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The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths | Jorge Luis Borges | 1,939 | A Babylonian king orders his subjects to build him a labyrinth "so confused and so subtle that the most prudent men would not venture to enter it, and those who did would lose their way." When an Arab king visited his court, the king of Babylonia told him to enter the labyrinth in order to mock him. The Arab king finally managed to get out and told the Babylonian that in his land he had another labyrinth, and Allah willing, he would see that someday the king of Babylonia made its acquaintance." The Arab king returned to his land, and launched an extremely successful attack on the Babylonians, finally capturing the Babylonian King. The Arab tied him on a camel and led him into the desert. After three days of riding, the Arab reminds the Babylonian that he tried to make him lose his way in his labyrinth, and says that he will now show him his, "which has no stairways to climb, nor door to force, nor wearying galleries to wander through, nor walls to impede thy passage." He then untied the Babylonian king, "and abandoned him in the middle of the desert, where he died of hunger and thirst..." Throughout time, Arabian kings have been known to build tremendous labyrinths. |
Rome Burning | Sophia McDougall | 2,007 | Three years after the events of Romanitas, the Empire is on the brink of war with Nionia (Japan), and plagued by a sequence of mysterious wildfires. Marcus Novius, the young heir to the Roman throne is forced to take charge as Regent when the Emperor Faustus falls suddenly ill. Marcus attempts to recruit Varius as his advisor, but Varius, who is still haunted by the events of the first book (in which he lost his wife and was framed for murder and treason), refuses. While Marcus works to avoid a world war, his lover Una is intent on discovering the truth about his ambitious cousin Drusus's involvement in a conspiracy that almost claimed Marcus's life. Her brother Sulien finds himself caught up along with Varius in a disastrous attack on an arms factory at Veii, just outside Rome. After surviving this and saving Sulien's life, Varius decides to return to political life after all, but Sulien is left with many questions about what happened. Una exposes Drusus's involvement in the murders of Marcus's parents and Varius's wife, although not before he almost kills her. Varius urges Marcus to have Drusus killed but Marcus is reluctant to begin his reign with an ex-judiciary killing, and is content to have Drusus tried for Una's attempted murder as there is no direct evidence for his other crimes. Drusus, however, has formed an alliance with a Roman general, Salvius, who releases Drusus from prison and urges the sickly Emperor Faustus to rethink his decision to allow Marcus so much power. Drusus, who has hitherto never felt much personal resentment of those who have stood in his way, has conceived a passionate hatred of Una, and tries to convince Faustus that she, Sulien, and Varius are a dangerous influence on Marcus. Sulien's attempts to discover more about the explosion at Veii lead him to believe he was somehow targeted. Una accompanies Marcus to peace talks hosted by the Sinoan (Chinese) Empress in the Song capital of Bianjing (Kaifeng). Things go well at first although Una discovers the Nionians are developing a super-weapon. But someone seems intent on sabotaging the negotiations. One of the Nionian party is killed by a Roman assassin and Marcus is abruptly summoned home by Faustus, under effective arrest. This leaves the Nionian Prince Tadahito deeply suspicious about Rome's intentions. Before he is forced to leave, Marcus hands over Una and Varius as hostages to the Nionians, partly as a sign of good faith, but primarily in the hope of keeping them away from Drusus, who would almost certainly have them tortured or killed. From within Nionian custody, and with the help of the Sinoan Empress and the Nionian Princess, Una and Varius attempt to influence the global action to stop Drusus causing a war, but their efforts come at a personal cost, especially for Una. |
With Folded Hands | Jack Williamson | 1,947 | Underhill, a seller of "Mechanicals" (unthinking robots that perform menial tasks) in the small town of Two Rivers, is startled to find a competitor's store on his way home. The competitors are not humans but are small, black robots who appear more advanced than anything Underhill has encountered before. They describe themselves as "Humanoids." Disturbed at his encounter, Underhill rushes home to discover that his wife has taken in a new lodger, a mysterious old man named Sledge. In the course of the next day, the new mechanicals have appeared everywhere in town. They state that they only follow the Prime Directive: 'to serve and obey and guard men from harm". Offering their services free of charge, they replace humans as police officers, bank tellers and eventually drive Underhill out of business. Despite the Humanoids' benign appearance and mission, Underhill soon realizes that, in the name of their Prime Directive, the mechanicals have essentially taken over every aspect of human life. No humans may engage in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is carefully scrutinized. Suicide is prohibited. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so that they may live happily under the direction of the humanoids. Underhill learns that his lodger Sledge is the creator of the Humanoids and is on the run from them. Sledge explains that 60 years earlier he had discovered the force of "rhodomagnetics" on the planet Wing IV and that his discovery resulted in a war that destroyed his planet. In his grief, Sledge designed the humanoids to help humanity and be invulnerable to human exploitation. However, he eventually realized that they had instead taken control of humanity, in the name of their Prime Directive, to make humans happy. The Humanoids are spreading out from Wing IV to every human occupied planet to implement their Prime Directive. Sledge and Underhill attempt to stop the humanoids by aiming a rhodomagnetic beam at Wing IV but fail. The humanoids take Sledge away for surgery. He returns with no memory of his prior life, stating that he is now happy under the humanoids' care. Underhill is driven home by the humanoids, sitting "with folded hands," as there is nothing left to do. |
The Familiar | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | The story opens in the middle of a particularly violent battle. As the battle becomes more and more hopeless Jake orders a desperate retreat leaving Marco and Rachel to fend for themselves. The Animorphs all escape, but barely. Tensions are high and Cassie begins to break down again questioning the violence and killing that come with battle. Jake responds to her without much sympathy. Exhausted he returns home and Tom seems at last suspicious of him. He falls asleep. When he awakes he realizes that he is a ten years older version of himself living in New York City on an earth that has already been completely taken over by the Yeerks. Everyone assumes him to be a Controller with a Yeerk named Essak in his head. Jake follows the crowd to his work, but skips his stop in order to investigate this strange new world. He doesn't know how he has come to be in this time and place and suspects that it is some kind of alternate or parallel timeline created by the Ellimist or Crayak. He discovers that there is a terrorist organization called the Evolutionist Front (EF) which is composed of Yeerks and their hosts who believe that forms of biological evolution and mutation should be explored instead of the enslavement of sentient species. He encounters Cassie, who is a Controller and one of the leaders of the organization. She is a brutal and calculating terrorist who will use any tactics to sabotage the Yeerk Empire. She persuades Jake to help her foil a Yeerk plot to turn Earth's Moon into a Kandrona sun, and tells him a contact will approach him with details later. It seems that time and space do not always follow logically in this futuristic world. Jake travels to his place of work, and there he is haunted by the image of the many creatures he has killed in battle. He is then taken in to be interrogated about EF activities. His questioner is a Controller Marco who is Visser Two, and the leader of Earth. Marco has also captured Cassie and threatens to kill her if Jake does not work with him against the EF. Jake's EFing contact turns out to be an unrecognizable crippled Rachel, scarred from years of battle. She gives him instructions where to meet the head of the resistance, saying that he will recognize him when he sees him. Jake follows her instructions and encounters a fully grown Andalite whom he believes to be Elfangor. It is in fact a cold and indifferent Tobias. Tobias explains that he stayed in morph as Ax, and explains to Jake that his brother Tom killed Jake while he slept ten years ago. He seeks Jake's help in foiling the Yeerk plan for Kandrona on the Moon. Jake protests that this will mean certain death for Cassie and Tobias responds that sacrifices must be made in war. In a race against time Jake is faced with a choice to either save Cassie or the world. Jake chooses to save "what must be valued above all else". Jake is then instantly back in his bed the next morning. He hears a voice in his head which he has "never heard", saying it is not the Ellimist. He describes the voice as both young and old, male and female, like distant thought speak. The voice simply says "Interesting choice. They have strangely segmented minds: conscious, unconscious, and an ability to reconcile both. They will bear more study, these humans…". Jake then gets out of bed and calls Cassie to ask her if she's alright. |
The Journey | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | A boy takes a picture of the Animorphs while they are demorphing in an alley. They track the boy down and decide to keep watch on him. When they go to Cassie's barn to reconvene, the Helmacrons show up and demand the morphing cube because they need it to charge their ship. In the battle that ensues, the Helmacrons leave the ship and enter Marco's nose. The Animorphs decide to use the Helmacron ship to shrink themselves so they can follow the Helmacrons and stop them from killing Marco from the inside. When they shrink, they realize that they are too small to hear the speech of full-size humans, which didn't happen the last time they were shrunk. When they catch up to the Helmacrons inside Marco's nose, they notice that they have been shrunk to 1/100th the size of the Helmacrons, who tweaked the shrinking device before they left their ship knowing that the Animorphs would shrink themselves so they could go after them. Meanwhile, Marco is bored of just sitting around and decides to go over to the apartment of the boy who took their picture to try to steal his camera. He goes up the fire escape and enters through a window, but before he can even pick up the camera he gets bitten by a dog and flees home. Rachel falls down into Marco's stomach, and the Helmacrons as well as the rest of the Animorphs follow her, where they are shortly burnt by stomach acid before morphing sharks and following the Helmacrons into the bloodstream. In the bloodstream, Rachel notices a pathogen while looking at all of the different types of blood cells around them. They realise that when the Helmacrons reach the heart, they can stop it from beating with their weapons. Marco goes back to the apartment a second time, and while he is there someone comes home. He soon finds himself trapped in the closet and against Jake's orders, morphs a cockroach. The Helmacrons shoot at the cockroach's heart, after which everyone believes Marco to be dead until they remember that cockroaches can withstand severe trauma. In the meantime, the Animorphs get the weapons away from the Helmacrons by biting their legs. Marco is indeed alive, and they manage to get him to morph back to human. Holding the Helmacrons at gunpoint, they all return to the barn, and recharge the Helmacron's ship with the morphing cube. The Helmacrons leave earth again after promising to never come back. Later at home, Rachel researches on the computer and discovers that the pathogen she saw in Marco's bloodstream was rabies, and his near death experience actually saved him from the virus. Rachel considers calling him, but quickly dismisses it. |
Exit Music | Ian Rankin | 2,007 | Just a week before Rebus’s retirement, Rebus and Clarke are investigating the death of a famous Russian exile poet who was mugged and beaten to death on King's Stables Road. Then a sound recordist with close ties to the dead Russian poet turns up dead. Rebus searches for the killer of both men but is suspended for his over-enthusiastic interrogations and getting on the wrong side of powerful Scottish bankers and politicians. His last three days before retirement are spent working from his apartment trying to solve the case. |
The Dogs of Babel | Carolyn Parkhurst | 2,003 | Paul Iverson called home to find a police officer answering the phone and suggesting that he come home. When he comes home he finds his wife, Alexandra "Lexy" Ransome, dead, fallen from an apple tree. The police declare it an accident, but Paul is bothered by the "anomalies" he finds, such as signs of someone cooking steak, a rearrangement of the book shelf, and the question as to what his wife was doing in the apple tree in the first place. The only witness to her death is their dog Lorelei, and Paul goes on a crusade to teach Lorelei to speak, in order to clear up the mystery. He cites several past attempts as evidence he will be successful, especially the case of Dog J, who was surgically altered by Wendell Hollis, "the Dog Butcher of Brooklyn", so that he could make human sounds. Paul leaves his job at the college, and dedicates his time to this single cause. As he attempts to teach Lorelei, Paul remembers how he and Lexy first met, at a yard sale where he bought a square hard-boiled egg mold from her. He recounts their week long first date to Disney World, and to a wedding where Lexy delivered masks she made. This is the first time Paul learns about the masks she makes for a living, and they are featured prominently throughout the rest of the book. Paul also remembers their wedding, and when he first learned of Lexy's depression, in the story she tells him about her adolescence. Unhappy with his lack of progress, Paul writes a letter to Wendell Hollis (now in prison) in hopes of getting ideas. In a response letter, he is directed to a man named Remo, who lives in Paul's neighborhood and is in charge of the Cerberus Society, a group dedicated to canine communication. At a meeting of the Cerberus Society, Paul is horrified and intrigued by the methods they use, and is especially excited about hearing Dog J, whom the society has kidnapped, speak. He is disappointed, though, when the mutilated dog is presented at the podium and is unable to say a single word; the rest of the society oblivious to this. The meeting is cut short when the police raid it and Paul flees to his house to find Lorelei gone. Finally realizing he will never be able to teach Lorelei to speak, and now left alone by both Lexy and Lorelei, Paul falls into an even greater depression. After hearing Lexy's voice on a commercial for a Psychic Hotline, he has been calling constantly, in hopes of finding the psychic Lexy talked to, Lady Arabelle. He finally reaches her, and is informed that Lexy was pregnant, a fact Paul knew but the reader did not. Lady Arabelle goes through the tarot reading she gave Lexy, and Paul is left to wonder how his wife took it. Paul eventually finds Lorelei in an animal shelter, her larynx removed by the men who kidnapped her. She is now not only unable to speak English, but to even bark. When he idly examines Lorelei's collar, he finds a subtle message from Lexy. He suddenly realizes that Lexy has sent him a message through the rearrangement of books, a quote from the story Tam Lin."Had I known but yesterday what I know today, I’d have taken out your two gray eyes And put in eyes of clay; And had I known but yesterday you’d be no more my own I’d have taken out your heart of flesh And put in one of stone" – Tam Lin It is then Paul realizes what he has suspected is true, that Lexy committed suicide. Although he continues to mourn his wife's death, the closure Paul has gotten by learning of its circumstances allow him to return to the world. He goes back to his job at the college, and stops his reclusive ways. The story ends on a happy note, but it is still clear Paul is grieving for his wife. |
Shopgirl | Steve Martin | 2,000 | Its titular character is young, lonely, depressed, Vermont transplant Mirabelle Buttersfield, who sells expensive evening gloves nobody ever buys at Neiman Marcus in Beverly Hills and spends her evenings watching television with her two cats. She attempts to forge a relationship with middle-aged, womanizing, Seattle millionaire Ray Porter while being pursued by socially inept and unambitious slacker Jeremy. Also playing roles in her life are her father, a dysfunctional Vietnam War veteran, and Lisa, her promiscuous, image-obsessed co-worker and voracious rival. |
Trek to Madworld | Stephen Goldin | null | The Starship Enterprise receives orders to proceed at maximum warp to Epsilon Delta IV, where 700 colonists are slowly perishing due to radiation poisoning. The journey is interrupted when Enowil, an eccentric being of incredible power, seizes control of the Enterprise, in addition to a Klingon and Romulan star cruiser. Enowil, requesting aid from all three parties in resolving a purported “private matter,” offers any reward within the scope of his power. Captain Kirk is thus faced with a dilemma: If he opts to decline, both the Romulans and Klingons have the opportunity to acquire a potentially unstoppable weapon, which would disrupt the galactic balance of power. Yet if he chooses to accept, the abandoned 700 colonists on Epsilon Delta IV will most certainly succumb to an agonizing and protracted death. |
Les Chouans | Honoré de Balzac | null | At the start of the novel, the Republican Commander Hulot is assaulted by Chouan forces, who convert dozens of conscripts. An aristocrat, Marie de Verneuil, is sent by Joseph Fouché to subdue and capture the royalist leader, the Marquis de Montauran, also known as "Le Gars". She is aided by a detective named Corentin. Eventually, Marie becomes smitten with her target. In defiance of Corentin and the Chouans whom she detests, she devises a plan to marry the Chouan leader. Fooled by Corentin into believing that Montauran loves her mortal enemy Madame du Gua, Marie orders Hulot to destroy the rebels. She discovers her folly too late and tries, unsuccessfully, to save her husband the day after their marriage. |
The Name of the Wind | Patrick Rothfuss | 2,007 | The story begins in the backwater town of Newarre, introducing the innkeeper Kote and his assistant Bast. The Inn is sparsely used, and widespread troubles from an ongoing war have further reduced travelers passing through the small town. It is revealed that Kote is actually the legendary hero Kvothe in hiding. Kvothe has a reputation as an unequaled swordfighter, magician and musician, who among other things is rumored to have killed a king and is somehow responsible for the war. His assistant and student Bast is a prince from the mystical Fae, magical creatures of great beauty but vulnerable to iron. Kvothe saves Chronicler, a travelling scribe, from spider-like creatures called Scrael. Chronicler recognizes him as Kvothe and asks to record his story. Kvothe initially refuses but eventually gives in, to tell the truth about the events that made him a legend. He tells Chronicler that this will take three days (corresponding to the planned trilogy of novels). Kvothe begins his story with his childhood amongst the Edema Ruh, a troupe of travelling performers. Kvothe is extremely intelligent and a talented musician, particularly with a lute. The troupe picks up an arcanist by the name of Abenthy, a graduate of the University , who begins to train Kvothe in matters of science and "sympathy", a form of magic which allows the user to link two objects together and cause changes in the bound object by manipulating the other (a system drawing equally from modern thermodynamics, quantum entanglement and voodoo dolls). Abenthy also knows true names, thus giving him power over those things he knows the true name of. Kvothe witnesses Abenthy calling the wind to fend off suspicious townspeople and henceforth vows to discover the titular "Name of the Wind." Meanwhile, Kvothe's father Arliden is composing a song about the "Chandrian," a mythical force of evil and corruption. This leads the Chandrian to find and kill the troupe; Kvothe survives by having been out in the woods at the time. Heavily traumatized, he spends three years in the city of Tarbean as a street urchin. After a storyteller named Skarpi tells Kvothe a tale of the Chandrian and their enemies, the Amyr, he makes his way to the University to continue his education and gather further information on the subject. On the road to the University Kvothe meets Denna, a beautiful and talented young woman with whom he immediately is infatuated. Kvothe is accepted at the university despite his lack of tuition funds and performs admirably as a student, but also faces difficulties due to continuous money problems and rivalries with the wealthy student Ambrose and the arrogant Master Hemme. Kvothe's research about the Chandrian is marred by taking a candle inside the University's famous Archives, resulting in a sustained banishment from the Archives by the Master Archivist. Kvothe buys a lute despite his poverty and performs at a famous musical tavern called Eolian in the hopes of earning some much-needed money. At the Eolian, he earns talent pipes that designate him as a master musician, and also meets Denna again, with whom he develops a romantic but unassuming friendship. Kvothe is careful not to chase Denna away, who has many suitors and often disappears for weeks at a time, but seems to return his feelings. When Kvothe hears reports of blue fire and murder at a nearby wedding, he realizes that it could be the work of the Chandrian, and rides to a small town called Trebon in his attempt to find proof that the Chandrian do exist. After an unexpected reunion with Denna, who was meeting with her mysterious patron, the two set out to find out what happened at the wedding. They meet a local farmer who reported strange sightings of blue fire, and later that night they encounter a massive fire-breathing herbivorous draccus. The draccus is later discovered to be addicted to denner trees (the trees have a resin that can be made into highly addictive drugs) and goes on a rampage through the town of Trebon, nearly burning down the whole town before Kvothe manages to kill it with a clever use of sympathy. Upon returning to the University, Ambrose taunts Kvothe, taking and breaking Kvothe's lute. Kvothe subconsciously breaks Ambrose's arm by roaring out the name of the wind. Because of this feat, Master Namer Elodin accepts Kvothe as a advanced student and attempts to teach him the power of naming. In the inn, the first day ends when a mercenary possessed by a demon arrives at the inn and attacks the patrons. Kvothe attempts to use sympathy to light the man on fire, but fails. After the man is killed by a patron, and Chronicler goes to bed, Bast breaks into Chronicler's room and urges him to focus Kvothe on the more heroic aspects of his story. Chronicler refuses, wanting Kvothe's story as true and objective as possible, but Bast threatens him. Bast explains to Chronicler that he lured him to the inn because he wanted to shake Kvothe out of his monotonous life, that Kvothe's simple life is killing him and that Bast hopes that some good will come from the Chronicler helping Kvothe remember his days of glory. |
Nothing to Lose | Lee Child | 2,008 | As described by Sherryl Connelly of the New York Daily News, |
The palace of laughter | Jon Berkeley | 2,006 | Miles Wednesday, an orphan boy who has recently escaped from the cruel Pinchbucket's orphanage, is the only one who witnesses the arrival of the Circus Oscuro in town one night. He is promptly visited by a tiger with the ability to talk; he considers making Miles his next meal, but leaves him alone after he "smells the circus in him". Miles, who has never even been to a circus before in his life, wonders what he could mean. The next evening, Miles sneaks into the circus to find the tiger and watches some of the show from behind the bleachers. He sees a small girl performing acrobatic stunts fall from the top of the tent and tries to catch her. She sprouts wings, however, and flies to safety. Miles' act of bravery results in him being kicked out by the ringmaster's right hand man, Ghengis. Miles stays hidden and sees the acrobat, who calls herself "Little", being tied up and taken back to her wagon when the show ends. Miles introduces himself and tries to steal the keys to rescue her, but is caught by the ringmaster, the Great Cortado. Miles pretends that he is interested in joining the circus and steps outside to prepare a "disappearing act". Angered at being tricked and losing one of his stars, Cortado unleashes a monstrous beast called The Null to chase after Little and Miles. The two children barely escape. Miles takes Little to a friend of his, a widow called Lady Partridge, who lives with her many cats in a treehouse made of her own antiques. Partridge gives them shelter and Little tells her story—she is actually a 400-year old Song Angel who fell from the sky along with her friend Silverpoint, a Storm Angel. After seeing Silverpoint protect Little from a mean clown by shooting lightning bolts at him, the Great Cortado kidnaps and separates the two; he takes Silverpoint to a mysterious place called the Palace of Laughter and forces him to perform there to protect Little. To prove her ability, Little sings Miles' stuffed bear, Tangerine, to life. Miles and Little decide to find the Palace of Laughter and rescue Silverpoint. The two meet many difficulties along the way. Tangerine wanders away from Miles and is taken by Ghengis, leaving Miles heartbroken. Luckily, the tiger appears again, and carries Miles and Little for a good portion of the journey. The tiger, after much pestering from Miles, reveals that the Circus Oscuro did have a tiger once: the tiger, Varippuli, was originally part of the circus of a great man called Barty Fumble, and showed him more loyalty than could ever be fathomed. The circus was always a success, until the year the Circus Oscuro appeared and began stealing the crowds. Barty was expecting his first child and knew he could not afford failure. He made a deal with the Great Cortado to combine the two circuses for the summer and then part ways. All was well until Barty's wife died in labor, leaving him heartbroken. He disappeared with his son, leaving Varippuli to the wrath of the evil Cortado. After attempting to starve Varippuli to make him perform once more, Cortado tried to whip the beast, but it got the better of him. Before Varippuli could deliver the final blow, Cortado found his gun and supposedly killed the tiger. Miles also runs into an old friend of Lady Partridge, an elderly former explorer named Baltinglass of Araby, who eagerly aids them. Just before they can reach the Palace of Laughter, Miles and Little are taken by a violent gang of orphan boys called the Halfheads and caught between the constant rivalry of two other gangs, the Stinkers and Gnats. With the help of Henry, one friendly member of the Halfheads and after the betrayal of String (who holds a grudge against Miles after being replaced by him), Little and Miles reach the Palace of Laughter and find it is nowhere near the pleasant place they expected it to be. The Great Cortado uses a method he has devised with the mysterious Dr. Tau-Tau to make people laugh uncontrollably and steal the laughter and happiness out of their souls. He then sells a drink that can temporarily make them feel themselves again. Cortado plans to spread his influence across the towns and eventually the world. Miles and Little are caught by Silverpoint, who at first pretends to not recognize them to keep them safe. He finally reveals Cortado's plan, and the three are befriended by the clown trio, the Bosillio brothers, who wish to help them. Cortado intends to make Miles and Little sit through the next performance and share the same fate as the other unfortunate spectators, but Miles is able to steal some of the antidote given to the clowns, Cortado and Ghengis before the show. Cortado and Ghengis happen to drink the water Miles replaces it with and now cannot stop laughing senselessly. The police arrive, informed by Lady Partridge and Baltinglass, who were informed by Partridge's cats who in turn were tipped off by the tiger. They lock up Ghengis and Cortado in the local asylum since they can't answer to any accusations after falling victim to their own scheme. String plans to get revenge on Miles by stealing Little and using her ability to fly to make himself the leader of the Stinkers. He finds a room where he believes she is locked up, but instead unleashes the Null. The monster goes on a rampage and Silverpoint is knocked unconscious trying to defeat him. He is about to squeeze Miles to death when Little sings her true name, saving Miles but tying herself to the earth forever. She loses her wings and is rescued from falling by the Bosillio Brothers. The Null is now much more tame and surprisingly affectionate towards Miles, who finds that he cannot let the city council destroy it. The Bosilio Brothers find Tangerine and return him to Miles, revealing that they gave it to him the day he was born. Barty Fumble was Miles' father and they were a part of his circus. Silverpoint returns the Realm of the Angels but is forced to leave Little behind. After one more talk with the enigmatic tiger (who Miles suspects is Varippuli), he promises to find what happened to his father and make Little's life on earth as happy as it was in the heavens. |
