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The Hand in the Glove | Rex Stout | 1,937 | Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner is half of the Bonner and Raffray Detective Agency. She claims to have been "inoculated against" men and has no use for them, even her perennial suitor, newspaperman Len Chisholm. Her business partner, Sylvia Raffray, doesn't know much about detection but is the firm's financial backer. As the story begins, Len has just been fired from his job at the instigation of Sylvia's guardian, financier P.L. Storrs, who also controls Sylvia's money for the next six months and thus insists that she withdraw her financial support of the detective agency. Strangely, Storrs asks Dol Bonner to join a house party at his place in the country. Other family members present are Storrs' wife Cleo, who "goes in for cults", and his daughter Janet, who is plain, quiet and writes poetry. Sylvia's fiance Martin, who is a neighbor, and his friend Professor Zimmerman have joined the party, and George Ranth, of the "League of the Occidental Sakti", is Mrs. Storrs' guest and financial parasite. Storrs' problem is that Ranth is pressuring Mrs. Storrs to let him marry Janet and thus become Storrs' heir. He hires Dol to discredit Ranth in Mrs. Storrs' eyes, and proposes that she pretend to be investigating the killing of some pheasants at Martin's estate as a cover story. Dol accepts the task and arrives at the Storrs estate, but before she gets too deeply involved in the task, she comes across the murdered body of her host and employer, who has been brutally strangled with wire and hung from a branch. She soon recognizes that in order to commit the murder, the murderer must have worn heavy gloves to avoid cutting his hands with the wire. She immediately searches the house for the gloves, dodging the police, and finds them -- bizarrely, concealed inside a watermelon in the garden. She continues to investigate Ranth but also learns more about the other guests and family members. Professor Zimmerman proposes marriage to Sylvia, regardless of the feelings of his friend Martin, and promptly becomes the second strangling victim. Dol rapidly collects enough information to identify the murderer of both men and forces a confession at gunpoint, foiling the police. |
The City of Trembling Leaves | Walter Van Tilburg Clark | null | The book opens over Reno, Nevada, the principal location for most of the stories. Clark describes the city as a scene, composed of several themes brought about by the physical structures of the city's districts. It is the early Twentieth Century. Reno is a bustling small town on the edge of a mountain range, with fantastic scenery all around. The vast majority of the book's elements are introduced by way of the primary character, Tim Hazard, and it is with him that the human narrative of the story begins. We find Tim in grade school and follow his adventures through childhood and adolescence until he becomes a man. It is composed of so many stories and precious elements contained within, that even if the reader knows everything about the book, its whole storyline, from beginning to end, it is possible to observe countless elements not described in terms of the master narrative. Clark's fondness for the surroundings is not surprising -- he grew up in Reno, son of a University of Nevada president. This familiarity with the underlying subject matter of the setting, leads the book to evoke a sense of place not readily found in other works. |
The Land of the Silver Apples | Nancy Farmer | 2,007 | In this novel, we find Jack back in his village, at the start of the new year. The Bard calls for a "need fire", a ceremony that must be performed by a young girl, to reverse the bad omens of the past year and to help the sun come back out on this day of the year where night is the longest. Lucy, Jack's younger sister, is to be the girl, but she breaks the bard's rules and spoils the ritual by wearing a silver necklace. Pega, a terribly ugly slave, inferior to everyone in the village, is chosen to hold the candle and finish the ceremony. The sun did come out, but there was still danger to the village. Jack is kicked out of his house after freeing Pega, with the silver he received from past adventures (see The Sea of Trolls) but hid from his angry father. He now lives with the Bard. Jack continues his training as a bard; however, just when his bardic skills are growing, his mother calls him back home. Lucy, his beautiful, otherwordly little sister, has become uncontrollable. Because her father always told her that she is a lost princess, Lucy is acting like one and is treating her parents like peasants. Father, under horrible guilt and mental anguish, admits that Lucy isn't his real daughter at all.. His real daughter, Hazel, was stolen by hobgoblins while Father was in the forest, and replaced by Lucy. Lucy was "the most beautiful infant he [Father] had ever seen," and he fell under the sin of "temptation" and brought Lucy home. The Bard suggests that even if the uncontrollable Lucy isn't Jack's real sister, they should cure her. To cure Lucy, the Bard, Jack, Pega, and a monk named Brother Aiden take the girl to Father Swein's (St. Fillians) monastery, near the fortress of Din Guardi. When they arrive, Jack is horrified by the brutal methods of exorcism at the monastery and he tries to rescue Lucy from the monks. Using his magical powers, he accidentally causes an earthquake, in the course of which Lucy is kidnapped by the Lady of the Lake and the holy well at St. Fillians becomes dry. Yffi, the half-monster king of Din Guardi, imprisons Jack's father and orders Jack to go underground and call upon the Lady of the Lake to restore water to the well. A slave named Brutus, whom Jack believes is good at nothing but grovelling, accompanies Jack and Pega as they travel through the tunnels. They travel for several days, and come across a small tunnel that has no air current. Forgetting the Bard's warning of these tunnels, they go in, and encounter a horrific monster called a Knucker. The Knucker takes on the shape of whatever one's greatest fear is--for Jack, the Knucker appeared to be a dragon, and to Pega, it appeared to be a gigantic bedbug. Jack's magic destroyed it, but Brutus is separated from them. Jack and Pega awaken on the outskirts of Elfland, an enchanted, perfect place with loving, trusting animals, delicious fruits from lush trees, and teeming life all around. The two travelers continue around, looking for Brutus, and find that each morning after they wake, food appears nearby. As they journey on, they come across Jack's old friend, Thorgil (met in The Sea of Trolls), a Norse shield maiden who was encased in moss by the Forest Lord, after killing a fawn that trusted her. Jack and Pega free her and learn her story. Thorgil had been raiding with her friends when they came across a beach. On the beach was an entrance to the Elfland, and Thorgil was chosen to explore the tunnel. The nephew of their King was also along; he was a spoiled raider who demanded the highest honors, an undeserved title, and the best plunder. He led the way, heavily armed, and found a tunnel with no air current. Thorgil warned him not to go in, but he ignored her and ventured in. Thorgil heard him screaming and saw a Knucker kill Heinrich "The Heinous", the spoiled raider. At this point, the earthquake that Jack caused struck, and the Knucker was crushed while Thorgil was swept into Elfland. She wandered around, and a fawn lay down in front of her. Oblivious to the rules of the land, Thorgil swiftly slit its throat. However, she was incapable of snapping any branches off trees for a fire, and when the forest started to attack her, she fled, terrified. After she exhausted herself, she was slowly buried under the moss. It wasn't able to completely cover her, since her Rune of Protection saved her, but she was starving to death when Jack and Pega arrived and saved her. At this point, the trio go to sleep, but after a fight between Pega and Thorgil, Thorgil and Jack sleep close to each other while Pega goes off alone. Jack wakes up in the night and finds that Pega is surrounded by ugly creatures. He quietly wakes Thorgil up, and the two go to see what's going on. The creatures reveal that they are hobgoblins and were supplying the group, and that their King, Bugaboo, is in love with Pega. They take the trio underground with them, where they hold them captive. However, some of the hobgoblins, led by Nemesis, Bugaboo's closest friend, release the captives so that Pega doesn't stop Bugaboo from ruling well. The hobgoblins send the three to the heart of Elfland, where the Elves hold them captive. There, they meet Father Severus, a monk who had been captured along with Jack by Thorgil several years before. They also meet the Abbot of the monastery of St. Fillians, and one of his victims. During the feast Jack sees Lucy who when he tries to remind her about his parents, she instantly responds that they were crude and ugly and that she is really the Elf Queen's daughter. Sadly, Jack realizes that there is nothing that he can do. He accepts the fact Lucy is an elf that when and if she dies, she'll go to neither heaven or hell. Brutus is also encountered, as a servant to the elves. The elves soon choose Father Severus as a sacrifice to what Severus calls Satan. While the elves lead the captives to be sacrificed, Brutus passes a single inflammatory mushroom and firemaking tools to Jack. The elves begin cruel games while they wait for Satan to appear. He appears at the zenith of the moon in the sky, and begins to pick a sacrifice - Thorgil runs forward and punches him when he considers her, distracting him, but setting her hand on fire. As she frantically begins attempting to put it out, the victim of the Abbot runs forward and throws the Abbot to Satan. Satan, enraged, consumes the Abbot and slays the victim as well. At this point, Jack lights a the mushroom, and the flames, which are the only real things in Elfland, dispel the elves' illusions and reveal who they truly are. Satan seizes an elf instead of the captives, and withdraws into the earth, while the Elves attempt to recreate their illusions and hide their horribly aged forms.Then the hobgoblins arrive with King Bugaboo and rescue them. The captives escape to the surface, taking Ethne, the Bard's daughter with the Elf Queen, who later strives to earn a soul with the Christians. But when they are in safety they find that Thorgil's right hand has been covered with silver, paralyzing it. At first she is inconsolable, but when Jack compares her brave deed to the Norse god Tyr who sacrificed his right hand to imprison Fenris, the great wolf. He promises he will sing a saga about it, pulling her out of her moping. Brutus has already gone, bringing water with him, to conclude the quest. However, the captives are captured by Yffi; he is half-Kelpie, and loves the taste of hobgoblin. While he is distracted with them, Jack escapes with Thorgil and Pega, to get aid from below the fortress. They come across creatures called Yarthkins, which they free by sacrificing Jack's staff; breaking the bound of Unlife. As the creatures swarm into the castle and break its defenses, first Pega displays her affection for Jack by kissing him, then Jack kisses Thorgil. The hobgoblins, Jack, Thorgil, and Pega then escape as the Forest Lord begins to rip the fortress apart. They go to the village, where Brutus, a descendant of Lancelot, has taken charge. Jack notes Thorgil's beauty as they retrieve Jack's father and begin to return home. Thorgil, who was abandoned by the Northmen, who thought she was dead, accompanies them. The hobgoblins then leave, as Pega rejects Bugaboo, and the book concludes with Jack relaxing alongside Thorgil, his father, the Bard and Pega. |
The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel | Michael Scott | null | Sophie and Josh Newman are 15 year-old twins who are working at their summer jobs in San Francisco when a mysterious man, John Dee, comes into Josh's workplace for a book, the Codex – or Book of Abraham the Mage. Sophie and Josh witness Nick and Perry, the book store's owners, using magic. They discover that Nick is not an ordinary bookseller, but is the medieval alchemyst, Nicholas Flamel, being kept alive by making the elixir of life (a secret from the Codex) for him and his wife, Perry (Perenelle). Dee also uses magic and takes the Codex by force while Josh is holding it – resulting in two pages being left behind. Both Flamels need the Codex to make the elixir of life, or they will age rapidly and die within a month. Also, if they do not retrieve the Codex, Dee will summon the Dark Elders to destroy the world and return to an age in which humans are but slaves and food. Flamel quickly takes them to a hideout to enlist the aid of Scathach, a powerful Next Generation Elder. There they are forced to run, threatened by rats sent by Dee, which are thwarted by Flamel and Scathach. Chased again almost immediately by tens of thousands of birds, Flamel then leads the twins and Scathach to secure the aid of Hekate, an Elder, who can awaken the twins' magical potential. Dee discovers this, and enlists the aid of Bastet and the Morrigan. The trio mount a massive assault on Hekate's shadowrealm, to destroy Yggdrasill – the world tree – that is the heart of Hekate's power. While Yggdrasill is attacked, Hekate awakens Sophie's magic abilities, but does not have time to awaken Josh, as the tree has been set on fire by Dee. While she rushes to defend her home, Scathach, the Flamels, and the twins attempt to escape the shadowrealm. While escaping, they encounter Dee, and witness the power of the ancient Ice Elemental sword, Excalibur. They see Dee transform a wereboar into pure ice, then shatter the statue. Scathach remarks that she thought that Excalibur had been lost when Artorius died. The twins, Scathach, and Flamels escape the shadowrealm, shortly before the destruction of Hekate, Yggdrasill, and the entire shadowrealm. As they escape, Dee uses Excalibur to freeze the tree, and Hekate, whose life and power is linked to it, transforms to ice as well. As this occurs, Dee is informed that the Flamels and Scathach have escaped with the twins. In his rage, he shatters Yggdrasill, which crushes Hekate into dust, killing her. The Flamels, Scathach, and the twins travel to Scathach's grandmother, the Witch of Endor (also called "The Mistress of Air"), who teaches Sophie her magical secrets quickly by giving the girl all the witch's memories and the power to know how to use air magic. While they are there, Dee has found out that a prophecy in the Codex speaks of Sophie and Josh. He tempts Josh to join him, while using necromancy to raise thousands of corpses to assault the Elders, the Flamels and Sophie. Josh almost agrees, but at the last moment he realises he will lose Sophie if he agrees. Dee brings all the dead in a near by cemetery alive and they start to attack them, Josh hits Dee with a Hummer distracting Dee long enough to escape with Scathach, Sophie and Nicholas Flamel by using a leygate (a teleportation device where two or more lines of energy, ley lines, cross the world) to go to Paris which is Nicholas Flamel's old home. Then the book ends. |
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home | null | null | The comic spoof of the Cold War was inspired by a May 1960 incident involving American Francis Gary Powers, a CIA operative whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking an international diplomatic incident. Blatty's tale concerns John "Wrong-Way" Goldfarb, a former college football star who once ran 95 yards for a touchdown in the wrong direction. Now a U-2 pilot, his plane malfunctions and crashes in the mythical Arab kingdom of Fawzia. The country's leader threatens to turn him over to the Soviets unless he agrees to coach a football team. Jenny Ericson, the magazine journalist who made Goldfarb famous, is on an undercover assignment as a member of the King's harem, and when she discovers she was wrong in thinking the King is no longer romantically interested in his wives, she seeks help from Goldfarb. The King blackmails the U.S. Department of State into arranging an exhibition football game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and his own team. Jenny becomes a cheerleader and then the quarterback who scores the winning touchdown for Fawz University. |
Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. | null | null | Edgar Wibeau's father left when Edgar was five. After Edgar's death at the age of 17, his father wants to know who his son was and begins interviewing people who knew him. Raised by his mother during the DDR-era, Edgar is a good son and an excellent student. After an argument with his apprenticeship supervisor, Flemming, however, he rejects authority and leaves his hometown of Mittenberg and, with his friend Willi, moves to Berlin, where he feels he can be free to follow his own desires. Discovered by chance, Goethe's book about Werther (whom Edgar often calls "Old Werther") becomes a verbal weapon Edgar uses to solve inconvenient situations. The young rebel isn't successful as an artist and thinks that he's underestimated by the people a bit. He starts working as a house painter. His co-workers Addi and Zaremba dream of a revolutionary invention, a nebula-free paint duster, but fail to put their plan into practice. Edgar secretly tries to build the machine by himself at his alcove. As soon as he tries out his prototype for the first time, he is killed by the voltage. Whether this death was intentional or not is left for the reader to decide. Originally, Plenzdorf wanted the protagonist to kill himself, but suicide was not an acceptable theme in the DDR. |
Eggs | Jerry Spinelli | 2,007 | On April 29, Carolyn Sue Limpert slips on a wet floor without a wet floor sign and falls down the stairs, resulting in her death. The Limpert family, consisting of Margaret, David's grandmother, David, Carolyn's son, and Carolyn's husband, move from Minnesota to Perkiomen Township, Pennsylvania. David becomes quiet and sensitive about his mother's death. His father, a sales manager, only comes home on the weekends, usually ending up with only David and his grandmother, whom he disrespects and ignores completely. In the beginning of the book, David's grandmother is taking him to the Easter Egg hunt, much to his disappointment. While hunting for eggs, he finds a beautiful girl resting underneath the leaves by some trees. When David asks if she's dead, she makes no response. He starts to talk to her about himself. He leaves, thinking that it's a dead body he's seen, and waits for a newspaper to come to express the news. It turns out that the girl he mistook for dead is Primrose, a ruthless thirteen year old who defies all rules. In a short time, the two, a thirteen year old with no father but a fortune-telling mother, and a nine-year-old with no mother, become great friends. Primrose lives in a 1977 van instead of a home, despite her mother's wishes for her to sleep with her. The duo commonly fight and get into loud arguments, but one day, when David makes a verbal slip about Primrose's unknown father being a homeless man on the streets, she becomes angry, shoving the boy's face into the cushions and nearly suffocating him. Refrigerator John, a man Primrose's size with a bad leg and a friend of the two is very kind to them and lets them sleep at his place. On the night of the Mid Summer Night's Scream, Primrose, disguised as David's mother and David go to the event, only to end in a quarrel in which David reveals Primrose's disguise, and his feelings of sadness and anger at his mother's loss. Infuriated, he runs, and ends up sleeping at Refrigerator John's home, much to his grandmother's worry. Time passes, and the two quickly reunite. Primrose sets off on a journey with David, who seemed to have no choice when she said she would go to Philadelphia. Later, she admits that she wants to see the Waving Man, a man who had been seen on TV, and known for waving at people as they passed. She also confessed that she wanted to ask why he waves. Much to David's shock, the two spend the night alone and away from home, since they couldn't make it back in time. David finds a comic book, Veronica, and reads to Primrose until she goes to sleep. In the morning, they are soon found by a police officer who had been looking for them throughout the night, but not before David sees the sunrise for the first time since his mother's death. The book ends with David planning his 10th birthday party. He leaves to go to Primrose, and helps her shove her beanbag back into her home. She wants to move back in with her mother, who had been the first to see her back in town when she came out of the police cruiser. David asks Primrose if they are going to try to go back to Philadelphia. Primrose says no because she knows why the Waving man waves. When asked by David why he waves, she says "because they wave back". |
The Dragon Waiting: A Masque of History | John M. Ford | 1,983 | The novel is a fantasy alternate history combining vampires, the Medicis, and the convoluted English politics surrounding Edward IV and Richard III. The book also fictionalizes the fate of the Princes in the Tower. Edward IV is on the throne of England, but in this alternate world, medieval Europe is dominated by the threat from the Byzantine Empire. During the third century CE, Julian the Apostate reigned longer than he did in our world, succeeded in displacing Christianity and reintroduced religious pluralism within the Roman Empire, resulting in the subsequent disappearance of Islam as well. Without any cohesive threat from the east, presumably Byzantium was able to survive, consolidate its authority and expand. Sforza, the Vampire Duke, marshals his forces for his long-planned attack on Florence, and Byzantium is on the march. A mercenary, the exiled heir to the Byzantine throne, a young woman physician forced to flee Florence, and a Welsh wizard, the nephew of Owain Gly Dwr, seem to have no common goals but together they wage an intrigue-filled campaign against the might of Byzantium, striving to secure the English throne for Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and make him Richard III. This succeeds, and Richard III goes on to win the Battle of Bosworth in this alternate universe, killing Henry Tudor and insuring that he never becomes Henry VII as he did in our world. At that point, the book ends. |
The Mountain Cat Murders | Rex Stout | 1,939 | Delia Brand, the protagonist, is a beautiful young woman living in tiny Cody, Wyoming. Delia is determined to avenge the tragic deaths of her parents; her prospector father's by shooting and her mother's suicide from grief. When she believes she knows the culprit, she buys some cartridges and announces her intention to shoot a man. After discussing her intentions with her uncle Quinby Pellet, the town taxidermist, Delia goes to visit her sister, Clara. Clara Brand is secretary to Dan Jackson, who runs a grubstaking business for local prospectors, and has just lost her job. In the middle of Delia's argument with Dan, she hears noises outside the office and discovers that Quin has been knocked unconscious by someone whom he hasn't seen. After dealing with the doctor and the police, Delia returns to her car to find that her gun and cartridges have been stolen. Dan Jackson's father-in-law Lem Sammis is Delia's godfather, Delia goes to see him and his brassy wife Evelina to get Clara's job back. Lem agrees and gives Delia a note to Dan to say so. When Delia returns to the office to confront Dan once again, she finds him dead and is arrested for his murder, due to her earlier incautious statements. However, very few people know that, although the late Dan Jackson was no favorite of Delia's, her actual suspicions were of the Reverend Rufus Toale. Other characters of interest include Delia's lawyer and suitor, Tyler Dillon; millionaire playgirl Wynne Cowles, known to all as the "Mountain Cat," who has come to Cody for her second divorce in two years; and illiterate prospector Squint Hurley. Squint Hurley comes up with a document found near Delia's father's body that he's never been able to read, which leads Delia to the identity and motivation of the real murderer. |
The Far Shore of Time | Frederik Pohl | 1,999 | Dannerman recovers from his ordeal he learns more about the Horch, the Beloved Leaders, and other species involved in their war. He collects information and technology, while looking for an opportunity to return to Earth and warn humanity about the coming of the Beloved Leaders. When Dannerman is asked to assist in preparing one of the former prisoners to infiltrate the Beloved Leaders he sees an opportunity to return home. He presents the plan to the Horch, and although they do not agree to it he is able to bluff his way through. He ends up back on Earth aboard one of the stealth submarines that the Beloved Leaders have placed on Earth. Dannerman is able to make contact with his government, and discovers that they are already aware of the Beloved Leaders and are taking precautions against them. However, they are not aware of the stealthed submarines. Dannerman and his alien friends are again interrogated by the American government and representatives of the United Nations, although more gently than his previous interrogators. Dannerman must serve as a translator between the humans and the aliens, because he is in possession of a translation implant from the Beloved Leaders. With information from Dannerman and help from Horch technology, the Beloved Leader's submarines are cut off from their masters and captured before they are able to unleash pockets of undersea methane gas. This strategy is the Beloved Leaders standard practice for dealing with planets that will not submit to them. Having survived the initial contact, the President of the United States prepares to release all information about the aliens and the confrontation to the world, so that humanity can prepare to defend themselves in the future. |
Saraband of Lost Time | Richard Grant | 1,985 | The story takes place in thirty-five chapters. The characters come from a variety of locations, and travel across the land in their adventures. Grant created his own place names, drinks, songs and more for this novel. Unlike many fantasy novels, he did not create a map of the world, which is supposedly a futuristic Earth after the occurrence of an apocalypse of some kind. It may or may not be the same world as used in Rumors of Spring and Through the Heart. The characters are still human and are not a great deal different from modern humans in most cases. In all three books, the humans are mostly dealing with major environmental changes and the resulting changes in humanity, but some people have stood out as different. |
On the Run | Nina Bawden | 1,964 | When Ben's cousins, whom he lives with, are unwell, he is forced to spend the summer with his father and stepmother-to-be. They live in London and have little time to spend with Ben. So Ben decides to explore the gardens of the terrace houses in his street. He walks along the walls connecting all the houses until he comes to one covered in jagged glass. Ben then falls into the garden and meets a young boy from Tiga, Thomas. Thomas is being kept in London, while his father, Chief Okapi, is exiled there. When Ben discovers a plot to kidnap Thomas, he, Thomas and Lil (a friend of Thomas) decide to run away. |
