flute and searches Swallow's trunk. Instead of finding the flute, she finds a doll with pins stuck in its chest. The doll has "Lotus" written on it, and Lotus demands to know who wrote the word for the illiterate Swallow. It is revealed that Cloud was the one who helped her. That night, Chen Zuoqian admits that he was the one who stole and destroyed her flute because he was afraid it was a lover's token. Instead of forgiving him, she bursts into tears and he leaves her. Cloud asks Lotus to cut her hair the next morning, and Lotus cuts her ear. Coral is impressed by Lotus's action and warms further to her. Coral reveals that Cloud attempted to poison her and cause a miscarriage when they were both pregnant. Coral nevertheless gives birth to a son, Feilan. When Chen Zuoqian celebrates his 50th birthday, more domestic strife breaks out. Feilan and Yirong (Cloud's child) knock over a vase and the resulting fight gives Lotus a headache. She goes outside to help it go away and instead she ends up next to an abandoned well in which three concubines of previous husbands had died. She has a hallucination in which a hand reaches out of the well water and a voice tells her to come down. Shaken, she returns to the party. Chen Zuoqian is extremely angry with her and he barely acknowledges her gift. Unfortunately, her gift is less expensive than the others'. She tries to make up for it by kissing Chen, but he gets angry. She leaves the room weeping. Feipu arrives with his flute teacher and friend, Young Master Gu, as well as a replacement flute for Lotus. Joy interrupts the flute lesson, however, and Young Master Gu leaves because the mood is destroyed by Feipu's absence. Afterwards, Feipu tells Lotus she is different from other women, who frighten him, and leaves on a business trip. Chen Zuoqian finally decides to see Lotus. He forgives Lotus for her behavior at his birthday party, but Lotus is unwilling to have sex as she cannot stop thinking about Feipu. Chen eventually leaves her in disgust when she is unable to stop weeping. As a result of Lotus' attitude and the manipulations of Cloud, Lotus loses favor with Chen even more. Later, Cloud claims that Coral hired a boy to beat up her daughter Yirong. Only Lotus and Coral know the truth behind the second mistress' facade, and they slowly become closer friends. Lotus finds a drawing of her on a piece of soiled toilet paper and confronts Swallow with it. Swallow is afraid at being caught and does not want to be sent away. In a fit of anger, Lotus tells her to eat the toilet paper or be forced out of the Chen household. Swallow catches typhoid and Chen is infuriated with Lotus. Lotus realizes that her twentieth birthday has gone by and determines to celebrate. When the new servant returns with wine, she announces Swallow has died. Lotus is regretful but says that "dying is better than living." Feipu arrives and a tipsy Lotus reveals how she feels about him. Feipu confesses that he likes her but he is too afraid of women to do anything. After he leaves in shame, Lotus gets very drunk and has a hallucination in which Swallow kills her. The next morning, Lotus wakes up to see Coral leaving for town. When she comes back, she is escorted by several male servants; Cloud has caught her and the doctor in bed. Coral is locked in her room. That night, Lotus sits up expecting Swallow to return. Instead, she watches the household servants taking Coral from her room and throwing her into the haunted well. Witnessing the murder drives Lotus to insanity. |
7482662 | /m/02632gv | Hades' Daughter | Sara Douglass | 2002-12 | {"/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/01hmnh": "Fantasy"} | It starts with an act of revenge, and shall end in destruction. Hades Daughter opens the Troy Game quartet. It is set in the Late Bronze Age (approx. 1000-1200 BC) during the time of the great Aegean Catastrophe and some years after the fall of Troy. The action ranges between Naxos, western Greece and the mysterious land of Llangarlia in the Isle of Albion (Britain). The main characters are: * Genvissa, sixth daughter-heir of Ariadne (lover of Theseus), and the MagaLlan of Llangarlia. * Brutus, leader of the Trojans. * Membricus, Brutus' former lover and now his adviser. * Asterion, the murdered Minotaur, half-brother to Ariadne. * Cornelia, Brutus' wife, and the central character of the first three books of the series. * Corineus, Brutus' captain. * Coel, a Llangarlian mystic and warrior; also temporary lover of Cornelia. * Loth, a strange, enigmatic Llangarlian man with a distorted antler-shaped head. * Aerne, Gormagog of Llangarlia. * Mag, Mother Goddess of the Waters of Llangarlia. * And a host of various supporting characters. |
7482693 | /m/02632jk | Nude with Violin | Noël Coward | null | null | The play is set in Paris in 1954. The famous painter, Paul Sorodin, has died. His relatives and hangers-on converge on his studio, hopeful of financial gain, and are stunned to learn from his valet, Sebastien, that Sorodin has left a letter in which he admits that he never painted a picture in his life. The paintings of Sorodin’s supposed three major periods turn out to have been executed by a choleric aristocrat, Anya Pavlikov; a jolly barmaid, Cherry-May Waterton; and a Jamaican Seventh-day Adventist, Obadiah Lewellyn. |