The Test | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | As the book opens, Tobias discovers Bobby McIntyre, a missing child who was hiking through the woods. He leads the boy's father and a search party to his son. Throughout the book Tobias deals with the psychological after-effects of the torture he endured at the hands of the sadistic sub-visser Taylor. He continues to question his own strength and resolve. Taylor, claiming she is now part of the Yeerks' Peace Movement, enlists Tobias to try and sabotage the Yeerk pool. All of the other Animorphs, except for Cassie, who declines on moral grounds, accompany him and Ax as they dig a tunnel to the pool. In order to dig a tunnel to the Yeerk pool, Tobias and Ax alternate turns in Taxxon morph, which has a nearly uncontrollable constant hunger. In fact, Taylor has been working for Visser Three, and sets off a gas explosion. Cassie is able to turn off the gas from its control station, injuring several humans in the process. She is once again distraught by the violence she has had to use to save her friends. Taylor is presumably killed in the gas explosion. The book ends with Rachel and Tobias on the beach. She holds his hand and reassures him that he is not weak and encourages him to let go of the past. *Taylor is believed to be killed. *Taylor mentions to Tobias that the Yeerks' invasion of Anati planet - supervision of which was given to Visser One in Visser - is floundering. |
The Unexpected | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | Someone found a piece of a Bug Fighter and the government is going to test it at a laboratory. Unsurprisingly, the Yeerks don't want it tested. The Animorphs have a battle at an airport. During the fight Cassie ends up unconscious on the belt with all the luggage. When she wakes up, she is in the cargo bay of a plane flying to Sydney, Australia. The plane is attacked by Yeerks looking for the "Andalite bandit" so she jumps out after unsuccessfully attempting to elude them on board. She hides in the sand as a flea until the Yeerks leave. After the Yeerks leave, she demorphs and meets Yami who lives nearby. He takes her to his family. His grandfather cut himself with a piece of a Bug fighter that he was using as a wood carving tool. Cassie morphs to Hork-Bajir and helps amputate his leg. Later, the Blade ship turns up again and Visser Three demands that she come outside. She does and tries to lead the Yeerks away from Yami's family. A Chee who was aboard the Blade ship turns up and she goes back home. |
Standing in the Light, The Captive Diary of Catherine Carey Logan | null | null | Catherine is a thirteen year old Quaker girl who leads a simple life with her mother, father, and younger siblings that are Thomas, Eliza and Baby Will. At first she writes in her journal about school; meetings (church services); her crush, a handsome, spunky boy named Jess Owen; and her family including Baby Will's first tooth. But when the family hears about the Indian raids and massacres on nearby farms and at church, fear grows in her. Catherine is terrified to death of what may happen. Then one day while walking to school, Caty (Catherine) and Thomas are both captured by Lenape Indians. They are taken to the Lenape camp, and Thomas is separated from his sister and taken to another camp. Later, he moves to her camp after a bout with fever. Catherine is adopted by an old woman named Wapa-go-kos (White Owl) and her daughter, Tan-kan-wan (Little Cloud). Catherine is called Chilili (Snow Bird). Catherine hates her new family and their traditions and customs. But when she befriends a handsome young hunter named Wine-lo-wich (Snow Hunter) and a romance develops, she grows to love her new people. Snow hunter is English and was also captured, but he has lived with indians several years. Seasons pass, and then tragically Catherine and Thomas are torn apart from their new family, and her new love by the white men. Snow Hunter and a group who went to trade furs were murdered by white men, and Catherine and Thomas were taken back to their real home. Catherine's mom was shocked by Catherine acting like a "savage" when Catherine was captured and does not know how to treat her daughter. Catherine decides to let her father read her diary. Instead of being ashamed, he tells Catherine that he is proud of her learning to look past differences between people and for "standing in the light". It also includes an epilogue and historical note. Catherine lived in the Quaker land, then in the Lenape land. |
Sir Harold and the Gnome King | L. Sprague de Camp | 1,991 | Harold Shea's wife Belphebe of Faerie suggests he undertake a transdimensional expedition to retrieve his colleague Walter Bayard, who is stranded in the world of Irish mythology. Walter’s long absence has put him in danger of losing his tenure at the Garaden Institute that employs both him and Harold as psychologists. A secondary advantage to Belphebe will be to get Harold out of her hair; she is pregnant with their first child, and he is getting on her nerves. Harold prepares for the trip more carefully than on previous occasions, reluctant to risk his life as cavalierly as before now that he has a family. In particular, he replaces the épée he formerly favored with a stronger cavalry saber, and dons a mail shirt for greater protection. To ensure he is able to locate Walter amid the uncertainties of transdimensional travel, he makes the goal of his expedition not Eriu but the Land of Oz, whose rulers are possessed of an artifact "effective as a teletransporter," the Magic Belt of the Gnome King. (De Camp prefers the standard spelling of "gnome" to Baum's idiosyncratic "nome.") As usual, things immediately go wrong. Instead of Oz, Harold ends up in a decidedly more sinister place, the University of the Unholy Names in Dej, a world of vaguely Islamic and Arabic antecedents. There he encounters the student Bilsa at-Tâlib, who enthusiastically suggests a magical contest between them and conjures up a gigantic snake that immediately snaps Harold up. Fortunately, the latter's mail shirt protects him long enough for him to repeat the spell that transports him between worlds, and this time he really does end up in Oz (thankfully sans snake). The Oz he encounters is greatly changed from the land of which Baum had written, the enchantment that had kept its inhabitants ageless having been broken through a misuse of magic by a dabbler in spells named Dranol Drabbo some years prior. Dorothy Gale and Princess Ozma are now grown up, married, and with children of their own. Moreover, Harold finds Ozma's husband, King Evardo of Ev, a much more canny and realistic ruler than Ozma in her youth; the royal pair is willing to help him, but only for a price! Lengthy negotiations ensue, as a result of which Harold finds himself committed to rescuing their son Prince Oznev, who is being held captive by Kaliko, the current king of the Gnomes. To facilitate his foray into the Gnome Kingdom Harold demands and receives the service of former gnome king Ruggedo, an old enemy of Oz, as guide, along with tarncaps to render them invisible. He also commissions the local blacksmith to forge a pair of bolt cutters under his direction with which to free Oznev. Meanwhile, Ozma uses the Magic Belt to summon Walter from Eriu. Much to her embarrassment Walter arrives in bed and with a bedmate, having recently acquired an Irish wife, Boann ni Colum. On the way to the underground Gnome Kingdom Ruggedo, pondering his past failures, consults Harold in his psychological capacity. His problem, it turns out, is that he is an unscrupulous, treacherous, selfish, greedy, lying, thieving scoundrel, and at the same time an irascible, ornery, cantankerous, ill-mannered, bad-tempered old grouch. Harold informs him that he will never be popular while remaining both; to succeed, he must overcome one trait or the other. Afterward the two penetrate the Gnomish Kingdom and manage to liberate Oznev. Ruggedo, determined to apply Harold’s advice, stays to dispute the throne with Kaliko. Meanwhile Harold and the prince duel with and defeat Drabbo, who has become Kaliko’s chancellor. Rescuer and prince return to Oz amid general acclaim. Harold then prepares for his return home, whence Walter and Boann plan to follow in the wake of the banquet celebrating Oznev’s deliverance. As for Ruggedo, when last seen he had expelled Kaliko from the Gnome Kingdom, declared monarchy obsolete, and proclaimed himself Lifetime President and Founding Father of the Gnomic Republic. |
The House of Bernarda Alba | Federico García Lorca | null | Upon her second husband's death, domineering matriarch Bernarda Alba imposes an eight-year mourning period on her household, as per her family tradition. Bernarda has five daughters, aged between 20 and 39, whom she has controlled inexorably and prohibited from any form of relationship. The mourning period further isolates them and tension mounts within the household. After a mourning ritual at the family home, eldest daughter Angustias enters, having been absent while the guests were there. Bernarda fumes, assuming she had been listening to the men's conversation on the patio. Angustias inherited a large sum of money from her father, Bernarda's first husband, but Bernarda's second husband has left only small sums to his four daughters. Angustias' wealth attracts a young, attractive suitor from the village, Pepe el Romano. Her sisters are jealous, believing that it's unfair that Angustias, plain and rather sickly, should receive both the majority of the inheritance and the freedom to marry and escape their suffocating home environment. Youngest sister Adela, stricken with sudden spirit and jubilation after her father's funeral, defies her mother's orders and dons a green dress instead of remaining in mourning black. Her brief taste of youthful joy suddenly shatters when she discovers that Angustias will be marrying Pepe. Poncia, Bernarda's maid, advises Adela to bide her time: Angustias will probably die delivering her first child. Distressed, Adela threatens to run into the streets in her green dress, but her sisters manage to stop her. Suddenly they see Pepe coming down the street. She stays behind while her sisters rush to get a look—until a maid hints that she could get a better look from her bedroom window. As Poncia and Bernarda discuss the daughters' inheritances upstairs, Bernarda sees Angustias wearing makeup—and a green dress, which symbolizes freedom within the Generation 98 culture. Appalled that Angustias would defy her orders to remain in a state of mourning, Bernarda violently scrubs the makeup off her face. The other daughters enter, followed by Bernarda's elderly mother, Maria Josefa, who is usually locked away in her room. Maria Josefa announces that she wants to get married; she also warns Bernarda that she'll turn her daughters' hearts to dust if they cannot be free. Bernarda forces her back into her room. It turns out that Adela and Pepe are having a secret affair. Adela becomes increasingly volatile, defying her mother and quarreling with her sisters, particularly Martirio, who reveals her own feelings for Pepe. Adela shows the most horror when the family hears the latest gossip about how the townspeople recently dealt with a young woman who shamelessly delivered and killed an illegitimate baby. Tension explodes as family members confront one another and Bernarda pursues Pepe with a gun. A gunshot is heard outside, implying that Pepe has been killed. Adela flees into another room while the family awaits the outcome. As Bernarda and Martirio enter, Martirio says Pepe escaped with his life, and Bernarda remarks that as a woman she can't be blamed for poor aim. Immediately she calls for Adela, who has locked herself into a room. When Adela doesn't respond, Bernarda and Poncia force the door open. Soon Poncia's shriek is heard. She returns with her hands clasped around her neck and warns the family not to enter the room. Adela, not knowing that Pepe survived, has hung herself. The closing lines of the play show Bernarda characteristically preoccupied with the family's reputation. She insists that Adela has died a virgin and demands that this be made known to the whole town. (The play alludes that Adela and Pepe had an affair; Bernarda's moral code and pride keep this from registering). No one is to cry. |
The Revelation | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | While having dinner with his family, Marco learns that his father, Peter, is involved in research that has led to the discovery of Zero-Space. When the Yeerks learn of Peter's research, they try to have him infested. The Yeerks plan is thwarted by Marco and Rachel, but at the expense of Marco losing his cover. With no alternative, Marco tells his father about the Yeerk invasion of Earth, the role he has played in the war, and tells him that they can no longer return home, even to save his wife, Nora. Marco also finally reveals the fate of his mother, Eva, telling his father that she is the host of Visser One. After hiding his father with the Chee, Marco speaks with the other Animorphs at Cassie's barn and tells them of what has transpired. Rachel suggests using the Z-Space transmitter created by Peter to intercept Yeerk transmissions, but the device is currently in the custody of the Yeerks. Ax is enlisted to help Peter re-build the transmitter. Meanwhile, Erek King and his "father" are posing as Marco and Peter at Marco's former home. The two are seen packing for a trip to Acapulco when four human-Controllers break into the room and fire their Dracon beams at "Marco" and "Peter", vaporizing the bodies. The Yeerks briefly speak to Nora, who has since been infested, and she follows the Controllers off the property. After verifying that the coast is clear, Marco, who was hiding in the house as a cockroach, demorphs and Erek shuts down the hologram hiding himself and Mr. King. Erek takes minimal damage in the Yeerk assault, but Mr. King needs more extensive repairs. Erek carries Mr. King back to their home disguised as a garbage truck, leaving Marco alone to contemplate what his life will be like until the end of the war. Several days later, the Animorphs and Peter assemble at Ax's scoop. The Z-Space transmitter is nearly complete, and is already picking up several Yeerk transmissions. Ax is having trouble stabilizing the transmitter's translator chip, which is only to translate for brief periods of time. However, Ax is able to interpret enough of the transmissions to learn that Visser One is being sent back to Earth to be executed as a traitor. The Yeerks are only awaiting the arrival of a witness from the Council of Thirteen, at which point the execution will commence and Visser Three will be promoted to Visser One. Ax also suggests that the execution of Visser One and Visser Three's impending promotion is the beginning of a change in how the Yeerks plan to conquer Earth. With this information in mind, the Animorphs decide to attempt to rescue Marco's mother. The Animorphs and Peter begin planning the operation. Later in the forest, Marco calls the local police department, which is known to be infiltrated by the Yeerks, and reports that he has an alien in his custody. After giving them the description of a Hork-Bajir and his location, he hangs up and waits for a Yeerk Bug fighter to arrive. The fighter comes four minutes later, and the two Hork-Bajir-Controllers on-board are quickly disabled by Jake and Rachel. Cassie and Ax take out the Taxxon pilot, allowing the Animorphs to commandeer the Bug fighter. Despite some difficulty piloting the fighter, Ax manages to get them inside the hangar connected to the Yeerk pool complex. The Animorphs disembark and make their way to the Yeerk pool in Hork-Bajir morphs. They find Visser One tied up on the infestation pier, her execution already underway. The Animorphs attempt to make their way back to their stolen Bug fighter, but are forced to fight several suspicious Hork-Bajir-Controller's on-route. Upon reaching the fighter, Ax flies it to the Yeerk pool and Marco and Rachel jump down to retrieve Eva. Unfortunately, a second Bug fighter, along Visser Three himself, engages the one captured by the Animorphs, leaving Marco and Rachel forced to engage several Blue Band Hork-Bajir while they wait for rescue. After several minutes of battle, Visser Three is disabled and the second Bug fighter is destroyed. Visser One leaves Eva and attempts to make her way to the Yeerk pool, only to be stepped on by Marco. Marco, Rachel, and Eva board the Animorphs' stolen Bug fighter and are flown to safety. Once clear of the Yeerk pool complex, the fighter is abandoned in the forest and is destroyed by the Yeerks. Eva's injuries are treated by the Chee, and she and Peter are relocated to the free Hork-Bajir colony. Peter pulls Marco aside and asks if there was anything that could be done to save Nora. Marco tells him that she was likely a Controller all along, assigned to spy on Peter and his research projects. The explanation is a lie, but Peter accepts it and reunites with Eva. Several nights later, the Animorphs assemble at the beach. Ax uses the Z-Space transmitter to call the Andalite homeworld. The Andalites demand to know who is making the transmission, to which Jake responds "this is Earth". *Marco tells his father, Peter, about the Yeerk invasion. *Marco and Peter fake their deaths and are forced into hiding. *The Blue Band Hork-Bajir are introduced. *Visser One (Edriss 562) is killed and Marco's mother, Eva, is liberated by the Animorphs, and she is reunited with Marco and Peter. * This book was sold in a clear cellophane wrapper, also containing a CD featuring a demo of the Animorphs PC game. * The cover morph is never actually completed in the book. In order to give his father proof of his story about the war against the Yeerks, Marco half-morphs into an ant and an osprey in front of him, never fully completing either morph. * This is the fourteenth book to feature a cover morph that was not acquired in the book. Marco acquired his ant morph in the fifth book, The Predator. * The front cover quote is "Sometimes there's no escape. Even for the Animorphs..." * The inside front cover quote is "Sometimes the truth won't set you free...." |
Vulcan's Glory | D. C. Fontana | 1,989 | The novel focuses on a young Spock, a conflicted ensign, serving on the Starship Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike. Spock is having a difficult time dealing with his Vulcan heritage and how it conflicts with his duties as an officer and what he wants personally. Spock soon becomes involved in a mission to retrieve the 'Vulcan's Glory', a priceless gem long thought lost in a spaceship crash. It is soon discovered there is far more to this mission then readily apparent. The novel focuses on the crew of the Enterprise from the period featured in the pilot episode "The Cage". A younger Montgomery Scott also appears. |
Mistborn: The Well of Ascension | Brandon Sanderson | 2,007 | The book begins with two armies laying siege to Luthadel - the army of Elend's father, Straff Venture and another one headed by Cett. Elend is now the King of Luthadel, with Vin as his girlfriend and the rest of the team as his close confidants. A short time later, a third army of koloss arrives, led by one of Elend's former friends, who is buying their obedience with counterfeit coins. Vin is starting to become suspicious of the mist, as they no longer make her feel as at home as they used to. At the same time, Sazed on his journeys has come across suspicious deaths which appear to be due to the mist. There is a lot of politicking during the middle part of the book, as Elend becomes a victim of the same laws he wrote as the Assembly has voted to depose him and elect a new king. The Assembly elects Lord Penrod as their new king, rejecting Elend. At the same time, Vin is going through a personal crisis due in large part to Zane, the son of Staff Venture and Elend's half brother, an apparently mentally ill Mistborn who is trying to seduce Vin and get her to go away with him. At the urging of Zane, Vin kills hundreds of Cett's soldiers at the mansion he was staying at in Luthadel, but stops short of killing Cett himself. Cett decides to leave the city and abandon his siege. Sazed and the rest of the crew scheme to get Elend and Vin out of the city, with Sazed creating a fake map to the Well of Ascension, where Vin is convinced she must go. Straff Venture withdraws his army and allows the koloss army to attack Luthadel, planning to rescue the city after the koloss have destroyed most of it and suffered casualties. Vin returns to Luthadel just in time to save Sazed. She also realizes that she is able to control the koloss using her allomancy, which is how the Lord Ruler kept them in check. She stops the slaughtering and pillaging that they were doing, and with the rest of the human army from Luthadel, attacks Straff Venture's army. Vin kills Straff and his generals as Cett decides to ally himself with Luthadel. Vin tells the armies that Elend is their new emperor, and Cett, Penrod and the last general of Straff's army can be kings under him. Vin realizes that the Well of Ascension is in Luthadel, and finds a hitherto unknown doorway in the Lord Ruler's former dwelling, that leads down to a series of caves. She finds the Well of Ascension, but is urged to "release" the power for the good of the world. She decides not to try to use the power to heal the dying Elend or fix anything else, but to release it. The moment she releases it, an entity shouts out that it is now free. Elend consumes a small piece of metal which makes him a Mistborn and he heals himself. |
Ilium/Olympus | null | null | The series centers on three main character groups: that of the scholic Hockenberry, Helen and Greek and Trojan warriors from the Iliad; Daeman, Harman, Ada and the other humans of Earth; and the moravecs, specifically Mahnmut the Europan and Orphu of Io. The novels are written in first-person, present-tense when centered on Hockenberry's character, but features third-person, past-tense narrative in all other instances. Much like Simmons' Hyperion where the characters' stories are told over the course of the novels and the actual events serve as a frame, the three groups of characters' stories are told over the course of the novels and their stories do not begin to converge until the end. |
Precious Bane | null | null | The story is set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother Gideon is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip. The title of the story is from John Milton's Paradise Lost: :Let none admire :That riches grow in Hell; that Soyle may best :Deserve the precious bane. It refers to the love of money, which, as Prue records, blights love and destroys life. |
Sarny | Gary Paulsen | 1,997 | Sarny has been released from the shackles of slavery during the American Civil War by United States Army infantry bayonetting her owner, Mr. Waller.Eventually finding them in New Orleans with the help of a new friend named Miss Laura at the end of the war. Miss Laura pays Sarny and her friend Lucy $20 a month to help her around the house. Sarny then opens a school for blacks, only to have it burned down twice by the Ku Klux Klan. Her husband Stanley, enraged, attacks one of them. The Klan lynches him. She lives her life until Miss Laura dies eight months later, leaving her 12 rental properties in New Orleans, and St. Louis; almost $125,000.00; and half interest in two steamships. She dies in Dallas, Texas in the 1930's at age 96. |