The Lincoln Lawyer | Michael Connelly | 2,005 | Moderately successful criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller operates around Los Angeles County out of a Lincoln Town Car (hence the title) driven by a former client working off his legal fees. While most clients are drug dealers and gangsters, the story focuses on an unusually important case of wealthy Los Angeles realtor Louis Roulet accused of assault and attempted murder. At first, he appears to be innocent and set up by the female "victim." However, Roulet's lies and many surprising revelations change Mickey's original case theory, making him reconsider the situation of Jesus Menendez, a former client serving time in San Quentin State Prison after pleading guilty to a similar and mysteriously related crime. In the end, Haller outmaneuvers Roulet (revealed to be a rapist and murderer) without violating ethical obligations, frees the innocent Menendez, and continues in legal practice, though not without much self-examination and emotional baggage. |
Four Reigns | null | null | The Four Reigns starts out with a young girl named Phloi whose mother leaves her husband of the lower aristocratic status to be free from the restraints of being one of his minor wives. Although being one of a few minor wives to a man was the norm, Phloi's mother was not content in that domestic order. Consequently, this provoked Phloi's mother, Mae Chaem, along with Phloi to move out and make a change which involved a trip to the royal palace to offer Phloi up to a better life as a minor courtier. Mae Chaem is there to assist Phloi on her trip to the palace and often visits her there to be sure of her well-being. Mae Chaem suddenly dies and Phloi is deeply saddened by her loss and spends the rest of her time coping and adapting to the palace life. Phloi's life, however, truly begins in the palace, where she humbly serves and befriends the royalty and their servants. Phloi lives through time periods of four reigns as the title suggests, involving four different kings. The king well-renowned in history, King Chulalongkorn, was the monarch at Phloi's birth and King Ananda Mahidol is the ruler reigning at Phloi's death. During her time at the palace Phloi lives the life of a minor courtier engaging in youthful diversions with her friend Choi and occasionally doing menial tasks as a court attendant. She really doesn't have a worry, except for selecting the correct outfit for the next leisurely excursion. On these trips everyone from the Grand Palace would attend religious ceremonies such as the Kathin festival at the end of the Buddhist Lent. As time goes by, Phloi's life is altered, when she is compelled to marry Khun Prem, a man on a personal level, she knows very little about. This engagement is influenced by her elders' and their traditional values. They believed that it was safest to marry someone of good financial grade rather than solely for love. Although Phloi did not quite know Prem at first, they eventually did grow to love one another. He is of the minor nobility but still all the same could be ranked among the aristocratic people in Thai society with good financial standing. Khun Prem is also of military standing and well respected by his peers. This is evident as he receives promotions and is involved with the highly regarded Wild Tiger Calvory Corps. Khun Prem starts out as a tradionalist but as society changes, Khun Prem inherits military discipline and Western idealism. This is shown forth as he begins to smoke Western cigarettes and drink Western wine. His first son enters military school while his and Phloi's other two sons are sent to study abroad. Their only daughter, Praphai, stays with Phloi and is her mother's companion until she branches out on her own. One of Phloi's sons Ot, who went to Europe to study abroad, comes back with new intellectual ideas and continually ponders with his uncle, Phloi's brother, the new fascination of politics. In the novel he states: "What else have we to talk about? The air is thick with political news. So-and-so is going to be arrested, so-and-so may have to be got out of the way, and there'll be an armed clash between such-and-such factions, and so on." (P. 483 of Four Reigns) Politics became something of more interest in Thai culture as it existed before but was more available to the general public when ideas about how the government should be run was appropriated among the people. This became the new way of life in Thailand that was capturing the minds of the evolving individual. When Ot's brother An returns from France he breaks with tradition by bringing back a French wife. This is much to the dismay of his father and a shock to his mother. An introduces his French wife to the family circle and she displays as expected, her Western influences. These include French clothing styles; make up and personal mannerisms. An's French wife, Lucille, in her short stay, influenced Phloi's youngest daughter, Praphai with her ways as well. This is evident as Praphai unlike her mother decided to marry a man of her choosing. Praphai and her husband Khun Sewi even changed their wedding to follow a more modern format. They didn't have the chanting monks and Khun Sewi even carried Praphai inside the house the way the "farangs" (Westerners) do. "They haven't abandoned the old custom but have adopted it to suit the prevailing conditions, you see"(P. 534 of Four Reigns). An for his part became an intellectual with Westernized influences from France. Once he became stable in the political circuit of Thailand he aligned himself with the rebel group called the People's Party who staged the Palace Revolution of 1932. Phloi experiences World War I, and its economic impact on Thailand. Prices for imported goods begin to make a noticeable rise. This is also the time that Phloi's husband,Prem, dies in a horse riding accident. Phloi is left to fend for herself but her children by then are home and all grown up and able to offer her much needed emotional support. Sometime later, Thailand suffers an economic depression and a rebel group called the People's Party in which An allies himself with, begins to form. They eventually organize a coup that forces the king to agree to relinquish absolute authority and cede full power to a Constitutional Monarchy. World War II succeeds the first and has a stronger impact Thailand. The Japanese invade, and then occupy Bangkok until the Allied bombings force them to give in. All of Phloi's children survive the war except for one of her sons who died of malaria while in southern Thailand on a work assignment. When the war ends Phloi's house is destroyed and she returns to her ancestral home at Khlong Bang Luang where she spends the last of her days. th:สี่แผ่นดิน zh:四朝代 |
Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two | Drew Karpyshyn | null | Darth Bane, still on the planet Ruusan, finds his apprentice Zannah, a girl only 10-years-old. Together they decide to see the effects of the thought bomb and journey into the catacombs where it lies. Inside they find a boy, Tomcat, who is Zannah's cousin; she spares him by cutting his hand off. Then Darth Bane attacks the remnants of an old Sith camp, inhabited by former mercenaries. He slays the majority of them, allowing two to survive. At the camp, he finds a scroll telling him the location of the tomb of former Sith Lord, Freedon Nadd. Then he travels to a ship and leaves the planet, charting a course for Dxun, a moon of the planet Onderon, but makes Zannah stay to find her own way to the planet, and meet him on Onderon, saying it is a test and a lesson. Meanwhile, the surviving mercenaries are found by Jedi Johun Othone and his group of soldiers that travel back to Ruusan to find any survivors of the thought bomb. Johun takes the mercenaries back to the main ship to stand trial. The remaining soldiers happen to find Zannah. On the way back to the main ship, she kills the crew, and plots a course to Onderon. Bane then flies to Dxun and enters the tomb. Upon touching the Sith holocron, he is attacked by orbalisks who attach onto his body. He learns that the orbaliks cannot be removed, but will provide an almost impenetrable armor and give his body superhuman healing prowess. Then he controls the mind of a Drexl, a flying beast native to the planet, and flies to Onderon to meet Zannah, thereby rescuing Zannah from an indigenous clan of beast riders. Johun is appointed protector of Chancellor Valorum, a boring job he does not desire, but then his master, Valenthyne Farfalla, makes him a Knight, instead of the former Padawan he was. Ten years later, Zannah is a woman and now a powerful Sith. Strikingly attractive, she tricks a handsome Twilek Kel, into a plan to assassinate former chancellor Valorum, a plan which is doomed to fail. Kel and other members of the rebel group attack, two members flee upon seeing bodyguard Johun Othone, who is a Jedi. After a fearsome battle, the Jedi narrowly defeats the Twilek Kel, and kills the rest of the group. Meanwhile, at base camp, Bane has been trying to construct a Sith holocron; after three failed attempts, he fails on the fourth one and goes into a blinding fury and destroys the camp. Zannah plants the seeds in his head that the orbalisks caused the failure, because she knows that one day she must challenge him and she is afraid that she will be unable to beat him, because of the orbalisks. He starts to wonder whether the orbalisks are causing his mind to degrade, because of the repeated failures to construct the holocron. The two members who had fled find Zannah and accuse her of tricking them into an attack that was doomed to fail. Unable to attack in public, she follows them to their master Hetton. In him, Zannah senses the dark side of the Force. She kills the two members that fled in a dramatic flair of Sith power. Hetton, very impressed, asks Zannah to make him her apprentice. She accepts, knowing that he has a large collection of manuscripts valuable to her master. Together Zannah, Hetton and eight Sith assassins attack Darth Bane. Bane kills the assassins, as well as Hetton, and almost kills Zannah too, until she explains to him what happened. He again thinks that the orbalisks have caused him to miss the subtle plan that Zannah constructed, almost killing her - furthering the thought that the orbalisks are causing him to degrade mentally. Using Hetton's manuscripts, he finds the location of the tomb of Sith Lord Belia Darzu. Hoping that it will contain the secrets of holocron construction, he travels there. Darth Bane instructs Zannah to disguise herself and go to the Jedi archives, to see if she can find a way to remove the orbalisks. There she finds the cure, but meets her cousin Tomcat, now called Darovit, who was found on Ruusan by Johun Othone. Darovit tells the Jedi about Darth Bane. He now finds himself changing alliances and decides to come with Zannah, because of his brotherly love for her. Five Jedi journey to the tomb of Belia Darzu, arriving after Zannah and Darovit. Bane instructs Darovit to hide, and he and Zannah together duel with the five Jedi. After having slain four of them, he attempts to kill the last one with Sith lightning. One of the four supposedly slain Jedi is still alive and casts a Force orb around Bane as he releases the lightning. The lightning is reflected back on Bane, frying him inside the orb. Some of the orbalisks are destroyed by the tremendous force and thereby release a toxin that will kill Bane in days. Zannah takes the group to Ambria, to find healer Caleb, who once saved Bane's life before. Caleb refuses to heal him, no matter what, but then he makes a deal that he will heal Bane if Zannah informs the Jedi of their existence. She accepts, but after Bane is healed, Zannah kills Caleb and makes Darovit go mad. She tricks the Jedi that come. They think that Darovit was the Sith Lord. Meanwhile, Zannah and Bane are hiding in a secret cellar. Bane expected her to let him die, but after the Jedi leaves, she tells him that she saved him because she still has much to learn. |
Arthur's Teacher Trouble | Marc Brown | 1,986 | Arthur starts a new year with Mr. Ratburn, and is given heaps of homework because Mr. Ratburn is very strict, D. W is ecstatic because she has not started school yet, and she knows that next year, she won't get any homework because the kindergarten teacher is nice. The principal announces the annual September Spellathon, and not long after Mr. Ratburn announces a spelling test to determine which two students will represent his class at the spellathon. Everybody studies, and Arthur and Brain get all twenty words right, and enter into the spellathon. On the night of the spellathon, Arthur is very nervous. Brain is first, and spells 'fear' "F-E-R-E", Prunella falls out not long after, spelling 'preparation' "P-R-E-P-E-R-A-T-I-O-N". Arthur spells preparation correctly and wins the spellathon. At the end of the spellathon, Mr. Ratburn announces that he has loved teaching third grade, but that he is looking forward to a new challenge next year, teaching kindergarten. At this announcement, D.W. faints. |
Odd Girl Out | Timothy Zahn | null | Laura Landon is a sheltered freshman at a fictional university in a midwestern town. Intensely shy and introverted, she is drawn to the president of the Student Union, Beth Cullison. Beth is outgoing and friendly, experienced socially (with men, particularly) but feels a void in her life. She doesn't understand how the other girls are so fulfilled by the men in their lives, despite having tried. Every time she allows herself to be intimate with one, she breaks it off out of disappointment. Beth shares a room in the sorority house with Emmy, and convinces Laura to pledge the sorority. Feeling a pull to Beth, Laura delights in her presence and experiences jealousy and confusion in her attachment to the older woman. They go on dates together to movies and plays, and Beth considers Laura something of an enigma, unsure of how to reach out to her to get to know her well. Laura finds herself especially jealous of Beth's most recent beau, Charlie, who to Beth's surprise, has awoken some new feelings in her. Laura is often so at odds with her unemotional upbringing conflicting with the intensity of the emotions she experiences for Beth that she practices self-injury. Beth begins to realize what effect she has on Laura and teases her good-naturedly to watch what happens to her, but Beth is taken back by Laura's intense attraction and love for her, and they begin an affair. This is compounded by her escalating relationship with Charlie, who is frustrated with Beth's vacillating between affection for him and her guilt for hurting Laura. Beth loses her faith with her sorority and the university when during a sorority costume party, Emmy gets drunk and her boyfriend, Bud, hoists her scantily clad over his shoulder and the top of her costume falls off. The sorority kicks her out after she is caught in the middle of coitus with Bud, after she was told not to see him. Bud is angered by this, and feels partly to blame. He reassures Emmy and promises to marry her. Whether or not he will fulfill his promise remains ambiguous. Emmy writes to Beth about her frustration when she doesn't hear from Bud, and her feelings of estrangement from her community. Disillusioned and not sure what to do, Beth agrees to leave school to be with Laura and they plan to run away to Greenwich Village. Charlie corners Laura and she tells him about their relationship, triumphant that she can have what Charlie cannot. Charlie corners Beth when she is on her way to meet Laura at the train station and confronts her about her relationship with Charlie. He calls her relationship with Laura childish and Beth admits she is not in love with him, she only loves Laura. Charlie drops her off at the station and says she must make her own decision, but he will wait nearby for half an hour, just in case. Beth finally reveals the truth to Laura when she meets her at the station. Laura stays on the train resolute her love for Beth and even thanks her for teaching her who she is. Beth says her goodbyes to Laura and rushes off to catch Charlie. |
I Am A Woman | Ann Weldy | 1,959 | The story joins the main character of Odd Girl Out, Laura Landon, a year after she has left college. Exhausted by living with her harsh, judging father for his perception that she failed out of school, Laura leaves home in the middle of the night and goes to New York City. She gets a job as a secretary in a medical office and lands an apartment with a roommate — Marcie. Marcie is young and very impulsive, but vivacious and she puts Laura at ease. Laura moves in to the apartment in Greenwich Village with a vague gnawing excitement in her. Laura and Marcie develop a routine and Laura learns her new job. Marcie is constantly fighting with her ex-husband Burr, who comes around frequently to date Marcie, and in between fights, they sleep together. Finding that Laura tempers Marcie a bit, she insists that she will only date Burr if Laura is with her — which confounds Laura as she recognizes that she is attracted to Marcie and intensely dislikes Burr. Burr brings along a friend, Jack Mann, and they double date one evening. As a joke, he explains, Jack takes them to a gay bar in Greenwich Village and watches their reactions. Jack is clearly an alcoholic and gets drunk frequently, but is good-natured and has a self-deprecating sense of humor. Laura is intrigued by him, and his friends laugh at him. Jack returns the intrigue when he hears Laura argue with Burr's statement that he can make any of the women in the bar straight if he wanted to. Jack asks her out again and shocks her when he tells Laura he knows she's in love with Marcie. Jack admits he's also gay and helps Laura deal with the realization about herself. She also confides to him that her father hates her because her mother and brother drowned and her father could not save them. After going out a couple times, Jack introduces Laura to a mutual friend, Beebo Brinker (born as Betty Jean) - a tall, swaggering, dark-haired butch. They meet later in the gay bar after Laura runs away from Marcie, unable to contain her attraction. After a few drinks, Laura is afraid to return home, so Beebo allows her to sleep on the sofa. From a desperate longing and loneliness, Laura sobers up enough to seduce Beebo and they begin a torrid affair. Laura tells Beebo about Marcie and Beebo warns Laura that Marcie knows Laura is in love with her and is playing with her. Laura refuses to believe it. Laura's father travels to town for a journalists' convention and she attempts to contact him, only to be rebuked. Marcie finally stops speaking to Burr and Burr, frustrated, calls Laura at work and accuses her of being in love with Marcie and keeping her from seeing him. Laura begins to spy on her father and unravel under the strain of her relationship with Marcie. She depends on Jack, who is in a new relationship with a young man, but who expresses his sincere doubt that it will last. After getting drunk and humiliating Beebo in a bar, she's left alone. Exhausted, Laura finally tells Marcie she's in love with her. Marcie, deeply moved by Laura's sincerity and intensity admits that it was a game for her after all, but will try to return Laura's love. Heartbroken and ashamed, Laura leaves the apartment to confront her father at his hotel. They have a violent fight and Laura hits him over the head with an ashtray and runs. After wandering the night in the rain, Laura shows up at Jack's house fearing she killed her father. Jack and his new boyfriend take care of her. Laura shows up to apologize to Beebo and tells her she loves her. In an ending that was completely different from any previous work of lesbian fiction, they walk together to Beebo's apartment arm in arm. |
Women in the Shadows | Ann Weldy | null | Laura Landon has been living with her lover, a tough and strikingly handsome butch named Beebo Brinker for two years. Their relationship has deteriorated and both are frustrated, even after a party for their anniversary where Beebo remarks that hardly any couples make it together for as long as they have. The chapters begin with Laura's diary entries asking herself why they all drink and fall into relationships they know will be ruined. Their mutual friend Jack Mann watches as Beebo descends into alcoholism and Laura becomes interested in another woman. Tris Robischon is exotic to Laura, Eastern Indian, with a fascinating accent and story. She is a dancer and soon Laura is going to her to take lessons. Jack, disheartened once more after Terry, his boyfriend, has left him begins to try to convince Laura to marry him, to which she responds in consternation since both are gay. Laura returns home from visiting Tris to discover Beebo's dog brutally slaughtered and Beebo bruised and battered from being raped, Beebo said, when some hoodlums found out she was a woman. Laura attends to Beebo for weeks after, but knows her heart is not in it. Laura's lessons with Tris turn more intimate as Beebo refuses to go to work and drinks constantly instead. Fueled by boredom and alcohol, Beebo becomes controlling and suspicious of Laura, and when Tris visits unexpectedly, Beebo assaults Tris and later hits Laura in a rampage, after which Laura leaves her. She goes to Jack, not knowing where else to turn. Jack proposes an atypical marriage to her: they would live together and perhaps have children, but they would never sleep together, and both could have their affairs if they wanted, but quietly. Tris finds herself attracted to Laura but is confused, not sure what to do with her emotions. She asks Laura to a beach house for 2 weeks where Tris flirts with men and with Laura simultaneously. Not knowing what to do with her attraction to Laura, Tris relents to her advances, but does not enjoy it, and Laura is ashamed of their encounter. Laura returns to Jack, telling him also that Tris is married and is black and has been hiding both. Hearing about Beebo's further deterioration, Laura finally agrees to marry Jack. They get married at City Hall, and begin a most unusual relationship. Laura has grave misgivings, but through time both of them get used to it, until Terry comes back and Laura feels pulled by the Village once more. When Laura goes looking for Beebo again, she learns how badly Beebo actually descended — Beebo killed her own dog and lied about the rape to Laura — to keep her longer, and when Laura left, Beebo attempted suicide. Terry's return causes Jack to return to alcohol. Laura finds Beebo again, who admits she has changed, unable to live in such a destructive way. They live together briefly, but their passion is no longer there. When Laura returns to Jack, they discover that a previous trip to get her artificially inseminated has worked, and they are pregnant. |
Girls of Riyadh | Rajāʼ ʻAbd Allāh Ṣāniʻ | 2,007 | The novel describes the relationship between men and women in the conservative Saudi-Arabian Islamic culture. Girls of Riyadh tells the story of four college-age high class friends in Saudi Arabia, girls looking for love but stymied by a system that allows them only limited freedoms and has very specific expectations and demands. There's little contact between men and women—especially single teens and adults—but modern technology has changed that a bit (leading to young men trying everything to get women to take down their cellphone numbers). The Internet is also a new medium that can't contain women and their thoughts like the old system could, and the anonymous narrator of the novel takes advantage of that: she presents her stories in the form of e-mails that she sends out weekly to any Saudi address she can find. Sex is described in this novel, and how men ignore women if they give themselves up before marriage. |
Holy Wood | Marilyn Manson | null | Describing the plot of the novel itself, Manson said: "The whole story, if you take it from the beginning, is parallel to my own, but just told in metaphors and different symbols that I thought other people could draw from. It's about being innocent and naive, much like Adam was in Paradise before they fall from grace. And seeing something like Hollywood, which I used as a metaphor to represent what people think is the perfect world, and it's about wanting — your whole life — to fit into this world that doesn't think you belong, that doesn't like you, that beats you down every step of the way, fighting and fighting and fighting, and finally getting there, everyone around you are the same people who kept you down in the first place. So you automatically hate everyone around you. You resent them for making you become part of this game you don't realize you were buying into. You trade one prison cell for another in some ways. That becomes the revolution, to be idealistic enough that you think you can change the world, and what you find is you can't change anything but yourself." Manson has also stated that there is a character "that's very much a take on Walt Disney," who was a big inspiration in the writing of both the book and its accompanying album. In describing the setting, he compared Holy Wood, the place, to Disney World: "I thought of how interesting it would be if we created an entire city that was an amusement park, and the thing we were being amused by was violence and sex and everything that people really want to see." |
The Patricide | null | null | The novel takes place in 19th century Georgia, when Georgia was occupied by the Russian Empire. It is a love story of Iago, a peasant boy, and Nunu, a beautiful young woman. Nunu's mother died early, and since her father (a member of the coalition army in the Shamil rebellion) is too poor to care for her, she lives with her uncle's family. They disapprove of her match with Iago, as they consider him a mere Plebe. Instead, they are sympathetic towards Grigola, the tyrannical village governor appointed by the Russians. Grigola is married, but in love with the beautiful Nunu. He convinces her family that his brother would like to wed her, though Grigola intends to keep Nunu as his own mistress. To get Nunu, Grigola realizes that he has to get rid of Iago first. Grigola accuses him of stealing state property and gives orders to lock him up in the Ananuri fortress. He then kidnaps and rapes Nunu. Koba, Iago's best friend, witnesses the kidnapping. He fights through Grigola's men to rescue Nunu, but he is too late. Koba swears revenge against Grigola for his shameful behavior. Koba and another friend break Iago out of jail, and they all decide to flee to the Northern Caucasus and hide in Chechnya, since Russian police and Cossacks are looking for them all over Georgia. Despite the fact that many Georgians were fighting on the Russian side, Shamil receives them and offers protection. The author portrays Chechens as free men who fight for their freedom, in contrast to the Georgians, who were kept on a short leash by people like Grigola, unable even to hold town meetings (a tradition since the Middle Ages). Meanwhile, Nunu escapes from Grigola. Koba manages to contact her and tells her to meet them in Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, along with her father. The night before Iago and Nunu are supposed to see each other again, Iago and Koba's host decides to inform Grigola of their whereabouts, hoping to receive their horses in exchange for the information. After midnight, Grigola shows up and murders Iago, the friend, and Nunu's father, hoping to pin the latter on Nunu and thus have an excuse to send her to Siberia. Koba escapes Grigola's wrath, but upon discovering both her lover and father murdered, Nunu dies from grief. At the end of the story, Koba exacts his revenge for both Iago and Nunu by shooting Grigola and his supervisor in a cab in the forest. Koba is the hero of the story, who respects friendship, defends truth, respects women, and enforces justice. |
