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Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium | Suzanne Weyn | 2,007 | When a young pianist named Molly Mahoney inherits a magical toy store from her eccentric 243-year-old boss, Mr. Magorium, she struggles with self-doubt. But through the friendship of a charismatic little boy named Eric Applebaum and a buttoned-up accountant named Henry Weston, she learns to believe in herself, and finds that she does possess enough magic to run Mr. Magorium's shop by finding herself in places she's never imagined. |
Reincarnation | Kenneth C. Eng | 2,008 | ;Prehistory In the first setting of the story the female character is a Cro-Magnon (more developed caveman), and the male character is a Neanderthal, man a little behind Cro-Magnon in evolution, thus unable to capture the concept of speech. The female, May, is ready to get married soon, and will be linked to Lenar by her deity, the Great Mother. The male, Kye is hunting with his group. They meet each other near the cave that May visits when they spot a green rock. They struggle over the stone. May wanted it so that she could have her own ranking within her tribe, to be able to not marry an insensitive tribesman, Lenar, the first antagonist in the book. Kye wants it so that he may redeem himself within his tribe, for he had run away from a fight. Future incarnations inherit May's singing, struggle with ranking in social groups, and that she is religious, and Kye's incarnations inherit aching head injuries. The incarnations also happen to be different in ethnicity like May and Kye. Egypt, 1280 B.C.E. The second setting is in ancient Egypt, in the setting of a wealthy nobleman. The female's name is Tetisheri, and she is the household singer and dancer, the performer. The male of this setting is Taharaq, a captured Nubian archer, who has been dragged into slavery by Egyptians. Due to an injury during the fight he is mute, unable to speak. He becomes a slave in the same household Tetisheri works and lives in. He was caught and given to the nobleman by Lenar's reincarnation, Ramose. Another antagonist is introduced as Nerfi, a household servant, and the woman who vies for Taharaq's affection, while Ramose vies for Tetisheri's. She is also the reason Tetisheri's incarnations have horrible ankles. The green gem is reincarnated as an Eye of Horus pendant that Ramose gives to Tetisheri, as he wishes to marry her when he returnes from a military voyage. Tetisheri takes the gift from him. While Ramose is away Taharaq and Tetisheri realize their love for each other and Taharaq heals, able to speak again. Seeing them together angered Ramose, so he banished Taharaq. Taharaq visits Tetsheri and Nerfi later on in Nerfi's room and Ramose sees them and kills Taharaq by stabbing him (and causing his reincarnations to have bruises from the stab wound) but it is not clear what happens to Nerfi and Tetisheri. Nerfi could have been reincarnated from Sha, a female briefly mentioned in Prehistory, from Lenar's point of view, as it says Sha has the trademark red curls. Tetisheri inherited her singing from her previous life, while Taharaq inherited his inability to speak, and a birthmark with terrible headaches (from Kye's injury). Further incarnations inherit Tetisheri's bad ankle that was injured when Nerfi dropped a jug of water on her right foot, and a knack for writing and reading and archery from Taharaq. Ramose's incarnations would inherit an aching jaw from when Taharaq punched Ramose. Pakistan, 538 B.C.E. When one of the characters is on the wheel of rebirth, they meet Siddartha, later Buddha. Kye met him, and was the reason for his later interest in Buddhism. He also drinks too much wine and becomes drunk, which is the cause of the drinking problem in later incarnations. ;Athens, Greece, 399 B.C.E. The female is Hyacinth, a nobleman's privileged daughter, and the male is Artem, a "wild boy" orphan whose Egyptian mother passed away, a slave woman found him with two emerald teardrop-shaped earrings. Living and wandering alone in the wilderness, he has a drinking problem. Hyacinth meets Artem in the marketplace and cannot forget him. Hyacinth later catches Artem hunting on her father's land. She follows him to his camp and they meet and talk for a while. Artem has inherited his passion for reading and writing from a previous life, and offers to teach Hyacinth to read, as women were thought to be servers for men in that period. The two keep meeting for their "reading lessons" but really they're falling in love, Hyacinth more so than Artem, at first. Artem, being a skilled archer, is convinced to compete for Hyacinth's hand in marriage against Macar, Lenar and Ramose's incarnation. But Macar catches the two together, and later attacks Artem, making him unable to go and compete for Hyacinth. Hyacinth is heartbroken, and by the time Artem is healed enough to go to her she has become a priestess at the temple of Athena, and having become a priestess, under oath, she is unable to leave or to marry. A Greek myth, an Oracle of Delphi, who foretells the future in riddles that only the learned could decipher, speaks to Hyacinth, and says, "You have been in the cave. I spied on you in the kitchen. I will bring you to fiery ruin. The jewel is not what you think. You must seek its meaning. If you seek me I will help you." Hyacinth tried to understand her words, she had never been in a cave, but she had sometimes been in a kitchen, and when she thought of the jewels, she thought of her earrings. The Oracle continued, "The one who comes for you with the earrings is your destiny." Hyacinth thought about Artem. She still did not understand, "Please, I don't understand." "The unraveling is the journey.' the Oracle answered. And she left. The Oracle of Delphi is an incarnation of Blind Seth, from the Egyptian era, and returns in a few more incarnations. Honouring her oath, Hyacinth refuses to run away with Artem, and when he finally comes to her, even though she wants to, she doesn't leave, but keeps the emerald earrings Artem gave her. Nerfi is now Iphigenia, another young priestess and she inherits her trademark red curls. She is insanely jealous of Hyacinth and Artem's love, and thinks negatively of Hyacinth turning him down, thinking she would run away with him in a heartbeat. She steals Hyacinth's earrings, and one night when Artem is serenading Hyacinth with his flute, as always, and she sees that Hyacinth is finally climbing down to join Artem. Iphigenia then throws the earrings out the window. Artem thinks Hyacinth has thrown the earrings, and bumps into Hyacinth as they both go to retrieve them. But that makes Hyacinth tumble down a rocky hill to her death, leaving Artem to be miserable for the rest of his life. ;Canaan, 28 C.E. One of the characters is now in Canaan, who went to the wedding Jesus gave wine to. It is evidenced it is Artem's incarnation, for he complains he drinks in excess. Gwendolyn, who was Hyacinth, becomes part of an abbey and later is Mother Abbess Maria Regina. She dies and the next person who is speaking is Macar's incarnation, a captain who took slaves, a possibly inheriting that of his treatment to Taharaq as an Egyptian. Artem is then his first mate and later on adventure with Pizarro. There he meets Gwendolyn, now Acana, in an Incan tribe and remarks on her knowledge of the arts and in general. It is revealed she died of the pox. Abby, once Iphigenia, is setting sail for America where next story takes place. ;Salem, Massachusetts, 1691 The female is Elizabeth May, the male is Brian, antagonist #1 is Charles, and antagonist #2 is Abigail O'Brian (Abby). But Abby wants to get rid of Elizabeth May so that she can have Charles, Elizabeth's well-to-do husband. Brian is never actually in the story, but rather a fond memory of Elizabeth May's. As it turns out, she knows the incarnation of old Seth, the man in Egypt who knew her and lived in the same house. His incarnation is a Barbados woman who is blind and the incarnation of The Oracle of Delphi, and she tells Elizabeth her future with tarot cards. The cards say she has lost a true love, Brian, but will see him again. Elizabeth May warns the Barbados woman that a few village ladies have accused her of witchery because of her strange, natural medicines. To get Elizabeth May out of the picture, Abby gets Charles thinking that she's having an affair, and shows him peridot earrings from Brian. When he shows Elizabeth May the earrings and refuses to give them back, she attacks him. Abby brings in a lawman and accuses her of being a witch, pointing out Charles's bloodied face, and just then Elizabeth May's black cat jumps into her arms. Due to May's death by burning at the stake, she now has a phobia of fire. In between Abby is now dead (having married Charles), surpassing her husband as 80 years old. It is discovered that Brian had a daughter back home. His wife writes in a journal that their baby girl dies. It was Elizabeth May's incarnation for she hysterically screams at a peat fire. In between Elizabeth May is reincarnated as Marianna Clark, a woman who goes insane due to constantly saying her skin felt like it was on fire and is eventually locked up in a mental asylum, where Gwendolyn's church used to be. The staff give her a drug called laudanum every waking moment to soothe her, which, in a later life causes her to be addicted to the drug. Brian is reincarnated as the man who helped in the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. The Battle of Honey Springs, Indian Territory, July 17, 1863 Louisa Jones is a fifteen-year-old African American girl who is disguised as a man during the Civil War, she goes by the name of Lou. She was a slave but ran away and was now in the war fighting against the South. The story is told from the third person view of both characters, but the first part is told from John Mays, the incarnation of Marianna Clark and Elizabeth May, they are now a white man. Louisa and John are fighting against the South. It says that when he is first injured, he sees a boy at the river, taking care of a wound. It says that he can't explain his desire for the boy, but walks over and talks to him. John doesn't know that the boy is really a girl, Louisa, the incarnation of Brian, because he/she had a birthmark looking like a Stab Wound. John is the incarnation of Elizabeth May, because he was addicted to the medicine to numb the pain from his Bad Ankle and fear of fire. They have each switched genders. A strange thing happened to Lou while she was fighting that day, it was the reason she was cleaning up a wound. She was surrounded by smoke from the gun shots, when a Cherokee Indian was shot and flew off of his horse and fell on top of Lou, maing her gun out of reach. The same man who shot the Indian, was about to shoot Lou also, but she got the Indian's They talk, feeling a "connection" between each other, but are interrupted when a Native American tries to kill John. Lou then pulls the trigger of her rifle and kills the Native American. Mays then begins to like her/him, but won't say or show anything, thinking that Lou is a guy. Later on, it's told from Lou's third person when she feels the big bruise on the side of her stomach that is actually a birth mark. It's the inheriting of (Taharaq's injury). She ran into John again when she went out for a quick drink and he tries to get her to join the rest of the soldiers by the camp fire, but Lou refuses, saying that her side really hurts. Lou then faints due to the pain of her side and earlier injury to the head and Mays puts her back into the tent she was in. That's when he finds out that she's a girl, but she then dies of her injuries. Paris, France, 1937 The young woman is now Delilah "Del" Jones, a performer, performing at "The Panther Club". The man is Robert "Bert" Brody, a reporter from Princeton. Bert interviews Del after a performance and she begins to flirt with him after a few questions. She admits that she can dance, but most of the time ends up falling due to her bad ankle. Bert then goes out with a dancer at the club, named Yvette, after he interviews Del. After he left the small meeting with Yvette, he's stopped by a cop working for British Intelligence. Back in the dressing room, Lenny Raymond, the club manager, rubs his aching jaw as he thinks about Del and which move he should make on her. He gives up eventually. The next day, Del meets up with Bert again, for the rest of the interview. She'd lied to him about being in the circus, and he, in return, tells her about his great adventures in Greece. There's a candle sitting in the middle of the table and Del asks the waiter to remove it. She then says to Bert that she's skittish about fire. He then asks her if she's interested in Buddhism and she says that it's strange. They then admit that some feeling is so strong between them. The next day, Bert was sure he was in love with Del. For a next performance, Bert went to see it. Del then told Yvette that she wanted to speak to her in private on the roof. Bert followed to find Lenny, Yvette, Del and him all on the roof. Nazis then fired at Del and Bert jumped in front of her, taking the bullets. He fell off the roof and died. In between There is no note of any incarnations of Bert in this chapter. However, the story is then told from the view of the ghost of Bert. He goes a few years forward in time- to the height of World War II- and finds Yvette on a death train bound for a concentration camp. He finds out that Del is still alive, and that she and Yvette were both spies for the French Underground. Yvette was eventually caught. When the train derails, allowing many to escape, Yvette shows her good side and saves a young child- only to be shot by a Gestapo agent who catches her in the act. Yvette, too, becomes a ghost, reunites with Bert, and together, they enter the next stage of reincarnation. Mississippi 1964 The boy is now Mike. He's riding in a car with his friends while his Brother, Ray, rubs his jaw. He went home and noticed an old record player. It reminded him about a collection of albums by some famous singer he'd never heard of; Delilah Jones. He played it and a jazz tune played about a lover who got away. The woman is now an elderly lady named Louisa. It's early in the morning when Mike is going door-to-door asking people if they are registered to vote or not. He then asks her about her rights of an American. He soon admits that it's hot and she invites him inside. She then asks him if she's met him before and says that it's deja vu. She says that she felt it when he admitted that he attended Princeton and that he felt it too. She fainted. As he helped her recover, he noticed books and things on bookshelves. He then saw a book called Their Eyes Were Watching God and it was signed by the author, Zora Neale Hurston. It was to Delilah Jones. He'd heard that name before and asked her who she was. Louisa then admitted that she was Del Jones and that Mike was Bert Brody. He was confused, so she explained