Scruples | Judith Krantz | null | Born the only child of a distinguished scientist, who is a member of the venerable Winthrop family but must work for a living, Wilhelmina is nicknamed "Honey," a diminutive of her middle name. In her infancy, her mother dies and she is raised by her distant father and a housekeeper. She grows up isolated from her extended family and, with the help of the housekeeper, turns to food for comfort. Around the time she graduates from high school, she is left $10,000 by a maiden aunt, who begs her to spend it foolishly while she is still young. In a last-ditch effort to "find herself," Honey goes to live in Paris with a French family. There, she undergoes a transformation of both body and soul, first changing her name to Billy, then losing weight, and then gaining Parisian style under the guidance of Liliane, the elegant Frenchwoman who is her hostess. She is also introduced to Edouard, Liliane's relative. It is her first sexual affair, but when the aristocratic but impecunious Edouard discovers that Billy has no money, he shows his true colors and ends the relationship. Billy returns to America and to a Boston stunned by her new body and beauty. Feeling "not in her skin," and unwilling, at 19, to start college, she moves to New York to attend the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school and prepare to earn a living. She meets Jessica, her New York roommate, who teaches her about men and sex and becomes her closest friend, and embarks on a whirlwind adventure of sexual discovery. When she graduates from Katie Gibbs, she is hired by Ikehorn Enterprises, and during a business meeting in Barbados, she sleeps with and subsequently marries the CEO, Ellis Ikehorn, who is far older than she. The next several years are happy ones, as Billy and Ellis live a glamorous life filled with parties, homes all over the world, and regular appearances on the Best-Dressed List. Ellis, however, suffers two debilitating strokes, and Billy moves them from Manhattan to Bel Air, California for the better climate. But Billy lives as a recluse in their enormous house and looks aimlessly for some purpose in her life, eventually developing a compulsion to shop in Beverly Hills. Seven years after Ellis' stroke, he dies, leaving Billy an enormous fortune but also an enormous amount of guilt. Billy realizes that she will never find "what she is looking for," so she decides to open a luxury boutique called "Scruples." She hires Valentine O'Neil to design couture clothing for the customers and Valentine's close friend, Spider Elliot, a former fashion photographer who appoints himself the Style Director and arbiter of elegance. The meeting, various romances, and career vicissitudes of Valentine and Spider, along with the development of their relationship, comprise a major subplot in the novel. The story ultimately develops around Billy's second marriage to Vito Orsini, a film producer, a film that he is making, and then around the Oscars. A second subplot concerns Billy's new friend Dolly Moon, a flamboyant supporting actress in Vito's current film project, Mirrors, Dolly's pregnancy, her relationship with an accountant, and a burglary at Price Waterhouse, where the Oscar ballots are tabulated and the results stored. The story ends at the Oscars, where Billy awaits the announcement that Vito's film has won and Dolly dramatically goes into labor. At the same time, Spider and Valentine realize that their friendship has turned into love. |
The Ungodly Farce | Svend Aage Madsen | null | The novels protagonist is Jesper Fegge, a young jazz enthusiast and wannabe writer who after meeting an American woman named Mabel and hitting his head several times loses his unconscious mind. This means in the book that Jesper can't make any decisions unconsciously anymore and it also gives him the ability to see various outcomes of every decision he makes or doesn't make. So at the beginning of the book he either can take his violin or his typewriter to America because of the size of his bag and this decision affects all his future life. Over the course of the novel Jesper can get married and settle down, found a new religion, get beaten up repeatedly, commit adultery, search for the meaning of life and do various other things. Some of the people with whom he interacts in various paths of his life can also sense their complicated relations with Jesper. In the end he has to choose a path of his life that would do the least harm. |
Hindle Wakes | William Stanley Houghton | null | The play is set in the fictional mill town of Hindle in Lancashire in England, and concerns two young people who are discovered to have been having what would now be called a "dirty weekend" during their holiday, during the town's wakes week. Their families pressure them to get married, but the young woman refuses. She is disowned by her people but manages to get her job at the mill back. It seemed quite a controversial and subversive piece at the time it was written. |
The Flames: A Fantasy | Olaf Stapledon | 1,947 | Cass's letter, which forms the bulk of the novel, describes his contact with a bizarre form of alien species. Whilst holidaying in the Lake District, Cass is inexplicably drawn to a lump of rock, which he pockets and takes back with him to his room. There, he is driven to place the rock on the fire, and this action releases a bizarre form of alien life - a living flame, which has been trapped in the rock for millennia. The flame reveals itself to be one of an ancient alien race who originated in the photosphere of the sun. Solar catastrophe has distributed the ancient race throughout the planets of the solar system, and the flame-beings can only be woken by intense heat. The flame and Cass discourse at great length about typically "Stapledonian" topics - the life of the spirit, the role of the individual and the purpose and meaning of the universe. Over the succeeding nights they develop a strange friendship, in which Cass reactivates the flame in his hearth, (which slumbers in the cold rock of the firebrick) with a hot coal fire. Eventually, the flame reveals that it has grand plans for Cass - it wishes him to be an ambassador for his people, and explains that the flame and his race have been manipulating events on Earth in order to better their chances of survival, manipulation that included the unfortunate suicide of Cass's wife. The flame proposes that Cass aid in introducing the flames to humankind. In exchange for a permanent home on earth - a zone of extreme heat - the flames will use their telepathic powers to assist mankind. Cass agonises over this offer for two days, and comes to the decision that humanity must stand or fall on its own merits, without outside help or control. He reactivates the flame and douses it violently with cold water. The rapid change in temperature kills the ancient being at once. Cass, torn with regret and doubt, but set in his course of action, begins finding and killing the little flame creatures wherever he can find them. Posing as a journalist, he visits a foundry where locomotives are made and attempts to shut off the furnace. He is arrested and placed in a mental home. Thos takes up the final part of the narrative, visiting Cass in the asylum. Cass claims to have been in contact with the flames once more, who have re-established contact with their brethren on the sun. Cass tells the story of their race: how they became part of a "cosmical mind" reaching out to the creator of all things, and how this enterprise failed. Thos hears nothing from Cass for a few months, but is later informed of Cass's death - he perished in a fire at the asylum, which he started himself. |
Dirty Work | null | null | The novel takes place over a period of two days in a VA hospital. Walter James, a white veteran of the Vietnam war, has just been admitted. Walter has a completely reconstructed face and suffers from frequent seizures and blackouts as a result of a fragment of bullet embedded in his brain. Braiden Chaney is a black man who lost both of his arms and legs from gunfire in the Vietnam War. He has been in the VA hospital for 22 years at the start of the novel. The novel is structured in the stream of consciousness style. Much of the novel takes place in the mind of Braiden as Braiden is forced to construct elaborate fantasies, most of which involve his being a king in Africa, to escape the plight of his physical state. Most of the novel consists of dialogue between the two men. They tell each other their respective stories, mostly during the course of one night, while they drink beer and smoke pot that Braiden's sister has smuggled into the hospital for him. The novel is ultimately a theodicy as it attempts to explain the paradox of evil in a world created by an omnipotent God. Braiden has several conversations with Jesus throughout the novel, and while the reader is left to determine whether they are fantasies or real conversations, the novel implies that they are real. The plot of the novel borrows from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which is referenced in the novel. Braiden along with his sister eventually convinces Walter to kill him, effectively ending the miserable existence he has led for the last 22 years. The novel ends with this event, and Walter reflects, "I knew that somewhere Jesus wept." |
If You Could See Me Now | Peter Straub | null | The novel tells the story of Miles Teagarden, a widowed English professor struggling to complete his dissertation in the summer of 1975. Twenty years earlier – on the night of June 21, 1955 – Miles made a vow with his beautiful cousin Alison Greening that they would meet again at the family farm in Arden, Wisconsin in twenty years. Shortly after swearing this vow, Alison drowned under mysterious circumstances while she and Miles were swimming in the quarry not far from the family farm. The main action of the book follows Miles as he returns to Arden ostensibly in search of peace and quiet in which he can complete his dissertation. Very quickly the work on the dissertation falls away as Miles becomes obsessed with memories of his cousin and the circumstances of her death. Several young girls have been murdered in the area and the suspicions of the small town fall on Miles, who soon comes to believe that Alison's vengeful spirit may be responsible for the deaths. |
By the Shores of Silver Lake | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1,939 | By the Shores of Silver Lake is based on Laura's late childhood spent near De Smet, South Dakota, beginning in 1879. Because her sister Mary was recently blinded due to an illness, Pa asks Laura to "be Mary’s eyes" by describing what she sees, and Laura becomes more patient and mature through this service. The book also introduces Laura's youngest sister Grace Pearl. The story begins in Plum Creek, shortly after the family has recovered from the scarlet fever which caused Mary to become blind. Aunt Docia comes to visit, and suggests that Pa works as the bookkeeper in Uncle Henry’s railroad camp for fifty dollars a month. Since Mary is too weak to travel, Pa goes ahead with the wagon and team, and the rest of the family follows later by train. The morning Pa is to leave, their beloved old bulldog Jack dies in his sleep, saddening Laura greatly. (The dog upon whom Jack was based was no longer with the family at that point, but the author inserted his death here to serve as a transition between her childhood and her adolescence.) Several months later, the family travels to Dakota Territory by train. This is the family's first train trip and they are excited by the novelty of this newfangled mode of transportation which can cover in a few hours the distance a horse and wagon would travel in a day. Pa comes for them in town, and the next day they leave for the railroad camp. Laura and her cousin, Lena, play together when they are done with their chores, which range from collecting laundry cleaned by a neighbor to milking cows; Laura rides a horse for the first time when Lena allows her the use of her pony. As winter approaches, the railroad workers take down the buildings in the camp and return East. As the family has nowhere to stay with the demolition of the camp, they plan to return east, but the surveyors, who had planned to stay for the winter, are called back East and ask the Ingalls to stay in their house in exchange for keeping watch over their surveying equipment. Laura is excited to move into a beautiful house well stocked with provisions. The newly married Mr. and Mrs. Boast arrive in the middle of a snowstorm. They stay past Christmas, and at New Year's the Ingalls visit the Boasts' small home for dinner. To pass time, Mrs. Boast shares her collection of newspapers with Laura and shows the Ingalls family how to make a what-not. Later, Reverend Alden unexpectedly visits, and upon realizing Mary is blind, informs Ma that there is a college for the blind in Iowa. Laura resolves that she will eventually teach school and help send Mary to college. During a clear night that winter, Laura and Carrie go for a moonlight walk and encounter a wolf. When Pa goes out the next day to hunt the wolf, he discovers the perfect section of land for their homestead claim. He plans to file a claim at the land office in Brookings as soon as the weather improves. However, his departure is delayed by a rush of men moving west who stop at the surveyors' house on the way to their own claims. The money earned from boarding these men is later used for Mary's college education. After Pa's return from Brookings, he builds a store building in town so the family can move when the surveyors return. The book ends as the Ingalls family settles into the snug claim shanty on their new land. |
Little Town on the Prairie | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1,941 | One day at supper, Pa asks Laura whether she will accept a job in town helping to sew shirts; the surge in people newly arrived in town means a need for services such as this. Laura hates the work, but continues because the money will help send her sister Mary to a college for the blind in Iowa. On the Fourth of July, Laura, Carrie and Pa walk to town to attend the celebration. The men organize horse races, and Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, wins the buggy race with his two Morgan horses hitched to his brother's heavy peddler's wagon. On the homestead, the family's crops of corn and oats are doing well, and Pa plans to sell them to pay for Mary to begin college that fall. In the summer, blackbirds descend and destroy both crops. Laura and Mary resign themselves that Mary will have to wait, but Pa sells one of their cows to make up the amount and Mary gets ready to go after all. When Ma and Pa escort Mary to the college, Laura, Carrie, and Grace are left alone for a week. In order to stave off the loneliness stemming from Mary's departure, Laura, Carrie, and Grace do the fall cleaning; they succeed despite a few mishaps, surprising Ma and Pa when they return. In the fall, the Ingalls move to town for the winter; they believe the coming winter will not be as hard as the previous one, but as the claim shanty is not weatherproofed, Pa thinks it is best not to risk staying in it. In town, Laura and Carrie attend school again, and Laura is reunited with her friends Minnie Johnson and Mary Power. She also meets a new girl, Ida Brown, the adopted daughter of the town's new minister, Reverend Brown, who claims to be related to John Brown of Kansas. Nellie Oleson, her nemesis from Plum Creek, has moved to De Smet and is also attending the school. The teacher for the fall term is Eliza Jane Wilder, Almanzo’s older sister, who has a nearby claim of her own. Nellie turns Miss Wilder against Laura and Miss Wilder loses control of the school for a time. A visit by the school board restores order; however, Miss Wilder leaves at the end of the fall term. For the winter term, Miss Wilder is replaced by Mr. Clewett. Laura sets herself to studying, as she only has one year left before she can apply for a teaching certificate, but can relax when the town of De Smet begins having literary meetings at the schoolhouse, where the whole town gathers for fun every Friday night: singing, elocution, a spelling bee, or plays and minstrel shows put on by the townspeople. The winter is very mild, so Laura and Carrie never miss a day of school. Laura and her classmates become friendly after a birthday party for Ben Woodworth, and so Laura begins lagging in her studies, though she remains head of the class. Laura spends the summer studying to make up for lost time. The next school year, there is another new teacher, Mr. Owen. During a week of church revival meetings, Almanzo Wilder asks to escort Laura home from church. Ma is surprised at this because Laura is only fifteen, and Almanzo is a grown man. Near Christmas, Mr. Owen organizes a school exhibition to raise awareness of the school's needs, as the school is becoming overcrowded. Mr. Owen assigns Laura and her friend Ida Brown the duty of reciting the whole of American history up to that point. Despite their nervousness, on the night of the school exhibition Laura and Ida perform perfectly, as does Carrie, who recites a poem. Almanzo once again sees Laura home, and offers to take her on a sleigh ride after he completes the cutter he is building. At home, Laura is met by Mr. Boast and Mr. Brewster, who saw Laura perform at the exhibition and want her to take a teaching position at Brewster's settlement twelve miles (19 km) from town. The school superintendent comes and tests Laura; although she is not yet sixteen, he grants her a third-grade teaching certificate. The book ends with Laura preparing to teach school. |
These Happy Golden Years | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1,943 | As the story begins, Pa is taking Laura 12 miles from home in the dead of winter to her first teaching assignment at Brewster settlement. Laura, only 15 and a schoolgirl herself, is apprehensive as this is both the first time she has left home and the first school she has taught, but is determined to complete her assignment and earn $40 to help her sister Mary, who is attending Vinton College for the Blind in Iowa. This first school proves difficult for her. Laura must board with the Brewsters in their two-room claim shanty, sleeping on a narrow sofa behind a curtain in their bedroom. The Brewsters are an unhappy family and Laura is deeply uncomfortable observing the way husband and wife quarrel. In one particularly unsettling incident, she wakes in the night to see Mrs. Brewster standing over her husband with a knife. Mrs. Brewster seems to resent Laura particularly, and is rarely pleasant to her. Laura does not like teaching school, but feels that at least going to the schoolhouse keeps her away from Mrs. Brewster, and steels herself to spend all of Saturday and Sunday in the Brewster house. To her surprise and delight, homesteader Almanzo Wilder (with whom she became acquainted in Little Town on the Prairie) appears at the end of her first week of school in his new two-person cutter to bring her home for the weekend. Already fond of Laura and wanting to ease her homesickness, Almanzo takes it upon himself to bring her home and return her to the Brewsters each weekend of that term -- once, on a dangerously frigid day when the temperature drops lower than -40° -- even though she at one point tells him she is only going with him because she wants to go home. The winter passes slowly. The weather is bitterly cold, though not so badly as the Hard Winter, and neither the claim shanty or the school house can be heated adequately. Some of the children Laura is teaching are older than Laura herself, and she has difficulty motivating them. With advice from Ma (a former schoolteacher herself), Laura is able to adapt and become more self-assured, and successfully completes the two-month assignment. Pa brings her the $40, and she gives it back to him to use for Mary's college education. Though Laura believed she would not see Almanzo again after school ended, she happily accepts an invitation to go on a sleigh ride with him the next weekend, and so their relationship continues. Sleigh rides give way to buggy rides in the spring, and Laura impresses Almanzo with her willingness to help break his new and often temperamental horses. Laura's old nemesis Nellie Oleson makes a brief appearance during two Sunday buggy rides with Almanzo, who later explains to Laura that he only offered Nellie a ride because he felt sorry for her. Nellie's chatter and flirtatious behavior towards Almanzo annoy Laura, who flatly refuses to ride with Almanzo if he continues seeing Nellie. Shortly thereafter, Nellie moves back to New York after her family loses their homestead. In between, Laura's Uncle Tom (Ma's brother) visits the family and tells of his failed venture with a covered wagon brigade seeking gold in the Black Hills, in which they built a stockade but were driven out of it by U.S. soldiers. Laura moves with seamstress Mrs. McKee to the McKee's claim when Mrs. McKee moves there to fulfill the residency requirements necessary to hold the claim. When Mary returns home for summer vacation, Mrs. McKee tells Laura she can go home. The family finances have improved with the increase in their livestock to the point that Pa can sell a cow to purchase a sewing machine for Ma. Laura receives another teaching certificate and teaches at a nearby school, for which she is paid $75; Pa uses the money to purchase a parlor organ to surprise Mary when she returns home from college. Almanzo invites Laura to attend summer "singing school" with him and her classmates, which they both enjoy. On the last evening of singing school while driving Laura home, Almanzo -- who has by now been courting Laura for three years -- proposes to Laura. She tells him "it would depend on the ring." During their next ride, Almanzo presents Laura with a gold ring set with a garnet and pearls, which she accepts, and they share their first kiss. During their engagement, Laura teaches one final term of school, and she and Ma begin working on the linens and clothing necessary for Laura to begin a household of her own after marriage. Almanzo is nearly finished building their house on his tree claim, when he asks Laura if she would mind getting married within a few days; his sister and mother have their hearts set on a church wedding, which Pa cannot yet afford. Laura agrees, and she and Almanzo are married by the Reverend Brown in a simple ceremony. After a wedding dinner with her family, Laura drives away with Almanzo and the newlyweds settle contentedly into their new home. |
Farmer Boy | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1,933 | Farmer Boy is based on the childhood of husband, Almanzo Wilder, who grew up in the 1860s near the town of Malone in upstate New York. The book covers one year in Almanzo's life, beginning just before his ninth birthday, and describes in detail the endless chores involved in running the Wilder family farm. Young as he is, Almanzo rises before 5 a.m. every day to milk several cows and feed stock. In the growing season, he plants and tends crops; in winter, he hauls logs, helps fill the ice house, trains a team of young oxen, and sometimes—when his father can spare him—goes to school. The novel includes stories of Almanzo's brother Royal and his sisters Eliza Jane and Alice. While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State, where he and his brother and sisters work at their chores from dawn to dinner most days-no matter what the weather. There is still time for fun, though, especially with the horses, which Almanzo loves more than anything. |
Dragonhaven | Robin McKinley | 2,007 | The story is set in the Smokehill National Park, a wildlife preserve for the preservation and study of dragons. The dragons are elusive; evidence of their existence can be found everywhere, but the dragons themselves remain hidden. Young Jake Mendoza, who lives with his father, the owner and director of the park, goes out for his first overnight solo and comes across a dying dragon. The dragon has been fatally injured by a poacher who has breached the security of the wildlife preserve. The fact that a dragon has killed a human, even a poacher, will make life very complicated for Smokehill National Park, which exists in a tough political climate, due to the controversial nature of keeping dragons alive. But what makes life even more complicated for Jake is that he discovers that the dying dragon had been a mother, and that one of her dragonlets is still alive. It is illegal to save the dragon's life, but Jake, having discovered the baby dragon, cannot leave it to die. He takes the dragon home and raises it. However, this creates a controversy. The family of the dead poacher want the dragons at Dragonhaven killed. Jake and the other rangers are trying their best to convince those against the preservation of dragons that the creatures are really peaceful and friendly. The bulk of the story involves Jake's growing relationship with the young dragon and other dragons, all the responsibilities that come along with caring for an orphaned wild animal, and his own maturation from child to young adult. The novel is written in a childish style at first, but Jake's writing style matures as he matures. In the end, Dragonhaven is saved by Jake and his dragon "friends," as they slowly learn how their two species can communicate with each other by their mind, in the process proving that dragons are as intelligent as humans and wish to be at peace with them. |
Back Home | Michelle Magorian | 1,984 | Virginia 'Rusty' Dickinson is the main protagonist of the novel. The story centres on her return to England in 1945 from Connecticut, where she was sent as a child evacuee in 1939, when the war broke out. Much to her disappointment, Rusty finds England hidebound, run-down, boring and totally devoid of any decent food. Her mother, Peggy, is an awkward woman who, all her life, had been dominated by her parents, husband and mother-in-law. During the war, Peggy came out of her shell and became a skilled car mechanic. She is stiff and hurt when the Americanised Virginia returns home. However, Rusty does initially have one ally - the kindly and eccentric Beattie Langley, in whose Devon home her mother and brother have been staying throughout the war, before they return to the family home (Rusty and Charlie's grandmother's house) in Guildford. Rusty is initially rejected by her brother, Charlie, who was born after she had been sent to America. She is baffled by the range and scale of rationing, rules she is not used to, and the people around her, and longs to return to her host family in Connecticut. Rusty struggles to deal with her peers and teachers at boarding school, her spiteful grandmother, stiff mother, and strict and violent father when he returns from war, but her tough spirit helps her through it and leads to her happiness in the end. |
Jue Dai Shuang Jiao | Gu Long | 1,966 | Jiang Feng and Yan Nantian become sworn brothers. Jiang Feng was injured during a misadventure and was rescued by the sisters Yaoyue and Lianxing of Yihua Palace. The sisters fall in love with Jiang Feng, but he spurns them because of their arrogance. Jiang Feng falls in love with the slave girl Hua Yuenu instead, and soon Hua becomes pregnant with his child. Jiang Feng and Hua Yuenu manage to flee, but are tracked down by the sisters when Jiang's servant betrays them. Hua Yuenu gives birth to a pair of twin boys and dies together with Jiang Feng. As the ultimate vengeance for Jiang Feng's scorn, Yaoyue decides to make Jiang's sons kill each other. She raises one of the twins as her own child and names him "Hua Wuque". The other child is saved by Yan Nantian. Yan Nantian pursues Jiang Feng's treacherous servant into Villains' Valley to avenge his sworn brother, where he encounters the notorious Ten Great Villains, a group of the most brutal and malevolent criminals in the world. He is eventually overwhelmed and knocked out. Surprisingly, the villains do not harm the child, and instead intend to raise him as their student and "groom" him to become the greatest villain ever. More than a decade later, the twins grow up into a pair of handsome youths. Yaoyue teaches Hua Wuque her formidable style of martial arts, and sends him to kill his brother without telling him about his origins. Concurrently, the other child Xiaoyu'er is trained by the Ten Great Villains in a variety of fighting styles, as well as many unique "villainous" skills such as poisons, theft, and disguise. Xiaoyu'er ventures into the jianghu (martial artists' community) alone, and his adventures lead him to encounters with many young maidens such as Tie Xinlan, Su Ying and Zhang Jing. He develops complex romantic relationships with most of them. Meanwhile Hua Wuque continues to pursue him, and the two clash on many occasions. Hua Wuque is superior to Xiaoyu'er in martial arts, but the latter usually manages to survive by using his wits and cunning. Initially the twins are hostile towards one another, as their personalities are completely different; Hua Wuque is righteous and somewhat naive, while Xiaoyu'er is expedient and cunning. However the two eventually develop a grudging level of friendship and respect after being forced through a series of trials and adventures together. At the same time, they also become entangled in love triangles with several of the maidens they meet. Yaoyue is determined to make the twins kill each other, and she forces Hua Wuque to challenge Xiaoyu'er to a fight to the death. Xiaoyu'er is seemingly killed by Hua Wuque during the duel. After his apparent death, Yaoyue exposes her true intentions, as well as the history of the twins and her plan to make their father pay for betraying her love. Hua Wuque is shocked to hear the truth, but soon afterwards Xiaoyu'er comes back to life, revealing that he actually feigned death by consuming special drugs. The twins finally recognise and acknowledge each other as brothers. |