The Empty Chair | Jeffery Deaver | 2,001 | Lincoln Rhyme is away from the city with his aide Thom and his companion and partner Amelia Sachs in order to receive experimental spine surgery, which may improve or further worsen his C4 quadriplegic disability. Whilst there they are approached by a local police sheriff- Jim Bell, the cousin of Rhyme's NYPD colleague Ronald Bell- and asked to help in a local case of kidnap and possible rape. They believe the kidnapper to be a local orphaned boy 'Garret', who is believed to be involved in a number of other murders and assaults. One of these involves a hornets nest being thrown at a woman, who suffers a heart attack after 137 stings, and dies. Garret is locally nicknamed 'The insect boy', due to his incredible love of insects. At the start of the novel a nurse, Lydia, is kidnapped by Garret when she visits the place where the first victim- 'Mary-Beth' was kidnapped. A police deputy is killed by a hidden hornets nest whilst searching Garrets hide-out. Lincoln reluctantly agrees to help, and he and Sachs track Garret from the trace evidence found at the scenes. Meanwhile we follow Garret and Lydia as he takes her back to his main hideout. After Rhyme cunningly outwits Garret, he is arrested and Sachs is allowed to question him in order to find out where Mary-Beth is being hidden. Garret tells her it was "The man in the tan overalls" and Sachs believes him, however none of the rest of the police department do. She subsequently breaks him out of jail. The rest of the police, including Rhyme, are trying to track her down, and as they come up close Sachs accidentally shoots one of the deputies dead. She is distraught, and is now being hunted for murder. Eventually they reach Garret's safe house, where he reveals that he was lying about the man in the tan overalls, but he never meant to hurt Mary-Beth. Once a small group of police arrive, along with Thom and Rhyme, they are attacked by a group of local gun-nuts who are attempting to get the reward of $2000 that Mary-Beth's mother has put up. They shoot several deputies dead and are eventually killed by Sachs and one of the deputies, Lucy. Inside the hut it is revealed that Thom has been shot. Back in town, Sachs and Garret are in jail and Thom is in the hospital. Rhyme is curious and thinks things do not fit into place correctly, and eventually confides in Bell that he believes the murders in the town are accountable to a local businessman manufacturing an illegal pesticide. Anyone asking questions about why they were getting ill were killed. It is revealed that numerous deputies in the department are 'in' on the scheme, and have even helped in killing some of the townsfolk. Rhyme also says that he believes that the businessman had Garret's family killed, and a car crash framed, because they refused to sell the land around their house so the businessman could have shipments of the pesticide transported up the river. It is at this point that Bell reveals he is in on it, and attempts to murder Rhyme with a sample of the harmful pesticide they have been analyzing. Lucy, the deputy who helped shoot the gun nuts earlier, is listening and they run in and restrain Bell, who is frustrated to see that Rhyme has tricked him and the sample of the pesticide was merely 'moonshine'. He is arrested. Garret is freed, Mary-Beth has dropped the charges, as Garret was acting to defend her. She unearths the remains of his family, and it earns her a spot on the list of people who are a risk to the business. Sachs is still in jail and is accepting a guilty plea in return for a reduced sentence of 5 years in prison. She is about to be sentenced when Rhyme bursts in with evidence that the deputy she shot was in on the murders, allowing Sachs to be freed on the grounds that her victim was a criminal engaged in pursuit of an officer and thus legitimately making her 'crime' self-defence. Later, Rhyme is in hospital, Thom is going to live and Rhyme is going to undergo the major spine surgery he has postponed while he searched for Mary-Beth. As he is wheeled in, Lydia, the nurse who had been kidnapped earlier, follows him in apparently to thank him and wish him luck. As he is going under anesthesia she reveals to him that she was the sheriff's mistress, and had been reporting who in the town had developed cancer due to pesticide poisoning so that those people could be silenced. As he is trying to fight off the effects of the anesthesia she ominously tells him "accidents happen in spinal surgery". Luckily Sachs notices that Lydia entered a closed surgery ward, and remembers that she is not a neurosurgery nurse, but an oncology nurse, and runs in, realizing what is going to happen. The novel ends with Rhyme, Sachs, Lucy, Thom and Garret in the local cemetery. They are burying the remains of Garret's family. It is hinted that Lucy is to become Garret's foster mother. Rhyme does not have the surgery and is now back on the ventilator, after going into shock as Lydia attempted to stop his oxygen flow, requiring another year to regain his original physical status until he is fit to have the operation again. |
Irish Gold | Andrew Greeley | 1,994 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Lace | Andrew Greeley | 1,996 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Whiskey | Andrew Greeley | 1,998 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Mist | Andrew Greeley | 1,999 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Eyes | Andrew Greeley | 2,000 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Love | Andrew Greeley | 2,001 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Stew! | Andrew Greeley | 2,002 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Cream | Andrew Greeley | 2,005 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Crystal | Andrew Greeley | 2,006 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Irish Linen | Andrew Greeley | 2,007 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Beggars and Choosers | Nancy Kress | 1,994 | The novel opens with the narration of Diana Covington, detailing the beginning of her service with the GSEA. She is commissioned by her superior, Colin Kowalski, to "tail" members of the SuperSleepless community, specifically Miranda Sharifi. Supers have been traveling around the country, incognito, and the GSEA wants to know why. Diana monitors Miranda Sharifi at a hearing of the Science Court, where Huevos Verdes has submitted a new product, the "Cell Cleaner (TM)," a nanobiotic pseudo-virus which can enter the cells of the body, perform repairs, and neutralize any foreign matter. Cancer, diseases, colds and so forth could be a thing of the past... Assuming the Cell Cleaner is passed by the Science Court. In the end, a further-research permit is denied, helped along by Miranda Sharifi's insulting opening statement, in which she accuses jury (some of whom would have been on her side) of shortsightedness, stupidity and elitism. It appears that Miranda wanted to lose the case, but Diana cannot imagine why. After the court is adjourned, Diana follows Miri on a gravrail to New York state. Drew Arlen returns to La Isla, not only to meet with Miranda Sharifi, but to receive statistical feedback on his concerts as gathered by the Supers; the Supers are using him as a form of societal control, attempting to engender specific behavioral tendencies via his concerts. ("I have stopped calling myself an artist.") At the end of his visit he is commissioned to create a concert, "The Warrior," that promotes risk-taking behavior as desirable. It also becomes clear that his love for Miri has dulled over the years; in order to overcome an embarrassing inconvenience, he resorts to thoughts of the woman he truly loves: Leisha Camden, the woman who became a foster mother to him. Billy Washington lives in East Oleanta, a Liver community in New York. Though he is quite old, he has become foster father to an eleven-year-old Liver child, Lizzie Francy, whose intelligence outweighs her Liver conditioning, to the consternation of her mother Annie. East Oleanta is suffering something of a crisis: rabid raccoons have been seen nearby, a dangerous proposition when the only source of medical assistance, the medunit, might break down at any time. Eventually, East Oleanta mayor Jack Sawicki organizes a hunt for the raccoons; Billy's hunting partner Doug Kane suffers a heart attack, while Billy himself is menaced by one of the raccoons. He is saved by a beam of light, projected by a girl with a head too large for her body and black hair in a red ribbon. She provides medical assistance to Kane and takes care of the raccoons. Unfortunately, Lizzie comes down with a sickness shortly thereafter; Billy is informed that nothing can be done, since the gravrail is broken, the medunit is broken, and none of his elected officials are available. This time he is saved by a donkey-gone-native calling herself Victoria Turner. When Lizzie recovers the next morning, she is immediately full of questions for "Vicki" (Diana) to answer. "Dr. Turner" also explains the constant breakdowns: a nanomachine dissembler, tuned to attack an alloy named duragem that is used in just about all modern machinery, is loose across the nation. The donkeys didn't release it—in fact, no one knows who released it (the Supers have discovered that it had multiple epicenters)—and they certainly don't know how to stop it. In Seattle, Drew Arlen is taken to a now-seized illegal genetic-engineering lab by members of the GSEA. They show him some of the products of the research, in the hopes that he will act as a messenger to Huevos Verdes and explain the GSEA's stance: that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and the Cell Cleaner's magic, too advanced for the donkeys to comprehend, is too dangerous to allow. He also reveals that holoterminals throughout the Adirondack Mountains have been seeded with subliminal messages regarding "Eden," a technological haven that, supposedly, donkeys don't know about. After his concert (during which he almost dies due to the aircar being struck by the duragem dissembler), he flies to Huevos Verdes to force a showdown with Miri; Leisha manages to blackmail her way on board. On the way, the plane contracts the duragem dissembler and goes down over upcountry Georgia. Though Leisha and Drew survive the crash, they are ambushed by a grass-roots militia, and Leisha killed by its leader, Jimmy Francis Marion Hubbley. Drew is taken captive and finds himself in an illegal genemod lab, now the Francis Marion Freedom Outpost. Hubbley is a leader in a "revolution" that aims to throw off all foreign oppressors—in this case, anyone genemod—and, among other things, released the duragem dissembler to do it. Diana is attempting to learn all she can about Eden, which she is sure is a SuperSleepless creation. To that end, she bribes Lizzie access to donkey education software; within a month, Lizzie is hacking into donkey-corporation databases. She also follows Billy on one of his forest sojourns, hoping he will lead her to Eden. When the distribution warehouse fails to open for two weeks in a row, the Livers break in... Only to discover that the age of prosperity is truly over, as the warehouse is empty. Billy hides "Vicki" away from the mob for fear that she, obviously a donkey, will be harmed in reprisal. Mayor Sawicki, under the influence of "The Warrior," proposes a bold plan to travel eight miles through snowy mountains to the nearest town (Cogansville) and bring back food; Billy joins the expedition. Though the expedition is successful, the group is jumped by a group of stomps, several members slain (including Mayor Sawicki), and most of the food stolen. Diana, sickened not only by this tragedy but by Lizzie's analysis that the duragem dissembler was released from Eden, calls in the GSEA. Agents arrive within the hour, seize the illegal genemod lab, and blow it up to prevent anything else from escaping; but Diana discovers that this lab was not, and could not have been, Eden. Drew is in captivity with the Francis Marion underground militia for 67 days. During that time he starts to realize just how little of the master plan Miranda has confided in him. He also discovers a coup attempt brewing against Jimmy Hubbley, and uses it to lure his bodyguard (who is in on the plan) to her death. Simultaneously the coup actually goes off, and in the chaos Drew negotiates to be left behind while the remnants of the cell flees with the help of the United States Army. Drew gets to a terminal and places a call for help... To the GSEA. In East Oleanta, Lizzie is once again ill, with something the medunit cannot diagnose or cure. Billy, moved by "Vicki's" love for Lizzie, decides to take them both, as well as Annie, to Eden to see if the large-headed girl with the red ribbon can do anything. Miranda allows them in, even though Diana's admittance alerts the GSEA, and injects all four with the Cell Cleaner. When the GSEA agents arrive, accompanied by Drew Arlen, the two have a bitter fight over whether Miranda has the right to choose for 175 million Americans, only to be put in their place by Billy Washington. "Don't you see, it don't matter who should control [this technology], them? It only matters who can?" However, Miranda's closing words, spoken to Diana (who is also under arrest) suggest a deeper conspiracy: "More in the syringe." After extensive medical surveillance, Diana reunites with the Francys just in time to catch a time-delay broadcast by Miranda Sharifi, explaining what she meant. The "Change syringe" contains a set of nano-engineered machinery that totally remodels the human body on a cellular level. Anyone injected will be infused with nanotubules leading inward from the skin, which are capable of dissembling organic matter on a molecular level. They are also infused with bacteriorhodopsin, allowing photosynthesis. It is now possible for a human being to lie on the ground, in the sunlight, for thirty minutes, and absorb all the energy and nutrients they need for a 24-hour period. Odds and ends include nitrogen-fixing microorganisms, mechanisms to keep the digestive tract in working order in the absence of "mouth food," and of course the Cell Cleaner itself. "You are now autotrophic," Miranda ends the broadcast. "You now are free." Billy, now spry and jaunty, has joined the Francys and Vicki Turner (who has legally changed her name) as a member of a mass migration to West Virginia, where Miranda Sharifi is imprisoned at the Oak Mountain Maximum-Security Federal Prison. Annie is having trouble with empty-nest syndrome; children, even those as young as thirteen-year-old Lizzie, don't need their parents anymore, having been rendered practically invulnerable to disease, starvation and casual injury. Likewise, the Livers no longer need the donkeys, many of whom are moving to snatch up the Change syringes for themselves. The nation is returning to a network of small, localized governments, with some groups (such as East Oleanta) making the transition far more smoothly, while the federal government simply stays uninvolved. Vicki, for her part, is worried that the underground resistance movement which released the duragem dissembler will use the transitioning period to its advantage by arming the Livers and encouraging violence against donkeys, who are the few people still insisting that America exists. Fortunately, Vicki's dismay is unfounded: when the underground rebellion, now calling itself "Will and Idea," begin to bomb the Liver migration for their adherence to the abomination Miranda, the prison's Y-shield protects everyone from destruction on the order of the President. Vicki is then allowed (on Miranda's request) to enter the prison and speak to Miranda personally. She explains that the Supers have decided to take a hands-off approach, to prevent the people from becoming too dependent on them; Miranda will serve out her sentence, while Vicki returns to her family amongst the Livers. Drew Arlen tries to visit Miranda in jail, only to be told that, though he has judicial clearance to see the prisoner, the prisoner will not see him. |
One Good Knight | Mercedes Lackey | 2,006 | The story is set in Acadia, which is ruled by its queen, Cassiopeia and her adviser and magician, Solon. Princess Andromeda (Andie) is highly intelligent, finds life in the royal palace dull, and seeks the approval of her mother. When she comes up with the idea of writing up what she's learned from her studies into actionable reports for her mother's chief adviser, she finally gets the acceptance she so craves. Her mother and the adviser call on her assistance in identifying problems, researching difficult points of law, and even give her a new staff with instructions to make her look better. When Andie finds reports that relate Acadia's wealth to mysterious shipwrecks, the plot becomes complicated. A dragon shows up on Acadia, even though there hasn't been one in the country's entire previous history. Traditionally, marauding dragons are soothed only by a virgin sacrifice so the frightened people of Acadia devise a lottery system to choose the victims, while they await a Champion. However something is preventing the sent-for Champions from coming to the kingdom. When Andie is chosen as sacrificial victim she plans to escape. When Andie is tied up awaiting the dragon and busy retrieving picklocks from her hair to release herself, Sir George arrives to confront the dragon; who despite being an excellent fighter is unable to finish off the dragon. Perplexed by the events, Andie offers to help Sir George track the dragon to its lair and complete their job. When George and Andie find the dragon, they discover another problem, there are two dragons being guarded by a group of angry virgins. The group are able to resolve any misunderstandings and get to the root of the problem. A wizard cast a spell, calling the dragons, Adamant and his brother Periapt, to Acadia. The dragons weren't too keen on this idea, and decided to try and rectify things. Sir George is able to clear things up by explaining why he was sent over. The wizard cast a barrier around the kingdom; a clause in his spell prevents any man from entering. However, George is no man, instead George is Gina, a female Champion. Andie realizes that the wizard can only be Solon, who secretly has been manipulating Cassiopeia the whole time. The motley group decide they need to stop him. With the Tradition helping them, Gina training the girls and Andie and Periapt on tactical side, they seem unstoppable. Unfortunately Andie is reluctant to face off her mother; she is even more distressed when she realizes she has fallen in love with Periapt. The climactic battle becomes a fight for life and things scale out of control when the Royal Palace starts burning down. Godmother Elena arrives to sort things out, when it seems that Andie can’t let go of Periapt, who declares his love for Andie, and Gina and Adamant reveal they’re in love as well. Using the Tradition, Elena is able to transform Gina into a dragon and Periapt into a man. The two couples have a double wedding, Andie and Periapt watch as the two dragons fly off for a honeymoon. |
Kai Lung's Golden Hours | Ernest Bramah | 1,922 | As with other Kai Lung novels, the main plot serves primarily as a vehicle for the presentation of the gem-like, aphorism-laden stories told by the protagonist Kai Lung, an itinerant story-teller of ancient China. In Kai Lung's Golden Hours he is brought before the court of the Mandarin Shan Tien on charges of treason by the Mandarin's confidential agent Ming-shu. In a unique defense, Kai Lung recites his beguiling tales to the Mandarin, successfully postponing his conviction time after time until he is finally set free. In the process he attains the love and hand of the maiden Hwa-Mei. |
Descent into Hell | Charles Williams | 1,937 | The action takes place in Battle Hill, outside London, amidst the townspeople's staging of a new play by Peter Stanhope. The hill seems to reside at the crux of time, as characters from the past appear, and perhaps at a doorway to the beyond, as characters are alternately summoned heavenwards or descend into hell. Pauline Anstruther, the heroine of the novel, lives in fear of meeting her own doppelgänger, which has appeared to her throughout her life. But Stanhope, in an action central to the author's own theology, takes the burden of her fears upon himself—Williams called this The Doctrine of Substituted Love—and enables Pauline, at long last, to face her true self. Williams drew this idea from the biblical verse, "Ye shall bear one another's burdens :" And so Stanhope does take the weight, with no surreptitious motive, in the most affecting scene in the novel. And Pauline, liberated, is able to accept truth. On the other hand, Lawrence Wentworth, a local historian, finding his desire for Adela Hunt to be unrequited, falls in love instead with a spirit form of Adela, which seems to represent a kind of extreme self-love on his part. As he isolates himself more and more with this insubstantial figure, and dreams of descending a silver rope into a dark pit, Wentworth begins the descent into Hell. |
The Last Empress | Anchee Min | null | The story begins with the death of Orchid's mother. The hatred between Empress Orchid and her son Tung Chih is also beginning to weaken, much to Orchid's despair. In 2149, the Selection of Imperial begins for him is completed. The chosen Empress is a "cat-eyed, eighteen-year-old beauty" called Alute. Orchid's preferred selection for Empress was the daughter of a provincial governor named Foo-cha. It was only due to Empress Nuharoo's rank as the higher wife that Alute was chosen. The Selection of Imperial is followed by the suspicious death of Orchid's close friend and eunuch An-te-hai. His death had a great emotional impact on Empress Orchid. Around one year later, tension begins to mount between Orchid and Alute. Orchid becomes irritated at Alute's lack of co-operation, and is further annoyed with Alute's rude attitude towards her. Her annoyance soon turns to happiness when Alute claims that she is pregnant with Tung Chih's first child. Tung Chih's illness worsens and in 1875 he dies with his mother beside him. Empress Orchid refuses to give up her power, as she believes that Alute only sees the "glamour and glory" of being an Empress. As well as this, she also believes that Alute has little experience with political and court matters - thus rendering her unsuitable for the role as Empress of China. Orchid also realises that Alute may have been mentally disturbed. Yet these possibilities had no effect on English journals describing Orchid as a violent character who contributed to the death of her son - whilst portraying Alute as the protagonist of the event. Many foreign reports and articles soon begin printing false reports of Orchid's actions as ruler of China, suggesting that she is solely responsible for China's decline due to her cruel regime. However, such stories are seemingly published only to justify further invasions of China. After the death of Tung Chih and Alute, Orchid adopts her sister Rong's son Tsai-t'ien. Orchid then renames her nephew Guang-hsu upon his succession to the Dragon Throne. Initially, Orchid felt no motherly love for her nephew as she only adopted him to prevent his death at Rong's hand. However, a mother-son bond eventually forms between the two. Shortly after the appointment of Guang-hsu as Orchid's successor, her love Yung Lu announces that he is planning to marry and move away to faraway Sinkiang. Soon after Orchid realises that she is no longer at full health, she receives information that Empress Nuharoo has collapsed from illness. Nuharoo dies, and rumours suggest that Orchid i Everyone dies at the ending. |
Journey to a Woman | Ann Weldy | null | Beth Ayers is stifled and bored in her role as wife and mother. Her husband Charlie is a successful businessman, and they live in California. He is frustrated with her lack of affection with their two children, and her unwillingness to tell him why she's unhappy after being married for nine years. Beth becomes intrigued by Vega Purvis, a casual acquaintance. Vega is chic, a modeling instructor, and ravaged by various illnesses, alcohol, and cigarettes. Vega's modeling business in decline after a vaguely detailed scandal Beth learns, Vega and one of her students disagreed. Beth knows Vega is a lesbian and connects her attraction to her with the recurring dreams she has of Laura Landon, an affair she had in college. Vega calls Beth one evening and asks her to come to a hotel where Vega shows Beth the scars that cover her body, and Beth is repulsed by it. Vega, however, becomes emotionally dependent upon Beth over the next several months, as Beth becomes more possessed by the idea of finding Laura once more. Beth writes to an author of several lesbian books she has been reading, Nina Spicer in New York City, who writes her back. Beth and Charlie face their inevitable separation and Beth returns to Chicago to try to find Laura, who she hasn't seen or heard from in nine years. She contacts Laura's formidable father and learns that Laura left for New York City many years before. Mr. Landon, however, wishes Beth to report back to him when she finds Laura. In New York City, Beth starts with Nina to get her bearings on finding Laura in the gay bars and clubs of Greenwich Village. Nina plays with Beth a bit, testing her to see if she's really a lesbian or if it's a curiosity she's looking to satiate. Beth uses Nina to get to Laura, but they sleep together eventually, after which Beth learns that Vega has been committed to a mental hospital. Tired of the games Nina plays, Beth ventures to the bars to find Laura herself and finds Beebo Brinker, who is astounded to see her after considering Beth a rival for Laura's affections when they were together years ago. Beebo points Beth in the direction of Laura and Jack's apartment. She meets Jack first and tells him why she's there, and he introduces Beth to their six-year-old daughter. The next morning she surprises Laura who falls into her arms immediately and they make love. However, after the surprise has worn off, Laura learns that Beth has left her husband and children, and now older (seemingly now older than Beth), hurt and angry still from being left long ago, asks Beth to think about the reasons why she has embarked on this journey to find her. Beth experiments in Greenwich Village and finds herself in Beebo's apartment once more, being carried there after drinking too much. Discussing what she's done with Beebo, Beth realizes what she must face in order to know what she wants from life. Returning to her hotel, Beth encounters a deranged Vega who threatens to shoot her for leaving, but holds her hostage until she eventually turns the gun on herself. After the police interrogation, Charlie picks her up from the police station. Beth asks for a divorce. When Charlie leaves, Beth goes to Laura to tell her what she knows about herself now. Laura greets and loves her as a friend. Another friend of Laura's now, Beebo, calls and meets them for coffee. Beebo invites her back to her apartment to live after confessing she's fallen for Beth after hating her phantom for so many years and they go together hand in hand. |