to him that she went back to her given name, Louisa, and she said that she married Lenny Raymond. She then explains that Bert Brody was her songwriter and that the songs on her album were written by him. Mike eventually is astonished and quickly leaves. Upon being away he returns that night, bringing her a record of her songs. They spend the next two weeks together. They are unable to show physical affection because of their age difference, but are in love nonetheless. He then ends up in the police station with his friends, upon hearing Ray is in trouble for being with Birdy (An incarnation of Abby). On his way to get help to bail them out of jail he is struck by a speeding car. In between There are no incarnations of Mike in this chapter. New York, present day The female is Samantha Tyler, a typical senior high-schooler. The male is Jake Suarez, the new guy at school, and the guy who just won first place in the archery competition. He also wrote a screenplay that he thinks he made up, but really he's telling the story of him and Samantha in the Salem lifetime. It's very emotional, because even though Samantha doesn't know it she's being told that Brian (Jake) had come looking for Elizabeth May (herself) and was miserable for the rest of his life when he was too late. It's a short one, so all that happens with antagonists #1 and #2, Chris and Zoë, is that Sam breaks up with Chris, and Zoë had a crush on him and fully supported her friend in this decision. The senior class is on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Samantha and Jake just happen to be lost and alone, looking for everyone else, and bump into each other. they decide to walk to the Hall of Emeralds exhibit together. Jake tells about his screenplay got him a scholarship, and Sam tells him about she can't decide between singing or dancing for her college studies, and about how it's lucky she wore corrective shoes as a kid for her bad ankle, otherwise she wouldn't be able to dance. Being in the Hall of Emeralds is also mysterious for them, because there they see all of the Green Gems. Tetisheri's Eye of Horus pendant, Baby's (and Del's) emerald studded collar, one of the teardrop earrings, even though it wasn't real emerald, but peridot, and even the gem that May and Kye fought over, which also wasn't real emerald. They finally admit the strong emotions for each other they are miraculously feeling while in the museum theatre. Nobody dies; they're together at last. |
Crossing California | null | null | In Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood in 1979, California Avenue divides the prosperous west side from the struggling east. Langer's brilliant debut uses that divide as a metaphor for the changes that occur in the lives of three neighborhood families: the Rovners, the Wasserstroms and the Wills. There are two macro-stories-the courtship of Charlie Wasserstrom and Gail Shiffler-Bass, and the alienation of Jill Wasserstrom from her best friend, Muley Wills-but what really counts here is the exuberance of overlapping subplots. One pole of the book is represented by Ellen Rovner, a therapist whose marriage to Michael dissolves over the course of the book (much to Ellen's relief: she's so distrustful of Michael that she fakes not having an orgasm when they have sex). If Ellen embodies cool, intelligent disenchantment, her son, Larry, represents the opposite pole of pure self-centeredness. As Larry sees it, his choice is between becoming a rock star with his band, Rovner!, and getting a lot of sex-or going to Brandeis, becoming successful and getting a lot of sex. The east side Wasserstrom girls exist between these poles: Michelle, the eldest, is rather slutty, flighty and egotistical, but somehow raises her schemes (remaining the high school drama club queen, for instance) to a higher level, while Jill, a seventh-grade contrarian who shocks her Hebrew School teachers with defenses of Ayatollah Khomeini and quotes Nkrumah at her bat mitvah, is still emotionally dazed from her mother's death. Muley, who woos Jill with his little films, wins the heart of the reader, if not of his intended. |
Dangerous Days of Daniel X | Michael Ledwidge | 2,008 | Daniel X, who has no other last name, has the best superpower ever: The power to create. He can create real objects, including people, with only his mind. In addition, he has super-speed (he outran a truck travelling at 100 miles per hour) and super-strength (he can flip a car in a somersault). He is also granted an extra long memory. When he was 3 years old, Daniel's parents were brutally murdered by a praying mantis-like alien called the Prayer, who came in search of the List of Alien Outlaws on Earth. When Daniel's parents wouldn't hand it over, the Prayer killed them. Daniel survived only by transforming into a tick and grasping onto the Prayer's dreadlock hair as he fled from the burning house. After he lost his grip on the Prayer and fell off, Daniel vowed to kill the Prayer for the death of his parents, and returned to the site when he was 13 to recover the List. Twelve years after the murder of his parents, fifteen-year-old Daniel X has taken up the task of his parents as Defender of Earth. In the sewers of Portland, Oregon, he faces and defeats number 19 on the List, Orkng Jllfgna, in hopes of working his way up to number 1: The Prayer. Later, Daniel is confronted by the Portland Runaway Juvenile Unit, and he escapes with the help of his "parents" whom he conjured up using his powers. He then leaves to go to Los Angeles in search of number 6 on his List, a shape-shifting alien named Ergent Seth who resides in Malibu. On his way to LA, he confronts an agent of Seth's who has a message for Daniel: Don't go to LA. Daniel ignores his command and continues on toward LA. He spends that night in the woods, camping with the "friends" he created: Joe, a motor-mouth and competitive eater; Willy, a stocky and headstrong fighter; Emma, a compassionate environmentalist; and Dana, the love of Daniel's life.The friends that Daniel creates, are actually a distinct memory of his life on his home planet. They all died in nursery school when their building collapsed. The next day, Daniel arrives in LA. With the help of his parents and "sister" Pork Chop (Brenda), he rents a house. His parents warn him not to go after Seth, because he has never gone after an alien in the Top 10. That night, while he is asleep, Daniel is haunted by one of the many vivid nightmares that he has, in which the Prayer warns him not to go after Seth because the Prayer wants to get him. The next day, Daniel decides to go to school, a first in Daniel's life; because of his power to telepathically access human knowledge, school was never necessary. At the end of the day, he bumps into Phoebe Cook, who is also new to the school. He walks her home and, following ideas from her mind, asks her out on a date. Daniel decides to search the city for clues about the whereabouts of Seth, and stumbles in upon a child-slave and drug-dealing operation. He goes to the one in charge of the operation (who is not Seth, but may be a lackey of his) and wipes his mind and makes him believe he is a Pentecostal preacher. The following day after school, Daniel walks Phoebe to his house, which he finds destroyed by two alien cats. The cats are regents of Seth's, and warn Daniel to leave LA. After attacking him, they flee. Soon after, he is contacted by Seth, who again warns Daniel to leave LA and never come back, or Seth is going to kill him. The next day, Daniel goes back to school and, so as not to seem too smart, purposely flunks a History test. He literally runs into Phoebe after the test. Phoebe has something to tell Daniel. She feels terrible for keeping secret the reason she had changed schools. A few months before, Phoebe's sister, Allison, had been abducted without a trace off of her own driveway. Daniel suspects it to be the work of Seth. On his way out of the school, he is attacked by some of Seth's henchmen. After incapacitating them, Daniel hurries home, where he finds his mom—only he didn't intentionally create her; he speculates he created her from his subconscious. Later that day, Phoebe calls Daniel to a coffee shop and gives him Allison's case file, which has details of other abductions that form a pattern, which Daniel describes as forming "an almost-perfect connect-the-dots circle with Malibu at its center." After his house is compromised (again), Daniel feels it is unsafe to return, so he goes to spend the night with Phoebe. They plot to go to Malibu the following day to investigate Allison's disappearance. Phoebe lets him sleep in the closet to avoid detection from her parents. The next morning, Daniel awakens to find Phoebe missing. He finds Phoebe near the school, but something is wrong. He talks to her, and she transforms, revealing herself to have been Ergent Seth in disguise all along. Seth deactivates Daniel's powers, shoots him in the stomach, and drags him through the desert and into a spaceship. The ship flies away from Earth. Daniel is put into a cell for the duration of the trip. He summons his friends, and they begin reconnaissance. During a poker game with his "family," Daniel figures out that his mother had been pregnant when she was killed, which also killed the unborn Pork Chop. Daniel is taken to the bridge as the ship comes to Alpar Nok, another planet very similar to Earth; it is Daniel's homeworld, only it has been taken over by Seth and his henchmen, killing or impoverishing most of the inhabitants. Daniel escapes from a landing party and flees to under the wreckage, where the few survivors live. He meets his grandmother, Blaleen, who removes the bullet from his stomach and allows him to rest and heal at her house. After regaining his strength, Daniel goes after Seth again and creates a thousand summoned soldiers, but they eventually fight one-on-one. Daniel misquotes Homer's Iliad by comparing this fight to Hector and Achilles rather than Paris and Menelaus. During the fight, Daniel turns into a tick and enters Seth's head via his ear. He transforms into an elephant inside Seth's head, killing him instantly. Daniel leaves Alpar Nok and returns to Earth, as it is his duty to defend it. |
First Boy | null | 2,005 | Dragged into the political turmoil of a presidential election year, fourteen-year-old Cooper Jewett, who has run a New Hampshire dairy farm since his grandfather's death, stands up for himself and makes it clear whose first boy he really is. Cooper never knew his parents and his birth certificate is blacked out. Who is Cooper Jewett really? Nobody Knows. |
The Royal Way | null | null | The locations are, at the beginning of the book, the ship from Marseille to Indochina and a brothel; later it is set in Cambodia, Laos and Siam. The most important characters are young adventuresome Claude Vannec and an old experienced adventurer named Perken, a Dane with German associations. They relate to each other because of their nonconformism, which lets them collaborate to obtain their personal goals: the quest for the reliefs (for which they are motivated both archeologically and financially), as well as the search for a lost adventurer called Grabot. They succeed in stealing the reliefs. But they are abandoned by their guide and in a dangerous jungle. Because they fear the government, they chose a way through the uncontrolled territory of the Moïs. This region is dangerous, too – but on the other hand Grabot is supposed to be there. The adventurers have to defeat hostile vegetation and traps (e.g. swamps, giant insects, fleams). A deal is made with the Stiengs, but disintegrates as the adventurers find Grabot enslaved horribly. Now the adventurers are under siege. Perken, in a moment of lucidity and courage, manages to rescue the beleaguered ones. The price he pays is an injury to his knee, which progresses to ulcerating inflammation of the joint (in a time before the invention of antibiotics, at a place without any opportunity to do a sterile amputation), and he dies slowly in pain. |
Angel of Music, or The Private Life of Giselle | null | null | Erik has not died, though his spirit is dead to the world. The Persian, the daroga (called "Aslan" in this novel), helps Erik out of mere pity, feeling sorry for him. Erik stays in the Opera but he has lost interest in life. But someone in the Opera has not lost interest in him. It is a beautiful and talented young ballerina, Camilla Fonteyn, a brave and charming girl, and a ball of fire. She adores mysteries and wants to solve the secret behind the Phantom of the Opera and that obscure affair of Christine Daae. She is persistent and quite soon encounters Erik - and in time her caring and love will bring him back to life and recover his spirits. But her charms work not only on Erik, but also on the poor daroga, who becomes her admirer, and unfortunately on a rich aristocrat, Anri Nerval, who turns out to be a mysterious "Parisian Vampire" - a maniac and sadist who haunts the night streets of Paris. He kills for the pleasure of seeing young women bleeding to death. He patronizes Camilla in her ballet career, as her greatest dream is to dance the part of Giselle in the ballet of the same name. She is truly bewildered by the fate of Giselle, the girl who died because of a broken heart but remained true to the man she'd loved even after her death. Nerval helps Camilla to receive the part, but later it turns out that he even may kill Camilla, if she won't fit in his plans or desires. He also pursues Erik, the "Phantom of the Opera", along with the Secret Police of France (who wants Erik's inventions and tricks). |