Batman: Dark Knight Dynasty | Mike W. Barr | null | Sir Joshua Wainwright, a crusader for the Knights Templar in the year 1222, battles the evil Vandal Savage, who steals a shipment of gold and tries to bring a mysterious meteor crashing to Earth. Savage, an immortal, gained his immortality from the meteor, and is trying to bring it back so he may gain even more power. After stopping Savage in this time period by hurling him into the sphere he was using to draw the meteor to Earth, Joshua swears an oath that he and his family will now and forevermore be sworn enemies of Savage and will prevent his mad schemes to protect the future. Unfortunately, Joshua himself is subsequently tried for heresy and burnt at the stake due to the impossible nature of his story causing the Templar leaders to assume that he stole the gold himself, prompting Savage to wistfully comment that he always wins. Bruce Wayne, the son of Thomas and Martha Wayne in the 20th Century, is shaken as his parents are killed on his wedding day; the gunman who would have killed them beforehand was scared away by 'Valentin Sinclair', Vandal Savage's modern alias. Discovering that they were murdered after analyzing camera footage of the deaths, but unwilling to risk his wife's life by investigating himself, Bruce, influenced by a painting of his ancestor Joshua Wainwright, creates a costume bearing a bat emblem and becomes the Dark Knight, the Batman, in order to avenge his parents' death. However, when Savage takes the Wayne Enterprises space shuttle up to acquire the passing meteor, Batman follows him and manages to keep him from acquiring the power source inside. Unfortunately, in the ensuing struggle, Savage sends himself and Batman hurtling back into Earth's atmosphere, Bruce dying in the descent while Savage regenerates in the desert after a few days. In the year 2500, man now lives side-by-side with intelligent apes, and a vast floating city- New Gotham- floats over the ruins of the original. Vice-President Brenna Wayne, having discovered evidence of an elaborate conspiracy against her family on a disk recorded by Alfred in the last few pages of the last story- thirteen generations of Waynes have all died young in a violent manner after spending their last few days dressed in a bat-like costume - takes up the mantle of Batwoman and faces off against Vandal Savage in one final battle. Discovering that her brother James has betrayed her, Brenna and Savage face off on the meteor as Savage tries to draw it down to Earth, unconcerned about the destruction that this will cause. The battle culminates in Savage being left drifting through space on the meteor, determined to learn the purpose of his life. |
The Door Between | Frederic Dannay | null | Karen Leith is an award-winning novelist whose fictional life and works bear a resemblance to Pearl S. Buck -- she was raised in Japan and writes novels that are set there, but lives in Manhattan surrounded by Japanese customs, art and furnishings. She is engaged to marry world-famous cancer researcher Dr. John MacClure. One day, the doctor's daughter, Eva, finds Karen with her throat cut in the writer's Greenwich Village home. Eva herself has no motive to kill Karen, but the evidence she finds at the scene suggests—even in her own mind—that no one else could have done it. The investigation by Ellery Queen confronts this puzzle and also turns up startling information about a long-vanished relative of Karen Leith. Queen pierces the veil of circumstantial evidence and finds out not only the method of the crime but, most importantly, its motivation. |
The Last Canadian | William C. Heine | null | The President had fled the White House. Now safely concealed in a secret war room - a shelter safe against everything but a direct hit by an atomic bomb, its air thoroughly washed and filtered, its communications systems locally and remotely controlled - the President sat watching his country die. A virulent and deadly disease had spread across the American continent, homo sapiens had become an endangered species. Gene Arnprior had survived the lethal virus, but could he survive the sinister society it had created? |
Three Days Before the Shooting | Ralph Ellison | 2,008 | The plot of Three Days Before the Shooting revolves around a man named Bliss of indeterminate race who is raised by a black Baptist minister named Alonzo Hickman. As an adult he assumes a white identity and eventually becomes a race-baiting United States Senator named Adam Sunraider. |
Jango | William Nicholson | 2,006 | Jango begins with Seeker, Morning Star and Wildman who are all being taught in the Nom and are near the end of their training. Their teacher, Chance, mentions the secret skill of a Noble Warrior, and tells them a new teacher will be assigned to them to help them attain this secret skill. He then hands them over to Miriander, who puts them through training to learn how to control another's will by using lir. Once this training is over, it is discovered that Seeker has power without limits. Unlike the other Noble Warriors, he is able to suck the lir out of any living thing and doesn't get weary doing so. He fights and defeats Chance. Afterwards, he is told to stay in one place while the Elder and the council of the Nomana decide what to do with him, as they feel that they should not loose such power in the world, yet he might be the one the save the Nomana. In the trees of the forest called the Glimmen lives Echo Kittle who is described as being pale, slender and beautiful. She is captured by the Orlan leader, Amroth Jahan, who intends to arrange a marriage between her and one of his sons. She refuses to do so until the Jahan threatens to burn down the Glimmen and kill everyone in it. She decides to go along with them and soon they arrive in Radiance, which is led by Soren Similin. After a series of events taking up more than half the book, Similin manages to form an alliance between the Jahan and Radiance so they can destroy Anacrea with the use of charged water, which has huge explosive power. Neither the Jahan or Radiance intends to share the victory with the other. In his cell, Seeker is told by a Noma, Narrow Path, that the council of the Nom has decided to cleanse Seeker. Narrow Path believes this is the wrong decision and, knowing that he himself will be cleansed for this act, sets Seeker free, and tells him that he must go and fight the true threat; the Savanters, whom live in the land cloud. Seeker heads off to the land cloud, which is on the opposite side of the Glimmen, and on the way there he meets Jango sitting by a strange door in a broken down wall. At first, Jango seems to be a crazy old man, until he begins citing many of Seeker's personal thoughts. He gives Seeker much cryptic advice on how to defeat the Savanters and cites Noman's famous quote. (see Noman's experiment). Seeker continues on his way through the Glimmen but is stopped by Echo Kittle who has escaped from the Orlans in Radiance. She pleads with Seeker to help her defend the Glimmen from the Orlans but Seeker, knowing that he has little time left, refuses and carries on his way into the land cloud. There he kills five out of seven savanters but he is told to go back by a black figure, pretending to be his shadow. Seeker feels that something bad is happening at the Nom so he runs back as fast as he can. When Seeker arrives back at the Nom, the army of Orlans has already attacked and the charged water bomb ready to blow up the city, although Seeker doesn't know this. Seeker drives his power into the ground, causing an earthquake that stopped the battle in an instant, but the charged water bomb had already been launched at Anacrea and destroyed it, along with the Garden and the Lost Child. Seeker gets angry and takes revenge on the Jahan by breaking his pride, forcing him to kneel to Echo Kittle. The army of Orlans breaks up and Soren Similin dies from a charged water explosion. Seeker heads out in search of a purpose and runs across Jango, who is standing before a door. Jango says the door is open and he can enter if he wishes. Before he enters, he is told by Jango that there are many more Noms, and so he realizes the All and Only is not dead. The book is ended when Seeker enters the strange door next to Jango and enters an exact replica of the Nom's Garden that he was used to. He kneels down and asks for forgiveness for disbelieving in him after the destruction of the Nom. |
The Narrows | Michael Connelly | 2,004 | While investigating the death of ex-FBI profiler Terry McCaleb at his wife's request, Bosch begins to suspect that notorious serial killer and ex-FBI supervisor Robert Backus, aka The Poet, presumed dead, may have murdered McCaleb. Digging deeper, Bosch follows a lead to Las Vegas that brings him into contact with the FBI. Meanwhile, FBI agent Rachel Walling, who was at one time Backus's protégé in the FBI (as McCaleb had also been) and who has been exiled by the FBI to South Dakota for four years for her role in The Poet investigation, is the subject of messages sent by Backus to the FBI. As Bosch and Walling are both outsiders to the main FBI investigation, they eventually join forces. The novel shifts points of view, cutting from Bosch's first-person commentary to the third-person perspectives of Walling and Backus. Bosch meets a neighbor whom he later discovers (in the book The Closers) to be Cassie Black, the main character of Void Moon, and he begins a relationship with Walling. He also accepts an offer from his old partner Kiz Rider to rejoin the LAPD under a new chief of police, as a homicide detective in the Open-Unsolved Unit within the department's Robbery-Homicide Division. In the end, Bosch and Walling bring The Poet to justice by chasing him into the concrete channels of the swollen Los Angeles River in L.A., where he drowns while Bosch barely survives. His death is confirmed this time, as opposed to The Poet where he was merely presumed dead. However, the relationship between Bosch and Walling falls apart in the end when Bosch learns that the FBI had discovered that Backus had nothing to do with McCaleb's death but had withheld the information from him. In fact, McCaleb had killed himself in a manner to make his death look accidental, as his heart transplant was failing, and he did not want to burden his wife and children with the crippling expense of additional medical procedures. it:Il poeta è tornato sv:Fällan |
The Bible with Sources Revealed | Richard Elliott Friedman | 2,003 | The core of the book, taking up almost 300 of its approximately 380 pages in the paperback edition, is Friedman's own translation of the five Pentateuchal books, in which the four sources plus the contributions of the two Redactors (of the combined JE source and the later redactor of the final document) are indicated typographically. The remaining sections include a short Introduction outlining Friedman's thesis, a "Collection of Evidence," and a bibliography. Friedman's version of the documentary hypothesis can be summarised as follows: The first source to be written down was the Jahwist, or J. This occurred in Judah, the southern of the two Israelite kingdoms, in the period between 922-722 BC. (Friedman's arguments are dealt with below). The Elohist, or E, was composed in roughly the same period, but probably a little later than J, in the northern kingdom of Israel. In 722 BC the Assyrian conquest of Israel brought E to Judah with refugees from the northern kingdom. Shortly after this a redactor combined the two into a standard text, JE, the redactor himself being known as RJE. Then in the reign of Hezekiah, c.715-687 BC, the Jerusalem priesthood produced a text which they saw as a replacement for JE, the theology of which was objectionable to their project of religious reform: this was the Priestly source, or P. Hezekiah's reform program failed, but was revived in the reign of his great-grandson Josiah, c. 640-609 BC, producing the last source, the Deuteronomist, or D. The three sources (JE now counting as a single source) existed independently until the return from the Babylonian exile, when a final redactor, R, combined them. The "Collection of Evidence" section sets out Friedman's arguments for the documentary hypothesis in general and for his own version of it in particular. He notes seven arguments: * Linguistic: each source (treating JE as a single source) reflects the Hebrew of its period. * Terminology: Certain words and phrases appear disproportionately, or exclusively, in certain sources. * Consistent content: Certain concepts, objects, and practices are specific to certain sources. * Continuity of texts: When separated into sources following linguistic, terminological and contextual clues, each source constitutes a coherent, self-contained narrative. * Connections with other parts of the Bible: Each source has direct, non-indiscriminate affinities with other specific parts of the Bible. * Relationships of sources to each other and to history: The sources each have connections to specific circumstances in the history of Israel/Judah, and to each other. |
Picture Perfect | Jodi Picoult | 1,995 | Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist, awakes lying atop a grave, suffering from amnesia and unable to recall any details about herself or her situation. She is taken in by Will Flying Horse, a half-Lakota Los Angeles police officer, until she is retrieved by her husband, Alex Rivers, a Hollywood celebrity. As she returns to her Bel Air mansion, it would appear she lives a picture perfect life, until memories gradually return to her. She remembers their whirlwind romance in Tanzania, her deep and unconditional love for Alex and the beatings she received from him. She tells us the story of her and Alex's relationship and unfortunately, it's not even close to the perfect picture she had been led to believe. After finding a positive pregnancy test in her bathroom, she remembers why she left before (to protect her baby) and flees to Will who hides her on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota. She grows to love the Reservation and the people there. Meanwhile, Alex's life is falling apart. He is lost without Cassie, and even after winning three Oscars, he can't live without her. Rumours fly around concerning Cassie's disappearance, tarnishing Alex's reputation. On the night of the Oscars, Cassie calls to tell Alex she is proud of him. A while after giving birth, she calls Alex again and tells him where she is but that she isn't coming home for another month. She makes him promise he won't come for her yet. He breaks his promise and shows up outside the Flying Horses' house two weeks later. They reunite and Cassie tells Alex of their son, Connor. Cassie tells Alex she only left to protect their baby, that she would never have left because of Alex. Cassie agrees to go back to LA with Alex and Connor if he promises he will see a therapist and won't ever beat her again. Alex promises and they return home together with their son, returning Alex's perfect reputation. However, their happiness is short-lived. Alex stops showing up at therapy, and more rumours fly about Cassie's whereabouts and whether Alex is truly Connor's father. After finding out about the rumours, Alex beats Cassie. Later that night, Alex begs Cassie not to leave again. He says he would do anything and she replies that she knows this. After he says he can't let her go and Cassie agrees that he can't. Cassie finally realizes that she can't stay with Alex at all, even though she loves him. She knows she has to do more than try to leave, as he won't let her go. She realises she has to do something to make him hate her, so that they can both be free. Cassie holds a press conference, announcing she is divorcing Alex on grounds of extreme cruelty. She knows this will ruin Alex, and kill her as she is forcing Alex to stop loving her but she can't stop loving him. She sees him in the crowd of reporters and when a reporter asks if she could say anything to Alex right at this moment, what it would be, she says 'I'd say what he always said to me. I never meant to hurt you." |
The Wedding Day Mystery | null | null | The plot revolves around the happenings taking place at Heights House,a Victorian mansion on the outskirts of River Heights. It was hired by Happily Ever After, Inc., a wedding consulting service at which Nancy's friend Bess Marvin works. Bess' cousin George and Nancy had agreed to assist Bess in the four weddings which were taking place on that weekend. But then a series of mishaps followed. Someone dressed as a ghost frightened the bride when she saw him/her in her closet. Nancy's car was also tampered with, which nearly killed her. The bride's wedding gifts were also stolen and the wedding dress of the bride of the next wedding was slashed to rags. In the end,the saboteur turned out to be Grace Sayer, the previous owner of the house. She had lost the house due to debts and intended to regain it by frightening all its inhabitants. But after she was caught during the third wedding, the problems did not end. A message was sent to the fourth bride warning her to stop the marriage before it was too late. Nancy discovered that Rafe, the security guard was also an ex-boyfriend of the bride, and he himself had sent the letter. Nancy and her friends prevented him from stopping the marriage. |
The Deception | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | The book begins in the exact place where #45 The Revelation had ended. The Animorphs have just begun a Z-space transmission with the Andalite fleet. They inform the Andalite fleet of an impending ambush on the Anati world. The Andalites are skeptical of the genuineness of the information thinking that the earth resistance might lie to them in order to become their top priority. They remain skeptical even when Ax confirms the information, saying that he may have confused his loyalties. Ax, Tobias and Marco (who now lives in hiding with them) intercept a Yeerk transmission that the newly promoted Visser One (Esplin 9466) has a plan to conquer the world by a war between the most populated country (China) and the United States. The humans would exhaust their weapons and would not be able to retaliate. The Animorphs steal an F-16 from an air base and fly out to sea to an aircraft carrier. They crash it into the sea so the Yeerks would not think they were being invaded. They infiltrate the ship and find Visser Two, whose host is a high-ranking officer in the Navy (Admiral Carrington). The Yeerks find out that the Animorphs are on the ship and have reinforcement. Bug fighters began invading the aircraft carrier. The Animorphs attack, and fight alongside the non-controller American military personnel. The yeerks have commandeered an American submarine and plan to use it to launch a nuclear attack against the Chinese and instigate WWIII. In order to stop this, Ax commandeers a Grumman F-14D Tomcat fighter loaded with a nuclear warhead, against Jake's decision, abducts Visser Two, and threatens to use the bomb to destroy the Yeerk pool and the city above it (along with the families of all the Animorphs). Visser Two is unable to call Ax's bluff (although even Ax himself is not sure if he was bluffing) and he calls off the attack that would have instigated the war. Ax is left wondering whether or not he would have been capable of launching the nuke, if the rest of the Animorphs, particularly Jake, will ever be able to forgive him. Ax directly betrayed Jake's explicit order, something he swore he would never do again. *Visser Three is promoted to the position of Visser One. |
Babe & Me | Dan Gutman | 2,000 | Joe Stoshack goes back in time to find out whether Babe Ruth called his shot in the 1932 world series. His dad tags along to keep him safe, per his mom's request, and to try to make some money, because he has just gotten laid off. Joe Stoshack ends up meeting Babe Ruth right after almost getting killed by a guy with a knife. Babe Ruth assumes that Joe has just saved him from an assassination attempt, so he invites Joe and his dad to come along with him. Joe's dad gets Babe Ruth to sign a bunch of baseballs, fulfilling what he wanted to do, and then they go to the baseball game, fulfilling what Joe wanted to do. However, Joe's dad sees presidentential hopeful Franklin Roosevelt (Who was elected president a month later) in the stands, and tries to warn him about the Holocaust. But security guards see him as a potential assassin, and take him away. Joe ends up watching the game and discovers that Babe Ruth really did call his shot and then gets re-united with his dad. His dad's sack of baseballs that got signed by Babe Ruth were confiscated, but he doesn't care because he got to spend some quality time with his son, something that almost never happens. Then they return to the present and Joe Stoshack hits a Walk-Off home run in his next Little League game, somewhat mirroring Babe Ruth's home run. |
Professor Martens' Departure | Jaan Kross | 1,984 | Friedrich Fromhold Martens, born in Pärnu, Estonia on 27 August 1845, was a renowned expert in international law. He attended the University of St. Petersburg where he later became a professor. He was a polyglot, jurist, arbitrator, and a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He represented the Russian Government at many international conferences including the Hague Peace Conference in 1899. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1902 and was mistakenly reported by some as the winner. During a train journey from his home town of Pärnu to St. Petersburg he recalls many events of his life. He remembers meeting his wife Kati for the first time at her father's house. He describes the discovery of his "double", Georg Friedrich Martens, a man who lived an almost parallel life to Friedrich eighty-nine years previously. Georg was born in Hamburg, Germany, attended the University of Göttingen and also became a professor of international law. Some of the recollected events, for example the Great Flood of Hamburg in 1770 and a fire in a wooden suburb of Göttingen actually took place during Georg's life and not his own. He describes the arrest of his nephew, Johannes. He remembers his meeting with the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov, to discuss the publication of a compendium of treaties between Russia and other nations. He formulates his theory of "comparativist psychology". With some embarrassment he relates the story of his candidacy for the Nobel Peace Prize and the mistaken reports that he was the winner. He outlines his "doctrine of respect for human rights". He describes his affair with an art student, Yvette Arlon, a woman that later bore his child, married and fled to the Congo. Friedrich discusses politics with a fellow train passenger, an Estonian lady and socialist, Hella Wuolijoki. He wonders how differently he would have lived his life if given another chance. He recalls the embarrassing episode of the Treaty of Portsmouth; Friedrich was a member of the Russian delegation but his name was mistakenly omitted from the initial list of delegates and so the Japanese did not allow him to participate in most of the talks. He remembers Mr. Saebelmann, the son of the man who was rumored to have ousted Friedrich's father from the parish clerk's cottage. Mr. Saebelmann became a composer of some note but later died in Poltava. He describes the death of his double, Georg, in Frankfurt am Main, just before meeting his own demise at the stop-off at Valga. |
The Seekers | John Jakes | 1,975 | The story begins in 1794, just prior to the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in the Northwest Territory. Abraham Kent, the son of Philip Kent and Anne Ware, had enlisted in the Legion of the United States to help neutralize the threat of American Indians against expanding white settlements. He led a cavalry charge in the battle, but let a chance to kill Tecumseh slip away. Philip Kent, his father, had grown affluent as the proprietor of the publishing firm, Kent and Son in Boston, and would have preferred to have Abraham follow him into the family business; however, Abraham was not interested in that trade and was uncertain what he wanted to do in life. Politically, father and son also had diverging views. Philip supported the Federalists, a party more friendly to urban industrialists, but Abraham did not. Abraham fell in love with Elizabeth Fletcher, his stepsister, the daughter of Judson Fletcher and Peggy McLean Kent. Philip had married Peggy after the death of his first wife, but never adopted Elizabeth as his own daughter. Elizabeth resented him for this and did not want to live by his conservative rules. Sharing a common desire to leave Boston and Philip, Abraham and Elizabeth married and planned to start a new life in the Northwest Territory. They purchased a tract of land on the Great Miami River, near Fort Hamilton, though Abraham feared that his young wife was too frail to make the journey. Along the way Elizabeth revealed that she was pregnant, but she lost the baby when their riverboat crashed in the Ohio River. Once reaching their tract of land, Abraham took advice once given him by Thomas Jefferson and began farming corn. There, a son, Jared Adam, was born to Abraham and Elizabeth. Having lived there two years had not made Elizabeth any more content then she was when she was living under Philip’s roof in Boston. Not wanting to see her in such distress, Abraham decided to sell his farm and move to a more populated settlement. This news seemed to raise her spirits, but just before the move, two Shawnee Indians wandered onto Abraham’s farm looking for whiskey. In attempting to expel them, Abraham killed one of the men, but the other one killed Elizabeth. Afterwards, Abraham, distraught, sold the farm, then made his way back to Boston with Jared to learn that Philip had recently died. Gilbert Kent, the son of Philip and his second wife Peggy McLean, inherited control of Kent and Son after his father’s passing. He gave Abraham a job there. Gilbert tried to arrange for Abraham to participate in the Lewis and Clark expedition, but Abraham informed him that he could not participate because he had caught a disease from a prostitute. When Gilbert expelled him from his house, Abraham tried to take his son with him, but Gilbert’s wife, Harriet, would not allow it. Abraham pushed her down the stairs and she went into premature labor. After a violent scuffle, Abraham left without Jared, and Harriet gave birth to a daughter, Amanda. Jared Kent never saw his father after that. He was raised by Gilbert and Harriet, though Harriet detested him and treated him cruelly. After the War of 1812 was declared, Jared enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served aboard the USS Constitution. He participated in the battle with HMS Guerriere that took place on August 19, 1812. During the battle Jared contributed to the maiming of Hamilton Stovall, a superior officer who had earlier demanded sex from Jared, but was denied. Later that year Gilbert Kent, had a seizure and died, and Harriet quickly remarried. Her second husband, Andrew Piggott, appeared to be a suitable mate before they were married; however, this was to prove illusory. He was a compulsive gambler and womaniser and would lose the entire Kent and Son publishing firm to Stovall in a game of craps, which proved a setup as retribution for Jared's having rejected Stovall's advances. In his rage upon hearing this news, Jared set fire to the firm and attempted to kill Stovall, instead shooting an associate of his. Thinking the man he shot was dead, Jared fled the city with his cousin Amanda. Earlier that day, Harriet had been hit by a carriage and died, leaving Amanda an orphan. Having no specific destination in mind, they traveled to Pittsburgh. Once there, Jared made the decision to settle in New Orleans, but he was sidetracked along the way. While in Tennessee, near Nashville, Amanda was raped and abducted by William Blackthorn. Having been beaten by Blackthorn, Jared was required to recover for a time at The Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. Jackson made inquiries as to Blackthorn’s destination, which he discovered him was St. Louis. Jared followed him there, discovered him in a brothel and shot him dead. With his dying breath, Blackthorn told Jared he had sold Amanda to fur traders going up the Missouri River. Jared was jailed for ninety days for disturbing the peace; while in jail, he was visited by Elijah Weatherby. Weatherby, a fur trader, had witnessed Blackthorn’s murder and he was impressed by young Jared. He told Jared he was going to Indian country to trade and that he needed a partner. Weatherby offered to aid Jared in his search for Amanda along the way. After some consideration, Jared decided to accept the offer. The story ends without Jared and Amanda being reunited, but the reader learns that Amanda is alive and was sold by fur traders to an American Indian. |