7483462 | /m/02633cq | Sing to the Dawn | Minfong Ho | 1975 | {"/m/0707q": "Short story", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Dawan, a young village girl who lives in Thailand, wins a scholarship to study in a city school. Her brother, Kwai, places second and is initially jealous, causing a rift between the two previously-close siblings. This hostility is further exacerbated by Dawan's father, who feels that the city is no place for a female. Dawan faces obstacles at every turn, and eventually overcomes these obstacles and proves to herself and to others that she is fully capable of handling the scholarship and the responsibility it entails. |
7483782 | /m/02633wx | The Third Twin | Ken Follett | null | {"/m/01jfsb": "Thriller", "/m/02n4kr": "Mystery", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/02xlf": "Fiction"} | Jeannie Ferrami, Psy.D., is a newly-hired associate professor at the fictional Jones Falls University in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a criminality researcher and is attempting to isolate the influence of genes in personality, as opposed to upbringing; her interest in criminal tendencies may be due to her father, a professional burglar who, at the start of the novel, is serving out a fifteen-year prison sentence. Her financial conditions have also been recently strained; as the novel opens, she checks her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother into a shabby nursing home, which is all she and her sister Patty can afford. Jeannie, a talented tennis player, is unwinding after a match in the university gym when the smell of smoke is detected. Convinced it is a full-blown fire, she and the other occupants scurry out in various states of undress; in the process, she loses track of her friend Lisa Hoxton. Diving back into the building, Jeannie finds Lisa in a back room, having been raped by a man wearing a red baseball cap bearing the word "Security." Lisa receives no pity from the hospital staff and police officers assigned to the situation. The next morning they are attended by Lt. Michelle Delaware of the Sex Crimes Unit, a far-more-sympathetic woman who walks Lisa through the process of creating a facial composite of the suspect. She also explains that the fire was a set-up: just a bit of smoke to cause a panic. The perpetrator was not an opportunist, but a planner and a sociopath; a serial rapist. While they do so, Jeannie heads to the university to continue her study. She meets Steven Logan, a young man who flirted with her after her tennis match. He is handsome, charming, in his first year of law school, and only 22; despite the age difference, sparks fly. However, Steve was unaware that he was a twin, which is a vindication of Jeannie's recruitment system: she designed software to isolate possible identical twins raised apart by comparing the raw binary code of ECGs, dental X-rays, fingerprints and so on. Steven is the twin of Dennis Pinker, a man who is serving a life sentence for murder. This troubles Steve: as a teenager, he was provoked to rage by damage to a newly-purchased leather jacket, and beat the offender almost to death. He has always suspected that he has murderous impulses, and the existence of his twin confirms it. While Jeannie carries out the study, she and Steve are visited by Berrington Jones, famed researcher, professor at Jones Falls, and one of three owners of Threeplex, a medical research company that also provides a great deal of JFU's funding. Berry is shocked by the sight of Steve, and immediately calls up the other two Threeplex owners, Preston Barck and United States Senator Jim Proust, to inform them of Logan's involvement. It is revealed that the firm's three founders are racist and classist, and that Threeplex has secrets to hide, evidently pertaining to Steven Logan and Dennis Pinker. Furthermore, their futures are on the line: Threeplex is being considered for purchase by international conglomerate Landsmann for the sum of $180 million, which (among other things) will finance Proust's presidential campaign. Berrington takes immediate action to prevent Jeannie from conducting further research, alerting the press to the possible (and real) ethical issues of her search engine. Shortly after, Steve is arrested by Lt. Delaware for the rape of Lisa Hoxton; Lisa later picks him out of the line-up, though Steve insists (and Jeannie believes) that he is innocent. Steven suffers a torturous 48 hours in jail but is eventually released on bail of $200,000, offering as part of his conditions to stay away from Lisa Hoxton—though there might be complications, since he doesn't actually know what she looks like. At the same time, Jeannie is surprised by her father, who has just been released (six years early) for good behavior. The next day, she and Lisa visit Dennis Pinker in jail, confirming that he is, indeed, identical to Logan, but discovering (via interviews with him and his parents) that he had no twin brother given up for adoption, was born two weeks after Steve, and in a different hospital in a different state. Steven's parents corroborate this claim. Jeannie