The Captain of Köpenick | John Mortimer | null | The first part of the play deals with the two parallel (and at some points intertwined) stories of Wilhelm Voigt himself and the uniform which plays a central role in the story, which is set in Potsdam, Berlin and Köpenick at around 1900. The uniform is originally made by the Jewish tailor Wormser for the Gardehauptmann (lit. "Captain of the Guard", but better translated as "Captain in the Guard Regiment") von Schlettow. But after a scandal in which von Schlettow is arrested by the police in civilian attire as he attempts to peacefully settle a bar brawl, initiated by a drunk grenadier, von Schlettow is forced to retire and the uniform is returned to Wormser. Eventually, the uniform is refitted for Dr. Obermüller, the mayor of Köpenick, for his promotion to Captain, but during a party afterwards the uniform is indelibly stained in an accidental spilling and ends up in a rag shop. Wilhelm Voigt, a trained shoemaker who has spent most of his life in prison, is released after yet another stint and tries to make an honest living in his advanced age. However, this is doomed to failure even from the outset as the militarized, inflexible society of the late German Empire offers practically nothing to citizens who have not served in the military (a fact which applies to Voigt). This catches him in a vicious circle: Without legal registration (just a simple passport would suffice) he can't get any work, and without any work he can't get a legal registration. In the end, a desperate Voigt resorts into breaking into a post office in order to get the passport, while his friend Kalle goes after the money, but both are caught in the process and Voigt once more goes to jail. During his ten-year stint in Sonneberg Prison, however, he gets formal military training, as the warden is a military enthusiast who enlists his convicts into re-enacting famous battles dating back to the Franco-Prussian War. After his discharge from prison, Voigt moves in with his sister Marie and his brother-in-law, Friedrich Hoprecht, and takes care of their lodger, a sick young girl named Liese. One evening, while reading a fairy tale to the girl, Voigt receives the official denial of his permit of residence application; this and Liese's death finally move him into resisting the cruel system he is caught in. He procures the uniform, whose authority by appearance and his trained military bearing enable him to recruit a group of grenadiers right off the street without any questions asked. Voigt and his team proceed to the Köpenick city hall where he has Obermüller and the whole city council arrested, but fails to procure a passport as he had intended (because the passport office is located elsewhere). The publicity which ensues from this feat label the Hauptmann von Köpenick, as he is nicknamed, a folk hero and prankster, but Voigt himself does not draw any joy from this. At length he surrenders to the authorities in exchange for the promise of a legal registration, providing the uniform to prove his identity as the Hauptmann. The police officers take his confession and surrender with surprisingly good humor, and in the end Voigt asks to see himself in a mirror dressed in the uniform, as he had not had the opportunity to do so yet. The policemen comply, and as he sees himself in the mirror, Voigt begins to laugh in amusement at his own reflection, guffawing the last line in the play: "Impossible!" |
Stone Cold | Robert Swindells | 1,993 | A young homeless boy, using the name of Link, recounts how he became homeless after his dad had left him and his mother. Subsequently, Link's mother began seeing Vince, a largely abusive man with a grudge against Link and his sister, Carole. After an argument, Carole moves out to live with her boyfriend. Despite the tension at home, Link performs well at school, successfully getting 5 GCSEs. But he fails to get a job and he sets his mind on leaving home like his sister. Link, however, has nowhere else to go, and is forced onto the streets, facing further hardships due to the close-knit nature of his community. He decides to travel to London instead, with £150 of savings and a sleeping bag on his back. After arriving in London, Link decides on a fresh start, finding a room and a job being top of his priorities. A local newsagent advertises a bedsit with negotiable rent, but due to the landlord's nature, Link is bullied into taking the room at a hefty cost; a fortnight's rent costs him two-thirds of his money. The scruffy, un-ironed clothes work little to Link's favour during job interviews, and Link is left unemployed and depressed after just 2 weeks. With only £9 left, Link is thrown out of the bedsit by the landlord and onto the streets. Facing the dangers of London's streets, Link is mugged for his watch, verbally abused and left without anywhere to sleep on a cold winter's night. Finding a small doorway, Link meets another homeless boy, the streetwise Ginger. Their relationship grows, and Ginger teaches Link how to survive on the streets. Meanwhile, a man nicknamed Shelter starts a spree of murders, targeting the homeless of London. Shelter, a discharged army veteran, served for twenty-nine years, being discharged on mental health grounds. He chooses to "clean up" the streets by luring homeless people into his home before killing them and hiding the bodies under his floorboards. Shelter plans very meticulously. He starts small and tries not to create a pattern in his killings so he cannot be tracked down. By buying a flat and a cat (because "owning a cat is unthreatening") he manages to lure many of the homeless to their deaths with promises of a warm shower and something to eat. While begging on the streets of London, Link and Ginger meet Shelter when they ask him for any spare change. Shelter replies in his usual manner; "Change! I'd change you if I had you in khaki for 6 weeks!". As they walk away he hears them laugh (although this is not mentioned by Link), greatly angering Shelter in the process. Due to these events, the pair become his targets – Laughing Boy One (Ginger) and Laughing Boy Two (Link). Ginger streetwise decides to meet up with some friends, but upon returning, Shelter persuades him to come to his flat, saying that Link is there lying on the floor after an accident. Once there, Shelter kills the hysterical Ginger. After some time, Link believes Ginger has gone off with his "real friends" and that he is on his own again. Shortly after this, Link meets a young girl, Gail, commenting that she is the best-looking "dosser" he has ever seen. He finds himself falling hopelessly in love with her. Link instinctively notices something "off" about Gail, but he does not act upon it, hoping not to lose another friend. After a series of events involving the family of Shelter's victims searching for their missing children, the same story is always given; an old man was seen matching the description of Shelter walking away with the victim. Link believes Ginger has met the same fate, and chooses to spy on Shelter. After an argument with Gail, Link observes Shelter alone, allowing Shelter to lure Link into the flat. In the ensuing struggle, Link manages to smash Shelter's window, which Gail notices, and informs the police; Shelter is caught in the act of attempted murder, and given life imprisonment. Gail tells Link that she does love him but reveals her true identity; she is in fact, an undercover reporter. Gail leaves Link with a handful of banknotes, and Link is left homeless and alone once again with an uncertain future. |
Wolf | Gillian Cross | 1,990 | Cassy, who lives with her grandmother, is awakened by mysterious footsteps one night. The next day, as always when the footsteps are heard, she is sent away to live with her lovely but feckless mother, Goldie, in a squat in London. Goldie, her partner, and his teenage son are producing a play about wolves, and they encourage Cassy to become involved. Cassy does her best to adjust to her new life. However, this time she cannot escape a sense of dread: a feeling that she is being stalked and that something bad is coming. Her fear eventually focuses on the mystery of her missing father, and she learns the secret she has been protected from all her life—that her father is a notorious terrorist. |
The Haunting | Margaret Mahy | 1,982 | Barney Palmer, a shy eight-year-old boy, discovers that one person in each generation of his family has had supernatural gifts – and this generation it seems to be him. He believes he is haunted by the ghost of an uncle he never met, and is oppressed by his fate. However, his sister Tabitha is determined to help him. |
Tulku | Peter Dickinson | 1,979 | Thirteen-year-old Theodore lives in a remote region of China at his father's Mission. When the violence of the Boxer Rebellion finally reaches them, Theodore escapes alone from its destruction. He soon becomes one companion of a formidable Englishwoman, "painted, blasphemous, gun-toting Mrs Jones". She is an amateur botanist and a former actress with an entourage. The party flees bandits into Tibet and take refuge at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. Theodore is briefly seen to be the Tulku, a great lama reincarnated; then the recently conceived child of Mrs Jones and her Chinese lover is identified as the one. Theodore is exposed to the "magnetic, repugnant rituals of Buddhism" and develops as a "whole, willing Christian". Mrs Jones is recruited to remain on site and the boy finally returns to England with the fruit of her botanical expedition. |
Sea Change | Richard Armstrong | 1,947 | Cam Renton has been an apprentice seaman for a year when he arrives at Liverpool to join the crew of the Langdale, a cargo ship heading for Barbados and the Spanish Main. He is working towards becoming an officer and someday captain of his own ship. Because he is dissatisfied with the progress of his training, he asks the Chief Mate for assignment to one of the night watches rather than to routine day-work. The mate gives him short shrift, and during the outward voyage the two are at odds. Rankling under a sense of injustice, Cam devises a scheme to make the mate think he is haunted by a whistling poltergeist. However, he soon realizes this is childish and futile. When they reach the Venezuela, Cam takes a rare opportunity to go ashore at Boca del Sol, a fictional seaport. He and his bunkmate Rusty find themselves in the local prison after a misunderstanding. Cam executes a daring escape, but Captain Carey already has the matter well in hand, and he tells Cam a few home truths showing him that he is getting an excellent training in seamanship, thanks to the mate. Afterward Cam starts to work and study in earnest, and his knowledge of navigation and semaphore are put to use when he becomes part of a skeleton crew aboard a salvaged derelict. |
Death's Shadow | Darren Shan | 2,008 | The book starts about six months after the events of Demon Apocalypse concluded, and is narrated by Bec, who is living staying with Dervish. This novel reveals more information about Beranabus, Kernel, Grubbs, and Bec, as well as the continuing search for information on using the on the great mystical weapon, Kah-Gash of which is sealed inside Grubbs, Kernel and Bec. More information on the mysterious foe known as 'the Shadow' (seen at the climax of Demon Apocalypse) is also discovered. |
Beast | Ally Kennen | 2,006 | Stephen is a 17 year old foster child living on the edge of the law. He has moved from family to family, all the time guarding a great secret. He harbors a huge crocodilan beast, ferocious from birth, bequeathed to him by his criminal father when Stephen was a child. Beast tells the story of his murderous intents toward this monster and his growing relationships, as well as frequently reliving his childhood through flashbacks. |
Clay | David Almond | 2,005 | Davie befriends Stephen Rose, who has come to live with his crazy aunt. He's a quiet boy with a passion for making clay models and an unusual, rather sinister, cast of mind. David and his friends Geordie and Frances come to believe that Stephen may be able to help them against the local bully Mouldy and his gang. |
Framed | Frank Cottrell Boyce | 2,005 | Framed, set in North Wales, is the story of how paintings moved from the National Gallery in London affect the fictional town of Manod. Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage—and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And, that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod- what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps. But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people and what have they got to hide? This is a story inspired by a press cutting describing how, during WWII, the treasured contents of London's National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This is a funny and touching exploration of how art — its beauty and its value — touches the life of one little boy and his big family in a very small town. |
Turbulence | null | null | Turbulence relates the story of Clay, a sixteen year old girl on the verge of taking her GCSEs. She has a brother, called Jamze, who grunts rather than talks, a little sister who always has to be the centre of attention, a dad who she watches Westerns with, a gran who likes horror films, and a mum who invites The Stranger To Dinner. The stranger's name is Sandor, and he is suave, sophisticated, and ingratiating. One by one, Clay's family and friends find themselves sucked into his life and its many dramas, and it is this situation that makes for much of the turbulence that the title refers to. |
Bloodline | F. Paul Wilson | 2,007 | The novel begins a bit after Gia and Vicky recover from the accident brought by the yenceri. Gia, as always persuades Jack to do some fix-its, on the condition that he does not risk too much. The persuasion was followed when a middle-aged woman named Christy Pickering asks for Jack's help. Jack finds that Christy has been having a problem with her daughter Dawn, she is dating a man Jerry Bethlehem, about twice her age (or as Christy puts it: "Old enough to be her father"). The problem is actually with her PI who has just disappeared. Along the way of looking into Bethlehem life, Jack begins to realize a connection between Bethlehem and the leader(Hank Thompson) of a new movement called the Kickers. It seems that both Hank and Jerry went to the same criminal institute known to take extremely violent criminals, the Creighton Institute. Further investigation leads Jack to finding the detective murdered in ways of a water torture. Jack later finds that not only are Hank and Jerry related by Creighton but also by the newfound mysterious oDNA found there. It comes to Jack that the 'o' stands for the wrong side of his life, the Other. He also finds that Jerry is not his real name, it is actually Jeremy Bolton, a sociopath who was captured for a crime far down in Atlanta, GA: the Atlanta Abortion Murders. After getting Dawn pregnant he starts acting differently, showing his true self to her. Upon finding out of her daughters pregnancy, Christy is found dead, presumed suicide by slashing her wrists. Before her death, Jack investigates on the whereabouts of Dawn's father who has never been mentioned by Christy, only to be enlightened with the truth that Dawn is a rape-baby. Further investigation in the oDNA it is realized that Hank, Moonglow(Christy), and Jeremy are all the children of the mysterious oDNA filled Jonah Stevens. As all the pieces come together Jack finds the final piece revealing a dark secret, Jeremy is Dawn's father. |