Wanderlust | Steve Winter | 1,991 | Tanis Half-Elven now permanently resides in Solace years after his first meeting with Flint Fireforge in Qualinost. A newcomer, the kender, Tasslehoff Burrfoot arrives in Solace and befriends both Tanis and Flint (much to the dwarf's chagrin), after accidentally 'borrowing' a magical bracelet that the dwarf had just made. As the kender leaves town, he again somehow acquires the bracelet and offers it to a tinker, Gaesil, to return it to the dwarf. However the tinker is shortly thereafter fleeced by a con-artist named Delbridge, who claims the magical bracelet for himself. A Dargonesti elf, named Princess Selana locates Flint, Tanis and Tas (who has returned to Solace) and requests the magical bracelet that she had the dwarf create for her. Flint tells that the bracelet has been lost and the four journey to Tantallon, after hearing a rumour of the prophet Delbridge who can see the future through use of a magical bracelet. They arrive in Tantallon to find that Delbridge is now a zombie and that the local lord's son, Rostrevor Curston, has disappeared. Lord Curston's wizard friend Balcombe, now has the bracelet after executing Delbridge. Balcombe has kidnapped Rostrevor, to sacrifice to the evil God Hiddukel to end their bargain that they had made at the beginning of the novel where Hiddukel agrees to spare Balcombe's life in exchanged for pure souls. As the party attempt to reclaim the bracelet, Selana is kidnapped and placed in a cave with Balcome's pet giant, Blu. The sea elf and giant become friends and plan to escape. Tanis, Flint and Tas encounter a group of phaethons and ally with them to drive out Balcombe from their mountain range. The phaethons and their friends infiltrate Balcombe's lair, and with the aid of the giant Blu, rescue Rostrevor and Selana, and trap Balcombe in a magical gem. Tas unwittingly uses the magical gem and sacrifices Balcombe's soul to Hiddukel. |
Anna Lombard | null | null | Set exclusively in the British Indian Empire (mainly India, but also Burma) in the final years of the 19th century, the story is told by Gerald Ethridge, a young, high-ranking member of the Indian Civil Service. Anna Lombard, the 21-year-old daughter of a general, has just arrived from England to join her father when she is introduced to Ethridge at a ball. Attracted to each other from the very first moment, they are not given a chance to actually express their feelings when Ethridge is suddenly transferred from India to Burma. On his return a year later he is shocked to learn that Anna is having a secret affair with one of her Pathan servants—although she asserts that they got officially married in some secret Muslim ceremony. Ethridge, however, does not desert her when she declares her inability to leave her lover. Rather, while abstaining from any sexual relations himself, he tries to help Anna overcome her passion, and even nurses the servant in his own house when he becomes one of the many victims of a cholera epidemic. Anna's lover does not survive the illness, but before she and Ethridge can get married Anna finds out that she is pregnant. Again, this does not deter Ethridge from loving her. They get married nevertheless but Ethridge insists on not consummating the marriage until after the birth of her child. When her son is born, Anna's maternal instinct overwhelms her and she is no longer willing to give her son away, as the couple planned during her pregnancy. However, seeing her beloved husband's suffering prolonged ad infinitum, she suffocates her baby, to emerge, after a year of repentance and making her peace with God, as the perfect partner in marriage for Ethridge. |
InterWorld | Michael Reaves | 2,007 | Joey Harker is an average high school student living in Greenville. He has trouble finding his way around his own house, let alone the town. On a field trip set by his Social Studies teacher, Mr. Dimas, Joey finds himself lost in the city. He then enters a strange fog and when he emerges, everything has changed. All the cars are brightly coloured, the police cars flashing green and yellow, instead of blue and red. He goes back home and discovers that he does not exist anymore, instead a girl named Josephine lives there. He runs outside and bumps into a man wearing a mirrored mask called Jay. Before Jay can explain anything, three men, standing on floating silver disks and wearing grey outfits, are trying to catch Joey using silver nets. Joey runs, unintentionally entering the fog again. Afraid of going back to a home where he doesn't exist, Joey decides to go to Mr. Dimas for help. Mr. Dimas is shocked to see Joey, telling him that he had drowned last year and that Mr. Dimas himself had pulled Joey's body out of the river. Suddenly a woman appears in the room bewitching Joey into following her. She calls herself Lady Indigo and is joined by two other men. One, called Scarabus, has mystical tattoos all over his body. The other, a man with transparent skin, is called Neville. They move Joey to a flying ship, the Lacrimae Mundi. The ship teleports to Nowhere-at-all, a sort of hyperspace. They are heading towards a place called HEX Prime. Before they can reach there Jay arrives and helps Joey escape, getting injured in the process. Joey opens a portal to the In-Between, a multidimensional world, where only Walkers and MDLF (multidimensional life forms, or mudluffs) beings can enter. The in-between is a shortcut for traveling from world to world. Joey and Jay exit in-between and arrive at a desert. There Jay explains to Joey how he is part of an organization called InterWorld and their job is to keep the altiverse balanced by stopping the scientific force (Binary) from making worlds too scientific, while also stopping the magical force (HEX) from making worlds too magical. Jay also says that Joey has the ability to "Walk", or go into the In-Between and other dimensions quickly and effectively. A mudluff which looks like a bubble and communicates using colours appears. It seems to be trapped somewhere, Joey approaches it. As Jay tries to free the mudluff, a giant serpent appears, biting Jay. The mudluff kills the serpent but Jay is already dying. Before he dies he gives Joey the direction to Base Town, where InterWorld HQ is. With his dying breath, he shows Joey a mathematical equation that will lead to Base Town: {IW}:=Ω/∞ (InterWorld is Omega over infinity). The mudluff becomes attached to Joey after he saved it, and Joey names it "Hue". Joey goes to HQ and learns that all Walkers are all copies of himself from different Earths. He begins an intense course of exercise while studying very advanced science and magic to prepare him for his new role as a member of the InterWorld. Many of the other Joeys initially resent Joey for causing Jay's death, but soon come around about him as his skills improve. After a few months, Joey and four other Walkers go on a training mission. They are supposed to retrieve some signal beacons in a more scientific earth. But the earth they go to turns out to be a "shadow realm" and is in fact a trap, set by the same people who captured him earlier. Everyone in the team is captured by HEX, except Joey who is saved by Hue. When Joey escapes back to HQ, the leader, an old man named Joe, decides that Joey is not capable of working in InterWorld, and wipes Joey's mind of his life in InterWorld. Joey is then returned home, where he thinks nothing has happened, but feels like something's missing. After some time, while blowing bubbles with his little brother, Joey remembers Hue, and every memory about the Altiverse comes back to him. With all those memories back, Joey says goodbye to his family, Walks into the Altiverse again, and sets off to save his teammates. With Jay's words in his head and Hue's help, Joey finds the airship where his teammates are being held, and lands safely on it. However, he is captured as well and taken to meet Lord Dogknife, a large hideous goblin who leads the people who captured his teammates. Joey is then taken to the room where his teammates are being held. A large cauldron is in the center of the room, built to capture their souls to power the ship. The HEX boil down Walkers to their raw essence, which is used as power supplies for their transdimensional spacecraft. Joey manages to move over to the cauldron and knock it over, incinerating some of the guards in the room. He then moves over to untie his friends, who all try to find an exit so they can go to the engine room and shut the ship down. They find an exit and escape to the engine room. The engine room is filled with souls from other Walkers, powering the ship. Joey and his teammates break the jars containing them to shut the ship down. The engine explodes, and Joey and his teammates plan an escape from the Nowhere-At-All. They talk of a gate in the Nowhere-At-All from which they can escape, but it is closing quickly. Joey decides he will not leave without Hue, because it has saved his life multiple times. Many soldiers come into the destroyed engine room in an attempt to recapture Joey and his teammates and then Scarabus appears to fight them. J/O, a cyborg Joey, steps up and defeated Scarabus, and everyone goes to find Lord Dogknife. Dogknife is in the room where Joey saw him earlier, captured by the souls and thus rendered harmless. Joey finds Hue and escapes with his teammates. They are about to escape when Lady Indigo appears to face them. Joey distracts her from fighting them with some powder in his pocket, and Joey and his teammates escape through the gate when he remembers the mathematical equation that will take him home: {IW}:=Ω/∞. They return to the Old Man, who does not congratulate them for their heroic work. Instead, he lectures them on all their wrongdoings in the Altiverse. However, he now says Joey is allowed to stay without wiping his memory. The group sets out on their next mission. |
The Rose of Sharon Blooms Again | null | null | The story was set in the present and revolved around a South Korean scientist who secretly helps North Korea develop nuclear weapons which are then used to ward off Japanese aggression. |
Endymion | John Lyly | null | The opening scene presents a conversation between Endymion and his friend Eumenides, in which Endymion confesses that he has fallen in love with the Moon goddess, Cynthia. Eumenides concludes that his friend is "bewitched" and has lost his senses. Cynthia is predictably cool to Endymion's passion. Tellus, Endymion's former beloved, resents the change in his affections; she hires a sorceress named Dipsas to enchant Endymion into a deep sleep, from which he cannot be awakened. Cynthia learns of this development; the goddess confines Tellus to a castle for speaking harshly of Endymion (she does not yet know that Tellus is the cause of the enchantment). Corsites, the commander of the castle, falls in love with Tellus. Cynthia also sends Eumenides in search of a cure for his friend's magic-induced sleep. Eumenides is in love with Semele, though she scorns his affections. Eumendies reaches a magic fountain that will answer any one question — but only one question — an inquirer asks of it; he debates whether he should expend his question on his friend's predicament, or his own. His sense of duty triumphs, and the fountain tells him that Endymion can only be awakened by a kiss from Cynthia. The goddess acquiecses, kisses and wakes Endymion. Tellus's treachery is revealed, and forgiven. The play ends with the marriages usual for comedy, with Eumenides, Tellus, and Dipsas all headed to the altar with appropriate mates. Endymion, however, cannot marry Cynthia; as a goddess, she is too far above his station on the mortal plane. The play also has a comic subplot: Sir Tophas nourishes a foolish passion for the enchantress Dipsas, and he is the butt of the jokes and pranks of the crew of pages that constitute a standard feature of Lyly's drama. |
What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? | null | null | Dever's book is a response to recent trends in biblical scholarship and biblical archaeology which question whether the bible can be used as a reliable tool for interpreting history. The book begins with Dever's explanation of the "minimalist" position, which holds that the bible is a product of the Persian or even Hellenistic periods, composed at the very earliest after c. 500 BC, and therefore unreliable as a record of earlier periods. The minimalists do not deny that the biblical books are based on genuinely old material, but they view the task of extracting that material from layers of revision and accretion is virtually unachievable. At the other extreme are the "maximalists" who take the bible at, or almost entirely at, face value. In his first two chapters Dever reviews and rejects both minimalism and maximalism. Dever nevertheless evidently regards the minimalist position as more dangerous than the maximalist, because it tends to eliminate altogether any study of ancient Israel prior to the Persian period. Dever then turns to Syrio-Palestinian archaeology, as the former discipline of biblical archaeology is now known, and reviews material discoveries to demonstrate that they can in fact be linked to the biblical narrative. The central chapters therefore offer a detailed discussion of the major archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century and relate them to the Deuteronomistic History (Joshua-2 Kings), "correlat[ing] text and artifact to demonstrate that significant material in the narrative plausibly derives from Iron Age II (ca. 1000-600 BCE) and not from later periods." Dever makes clear that he positions himself in the middle ground between minimalists such as Thomas L. Thompson (with whom Dever has had a long running and acrimonious public dispute) on the one hand, and maximalists on the other. "While the Hebrew Bible in its present, heavily edited form cannot be taken at face value as history in the modern sense, it nevertheless contains much history." For Dever, this historical core is concentrated in the period from David onwards; the Torah and the period of the Conquest he regards as essentially mythical. The final chapter sums up the argument of the book, stating that there was an ancient Israel, that the bible was written from a genuine historical core, and that archaeology can identify this core and prevent Israel from being "written out of history". |
Josh | Ivan Southall | 1,971 | 14-year-old Josh Plowman arrives in a country town for a week's visit with his great-aunt, the Plowman family matriarch. The city boy from Melbourne is immediately at odds with the Ryan Creek youngsters. His writing poetry and his dislike for hunting make him a target for the local boys. Initial misunderstandings eventually explode into violence. A traditional hero might have faced and fought the bullies but Josh shows a different sort of courage and integrity by choosing to walk away with dignity. |
Night Flight | null | null | Fabien is an airmail pilot of the Patagonia Mail. He has to deliver mail in Argentina during a thunderstorm. Even though the storm is dangerous, Rivière, Fabien's boss, tells him to fly that night, thereby endangering him. Rivière feels responsible for having sent Fabien on this risky flight, and keeps in radio contact with him. Fabien's wife is waiting, too. The situation becomes more and more dangerous—Fabien is bound to die. Then the radio messages cease, and Rivière can't do anything but try to calculate when Fabien's aircraft will crash. This flight disconcerts Rivière—who, up to that point, had believed that no flights should be delayed, in order to make flying more profitable. The plot ends there, but it is almost certain that Fabien has died. |
Ug | Raymond Briggs | 2,001 | The book is about a boy named Ug living in the stone age who is thought by others to "think too much". He wants to have soft trousers (the trousers he and all the other cavemen wear are made of granite) and believes mammoth skin would be good to use, in the end, he and his father Dug do make the trousers, but after realising they cannot sew them together, they call it a day and leave them. Ug then grows up to be a cave painter as his mother Dugs warned him. |
Spangle | Gary Jennings | 1,987 | Spangle is a historical novel written by Gary Jennings (1928–1999). Published in 1987, it follows a circus troupe known as "Florian's Flourishing Florilegium of Wonders" from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox to Europe, ending in France during the Franco-Prussian War. The book chronicles the rise of the troupe from a small "mud show" with few acts to the glittering toast of Paris, while delving into the evolving personal lives of its performers. The book is also an examination of the social structures of both post-Civil War America and Europe during a period in which the ancient system of monarchy was toppling. The main protagonist, other than the circus itself, is Zachary Edge, a former Confederate colonel embittered by war who accepts a position as the Florilegium's equestrian director. Edge's trials, both professional and personal, form the core of the plot, which details Edge's rise in the ranks of the circus in parallel to the rise of the Florilegium. |
Miranda | Antoni Lange | 1,924 | The novel tells about ideal civilisation of powerful mages which have invited paranormal skills like telepathy, levitation and mediumism. The Brahmins value anarchy, freedom, peace, free love and anti-work. Their country is organized by Ministry of Love, Ministry of Power and Ministry of Wisdom, and they use a strange substance classified as Nivridium in order to their self-perfect idea. The main plot is the history of love of Polish emigrant Jan Podobłoczny (Lange's own porte-parole) to the materialization of an ideal woman named Damayanti. A tragic end of their romance comes from clash between physical and spiritual sides of human existence. In the last chapter of the novel, Damayanti sacrifices her body in order to let her spirit fly to higher stage of consciousness. Miranda is a Scottish spiritual medium, who lives in Warsaw. She can contact the soul of Damayanti and materialize the mysterious person of Lenore, who meets Jan Podobłoczny when he is close his death. In the moment when Damayanti dies, Miranda disappears. |
Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say \\"No\\" to Drugs | null | 1,991 | The plot mainly deals with the title character, Latawnya, the youngest horse in her family. While out playing with her sisters Latoya and Daisy, they come across some other mares: Connie, Chrystal, Jackie and Angie. They ask Latawnya if she wants to engage in "smoking games" and "drinking games". Latawnya realizes that they want to smoke drugs and drink alcohol, and she joins in. Her sisters catch her with the three "bad" horses and proceed to criticize her for "smoking drugs and drinking", something that their parents tell them not to do. Although Latawnya begs Latoya and Daisy not to tell their parents, they tell on her anyway, resulting in an uncomfortable confrontation with them, as they are disappointed in her experimenting with smoking drugs and drinking. After an intense lecture from her parents (including a scene wherein an old friend of the father horse suffers an overdose after engaging in smoking games and drinking games), Latawnya realizes the error of her ways and promises never to engage in "smoking games" and "drinking games" again. |
Scorpion | Andrew Kaplan | 1,985 | As the President of Russia dies, his deputy, Fyedorenko makes a mysterious phone call. A beautiful young American woman, Kelly Ormont, is brutally abducted from the streets of Paris into white slavery. In a safe house in Pakistan, a senior CIA director, Bob Harris, recruits a free-lance ex-CIA agent, codenamed “Scorpion” to rescue Kelly, a Congressman’s daughter, last seen on a flight to Bahrain. The Scorpion follows the trail to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, where he uncovers a plot to assassinate the King of Arabia, while flashbacks reveal the Scorpion’s past as the orphaned son of an American oilman raised by a Bedouin desert tribe. At the King’s Camel Race, the Scorpion manages to foil the assassination plot. He is captured, but manages to escape with Kelly and kill Prince Sa'ad, author of the assassination plot. In Washington, the Scorpion confronts Harris who reveals the whole thing was a CIA and French SDECE plot to pre-empt the Russians in the Gulf with Kelly in on it, thinking she was working for the Israelis. Fyedorenko is replaced by an accomplice because of the plot’s failure as the Scorpion returns to his shadowy battles in Afghanistan. |
Term Limits | Vince Flynn | null | - ~Plot outline description~--> |
A Gesture Life: A Novel | Chang-Rae Lee | 1,999 | The whole story, told by the first person narrator Doc Hata, consists of flashbacks. The main story line reaches from the time he gives up his store in Bedley Run until he meets his adopted daughter again. The sub story lines show the reader about his time during the war, and about his time with a teenage daughter and how he dealt with times when raising his daughter was very difficult. At the beginning of the story, Doc Hata describes his current situation and place of living. He lives in a small town called Bedley Run, where he is from the first accepted by the other inhabitants as a decent shopkeeper, although he sold his store to a young couple from New York and is now retired. He has difficulty leaving his old life behind him and visits his old store nearly every day. At this point, i.e. very early, he mentions that he has a daughter who comes from Japan as well. Then he describes his house and the area he lives in. He also introduces Liv Crawford, who is a real estate agent and wants him to move and sell his house. Doc Hata thinks a lot about his past in Bedley Run but also about his past experiences in Japan. He gives many insights into his daily routines, such as going to his old store and going to swim every day in his pool. He thinks a lot about Sunny and how she arrived when she was a little girl. Later on, it becomes clear that Sunny was adopted and that Doc Hata specifically wanted to a girl, and even bribed the relevant person to get what he wanted. He remembers Sunny playing the piano and the initial problems he had with her. In the first flashback we can see how he remembers his time with Mary Burns, one of his neighbors. He remembers meeting her the first time during his gardening. She quickly becomes a kind of girlfriend for him and spends a lot of time with Sunny, who does not accept her at all. Although Mary Burns works a lot on her relationship with Sunny, the young girl does not get along with her. In her first conversation with Doc Hata it becomes clear that he is not a real doctor, but that everybody calls him 'doc' because of his store. Mary Burns is very impressed by him because of the fact that he lives in a house that would fit a real doctor and his salary. At the beginning, the relationship between Doc Hata and Mary Burns is very close but they soon start to argue about Sunny and how Doc Hata treats her. Doc Hata gives one piece of information about his daughter after the other, never giving all the information at the same point. While the story is going on it becomes clear that a big fight between Doc Hata and Sunny took place a while ago and separated them. During a stay in the hospital, where he has to stay for almost burning his own house, Doc Hata remembers what this fight was about. In hospital Officer Como's daughter visits Doc Hata and he begins to remember which problems Sunny had with Officer Como. Sunny was in trouble and she did not accept the authority of the police officer. This is just the beginning of the tragedy which is going on between Sunny and Doc Hata. At this point of the story, in the flashback situation, it becomes clear that Sunny runs away from home and that she meets with dubious persons. Going on in the story, Doc Hata goes back in time a lot; he starts to talk about his time in World War II. He explains that most of the soldiers and also some officers had fun with abducted young women, who were brought there for the pleasures of the soldiers. He talks in particular about one girl he thought of the whole time. Before he comes back to the war situation he tells the reader about how he finds Sunny again and how this situation goes on and he also gives more background information on the conflict with Sunny. Then, he meets Sunny again on a regular basis. She has a son, named Thomas of whom Doc Hata takes care, but he does not tell him that he is his grandfather, because Sunny does not want her son to know that. For Sunny it is quite a comfort that her dad takes care of her child, because she can apply for a new job and does not need to find a new baby sitter or nanny. When he speaks about his war time he talks most of the time about K and about their relationship to each other. K is a girl who was arrested by the Lieutenant Kurohata for special services. She was a kind of prostitute (comfort woman), but without getting any money for it from the soldiers, the young Franklin Hata tried to protect her from the treatment of the others. It seems that Doc Hata fell in love with K and he wanted to protect her from everything. While Captain Ono tried to rape her, she killed him, and she asked Hata to kill her too, but instead, he told the others that Captain Ono killed himself in an accident. In the end, Doc Hata does not say explicitly that K died after she is raped by 30 or more soldiers, but implicitly it is clear that she is dead. At the end of the story, Doc Hata changes a lot. He stops following his rituals, he sells his house and he gets along with Sunny. So, it can be seen that he begins to handle his war experiences and that he is able to change. |