The Angel of the West Window | null | null | At the beginning of the novel Mueller has been given the possessions of a cousin, John Roger, who has recently died. Among them he finds the personal diaries of Dr John Dee, the Elizabethan Magus, Astrologer and Alchemist who served in the court of Queen Elizabeth I and was an ancestor of both Roger and the Baron. As the Baron reads the diaries, which deal with Dee's discovery of his special destiny as a Magus, his efforts to find the secret of immortality contained in the Philosopher's Stone and guide the future of England and his conversations with the Green Angel through the mediumship of the confidence trickster Edward Kelley, he realises not only that he is a descendent of Dee but may even be the reincarnated spirit of Dee himself. In so doing he begins to suspect and that the various people around him are also the reincarnated spirits of those who had played a crucial part in Dee's adventures - his housekeeper may be Dee's wife, Jane, his Russian acquaintance, Lipotin, may be the mysterious 16th Century Muscovite Mascee etc. Mueller finds himself the guardian of the Spear of Hywel Dda, another of his ancestor and part of the quest to prevent the Succubus-like figure of Black Isaïs from gaining control of it, thus completing the work Dee only part managed to achieve. As the book ends, Mueller vanquishes Isaïs in her form as the Princess Shotokalungin and becomes a Man of the Rose, part of a group of humans who have become immortal through their spiritual strivings whose task is to help mankind to develop and grow (a concept similar to that of Ascended masters or Secret Chiefs). |
Death of a Doxy | Rex Stout | null | Orrie is finally going to tie the knot. He's engaged to marry Jill Hardy, a stewardess. But for months, Orrie's also been keeping company with Isabel Kerr, an ex-showgirl. Orrie has some time available because Jill works international flights. Isabel has time available because she no longer performs: rather, she occupies a plush apartment that's paid for by another gentleman friend who visits her just two or three times a week. Isabel objects to Orrie's marriage plans. She has taken some of his personal and professional belongings and stashed them in her apartment. Isabel threatens to show them to Jill and thus quash the marriage. So, Orrie asks Archie to get into Isabel's apartment, find his possessions, and get them back. When Archie does enter the apartment, he finds not Orrie's belongings but Isabel's body. Archie withdraws to meet with Orrie, but otherwise keeps the news to himself. Isabel's sister Stella later discovers the body. The police find Orrie's possessions in the apartment and arrest him on suspicion of murder. In a meeting to consider whether Orrie is guilty, Wolfe, Archie, and Fred are all unsure, but Saul — via some convoluted reasoning — concludes that he is innocent, and Wolfe undertakes to demonstrate it. Wolfe must determine who knew about Isabel's apartment. Orrie has given Archie some names — Avery Ballou, who pays the bills, Stella Fleming and her husband Barry, and a nightclub singer named Julie Jaquette. Archie visits Stella and Barry, and learns that Stella is frantic to keep a lid on the nature of her sister's living arrangements. Stella's concern for Isabel's reputation is such that she tries to claw Archie's face when he refers to Isabel as a "doxy." Archie corrals a reluctant Ballou, and Wolfe coerces his cooperation by threatening disclosure of his relationship with Isabel. It turns out that Ballou has already been subjected to blackmail, by someone named Milton Thales. Ballou thinks that Thales is really Orrie, but Wolfe deduces Thales' true identity and assumes that he is Isabel's murderer. Wolfe sends Saul to bring Julie Jaquette. When she dances into Wolfe's office, Miss Jaquette puts on a performance, first singing and then demanding to see Wolfe's orchids. She displays a cynicism regarding human behavior that Wolfe regards as similar to his own. Julie agrees to act as bait for the murderer and is nearly killed herself. For her protection, she is moved into the brownstone, where she helps Wolfe and Archie force Thales' hand after Wolfe offers $50,000 cash for her assistance. |
The Stone of Laughter | Hoda Barakat | 1,990 | The novel opens with Khalil, the protagonist, and Naji, a friend, heading to Khalil's room to talk. They discuss the possibility of Naji moving to Saudi Arabia to live with his sisters. The audience learns that Khalil is romantically attracted to Naji, as he repeatedly secretly admires him. As they progress down the streets of Beirut, the narrative digresses to describe the state of things there. It is revealed that people are fleeing the city in droves and are not coming back. The next chapter begins with Khalil ritualistically cleaning and straightening his room. He always does this after battles in the streets. Some time has passed since the opening conversation, and Naji decided to leave the area. Khalil visits Naji's abandoned apartment, which he was asked to look after. As Khalil cleans up glass, we learn that Naji and his mother claim that they plan to come back. Khalil does not believe them. Naji is supposed to come over for a visit with Khalil, but he doesn't come. After waiting for a long while, Khalil decides to visit another friend, Nayif. Nayif is having a small party with friends that he knows from his job at a newspaper. We learn that Nayif is involved in a political party. Another car bombing takes place near a market that Khalil often shops at. When Khalil goes to the scene days later, he finds that it has seemingly healed and that life there is back to normal. Next, he visits Naji's house, and, while he is there, the phone rings. He picks it up and it is Naji's sister, whom he has met only once before. She tells him that Naji is dead. Khalil is unable to dwell on this, because the city starts getting bombed in the 1982 Israeli-Lebanese conflict. He hides with others in the newspaper offices where Nayif works. The newspapers have immunity from the bombings. There is a frantic party-like atmosphere here as the reporters rapidly write stories on the bombings. Once the bombings are over, Khalil returns to his apartment, going through war-damaged streets. He comes to his room to find that the window has been blown open and feels that his room has been somehow changed. Disturbed by this he goes outside in time to see an anti-Israeli march pass by. Since the bombings are over, Khalil is forced to face Naji's death. He stops sleeping and spends most of his nights lying awake. Nayif comes over in order to tell him that Naji was killed because he was an agent for a group responsible for attacks. Khalil doesn't want to believe this and uses his usual defense of denial. Later, after much thought, he decides to accept what Nayif has said as true. He isolates himself from everybody. He sleeps all day and spends all night listening to other people's problems on FM radio shows. The bombing starts again, and Khalil hides with others in the higher floors away from the fighting on the street. After several days, the fighting stops and the people go out to see the damaged streets. Khalil's uncle's family comes to Beirut, having fled their village, and Khalil sets them up in Naji's apartment. His daughter, Zahrah, has a crush on Khalil, who is pleased to be loved despite the fact that he feels little attraction to her. Khalil has a crush on her brother, Youssef. The narrative goes on to describe Khalil's own struggles to form his political views and gain acceptance with the other young men his age. This struggle is paralleled by Youssef, who comes to Khalil's apartment to ask his advice on whether or not he should join a local militia. Khalil stays neutral and rather asks Youssef questions to help him think it over. He decides to join the group. Youssef's new job keeps him busy during the day and greatly reduces the time he spends with Khalil, which causes Khalil much distress. Khalil decides to take the job that Nayif offered him at the newspaper. He goes in for an interview and embarrasses himself by saying things that make him seem radical despite his lack of involvement in politics. Sporadic street fighting starts again. In one such episode, Youssef is killed. As Khalil is suffering emotionally from Youssef's death, he becomes sick and starts coughing up blood. He isolates himself from the world much as he did after Naji's death. Nayif comes by the apartment, but Khalil doesn't answer the door, hoping that Nayif will break in out of concern. After doing this twice, he finally answers the door and lets Nayif in. Nayif tells him that one of his political friends, called The Gentlemen, wants to clear out an abandoned apartment in Khalil's building in order to house his mother. They agree to clear out the furniture and sell it. Khalil takes a taxi ride to the hospital to have himself examined as he had acute abdominal pain. On the way there the taxi encounters traffic and the driver decides to take side streets. He accidentally drives up to a roadblock and Khalil and the other passengers are interrogated and nearly killed by armed men. Khalil manages to get by and make it to the hospital. It turns out that Khalil had an ulcer, which he needs an operation to remove. Khalil enjoys the hospital, which he views as a sanctuary. Khalil soon acquires a reputation for cowardice among the hospital staff, who, nevertheless, like him. One of Khalil's neighbors, Mustafa (usually called the bride groom), recommends that Khalil should rent out Naji's apartment. He rent it to a woman and her son. As he looks it over he encounters his memories of Naji and Youssef. Khalil likes his new tenants but has a feeling that the woman dislikes him. At a party with friends of Nayif, Khalil becomes acquainted with the Brother, a man who is involved in Nayif's newspaper and is a leader of a military organization. He suspects that Khalil is gay, which he confirms in a conversation, and reveals that he is gay as well. He makes advances, which confuse Khalil, who ends up going home. The Brother begins inviting him on business dealings, which involve the buying and selling of drugs and weapons. On one walk back to apartment after a deal Khalil is accidentally assaulted by the Brother's men, who apologize and offer to take him home. The author describes the city of Beirut. She explains how is corrupting Khalil and sucking away at his soul. Some time passes before the next scene. Khalil, now referred to as "Mr. Khalil" by Mustafa, is talking about storing weapons he has brought in the apartments. The woman who is still his tenant complains that it is dangerous and he tells her to go upstairs and that he will come and talk to her. He goes up and rapes her. The author explains how her Khalil has changed from how he was to "a man who laughs". |
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History | Philip Bobbitt | 2,002 | A synopsis of The Shield of Achilles was originally hosted on the Global Business Network. * Commentary on the book can be accessed at the University of Texas website. |
Reap the Whirlwind | David Alan Mack | 2,007 | The Taurus Reach is a mysterious section of space watched over by Starbase 47, AKA Vanguard. It is home to the Shedai, an ancient race of aliens that have been in suspended animation. They have awakened, threatening Vanguard, the USS Sagittarius and peace for the Federation. |
Angel Light | Andrew Greeley | 1,995 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas | Morgan Llywelyn | 1,986 | ~Plot outline description~ --> <!-- |
Beebo Brinker | Ann Weldy | null | Jack Mann finds Beebo Brinker (real name Betty Jean — she was unable to pronounce it as a child) wandering the streets of Greenwich Village. Beebo is 18 years old, tall and handsome, vacillating between overconfidence and vulnerability after leaving her family's farm in Wisconsin for New York City. Beebo is clearly welling up with a terrible secret that forced her to move east, and guilt that comes with leaving her father alone. Jack helps Beebo get a job delivering pizzas (one of the advantages is that she can wear pants) for Pete, who is a little creepy, and his wife who cooks. Jack also allows Beebo to live with him until she gets on her feet, and allows her the time and space to ask the questions he knows she needs to ask. When she admits her frank admiration for a woman she sees, Jack tells her about lesbians, and she reacts with obvious fascination. He escorts her to several gay bars in the Village where she is astonished and touched by what she recognizes in herself. After being treated cruelly by a vindictive woman playing a game with Pete, Beebo happens upon Paula one evening at her apartment, and it is Paula who verifies the suspicion of Beebo's sexuality. She is roused a couple days later to make a delivery to the apartment of a rather outrageous movie star, Venus Bogardus, who lives with her lonely teenaged son whom Beebo befriends. Beebo is infatuated and unnerved by Venus, who proposes that Beebo join them to return to California as company for her son — and to bridge the gap between them. Venus, in turn, divulges her past loves with men and women and seduces Beebo. As Venus rehearses for a television show, Beebo learns her new precarious place at Venus' ranch in California negotiating around Venus' business-minded husband, her public persona, and her vulnerable son. She is essentially, kept in secret. It dissatisfies her and she begins to miss Paula. She is seen briefly with Venus in public and it causes gossip columnists to start asking questions, and Venus' husband warns her to stay away from Venus in public. But on the night of the show, Venus' son has an epileptic seizure and cuts his head open. Beebo must find Venus at a party celebrating the show's end, but is intercepted by her husband, who beats her in a rage before she can tell Venus what has happened. The morning papers unleashed rumors of Venus being a lesbian. Unwilling to live in secret with Venus, Beebo returns to New York to recover while Venus and her husband appear happily in public. After a while, Beebo goes to find Paula again, who is thrilled to see her once more. Paula assures her that love can be better and they decide to see for themselves how. |
The Pacific Between | Raymond K. Wong | 2,006 | When entrepreneur Greg Lockland arrives in California to attend his parents' funeral, his world begins to unravel. Pictures of a brother he barely remembers and letters discovered hidden in his father's safe deposit box suggest an illicit affair between his late father and Greg's ex-lover Lian Wan. Confused and angry, Greg visits Kate Walken, a young woman with whom his relationship has taken an unexpected, romantic turn. Greg hates secrets and the hurt they cause. Yet, he tells Kate only of the pictures he found. Greg battles with his mixed emotions and can't bring himself to tell her about Lian. Does he still love Lian? Does he love Kate? Can he love Kate? Greg is like a boy who never grew up. He'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Though he can be affectionate, he can be obnoxious, deceiving and secretive-all the things he loathes. Seething anger, growing suspicion, and inescapable jealousy accompany Greg on a transpacific journey to Hong Kong in search of Lian and the truth about the affair. Greg has no idea he's about to unlock a secret that has been kept closeted for years. One after another, people return from his past, each adding another roadblock to Greg's mysterious puzzle. With each piece of information, Greg is forced to re-examine his beliefs, feelings, and relationships with old friends and family. Among those who help Greg is Agnes, the Director of Nursing at the hospital where his father once worked. She is a bossy, mannish, British nurse whom Greg never liked. During his relentless search to uncover the truth, Greg is surprised to find Agnes with his happy-go-lucky friend Old Chow and realizes Agnes has a passionate side. Agnes and Old Chow prod Greg to explore his feelings and their secret plans push him into another situation of doubt. (Summarized by Joanne D. Kiggins) |
Fox on the Rhine | Michael Dobson | 2,002 | The book begins on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg successfully bombs the Wolfscchanze during a strategy conference and later executes Operation Valkyrie in Berlin. However, his decision to signal Hitler's death to other conspirators by code buys enough time for SS chief Heinrich Himmler to launch his own countercoup called Operation Reichssturm. While the Allies are working to break out of Normandy through Operation Cobra, Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel recovers from the injuries he suffered during a real-life strafing run three days before the Stauffenberg coup. Himmler appoints him as commander of all German forces in Western Europe, under watch from the SS, after Field Marshal Günther von Kluge dies in an air attack. He also believes that Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel's mention of Rommel as a possible Bomb Plot conspirator holds no weight. Back in Berlin, Himmler takes charge of the German government and sends Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wehrmacht Colonel Gunther von Reinhardt to negotiate a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. The plan, called Operation Carousel, calls for Germany to shift troops from the Eastern Front to the west, while leaving Eastern Europe and Scandinavia to the Soviets. The Nazis will also share missile technology with Moscow. The sudden implementation of the treaty angers the Allies, who promptly shift naval forces from the Pacific to the European Theater of Operations. At the same time, Rommel organizes a counterattack at Abbeville against the US 19th Armored Division using units recovered from the Normandy front. He also orders the 19th Army to evacuate southern France ahead of Operation Dragoon and regroup at the Westwall. Having identified all of the surviving July 20 conspirators, Himmler orders the SS to kill them, in some instances posing as British Commandos. Luftwaffe general Adolf Galland is assigned to spearhead the development of the Me-262 fighter. Because of his concern for the troops, Rommel disagrees with Himmler about holding Metz as a strongpoint against the Allies. Himmler responds by sending SS troopers disguised as US soldiers to ambush a combat unit Rommel withdraws from the city. Galland's efforts with the fighter program results in the mobilization of all surviving Luftwaffe units in a co-ordinated assault against an Allied bomber raid of almost 2,600 aircraft in November 1944. The attack severely cripples the bomber force, so much that the Allies are forced to suspend the bombing campaign. The postponement buys Rommel more time to boost his forces for a major offensive through the Ardennes. Although the operation is codenamed Wacht Am Rhein, von Reinhardt successfully proposes a change to Fuchs Am Rhein (Fox on the Rhine) to emphasize Rommel's role as the leader of the offensive. Heinz Guderian is also assigned to lead one of the two panzerarmees to be used in the operation, which aims to reach Antwerp. Like the real-life Battle of the Bulge, the operation begins on the night of December 16, 1944. The capture of a major fuel dump at Stavelot allows the German forces to extend their advance much further than in the actual offensive, capturing a bridge in Dinant to keep the momentum going. Field Marshal Montgomery, who successfully reinforced 21st Army Group's side of the Meuse River against a German crossing, dies when German forces bombard his command post at Waterloo. The Germans also conquer Bastogne. Third Army commander General George Patton assigns the 19th Armored Division to counterattack against the Germans at Dinant and to destroy the bridges. The sudden appearance of the US forces prompts Rommel to send one division that has already crossed back to Dinant and hold it with the Panzer Lehr division coming from the east. However, the Allies launch heavy air attacks against the Germans. The 19th Armored Division breaks through and destroys the bridges on December 26. Left without any option to refuel all Wehrmacht units that have crossed the Meuse, Rommel decides to surrender Army Group B to Patton. An SS general tries to kill Rommel as he prepares to meet Patton, but one of the field marshal's assistants stop the assassin in time. Himmler sees the surrender as an opening for the SS to consolidate their grip on all surviving Wehrmacht units while Joseph Stalin is pleased with the opportunity for a new attack now that the Eastern Front is almost clear of German forces. Other subplots in Fox on the Rhine include the adventures of a US B-24 Liberator aircrew (explained through a crewmember's letters to his mother), a German-American US Army officer doing intelligence work, a Panther tank commander who eventually becomes Rommel's personal driver, an Associated Press reporter yearning for a position as field correspondent, and some officers in the US 19th Armored Division's Combat Command A. A more general explanation of the story (and other in-universe events) is written in the novel through excerpts from a fictional history book called War's Final Fury by Professor Jared Gruenwald. |
The Wounded Sky | Diane Duane | 1,983 | The Enterprise, equipped with a radical new "inversion drive" which allows the ship to bend spacetime and transit immense distances instantly, is sent on a mission to the Magellanic Clouds just outside the Milky Way, in order to place navigation beacons for future extra-galactic voyages using the new technology. The inversion drive is a product of the "creative physics" practiced by the natives of the Hamal star system, a race of crystalline spider-like beings. The chief designer of the drive is aboard, advising Captain Kirk, as the Enterprise makes its first "jump", after outmaneuvering a Klingon squadron which was sent to capture the new technology. Unknown to anyone on the starship, however, the use of the drive destabilizes spacetime itself on a fundamental level, creating a rift or tear through which another, external Universe penetrates and begins to mix with the Enterprise's own, with rapidly-spreading, potentially fatal consequences for all life everywhere. The denouement of the novel follows as Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew, experiencing bizarre, dream-like experiences of other times and worlds during the use of the drive, realize that something is dreadfully amiss. Arriving near the rift and observing the destruction it inflicts on nearby star systems, they discover that the price for traveling distances that would take centuries to cover with warp drive may be the loss of their own Universe. Deliberately using the drive one, final time, they cross the "boundary" between external "reality" and their own collective inner consciousness, where they must together draw on mental, emotional and spiritual strengths to heal the wound that they have caused. The novel deals intensively with the question of whether reality is an objective thing in and of itself, or a product of conscious perception by humans and other intelligences. Like Duane's other Star Trek novels, it incorporates both real physics and speculative extensions thereof to support the plot. Like most of Diane Duane's TOS-era novels, this one includes several scenes in the ship's recreation room, one of which quotes a Star Trek filk song based on John Denver's "Calypso". |
Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism | null | 2,005 | The book starts from the premise that in order to achieve a more progressive black political agenda, African Americans need to look critically at the way race, class and gender intersect in their lives to create different responses. Looking at the black community as a monolith may prevent us from seeing that African American women are the targets of specific social welfare policies or that African American men are being disproportionately incarcerated. Both of these results stem from racism, but take on a gendered approach. In Black Sexual Politics, Hill Collins proposes several ideas for black liberation, though the book is focused on getting individuals to find creative ways to challenge racism, sexism and homophobia as it manifests itself in their own communities. One idea that Hill Collins purports is that African Americans need to create and support avenues of self-expression that allow them to tell their own stories about the effects of racism/ sexism/ homophobia, and to share their emotional and sexual experiences as African American persons. This work is being done, but is largely in its infancy. Hill Collins also argues that it is critical for African Americans to define new visions of success that resist traditional Western/ American views. She argues that equating masculinity with wealth and femininity with submissiveness and financial dependence is harmful to all groups, but especially for African Americans, who have been traditionally locked out of the economic opportunity structure. In a society where black men face threats to their economic well being, and disproportionately are incarcerated and lack access to quality education, any vision of masculinity that suggests that to be a man is to be financially successful puts a great number of black males at odds. Collins argues for a new, more holistic version of success, that includes visions of the importance of personal character apart from economic achievement. Hill Collins argues that there needs to be a culture of honesty in the black community, whereby black persons can express their ideas and identities in a whole way. If we do not create the space for black people to express their sexual perspectives freely, then we create a space where the silence and deceptiveness that leads to the spread of HIV/ AIDS to continue. When we can discuss sexuality from multiple perspectives, we allow people the space to talk about sex and sexuality and feel more comfortable engaging their partners in dialogues about their own sexual history, sexual feelings, and lead to STD testing and full appreciation and connection of one another. |
Perfect Match | Jodi Picoult | 2,002 | The story opens with a prologue in which an unnamed female character in a courtroom inexplicably shoots the defendant four times as he approaches his defense attorney. The shooter, as revealed, is Assistant District Attorney Nina Frost and the defendant a priest. At the time of the trial (and shooting) she had been led to believe that Father Szyszynski had sexually abused her five-year-old son Nathaniel after lab tests had confirmed that his semen was found in the child's underpants, and Nathaniel had verbally accused Father "Glen" Szyszynski of molesting him. It later turned out that Nina had in fact killed the wrong man, and a visiting priest named Father Gwynne had molested Nathaniel. Fathers Gwynne and Szyszynski shared the same DNA in their blood because Father Szyszynski had a bone marrow transplant from Father Gwynne (being that they were half brothers), leading to the belief that the semen belonged to Szyszynski. Although this fact was made known at Nina's own court trial for murder, after the jury could not reach a verdict, the judge ruled that her reasons were justified and therefore she was found not guilty of murder. However, using a Maine clause she was found guilty of manslaughter because the Judge believed she was under the influence of a reasonable fear or anger brought about by reasonable provocation and sentenced to 20 years in Jail but it is suspended. In a final twist at the end, Nina's best friend and colleague Patrick Ducharme, with whom she'd had a very brief affair during a brief split with husband Caleb, moves away, and Nina discovers that Caleb had poisoned Father Gwynne, despite his earlier protests to her killing Szyszynski. |