The Edge | Alan Gibbons | 2,002 | At the start of the book, a mother and her son escape from their evil stepfather. The stepfather, named Chris, hears them and chases them to the local tube station, though he is unsuccessful in his efforts to catch them. Unknown to Chris, the mother, Cathy, and the son, Danny, are going to live with Cathy's mother and father, Joan and Harry, in an area of the country known as "the Edge". Chris believes that he owns Cathy, and tries to get her back. At first, Harry refuses to accept Danny because he is both Mixed Race, and the result of an unplanned teenage pregnancy. As the book progresses, Harry accepts Danny as his grandson. Danny has a lot of trouble at school with a racist bully named Steve Parker and his friends. Danny befriends, and later dates a girl called Nikki, who Steve fancies. Nikki warns him not to get on the wrong side of Steve; it is implied in the novel that Steve and his gang were responsible for an arson attack on a black-owned store. Also during this time Danny encounters his real father, a man named Des, who saves him from Steve's gang. Chris, meanwhile, is attempting in vain to find out where Cathy fled to. She covered her tracks well leaving virtually no clues. Eventually, he finds a newspaper article, and is able to deduce where she and Danny have gone. Chris shows up at Danny's new school, and chases him back to the house. Attempting to retake Cathy by force, he overpowers Harry, before being restrained by police officers. At the end of the novel, Chris is in prison, and Danny now has a happy family and a good life. |
Doomwyte | Brian Jacques | 2,008 | The magpie Griv, resting from a storm, listens to the story of the Dibbun Bisky, about how his ancestor Gonff the Mousethief stole four great jewels from the Great Doomwyte Idol. However, the listeners, all fellow Dibbuns, disbelieve the story and lands Bisky in a pillowfight with the squirrel Dwink. Griv leaves for the lair of the Doomwytes, of which she is a member, and tells the Wytes' leader, Korvus Skurr, about the jewels. Bisky and Dwink are caught in their fight by the infirmary keeper Brother Torilis, who reports them to Abbot Glisam. While reporting to Abbot Glisam, Bisky tells him of his story. Samolus Fixa, a relative of Bisky's, overhears them and confirms to Glisam that there is truth in Bisky's story. Samolus, Bisky and Dwink dig through the Abbey records in the gatehouse, coming upon the journal of Lady Columbine (Gonff's wife), Young Dinny (Gonff's friend) and Gonff himself. All three tell a similar account of Gonff stealing the jewels and offering them to Columbine, who refuses to have them because they have seen too much evil. Gonff then composes riddles to the location of the jewels. Korvus Skurr and his smoothsnake adviser Sicariss hear and believe Griv's story. Thinking that the jewels are within Redwall, Korvus sends crows to kidnap a Redwaller to verify the story. However, a crow is killed by the hare Laird Bosie McScutta of Bowlaynee, and the others subsequently retreat. The Redwallers, having seen this, offers Bosie the position of Abbey Warrior, which he accepts. Korvus, not giving up, now sends his best warriors, the Ravenwytes. Led by the crow Veeku, the Ravenwytes are much more skilled (and brave) than their crow counterparts, and finally manage to capture a squirrel Dibbun. Fortunately Bosie comes to the rescue again, killing a Ravenwyte. All the Ravenwytes, except one named Tarul, flee in panic. Korvus then makes a pact with the giant adder Baliss. Although Baliss is blind, his extraordinary sense of smell and touch compensate for this handicap. Korvus offers all his reptiles to Baliss to eat, in exchange for Baliss's services, which the adder agrees. Luck, however, was not on Korvus's side as Sicariss overhears and begins to distrust him. The party searching for the jewels, which included Bisky, Dwink, Samolus, Skipper Rorgus, Foremole Gullub Gurrpaw and Gatekeeper Umfry Spikkle, attempt to solve Gonff's riddle, which leads them to the cellar and, from there, to an underground tunnel. The tunnel eventually splits, and so does the party. Bisky, Rorgus and Umfry go down one, Samolus, Bosie and Dwink go down another, and Foremole Gullub stays behind to guard the rations. Tarul, having been starved and nearly deafened due to his hiding place near the belltower, finally sees his chance when two Dibbuns come and ring the bells. However, just as Tarul goes between the bells, Sister Violet comes to help and the bells squash Tarul, resulting in his death. Bisky, Rorgus and Umfry encounter Painted Ones at the end of their tunnel, while Samolus, Bosie and Dwink encounter the owl Aluco down theirs. Aluco uses a green jewel to scare away the Painted Ones, and upon close inspection the jewel is revealed to be an eye to the Doomwyte Idol. Aluco agrees to help them, and the company eludes the Painted Ones and re-enter Redwall. However, Bisky is captured by the Painted Ones. After Tarul's death, Cellerhog Corksnout Spikkle (Umfry's father) is ordered to dispose of his body. Baliss arrives just as Corksnout is disposing of Tarul. Sensing a quick meal, Baliss attempts to eat Tarul, but instead headbutts Corksnout. With Corksnout's spikes trapped in his head, Baliss becomes insane and goes after Korvus, whom he blames. Bisky, in captivity, is quickly irritated by Jeg, the son of Chief Chigid. He is joined by a Guosim shrew, Dubble, who is escaping from his bully father, Log-a-Log Tugga Bruster. Dubble and Bisky escape but are captured almost immediately by a tribe of bickering mice called the Gonfelins, who are descendents of Gonff and therefore Bisky's distant relatives. The two meet Pikehead Nokko, head of the Gonfelins, and he reveals that they have a Doomwyte jewel. Bisky also meets Nokko's daughter Spingo, and they become great friends. Tugga Bruster and the Guosim arrive at Redwall and are from there guided to the Painted Ones' lair to rescue Bisky and Dubble. Unbeknownst to them, Bisky and Dubble are leading the Gonfelins to the Painted Ones' lair anyway. The Redwallers and the Guosim see Baliss thrashing around in madness due to Corksnout's spikes, and are soon ambushed by the Painted Ones. However, the Gonfelins arrive just then and the Painted Ones are heavily outnumbered. This, coupled with the death of their chief, Chigid, prompts many Painted Ones to surrender. Tala, wife of Chigid, swears revenge to Tugga Bruster, who had killed her husband. Dubble, upon seeing that Jeg was not with the Painted Ones, chases after him in Mossflower. Jeg had tricked Dwink away from the group and is preparing a fire to burn him when Dubble arrives. After freeing Dwink, Dubble chases after Jeg, and they fight. Before Dubble kills him, Jeg is eaten by Baliss. The Redwallers, Guosim and Gonfelins return to Redwall, unbeknownst that Dubble is not with them. Tugga Bruster then gets humiliated by Nokko, and, to get his own, he attempts to steal Aluco's emerald and make it look like Nokko did it. Unfortunately for him he is caught by Dwink, whose footpaw he breaks. However, by that time most of the Abbey had arrived and the Guosim banish Tugga Bruster. After leaving the Abbey, Tugga Bruster is killed by Tala, who was lurking in the ditch by the Abbey. Dubble goes into a less fimiliar part of Mossflower and is attacked by carrion crows. A black otter, Zaran the Black, drives them off and allows Dubble to rest in her home. She tells him that she is plotting revenge against Korvus Skurr and the Doomwytes, because it was Korvus who killed her husband and young one. Zaran is digging above the Doomwytes' lair in order to make it collapse and cave in, suffocating the inhabitants inside. Baliss has arrived at the Doomwytes' lair and has caved in a single entrance, blocking himself and the Wytes' inside. In a panic, the carrion crows and rooks begin frantically eating their reptilian counterparts, with only Sicariss being spared. Baliss is desperately trying to find cool water to stop his pain momentarily. He finds a lake, and is attacked by Welzz, Korvus Skurr's giant pet catfish. Baliss kills him in defense. Bisky and Spingo steal a Guosim logboat to sail down the River Moss and attempt to find Dubble. They find him and Zaran above the Doomwytes' lair, doing their tunneling operation. Bisky and Spingo join but Spingo gets buried alive in a depression. Zaran makes holes for her to breathe while Bisky and Dubble return to Redwall for help. At the abbey, Dwink, Rorgus and Foremole are joined in their search by Perrit, a female squirrel. Gonff's next clue frequently cites "Friar's Grace" which turns out to be a clay pot made by Goody Stickle. To Brother Torilis's dismay, the searchers break the pot, revealing another green emerald and the next clue. Going on, the clue mentions the "wild sweet gatherers home" which turns out to be outside the Abbey. They eventually find loads and loads of bees, and among them, Blodd Apis, a mad, mentally deranged hedgehog. Despite her madness, Apis is very cunning. She manages to get them all drunk on her mead while she is unaffected because she lives on it. She was about to pour wood ants' juice on them to make her bees sting them to death when Foremole, who proved less potent to the drink, smashes the juice on her. the bees then promptly kill Apis. Searching her body, the searchers find another Doomwyte jewel, a ruby this time. Bisky and Dubble arrive just after Dwink, Rorgus, Foremole and Perrit leave. They inform the Redwallers about the situation above the Doomwytes' lair, and Friar Skurpul leads the moles to the rescue as Deputy Foremole. Bisky and Dubble return with loads of Guosim, Gonfelins and Redwall moles. On the way, Dubble is offered the position of Log-a-log. However, he refuses and gives the title to Garul, an older shrew. The moles manage to successfully rescue Spingo, but Skurpul is buried alive in her place. Upon seeing the chaos in the Doomwytes' lair, the woodlanders attempt to finish off the dirty work. Bisky, Nokko, Dubble and Bosie attempt to rescue the moles trapped on the ceiling. Three moles fall to their deaths, but the rest are saved. Korvus then sees that Sicariss was lying to him all along. After killing the smoothsnake, he attempts to escape through a recess in the wall. Zaran was too skilled and had worked too hard to be denied by now, and she promptly kills Korvus. Bosie also suffers a serious wound from Veeku and goes into the Bloodwrath, slaying dozens of Wytes. Eventually, the battle is won and the Wytes defeated. However, Baliss is still in the cave. To trap him there, Gobbo, a member of the Gonfelins, makes a fire at the entrance. Bosie, Zaran, Spingo and the mole Frubb collapse the Doomwytes' lair, crushing Baliss inside. The party then returns to Redwall, where they have a great feast, mainly composing of Dubble's dishes. The Abbey mourns the death of Skurpul, Ruttur, Rooter and Grabul, the moles who died saving Spingo. Nokko then hands over the last Doomwyte jewel and declares the Gonfelins as citizens of Redwall. Abbot Glisam, seeing that the jewels have seen too much evil, buries them in the memory of the moles on top of the crushed Doomwyte rock. Seasons later, Perrit becomes Mother Abbess of Redwall and has a daughter, Mittee, with Dwink. Zaran marries Rorgus and has Rorzan, a son. Bisky and Spingo have another daughter, Andio, and Dubble becomes head Friar of the Kitchen. Glisam, having retired as Abbot, becomes Abbey Teacher, teaching the illiterate Umfry Spikkle how to read and write. |
Troy | null | null | It starts ten years into the Trojan War. Xanthe and Marpessa are sisters living in Troy, which is besieged by the Greeks. After Paris swept Helen away from her husband in Greece to his home in Troy, Menelaus started a war to win her back. The Gods have already decided its outcome of the war. The Goddess Aphrodite, who started it all when she promised Paris the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, is tired of the war. Therefore, she turns her attention to the two sisters. When her son Eros, the God of Love, aims his love arrow, neither of the sisters can escape its power. They both fall in love with Alastor, a handsome fallen soldier with power. The story is filled with encounters with Greek gods, which only Marpessa can remember. |
Little Soldier | Bernard Ashley | null | Kaninda, who escaped when his family was gunned down in their own home in Africa, is now in London. He longs to escape back to his country of Lasai so that he can avenge his family. Meanwhile, on the streets of London another form of tribal warfare - gang warfare - threatens to draw him in. |
Harlequin | Bernard Cornwell | 2,000 | ;Prologue: The narrative begins in the village of Hookton, where Thomas is growing up under his once mad father, who is also the village priest. Thomas has been training secretly with a bow, despite the fact that his father forbids it. On Easter Morning, 1342, a French party of raiders arrive under the command of Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, a French Knight whose crest is a blue field with three golden hawks on it. Also with Sir Guillaume is a warrior dressed all in silver, known simply as the Harlequin, who has hired Sir Guillaume to carry out the raid to steal Hookton's treasure, the Lance of St. George. The Harlequin kills Thomas' father, and the lance is stolen. Thomas manages to reach his bow and kill four of the raiders, but the Harlequin and Sir Guillaume both escape. ;Brittany: The book then moves forward by four years. Thomas has gone to France to serve in the English army and take vengeance on his father's killers. He is serving under a competent commander, Will Skeat, and the army is besieging the city of La Roche-Derrien. The army assaults the city and is beaten back with many losses. Among the city defenders is the Blackbird, a woman who fights with a crossbow. Her real name is Jeanette, and she is the countess of Amorica. She wounds an English knight, Sir Simon Jekyll, in the arm after the assault, and Jekyll vows revenge. Skeat and Thomas later visit the army commander, the Earl of Northampton. Thomas has discovered a way to assault the city from the rear- a weak wooden palisade is all that prevents the army's entry, and they are weakly placed. The Earl gives Thomas permission to lead an assault, with Jekyll in nominal command (though everyone in the army hates him). Thomas and his men successfully penetrate the city, open the gates and the town is sacked. During the onslaught Jekyll encounters Jeanette and attempts to rape her, but is prevented by the Earl, who walks in on him with his pants down. Jekyll is chastised for his actions, but the war calls the Earl away to another campaign. Skeat and his men, including Thomas, are left to garrison the captured city. Thomas and his men guard Jeanette from Sir Simon, but Jeanette will not let them in her house. As the days go by, Skeat and his men conduct a series of raids on French villages. A small French force from Lannion under the command of Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc attempts to destroy Skeat's army, but Skeat refuses to fight him. Jekyll, however, is eager for plunder, so he and his men battle Sir Geoffrey's force. Jekyll loses the battle despite putting up a powerful defense, and Geoffrey then attempts to charge Skeat's archers. His force is mowed down and destroyed by the English longbows, and Thomas captures him, but lets him go, to Jekyll's fury. Thomas' response is to tell Jekyll to "go and boil your arse". Later that night, Thomas is ambushed by Jekyll's men and brutally beaten, but he is saved by Father Hobbe, a friend who constantly reminds him of his vow of revenge. Thomas then befriends Jeanette and the two make a plan to take revenge on Jekyll. Skeat and his men then move to attack