Illegal Aliens | Nick Pollotta | null | A perfectly spherical white spaceship lands in Central Park to great global excitement, from which Leader Idow, an alien covered in blue fur, claims that his crew represent a Type III civilization that will test Earth's worthiness to be a member planet of their federation. Unbeknownst to the United Nations, the aliens are criminals (the equivalent of juvenile delinquents) who seek out planets with levels of technology similar to Earth's so that they can record the global violence and mayhem that will result from Earth's certain failure for their own prurient interests. The aliens scan the Central Park crowd for potential test subjects where they happen upon a minor New York gang who they identify as the most likely to provide the most entertainment during their "test". Meanwhile, the United Nations has sent security into New York and identified two new aliens attempting to transport clandestinely to Earth. These aliens are representatives of the Gees, an extraterrestrial law-enforcement body whose mandates include preventing overt contact between space-travelling civilizations and non-space-travelling civilizations. Unfortunately for the crew of the All That Glitters (a Mikon #4 class ship), the human gang manages to escape the test and infiltrate the ship, where they happen upon the ship's engineer Trell. Threatening Trell, the gang manages to release Omega Gas into the main bridge, killing Idow's crew (except Trell). The gang then holds the ship hostage, asking for pardons and appeasements. The army tricks the gang into accepting a group of beautiful women on board, who are actually army personnel sent to arrest them and take back the ship. The United Nations' Alien Contact Crew manages to trick the Gees into believing that Trell has been dissected and liquefied for experimentation just before the Gees leave and set up a massive quarantine around Earth. The human race, through Trell's assistance, has duplicated many of the Mikon #4's technologies, including molecular softening beams, advanced camouflage, horizontal/vertical elevators, and hyperdrive, with the intent to break the Gees' quarantine. They have also learned that the Gees are not the bosses of the galactic federation, merely a police force whose presence is resented by many planets, including some that have been quarantined specifically to prevent their entry into the federation. Now loose in space, the illegal (human) alien crew of the Earth ship struggles to reach the Galactic League and argue a case for admittance - without getting blown out of existence by the Great Golden Ones (Galactic Police). |
A Flea in Her Ear | Georges Feydeau | null | The play is set in Paris at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. Raymonde Chandebise, after years of wedded bliss, begins to doubt the fidelity of her husband, Victor Emmanuel, who has suddenly become sexually inactive. Raymonde is unaware that his behavior is due to a nervous condition. She confides her doubts to her old friend Lucienne, who suggests a trick to test him. They write him a letter, in Lucienne’s handwriting, from a fictitious and anonymous admirer, requesting a rendezvous at the Hotel Coq d’Or, an establishment with a dubious reputation, but a large and prominent clientele. Raymonde intends to confront her husband there, and she and Lucienne leave to do so. When Victor Emmanuel receives the letter, however, he has no interest in such an affair and believes the invitation from the mysterious woman was meant for his best friend Tournel, a handsome bachelor. Unknown to Victor Emmanuel, Tournel has his eye on Raymonde and eagerly exits to make the appointment. Camille, the young nephew of Victor Emmanuel, is overjoyed to have his speech impediment corrected by a new silver palate from Dr. Finache. In celebration, he and the household cook, Antoinette, also hurry to the Hotel Coq d’Or, followed by Etienne, Antoinette's jealous husband. Dr. Finache decides to go to the hotel in search of his own afternoon rendezvous. Victor Emmanuel shows the letter to Lucienne’s husband, Carlos Homenides de Histangua, a passionate and violent Spaniard. Carlos recognizes Lucienne’s handwriting and assumes that she is trying to start an affair with Victor Emmanuel. He runs off to the hotel, vowing to kill her. Victor Emmanuel, hoping to prevent the threatened murder, hurries off in pursuit. The various characters arrive in search of their goals: Finache for fun; Raymonde for Victor Emmanuel; Tournel for Raymonde; Camille with Antoinette, followed by Etienne; Carlos for Lucienne; and Victor Emmanuel to stop Carlos. Carlos, attempting to kill his wife, shoots at anything that moves. Victor Emmanuel sees Raymonde talking with Tournel and believes she is unfaithful. Victor Emmanuel is believed to be insane when Poche, an alcoholic porter at the hotel who is a dead ringer for Victor Emmanuel, is mistaken for him. Camille loses his palate, and Tournel tries very hard to seduce Raymonde. The confusion persists even after all are reunited again at Victor Emmanuel’s house. Things begin to clear up when Carlos discovers a rough copy of the letter written by Lucienne on Raymonde’s desk, this one in Raymonde’s handwriting. The owner of the hotel comes by to return an article left behind by a member of the household and clears up the confusion between his porter and Victor Emmanuel. Finally, Raymonde tells Victor Emmanuel the cause of her suspicions, and he assures her that he will put an end to her doubts—tonight. |
The Closers | Michael Connelly | 2,005 | LAPD detective Harry Bosch is back on the force after a three-year retirement. Assigned to the Open-Unsolved (cold cases) unit and teamed with former partner Kizmin "Kiz" Rider, Harry's first case back involves the murder of 16-year-old high school girl Rebecca Verloren in 1988, reopened because of a DNA match to blood found on the murder weapon. The blood on the gun belongs to a local low-life white supremacist, Roland Mackey, a fact that links him to the crime via the victim's biracial family. But the blood indicates only that Mackey had possession of the gun, so how to pin him to the crime? Connelly meticulously leads the reader along with Bosch and Rider as they explore the links to Mackey and along the way connect the initial investigation of the crime to a police conspiracy orchestrated by Bosch's nemesis Irvin Irving to cover up the ties of a ranking officer's son with a neo-Nazi group. Most striking of all, in developments that give this novel astonishing moral force, the pair explore the "ripples" of the long-ago crime, how it has destroyed the young girl's family—leaving the mother trapped in the past and plunging the father into a nightmare of homelessness and alcoholism—and how it drives Rider, and especially Bosch, into a deeper understanding of their own purposes in life. |
City of Bones | Michael Connelly | 2,002 | On New Year’s Day, a dog digs up a bone in Laurel Canyon outside of Los Angeles. The dog’s owner, a doctor, recognizes the bone as human and calls it in to the police. Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch takes on the case together with his colleague Jerry Edgar and after investigating the matter further, a shallow grave containing the bones of a child, is discovered. Bosch can’t let go of the case, a case that brings back memories from his own childhood, and starts an investigation. The only clue that he has to go on is the skateboard found during a search at a suspect's house. The body turns out to have been a 12-year old boy that has been buried 20 years earlier. To solve the murder, Bosch has to dig through records of cases involving disappearances and runaways dating far back in time. In order to try to solve the crime, Bosch has to chase down possible witnesses and suspects from near and far. After 20 years time, a lot of the details once remembered about the disappearance of the boy are blurred and leads Bosch fumbling in the dark. At the same time, a female rookie named Julia Brasher joins the department. Even though Bosch has been warned not to fall for a rookie, he does and this leads to further complications, both inside and outside of the investigation. |
A Darkness More Than Night | Michael Connelly | 2,001 | Terry McCaleb and Graciela Rivers have married and have an infant daughter named Cielo, and McCaleb's fishing charter business is running full-time on Catalina Island. Nevertheless, sheriff's deputy Jaye Winston brings McCaleb a file involving a murder scene filled with exotic elements and asks McCaleb to take a look at it, as the police have gotten nowhere. As McCaleb analyzes the clues, they seem to point straight toward Harry Bosch, whom McCaleb knows from a previous investigation before his retirement. Bosch is currently a key witness in a separate high-profile murder case involving a movie director, and author/reporter Jack McEvoy, who wrote The Poet, is covering the case. After McCaleb alerts the police to Bosch's probable involvement in the murder, Bosch goes to Catalina himself to challenge McCaleb's work and to ask him to re-examine the evidence. Based on a parking ticket that McCaleb finds, he concludes that Bosch may have been set up by the director in order to discredit his evidence in the court case, but the key evidence in proving that is a post office surveillance tape that was in the process of being erased, and from which nothing usable can be recovered. Nevertheless, Bosch and McCaleb pretend that they have recovered something from the tape, and the real killer in the second case (an ex-cop that handled security for the director) then targets and almost kills McCaleb. Bosch saves McCaleb and captures the ex-cop, while killing his younger brother. In return for not being charged with felony-murder in his brother's death, the ex-cop turns over evidence implicating the director in the frame of Bosch, and the director agrees to plead guilty to murder in a plea bargain seen by only McEvoy (who got a tip from Bosch) among the reporters. However, McCaleb realizes that Bosch was around to save him only because Bosch knew all the details of the potential frame, which Bosch had lied about to McCaleb, and McCaleb breaks off any renewed relationship with Bosch as a result. Bosch then "baptizes" himself in a plan for a fresh start. |
Angels Flight: A Harry Bosch Novel | Michael Connelly | 1,999 | Detective Bosch finds himself yet again in charge of a case that no one else will touch. This time his job is to nail the killer of hot shot black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris: a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. Elias had let it be known that the aim of his civil case was not only to reveal the real killer but to target and bring down the racist cops who beat up his client during a violent interrogation. Bosch is going to have to take a long hard look at some of his colleagues in a post-Rodney King Los Angeles Police Department that is rife with suspicion and racial hatred. fr:L'Envol des anges it:Il ragno (romanzo) sv:Fallen ängel (1999) |
Trunk Music | Michael Connelly | 1,997 | A body found in the trunk of a car seems to have connections with the mob and leads Bosch and his investigation to Las Vegas. fr:Le Cadavre dans la Rolls it:Musica dura sv:Återkomsten (roman, 1997) |
The Last Coyote | Michael Connelly | null | Bosch is involved in an incident at work and has been put on involuntary stress leave. He must go through therapy sessions to be able to return to work. This involves talking about the incident and himself with Carmen Hinojos, a police psychologist. Three months ago, Bosch broke up with his girlfriend, Sylvia Moore. Carmen asks Harry to verbalize his mission in life. Harry decides that his mission is to investigate his mother's murder. She had been a prostitute and was strangled when Harry was twelve. He gets the murder book from the police archives and reviews the case. He first goes to visit Meredith Roman, another prostitute who was his mother's best friend at the time. The one real piece of information the Bosch gets from her is something that she did not tell the police: his mother was going to meet Arno Conklin at Hancock Park on the night of the murder. Bosch, with the help of the new cop beat/LA Times reporter, investigates Fox, Conklin, and Conklin's close associate Mittel. He discovers that Fox was killed in a hit and run while distributing campaign literature for Conklin. Conklin had been running for District Attorney. He also learns from an old cop friend that Mittel is now a very successful lawyer and campaign fund raiser. He is currently helping Robert Shepard, a computer tycoon, run for the Senate. On a whim, Harry drives to Shepard's house and ends up attending a fund-raising party. He meets Mittel and, using the name of his boss Pounds, asks a waitress at the party to deliver an envelope to Mittel. In the envelope, Harry puts a copy of a newspaper article about Fox's death and circles the names Conklin, Mittel, and Fox. He writes under the article, "What prior work experience got Johnny his job?" Harry checks with the city offices and finds out that only one of the original investigating officers is still alive and that his retirement checks are mailed to a post office box in Florida. So he takes a plane to Florida to speak with the retired detective, Jack McKittrick. He learns from him that at the beginning of the investigation, his senior partner, Eno, was called into the Assistant DA's office and told that Fox was not involved with the murder and he should not be investigated by the department. The only way they could interview him was in Conklin's office. After that interview, the investigation went nowhere and was left as an unsolved case. In order to gain entrance to the gated community where McKittrick lives, Bosch pretends he is interested in a house for sale in the community and tours the house briefly. He goes back to the house after leaving McKittrick and eventually has a romantic encounter with the woman who owns the house, Jasmine Corian. He spends an extra day in Florida with Jasmine, and they reveal many personal secrets to each other in bed. On his way back to Los Angel, he stops in Las Vegas to visit the widow of the other detective, Eno. He intimidates the widow's sister, who is taking care of the ninety year old invalid, into letting him take some of Eno's old files. From the files, he discovers that Eno had been receiving $1000 a week through a dummy corporation since one year after his mother's murder. He learns that this corporation's officers were Eno, Gordon Mittel, and Arno Conklin. When he returns to Los Angeles, there are four Los Angeles Police Department cops are waiting for him inside his home. While he was in Florida, his boss, Harvey Pounds was found dead in the trunk of his car, tortured. Bosch is brought to the Parker Center for questioning. Harry realizes that when he used Pounds' name when trying to scare Mittel at the Shepard fund-raiser, it led to his death. Harry learns from LA Times reporter Keisha Russell that the writer of the article on Fox was Monte Kim. Russell gives Bosch his address obtained from the phone book. Bosch visits Kim and learns that he wrote the article on Fox's death, ignoring the illegal activities in his past in order to obtain a job with Conklin. Kim had photos of Conklin and Fox with two woman (Meredith Roman and Bosch's mother) and used them to blackmail Conklin to obtain the job. Bosch, believing that he finally has enough information to confront Conklin, visits him in his nursing home and discovers that Conklin was actually in love with Bosch's mother. On the day that she was murdered, they decided to go to Las Vegas and get married. Conklin had called Mittel to ask him to go with them to be his best man. Mittel declined and told him that marrying her would ruin his career. Conklin believes that Mittel murdered Bosch's mother. After leaving Conklin, Bosch is hit with a tire iron when trying to get in his car and awakes at Mittel's house with his head bleeding, locked in a game room. Before Mittel's enforcer can arrive, Bosch pockets a billiard ball that he hopes to use as a weapon. Mittel tells Bosch that Conklin has conveniently jumped out of the window of his room right after Bosch left. So the last loose end for him to clean up is Bosch. After Bosch tells him that he left his briefcase with his evidence in Conklin's room, Mittel nods to Jonathan to finish off Bosch. But Bosch makes Jonathan miss, hits him with the billard ball, and eventually knock him out. Mittel runs off, and Bosch follows. Mittel attempts to ambush Bosch and in the struggle, Mittell fall off a cliff and dies. Bosch returns to the house but cannot locate Jonathan. The police arrive, and Bosch next wakes up in the emergency room. Bosch realizes that he can prove that Mittel killed his mother by checking his fingerprints against the print found on the belt that killed his mother. He obtains the prints from the medical examiner's office but they do not match. Bosch has gone through all of this and still has not found his mother's killer. He returns to talk to Hinojos. During this meeting, she gives Bosch her opinion on the photos from his mother's crime scene. She noticed that his mother was wearing all gold jewelry and the belt that was used to kill her was silver, which is a combination which a woman would not normally wear. Bosch's mother might not have been wearing the belt. The killer may have been wearing the belt and used it to kill his mother. Bosch believes he finally knows who killed his mother and returns to Meredith Roman's house, only to find that several days before she committed suicide. She left Bosch a note trying to explain her actions. He calls 911 and is about to leave when Jonathan confronts him with a gun. He had been waiting for him, letting him find Meredith and the letter. Since Jonathan believes he is going to kill Bosch and escape, he tells him the truth: that in actuality, he is Johnny Fox. His death was faked, and he remained with Mittel as his bodyguard. It was Fox who had killed Pounds and Conklin. The police finally arrive, and Fox is shot while trying to escape. |
The Concrete Blonde | Michael Connelly | 1,994 | Detective Harry Bosch is pursuing "the Dollmaker", a serial killer who uses makeup to paint his victims. He gets a tip from a prostitute that a recent customer of hers, Norman Church, had a large amount of women's makeup in his bathroom. Bosch goes to Church's garage, identifies himself as police, breaks in the door. Church is naked and shaved. Bosch tells him to not move, but Church starts to pull something from under his pillow, and Bosch shoots him. Bosch is investigated by internal affairs and cleared in the shooting; but, since he did not follow police procedure, he is transferred from the elite Robbery-Homicide Division (RHD) back to the Hollywood table. The makeup is found to match those of nine of the Dollmaker's victims. Four years later, Bosch is sued by Church's widow. Her attorney portrays Bosch as a cowboy and a vigilante, seeking revenge for the unsolved murder of his mother when he was a child. During the trial, the police receive a note, purportedly from the Dollmaker, which leads to the discovery of a new victim with the same modus operandi. This victim was encased in concrete, unlike the original eleven victims, but all other aspects of the killing are the same, including the signature cross painted on a toenail. The concrete blonde victim, along with two other of the original victims, fit a different pattern: large-breasted blondes in the local adult entertainment industry who also advertise as high-class prostitutes in the local sex rags. Bosch and his task force suspect that "the Follower" is Detective Mora from Ad-Vice. Mora has ties to the adult video industry, had insider knowledge of the Dollmaker case, and was not at work during the killings not attributed to Norman Church. The task force put Mora under surveillance and Bosch breaks into Mora's house looking for evidence that he is the Follower. Instead he finds that Mora has been making pornographic movies with underage children. Mora returns to his house, finds Bosch and threatens to kill him. The rest of the task force arrive; they search Mora's house and determine that he is not the Follower. Mora does have information on who he believes is the Follower, and makes a deal: he provides the name of Professor Locke, agrees to quit the police force, and all of his crimes will be ignored. Mora got information that Locke had been seen on the set of adult movies where the slain women were cast members. When Bosch returns to his office he finds another note from the Follower, saying that he will be taking 'his blonde'. Bosch assumes that he means his girlfriend Sylvia; when she does not answer her phone, he sends the police to her house. He arrives to an empty house, when a real estate agent shows up to show the house. Bosch finds Sylvia at his house and takes her to a hotel to protect her. Sylvia tells Bosch that they must have some time apart for her to decide if she can live with him and his dangerous job. The next day Bosch returns to court as the jury is to restart their deliberations. Honey Chandler, the widow's attorney, does not appear. Bosch sends the police to her house as she is also a blonde. The jury reaches a verdict for the plaintiff and awards compensatory damages of one dollar and punitive damages of one dollar to Church's widow. When Bosch finally arrives at Chandler's house she has been dead 48 hours, killed in the same manner as the other Dollmaker killings, except that she also has burn and bite marks all over her body. Locke, who had been missing for several days, shows up at the crime scene. Bosch and Edgar interrogate him but discover that he has a solid alibi and dismiss him as a suspect. Bosch follows Bremmer from the crime scene to his house. He asks Bremmer if he can come in for a drink to discuss his court case. When Bremmer returns with two beers Bosch confronts him as being the Follower. Bremmer fights Bosch and gets control of his gun. Bosch, playing on Bremmer's pride, gets him to confess. Bosch had found a note that the Follower had mailed to Chandler, which mentioned an article in the Los Angeles Times. Bosch had noticed that it had been mailed before that article was published, which led him to suspect Bremmer. Bremmer had tortured Chandler to find out where she had hidden the note and envelope. Bremmer attempts to shoot Bosch but the gun is empty; Bosch grabs the magazine he had hidden in his sock, hits Bremmer with it and arrests him. Bosch had hidden a recording device in the room while Bremmer was getting the beer. The next day Bosch forces the district attorney's office to charge Bremmer with first degree murder, as the filing attorney is not satisfied with the amount of evidence. The police then obtain a warrant to obtain blood, hair and teeth molds of Bremmer; and they match his bite marks on the body of Chandler, as well as his pubic hair to those found on two of the original Dollmaker victims. A woman who owns a storage locker company recognizes Bremmer as having rented a locker under a false name and the police find video tapes of Bremmer's killings. Bremmer makes a deal for life without parole in exchange for leading police to the bodies of his other victims. Harry takes two weeks off work to make some home improvements. Eventually Sylvia returns and they re-unite and head off for a weekend together. |
The Black Echo | Michael Connelly | 1,992 | The novel centres round Harry Bosch, a Vietnam veteran who served as a "tunnel rat" during the war, became an L. A. police detective advancing to the Robbery-Homicide Division. However, after killing the main suspect in the "Dollmaker" serial killings, Bosch is demoted to "Hollywood Division" homicide, where he partners with Jerry Edgar. The death of Billy Meadows, a friend and fellow "tunnel rat" from the war, attracts Bosch's interest, especially when he determines that it may have been connected to a spectacular bank robbery using subterranean tunnels. Bosch suspects that the robbers were after more than money and he then partners with the FBI, in particular agent Eleanor Wish, in an attempt to foil their next attack. Bosch and Wish end up connecting the robberies to a group of Vietnamese living in Orange County, as well as some Americans that may have been involved with them. |
Hour of the Assassins | Andrew Kaplan | 1,980 | Ex-CIA agent, John Caine, is hired by Wasserman, a Holocaust survivor, who has become a Hollywood porn king, to find and kill Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of Death of Auschwitz, who has eluded pursuers for more than 30 years. After an encounter with Wasserman’s mistress, C.J., Caine begins a hunt for Mengele that will lead him from Europe to an encounter with the Neo-Nazi ODESSA ring in Paraguay to Jerusalem and Vienna, where he learns of a plot called “Starfish” and escapes ODESSA agents with a lead to South America. Deep in the Amazon jungle, he finds a medical clinic for Indians run by a Dr. Mendoza, who turns out to be Mengele. Captured, Caine manages to kill Mengele and escape into the jungle pursued by headhunting Indians. He makes his way to Lima, where he meets C.J., who betrays him to the Peruvian police, who arrest him for Mendoza’s murder. Caine’s CIA case officer, Harris, springs him from jail and reveals an oil strike in the Amazon that was behind the Starfish conspiracy to take over South America. Landing in Los Angeles, Caine finds Wasserman who is revealed as a Nazi, von Schiffen, who had taken the identity of the Jew, Wasserman and who needed Mengele dead as part of the oil conspiracy. Caine kills von Schiffen and he and C.J. escape together. |
Dragonfire | Andrew Kaplan | 1,987 | Parker, an American CIA agent, is captured while on a mission in Bangkok. Sawyer, a lone CIA agent is sent on the same mission, code-named “Dragonfire”, to prevent another Southeast war. Sawyer tracks the missing Parker from the deadly underworld of Bangkok’s waterfront to the forbidden hill country of the Golden Triangle. He joins forces with Suong, a beautiful Eurasian resistance fighter and Toonsang, a treacherous opium trader, who leads them to the lair of Bhun Sa, the most powerful warlord in the opium trade. Sawyer kills Bhun Sa and he and Suong escape to abandoned temple ruins in Cambodia. To convince him she has not betrayed him, Suong tells of her survival of the Khmer Rouge’s Killing Fields. Sawyer is captured by the Khmer Rouge. Suong is revealed as a war criminal, the sister of Pranh, the notorious Brother Number Two of the Killing Fields. Vietnamese forces attack the Khmer Rouge, freeing Sawyer who takes Suong captive. After a fight on the Bangkok waterfront, during which Sawyer kills Vasnasong, the billionaire businessman behind the plot, Sawyer turns Suong over to the Cambodian resistance. In an epilogue, the story of Suong’s brutal death on a ship at the hands of her former victims is revealed. |