realizes what has happened when both sets of parents confess that the fathers were in the military when the couples sought fertility treatments at the Aventine Clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From a pamphlet at the clinic, Jeannie discovers that Aventine Clinic was founded by Threeplex in 1972 as a research center for in vitro fertilization. Shortly afterwards, she is approached by someone identical to Steve and Dennis. She mistakes him for Steve, and he attempts to rape her in her car. Berrington has been busy protecting Threeplex's secrets. When Jeannie meets Dr. Maurice Obell, president of JFU, concerning the ethics of her search program, spurred by an article in the New York Times, he successfully manipulates them into arguing instead of compromising. He then convinces Obell to fire her, though she is entitled to a hearing by the college's discipline committee. Finally, he bribes two members of the committee to make sure Jeannie is fired. When Jeannie arrives at her apartment in Baltimore, Steve is waiting for her. Her initial terror is calmed when her neighbor Mr. Oliver explains that Steve has been waiting there for two hours, making it impossible that he attacked her in Philadelphia. She then calls up Dennis Pinker's jail and confirms that he is still incarcerated. She and Steve realize the existence of the novel's titular "third twin," the man who attacked Jeannie in Philadelphia and, possibly, the man who raped Lisa. These cloned children were implanted, illegally, in Mrs. Logan's and Mrs. Pinker's wombs during their so-called fertility treatments. Even better, Jeannie has the means to discover how far the conspiracy goes: a friend of hers ran her search engine on the FBI's fingerprint database. Jeannie saves the data to a floppy disk, but before she can use it she is called in by Obell to be fired; by the time she returns, she has been locked out of her office. Her only hope is to win the hearing, with Steve serving as her lawyer. Unfortunately, though he does his best (and is complimented for his efforts by the lawyer representing the university), he is no match for a committee that has already made up its mind. Dr. Jean Ferrami is dismissed from her position at Jones Falls University. However, Jeannie has one more resource: her father, Pete Ferrami. The father-and-daughter duo manage to break into the JFU psychology building and then her office, and make off with not only the floppy disk (which Jeannie, in a fit of paranoia, labeled shopping.lst) but a printout of its contents. Both Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker are linked to a third name, Wayne Stattner, who turns out to be a nightclub impresario in New York City. She and Lt. Delaware fly to there to meet him. His apartment shrieks of sadism, but his alibi is airtight: he was at the Emmy Awards presentation and was seen on national television. However, like Mr. Pinker and Mr. Logan, Wayne's father was in the military at the time of his conception, and his mother sought fertility treatments at Aventine. There are four twins... At least. Conversation with Steven's father, Col. Charles Logan, reveals the motivation: a Super-Soldier program, rumored to have been initiated by Nixon. This only further shakes Steven's faith in himself: he is genetically disposed to murder and risk-taking behavior, and his biological parents might be total strangers. To further Jeannie's research, Col. Logan uploads her search program into The Pentagon's computers, and comes up with a total of eight names, which he smuggles to Steven just before he himself is arrested. Jeannie and Lisa use a nationwide CD-ROM phone book database to track down the remaining five. One, Per Erikson, is dead from a botched skiing stunt; one, Murray Claud, is in jail; one, Henry King, is still at large; George Dassault they are not able to reach at all; and the final one, Harvey Jones, they leave for last because of the number of Joneses in America. They find him in Philadelphia, and Jeannie drives down to investigate. Courtesy of a neighbor who has a spare key, Jeannie places the perpetrator due to the distinctive red "Security" baseball cap. The neighbor also informs her that Harvey often travels to Baltimore on Sundays... Berrington Jones has been sinking to ever-lower straits. Though he had hoped that bribing the discipline committee would be the end of it, he now finds himself following Jeannie around in his car. It is his intervention, and Proust's, that gets Col. Logan arrested, but Steve still has that damning list of eight names, and Berry quickly confirms that Jeannie has been in contact with all of them. He then confronts Harvey, his son, who raped Lisa Hoxton and assaulted Jeannie in Philadelphia (Proust's idea, carried out without Berrington's knowledge or approval). Berrington sends Harvey to Jeannie: if he pretends to be Steve, he can find out just how much she knows and what she plans. Harvey plays through the situation quite successfully until he displays a behavioral tic Jeannie has seen Berrington use (smoothing his eyebrow with his forefinger); with the timely arrival of the real Steve, as well as the neighboring Mr. Oliver, Harvey is subdued. Jeannie, Lisa and Steve