Lannion, weakened by the loss of Geoffrey's force. During the attack Geoffrey is killed by Thomas. A French relief force attempts to destroy the English, but they are destroyed by Skeat's archers. That night, Thomas and Jeanette lure Jekyll out of the town. He attempts to rape Jeanette again, and Thomas tries to kill him, he shoots Jekyll's squire, and injures Jekyll but Jekyll escapes. ;Normandy: Thomas and Jeanette can no longer stay at La Roche-Derrien, as Jekyll will kill them both, so they decide to take refuge with the Duke of Brittany who Jeanette is related to through her husband. The Duke, however, is inhospitable; He rapes Jeanette and kidnaps her son, but Jeanette escapes with Thomas. She is traumatized by the event, but Thomas nurses her back to health. The two then rejoin the main English army under Edward III that has invaded the channel. Jeanette becomes attached to the Black Prince as a Lady of Honour. Thomas takes part in the assault on the French city of Caen. During the battle he recognizes the coat of arms of Sir Guillaume d'Evecque, and shoots him in the thigh. He also rescues a young woman named Eleanor from being raped by an English man-at-arms. As he leaves the house, Jekyll sees him and knocks him unconscious, afterwards leaving him to hang. Thomas is rescued by Eleanor, who is revealed to be Sir Guillaume's illegitimate child. Sir Guillaume appears to Thomas with a missing eye, along with the wound Thomas gave him. Sir Guillaume tells Thomas that it was the Harlequin who gave him the wound. Sir Guillaume, like Thomas, wants to kill the Harlequin, and the two become friends. Thomas is nursed back to health by a Jewish doctor named Mordecai. Meanwhile Jeanette confronts Jekyll in front of the Prince, who has Jekyll banished from the army. Thomas learns a great deal about his family from Sir Guillaume and a churchman in Caen. His father was a member of the infamous Vexille family- the former counts of Astarac and descendants of the Cathar heretics. Thomas also learns that the Vexille family may be in possession of the Holy Grail, and the Harlequin had gone to Hookton to find it as well as the Lance of St. George. Despite this new information Thomas decides to return to the English army with Eleanor who becomes his lover and simply be an archer for the time being. Meanwhile Sir Simon Jekyll decides to join the French army for a chance to take revenge on both Jeanette and the Black Prince. He impresses several knights through his battle skills, and even manages to defeat a black knight- the Harlequin, who reveals himself to be Guy Vexille, the Count of Astarac, and Thomas' cousin. ;Crecy: Thomas manages to rejoin Will Skeat's band and helps the English defeat a French force guarding a river ford in the battle of Blanchetaque. The two armies then line up for battle at Crecy. Sir Guillaume, Sir Simon, and Guy Vexille are all on the French side. During the epic battle the French are massacred by the English arrows, but the fighting soon becomes hand to hand. Jekyll encounters Thomas on the battlefield and attempts to kill him, but Sir Guillaume stabs Jekyll in the side and kills him. Sir Guillaume then encounters Vexille and tries to kill him, as do Thomas and Skeat. Vexille severely wounds Skeat in the head, and Sir Guillaume is nearly killed by the English, though Thomas rescues him. Guy manages to escape, though not before he recognizes Thomas. Skeat is sent to Mordecai to recover and Sir Guillaume is set free to help him. |
All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye | Christopher Brookmyre | 2,005 | Jane Fleming, a 46-year-old housewife and grandmother, lives a quiet life in suburban East Kilbride. All that changes when her son, Ross, who works in the arms industry, is forced into hiding when his latest research attracts unwanted attention. Aided by the mysterious Bett, Jane must confront drug dealers, assassins and ruthless arms dealers in order to save her son. |
A Big Boy did it and Ran Away | Christopher Brookmyre | 2,001 | Anti-terrorist forces are put on alert when it is learned that the notorious international terrorist the Black Spirit plans to perform an attack on an unknown British target. Meanwhile, 30-something Raymond Ash is struggling to cope with the banality of his new life as an English teacher, having sold his video game shop and decided to settle down with his wife and new baby. While visiting Glasgow airport he sees his old friend Simon Darcourt who supposedly died when terrorists blew up an airliner a few years before. He has no idea that Darcourt is in reality the Black Spirit. Darcourt for his part sees Raymond and decides to settle an old score with him by incorporating him into his terrorist plot. Raymond ends up being abducted by Darcourt's terrorists and escaping, then finds himself aiding policewoman Angelique de Xavia in a valiant attempt to foil their plot, the two being the only people with a chance of reaching the site of the attack in time - the hydroelectric plant at Dubh Ardrain. |
Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie | David Lubar | 2,005 | Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie follows the character of Scott Hudson as he attempts to survive high school and attract the attention of his crush Julia, a beautiful freshman. If dealing with school activities and growing up isn't stressful enough, Scott's mother has announced that she's going to have a baby. In an attempt to make all of this more manageable, Scott tries to write down tips for getting through daily life and high school for his unborn sibling. |
The Boy and the Darkness | Sergey Lukyanenko | 1,997 | The novel's protagonist, Danny (), accidentally encounters a Sunny Kitten, a being made of True Light (sunlight appearing only at dusk or dawn) reflected off a True Mirror. The Kitten offers the boy a magical adventure and reveals a Secret Door, explaining that each world is connected to another with three such gateways. The world they find is completely without sunlight. Soon, Danny discovers that, in this world, humans sold their sunlight to otherworldly traders for certain comforts of modern civilization (electricity, hot water, indoor plumbing, etc.) and magical Wings. These Wings allow a child no older than 20 (adults are too heavy) to literally take off and fly as a bird. As such, most male children become Wingers, defending their cities against the creatures of the Dark - Flyings, living in dark towers across the world. The Flyings used to be human, but most turned to Darkness to allow them to eternally feel the winds and fly free. They serve a mysterious Dark Lord and have weapons capable of wiping out cities whole. However, due to an unspoke status quo, the Flyings refrain from using the Black Fire (similar to napalm or Greek fire), and the Wingers stick to defending their cities and do not mount organized attacks against the creatures of Darkness. Danny soon becomes an Elder Winger (Wingers always fly in pairs), taking a young boy-Winger named Lan as his Younger, despite them being roughly the same age. After Danny lets a wounded Flying go, the other Elders blind him with a knife, and only the Kitten is able to use the power of the Light to heal his eyes, unintentionally giving him True Sight (he can see through low-density objects and see to the very core of living things). Soon, a trio of traders arrives to their city, and Danny hires both of them out as escorts until they reach the traders' city. While defending the caravan against a Flying attack, Lan is taken prisoner. Danny manages to rescue him, destroying a tower in the process as well as the second Secret Door home, but Lan is already poisoned with the Darkness. His essence is slowly being stripped away from him, and Danny does all he can to ensure that his friend remains human. After arriving to the traders' city, the Kitten takes the boys to an arms shop, where he demands that the shop owner sell them the True Sword, the only weapon capable of defeating the Dark Lord. The shopkeep, at first, tries to sell them several other powerful swords, acquired on other worlds; however, the Kitten remains adamant. The shopkeep gives in and explains Danny the nature of the Sword - it can only be used once and only against the wielder's True Enemy. In order to get the sword, the boy must pass through several trials, facing his True Fear - the Darkness. After that, Garet, the wife of the trader whom they escorted earlier, offers the boys a boat ride to a sunny world. Garet and her daughter pass their sailing boat through a portal. After a bit of swimming in the nude, Garet pulls Danny into a secret hold and makes love to him. After that, Danny discovers that the Kitten knew about it and, possibly, even set it up. Danny needed to grow up really fast, as, on the inside, he was already a man trapped in a teenager's body. Angry, Danny demands they return to Lan's world, and the two Wingers and the Kitten return to their city, trying to convince the people that they must organize and take the fight to the tower of the Dark Lord. Unwilling to listen to Danny, the Wingers refuse. The Kitten and Lan then tell Danny that they must force the Wingers' hand by dropping a few canisters of the Black Fire onto the city, making it seem as a Flying attack. After raiding a nearby tower, they find a dying Flying who reveals that he was brought to this world the same way as Danny - by a Kitten of his own, but chose Darkness instead of the Light. Taking the canisters, they return home and argue who should drop them. During a distraction, Lan takes the Fire and drops it onto the city from high altitude. While many people die, Shoki, the Wingers' unofficial leader, still refuses to be baited. However, his grandfather then dies in the fire, and Shoki finally decides to fight. Taking all the Wingers and several thousand adults as foot soldiers, they march onto the main tower. In the final battle, the Wingers and the adults distract the main Flying force, while Danny, Lan, and the Kitten sneak into the tower to find the Lord. The Kitten soon abandons the boys, saying that he must go into the tower basement, where the Flyings keep a large cache of Sun Stones, from which he can draw the Light. The Kitten intends to become the new sun, hoping that the love of humans across the world will give him fuel. The boys continue moving through the tower. Eventually, they reach a mirrored room, where they encounter a former Winger, with a score to settle with Danny. He reveals that there is no such thing as a Dark Lord. He is simply the Current One, the most qualified to deal with a specific problem - Danny, in this case. Then appears Lan's former Elder, who joined the Flyings shortly before Danny's arrival. They both begin to cause the Darkness to take over Lan, and he joins their side. Danny must figure out who is his True Enemy and strike him down. He turns around and sees his reflection in a mirror as an adult. Realizing that he is his own True Enemy, Danny uses the True Sword to destroy his adult essence, leaving him a boy again. As the three dark creatures prepare to attack, Lan once again changes sides and kills the Current One, but himself falls from the other Flying's sword. Danny manages to push the Flying to open the third Secret Door to Earth, where the sunlight kills the creature of Darkness, also destroying the door in the process. As the Kitten offers to grant him one last wish - to return home, Danny uses the Kitten's sun's Light to revive Lan, purging him of Darkness. They fly away moments before the tower crumbles to dust. The new sun breaks through the eternal dark, and the Wingers see the sunlight for the first time in their lives. The war is over. Danny and Lan return home. As the sun begins to set, Lan brings out a mirrored box, and Danny realizes that it is a True Mirror. The last rays of sunlight reflect off the mirror, and the Kitten reappears, claiming that he is simply a version of his now much larger self. He reveals to them another Secret Door, leading to a world other than Earth. From there, he hopes to find a doorway to Earth. The novel ends with the three characters stepping across the threshold, apparently into a world filled with werewolves. |
South Park and Philosophy: You Know, I Learned Something Today | null | 2,006 | The book includes contributions from twenty-two academics in the field of philosophy. Topics include issues of sexuality involved in depicting Saddam Hussein and Satan as gay lovers, existentialism as applied to the death of Kenny, and a debate about whether feminists can enjoy the show due to some of its misogynistic characters. The contributors to the work utilize philosophical concepts derived from Plato, Aristotle, Freud and Sartre and place them in a South Park context. The book's contributors all attempted to analyze the philosophical and cultural aspects of South Park in the work. One of the authors, David Koepsell, wrote about the controversial episode dealing with Scientology, entitled: "Trapped in the Closet". Koepsell cited the fact that the series won a Peabody Award due to its willingness to criticize intolerance in April 2006 as a "special concern for criticizing and countering intolerance", and the notion that "the Church of Scientology suffers from the widely held perceptions that it seeks to silence former members and others who criticize its beliefs and practices" as the motivation behind the episode. Koepsell analyzed Comedy Central's reaction to the episode itself, in a section of his book entitled "2005-2006: Comedy Central Caves". He mentions South Park's usage of the onscreen caption "this is what Scientologists actually believe." in the episode, noting that the same device was used in the episode "All About the Mormons?." In referencing this similar use of the onscreen caption device, Koepsell seemed to point to an inconsistency in the behavior of Comedy Central relative to the episode. He explained "By a long shot, this show was more kind to Scientology than was "All About the Mormons" to Mormonism." He noted Comedy Central had suggested it would not rebroadcast the episode for the second time, though it later announced on July 12, 2006 that it would. The book can thus be summed up in the following sentence: "Perhaps the truth is in the middle." |