War of the Raven | Andrew Kaplan | 1,990 | Raoul de Almayo, an Argentine society playboy is murdered by German agents in Buenos Aires in the early days of World War II. Charles Stewart, polo-playing American OSS secret agent, is sent to uncover the identity of the “Raven”, a spy in the German embassy in Buenos Aires to whom Raoul was the only link. Stewart’s trail leads him to Argentina’s decadent high society and an affair with the beautiful Julia Vargas. He uncovers a plot that may determine the course of the war, involving a coup against the Argentine government, the planned assassination of President Ortiz and the German battleship, Graf Spee, that is rampaging British shipping in the Atlantic. Stewart and Julia escape German agents, but Stewart is arrested by the notorious Colonel Fuentes, head of the Argentine secret police. Julia arranges Stewart’s release, but the two of them are captured by Gestapo agents who intend to murder them as part of the coup plot. Meanwhile, flashbacks tell the brutal story of John Gideon, Julia’s dead grandfather, who rose from a prison ship to become founder of Argentina’s greatest fortune and whose life is somehow entwined in these events. Julia and Stewart escape the Germans and Stewart manages to get critical information to the British that leads to the Battle of the River Plate and the sinking of the Graf Spee. At a society polo match at Julia’s estancia, Stewart manages to prevent the assassination and coup. Captured by the Germans and about to be shot, Stewart is saved by the Raven only to discover that the real author of the plot and these events was Julia, who takes her grandfather’s final horrific revenge. In an epilogue at the Battle of Stalingrad, Stewart learns in a letter from the Raven of Julia’s final fate. |
Bao Gong An | null | null | The Judge Bao Zheng unveiled the evil doings by reasoning, with the help of his assistant. He has dark brown skin and a moon-shaped scar on his forehead. He has four bodyguards and one personal expert. |
Soldier's Heart | Gary Paulsen | 1,998 | (Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution) Charley Goddard is a fifteen-year-old boy growing up in the farming community of Winona, Minnesota, in 1861, just prior to what will become the Civil War. He lives with his single mother and little brother, Orren. Charley's father was killed when a swarm of bees landed on a horse, scaring it into kicking Charley's father in the face, killing him. The whole area is talking about what they think will be a "shooting war." The atmosphere at the town meetings discussing the possibility is festive, with flags and drums and patriotic speeches. As a volunteer army is beginning to form, Charley decides he wants to be part of it after a brief argument with his mother. Everyone assumes that it will be an easy, victorious battle, most likely over in a month or two if it happens at all. Charley lies about his age and joins the volunteers in what he thinks will be a fun experience that will make him a man. They pay is eleven dollars a month, much more than he makes working on the farms. Charley trains and learns to be a soldier. In his letters, Charley describes the experience as something much different than he had imagined. Upon leaving the camp, the men are treated as heroes even before they leave town, accompanied by much cheering and flag waving. On the train ride to their new camping location, Charley meets a slave, who quickly blesses him and gives him bread for what he is doing for the southern slaves. However, a slave owner soon finds the woman and drags her back inside her house as the train departs again. Charley feels great, and spirits are high. However, not long after, he finds himself in his first battle. The Union soldiers lose badly. He is caught in the middle of violent suffering and death, and he cannot believe what is happening so suddenly all around him. When the battle is over, hundreds of his comrades have been killed, and Charley and the other survivors are stunned. It was named The Battle of Manassas Junction by some newspapers but was quickly called the battle of Bull Run by some of the men, for the creek that ran nearby. A camp is created near Washington and eventually reaches ninety thousand men. Charley becomes part of the day-to-day routine of the camp. He and the others forage the farms in the area for food and eventually build log houses to live in during the approaching winter. However, many men get diseases such as dysentery and die in the camp. During the time here, Charley participates in one nearby battle against the Rebel soldiers. The Union wins, but not without losing many men. One of them is a man whom Charley befriended only hours before. His name is Nelson, and he is shot in the stomach. Nelson knows the surgeons do not have the skills or time to mend his wound and that he will be left to die. As a result, he kills himself on the battlefield as the other soldiers leave for the return march to the camp. Charley takes part in a battle near Richmond, Virginia where the Confederate Army uses its mounted cavalry to charge Charley and the Union soldiers. Nearly one hundred men on horseback charge the six hundred foot soldiers. Charley and the others are told to shoot the horses in order to defeat the cavalry, and they do so, killing every horse and man. He then fights a large army of confederate soldiers. After all the fighting is over he is told he has been shot in the shoulder, but when he arrives at the temporary hospital he is told that the blood on his uniform is not his and he is not really shot. Next, Charley participates in the Battle of Gettysburg. Here he has the protection of rocks and logs and a large force of artillery behind him. Most of the charging Rebel soldiers are killed in the lines as they attack, but some eventually get close. The Officers realize this danger, and send the only unit still in relative shelter, The First Minnesota Volunteers. They rush at the soldiers, killing them as they go hacking and shooting each other. Charley eventually succumbs to the hits of the Rebels, got spun and then knocked out. He saw a red veil come down his eyes and claims that at last he died. Charley is 21 now. Charley claims he had become so old at heart, and waited death, for it was his only escape. He knows too much and the violent killings numbed him. He says that he should be studying marriage and raising young ones, but it wouldn't be that way for him. He's tired and broken, walking with a cane and passing blood, knowing it would be near over for him. In some ways it made him sad and he was near glad of it. There was so much men that he knew that was there already, and knew it was only a matter of time. He wants to go see them to get rid of this constant pain and sounds he could not stop hearing. He limped to have a picnic near the river, and took out roast beef a jug of cold coffee, that he's used to drinking coffee that made his stomach knot. The army taught him to thrive on coffee. He can still sit to a small meal and not feel starved at all. He then admires a Confederate's pistol. Everybody wanted one, and asked Charley to get them some, he imagines committing suicide with it. He takes out cheese and bread and admires the river, thinking of all the pretty things. Later in the author's note, it is noted that in the Battle of Gettysburg only forty-seven men were left standing of the original thousand soldiers in Minnesota's First Volunteers. Charley was not one of them. He was hit severely, and got patched up as best they can. He fought at later actions, but his wounds did not heal properly, nor his mental anguish. The war finished and he tried to hold jobs, but he couldn't. He went running for county clerk based on his war record. He was elected, but before he could serve, his wounds and the stress took him and he died in December 1868; he was only twenty-three years old. ... |
Dawn Wind | Rosemary Sutcliff | 1,961 | The story follows him, and the dog he finds after the battle, into the border country with Wales to the ruins of Viroconium (Wroxeter). There he meets a street urchin named Regina, the only person left in the city. They learn to trust each other and form a bond. When they leave the city and are later separated, Owain becomes a thrall to a Saxon lord in the swamps near the Isle of Wight, where he spends a number of years. In the end, Owain and Regina are finally reunited and return to the Celtic lands beyond the Welsh border. The story takes place at a turning point in the evolution of relations among the Saxons, invaders from the European mainland, and the indigenous Celts. As Owain lives and fights with the Saxons, he sees them beginning to reach accommodation and common cause with the Celts. The Dawn Wind of the title is a reference to the arrival of St Augustine, who brought Christianity to the Saxons. This change also later brought the Saxons and the already-Christian Celts closer together. |
El Príncipe de la Niebla | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | 1,993 | Max Carver, son of a watchmaker, has moved with his family from the city in order to get away from the war. Max's new house was formerly owned by Richard Fleischman, his wife and son. Max experiences mysterious events which have to do with Jacob Fleischman, the son of Richard Fleishman, who had drowned. Over time, Max discovers a sculpture garden near his house, where strange things happen. Max finally makes a friend, Roland. Roland is older than Max, around the age of his sister, Alicia, who is 15. After diving near the wreck, the Orpheus, Max has more and more questions, which will be answered by Victor Kray, grandfather of Roland. Detailed Summary Chapter 1 The story opens in 1943 in an unnamed city. It is mid-June, the day of our protagonist, Max Carver’s, thirteenth birthday. Maximilian Carver, Max’s father, and an eccentric watchmaker, tells Max and his family that they are leaving their lives in the city, which is suffering a war, to live in a town on the coast. We meet the family: Andrea Carver, Max’s mother, and Max’s sisters: Alicia, the elder, and Irina the younger. They reluctantly accept their fate, although Alicia is especially unhappy about having to leave her friends in the city. Before retiring to bed, Mr. Carver gives Max his birthday present: a watch made by his father, with an engraving on the back that says, Max’s time machine. They arrive at the train station, and Max sees that the station clock is slow. His father jokes that he has work already. Mr. Carver finds, and then employs two men, Robin and Philip, to help the family carry and transport their luggage. Max feels someone watching him, and turns to see a large cat with luminous yellow eyes watching him. The cat befriends Irina, who takes an immediate liking to the creature; she begs her parents to let her bring it with them, and they eventually concede. Before they leave the station, Max notices that the clock is even further behind than he had thought, but as he watches it for a moment, he realizes it is actually turning backwards. Chapter 2 As they drive through the town, the family begins to warm up to the sights, noticeably calmed by tranquil coastal setting. Maximilian Carver is delighted by his family’s reactions, and visibly enthused about their new lives on the coast. Max gazes at the ocean, which is covered by a light mist, and thinks he sees the silhouette of a ship sailing on the horizon. But it quickly disappears. On the way to their new home, Mr. Carver tells them the history of the house. It was built in 1923 by Dr. Richard Fleischmann, and he lived there with his wife, Eva. They had a son, Jacob, on June 23, 1925. The family lived happily until the tragedy of 1932, when Jacob drowned playing on the beach near his home. After that, Dr. Fleischmann’s health deteriorated, and after he had died, his widow, Eva, left the house to her lawyers to sell, and fled elsewhere. When they arrive, the porters leave quickly, and before they have even taken their first steps into the house, the cat leaps from Irina’s arms, letting out a satisfied meow as it is the first to touch down in the foyer. The home is musty and dusty, so the family sets out cleaning it up. The girls are horrified to find huge spiders in their rooms, so Max is charged with disposing of them. Before he can terminate a terrible-looking one, the cat aggressively devours it. Max looks out the window, and beyond the yard, and can vaguely make out a small clearing enclosed by a wall of stone. Inside, there appears to be an overgrown garden, with a circle of stone figures – statues. The wall enclosure is secured with spearhead points along its edge, each embossed with a symbol of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. Chapter 3 Max awakes with a start from a bad dream the next morning. Outside, dawn is breaking, and the air is clouded with a hazy mist. No one else is awake, and he decides to go outside and explore the mysterious garden he had observed through the window the night before. He must break a lock to access the garden, and he is overcome with a foreboding feeling as he enters. Inside, he discovers the statues depict ominous-looking circus characters, including a lion tamer, a contortionist, a fakir, a strong man, and some other ghostly characters, all are arranged in a star pattern around one central figure on a pedestal: a terrible clown, with arms outstretched and hands in a fist. At the clown’s feat, Max sees another small paving stone with the same six-pointed star inside of a circle inscribed on its surface. Max looks up again, and sees the hand of the clown is now open to the sky. Afraid, he flees back to the house, not looking back. Finding his family now awake and preparing breakfast, Max decides not to tell them what he has seen because he knows they will be sceptical, and he doesn’t want to crush his father’s excitement about their new home. Maximilian Carver eagerly tells the family about his own discovery in the shed outside: an old projector and a box of old films, as well as two bicycles. Chapter 4 Max helps his father restore the old bicycles and they discover they have barely been used. He asks his father casually about the garden out back, but his father doesn’t give much of a response. Max takes his bike for a ride, and begins to explore the town. Soon, he meets a boy a few years older than he is, named Roland, who is also out riding his bike. Roland offers to show him around, and Max takes him up on the offer. The two pedal around town for hours, and Max is barely able to keep up with the older boy, but enjoys the tour nonetheless. They rest, and Roland tells him about a ship that sunk off the coast in 1918; the wreckage remains underwater. The sole survivor of the shipwreck was an engineer who, as a way of thanking providence for saving his life, settled in the town and built a lighthouse on the cliffs overlooking where the ship had sunk. That man is Roland’s adoptive grandfather, Victor Kray; Roland’s own parents were killed in a car accident when he was a baby, and they had entrusted Roland to Victor’s care in their will. Before the boys part ways, Roland invites Max to go diving with him and explore the shipwreck the next day. Max accepts the offer, and Roland promises to pick him up the next morning. At home, Max finds a note from his mother and a plate of sandwiches awaiting him. His parents have gone into town with Irina, and Alicia is nowhere in sight. Outside, rain begins to fall, and Max retires to his room for a nap. Chapter 5 Max awakes to the sound of his family downstairs, and he goes down to join them for dinner. He tells them about the friend he’d made that day, and even invites his older sister, Alicia, to join he and Roland in their dive the next day. To his surprise, Alicia accepts the invitation. After dinner, Maximilian sets up the old projector he had salvaged that morning, and the family settles in to watch one of the unmarked films from the box. As the movie begins, they see it is a homemade movie, and the scene begins in a forest. The scene takes them through the trees, and a silhouette begins to appear, as the camera approaches an enclosed garden – the very garden Max had visited that morning. The camera operator enters the garden, revealing the mysterious statues, which look new, unlike the weathered state Max had observed them in. When the scene moves to the clown, Max feels something is different from the way he had observed it that morning, but he can’t decide what it is, and the film ends suddenly. Disappointed with their cinematic experience, the family retires to bed. Max decides to stay up and watch another film. Alicia waits for the rest of the family to leave, and she looks distraught. She tells Max she has seen the clown from the movie before – which she dreamed of that exact clown the night before they had moved to their new home. Max assures her she is probably just imagining the similarity and encourages her to forget about it. Alicia agrees he is probably right, and she goes to bed. Feeling unsettled by what Alicia told him, Max suddenly feels a presence behind him. He turns suddenly, and sees Irina’s cat looking at him with its yellow eyes. He shoos it away, but before leaving, it seems to smile at him. Max decides to put the projector and films back into the box and then go to bed. Chapter 6 Alicia wakes before sunrise with two golden feline eyes staring at her. She ignores the animal and thinks about her friends in the city, as she gets dressed. Max knocks on the door to tell her Roland has arrived. She joins the boys outside and there is an instant connection between Roland and Alicia, who are the same age. Knowing there is an extra bike in the garage, Max enjoys the flirtatious scene, and tells Alicia she will have to balance on Roland’s handlebars down to the beach. At the beach, Roland shows them his shack, where he sleeps during the summers. The inside is filled with trinkets and treasures that Roland has recovered from his dives down to the shipwreck just off shore. The boys prepare for their dive and Alicia waits on shore. Max is mesmerized by the experience of the cool water, and the serene silence beneath the surface of the ocean, but he leaves the deep diving to his friend. Roland discovers some new treasures, while Max observes from a distance, noticing the ship’s name inscribed on the bow, the Orpheus. Through the water, he dimly sees an old, tattered flag ebbing with the current. As it unfurls, horror seizes Max as he recognizes the symbol he had seen in the garden of a six-pointed star enclosed in a circle. He immediately swims back to the beach. When Roland joins the Carver children on the beach, Alicia begins collecting seashells, and once she is out of earshot, Max tells Roland about the symbol and the circus figures. Alicia returns to the boys and begins to ask Roland about his grandfather and the ship. Roland invites them into the cabin and promises to tell them the full story there. Meanwhile, back at the Carver home, we learn that Irina has been hearing voices in the house, and now hears them in her room, much like a whisper in the walls. It seems to be coming from her wardrobe, and as she approaches it, she sees there is a key in the lock. She hurriedly turns it to the locked position, and steps back. The sound continues, and hearing her mother calling her, Irina turns to run from the room. An icy breeze sweeps past her and slams the door shut, and she struggles with the handle, looking over her shoulder. She sees the key slowly turning; the voices become louder, and she hears laughter… Back in Roland’s shack, Roland tells Alicia and Max more about the Orpheus, retelling all that his grandfather, Victor Kray, has told him about the accident, and the events leading up to it. The Orpheus began as a cargo ship with a bad reputation, operated by a corrupt Dutchman who rented the ship out to anyone who would pay, including smugglers and criminals. The Dutchman was also a gambler, and he had accumulated a lot of debt, which made him desperate to gamble more. He lost a big card game to a man named Mr. Cain, who owned a travelling circus, known for employing shady criminals. Knowing the police were closing in on he and his group’s criminal activities, Mr. Cain charged The Dutchman with transporting his evil posse across the Channel on his ship, and the man agreed. Roland’s grandfather had the misfortune of knowing Mr. Cain for some time, and had unfinished business of some sort with him. He did not want Mr. Cain to leave the town without settling things with Victor first, so hearing of his plot to escape the town, he boarded the Orpheus as a stowaway, not even sure what he would do when he confronted Mr. Cain. He wouldn’t have to, as it turned out, as the ship crashed, and Mr. Cain and all of the other passengers on the ship were killed, save Victor, who was spared thanks to the hiding place he had chosen – a lifeboat. But they never found any bodies. Max and Alicia point out that something seemed to be missing from Victor Kray’s story, and Roland agrees… Back at the Carver house, Irina feels her hands go numb, and she continues to fumble with the door, and she watches in horror as the key turns in the lock, finally stops moving, and is then pushed out of the keyhole, falling to the floor. The wardrobe begins to creak open, and Irina tries to scream as a shape emerges from the wardrobe – the cat. She kneels to pick it up, but then notices something behind the cat, deeper in the wardrobe. The cat opens its jaws and hisses at her, then retreats back into the wardrobe, and a giant smile filled with light appears in the darkness with two glowing golden eyes, and all of the voices she has been hearing say “Irina” in unison. Irina screams and throws herself against the bedroom door, which gives away, and she stumbles into the hallway, and hurls herself down the stairs. Downstairs, Andrea Carver has heard her daughter’s scream, and runs to the base of the stairs just in time to see her child tumbling down to the bottom, a tear of blood escaping from her forehead. Mrs. Carver feels her pulse, and finding it is weak, calls the doctor. Holding her unconscious child, she looks up the stairs to see the cat watching her coldly. Chapter 7 When they return to the house, Max and Alicia see an unfamiliar car in the driveway, which Roland recognizes as the car of the town Doctor, Dr. Roberts. Their father tells them about Irina’s accident, and explains that he and Mrs. Carver will go with Irina to the hospital. Max and Alicia assure him that they will be fine. The three friends eat a simple dinner on the porch, and then Alicia and Roland decide to go swimming. Max sits on the porch, and thinks about the bond between his sister and new friend. He recalls Roland telling him that he may be sent to the war at the end of the summer, and he fears the effect that will have on his sister. After the swim, Alicia and Roland and Max build a bonfire on the beach, and discuss the strange occurrences and discoveries of the past few days, and Max reveals a final mystery: the Fleischmann film of the statues revealed the figures situated in different positions than Max had seen in the present day. Roland reveals a secret too: he has dreamed about the clown figure every summer since he was five. They all agree they will speak with Victor Kray the next day to learn more about the shipwreck. Chapter 8 The teens stay up until daybreak, and then Roland rides his bike home, while Max and Alicia retire to bed. The scene moves to Victor Kray returning from the lighthouse. He enters his home quietly, and finds his grandson waiting for him in an armchair. They make breakfast together, and Roland begins to tell him about his new friends that live in the Fleischmann’s’ old house, and the strange happenings. His grandfather listens and tells him to find his friends and bring them to the lighthouse. Chapter 9 Back at the Carver’s house, Maximilian has phoned his children to tell them Irina is in a coma, but is expected to wake up. Roland appears on the scene and asks Max and Alicia to come to his grandfather’s home. Victor Kray recounts for them a story very similar to the one Roland told about the shipwreck, but he also reveals some new facts. He explains the “unfinished business” between him and the wickedness Mr. Cain. They had met when they were boys, when the villain went simply by the name Cain. He was a notorious cheat at dice and cards in the town where Victor grew up, and the neighbourhood boys referred to him as the Prince of Mist because, rumour had it, he appeared out of a haze in dark alleyways at night and disappeared again before dawn. He had a reputation for making young boys’ wishes come true in exchange for their undying “loyalty.” Victor never succumbed to the temptation of expressing his wishes to Cain, but Victor’s best friend, Angus, did. Angus’ father had lost his job, and he asked Cain to restore the family’s only source of income. Inexplicably, his father was rehired the next day. Two weeks later, Victor and Angus were walking on the train tracks at night when they ran into Cain. Cain told them Angus would have to burn down the local grocery store. Victor and Angus ran home, but Victor knew Angus would not fulfill the request. But the next morning when Victor went to Angus’ house, he was not there, and no one could find him. Victor searched the city, and then returned to the train tracks where they’d run into Cain. There, he found the frozen corpse of his friend’s body – transforming into smoky blue ice, and melting into the tracks. Around his neck was a chain with a symbol of a six-pointed star in a circle. That same night, the grocery store Cain had demanded that Angus burn down was destroyed by a fire. Victor never told anyone what he knew, and his family moved south a few weeks later. Chapter 10 Victor continues to tell of his knowledge of Cain, recounting another encounter that took place a few months later, when his father took Victor to an amusement park. Waiting for the Ferris Wheel, Victor became aware of a tent being touted as the den of “Dr. Cain – fortune-teller, magician and clairvoyant.” Reluctantly, Victor gave into his curiosity and entered the tent, where Dr. Cain immediately recognized him and called him by name. He asked him his wish, but Victor wouldn’t tell him. He spoke boldly to Cain, and accused him of killing his friend. Cain denied the incident, describing it as an “unfortunate accident.” When Victor left the tent, he resolved never to see the man again. For many years, he didn’t. He went to college, and befriended a man named Richard Fleischmann and a woman named Eva Gray. Both Victor and Richard were in love with Eva, but the three remained friends. One night, Richard and Victor went out drinking and ended up at a fair. They stumbled upon a fortuneteller’s tent, and Richard wanted to go in and ask whether Eva would eventually choose one of the men for her husband. Despite his drunken stupor, Victor refused to go inside, knowing it would be the evil Dr. Cain, but his friend rushed in. Victor fell asleep outside on a bench. When he woke up, it was daylight, the fair was being cleaned up, and Richard was asleep on the bench next to him. The two had a terrible hangover, and barely remembered the night before. Richard told Victor that he dreamt he went into a magician’s tent and was asked what his greatest wish was. He said he wanted to marry Eva Gray. Two months later, Eva Gray and Richard Fleischmann were married. They didn’t invite Victor to the wedding, and Victor didn’t see them for twenty years. Decades later, Victor noticed someone suspicious following him home. It turned out to be Richard, his old friend. Richard looked terrible, and began to cry as he recounted his memories from the night at the fair, finally revealing what he had promised the magician in exchange for his wish for Eva’s love: his first-born son. Richard described to Victor how he’d been trying desperately to keep Eva from