decide on their course of action. Landsmann and Threeplex are holding a joint press conference tomorrow, at which they intend to announce the purchase; Jeannie will crash the party with as many twins as she can interest in tow, and tell her side of the story. (Steve makes the approaches.) Furthermore, they turn Berrington's plan back on him: they send Steve, posing as Harvey, into the enemy camp. While Jeannie, Lisa and Mr. Oliver smuggle Harvey into the hotel, Steve plays through the situation quite successfully until the next morning, when he fails to display a behavioral tic (a family in-joke); Berrington locks him in a bathroom and liberates his son. Fortunately, Jeannie's recruitment scheme succeeds, and Lisa shows up with Henry King, George Dassault and Wayne Stattner, who combined with Steve and Harvey are enough to draw the attention of the press. Steve also comes to a conclusion about himself when he turns down propositions from Berrington's maid, whom Harvey has apparently blackmailed into sexual servitude; he thanks his parents for his upbringing, and his unknown progenitors for their genes, but realizes that, ultimately, it is his choices that define him. The epilogue takes place during the next June (roughly nine months later). Jeannie and Steve are on their honeymoon, but first stop by the new rest home where Mrs. Ferrami lives for a re-cap. Berrington Jones, Preston Barck and Jim Proust have gone down in flames; Pete Ferrami has started a new and lucrative business providing security arrangements for people's homes; and Harvey Jones is serving five years for rape and arson. Jeannie has taken a lucrative position as head of genetics research for Landsmann. |
7484114 | /m/02634bb | The Andalite's Gift | K. A. Applegate | 1997-05 | {"/m/06n90": "Science Fiction", "/m/014dfn": "Speculative fiction", "/m/05hgj": "Novel"} | The Animorphs plan to have a lazy summer, with several Animorphs attending a pool party and Rachel going to a gymnastics camp. However, before she can leave for the camp, Rachel - in her eagle morph - takes a cruise through the air and, seeing Ax, attempts to say hello but is mobbed by smaller birds, who cause her to crash and lose consciousness. When she awakens, she has demorphed to human but has amnesia. Meanwhile, Jake and Cassie are attending the pool party. Because Marco was not invited, he decides to take Ax along. The two of them morph into mice and crash the party. After they are done terrorizing the guests, they run into the basement to demorph. However, when they demorph, they are attacked by a massive flying monster, known as a Veleek (yeerk word for "pet"). It destroys the house before abruptly dissolving into dust and leaving. The Animorphs regroup and discover that Rachel never made it to the gymnastics camp. Jake, Marco, and Tobias head into the forest to look for her. As Jake and Marco morph to wolves, the Veleek begins to chase after them, and they realize that the Veleek is drawn by the energy generated through morphing. Moments before they are about to collapse from exhaustion, the Veleek flies away. Rachel has been captured by a crazy ex-Controller, who locks her in a wooden shack and sets fire to it. Rachel inadvertently morphs into a grizzly bear to escape, and is then attacked by the Veleek. The two begin to fight, until Ax encounters them mid-combat. He begins to morph and the Veleek captures him and returns to the Blade ship, delivering Ax to Visser Three. Rachel demorphs and makes her way into town, where she hides out in an empty house. When police surround the house and tell her to come out, she morphs into an elephant and breaks through the side of the house. Meanwhile, Jake, Marco and Cassie notice the Veleek floating through the air as dust, and steal Cassie's father's truck in order to chase after it. They attempt to play a game of "keepaway", by continually morphing to distract the Veleek, but their plan does not succeed. The truck crashes into Rachel's elephant form, restoring her memory but drawing the Veleek to all four Animorphs. The Veleek attempts to capture Rachel, but cannot lift her. Jake and Marco continue on in the truck, but crash it again, and Marco is captured by the Veleek. Marco and Ax, now prisoners of Visser Three, are on board the Blade Ship. Ax morphs into a flea and hides on the Visser's body. He slightly demorphs and remorphs to attract the Veleek's attention. The Veleek begins to attack Visser Three, causing Visser Three to order the water turned on. In the confusion, Ax and Marco escape from the Blade ship, morphing into birds moments before they hit the ground. From this event, the Animorphs realize that the Veleek does not like water. The next day, Cassie develops a plan: the Animorphs head out to sea, where Cassie finds and acquires a humpback whale. She morphs into a cockroach, and Tobias flies her as high up as he can. While the remaining Animorphs morph and demorph dolphins to keep the Veleek distracted, Cassie demorphs and then morphs into the whale, all the time falling back to the sea. The Veleek attempts to capture her but cannot carry the whale's weight, and it is dragged into the sea and drowns. |
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