Emily's Quest | Lucy Maud Montgomery | 1,927 | Emily Starr and Teddy Kent have been friends since childhood, and as Teddy is about to leave to further his education as an artist, Emily believes that their friendship is blossoming into something more. On his last night at home, they vow to think of each other when they see the star Vega of the Lyre. As Emily grows as a writer and learns to deal with the loneliness of having her closest friends gone, life at New Moon changes. Mr. Carpenter, Emily's most truthful critic and favorite teacher dies (warning Emily, even as he dies to "Beware --- of --- italics."). She becomes closer to Dean Priest, even as she fears he wants love when she only has friendship to give. Worst of all, Emily and Teddy become distant as he focuses on building his career and she hides her feelings behind pride. Disappointed by her failed romance, Emily throws herself into her work and writes a novel A Seller of Dreams. Several publishers reject it so she submits it to the opinion of Dean Priest, the only person she feels is capable of giving her an honest opinion. Dean lies to Emily and tells her the book is "pretty and flimsy". In her grief, Emily burns the manuscript and then, crazed by what she has done, she rushes out the door, only to trip on the stairs and have her foot pierced terribly by scissors. The injury and subsequent blood poisoning threaten Emily's life. Dean comforts her through her long recovery, and she comes to depend on his companionship. She recovers her health but loses her desire to write. Eventually, she decides to marry Dean. Their engagement is a mixture of happiness and, for Emily, feelings of imprisonment. Emily's happiest moments come while furnishing the Disappointed House, which Emily has always loved. One night after the house was complete, Emily feels drawn to it and has an out-of-body experience where she saves Teddy from sailing on the doomed Flavian. Emily realizes she loves Teddy. She breaks off her engagement but grieves over the loss of Dean's friendship. Before he leaves, Dean tells her that he thought her book was good but he was jealous of her having something apart from him. Although devastated by this revelation, since she can never get her book back, Emily's faith in her talent is restored. After breaking off her engagement, Emily regains her ability to write and has one golden summer where she and Teddy almost share their love. Misunderstanding and Emily's pride keep them apart, and Teddy leaves with no goodbye and nothing more than a newspaper clipping. Emily goes through another series of comic courtships and writes a novel to keep her Aunt Elizabeth amused while she is bedridden. Her novel is eventually published, but the joy of its publication is ruined when she hears that Teddy is engaged to her best friend, Ilse Burnley. The engagement causes a strange friendship to grow between Emily and Mrs. Kent, Teddy's jealous mother, which eventually results in Mrs. Kent revealing that she had replaced a letter in which Teddy confessed his love to Emily with a newspaper clipping. Emily says that Teddy must never be told of this, but triumphs in the knowledge that he did love her once. The day of Ilse and Teddy's wedding comes. Just before the ceremony, Ilse hears of the near death of their old friend Perry Miller. Ilse rushes off, declares her love for Perry, and leaves Teddy angry and ashamed. Ilse, true to form, laughs the matter off and eventually marries Perry. Years pass without Emily hearing of Teddy until she unexpectedly hears his old call. She goes to him, and years of misunderstanding and pride are swept away with a look. Dean, hearing of their engagement, gives the Disappointed House to Emily and Teddy and promises his future friendship. |
Nebula Maker | Olaf Stapledon | 1,976 | As in Star Maker, the book begins with a single human observer staring at the sky and considering the immensity of the cosmos. From that point, however, the similarities end. The narrator of Nebula Maker immediately sees the face of the creator - an ever-shifting mask of constant change, human then alien, demonic then angelic. The narrator watches in wonder as this vision of God creates our universe. The universe is peopled at first by the immense, bizarre lifeforms whose history takes up the rest of the manuscript - the nebulae. Singularly or in clusters, these vast entities come to consciousness and express their passions through a frenzied cosmic dance. Some, however become perverted and fanatical, and war breaks out in the heavens. It is discovered that nebulae can journey to other nebulae if they feed on the dead "flesh" of their fellows, and this development fuels aeons of conflict. The novel then focuses on two individual nebulae, Bright Heart and Fire Bolt, who embody the human types Stapledon was most fascinated by - the saint and the revolutionary. Bright Heart preaches peace, and is martyred for his troubles; Fire Bolt brings about revolution and changes the social order of the cosmos. With Bright Heart dead, and Fire Bolt crumbling into senescence, the remaining nebulae attempt to bring about universal peace and harmony, but a quarrel over how this is to be done once again results in war. The history of the nebulae is thus one of tragedy, and as they dissolve into the stars and planets of our own cosmical time, the narrator wonders at the creator who could author such a complex dance of hope and futility. |
Master Alvin | Orson Scott Card | null | This book has yet to be published. At this time, the expected release date is unknown. |
The Wives of Israel | Orson Scott Card | null | This book has yet to be released. It will be a continuation of the previous novel in the Women of Genesis series; Rachel and Leah. The book left off after Rachel had married Jacob, following the marriage of her sister Leah. Card states in the afterword of said novel that he had not intended to have the story be continued in two more books, but that it would have been too much to include the marriage/concubinage of the sister's handmaidens and so decided to put them into consecutive books to cover that subject as well as the children and their raising and adventures (chiefly Joseph and his brothers, and Joseph's further adventures into slavery in Egypt, possibly from the point of his wife). Though Card says that he plans to leave the matter of Judah's daughter-in-law, Tamar, alone. |
Weep Not, Child | Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o | 1,964 | The book is divided into two parts and eighteen chapters. Part one deals mostly with the education of Njoroge, while part two deals with the rising revolutionary, anti-colonist turmoil in Kenya. Njoroge, a young boy, is urged to attend school by his mother. He is the first one out of his family who is able to go to school. His family lives on the land of Jacobo, an African made rich by his dealings with white settlers, namely Mr. Howlands, the most powerful land owner in the area. Njoroge's brother Kamau works as an apprentice to a carpenter while Boro, the eldest living son, is troubled by his experiences while in forced service during World War II, one of which was witnessing the death of his elder brother. Ngotho, Njoroge's father and a respected man in the surrounding area, tends Mr. Howlands' crops more to preserve and keep an eye on his ancestral land, than for any compensation or loyalty. One day, a strike is called for higher wages for the black workers. Ngotho does not know if he should participate at first, because he would likely lose his job. Finally, however, he decides to go to the gathering, although his two wives do not agree. At the demonstration, there are calls for higher wages. Suddenly Jacobo, the father of Mwihaki, appears with the white police inspector. He tries to put an end to the strike (the police brought him there to pacify the native people). Ngotho attacks Jacobo. The result is a big tumult with two people being killed. Nevertheless, Jacobo survives and swears revenge. Njoroge’s family is forced to move and Ngotho loses his job. Njoroge’s education is thereafter funded by his brothers who seem to lose respect for their father. Mwihaki then goes to a girls' only boarding school, leaving Njoroge relatively alone. He reflects upon her leaving, and realizes that he was embarrassed by his father's actions towards Jacobo. For this reason, Njoroge is not upset by her exit and their separation. Njoroge stays close to home where he switches to another school. For a time, everyone's attention is focused on the upcoming trial of Jomo Kenyatta - a revered leader of the movement. Many blacks think that he is going to bring forth Kenya’s independence. But Jomo loses the trial and is imprisoned. This results in further protests and greater suppression of the black population. Jacobo and a white landowner, Mr. Howlands, fight against the rising activities of the Mau Mau, an organization striving for Kenyan economic, political, and cultural independence. Jacobo accuses Ngotho of being the leader of the Mau Mau and tries to imprison the whole family. Meanwhile, the situation in the country is deteriorating. Six black men are taken out of their houses and executed in the woods. One day Njoroge meets Mwihaki again, who returned from boarding school. Although Njoroge thought he had needed to avoid her, their friendship is not affected by the situation between their fathers. Then Njoroge passes a very important exam that allows him to advance to High School. The whole village is proud of him. They collect enough money so that Njoroge is able to attend High School. After a few months, Jacobo is killed. He is murdered in his office by a member of the Mau Mau. Mr. Howlands has Njoroge removed from school for questioning. Both father and son are brutally beaten before release and Ngotho is left barely alive. Although there doesn't seem to be a connection between Njoroge's family and the murder, it is eventually revealed that Njoroge's brothers are behind the assassination. Boro, the real leader of the Mau Mau. Ngotho soon dies from his injuries and Njoroge finds out that his father was protecting his brothers. Kamau has also been imprisoned for life. Only Njoroge and his two mothers remain free with Njoroge left as the sole provider to his two mothers. With no hope of making ends meet, Njoroge gives up all hope of going further in school and loses faith in God. Njoroge now hopes for Mwihaki's support, but she is angry because of her father’s death. When he finally pledges his love to her, she refuses to leave with him, realizing her obligation to Kenya and her mother. He finally decides to leave town and makes an attempt to take his own life; however, he fails at even this because his mothers find him before he is able to hang himself . The novel closes with Njoroge's utter sense of hopelessness and his own feelings of cowardice. |
Mister Pip | Lloyd Jones | 2,006 | Mister Pip is the story of a girl caught in the throes of war on the island of Bougainville. It is through the guidance of her devoted but strict Christian mother and teacher that Matilda survives but more importantly, through her connection with Pip, a fictional creation from the mind of Charles Dickens in Great Expectations. Pip helps Matilda maintain a desire to live, especially after her mother, the wise Mr. Watts, and her island cease to exist. The novel opens with a colorful description of Mr. Watts, whom the children call Pop-Eye due to his eyes that "stuck out further than anyone else's". We learn of his marriage to Grace, a native of Bougainville, which serves to explain why he remained long after most of the white men had abandoned the island. With military tension rising and the school room growing over with creepers, Mr. Watts decides to take on the task of educating the children. Despite his claim to be limited in intelligence, he introduces the students to one of the greatest English authors, Charles Dickens. Dolores, Matilda's overzealous Christian mother, expresses an extreme distrust of the teacher and his curriculum. She does everything in her power to ensure that her daughter's mind is not polluted by the strange white man, including making weekly visits to the classroom. She even goes as far as stealing and hiding Mr. Watts's Great Expectations book, an action that causes immense trouble when redskin soldiers enter the village and find Mr. Pip's name carved into the sand. Coincidentally, it is Matilda who wrote his name, and it is her guilt that makes her empathize with her mother, who refuses to give up the book as evidence of Pip as not a rebel but a fictional character. Convinced that this Mr. Pip must be a spy who has been hidden from them, the redskins destroy the houses. All they leave behind are smoking fragments of Matilda's former life. As the tension escalates even further, a group of rebel soldiers returns to the village to question the only remaining white man, Mr. Watts. He agrees to explain himself over the course of seven nights, and proceeds to tell a story that entwines Pip's life even further with his own. Matilda develops an idea about why he returned to the island with his wife and stayed after all the other whites left. Now that his wife has died, Mr. Watts considers moving on and offers Matilda a chance to escape from the island. However, she would have to choose between Mr. Watts and her mother but before this can happen the rebels flee and the redskin soldiers return. This time the soldiers kill Mr. Watts, and when Matilda's mother speaks up she is taken away and raped. Matilda herself is almost raped, but her mother gives up her life to spare her. In the wake of surviving the slaughter of her village, her mother and Mr. Watts, Matilda loses her will to live. She nearly drowns, but is revived by the memory of Pip, who also narrowly escaped death. After clinging to a log, Matilda is picked up by the fisherman who had arranged to escape with Mr. Watts, and eventually she reaches Australia. It is there that Matilda is reunited with her father and begins to pick up the pieces of her disrupted life. She comes to terms with the reality of Mr. Watts, who altered both the facts of his life and abridged the contents in Great Expectations in an effort to provide escape from the world, both for himself and for the children. She reveals her success in becoming a scholar and a Dickens expert and concludes her narrative by emphasizing the power of literature to offer escape and solace in the worst of times. |
Person or Persons Unknown | Bruce Cook | 1,998 | Women of the street are being brutally murdered in Covent Garden, and Sir John is baffled. Worse, one of the Fieldings' acquaintances becomes the prime suspect. |