The Contortionist's Handbook | Craig Clevenger | 2,002 | John Dolan Vincent is a talented young forger with a proclivity for mathematics and drug addiction. In the face of his impending institutionalization, he continually reinvents himself to escape the legal and mental health authorities and to save himself from a life of incarceration. But running turns out to be costly. Vincent's clients in the L.A. underworld lose patience, the hospital evaluator may not be fooled by his story, and the only person in as much danger as himself is the woman who knows his real name. |
Dermaphoria | Craig Clevenger | 2,005 | Eric Ashworth awakens in jail, unable to remember how he got there or why. All he does remember is a woman's name: Desiree. Bailed out and holed up in a low rent motel, Eric finds the solution to his amnesia in a strange new hallucinogen. By synthesizing the sense of touch, the drug produces a disjointed series of sensations that slowly allow Eric to remember his former life as a clandestine chemist. With steadily increasing doses, Eric reassembles his past at the expense of his grip on the present, and his distinction between truth and fantasy crumbles as his paranoia grows in tandem with his tolerance. |
Demon Theory | Stephen Graham Jones | 2,006 | The following description of the novel is found on the author's official website: On Halloween night, following an unnerving phone call from his diabetic mother, Hale and six of his med school classmates return to the house where his sister disappeared years ago. While there is no sign of his mother, something is waiting for them there, and has been waiting a long time. Written as a literary film treatment littered with footnotes and experimental nuances, Demon Theory is even parts camp and terror, combining glib dialogue, fascinating pop culture references, and an intricate subtext as it pursues the events of a haunting movie trilogy too real to dismiss. There are books about movies and movies about books, and then there’s Demon Theory – a refreshing and occasionally shocking addition to the increasingly popular “intelligent horror” genre. |
All The Beautiful Sinners | Stephen Graham Jones | 2,003 | Deputy Sheriff Jim Doe plunges into a renegade manhunt after the town’s sheriff is gunned down. But unbeknownst to him, the suspect—an American Indian—holds chilling connections to the disappearance of Doe’s sister years before. And the closer Doe gets to the fugitive’s trail, the more he realizes that his own involvement in the case is hardly coincidental. A descendant of the Blackfeet Nation himself, Doe keeps getting mistaken for the killer he’s chasing. And when the FBI’s finest three profilers descend on the case, Doe suspects the hunt has only just begun. But beneath the novel’s pyrotechnic plotting, the deeper psychic cadences of Stephen Graham Jones’s prose take hold. His specific imagery and telling detail coalesce into the literary equivalent of an Edward Hopper painting. But like the other seminal works in the genre (Fight Club, Red Dragon), All The Beautiful Sinners will unnerve you, and it will then send you back to page one to experience its mysteries all over again. |
The Fast Red Road: A Plainsong | Stephen Graham Jones | 2,000 | The Fast Red Road—A Plainsong is a gleeful, two-fisted plundering of the myth and pop- culture surrounding the American Indian. It is a novel fueled on pot fumes and blues, a surreal pseudo-Western, in which imitation is the sincerest form of subversion. Indians, cowboys, and outlaws are as changeable as their outfits; horses are traded for Trans-Ams, and men are as likely to strike poses from Gunsmoke as they are from Custer’s last stand. Pidgin, the half-blood protagonist, inhabits a world of illusion—of aliens, ghosts, telekinesis, and water-pistol violence, where TV and porn offer redemption, and the Indian always gets it in the end. His attempts to reconcile the death of his father with five hundred years of colonial myth-making lead him to criss-cross a wasted New Mexico, returning compulsively to his hometown of Clovis, the site of his father’s burial. Accompanied by car thief Charlie Ward, he evades the cops in a top-down drag race, tearing through barriers “Dukestyle.” The land they travel seems bent with fever—post-apocalyptic —as though the end has arrived and no one noticed. Its occupants hawk bodies and pastel bomb shelters, wandering a bleak hallucination of strip-joints, strip-malls, and all you can eat beef fed beef stalls. They speak a lingo of disposable nicknames, truncated punch lines—slang with an expiration date. Pidgin strays through bar and junkyards, rodeos and carnivals, encountering the remnants of the Goliard tribe. There’s the mysterious Mexican Paiute, Uncle Birdfinger, checkout-girl Stiya 6—the reincarnation of Pidgin’s mother—and media-queen Psychic Sally, who predicts the group’s demise. Each plays a part in the search that will eventually place Pidgin in a position to rewrite history. |
Kiss Me, Judas | Will Christopher Baer | 1,998 | During his first night out of a mental institution after suffering a nervous breakdown, Phineas Poe is picked up by a prostitute named Jude. She drugs him and removes his kidney and leaves him in a hotel bathtub full of ice with a note on the counter that reads, "If you want to live, call 9-1-1." Phineas, an ex-police officer who had recently been searching for information against the Denver Police Department's Internal Affairs Unit, later finds out that his kidney was actually replaced by a baggie of heroin. While searching for his missing kidney, Phineas actually finds love in his attacker, while he evades the angry police of Denver and tries to unlock the secrets behind his wife's recent death. |
Penny Dreadful | Will Christopher Baer | 2,000 | To play the game of tongues, you must first understand the caste system….Phineas Poe, antihero of Kiss Me, Judas, returns to Denver from harrowing adventures in Mexico to find that reality has been rewritten and the laws of reason redrawn. When Poe is enlisted by his old ally, Detective Moon, to find a missing cop named Jimmy Sky, he finds himself perilously drawn into the game of tongues, a violent fantasy game played out by disaffected college drones, hacker kids, and goth refugees in underground punk clubs, on rooftops, and in sewers. Everyone he meets has multiple personalities, and before long Poe begins to lose track of his own various identities. If he can hang onto his sanity long enough to find Jimmy Sky, he might just beat the game. |
Hell's Half Acre | Will Christopher Baer | 2,004 | Kidnapping, snuff films, amputee geeks and a requiem of lost love... Cast adrift after the blood symphony of Penny Dreadful, Poe is looking for answers in the form of a woman. He tracks Jude to San Francisco, where he finds her involved with John Ransom Miller, a wealthy sociopath with a mysterious hold over her. Jude is nursing a revenge fantasy against a U.S. Senator with an amputation fetish who wants her dead, but she needs Miller's help, and in exchange, Miller wants Jude to help him pull off a high-profile kidnapping and make a snuff film on the side. Poe throws himself into the mix, hoping he can save Jude from herself, make sense of his past, and safely navigate a torturous internal landscape he calls hell's half acre. |
Attack of the Smart Pies | null | null | Emma is an orphaned child who has been treated badly by her stepfather, Darien Drinkwater. She runs away after Darien threatens to do something nasty to her. She ends up in Kokonino County, where the helpful Muses live. Feather, the Muse of Plants, uses intelligent air to watch Darrin Drinkwater, and Emma watches him take the two pieces of paper her parents had left for her. After much work, Emma is able to write down what is written on the two pieces of paper. The text, however, seems to be some sort of secret code, so Emma searches for someone who can help her crack the code. Unfortunately, she arrived in the middle of the great Pie War between Kokopelli and Urania, two Muses who get along very badly. She ends up helping Urania because Urania is proficient in maths. In the end, it is Bo, the Muse of Factoids, who saves the day by recognizing the "code" as the number to a safe deposit box in a bank. Emma then finds a grown-up cousin to live with while Darien Drinkwater is arrested for various crimes performed throughout the book. |
Mary, called Magdalene | Margaret George | 2,002 | As a woman in the Bible, Mary Magdalene's story is not recounted to its full. Margaret George, in the book Mary, called Magdalene presents a new view of Mary Magdalene - a female apostle who was the first of Jesus' followers. |
Summer Knight | Jim Butcher | 2,002 | It's two years after the events in Storm Front. Dresden, struggling with curing Susan of her vampirism infection, is approached by Mab, the Winter Queen. Mab purchased Dresden’s debt from his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Queen Mab tells Dresden he can pay off his debt by doing three favors. The first favor is for him to find the murderer of the Summer Knight Ronald Reuel and recover his stolen mantle, declaring Dresden her chosen Emissary. Dresden refuses her request, but is forced by the White Council to accept as his Trial, else be stripped of his title of wizard and handed over to the Red Court vampires as a peace offering. Dresden finds Elaine, his former fellow apprentice and lover, who is the Emissary of the Summer Court and heavily indebted to Aurora, the Summer Lady. Dresden goes to Reuel’s funeral, looking for a group of teenage half-human/half-Fae changelings who were Reuel's friends, but they flee and attack, believing him to be in service to Winter. Dresden gets information and a guide to the Winter and Summer Ladies. Dresden’s interview with the sadistic Winter Lady, Maeve, convinces him that she did not kill the Summer Knight. Approached by the changelings to find their friend Lily, after Dresden tells Meryl and Fix that he will look for Lily. Dresden discovers Elaine in the back seat of his car, dying of multiple stab wounds. He follows Elaine’s delirious advice to take her to the Summer Lady, Aurora. Aurora heals Elaine, and briefly comforts Dresden. She is not forthcoming with any details on Reuel’s murder or Lily’s disappearance. Instead, she explains that the death of the Summer Knight and the theft of his mantle of power shifted the power balance in favor of Winter. Summer must now attack Winter at Midsummer to maintain control over their remaining power. Dresden heads north to an isolated spot on Lake Michigan and summons his fairy godmother, Leanansidhe. Dresden tells his godmother that he needs to see the Fae Queens and Mothers. Leanansidhe instead takes him transported to an ethereal Chicago-over-Chicago and a great Stone Table. This sacrificial stone that maintains the balance between the Winter and Summer Sidhe. The power of blood spilled upon that table will change the balance of power between the Courts. Leanansidhe says she can do no more for him and disappears. Dresden still needs to speak with the Mothers of both Courts. He tracks Elaine to O'Hare International Airport and persuades her to call in some favors so he can get an invitation to see the Mothers. Rather than provide him with answers, they goad him into answering his own questions, that Aurora is the only Queen capable of stealing the Summer Knight's mantle, and therefore one of his killers. Lily captured the mantle, being the closest Summer fae at the time of his death, and was turned to stone by Aurora, which is why no one could find either Lily or the mantle. As a reward for his correct deductions, they give him a Cloth of Unraveling and their blessings. Victorious at last, Dresden returns to Elaine and is ambushed. When Dresden regains consciousness, he is the prisoner of Aurora, the Winter Knight Lloyd Slate--and Elaine, who has been coerced into helping with the plot. Aurora explains that she plans to sacrifice Lily on the Table to give Winter the power of the Summer Knight, permanently destroying the balance and freeing humanity from the constant collateral damage of the eternal Faerie War. Elaine then binds Dresden and leaves him to drown. Recognizing the spell he and Elaine invented, Dresden easily escapes. Collecting his friends, they fight their way to the Stone Table and the Winter Queen, telling her of Aurora's plan. Dresden confronts Aurora and unleashes an army of pixies armed with steel-bladed box cutters--cold iron, which is deadly to the Fae. After the pixies kill Aurora, Queen Mab congratulates Dresden on his success, and offers Dresden the mantle of the Winter Knight, which he refuses. Queen Mab grants safe passage to the White Council. Having passed his Trial, he retains his wizard accolades, and protection from the Red Court. The new Summer Lady, Lily, and her new Knight, Fix, pay Dresden a visit and grant him a favor of Summer in thanks for his services. |
The Mother Hunt | Rex Stout | null | Lucy Valdon has recently been widowed by the accidental death of her husband, the novelist Richard Valdon. Lucy has a surprise waiting for her in her vestibule one evening: an abandoned baby, dressed, with a note pinned to a blanket. The note claims that the baby is Richard's son. Lucy wants to learn who the mother is. That information would help determine whether her husband and the mother had been intimate, and therefore the likelihood that the child is in fact Richard's. Wolfe is reluctant as always, but agrees to investigate. Archie examines the clothes that the baby was wearing and spots an unusual item: the baby's overalls have horsehair buttons, apparently handmade. After Archie draws a blank trying to track the buttons down via businesses in the garment trade, Wolfe tries a tactic that he uses to good effect in other cases. He advertises for information. The advertisement succeeds in prompting a call from someone who has seen a similar button, and when Archie follows up he eventually locates Ellen Tenzer in Mahopac, about fifty miles north of New York City. Miss Tenzer is a retired nurse who from time to time cares for babies temporarily. She is unwilling to help Archie, though, and orders him off her property. Archie complies, Miss Tenzer disappears, and the next day she is found, strangled, in her car on a Manhattan street. With that line of investigation closed to them, Wolfe and Archie try another. Lucy arranges for several of Richard's acquaintances to come to the brownstone. Wolfe asks that they each supply him with a list of all the women with whom Richard was in contact during a three month period roughly corresponding to the date of the baby's conception. A list of 148 names results, and it takes nearly four weeks for Archie, Saul, Fred and Orrie to verify that none of the women had an unaccounted for baby following the period in question. Finally, Wolfe decides to go for the swindle. His plan involves the Gazette, Lon Cohen's employer, and it succeeds in flushing the baby's mother from hiding. But then she is found dead, also strangled. When Inspector Cramer learns that there is a connection between the dead woman and Wolfe, he shows up at the front stoop, forcing Wolfe and Archie to flee via the back door. Wolfe is furious about the murders, particularly the second, and desperately wants to expose the killer himself. But if Cramer finds him, he will either have to tell Cramer about the search for the baby's mother or withhold evidence in a capital case. To avoid having to make that choice, Wolfe and Archie hole up in Lucy's house — she, her baby and her staff are away for a few days. While there, Wolfe has an insight about how the murderer and Ellen Tenzer might have become acquainted. That insight leads to the traditional Wolfe finale, with witnesses and suspects gathered together, but this time it's in someone else's house. |
A Sea So Far | Jean Thesman | 2,001 | After the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906, two girls' lives become connected. Kate Keely is the orphaned daughter of a newspaper reporter father and an Irish immigrant mother, living close to poverty with an aunt until their home was destroyed by the earthquake. They move to a boardinghouse the aunt purchases with a friend, and there Kate learns of an opportunity to go to work as the companion to Jolie Logan. Jolie's father is a wealthy physician and her mother died in the earthquake. Suffering from a history of scarlet fever and the loss of her mother, Jolie is sickly and depressed and her father thinks a companion would lift her spirits and that together they could travel. Kate sees this position as an easy source of income and, more importantly, a chance to visit her mother's fabled Ireland. Together the girls do travel across country and then to Ireland, and become more than friends, and learn more of life than they expected. |
A Scourge of Screamers | Daniel F. Galouye | 1,968 | The novel opens in 1997, two years after the nuclear exchange. The "Screamies" have been afflicting humanity since the 1980s. Arthur Gregson, an American spaceflight engineer, and his close friend Kenneth Wellford, from England, are attacked by an odd flying craft while themselves flying a small plane to a meeting in Rome. The evade their attacker long enough for SecBu military craft to arrive and shoot it down. The experience is too much for Gregson, however, who has to pretend to check out another part of the plane so he can endure yet another of his intermittent Screamie attacks. Finally reaching their destination, they meet the head of SecBu, Weldon Radcliff, and are shown the corpse of an alien. It is definitely not human, having no hair, no fingernails, and most tellingly, an elaborate double heart. Greg's twin brother Manuel had gone out on the first operational starship, the Nina, which was lost after sending messages about "a glowing ship" and "presences". Radcliff informs Greg and Kenneth that they believe the Nina was attacked by aliens, who are now on Earth and are responsible for the Screamies in some way. A human accomplice of the aliens apparently calls them "Valorians". The particular alien they are shown attempted to assassinate a SecBu official. Back in New York City Gregson and Wellford are caught up in yet another assassination attempt on an official, and Gregson recognizes one of the assailants as a Valorian. Giving pursuit, he is halted by a Screamie attack after the Valorian reaches into his pocket to activate a device of some kind. While visiting his fiancee Helen Forsythe and her father in rural Pennsylvania, Gregson follows up on an article in a local newspaper about a farmer who claimed that aliens tried to recruit him to help them. He runs into a group of men and an alien at the farmhouse who interrogate him until SecBu troops arrive. Strangely the men know him and refer to Helen as if she had been working with them. Summoned to London with Wellford for another SecBu briefing, Gregson hears that Wellford was predicted to go Screamie himself, that very day, by a fortune teller. Since she offered him a refund if she was wrong, Wellford looks forward to collecting. The briefing consists of a show where an apparent drugged Valorian confesses to seeking the conquest of Earth, and to bringing the Screamie disease as a biological weapon. Astonishingly, Weldon Radcliff executes the Valorian in front of his agents. To make matters worse, Wellford goes Screamie, as the fortune teller predicted. Returning to Pennsylvania Gregson confronts Helen, who admits to talking with the Valorian and being told that the Screamies were the advent of a new perception. By this time SecBu have begun a campaign to convince people that the Valorians are not only hostile but have powers of persuasion amounting to hypnosis. Helen recants her beliefs. Shortly afterward Gregson himself has his ultimate Screamie attack, and is sedated for removal to one of the many Isolation Institutes reserved for Screamers. He endures months of psychic pain, apparent hallucinations, and terror, narrowly avoiding the typical fate of Screamers, who tend to commit suicide when their sedation wears off enough for them to reach a convenient high window. He recovers and is met by Helen on his release. Now, like many ex-Screamers, Gregson is a valuable commodity to SecBu. Most elected officials are ex-Screamers, as are the top officials in the Bureau. Gregson learns that Wellford also recovered, only to be kidnapped by the Valorians. Radcliff reveals to him the existence of a device which can suppress the Screamies over a small area, by blocking the effects of an unknown form of radiation. Radcliff wants Gregson to help construct a super-suppressor on the space station Vega Jump-off, the departure point of the Nina, to cover the entire planet. First Gregson is sent to Paris for training. He learns that the Screamies really are a new form of perception, called zylphing and the radiation is called rault, created by a body at the galactic center known as Chandeen. Another body known as the Stygum Field blocks the rault, and Earth has been in the shadow for thousands of years. Besides the training, Gregson is introduced to a temptress called Karen Rakar. Gaining proficiency at zylphing he learns that the perception can be used for many purposes, including telepathy, long-distance viewing, and even precognition. He also begins to realize the depth of the SecBu plot to keep and hold power. Discovering the head of the training institute asleep in a field of artificial rault he is able to zylph the man's true purposes from his mind. The man wakes up and Gregson has to kill him. He then escapes in a car, but as he does so he zylphs a re-entry capsule, bearing a Valorian, coming down nearby after having been disabled by SecBu weapons. Rescuing the occupant, a female, he drives to confront Madam Carnot, a conspirator who claims to be the oldest and most powerful zylpher on Earth. As he zylphs her true intentions, a rescue party led by Wellford breaks into the building, intent on rescuing the Valorian woman, but in the process capturing Gregson and killing Carnot. She had previously foretold a violent end for Gregson, but in reality she would be the victim. In the Valorian hideout, a castle in the Rhine valley, Wellford assures Gregson that the Valorians have no powers beyond zylphing, nor any evil intent. Gregson is still doubtful. He sees the necessity to build the super-suppressor as the Screamies are getting worse by the day. His qualms at the intent of the SecBu conspirators are balanced by the urge to carry out the plan for the good of humanity. The Valorian he rescued, who is called Andelia, tells him that his brother Manuel is alive, one of the few on the Nina who survived when the ship emerged into full rault. He cannot return to Earth because he has lost the ability to live without zylphing. Eventually, she promises Gregson, they will be re-united. Gregson, apparently free to leave the hideout, steals a craft and returns to Pennsylvania to find Helen, only to be captured by SecBu. They zylph the location of the castle from him, but by the time they get there only the injured Andelia is left for them to capture. Gregson ships up to the space station for the final phase of construction. Crucial to the process is lowering the station's altitude, which is something only he can be counted on to do. On the station he re-unites with Karen Rakar. He is still ambivalent about which fraction to side with. The station is already in a small suppressor field, but this breaks down long enough for him to detect the presence of Andelia. While he is talking to her a guard arrives and kills her. Gregson kills the guard, but is cut down yet again by Wellford, one of a boarding party intent on a last-ditch gamble. Recovering, Gregson learns Wellford's plan. The super-suppressor can be re-wired to be a super-transmitter. All the top SecBu people are on the station, and activating a super-transmitter would fry the brains of everyone aboard. It is the supreme chance to decapitate the conspiracy, who plan to use their control over the super-suppressor to cement their power, threatening to turn it off if their demands are not met. With them eliminated, the super-suppressor could be activated as planned, and with help from the Valorians humanity would be able to recover the lost perception, ready to deal with high levels of rault which must be coming. Gregson helps Wellford re-wire the suppressor, and they escape to a comparatively safe distance of a few thousand miles aboard Wellford's ship. Even at that distance, the radiance is almost more than they can bear. Returning to the station, they find the people aboard either dead or catatonic. The final chapter takes place a few years later. Helen and Gregson are married with young children. Humanity is learning to live with rault, but already the Valorians have located another civilization about to emerge from the shadow of the Stygum Field. Gregson and Wellford are offered a place on that mission. |
In The House Of The Queen's Beasts | Jean Thesman | null | Emily Shepherd, her professor stepfather, physician mother, and stepbrother Grady are moving into an older, larger house and Emily is very happy. An accident that scarred her face the year before had left her shunned by friends and foes alike. Plastic surgery has removed the physical scar but not the psychic one, and the new home is a chance to start over for her. The house comes with a marvelous treehouse and a new neighbour, Rowan Tucker. Rowan's life is full of secrets, most of which surround her antisocial father and their locked-up house. But on the common ground of the treehouse, Emily and Rowan forge a friendship. Rowan is a woodcarver and has fashioned a series of animals for the treehouse which she names after England's Queen's Beasts; but Rowan's beasts are memorials for animals who have suffered in life and are saved by Rowan's art. The stories she crafts for the carvings bring them to life for Emily, too, who also finds healing through them. In the give and take of real friendship, each gains; perhaps Rowan is finding in Emily the strength to stand up to her father. |
Laura | Vera Caspary | null | Like Wilkie Collins' groundbreaking detective novel The Moonstone (1868), Laura is narrated in the first person by several alternating characters. These individual stories all revolve around the apparent murder of the title character, a successful New York advertiser killed in the doorway of her apartment with a shotgun blast that obliterated her face. Detective Mark MacPherson, assigned to the case, begins investigating the two men who were closest to Laura: her former lover, a narcissistic middle-aged writer named Waldo Lydecker, and her fiance, the philandering Shelby Carpenter. As he learns more about Laura, Mark – not the most sentimental of men – begins to fall in love with her memory. When Laura turns out to be very much alive, however, she becomes the prime suspect. The novel has some autobiographical elements; Caspary, like Laura, was an independent woman who earned her living as an advertiser and who struggled to balance career and romance. |