becoming pregnant, but that she wanted a child so badly that their lack of one was driving her into depression. Victor agrees to help Richard by tracking down Cain. He finds Cain with a circus troupe, now in a clown façade, just as they are preparing to escape on the Dutchman’s ship. Victor climbed aboard and hid himself in a lifeboat. Fierce winds picked up, and the storm soon took over. As Roland had told his friends the day before, Victor was the only known survivor of the shipwreck, and the other bodies were never found. Hearing that Victor had constructed and moved into a lighthouse on the cliffs, Richard visited him one day, and Victor told him what had happened. Overcome with relief, Richard stopped preventing Eva from having a child, and began building a home for them on the beach. A few years later, their baby boy, Jacob, was born. The couple enjoyed the best years of their lives with their child, until he drowned. When Victor heard, he knew the Prince of Mist had never really left their lives, and he has feared his return ever since. Chapter 11 When Victor finishes his story, a storm is closing in. Max still thinks some facts are missing from Victor’s story, but can’t determine where the holes are. Alicia and Roland seem sceptical of the whole story Victor has told, questioning whether the old man has begun to lose his mind. That night, Max and Alicia have a quiet supper together, their parents still at the hospital. Alicia goes to bed, and Max decides to watch another of the Fleischmann films. The film shows the face of a clock turning backwards, hanging from a chain. The camera zooms out, and we see the pocket watch is being held by a statue in the walled garden. The scene scans the faces of the statues, landing finally on the Prince of Mist – the clown. The camera pans down and reveals the motionless statue of a cat at its feet, its claw poised in the air. Max remembers that cat wasn’t there when he’d visited the garden, and notices the likeness between the statue and Irina’s cat. The camera goes back to the clown’s stone face, and it slowly smiles, revealing wolf-like fangs. Chapter 12 The next morning, Max wakes at noon and Alicia has left a note, saying that she is at the beach with Roland. He rides his bike to town and eats at a bakery, and then rides to where Roland’s Shack sits on the beach. He sees Roland and Alicia kissing, and feels silly approaching them, so he rides his bike back into town. He goes the library, finds a map of the town, and locates the graveyard. He rides his bike there to visit the tomb of Jacob Fleischmann. The cemetery is big and quiet. He finds a dark mausoleum devoted to Jacob Fleischmann, and enters the tomb. Under Jacob’s name, he finds the six-pointed star symbol engraved. He feels eerie in the tomb, and suddenly senses he is not alone in the darkness; he sees a stone angel walking on the ceiling above him, and it points at him slowly and then gives an evil smile, transforming into the face of the evil clown, Dr. Cain. Max saw burning hatred in its eyes, and filled with fear, ran from the tomb. Afterwards, he realized he had dropped the watch his father had given him, but he was too afraid to go back and retrieve it. He rides to Victor’s lighthouse, and tells him what happened. Then he accuses the man of keeping some of the truth from Max and his friends, but Victor Kray denies it, and tells Max to forget the whole thing. Victor looks pained to shut him out, but asks Max to leave. Chapter 13 The next morning, Max gets up before dawn and rides to the town bakery to get breakfast for he and Alicia. Later, they meet Roland at the beach, and he shows them a small rowboat he has restored. They go out in the boat, and Roland and Alicia prepare to dive down. Alicia enjoys being beneath the water with Roland, but then Roland spots a giant black shadow approaching them, and begins rushing Alicia back to the boat. A gigantic eel-like figure rapidly follows them, but Roland gets Alicia to the boat before the figure snatches him with jagged teeth and drags him into the sea. Seeing his sister is safe, Max impulsively dives in after his friend, and is able to rescue him from the frightening creature, even as it transforms into the face of an evil clown. Roland wakes up in the boat, choking, and knows Max has saved his life. Back on shore, the three friends are exhausted and they fall asleep in Roland’s shack. Chapter 14 The scene opens with Victor Kray sneaking through the Carvers’ yard, toward the garden enclosure. He has a rifle with him, and when he enters the garden, the statues are gone. He hears the rumble of a storm, a flash of lightning splits the sky, and Victor suddenly understands what will happen. Max wakes up in Roland’s shack, and realizes he needs to be proactive about predicting Cain’s next move. He rides his bike back home and begins watching another film. This movie begins in the living room where Max sits, but with different furniture, and everything looking new. The camera moves up the stairs, and into the room that Irina had occupied before her accident. The door opens, the camera enters the room, focusing on the wardrobe. Dr. Cain emerges from the wardrobe with an evil smile, and reveals a pocket watch, with its hands spinning backwards. Max recognizes it as the watch his father gave him for his birthday, and the one he had dropped in Jacob’s tomb earlier that day. The hands move faster and faster until they start to smoke and spark, and soon the whole face of the clock is ablaze. The camera moves away from the clock and films a mirror, revealing the camera operator as a small boy. Max looks at the boy’s childish grin, and realizes he looks familiar: it’s Roland as a child. A flash of lightning catches Max’s eye outside and when he looks out the window, he sees a dark figure there: Victor Kray. Chapter 15 Max lets Victor in and makes a cup of tea to warm him. Victor is shaking as he tells Max the statues are gone, and asks where Roland is. Max tells Victor his suspicion that Roland is Jacob Fleischmann, and Victor tells him he doesn’t understand what’s happening, but Max insists Victor tell him the truth. The old man explains that when Richard had thought Cain had drowned and built the house on the beach, things had been fine for a long time, until Jacob went missing one day when he was five. When night fell, Richard searched the forest, remembering an old stone enclosure that had been there when he was building the house. He searched the enclosure, and found Jacob. He was playing amongst the ominous statues that Richard was certain weren’t there when he built the home. Richard never told his wife about this or his encounter with the magician so many years before. One night, Victor was manning the lighthouse, as usual, when he had a sudden premonition that Jacob was in danger. He ran to the Fleischmann house, and to the beach. He saw Jacob wading into the water, as if entranced by a mysterious water monster that was dimly visible in the mist off shore. He looked to the house, and saw some of the circus statues were holding Mr. and Mrs. Fleischmann, who were desperately fighting to save their son. The creature began dragging the boy into the sea, but Victor chased it, and rescued Jacob from its clenches, taking him back to the surface. He tried to revive him, but he was gone. The statues disappeared the moment the Victor realized the boy was dead. Fleischmann was beside himself with grief, and ran into the ocean shouting to Cain, offering his own life in exchange for the life of his son. Then, inexplicably, Jacob sputtered back to life. He was in shock and did not remember his own name. Eva took him inside, and Victor followed, while Richard remained outside. Eva asked Victor to take the boy, hoping that his life would be out of danger if he had a different identity. They let the townspeople think that Jacob had drowned, and the body was never found. A year later, Richard passed away from a deadly infection he caught from being bitten by a wild dog. Victor explains that the tomb at the local cemetery was built by Cain, who is reserving it for the day he recovers Jacob’s body… Meanwhile, Alicia and Roland wake at the beach shack to find a thick mist creeping under the door and filling the shack. It becomes a tentacle and begins pulling on Roland. An evil clown appears in the mist, and says “Hello, Jacob.” The mist grabs Alicia and begins to pull her toward the sea. Both she and Roland try to fight the mist, but to no avail. Roland stands helplessly on the beach, watching as the Orpheus begins to rise from the water, and float upright. Roland hears maniacal laughter, and sees Dr. Cain standing on the ship, grinning as the tentacle of mist drops Alicia at his feet. Chapter 16 Max joins Roland on the beach and begins screaming at Cain; Roland dives into the waves and swims towards the Orpheus. Cain drags Alicia to a cabin and locks her in, where she finds the corpse of the former captain of the ship, The Dutchman. Max makes climbs on some nearby rocks to get closer to the ship, and is able to jump on board, while Roland struggled to grab hold of the helm and steer the vessel away from the rocks. Meanwhile, Victor arrives at Roland’s hut, and something strikes him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Max encounters Cain, who brags to him of his exploits, and Max attempts to indulge him, hoping to give Roland time to find Alicia. But they hear Roland calling Alicia’s name, and Cain realizes what Max was trying to do. Cain flings Max into the sea, and he is able to scramble onto some rocks. Chapter 17 Cain and Alicia have another encounter, and he tries to convince her to promise him her first-born child in exchange for Roland’s life. She tells him to go to Hell, and he say, “my dear girl, that’s exactly where I’ve come from,” (200.) The ship is sinking, and Roland is still searching for Alicia when he encounters Cain, who keeps calling him Jacob. Roland still has not made the connection, since he cannot remember his life before his parents died, but he plays along, asking Cain what he has to do to save Alicia’s life. Cain says, “I hope you’ll carry out the part of the agreement your father was unable to fulfill… Nothing more. And nothing less” (203.) Tears in his eyes, Roland agrees. Cain tells Roland where Alicia is, and explains that it’s already underwater and she won’t be able to breathe by the time he reaches her. He finds the room, takes a deep breath, and searches her out in the darkness. He waits for the ship to touch the bottom of the sea so that the pressure will not pull them back down; when the impact came, the ceiling above began collapsing on top of them, and Roland’s leg was pinned beneath the woody debris. Alicia was struggling to hold her breath, so Roland pulled her to him, and though she tried to resist, he breathed the last of his air into her mouth and then pushed her away towards the surface. Max helps Alicia out of the water; Victor wakes up on the beach and helps the two of them ashore, asking, “Where’s my Roland?” (207.) Roland never returned. Chapter 18 The day after the storm, Maximilian and Andrea Carver returned to the beach house with young Irina, who had fully recovered. It was clear to the parents that Max and Alicia had been through a great ordeal, but they didn’t ask, and the teens didn’t tell. Max accompanies Victor Kray to the train station, and Victor tells him he won’t be returning to the town. Before he leaves, he gives Max a small box. Max waits until Victor is gone before he opens it, and inside, he finds the keys to the lighthouse. Epilogue In the last weeks of summer, the war is nearing its end. Maximilian’s watch making business is booming, and Max cycles to the lighthouse every day to ensure the lantern is lit to help guide ships safely to shore. He often sees Alicia alone near Roland’s shack on the beach, gazing into the sea. Max remembers Roland’s words about worrying that this would be his last summer in the town, and comforts himself with the thought that the memories Roland, Max and Alicia shared, will bind them forever. |
Sapho and Phao | John Lyly | null | The play is set in Syracuse and the surrounding countryside. Venus, on her way to Syracuse to humble the pride of Queen Sapho, endows a young ferryman named Phao with great beauty. (In some of the myths, Phaon is an old ferryman of Lesbos who is rewarded by Aphrodite with renewed youth and beauty after he transports her from Mytilene to Chios.) The beautiful waiting women of Sapho's court learn of Phao, flirt with and court him; but he is disdainful of them. When Sapho catches sight of Phao she instantly falls in love with him; and Phao in turn is love-struck with her. Sapho hides her infatuation by pretending to be fever-stricken, and sends for Phao, since he reportedly possesses febrifugic herbs. They share a mutual passion, but the enormous gap between their social positions is an insuperable barrier. Through an accident with Cupid's arrows, Venus herself falls in love with Phao. She has her husband Vulcan (his forge is under Mount Etna) mold new arrows to break love spells; she turns for help to her son Cupid, who in Lyly's hands foreshadows the later Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Cupid performs part of his mother's will, in that he cures Sapho of her love of Phao; but then Cupid succumbs to the queen's charms. The pranksterish god not only fails to make Phao love Venus, but actually inspires him with a revulsion for her. The play concludes with Phao leaving Sicily; Cupid rebels against his mother's will and remains with Sapho, adopting her as his new mother. Variety and comic relief are provided by the talk of Sapho's ladies in waiting, by the "Sybilla" whom Phao consults for advice and guidance, and of course by the witty pages who recur so regularly in Lyly's dramas. |
Midnight's Lair | Richard Laymon | null | The novel concerns a group of tourists who become trapped in an underground cavern after a fire destroys the exits. Darcy, one of the tour guides, takes a small group to try to escape by breaking into a portion of the cave that had been walled up years before. But when they attempt to breach the wall they accidentally release a family of cannibalistic savages that has been secretly living in the cave for over half a century. |
Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion | Izabella St. James | 2,006 | St. James explains how she met Hefner twice in the same week – on a Wednesday at the Hollywood club Las Palmas and then Friday at another club called Barfly. After approaching him at Barfly, she was invited to meet him at Barfly the following day. After attending various parties, she was invited to live at the mansion. The real substance of the book is in the depiction of what life was truly like at the Playboy Mansion. The author confirms that the girlfriends were recipients of free surgery, clothes, cars, and a weekly allowance. Behind the scenes, the author goes to great lengths to explain that Hugh Hefner had many strict rules including curfews, schedules, and routines. While living with Hefner’s other girlfriends, the author explains the struggles to capture Hefner’s attention while catfights and other internal tensions were highly common. |
Tomcat in Love | Tim O'Brien | 1,998 | As part of his irrational reaction to the end of his marriage, Thomas Chippering returns to his (fictitious) home town, Owago, Minnesota. Emotionally spent, he trespasses on the backyard of the house where he grew up. The current resident, Mrs. Robert (Donna) Kooshof, finds him but is surprisingly attracted to him. Donna rashly agrees to participate in Tom's madcap scheme of revenge against his ex-wife (Lorna Sue), her brother (Herbie), and her new husband (known to the reader only as "the tycoon"). Tom, Lorna Sue and Herbie have been close friends — or at least companions — since childhood. The proximate cause of Lorna Sue leaving Tom was that Herbie revealed to her that Tom has been keeping a lifelong record of his infatuations and dalliances. While planning his revenge, Tom also maintains his position as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota. As in years past, Tom eagerly assists his female students with their writing projects, but at this point, one of these students decides to accuse Tom of sexual harassment. Tom loses his job and returns to Owago to live with Donna. Tom finds a job as an instructor at the Owago Community Day Care Center and starts teaching Shakespeare to four-year-olds. Tom's revenge involves trying to break up Lorna Sue's new marriage by innuendo. When this goes awry, Tom plans to burn down the Zylstra's house in Owago. Tom gathers mason jars, gasoline and firecrackers to this end. But the resolution to the plot occurs when Lorna Sue steals Tom's bombs and tries to set the local church on fire. Thus, Tom is able to get over his dependence on Lorna Sue. At the end, Tom and Donna move to a Caribbean island and live comfortably together. Tom's flirtatious nature, while not reformed, is kept in check. There's another mysterious layer in the book. Occasionally the narrator addresses the reader directly, referring to a broken relationship that supposedly unhinges "you" (the reader) because "your" husband ran off to Fiji with a redhead. No explanation about this subplot is forthcoming. |
Chat Room | Barbara Biggs | 2,006 | A young girl aged 13, Samantha, is extremely lonely after moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Both of her parents work long hours and she starts getting interested in chat rooms, where she meets new friends. While in the chat rooms she stumbles across a guy named Robin. He fakes his age as 17, even though he is really 27 and makes Sam feel special. He is charming, smart, romantic and good-looking. He tells her they have to wait for a while before he can tell her his final secret, which she does not realise is his age. Eventually he lets her know hes 27 and she freaks out, after 10 days of stressing and feeling more depressed than ever she goes online and asks to talk to him. He answers her and they confess to liking each other, then they decide to meet. she goes to meet him, hes extremelly gorgeous, and they go for a walk. During the time shes with him Erica, her babysitter, reaises Sam is missing and finds the emails from Robin. She calls the cops and they set out to find her. When they do Robin is caught and Sam is told what happened. Robin has been to court several times on child sexual abuse charges and has been let go on all charges before now because there was a lack of evidence. Now robin is taken in with the police and will be dealt with time in jail. |
The Time Crocodile | Colin Brake | null | The space zoo isn't like any zoo you've ever visited on Earth. For a start, some of the animals can talk! Explore the zoo and work out who can be trusted and who has a hidden agenda... |
The Corinthian Project | null | null | When the TARDIS lands in an undersea community known as the Corinthian Project, it doesn't take you long to realise there are some very strange things going on. Explore the project and see if you can uncover the truth... |
War of the Robots | Trevor Baxendale | null | On a distant world populated by robots, war has been raging for many years. Can you, the Doctor and Martha discover why the robots are fighting and end the war once and for all? |
Voyage on the Great Titanic | Ellen Emerson White | 1,998 | 13-year-old Margaret Anne Brady is an orphan whose parents died when she was only 8 years old. Subsequently sent to live in an orphanage, she lives a life of penury and dreams that her older brother, William, who lives in America, will someday earn enough money to send for her. One day, however, her fortunes take an unexpected turn for the better when a wealthy, privileged woman named Mrs. Carstairs expresses the desire for a companion for her upcoming trip to the States. The job, which involves simple tasks such as dressing her and walking her dog, is easy, and Margaret Anne accepts readily. Within merely a few days, Margaret Anne and Mrs. Carstairs board the Titanic, the newly-built and highly glamourous liner deemed to be "unsinkable," as first-class passengers. There, Margaret Anne, who has lived most of her life in destitute conditions, is enthralled by her luxurious premises. She quickly befriends a handsome, young steward, Robert, and their relationship gradually turns romantic. All is going well when one night, April 15th, 1912 (2:20), and Margaret Ann are awoken by a frantic Robert who informs that the ship has just struck an iceberg and advises them to put on their lifejackets. The two women obey and hurridly make their way up to the deck where they discover with horror that the ship is sinking rapidly. Though her life is hanging in precariously on the line, Margaret Ann is adverse to leaving Robert, who is part of the crew and must remain on the cruiser, and runs back to him. Finding him sitting dejectedly alone in an vacuous hallway, she attempts to persude him to follow her. Robert, though, replies her that he can't, and the two share a long, passionate kiss before parting. Back on deck, Margaret Anne is rapidly put in a lifeboat and whisked away. Floating for several hours, the small group is finally rescued when a passing ship picks them up. There, everyone, including Margaret Ann, is treated for pneumonia and put to rest. Though she expresses hope for Robert's survival, it is later revealed in the book that he, in fact, did go down with the ship. |
Deal Breaker | Harlan Coben | 1,995 | Investigator and sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail. Trying to unravel the truth about a family's tragedy, a woman's secret and a man's lies, Myron is up against the dark side of his business - where image and talent make you rich, but the truth can get you killed. |
Pollen | Jeff Noon | 1,995 | Pollen is the sequel to Vurt and concerns the ongoing struggle between the real world and the virtual world. When concerning the virtual world, some references to Greek mythology are noticeable, including Persephone and Demeter, the river Styx and Charon, and Hades (portrayed by the character John Barleycorn). |
The Devil To Pay | Frederic Dannay | null | Solly Spaeth is a financier whose machinations with the "Ohippi Hydro-Electric Project" have left a number of people much less wealthy than once they were, including his business partner, Rhys Jardin. Jardin's beautiful daughter Valerie is involved with Spaeth's son Walter. Rhys is so impoverished, he has to sell up his personal property at auction, much to the dismay of his daughter and his long-time servant/valet/trainer, Pink. Walter asks Ellery Queen to sit in on the auction and buy every lot, which is how Ellery becomes involved when Solly Spaeth is found pierced by an ancient sword whose blade has been coated with molasses and cyanide. Suspicion falls on a number of people, including the Jardin household, Solly's son, lawyer and his mistress, the kooky Winni Moon, but Ellery works through alibis and motives and traces the crime back to the murderer. A sub-plot of the novel is that Ellery has been hired to work on a screenplay and has been completely idle for weeks because he can't get in to see studio head Jacques Butcher; Butcher plays a much more prominent role in the next novel, The Four of Hearts. |
The Four of Hearts | Frederic Dannay | null | At the end of the previous Ellery Queen novel, The Devil to Pay, he's in Hollywood and about to meet studio head Jacques Butcher. At the beginning of this novel, he does so and is asked to work on a movie script about the lives of "the fightin', feudin', first families of Hollywood", actors John Royle and Blythe Stuart. Years ago, these tempestuous thespians had been romantic partners, but quarrelled violently and had become the central figures in a famous feud. The feud extended to Blythe's daughter Bonnie and John's son Ty, both young movie actors—and Jacques Butcher is now engaged to Bonnie. The perpetually broke elder actors are persuaded to accept roles in a biographic picture about their lives which garners great publicity because of their long-standing feud—whereupon they promptly make up and decide to get married. Hollywood's publicity machine kicks into high gear and the pair are married on an airfield in front of huge crowds, then fly away in a private plane for a honeymoon. But a masked person has forced his/her way onto the airplane and left two poisoned flasks of cocktails, and John Royle and Blythe Stuart are dead at the end of the flight. Ty and Bonnie vacillate between feuding and a sudden romantic interest, and Ellery takes a hand to investigate the case. It seems that the murdered pair had been receiving anonymous mailings of playing cards that had a mysterious significance. Ellery's suspicions fall upon the households of John and Blythe, and Ty and Bonnie become suspicious of each other. It's only when Ellery learns the true meanings of the cards that he solves the case. In the process, he has formed a romantic attachment of his own with prominent and lovely gossip columnist Paula Paris, who is agoraphobic—as the final act of the novel, he persuades her to accompany him out to dinner. |
A Blues for Shindig | null | 2,006 | Shindig is a young woman who survives the rough streets of London’s Soho neighborhood by working in an illegal bar and selling drugs in the alleys. Shindig’s daily life is populated by abusers, boozers, losers, crooked cops and gangsters. Yet these seemingly deviant characters look out for one another and Shindig navigates through this underworld with a sense of adventure. Yet, she soon finds herself caught in the middle of a much larger power play. |
The Angel Makers | null | 2,007 | During World War I, the men of a Hungarian village leave to fight. In their absence, the women form powerful bonds. Their village is made into a camp for Italian prisoners of war and some women fall for these soldiers. When their men return and begin to mistreat them, the women become murderous in their fight to keep their freedom. |
Baber's Apple | null | 2,006 | It is the story of Baber Mittough. His employer sells him to a sketchy Kazakhstan businessman. Baber meets up with a woman, two ageing hippies that might be his parents, and has a make a hasty escape out of the country. |
Cry of the Justice Bird | Jon Haylett | 2,007 | In an Africa ravaged by civil war, two women are pulled from a minibus, and are raped and mutilated. Armstrong MacKay, one of the dead women’s lover, enters the country to bring her body home. During the festivities of her African wake, Mackay finds out the truth behind her violent death from the other woman’s husband. Faced with Africa’s weaken government and the ineffective Boromundi legal system, the two men decide to take justice in their own hands and seek out the murders for themselves. Kisasi, the Justice Bird, cries out as the men set out to execute the killers. |
The Rasp | Philip MacDonald | 1,924 | Anthony Gethryn, ex-secret service agent, is an occasional "special correspondent" for a weekly newspaper and is assigned to cover the story when a cabinet minister, John Hoode, is found murdered in the library at his country house, battered to death with a wood-rasp. Gethryn recalls his acquaintance with a member of the household and is thus invited to investigate the crime as a kind of "friend of the family". It soon seems as though everyone concerned has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the crime, but Gethryn comes up with an imaginative way for the murderer to have accomplished the deed and established an alibi, and reveals the murderer. |
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