Burndive | Karin Lowachee | 2,003 | Ryan Azarcon lives in a fishbowl. He is the son of the infamous Captain Cairo Azarcon, of the deep space carrier ship Macedon and Songlian Lau, Austro Station's head of publicity. Because of his combination of good looks and influential parents, Ryan is constantly watched by the media. After going to college for three years on earth and witnessing a horrifying terrorist attack related to the war between Earthhub and the striviiric-na in deep space, Ryan develops post traumatic stress disorder, drops out of school and returns to Austro, where he quickly begins doing drugs. However, when Captain Azarcon destroys the pirate ship Genghis Khan and begins to make peace with the striviiric-na, Ryan finds himself in danger. After a failed assassination attempt in a club on New Years Day which leaves many people dead or injured, Ryan finds himself trapped in his home for his own safety- at which point his father comes for him, taking him aboard his ship. Ryan is immediately caught in the middle of the war, the peace, and the effects thereof. The truth about his father's mysterious past, as a protégé of the pirate captain of the Genghis Khan, Vincenzo Falcone emerges. Earthhub factions, particularly the Family of Humanity, are against the peace. This extremist group eventually has Ryan's mother assassinated. The Macedon returns to Austro for her funeral, where another assassination attempt nearly kills Ryan. Captain Azarcon subjects Austro to martial law illegally to save him, and is forced to flee to the striviiric-na section of space. Ryan recovers on his father's ship, where he comes to terms, somewhat, with who he is, who his father is, and his place in the war. |
Dark Wind Blowing | Jackie French | 2,001 | A young bullied boy by the name of Lance, who many think of him as a try hard "Loser" (which is what he is commonly referred to in the book), threatens to release an unstoppable virus in class after he has had a prank played on him. |
Cagebird | Karin Lowachee | 2,005 | The novel begins with Yuri Terisov, the jaded former protégé of the infamous dead pirate, Captain Vincenzo Falcone, and the Captain of the pirate ship Kublai Khan in prison on earth, where his is approached by Black Ops agent Andreas Lukacs. Lukacs offers to free Yuri from prison in exchange for his help in infiltrating the pirate network, which Yuri agrees to in exchange for the protection of his cellmate Stefano Finch. Yuri fakes his own death and his is smuggled out of prison with Finch to Pax Terra, the station orbiting above the earth, where he is picked up by his ship. He finds, however, that his ship has been taken over by his Lieutenant Taja Roshan and is first forced to kill her taking back his ship. Once that is done, he contacts Falcone's former Lieutenant, Caligtiera, about the Black Op's offer, who proposes that together they destroy the Earthhub Military Carrier Archangel. Yuri finds that he cannot bring himself to do this and informs the Macedon of his plans. He destroys his ship and kills Lukacs, who had intended to use the pirate to gain power, then flees to the Macedon whose crew includes two of Falcone's other protégés. This story alternates with the story Yuri's childhood, which tells how his colony was destroyed by the striviiric-na when he was four. His family was split up and he was sent to live in the bleak refugee camp camp on the partially terraformed planet Grace. When he is nine, Falcone recruits him from the camp and takes him on as his protégé and eventually as a geisha. Yuri falls in love with his geisha mentor, Estienne, and is indoctrinated, but this indoctrination fails when Yuri is forced into geisha duties at fourteen, which is essentially prostitution, with the aid of Falcone's cruelty. Despite this, Yuri is eventually given his own ship. When Falcone's ship, the Genghis Khan is destroyed, Yuri is sent to seek revenge on the Macedon's captain, Cairo Azarcon, by attempting to murder his son, Ryan Azarcon. He fails on his first try intentionally, but almost succeeds on his second, which is what lands him in prison. This portion of the story is told in more detail, through Ryan's perspective in the Universe's second book, Burndive. |
Platoon Leader | null | 1,985 | The author, James R. McDonough, introduces the book as a story of an "American platoon leader in combat." |
The Goose Girl | Shannon Hale | 2,003 | The book centers around the Crown Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee of Kildenree, a small kingdom with more powerful neighbors. As a child she bonds with her aunt, who becomes her nursemaid and constant companion. She tells Ani, as the Princess is soon nicknamed, stories about three gifts certain people have: people-speaking (the power to manipulate people and persuade them in your favor), animal-speaking (the ability to communicate primarily with animals, using their sounds) and nature-speaking (the ability to communicate with certain elements, which the aunt says is very rare). The aunt goes on to say that Ani’s mother, the Queen, has the gift of people-speaking, as do many monarchs; she also says that she herself has the gift of animal-speaking. Though when Ani asks what gift she might have, her aunt says that it is still to early to tell. The aunt however soon returns to the forest, and Ani's mother, the queen, keeps Ani from using her gift of animal-speaking, for she thinks the people will not trust her if she communicates with beasts. Later, it is revealed that the aunt died that winter. The book then jumps ahead to when Ani is fifteen or so. Her lady-in-waiting and close friend Selia, whose mother is the key-mistress, has the gift of people-speaking but is still kind. However, Ani’s inability to be sociable and perfect like her mother is soon revealed to the reader. She seeks solace in her horse, Falada, whom she can communicate with through mental communication, and goes out riding with her father the King, who is easier to get along with, but he soon dies, assumedly leaving Ani the throne. But after the funeral Ani’s mother proclaims that her eldest son, Ani’s younger brother, is inheriting the throne. She then reveals to Ani that, behind her and her father’s back, she engaged the girl to the Crown Prince of the neighboring powerful kingdom of Bayern, and that Ani is to travel there to marry him. Ani feels betrayed and even more isolated but complies. So Ani sets out through the forests to Bayern, with an entourage of guards and Selia. However, Ani observes odd activity between Selia and a guard Ungolad. Mutiny eventually ensues while Ani is absent from camp, but still watches the exchange. The mutineers, led by Selia and backed by most of the guard, decide to kill the Princess and replace her with Selia herself. Ani is forced to flee and leave behind Falada and her remaining supporters. After days in the woods, Ani collapses in the garden of a Bayern woman named Gilsa. Gilsa says that she doesn't want to know Ani's story, preferring not to get mixed up in it, so Ani assumes the identity of “Isi”, a forest-born who comes, along with others, to the Bayern capital to find work tending to animals in the capital; she adopts a Bayern accent, hides her hair (blonde, as compared to the browns and blacks in Bayern) and tells stories to her fellow animal-workers. She tends to the geese, which she can communicate with, along with a boy named Conrad, and discovers that she also has the gift of nature-speaking, with the wind. Among the many she befriends is a Royal Guard named Geric, who she talks to while out in the fields. However, her secret is discovered by her friend Enna (see "Enna Burning"), and later she is spotted in a festival by her erstwhile guards. Later, after literally being stabbed in the back by Ungolad she flees back to Gilsa, who fixes her up again and sends her back to the capital. In the time she was gone Enna was forced to reveal Ani’s secret, and as the wedding between the Prince and Selia, who had been leading the King of Bayern to believe that Kildenree was about to launch a surprise attack on the much stronger country of Bayern, and so the military is preparing to attack before Kildenree can, is about to take place, they ride to the castle it is to take place in. She confronts Selia and learns that the 'Guard' Geric is actually the Crown Prince, so the Bayern party retires and Selia and Ani talk. However, before Selia’s now-lover Ungolad can kill Ani, Geric and the King, who had been eavesdropping behind a curtain to figure out who was the real princess was, intervene and a fight between Ani and the King’s supporters (her Forest friends and his Guards) and Selia’s supported (Kildenree’s Guard) ends in Geric and Ungolad being stabbed and Selia almost escaping. Days later, after things quiet down and Geric recovers, Ani is called to prove that Kildenree is not planning an attack on Bayern. She quickly dismisses the “proof” they have and, smarting from the accusations, goes on to show them the injustice and segregation that she had witnessed while tending to the King’s geese, and leaves them astounded. Geric later finds her on a balcony; they kiss (having fallen in love while both were lying about their true identities), and the book ends with Ani’s Forest friends rejoicing on being finally recognized as official Bayerners. |
Enna Burning | Shannon Hale | 2,004 | The story picks up from the first book, shortly after it ends. It is set mainly in Bayern; a kingdom divided into forests and towns, with a Medieval technology. It is on the other side of the mountains from from Kildenree, where the first book began. Enna and Princess Isi (Ani) became fast friends in The Goose Girl. After the end of the first book, Enna returned to the forest to live with her older brother Leifer. Finding a vellum scroll, while in the forest, Leifer learns the secret of 'Fire Speaking'; but, he is unable to control his fire, or his temper, from 'flaring up'. Enna goes to the city, hoping to talk to Isi about Leifer's new power with fire. But, Isi is unable to manage her own ability to communicate with some animals and wind, since the end of the first book. The neighboring country of Tira invades Bayern. Enna and her friends, Razo and Finn, travel to the front, where they meet Leifer. He is anxious to use his power with fire to fight; but, dies in the battle. When Enna finds Leifer's body, she finds the vellum; and, learns its secrets. She makes a series of rules for herself, which she hopes will allow her to fight in the war, without meeting the same fate as her brother. Enna goes on a series of raids, with her old friends. But, finds she is unable to keep the promises she made to herself. When her friends try to stop her, from more sabotage raids, she runs away; and, is captured. Tiran Captain Sileph uses herbs to drug Enna; so, she can't use her power with fire to escape. He tries to brainwash her into teaching him the secret of fire, and fighting for Tira. Razo and Finn try to rescue her, but are captured. Enna gradually gives in to Sileph's persuasive skill with 'people speaking'. She believes he loves her; and, falls victim to Stockholm Syndrome. While Sileph is away, at a battle, the guards forget to drug her. She fights her way out of the camp and escapes, to fight for Bayern, and try to end the war, even if it means her own death, like her brother. Before she succumbs to her wounds, from using too much fire, her friends find her. The last part of the book follows Enna and Isi trying to find a cure, in a neighboring kingdom, to balance the fire and wind, that is killing them. The trip takes months. Along the way, Enna has to face Sileph, and a band of Tiran soldiers. His charisma has worn thin for her and his troops; and they fight. Enna and Isi finally return home, at peace, to their friends and families. |
Austenland | Shannon Hale | 2,007 | Jane Hayes is a seemingly normal young New Yorker, but she has a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen—or maybe even, she suspects, with the actors who are playing them. It’s all a game, Jane knows. And yet the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own? |
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,910 | The book contains all twelve Lady Molly adventures and is narrated by Lady Molly's assistant Mary Granard. |
Princess Academy | Shannon Hale | 2,005 | Miri is a fourteen-year-old girl from Mount Eskel, an isolated territory of Danland, who has never been allowed to work with the rest of the villagers in the quarry that keeps the community alive. Because of this, she feels like an outcast in the community and cut off from the culture focused around a shared working life in the quarry. As the quarry can barely cut enough linder to feed the villagers, Miri keeps on trying to help. In spite of her feelings of isolation, Miri is very close to her father and her sister, Marda, and she shares a close friendship with a boy named Peder. Unexpectedly, a messenger from the king arrives along with the usual traders from the lowlands. The messenger announces that the nation's priests have informed the nation that, despite the lack of education provided for the villagers and the prejudice that exists between the mountain villagers and the lowlanders, the crown prince's future bride will come from Mount Eskel. A "princess academy" is established near the village to train the potential princesses, with compulsory attendance for every girl aged between twelve and seventeen. At the end of the year, the prince will visit the academy and choose the girl to be the next princess. Miri and the other girls attend the academy, and although they struggle to appease the strict teacher, Tutor Olana, Miri excels at learning and commerce. All the girls are eager to please the prince and win a comfortable life for themselves and their families, and Miri's new knowledge of commerce helps the village prosper in trading with the lowlanders. After a disagreement, the girls use their knowledge of diplomacy to negotiate a more bearable living arrangement with Tutor Olana, including weekly visits home. Miri also begins to explore the mechanics of quarry-speech, a form of unspoken communication used only in the quarry, and makes friends with some of the other girls, including Britta, a lowlander who had recently moved to Mount Eskel. Miri's excellence in her studies and her willingness to help her peers despite bitter competition eventually earn her the title of academy princess and the privilege of having the first dance with the prince. At the academy ball, the prince dances with every girl except Britta, who is ill, and generally acts very distant. Later in the evening, he takes a walk with Miri and shows a more human side. However, he leaves without choosing a bride. Once the prince has left, promising to return in the spring to announce his choice, bandits attack the academy hoping to hold the new princess hostage. Miri must use her new knowledge of quarry speech to call for help from the village. At first no one seems to hear her, but eventually she is able to contact Peder. The villagers come to the academy through the blizzard, and the girls escape from the bandits and spend the winter at home with their families. In the spring, the prince returns and chooses to marry Britta - whom he has known since childhood - and names Mount Eskel an official province. The book ends with Peder and Miri admitting their feelings toward each other. |
River Secrets | Shannon Hale | 2,006 | The story begins as the main character, Razo, is watching a meeting. The king and queen of Bayern speak with a Tiran ambassador and agree that they should exchange ambassadors to promote peace between the two countries. After the reception, Razo is chosen to be one of twenty soldiers from Bayern's Own to join the ambassador in Ingridan, the capital of Tira. Razo experiences self-doubt and believes that their captain only chose him because of his participation in the war. As winter creeps into Bayern, the ambassador, Lady Megina, and twenty of Bayern's Own leave for Tira. On the way, Razo finds a burned body hidden in the trees near a river. After talking with his captain, they assume that Enna might be burning again—either that, or the burner might be from Tira, because the body was placed where it could be easily seen by the Tiran escort group, who are led by a soldier named Ledel. When the party arrives at Ingridan, they are taken to Thousand Year's Palace, where they are introduced to Lord Belvan and Lady Dasha, their host and hostess. Razo finds more burned bodies and still doesn't know who the burner is. After being beat up by one of Ledel's soldiers, Tumas, he goes to his captain requesting to be sent home. Talone rejects his plea, and asks him a series of random questions. After answering them all correctly, Razo is told that he has excellent observation skills, and is given the job of spying to find the murderer. Razo proceeds to watch and spy on everyone. A week passes and the Tiran party challenges Bayern's Own to a mock swordfight. Razo is humiliated with defeat and the Tiran soldiers mock him. Then Finn speaks up and tells them to challenge Razo with a long-ranged weapon, his sling to their spears. Razo hits every target and discovers that he's the best sling Bayern had. Summer approaches and the Tiran soldiers and all the nobles leave for the coolness of the country. Razo goes out to buy shoes and meets the prince of Tira. The prince tells him that he has no true power, except the power of the people's opinion. Razo proceeds to spend most of the summer with the prince so that people can get used to seeing Bayerners. They then dye their boring white robes that all Tiran wear rich and deep colors. Next thing they knew, everyone was wearing their Tiran robes.with Bayern dyes; however, this is not nearly enough to turn popular opinion against the warmongers. Soon after Ledel's cohort returns from their summer assignment outside the city, Razo discovers a map and overhears a discussion that leads him to believe that Ledel was behind the burning. Razo and Dasha go to the burner's warehouse but are captured. They fight back and are nearly killed - although Razo ends up killing Tumas with his sling - until Enna and Finn, tipped off by Conrad, arrive. Enna and Dasha, whom Razo discovered had the gift of water-speak, fight the newly-taught Tiran burners while Finn and Ledel duel; the Bayeners and Dasha win, and the whole story - of Ledel attempting to teach fire to soldiers in order to spark another war, only to have them die like Enna's brother Leifer - comes out. Soon before the Bayern cohort is due to return home, Geric and Isi (King and Queen of Bayern) come to see the vote for or against war; they arrive too late, but come just in time for the celebration, escorting Isi's sister Napralina. At the celebratory feast, Finn makes a fool of himself by playing the harp and singing a love song to Enna, and Enna finally accepts his proposal to marry him. After the dinner, Razo and Dasha confess feelings for each other and discuss how they can make their relationship work with such separate identities. The novel ends with Razo and Dasha together in a boat, with Razo telling Dasha Isi's story. (see: Goose Girl) |
The Tangled Skein | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,907 | In The Tangled Skein, Baroness Orczy does not paint Queen Mary nearly so black as she is usually portrayed. Indeed Mary is depicted as so passionately loving as to be almost lovable, a woman of strong emotions, invariably swayed by justice. The tangling of the skein results from Mary’s love for (the fictional) Robert d’Esclade, fifth Duke of Wessex, whom the people of England desire to become King Consort. Robert is the embodiment of all chivalry, and every virtue dear to the heart of an Englishman. He is, so far, fancy free, but beyond deep respect for, and loyalty to, his Queen, he has no other feeling, and the idea of marriage with her merely for political reasons is repulsive to him. He is at the same time half betrothed, but not bindingly, to Lady Ursula Glynde, whom he has not seen since her babyhood. Wessex is repelled by the idea of having his wife thrust upon him in any way, and purposely avoids the girl, in which he is, unknown to himself, aided and abetted by the Queen, who tries jealously to guard him against falling a victim to Ursula’s undoubted fascinations. The Lady Ursula is exceedingly beautiful, very, sprightly in manner, and a favourite wherever she goes. As soon as she realises for what purpose Mary is keeping her in the background, Ursula’s spirit is aroused to the point of self-defence. To begin with, she is in love with Wessex, the report of his nobility and goodness and the feeling that in a measure he belongs to her, have influenced her all her life; but she has also a deeper interest at stake in the fact that on her father’s death- bed she bound herself by a promise to go into a convent if she should not marry Wessex. Ursula has no fancy to take the veil, so merry, so utterly independent is she that she takes to breaking bounds in order to frustrate the Queen’s jealousy; and bring herself under the notice of her betrothed, which she achieves, and all would have gone well for the young couple but for the power of Cardinal de Moreno, and his tool Don Mignel, Marquis de Saurez. The Cardinal is in England in order to negotiate the marriage between Philip II of Spain and Mary. His only stumbling block he discovers to be Wessex, and with a view to clearing him out of the way he first tries to bring about the marriage between the Duke and Lady Ursula. But, Mary discovers the ruse, and, in a fit of rage, declares that if this comes about his Eminence may leave England immediately; she will not marry Philip, Then the Cardinal has to set to work to part the lovers, a far more difficult and intricate business than bringing them together. It costs a life, Wessex his freedom, and Lady Ursula her good name before it can be affected. The skein is more hopelessly tangled than before, and still Mary remains obdurate. To straighten the tangle it takes the forfeiting of Mary’s dignity, her love, and her will. The Cardinal’s victory is gained at the expense of his own career. The lovers themselves are left with scars they can never forget. |
Book of a Thousand Days | Shannon Hale | 2,007 | When Dashti, a mucker from the steppes of Titor's Garden, seeks to find a job after her mother died due to illness, she eventually finds one in one of the 8 Realms. It's to become Lady Saren's maid, she enters into a struggle between Saren and her father. The Lord of Titor's Garden has declared that his daughter will marry Lord Khasar of Thoughts of Under, when Saren reveals that she has betrothed herself to the young Khan Tegus of Song for Evela. To tame his daughter, Saren's father shuts her and Dashti, the only maid willing to accompany Saren, in a tower far away from his city. He claims he will only release them after seven years, or if Saren will relent and marry Khasar. |
A Bride of the Plains | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,915 | The story is set in Hungary and the scene is laid in a village close to the Maros. The sharp, cracked sound of the Elevation bell breaks the silence of the summer morning. The good Pater Bonifacius is saying Mass: he, at any rate, is astir and busy with his day’s work and obligations. Surely it is strange that at so late an hour in mid-September, with the maize waiting to be gathered in, the population of Marosfalva should be still absent from the fields! Hej ! But, stranger, what would you ? Such a day is-this Fourteenth of September. What ? You did not know it? The Fourteenth of September, the ugliest, blackest, most God forsaken day in the whole year! What kind of a stranger are you if you do not know that On this hideous day all the finest lads in the village are taken away to be made into soldiers by the abominable Government? Three years! Why, the lad is a mere child when he goes-one-and-twenty on his last birthday, bless him! still wanting a mother’s care of his stomach, and a father’s heavy stick across his back from time to time to keep him from too much love-making. Three years ! When he comes brick he is a man and has notions of his own. Three years! What are the chances he comes back at all? Bosnia! Where in the world is that? My God, how they hate it! They must go through with it, though they hate it all-every moment. They hate to be packed into railway carriages like so many dried heads of maize in a barn... and the rude alien sergeant with his 'Vorwarts!' and 'Marsch!' and 'Rechts!' and 'Links!' I ask you in the name of the Holy Virgin what kind of gibberish is that? On this particular fourteenth of September it is Andor's turn due to go. On the eve preceding it, at the village merrymaking, as the whole population spends its last happy hours trying to forget the hideous evets that will occur in the morning, he tokens himself to Elsa the village beauty. It is Elsa and Andor that everyone is watching. He is tall and broad-shouldered with the supple limbs of a young stag, and the mad irresponsible movements of a young colt. The young couple dread the next day, which comes all too soon. They are at the station now, the last bell has sounded. For each lad only one girl, and there she is at the foot of the carriage steps, a corner of her ribbon, or handkerchief or cotton petticoat stuffed into her mouth to prevent herself from bursting into sobs. The pain and loss of conscription. It is some time since Andor was conscripted but there has been no news of him so Elsa is forced to betroth herself to the wealthy and sinister Béla, after being placed in the terrible alternative of either being faithless to Andor or disobedient to her mother. It is characteristic of Hungarian society at the time that of the two options available the latter seemed by far the more heinous. On the eve of Elsa's wedding Andor suddenly reappears, and is indirectly concerned in the assassination of Béla which takes place the same night. The story begins and ends with festival mingled with tragedy. |
Trading Up (Candace Bushnell)) | Candace Bushnell | 2,003 | Janey Wilcox's flagging career was revived when, in the closing pages of Four Blondes, she accepted a contract with Victoria's Secret. Trading Up stars a slightly older and wiser Janey Wilcox, one who is determined to make it to the top. Wilcox begins the novel as an older but still quite popular lingerie and runway model whose aspirations now include breaking into show business. Fortunately, the New York social scene is dominated by powerful media mogul/starlet couples. Spending a summer in the Hamptons, Janey Wilcox befriends Mimi Kilroy, wife of media mogul George Paxton. Kilroy introduces her new model friend to Selden Rose, an up-and-coming CEO of cable television network MovieTime. At first Janey is uninterested in Selden and is instead enamored with Zizi, a young Argentinian polo player with model looks and the countenance of a member of the European elite. Only in an attempt to attract Zizi does she begin dating Selden. Janey and Selden are quickly married, while Zizi begins an affair with Mimi. Janey continually struggles with her torrid past as a consummate seducer of powerful men and is known in many circles as a semi-prostitute. Determined to become a movie producer, Janey attempts to maneuver her way to the top of the New York social scene by any means necessary, including using her younger sister and her brother-in-law, a popular rock star, for her own ends. Eventually it is revealed that Janey's reputation as a prostitute is rather well-deserved and a past indiscretion with a powerful media mogul is publicly revealed. Janey's reputation is ruined and she splits from her husband, fleeing to Los Angeles. In the end Janey has managed to get an old, crudely-written screenplay (written years earlier) into the hands of the right people in Hollywood and is poised to embark on a new path as a Hollywood movie producer. The story ends on an unexpectedly triumphant note, with Janey poised to conquer Hollywood. There is a sense that the ends have justified the means. Janey's shameless ambition, her hard headed cool determination to get whatever she wants - at any cost - wins through. This isn't the expected tale of a grasping, gold digger who gets her comeuppance. It is more the tale of a beautiful woman who uses her looks as a tool to operate in a world where male ruthlessness is admired and feared, and yet her own casual callousness is deplored and scorned by those around her. |
The Stone Monkey | Jeffery Deaver | 2,002 | In the novel, we follow Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, partners and lovers, as they try to track down a ruthless Chinese human smuggler and hitman, 'Gui', translated as 'The Ghost'. The start of the novel sees the Ghost scuttle a ship full of human smugglers as they are intercepted by the coastguard. He escapes to shore via a liferaft, as do some of the 'Undocumenteds' being smuggled into America. Before Ghost escapes to the shore, he shoots several members of the crew and shoots at the escaping immigrants. Near the shore the immigrants hit rocks and several of them are thrown out of the boat, and are washed up on the shore. The Ghost shoots two of them, and steals a car to escape after his accomplice flees the scene on hearing the rapidly approaching police. Meanwhile the immigrants land on the shore and steal a white van from a church. As Amelia arrives on the scene, she spots a man clinging to the rocks in the sea. Unwilling to wait for search and rescue, she dives in after him and keeps him afloat. Once the S+R crew arrive, they are pulled to shore. They discover the mans name is John Sung, and he has been shot, but insignificantly. He is taken off to hospital, and later placed in detention for illegal entry to USA. Back at Rhymes apartment, they meet Sonny Li, an immigrant on the ship who is actually an undercover police officer from China, intent on killing the Ghost for personal reasons. He predicts that the Ghost will attack the traitorous accomplice that fled the scene, leaving him to get away by himself. Rhyme disagrees and puts all his energy into finding the immigrants, who have gone into hiding. The accomplice is later discovered, apparently tortured with knives, his eyelids cut out. Dead. Sonny gains respect from Rhyme. Rhyme and Sachs track down one of the families in hiding, the 'Wu's', who have gone into hiding in a safehouse provided by a local gang. However the Ghost has also hunted them down, and is heading to kill them. He turns onto the street, and a shot fires out. It is Alan Coe, an INS agent with a personal vendetta against the Ghost. He is not allowed to continue the investigation because of this, as it results in the Ghost escaping. However, the Wu's and John Sung are both in safehouses leaving only the 'Chang' family still in hiding. Here we see the Changs, with the father, Sam Chang, planning to masquerade as a traitor to the family who is selling their hideout to the Ghost, and kill him. He knows this may well end in his death.He confides in his wife and his father, and is preparing to leave. His father asks him for a last drink together and prepares tea. The tea is drugged, and Sam Chang's father takes the gun and leaves to meet the Ghost. He fails to kill the Ghost, and kills himself with an overdose of morphine after running out of ammo. Meanwhile, Sonny Li is following his less conventional methods of police work, and he actually tracks down the Ghost and finds who he is. However he confronts him without the others, and is killed before he has a chance to tell Rhyme. However, he deliberately spreads some trace evidence at the scene to lead Rhyme onto the right person. At this point the reader knows who the Ghost is, but Rhyme doesn't. Using the evidence from Chang's killing, and Sonny's killing, Rhyme deduces where the Changs are hiding out. He sends Sachs, Coe and John Sung (as a translator) to take them into detention and government safehouses. During the journey there, Rhyme phones Sachs and tells her who the Ghost is. She pulls over and pulls the gun on Coe, and arrests him, claiming to have uncovered evidence that he is the Ghost's police contact. He is taken away. She and Sung continue to the Changs flat. They get inside and Sachs spins round and trains her weapon on Sung, a SPECTAC team swoop in and apprehend Sung and he is revealed to be the Ghost. Arresting Coe was a cunning move to trick Sung into thinking they thought they had captured the real Ghost. It is later revealed that the Ghost had shot Sung on the beach, and stolen his personal affects, then shot himself and jumped in the sea. They later hear of the intention to release the Ghost back to China, where he will supposedly be tried. Rhyme and Sachs are horrified and attempt to stop it. They discover something and race to the airport. They confront the Ghost and his two INS guards coming up to the airport gate. They reveal that through their research, they have discovered a high level of corruption in the INS, and this leads to the Ghost being tried in America and several high level security personnel taking 'early retirement'. The novel ends with Rhyme revealing that he will not be undergoing the surgery described in the previous book, which is a huge relief to Sachs, his earlier conversation with Li having inspired him to consider that he is a better detective in his current state due to his ability to focus on purely intellectual matters. Finally Sachs oversees the adoption of the baby whose mother was killed aboard the ship, by the Changs, who have always wanted a daughter. The families are awarded asylum. |
Under the Jolly Roger | null | 2,005 | After leaving Lawson Peabody, a boarding school in Boston, Jacky joins the whaling ship, the "Pequod", as a companion to the Captain's wife, a teacher for the Captain's son, and as the cook's helper. Jacky leaves the ship when it arrives in London and searches for Jaimy. She goes to Jaimy's house on Nine Brattle Lane, where Jaimy's mother threw Jacky out and told her Jaimy was no longer in love with her. She is confused until the family maid, named Hattie, tells her not to believe her and that Jaimy will be at the races at Epsom Downs. Jacky sets off to find him. In the meantime, Jacky visits her old gangs kip under the Blackfriar's bridge. She doesn't recognize any of the kids and they tell her what happened to the other members of the gang. They tell her a former member, Judy was hired to be a helper to an older woman, and despite her promises, has not come back to help the gang. Thinking that was odd, Jacky goes to visit her and discovers Judy is being forced to work at a wash house for a terrible man. Jacky saves Judy. Jacky takes Judy in as her maid and buys her all new clothes. Jacky dresses as a jock in order to get into a racetrack, where Jaimy is. She sees Jaimy with his cousin Emily and mistakenly thinks that Jaimy has replaced her. She runs away and is captured by a press-gang who mistake her for a boy and take her aboard a ship, HMS Wolverine, where Jacky furiously reveals that she is a girl. Instead of sending her back, the captain keeps her around, wanting to have a night of sport with her. Jacky, knowing what the Captain has in mind, jumps from the ship into the sea, in an attempt to swim to safety. As Jacky is swimming, the Captain of the Wolverine sends out a small boat to retrieve her. As the boat creeps up on her, Jacky tries to stop them by going under water and pulling at an oar, causing a sailor to fall out. She thinks this will cause them to slow down and save the man, but instead they just keep going. Jacky can't let the sailor die, so she dives down and saves him. When she does this the other men grab her and pull her aboard. When back on the ship, Jacky tells the Captain that if she is to be entered into the books then she shall be put it as midshipman, since she was made midshipman while on the Dolphin. After she was put into the books, Jacky settles into the midshipman's berth. There she meets the other midshipman, Georgie Piggott, about eight years old, Ned Barrow and Tom Wheeler, both twelve years old, and Robin Raeburne, about sixteen years old. Meanwhile Jaimy has written a letter to Jacky, explaining the events at the track. Jaimy tells that the girl Jacky saw was actually his cousin Emily, who likes to make other men jealous by going into town with Jaimy. Jaimy says he is still hers. Jacky attempts to begin training the midshipmen. To begin this Jacky puts the midshipmen onto the ship's watch. Jacky also goes to the officers to be assigned a division. She is put with gun crew, Division One on the port bow guns. Jacky goes to the division and learns they have never even fired the guns. She assigns the men their jobs and drills the men on dry runs. The book again turns to a letter from Jaimy to Jacky. Jaimy says how Judy shows up on his doorstep. Jacky had told her if she did not return to go to Jaimy's house, since she thought she and Jaimy would be together. Judy tells Jaimy how his mother had thrown Jacky out of the house and told her Jaimy no longer loved her. Jaimy is outraged and goes to his mother and has Judy tell the story. His mother hears how the maid, Hattie, told Jacky where Jaimy would be and tells her to leave. Hattie is mad that she would throw her out after many years of service and tells Jaimy to look in one of his mother's drawers. In the drawer Jaimy finds letter to and from Jacky. This makes Jaimy very mad, and tells her that he is leaving, which is what he did, along with Judy and Hattie. During an early morning watch, Jacky notices a flashing light from the shore. She is told that they occur about every week. They don't know what they mean but they are supposed to tell the Captain when the lights occur. While on watch Jacky goes about and inspects the ship. She goes up the foremast to check on the lookout. There she meets Joseph Jared, the Captain of the top. He tells her he is a friend of Billy, the sailor she saved on the first day. Jared also tells her that the ship does not stop ships from passing through the blockade. One night, Jacky is on the watch when a storm comes, which she calls a living gale. Jacky looks up and sees the forestaysail chafing. If it breaks the ship will be lost. Jacky runs from the quarterdeck and climbs to the line and fixes it. Jacky decides to climb even higher to make sure not anymore line is chafing, even though that's Jared's job. When she gets there a huge wave comes over the deck. Jacky holds on to the mast, but she knows the wave will tear her away. When she thinks she is lost Jared comes from behind and holds her down, saving her. The Captain sends the officers away in a small boat when the captain decides he wants to sleep with Jacky. She tries to offer herself to a fellow midshipman, Robin, wanting her first time to be willing and happy instead of in fear. However they are interrupted and Jacky is sent to the Captain's cabin. A member of the crew, wanting to protect Jacky, begins dropping cannon balls from the rigging on to the quarter deck. This enrages the Captain, it being a beginning act of mutiny. He orders the person to be captured, and it is revealed to be Robin. When the Captain tries to have his way with Jacky, he has a heart attack and dies. At first, Jacky pretends that the Captain is too sick to leave his cabin. After a few days Jacky tells the crew of the Captain's death. She realizes that she is now Captain of the ship, all the sailors ranking above her having been sent off in a small boat, never to be heard from again in the book. After the Captain's death, Jacky discovers that the Captain has been taking bribes to let ships pass through the blockade. She soon uncovers a smuggling ring, which included smuggling out French spies. Jacky takes control of the ship, which includes releasing Robin and placing Joseph Jared, a sailor that Jacky befriended, as one of her officers. She and her crew take several French ships as prizes and Jacky earns a reputation as La belle jeune fille sans merci, or "the beautiful young girl without mercy". Soon she is removed from her position as captain, but manages to escape on one of the captured ships, the Emerald, which she makes her own. She tries to hide from the Admiralty the fact that she captured the Emerald. Along with Higgins, a steward from the Wolverine, Jacky travels to Ireland and finds her former sea dad, Liam Delaney and offers him the role as Captain of the Emerald, while she would be the owner of the ship. He accepts and together they find a crew and begin privateering. Jacky becomes close friends with Liam's daughter, Mariad. They become very wealthy and prosperous and Jacky's reputation grows. When the Emerald is at a port in England Jacky is relaxing in the countryside and an older man approaches her. The man turns out the be Jacky's grandfather. This is the first family Jacky has had since the dark day when her parents and sister died and she was forced out on the street. Jacky had acquired a letter of marque by revealing the smuggling ring to the admiralty, but then the admiralty revokes her letter of marque and she is branded as a pirate, when they learn she kept the Emerald for her own use.. Later, she is briefly reunited with Jaimy who is a lieutenant aboard the Wolverine which captures and sinks her ship and finds out that the girl she saw Jaimy with was actually his cousin, and they are together again. However, the Wolverine becomes engaged in the Battle of Trafalgar where Jacky escapes the brig and takes part in the battle. When all is over she request to stay and help doctor many of her former shipmates who had been injured, but the Captain sets her free for her bravery in battle. She then signals Jamie to meet her in Boston before sailing away in a small boat. |
Skinnybones | Barbara Park | null | Alex wrote a letter in a promotional contest for a cat food company that describes the key points in his young life mainly having to do with Little League baseball. Alexwell has played in Little League for six years, his skills in the game are so subpar he refers to himself as "really stinky" when it comes to baseball. He is constantly berated by his nemesis T.J. Stoner, a player widely-known for his incredible skill. After numerous attempts to get T.J. to leave him alone fail, Alex tries beating him in a pitching contest, at which he fails miserably. A few days later, their teams are playing a game against each other and T.J. once again tries to make Alex look foolish. During the game, Alex bunts the ball and runs to first, where T.J. is set to get him out. Desperate to stop him, he jumps up and down, screaming "BOOGA BOOGA!" He makes T.J. miss the ball, allowing him to get a double. Then he is called out by the umpire immediately after for interfering with the play at first base. Though he was thrown out, he accomplished something better than getting a double to him which was making T.J. embarrassed. When he looks like he's going to beat Alex up, he runs home and locks himself in his room. T.J. gets a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for beating Alex's team. Alex, in a twist of good luck, ends up winning the contest from the cat food company that he wrote the letter to at the book's opening. By winning, he will get to appear on a national television commercial. He leaves school that day, nervous about filming it, but eager to be a big star and hoping things will go well. |
Devil May Care | Sebastian Faulks | 2,008 | The story is set in the 1960s. A ritual execution in the outskirts of Paris starts a chain of events: a narcotics tide threatens to engulf Britain, a British airliner disappears in Iraqi airspace, and the threat of war echoes throughout the Middle East. Bond is instructed by his superior, M, to investigate a man named Dr Julius Gorner, and his bodyguard, Chagrin. Bond is warned that his performance will be monitored and that a new 00 agent is waiting in the wings, if his actions go awry. Bond flies to Imperial Iran (Persia) to investigate. Gorner owns factories and produces legitimate pharmaceuticals, however MI6 suspects he has other motives. During Bond's investigation he identifies Gorner due to a deformity of his hand, and establishes Gorner's complicity in a scheme to not only flood Europe with cheap drugs but also to launch a two-pronged terrorist attack on the Soviet Union, whose retaliation will subsequently devastate the UK. The attack is to be made using both the stolen British airliner and an ekranoplan. Bond is assisted in his investigation by Scarlett Papava (whose twin sister Poppy is under Gorner's emotional spell), Darius Alizadeh (the local head of station), JD Silver (an in-situ agent), and Felix Leiter. Bond is eventually captured by Gorner in the heroin plant, who explains that Bond is to be used as bait during a drugs delivery across the Afghan desert, and should he survive an expected ambush, is to fly the captured airliner into the Russian heartland. Bond would be identified as British upon its destruction, increasing the evidence against the British Government. Bond survives the predicted Afghan attack and plots an escape attempt, which sees Scarlett get away due to Bond surrendering himself as a diversion. Bond is recaptured and returned to his cell. In the morning he is taken aboard the aeroplane. Before the airliner can bomb the Soviets, with the aid of the airliner's pilot and Scarlett (who had been hiding on board), Bond regains control of the aeroplane and crashes it into a mountainside after parachuting to safety. Meanwhile, Felix Leiter and Darius inform agent Silver of the second method of attack. Silver shows himself to be a double agent by failing to call in an airstrike against the Ekranoplan and by attempting to kill Leiter and Darius. In the shoot-out Darius successfully calls in the airstrike at the cost of his own life and Leiter survives only thanks to the timely arrival of Hamid, his taxi driver. The Ekranoplan is destroyed by RAF Vulcan bombers before it reaches its target. Bond and Scarlett escape through Russia but are pursued by Chagrin, who Bond finally kills on a train. Later Gorner meets him on a boat and tries to shoot him, but Bond pushes him off, where he is torn to pieces by a propeller. With the subsequent elimination of both Chagrin and Gorner, Bond considers his mission a success, and on condition that the agent M has waiting in the wings will not take his place Bond is sent to assess the new agent, designated 004. She turns out to be Scarlett Papava. Scarlett discloses that the story of her twin sister was a ploy to convince Bond to enable her to join the mission. Papava feared that if Bond knew she was a potential double-0 agent, he would not have worked with her. With Bond returning to active duty, Scarlett moves off to her own operations as a full 00 agent. |
Blade of Fire | Stuart Hill | 2,007 | Blade of Fire takes place 20 years after the first novel. The story follows Thirrin's and Oskan's (now married) new efforts to repel the imposing threat of Imperial invasion, yet again at the hands of Scipio Bellorum and his bloodthirsty sons, Octavius and Sulla. But this time, they have the help of their five children: Cressida, the Crown Princess and military extraordinaire; Eodred and Cerdic, the twin warrior princes; Charlemagne (Sharley), stricken with polio at a young age, and much to his chagrin, cannot be a warrior; and finally Medea, the dark daughter and the only inheritor to her father's gift. A burning hatred for Charlemagne causes Medea to turn against her family. Early on in the book Oskan has a prophecy about Sharley. About a week or two later Sharley is sent off into exile to be Prince Regent to the exiles. Maggie, his tutor, goes with him. He is sent to the Southern Continent where he makes some unexpected allies and friends. This includes the Desert People (he befriends the Sultan's son) and the Lusu people of Arifica. Maggie falls ill on the journey to the Sultan's palace and is sent to stay in oasis where he recovers. On the journey to Lusuland, an unexpected storm comes but the spirits of the desert (the blessed women) save them from harm. On the sea voyage back to Icemark the fleet of Lusu people and the desert people are attacked by the Empire's biggest allies. Then before the final battle against the Polypontians, Medea possesses the Crown Prince of the desert people, Mehkmet, and turns him against Sharley. With the help of the Blessed Women though, Medea is defeated. Later when Oskan is about to call down lightning, Medea steals his lightning and is about to use it against Sharley but Oskan blocks the lightning, sending it back toward Medea. Oskan attacks Medea because he found out that Medea betrayed the Icemark and banishes her to the seventh plain of the magical realms called The Circle Of Dark. Octavius is killed by Sharley and Sulla is killed by Cressida. After the battle Scipio is beheaded by Thirrin and the Vampire Queen rips apart his body. Icemark has defeated the Empire. |
Fall of a Kingdom | Hilari Bell | 2,003 | When the Hrum (an evil race) arrive in a country (good guys) Farsala, Some serious stuff goes down. Kavi is a peasant peddler selling bronze goods plated in gold and he holds a grudge against the deghans. When he was a young apprentice to a man in the city of Mazad, a deghan came in looking for a remarkable sword and is willing to pay an astronomical price for it, but does not have the money with him. Kavi grabs for the sword, but the deghan pulls and scars his right hand. A year later, the deghan returns for the swords pay, and throws in a bonus amount "For his troubles". The cut cripples him with an injury that still pains him years later. While Kavi is running from a city where he is found to be selling false gold items, he is caught up in High Commander Merahb's plan. He is to visit the cottage where Soraya is staying to supply her with the goods and news that a deghass is accustomed to, and he is to do it like an obedient peasant should. But while he is on his usual rounds of the northern mining towns selling second rate iron goods to the country folk, he is captured by Hrum scouts who have infiltrated Farsala unknown. To save his own life Kavi agrees to turn traitor to Farsala and spy for the Hrum. He also believes that the Hrum will be better rulers of Farsala than the deghans. When the Hrum arrive in Farsala the deghans and their unstoppable charge is ready to meet them. Seconds before the wall of horses slams into the Hrum's front line, spears five yards long and as thick as saplings appear throughout the Hrum line. The deghans' charge is dissolved and half of their army is killed in their initial charge. Jiaan is thrown from his horse and is knocked unconscious. He also thinks he broke his collar bone. During this time the Farsalan army is being driven back to their camp. When Jiaan wakes up, all he sees is his father attempting to save his army and challenge the Hrum's champion to a life or death duel for victory or defeat. Before Commander Merahb could do anything else, he is shot by four arrows. Then, attempting to get up, he gets shot with another volley of arrows that kills him. With the High Commander dead and the Farsalan army defeated and virtually non-existent, Jiaan has to scrounge up an army of peasants and try to defeat an empire that spans half of the known world. |
The Last Children of Schewenborn | Gudrun Pausewang | 1,983 | The story starts in a present of a Cold War situation similar to that at the time of writing. It is told in the first person by Roland, at the beginning a 12-year old (in fact, nearly 13) boy from Bonames (a district of Frankfurt), who travels with his parents and sisters to visit his grandparents at Schewenborn. During this journey they are surprised by a nuclear attack. After the explosion, no assistance arrives from the outside. Survivors start to assume that the whole of Germany, or the entire civilized world, may have been destroyed — but this is never clarified until the end of the novel. The family finds refuge in the house of the grandparents, who at the time of the nuclear explosion were in Fulda and were probably killed there. Shortly afterwards, Roland's mother takes in a young brother and sister who have been orphaned in the attack. The later parts of the plot describe the weeks, months and years after this attack, and take place mostly at Schewenborn. The oppressive story does not have a happy ending. Gradually, members of Roland's family, including a new-born sibling without eyes, die of radiation sickness and other illnesses. At the conclusion, only Roland, his father, and a small group of children -- the "last children" of the title -- remain alive, and the final paragraphs suggest that they, too, will perish. |
Bitter Lemons | Lawrence Durrell | null | The book is alternately comic and serious, charting Durrell's experiences on Cyprus and the people he met and befriended, as well as charting the progress of the Cypriot "Enosis" (union with Greece and freedom from British rule) movement, which plunged the island into chaos and violence. Comic moments include Durrell's successful house-buying adventure, and the visits of his mother and brother, naturalist Gerald Durrell. Durrell settled in the village of Bellapais (purposely spelt "Bellapaix" by Durrell to evoke the old name Paix), which is now part of the Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus. During his stay, Durrell worked first as an English teacher at the Pancyprian Gymnasium, where several of his female students reportedly fell in love with him: Invited to write an essay on her favourite historical character, [Electra] never failed to delight me with something like this: 'I have no historical character but in the real life there is one I love. He is writer. I dote him and he dotes me. How pleasure is the moment when I see him came at the door. My glad is very big.' Eventually, however, "the vagaries of fortune and the demons of ill-luck dragged Cyprus into the stock-market of world affairs" and as armed groups emerged demanding an end to British rule and Cyprus' reunion with Greece, Durrell accepted a job as press adviser to the British governor. Durrell was not enamoured with the Cypriot militants, however, and felt that they were dragging the island to a "feast of unreason" and that "embedded so deeply in the medieval compost of religious hatreds, the villagers floundered in the muddy stream of undifferentiated hate like drowning men." The account ends with him fleeing the island without saying goodbye to his friends, approaching the "heavily guarded airport" by taxi in conversation with the driver who tells him "Dighenis, though he fights the British, really loves them. But he will have to go on killing them—with regret, even with affection." |
A Sheaf of Bluebells | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,917 | Many French aristocrats exiled during the revolution have been presenting petitions to enable them to return to France under the conditional amnesty granted to them by the newly crowned Emperor. Amongst them are a petition signed by Mme.la Marquise de Mortain and her son, Laurent (aged twenty-one years), and one signed by M. le Comte de Courson for himself and his daughter, Fernande. Fernande is Laurent’s cousin and is promised in marriage to him Napoleon, in a lenient mood, grants their return and allows them to retake possession of their chateaux and any remaining land that had not been sold by the State. Mme la Marquise, however, has an older son from a previous marriage still resident in France, Ronnay de Maurel was only four years old when his father died, but an uncle brought him up. This uncle, Gaston de Maurel is a solid republican patriot, if ever there was one, with nothing of the aristo about him at all. Gaston eats peas with his knife and wears sabots and a blouse... he even voted for the death of the king. Ronnay works in the foundries where he employs five thousand men and as a result he is now one of the richest men in France. Yet despite their fortune, he and his uncle live like peasants using only a couple of rooms in the sumptuous chateau that is now being returned to his mother. The fastidious Mme. la Marquise hates her elder son on every count. He is a follower of the loathed Bonaparte, and a bourgeois in his upbringing, manners and dress. Fernande also starts off by hating and despising Ronnay, but she soon hatches a plan to make him fall for her so she can win him over to the Royalist party. To this end she plans to bump into him in the woods and conveniently sprains her ankle just before the time she knows he will pass. "She had only just time to arrange her gown in its most becoming folds to decide on the exact position of the sheaf of bluebells and of her outstretched arm, and to assure herself that the sunlight was indeed playing with her hair and with her toes in just the manner she desired. Then she closed her eyes and waited." She waits until he is right in front of her before opening her eyes, gazing into his and pleading for his help. Ronnay is, as usual, dressed in blouse and rough breeches. Unused to such ploys, he gazes around in pathetic helplessness, as if expecting the dwellers of the forest to help him in his awful dilemma. But no one the around, and the lovely Fernande, whose tiny bare foot looks like an exquisite flower to him, is appealing, oh, so piteously, for help. Ronnay gives in and carries Fernande home. As per her plan he loses his heart completely on the journey, but rather unexpectedly, Fernande ends up also falling victim to the passion that she sought to arouse in Ronnay, in spite of her hatred of the cause for which he is fighting. The news that the hated Ronnay has become the lover of the woman promised to her adored younger son Laurent, only causes Mme. La Marquise to loathe him more. She plots and schemes for the undoing of her hated elder son but Fernande discovers the plot and saves Ronnay from being treacherously murdered. Laurent goes through tortures of passionate jealousy and deserts from his regiment at a great crisis in order to assure himself of Fernande’s feelings. Following which his mother furiously disowns him, accusing him of dishonour, while his father and kindred are fighting for France. Poor Laurent eventually retrieves his dishonour only to die a hero’s death, conveniently leaving Fernande free to marry Ronnay. |
Fire in Stubble | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,912 | The book centres on the love life of Rose Marie, the only daughter of M. Legros tailor-in-chief to His Majesty the King of France. As an infant Rose was espoused to Rupert Keyston, a mere child himself at the time. Over the years Rupert’s position has changed from one of poverty and obscurity to one of wealth, and he now holds the honorable position of the Earl of Stowmaries. Rupert has not seen his child-bride since his espousals, and on reaching manhood conceives a dastardly plot to free himself from the unwanted union by persuading his cousin Michael to impersonate him when he is finally called upon to ratify his engagement, and claim his bride. Once this has happened, he fully intends to get his marriage annulled, on the score of his wife’s unfaithfulness with his cousin. The mock nuptials are concluded with a dance in the workshop of M. Legros “The couples fell back one by one, panting against the wall, while only one pair remained in the centre, now twirling and twirling in a cloud of dust. The man’s head ’was bent, for he was over tall, and towered above every one else in the room. He was a head taller than she was, but he looked straight down at her, as he held her, straight into her eyes-those beautiful blue eyes of hers, which he had thought so cold. How it all happened afterwards she could never say. She had been dancing with her lord, looking up into his face, glowing with ardent love. She was still so dizzy, with the frantic whirl of the dance, that she hardly remembered being lifted into the saddle, and landed safely in the strong arms of her lord. In the forefront were papa and mamma, half laughing, half crying, waving hands and mopping tears…. No other ride had been just like this one, just one slight shifting of her lissome body, to settle more comfortably. One little movement, which seemed to bring her yet a little nearer to him.” The wild and lawless Michael, who agreed to his part in this base deed in return for gold is suddenly caught hopelessly in the charms of the lovely Rose Marie – but he is determined not to lose his prize. Papa Legros, on being informed of the trick that has been practiced on his child, pursues the couple hotly, and brings back his beloved daughter the same evening. So Michael‘s punishment begins. His love for Rose Marie transforms him from a reprobate to a chivalrous gentleman. After a series of exciting episodes they are eventually re-united. His trial as a Papist and traitor is dramatically told, and Rose Marie’s evidence that he was with her on the dates in question saves his head from being exhibited at Tyburn. Michael, frantic at this public smirching of her fair name, with a cry as that of a wild animal wounded to death, bounds forward to where his snowdrop in standing and sinks to his knees, pleading with the judge to stop the desecration of his beloved’s character. And so the splendid blackguard and reckless adventurer is reduced to a humble lover. |
Seeing | José Saramago | 2,002 | Seeing is a story set in the same country featured in Blindness and begins with a parliamentary election in which the majority of the populace casts blank ballots. The story revolves around the struggles of the government and its various members as they try to simultaneously understand and destroy the amorphous non-movement of blank-voters. Characters from Blindness appear in the second half of the novel, including 'the doctor' and 'the doctor's wife'. |
Now I Can Die in Peace | Bill Simmons | 2,006 | Now I Can Die in Peace is a collection of Simmons' articles from 1999 to 2004. It chronicles events such as Pedro Martinez's 1999 Cy Young season, the loss to the New York Yankees in the 2003 ALCS, and the 2004 ALCS, when the Red Sox won the last 4 games after they lost the first three games of the series. It contains frequent pop culture references and comparisons to The Shawshank Redemption. |
Homicide Trinity | Rex Stout | null | Bertha Aaron, a secretary at a law firm, comes to the brownstone to hire Wolfe to investigate a possibly serious ethical lapse by a member of the firm. She has no appointment and arrives during Wolfe's afternoon orchid session, so Archie gets the particulars from her. The firm she works for is representing Morton Sorell in a messy, highly publicized divorce. A few evenings ago, Miss Aaron noticed a junior member of the law firm – she won't say which one – in a cheap eatery, tête-à-tête with Mrs. Sorell, the firm's opponent in the divorce action. That sort of ex parte communication is highly improper. Later, Miss Aaron asked the lawyer about it, and he wouldn't discuss the matter. Miss Aaron won't take the problem to the firm's senior member, Lamont Otis, because she fears that the news, coupled with Otis's advanced age and heart condition, will kill him. But it has to be investigated. It's a novel problem, and Archie takes the unusual step of consulting Wolfe in the plant rooms. Because the case concerns a divorce, it's one that Wolfe normally would not touch. But because legal ethics, not the divorce itself, is the central issue, Archie thinks there's a chance Wolfe will take it. Even so, Wolfe tells Archie he won't do it, and Archie returns to the office to give Miss Aaron the bad news. Back in the office, Archie finds he can't give the news to Miss Aaron because she's dead, hit on the head with a heavy paperweight and then strangled with a necktie. It's Wolfe's paperweight. Even worse, it's Wolfe's necktie. He had spilled some sauce on it at lunch, removed it, and left it on his desk where someone could find it and use it to strangle Miss Aaron. Late that night, after Inspector Cramer and other police investigators have left, Mr. Otis arrives, along with one of the law firm's associates, Ann Paige. The death of his valued secretary has upset Otis, and he wants to know what happened. Wolfe allows Otis to read a copy of the statement Archie gave the police, and Otis is clearly shaken by the report of the ex parte communication. Otis asks Miss Paige to leave Wolfe's office – he wants to discuss things privately – and Archie escorts her to the front room. Wolfe and Otis discuss the situation at length, and Wolfe gets Otis's take on the three junior members of the firm, one of whom Miss Aaron saw talking with Mrs. Sorell. During their discussion, Archie checks on Miss Paige, and finds that she has opened the window in the front room and, apparently, jumped down to the sidewalk. She is nowhere to be found. The next morning, Archie calls on Mrs. Sorell, using as entrée a note he's written, informing her that she and the unidentified junior member were seen together in the restaurant. He wants to bring her to talk with Wolfe, but she plays dumb, and the best Archie can get from her is a promise to phone later in the day. On returning to the brownstone, Archie finds the office occupied only by a man he doesn't recognize. He finds Wolfe at the peephole, and learns that the man's name is Gregory Jett, one of the law firm's junior members. Jett is there to complain that Wolfe's behavior caused Mr. Otis undue stress. Brushing aside Jett's complaint, Wolfe learns that Jett is engaged to marry Miss Paige, and also that he had a brief fling with Mrs. Sorell a year earlier. Then the two other junior members, Edey and Heydecker, arrive looking for information and acting like lawyers. Mrs. Sorell's promised phone call comes, and she tells Archie that Miss Aaron must have seen her talking with Mr. Jett. Wolfe and Archie regard this information with skepticism: she seems to them devious. Now Wolfe tells them what Miss Aaron had to say before she was murdered – as yet, that's been disclosed only to the police and to Mr. Otis. Wolfe also states his assumption that the guilty lawyer followed Miss Aaron to Wolfe's office, convinced her to admit him while Archie was in the plant rooms with Wolfe, and then took the opportunity to kill her. The problem is that the three lawyers share a mutual alibi for the date and time that Miss Aaron was murdered: they were in conference together at their office, fully a mile from the brownstone. The lawyers leave, suspicious of one another, and not happy. When Wolfe then learns from Inspector Cramer that the timing apodictically exonerates Edey, Heydecker and Jett, he arranges for all involved to be brought to the brownstone for the traditional climax. This time, though, all but one are in the front room, listening via hidden microphone to Wolfe talk things over with the murderer. |
Before I Wake | Robert Wiersema | 2,006 | The novel is set in Victoria, British Columbia. A car accident leaves three year old Sherry Barrett in a coma. As her parents struggle to deal with the aftermath of the accident, word spreads that anyone who comes into contact with her will be miraculously cured of illnesses. As interest in Sherry intensifies, she becomes the focus of attention not only from pilgrims seeking healing, but of religious figures who accuse the Barretts of exploiting their daughter for gain. There is a fantastical aspect to some of the characters who intrude into the lives of the Barretts, and even Henry Denton, the driver of the vehicle that struck Sherry, trying to deal with his remorse, becomes trapped in limbo, which in this case is found in the Victoria Public Library. |
The Ministry of Fear | Graham Greene | null | In London, during the Blitz, Arthur Rowe wins a cake at a charity fête. He doesn't know the cake was given to him by mistake and contains a secret message. From the very moment he takes his prize, Rowe is caught up in an international spy ring acting on behalf of Nazi Germany. The action plays out as bombs pound the city, and who is friend and who foe becomes increasingly uncertain. The novel title was later used by Irish poet Seamus Heaney as a title about his time in school. fa:وزارت ترس ru:Ведомство страха |
Rogue Ship | A. E. van Vogt | 1,965 | Rogue Ship is a standalone novel in a form of a Fixup, because of its form of 3 short stories re-hashed into one, the reader can tell without difficulty when the story changes from one original short story to the next. Because of this, Rogue Ship can sometimes lose some continuity, as there are 'large gaps' in the plot/story line. Centaurus is the destination of the space ship, The Hope of Man. It has been traveling through space for almost twenty years, and still has nine years of flight remaining before Centaurus will be reached. For many on board the craft, Earth has become a vague memory, while for others it is a mere dot in the vast starry reaches of space. Restlessness is evident everywhere; the people want to return to a place they know is inhabited - not continue to an unknown where life is uncertain. Mutiny seems inevitable. Captain Lesbee (the ship's main officer) knows that mutiny breeds mutiny, but what is more significant is his knowledge of Earth's possible obliteration. The one hope is Centaurus. Now more than ever, there can be no turning back. Order has to be maintained even at the price of human life. After reaching Centaurus and finding it unsuitable to live on, The Hope of Man heads towards the next destination, the Alta system; because the ship at this time is unable to attain light speed it takes decades to travel there. Upon arriving in the system, after mutiny and treachery, The Hope of Man is now captained by Browne, a descendant of the ship's original First Officer. The Hope of Man starts to orbit Alta III in search of a new planet to settle on, but again they find it already inhabited and come under attack from the occupants. During this time we see a struggle for power by various groups. Control changes quickly from one character to another until the arrival of the ship's owner, Avil Hewitt. The novel concludes with Hewitt in charge and the ship finding many planets to inhabit. |
By the Gods Beloved | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,905 | Background Mark Tankerville and Hugh Emmett became firm friends whilst at school at St Pauls, their friendship cemented by many afternoons spent at Hugh's house in Hammersmith in the company of his father, one of the greatest archaeologists and Egyptologists of his generation. Mr Tankerville keeps the boys entertained with stories and theories about the people of Ancient Egypt and teaches them how to speak and understand the language of ancient Kamt. When they finish school, Mark goes to Oxford to study medicine while Hugh stays at home to help his father with his research. During this period Mr Tankerville and Mark's Uncle both die. After college Mark is unemployed but living off a small fortune left to him by a distant relative. He still sees Hugh occasionally but his old friend has become more and more distant as he absorbs himself in some 'important work'. Hugh apologies for his behaviour and asks that Mark gives him two years to finish his project and get back to his old self - Mark, as a qualified Doctor, is concerned that Hugh will have worked himself into the grave within two years if he keeps on as he is and makes Hugh promise that he will ask for help if he needs it. Two years pass with no contact between the friends, until one day Mark receives a telegram from Hugh asking him to come over. His work finally finished, what Hugh reveals to his old friend is a piece of 3000 year old parchment which he and his father have spent forty years piecing together. Hugh explains that the text proves that the ancient civilisation did not simply disappear at the close of the 6th dynasty, rather they were driven off by strangers and formed a new empire somewhere in the Libyan desert. More importantly he believes that their descendants are still living there and that the parchment clearly sets out the way to find the secret city. The Journey Hugh convinces Mark to accompany him on an expedition to find the hidden civilisation and a week later they are heading up the Nile on a dahabijeh towards the mysterious immensities of the Libyan desert. From Wady-Halfa they set out towards the west, alone but for four camels. After days of walking through the monotonous heat and sandstorms, they have exhausted most of their food supplies and two of the camels have died but eventually they spot the rock of Anubis - and suddenly it appears that there might be something tangible in Hugh's conjectures after all. The pair make their way slowly towards the rock, only to realise as they approach that the mass of white specks they have seen glinting in the sun at the base of the rock are human bones, none of which have been there for more than ten years... Nearby is a half dead man, dressed in rags who is speaking the ancient language of Kamt, before he dies he tells them that he has been thrown out of Kamt as a punishment. All ways into the valley appear to be sealed and impassable so, down to their last few days of supplies, Mark and Hugh wait by the main gate in the hope that another criminal will be expelled - giving them a chance to enter. Kamt Some days later the opportunity arises and they sneak into Kamt to find themselves in the middle of a massive temple. Hiding in the background they watch an ornate ceremony take place in the middle of which is a living breathing Pharaoh, his mother, Queen Maat-kha, and the High Priest Ur-tasen. Eavesdropping on the Queen and the Priest, they discover that the Pharaoh is very ill and if he dies his throne will pass to his cousin Princess Neit-akrit, as Maat-kha cannot remain as queen if she has no son or husband to accompany her on the throne. At this point Hugh comes out from his hiding place and tells the shocked witnesses that he has been sent by Ra. The Priest asks him what his will is, to which Hugh replies "To wed that woman and sit upon the throne of Kamt". Hugh's actions stun Mark but probably save them from death as they are quickly accepted by those present, who fall at Hugh's feet. The pair are treated like gods: showered with food, given luxurious clothes and entertained with lavish ceremonies. Before long they have been fully integrated into palace life. The Princess It soon becomes obvious that Princess Neit-akrit has her detractors, for her beauty causes madness in men and jealousy in women. Even the Queen is not immune, and asks Hugh to force the Princess to become a Priestess of Ra, hoping that once she has been blinded and rendered harmless, she will no longer be a threat. Hugh dismisses the idea, but after getting involved in the trial of one of the Princess' servants who murdered her own son rather than watch him be a slave to Neit-akrit's beauty, his curiosity is roused. He is further intrigued when, the night before he is due to visit the Princess for the first time, he is approached by a young girl. It turns out that her lover was the man cast out into the desert before they arrived, for he had fallen for the Princess and been caught trespassing in the temple on her request. The girl then gives Hugh a scarab as a talisman, to protect him from falling under Neit-akrit's spell. Before leaving Hugh manages to upset the High Priest even further when he insists that Mark is appointed as physician to the Pharaoh, there is a bit of a power struggle between the two men but Hugh, who knows he has the support of the people comes off better and Mark takes over nursing the Pharaoh, who appears to be suffering from a form of diabetes. Despite the Queen's concerns, all seems to go well when Hugh first meets the Princess. She is truly regal in her beauty, but Hugh appears to be immune while Mark falls for her at first look. At supper Hugh mentions the man who was expelled from Kamt for doing the Princess's bidding, which unsettles her and she comes to talk to him about it afterwards. It becomes obvious that the Princess is making a play for Hugh but although she claims she is happy to lose her claim on the throne of Kamt, Mark is not convinced. Shortly afterwards the scarab goes missing from Hugh's room and he starts to become fascinated by the Princess - though she is less than impressed to hear he is going through with the wedding to her Aunt and is leaving for Net-amen to make the necessary arrangements. The Pharaoh is clearly passionate about the Princess but she is only pretending to be interested in his advances in an attempt to make Hugh jealous. After a month Mark is missing Hugh so, leaving the Pharaoh in the care of some servants, he makes his excuses to the Princess and travels to Net-amen to check on his friend. Hugh looks dreadful and after some persuasion confides that he is madly in love with the Princess - a confession which makes Mark feel jealous, yet though he admires Neit-akrit, he still does not trust her. Tanis Tanis, where Hugh's wedding to the Queen is due to take place, is a beautiful city, full of love and romance. As per local custom Hugh must spend 24hrs alone in a pavilion in the temple gardens before his wedding. The Queen and the Pharaoh arrive together and Mark is immediately called to look after the Pharaoh, who has deteriorated since Mark left. The Pharaoh has realised that Hugh loves the Princess rather than his mother and, out for revenge for the Queen stealing his throne from him, he tells her as much - insisting that she will pay for stealing Hugh from Neit-akrit, for the Princess loves Hugh as much as he loves her. Shaking with rage, the Queen attacks her son and strangles him to death with her bare hands. After seeing everything, the High Priest Ur-tasen condemns Queen Maat-kha for murder and desecrating the temple. She starts to realise that there will be consequences for her actions and declares she will go willingly into the valley of the dead and leave Ur-tasen all her wealth, if only the Priest will separate Neit-akrit and Hugh once she has gone. The Priest makes the Queen promise to the gods that she will do his bidding, which she agrees for she would rather see Hugh dead than with the Princess. He insists she must go through with the marriage ceremony as if nothing has happened, then when Hugh goes to meet her in the garden after the ceremony, he will find the dead body of the Pharaoh and they will frame him for the murder. Mark has overheard everything and tries to warn Hugh, only to discover he is trapped in the temple and can't get out. Stuck until the wedding, Mark waits and watches, only to see Princess Neit-akrit appear next to the High Priest... who then announces "I did it all for thee Neit-akrit", for he is in love with her too and wants to see her crowned Queen once her 'enemy' has been removed. Neit-akirt, however, has other ideas and defies the Priest to do his worst, for she will not allow Hugh to be blamed for the Pharaoh's murder. The Priest laughs at her and dares her to summon help knowing it will be his fellow priests who come. Outmanoeuvering the Princess, Ur-tasen then tells her that if she mentions any of what has happened to Hugh, the marriage will go ahead and she will have to suffer losing both her crown and the man she loves. Faced with the impossible choice between death of her loved one or seeing him happy in another woman's arms, the Princess leaves the temple. The smell of burning herbs makes Mark think he can escape but the pungent odour starts to affect him and just before he loses consciousness he realises that he is in a room with the body of the dead Pharaoh. The Marriage Mark finally comes round to hear Hugh making his marriage vows. Unable to speak he can only watch as his friend pledges himself to the woman who is plotting his death and shame before sinking into yet another drugged sleep. He comes to again several hours later, it is dark but he can just make out his friend waiting in the gloom, soon to leave and walk into the trap that had been set. Still unable to speak he is helpless to warn Hugh, however, soon Princess Neit-akrit turns up and asks Hugh to help her make a posy from the flowers in the temple. She is able to manipulate Hugh's love for her to prevent him from going to his bride and being framed for the Pharaoh's murder. Mark shakes off the last effects of the drug, overcomes the priests who have come to finish him off, and escapes. Mark finds Hugh and tells him everything he has seen. The two are confronted by Ur-tasen who has captured Neit-akrit as she left the temple at dawn. Ur-tasen threatens to have his priests torture and mutilate Neit-akrit as is the custom in Kamt for women who have committed adultery. Hugh threatens to use his position as Beloved of the Gods to inspire the people of Kamt to revolt and leave nothing but one vast and burning ruin where Kamt now stands if Neit-akrit is not released. Ur-tasen relents but convinces Hugh that he must leave Kamt if Neit-akrit is to retain her honor and take her rightful place as Pharaoh. The Departure Hugh and Mark agree to leave if the priests provide them with supplies and oxen to get them through the Valley of Death and back to their civilization. Ur-tasen must go with them as far as the Rock of Anubis as a guarantee at which point he would be released to return to Kamt. Hugh plans to leave without seeing Neit-akrit again, but as Ur-tasen is announcing that Beloved of the Gods has had to leave Kamt to return to the feet of the Gods, Neit-akrit comes up to the platform and leaves a flower--rosemary for remembrance. Hugh and Mark make their way back to England where, years later, their adventures in Kamt all start to seem like a dream. But in a small gold casket with a glass lid Hugh keeps in front of him a dried sprig of rosemary. |
The Intruder | John Rowe Townsend | null | Sixteen-year-old Arnold Haithwaite is a sand pilot guiding parties of tourists over the sands at Skirlston (when the Admiral is not feeling up to it). But Arnold's quiet life is shattered when a stranger turns up claiming to be the real Arnold Haithwaite. Life at Cottontree House changes dramatically for the young lad and his father when the stranger worms his way into their lives. No one seems to have any sympathy for Arnold's predicament, except newcomers Peter and Jane, and even they are not sure he is not simply imagining the whole thing. Things come to a head when Arnold finds himself fighting the sea itself in the midst of a raging storm, with the stranger at his heels and Jane trapped by the rising tide in the ruins of an old church. |
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