Moon of Mutiny | Lester del Rey | null | Fred Halpern, a young man (presumably high-school age) training at the Goddard Space Academy is expelled a week before graduation due to his long history of insubordination and arrogance, despite his top-rate piloting skills and uncanny ability to accurately figure trajectories and orbits in his head. Some time prior to the opening of the book and his training at the academy, Fred had been living with his father aboard the space station which his father commands. When it had become clear that the United States was falling behind in the race to the moon, Fred stole one of the taxi rockets from the station and made a successful trip to the moon on his own. On touch-down, however, his rocket tipped over, landing on the air-lock, and trapping Fred inside. The rescue effort was costly and dangerous, and resulted in the death of one of the rescuers. Because of this history, Fred is looked upon by other cadets and space-men as a glory-hog and pariah, but is lauded by the media as a hero. This causes much tension in Fred's relationships as he tries to escape his past, and earn a place in space. Fred's hero status in the popular media has allowed him to earn enough money to pay for school, and donate his surplus earnings to the struggling Moon colony, which he hopes someday to join. Upon his expulsion from the academy, Fred temporarily returns to his father's station before his exile to earth begins. He realizes that he has grown out of life on the station, and that he is unable to contribute there in any meaningful way. During his stay on the station he meets Dr. Sessions, the leader of the imminent expedition to the moon, but can't bring himself to ask for a place on the already overcrowded expedition. At the last minute, one of the expedition's pilots is injured, and in order to embark in the desired launch window, Fred is asked to join despite the reservations of Sessions. During the course of the expedition Fred has several personal epiphanies regarding his past and his current goals. He realizes that his past behavior has been arrogant, self-centered, and reckless, and makes a decision early on to grow up and learn discipline and good judgment. He also learns that underlying his arrogance and recklessness lies real and valuable skills which he can put to good use if his judgment can be honed. |
Venus | Ben Bova | 2,001 | Martin Humphries is the head of the giant Humphries Space Systems and at his 100th birthday party announces a prize of ten billion dollars to anyone who can recover any remains of his eldest son Alex. Alex was killed two years previously on a mission to Venus. Van Humphries, Martin's son and younger brother to Alex takes up the challenge despite, and because of, a mutual dislike between son and father. Van assembles a ship and crew and heads off to Venus, shadowed by the mysterious Lars Fuchs. Upon entering the Venusian atmosphere they find the clouds are alive with bacterial life which, unfortunately, takes a liking to the ship. The ship is soon in trouble as it is eaten away by the bacteria. Van's more conservative ship is quickly eaten away by the bacteria, while Lars' bulky ship manages to survive. Van is rescued by Lars Fuch's ship but most of his crew are lost. Van finds Lars a brutal yet intelligent man who rules his ship with a rod of iron. The heat builds as they descend through the Venusian atmosphere. Lars has to deal with mutiny and they find out that Lars Fuchs is Van Humphries' real father. At the end of the novel the intense heat, Lars' and Van's health and volcanic activity conspire to produce a climactic finale, in which a sulfur-based lifeform is revealed to exist on Venus. Alex's remains are recovered and the money claimed. |
Agaguk | Yves Thériault | null | This novel is a story of cultural conflict between the Inuit of Northern Quebec and white men, set in the 1940s. It is told from the perspective of the main character Agaguk, an Inuit man. Agaguk diverges from his tribe with a woman named Iriook. Through their journeys, Yves Thériault explores Agaguk's mastery of nature as well as the general relationship between the Inuit and the tundra. Furthermore, by describing the conflicts with the white men, the themes of alcoholism, assimilation as well as economic and judicial injustice are thoroughly explored. The personal aspect of the novel also allows for an intriguing analysis of Agaguk and his behaviour towards his wife in particular. |
The Wheel of Darkness | Douglas Preston | 2,007 | This novel picks up shortly following the events depicted in The Book of the Dead. Agent Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, are studying in Tibet with Buddhist monks; they are recuperating from the events depicted in the novel The Book of the Dead. An artifact is stolen from the monastery, and the monks ask if Pendergast can retrieve it. Pendergast pursues the thief and artifact through China, Rome, and London. He finds that the original thief was killed and the artifact stolen by someone else. He and Constance track the killer to a new luxury ocean liner, the Britannia which is headed to New York City. Aboard the ship, Pendergast quickly eliminates all but a few possible suspects. He coerces the ships' guards to help him in exchange for helping them stop cheaters at the casino on the ship. The killer is murdering random people on the ship and everyone is panicking. There also a mysterious shadow thing being sighted and causing inevitable panic. The captain refuses to go to the nearest port which creates more problems. Fearing the loss of a life over the loss of profit, the crew mutinies and puts a female commander in charge. Pendergast locates the artifact's thief. However, he actually looks at it and undergoes a mental change. It brings out his "evil side"; where he doesn't care about anyone but himself and to think that humans are pathetic and should be cleansed. Meanwhile, the new captain has tricked the crew out of the bridge and locked it down. She aims for 'Carrion Rock', a land mass that will easily sink the ship. It is later revealed she herself had looked at the artifact and had decided to kill everyone on board as revenge for not being promoted to what she believes is her rightful position. The crew plead for mercy from the old captain; he has the codes needed to unlock the ship. He leaves them to their fate. The shadow thing is revealed to be a Tulpa or thought form, established by the mental energy from the passenger that possesses the stolen artifact. It attacks Pendergast as ordered, intended to drain from him all who he is and most of his body mass. Pendergast retreats into the carefully structured order of his own mind. Deep inside, he converses with a simulacrum of his deceased brother, Diogenes. He encourages the agent to fight back. Pendergast does so, sending the being on a course against those who had viewed the artifact. In the course of this, it burns away the evil influence it has on him. It attacks the ship's captain killing her; she manages to open the bridge door before she dies. The crew steers away from Carrion Rock saving the ship's survivors; previous maneuvers had left about two hundred dead due to damage. It is then revealed that this was an elaborate plan of the monks to find the reincarnation of the 'leader' of the temple. They reveal a prophecy that the guardian of the 'leader' will bring the artifact back to them after it has been stolen. The 'leader' turns out to be Constance's child (from when Diogenes seduced her) which she did not abort even though she had planned to. |
The Careful Use of Compliments | Alexander McCall Smith | 2,007 | After her son, Charlie's birth, Isabel feels that her life has hit a happy (or happier) patch. Deciding that she may bid for a painting at auction, she visits the showroom, where she has arranged to meet Jamie (her son's father). Jamie proposes but Isabel says that she thinks they should wait, half-hoping that Jamie will press his case. She is a little disappointed when he agrees with her, but accepts that they have made the correct decision. To her distress, she learns that the editorial board of the Review of Applied Ethics, which she edits, has decided to replace her, an action that she effectively reverses although not without her usual philosophical qualms and musings. Meanwhile, she becomes interested in the life and recent death of Andrew McInnes, an artist most of whose paintings feature the island of Jura and who was lost in a boating accident there some years previously. Travelling with her fiancée, Jamie, and Charlie to the place of his loss she discovers new information about a more recent painter who was painting similar scenes. Her investigations into a possible art fraud unearth something quite unexpected. |
Strange Brother | Blair Niles | 1,931 | Mark Thornton, the story's protagonist, moves to New York City in hopes of feeling like less of an outsider. At a nightclub in Harlem he meets and befriends June Westbrook. One night they witness a man named Nelly being arrested. June encourages Mark to investigate. This leads Mark to attend Nelly's trial, where he is found guilty and sentenced to six month's imprisonment on Welfare Island for his feminine affections and gestures. Next Mark researches the crimes against nature sections of the penal code. Shaken up by his findings and the events, Mark confesses his own homosexuality to June. Mark and June's friendship continue to grow, and June introduces Mark to a number of friends in her social circle. Various social interactions ensue including a dinner party for a departing professor, a trip to a nightspot featuring the singer Gladys Bentley and attending a drag ball. Despite reading Walt Whitman's poetry collection Leaves of Grass, Edward Carpenter's series of papers Love's Coming of Age, and Countee Cullen's poetry, Mark is afraid to come out. Subsequently Mark is threatened with being outed at work. In response to this threat, Mark commits suicide by shooting himself. |
Wartime Lies | Louis Begley | 1,991 | Maciek and his aunt Tania are Polish Jews during World War II. By getting Aryan papers, they elude arrest. In parallel, we follow Maciek, now fifty years old and struck by the tragedy of the consequences of a lying childhood transforming his entire life in a constant fiction. |
Magic Mirror | Nathan Andrew Pinnock | 1,999 | Magic Mirror is a story about the problems of a mythical family. |
Cassandra | null | null | Despite its rather loose chronology, Cassandra's narrative begins by describing her youth, when she was Priam's favorite daughter and loved to sit with him as he discussed politics and matters of state. Her relationship with Hecuba, however, was never as intimate, since Hecuba recognized Cassandra's independence. At times their interactions are tense or even cold, notably when Hecuba does not sympathize with Cassandra's fear of the god Apollo's gift of prophecy or her reluctance to accept his love. When she ultimately refuses him, he curses her so that no one will believe what she prophesies. When Cassandra is presented among the city's virgins for deflowering, she is chosen by Aeneas, who makes love to her only later. Nonetheless, she falls in love with him, and is devoted to him despite her liaisons with others, including Panthous—indeed, she imagines Aeneas whenever she is with anyone else. It is Aeneas' father Anchises who tells Cassandra of the mission to bring Hesione, Priam's sister who was taken as a prize by Telamon during the first Trojan War, back from Sparta. Not only do the Trojans fail to secure Hesione, they also lose the seer Calchas during the voyage, who later aids the Greeks during the war. When Menelaus visits Troy to offer a sacrifice, he rebukes impertinence of Cassandra's brother Paris, who has recently returned to Troy and been reclaimed as Priam and Hecuba's son, though as a child he was abandoned. His words provoke Paris, who insists that he will travel to Sparta, and if Hesione is not returned to him, he will take Helen. The tension increases when Cassandra experiences a sort of fit and collapses, having foreseen the fall of Troy. By the time she recovers, Paris has sailed to Sparta and returned, bringing Helen, who wears a veil. Cassandra soon begins to suspect—but does not want to believe—that Helen is not in Troy, after all. No one is permitted to see her, and Cassandra has seen Paris' former lover Oenone leaving his room. However, she is unable to accept that Troy—that her father—would continue to prepare for a war if its premise were false. When Paris finally tells her explicitly what she already knows, she protests to her father, but he rejects her plea to negotiate peace and orders her to be silent. Thus Cassandra's traditional role—as the seeress who tells the truth but is not believed—is reinterpreted. She knows the truth, but Priam knows it too; she cannot persuade anyone of the truth, but only because she is forbidden to speak of it. Although she feels miserable, she still loves and trusts Priam and cannot betray his secret. Although Priam's political motives ostensibly drive Troy to war, the palace guard Eumelos is the true force behind the conflict. He manipulates Priam and the public until they believe the war is necessary and forget that the stakes are anything but Helen. Eventually he arrests Cassandra, when she threatens to undermine his strict control in Troy. Anchises explains that Eumelos, by convincing the Trojans that the Greeks were enemies and inciting them to fight, made his own military state necessary and was thus able to rise to power. One of Eumelos' guards, Andron, becomes Polyxena's lover, but when Achilles demands her in exchange for Hector's body, Andron does not object—rather, he offers her to Achilles without remorse. Later Eumelos plans to lure Achilles into a trap by stationing Polyxena in the temple, and for Polyxena's sake Cassandra refuses to comply with his scheme, threatening to reveal it. He promptly arrests her and imprisons her in the heroes' graveyard. Eumelos executes his plan after all, and Achilles is killed, requesting as he dies that Odysseus sacrifice Polyxena at his grave for her betrayal. Later when the Greeks come to take her away, Polyxena asks Cassandra to kill her, but Cassandra has discarded her dagger and cannot spare her sister. When the war is lost, Cassandra meets Aeneas for the last time, and he asks her to leave Troy with him. She refuses, and he cannot understand why, since if she stays she will become a slave. However, she knows that he will be forced to become a hero, and she cannot love a hero. |
The Early History of God | null | null | Smith begins from the understanding that Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in origin, and that deities such as El, Baal and Asherah, far from being alien to the Israelites, formed part of their heritage. He therefore sees Israelite monolatry (the insistence that Israel should worship one god, Yahweh, but without denying the reality of other gods) as a break with Israel's own past. Yahweh, he argues, originated in Edom/Midian/Teman as a warrior-god and was subsequently assimilated into the highland pantheon headed by El and his consort, Asherah and populated by Baal and other deities. Smith sees this process as marked by two major phases, which he describes as "convergence" and "differentiation." In the period of the Judges and the early monarchy, convergence saw the coalescence of the qualities of other deities, and even the deities themselves, into Yahweh. Thus El became identified as a name of Yaweh, Asherah ceased to be a distinct goddess, and qualities of El, Asherah and Baal (notably, for Baal, his identification as a storm-god) were assimilated into Yahweh. In the period from the 9th century BC through to the Exile certain features of the Israelite religion were differentiated from the Yahweh cult, identified as Canaanite, and rejected: examples include Baal, child sacrifice, the asherah, worship of the sun and moon, and the cults of the "high places". |
Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall | Spike Milligan | 1,971 | The prologue consists of only two sentences, which in itself represents the word-play humour that was Milligan's hallmark: "After Puckoon I swore I would never write another novel. This is it". Milligan is at home with his family. His mother is digging the air-raid shelter when Neville Chamberlain announces that Britain is at war with Germany. The family response is for Spike, his father and brother to produce boyish drawings of war machines (the drawings are included in the book), which are taken to the War Office. Milligan receives a letter marked O.H.M.S., which his uncle advises him not to open. After some weeks similar letters arrive marked "Urgent". Eventually he opens one containing a "cunningly worded invitation to partake in World War II". About then, in an attempt to impress girls at a gym, he slips a disc, whereupon he's hospitalized to determine whether he's faking. After three months of avoiding call-up, he is given "a train ticket and a picture of Hitler reading "This is your enemy"". He searches the train, but can't find him. Part 2 lasts 13 pages, much of it illustrations by Milligan or photographs. He begins his months in military training at Bexhill-on-Sea. It starts with Milligan joining his regiment (56th Heavy Regiment Royal Artillery) late, and immediately being singled out as a troublemaker. He learns disrespect for certain officers within a few sentences, and commences sniping: :"I suppose," said Suitcase, "you know you are three months late arriving?" :"I'll make up for it sir, I'll fight nights as well!" Milligan talks to soldiers returning from Dunkirk, and sees his first German plane. His regiment is equipped with the obsolete BL 9.2 inch Howitzer. Training included the crews shouting 'bang' in unison as they had no shells to practice with. A shell from World War 1 is eventually found, and they make strenuous attempts to fire it for practice. It's a dud. A year passes, Milligan trains, the summer months are pleasant. Part 3 begins a year previously, and launches into a favorite Milligan literary aside — a long discussion of setting up musical shows, including names of songs, instruments, and players. It is playing jazz that he meets his lifelong friend, Harry Edgington, a man "with moral scruples that would have pleased Jesus". (In the biographies, Milligan variously portrays himself as licentious or unusually chaste.) The group of pick-up military musicians practices for a month, then are asked to give their first gig in Bexhill Old Town Church Hall. (Milligan's military career shifts between his duties as a gunner and musical performances.) Milligan notes that before the winter of 1940 they were entertaining nightly, which he later saw as his first steps into show business. Milligan is left off long enough to go to a BBC musician contest, where, as trumpet player, he wins a recording session with an established artist. He cuts his first records, then returns to barracks. With the introduction of the new C.O. Major Chater Jack, Milligan meets an officer for whom he has great respect ("one who I would have followed anywhere"). 1940 ends and the 19th Battery has the luxury of being billeted in an empty girls' school. The book quotes at length from the regimental war diary, describing an extraordinary day when the War Office (now the Ministry of Defence) was alerted to a sea invasion — in what was intended to be an exercise. The author now confesses that he, in error, left the word "PRACTICE" out of a transmission. Edgington and Milligan write "reams" of scenes that Milligan reckons were the beginnings of The Goon Show. Amid the continued army stories, Milligan mentions a topic he returns to, the (actual) exceptional ability of their artillery battery. By August 1942 they had learned driving skills and how to shoot machine guns. In December 1942 Milligan drinks a toast with his family that will prove to be the last for ten years. On January 8, they head to sea. Their band has been warned by an officer that if they smuggle their instruments on board, the instruments will be thrown overboard. Later in voyage, after a miserable passage, the officer asks if the instruments are actually on board (which they are), and will the band please play to entertain the men. Algeria comes into view. :"We were issued with an air-mail letter, in which we were allowed to say we'd arrived safe and sound....From now, all mail was censored. We were no longer allowed to give the number of troops, measurements of guns and ammo returns to the German Embassy in Spain. This, of course, would cut down our income considerably." The Sanitary Orderly mistakenly cleans the latrine with petrol, an officer lights a cigarette, causing second degree burns on the bum. :"A sort of British loss of face. He was our last casualty before we actually went into action. Next time it would be for real." (p. 146) |
The Book of Secrets | null | null | In Dar es Salaam in the late 1980s, a retired school teacher named Pius Fernandes is given an English language diary by one of his former students, now a shopkeeper. The diary entries, written between 1913 and 1914, are an account written by Alfred Corbin, Assistant District Commissioner, a low ranking colonial official sent to the small town of Kikono. While there, Corbin becomes intrigued by a young woman named Mariamu whom he saves from an exorcism. Before she is married, Mariamu also briefly nurses Corbin when he is stricken with blackwater fever. After her marriage, Mariamu's husband, believing that Mariamu is not a virgin, accuses Corbin of sleeping with her. The narrative then shifts to Mariamu's husband Pipa. Initially enraged at the thought that Mariamu was not a virgin when they married, he gradually grows to accept and love her. When their son Ali Akber Ali is born and has fair skin and grey eyes, their marriage becomes strained again. Meanwhile, World War I has reached the small town of Kikono and Pipa is enlisted as a messenger, first by Corbin on behalf of the English and later by the Germans. After being arrested by the English as a messenger for the Germans Pipa returns home only to find that Mariamu has been raped and murdered. After her death Pipa discovers that she had stolen Corbin's diary. Pipa believes that the diary holds the secret to Ali's paternity, but since he cannot speak English, and is illiterate, he is unable to read its secrets. After a time, Pipa remarries a woman named Remti. As a consequence of this marriage his son is sent to live with his maternal grandparents in Moshi. While living with them he encounters Alfred Corbin and his wife Anne. After this encounter Corbin visits Khanoum, Ali's grandmother, and offers to pay for Ali's education. Khanoum refuses and contact between Corbin and Ali is dropped. Eventually, Khanoum falls into poverty and Ali goes to live with Pipa, Remti and their two daughters. Living with Ali once more, Pipa begins to obsess over Mariamu. He builds a private shrine to her within his shop where he keeps Corbin's diary. Through his son, Pipa is eventually able to learn to spell and read the word Mariamu, and is able to read this word in Corbin's diary. Though he questions Mariamu's spirit about the true paternity of their son he is never able to obtain a direct answer. The narrative shifts once more, to a young Pius Fernandes. Immigrating from India to Dar es Salaam in the early 1950s, Fernandes teaches at a boy's school. Eventually, he is forced to also teach at the inferior girls school where he becomes infatuated with a teenager named Rita. Ali, now a successful married man in his thirties, also falls in love with teenage Rita. He begins sending her notes and when she eventually responds he convinces her to run away with him to London. Ali eventually becomes successful in London and briefly encounters Corbin. However, letters left to Fernandes by a colleague and friend who corresponded with Corbin's wife, reveal that Corbin and Ali met several times though whether Ali's paternity was revealed is remained hidden. In the present, Rita, now divorced from Ali, returns to Dar to reclaim the diary on behalf of her former husband. Fernandes willingly relinquishes both the diary and his research notes to Rita. |
The Name of this Book is Secret | Pseudonymous Bosch | 2,007 | The story starts when real-estate agent for the dead named Gloria finds a mysterious box in a magician's house called, The Symphony of Smells, and gives it to Cass and her substitute grandfathers. Cass is an outcast misfit in her school until she stumbles across another misfit, Max-Ernest, who talks too much and has divorced parents but who are still living in the same house. Cass and Max-Ernest become collaborators and investigate the dead magician's – Pietro Bergamo – house only to get caught by a young couple; but not before they find a mysterious journal hidden in a secret room. Later the couple comes to their school looking for them but find a synesthete boy named Benjamin Blake after they examine a piece of art painted by him on display in the school. After initially loathing him, Cass decides its her job to save him. The young couple were nothing but the dangerous Ms.Mauvais and her partner Dr. L.They wanted to achieve eternal glory so as to be immortal. Cass and Max-Ernest eventually find out that Ms.Mauvais has an evil group called Midnight Sun and that she was the one one of the founders. Around this time Cass and Max-Ernest stop being collaborators. Ms.Mauvais kidnaps Benjamin and now its now the responsibility of Cass to save Benjamin. After leafing through some spa brochures collected by her mother, Cass decides to pose as one of the Skelton Sisters, a pop band, and calls The Midnight Sun spa to pick her up in a limousine. Cass then meets Owen, a stuttering servant who sets up her room and tries to make her comfortable. Later that night Owen comes into Cass's room, speaking with a strange accent a notable characteristic he had when she last met him. Max-Ernest and Cass reunite as Owen leaves to go about some business and they discover that the goal of the Midnight Sun is to achieve eternal youth. The duo save Benjamin and a fire breaks out, but before it is implied that Ms. Mauvais' conspirator Dr. L is Pietro Bergamo's brother Luciano. Owen meets up with Max-Ernest, Cass and Benjamin and they all speed away from the spa in the limousine as the light from the orb atop the pyramid dims and eventually goes out. Owen sets off on his own in the limo while Benjamin, Cass, and Max-Ernest drive home with Grandpa Larry. Cass and Max-Ernest become collaborators again shortly before the end. It is then known that Pietro is still alive and has a secret society named Terces Society to fight the Midnight sun and protect the secret from them.He tells Cass and Max-Ernest everything and asks them to join Terces Society. |
Paloma | Kristine Kathryn Rusch | 2,006 | Miles Flint, a retrieval artist, returns to the Moon to find that the woman he purchased his retrieval agent business from has just been murdered. Bartholomey Nyquist is the lead investigator, as Noelle DeRicci has been promoted to director of security (and takes a small role in this novel). During the investigation, Flint discovers that Paloma was herself a disappeared and the plot revolves around why she was a disappeared, who she was before that happened, as well as who hired the assassins. |
Dragonsbane | Barbara Hambly | 1,985 | A witch, Jenny Waynest, and lord, John Aversin, who live in the Northlands are approached by a young southern noble, Gareth, who requests they slay a dragon in the capital city of Bel to the south. The pair agree on the condition the king send troops to the north to fend off bandits. On arriving, it is revealed that Gareth is not a mere noble, but the prince of the realm seeking aid against the wishes of his father. The dragon is revealed as Morkeleb the Black, an ancient and powerful dragon, inhabiting the caverns of the gnomes. In addition, the sorceress Zyerne is revealed to hold the king in her power, dominating him with the goal of capturing the power of the Stone in the heart of the gnomish Deep. John is persuaded to kill Morkeleb, with Jenny's assistance, but is himself wounded and Jenny is forced to save the dragon's life in exchange for that of John's. In saving Morkeleb's life, Jenny's weak powers are much augmented, allowing her to confront Zyerne but also tempting her to transform into a dragon and abandon the concerns of humanity. Zyrene enters the Deep, attempting to claim its magic, but is defeated when the Stone is destroyed by John, Jenny and Morkeleb. Jenny accepts Morkeleb's offer to transform into a dragon, but later returns to the North, unable to live without her humanity. |
Blasphemy | Douglas Preston | 2,008 | Isabella, a powerful particle accelerator has been constructed in Red Mesa in the remote Arizona desert, the most expensive machine ever built by science. A team of scientists under the direction of a charismatic Nobel Laureate, Gregory North Hazelius, experience trouble, and the scientists seem to be covering it up. CIA agent Wyman Ford is tapped to go to Arizona in an undercover role and find out what’s really going on. He discovers the scientists have made a discovery that apparently not only demonstrates the existence of God, but communications with it reveal it to be far grander and deeper than anything found in the conventional religions. When part of the discovery becomes known to a local fundamentalist pastor, he interprets it as a sign of the End Times and by way of viral email recruits thousands of people from across the United States into "God's Army". They storm the machine, killing anyone in their way, and destroy the entire facility. They capture the scientists, gunning down two of them, and burn Hazelius at the stake. In the end, it is revealed that Hazelius simulated the communications in an effort to create a new religion, one based on science and particularly the Scientific Method and the search for truth. However, Hazelius himself admits to the simulation performing "beyond its specs." Comparisons are made between Hazelius and Hubbard in regards to Scientology. |
Sex and the Single Ghost | Tawny Taylor | 2,006 | Claire Weiss was killed in 1995. Although she doesn't remember too much of what happened, she does recall that she was murdered by two thugs while she laid with her soon-to-be husband Matt in bed. After her death, she was stuck in purgatory. While in purgatory, she discovered that every nine years after a person dies, they can returned to earth around Halloween and live as a mortal. Then, if the Spirit American (that is what ghosts preferred to be called) can help someone on Earth, can can have another nine days as a mortal before they were sent back to purgatory. So she waited nine years to come back to earth in order to discover why she was murdered. Before she returned, she was given a case worker named Bonnie and an emergency phone number in case she needed to contact her. The night she returned to Earth, she reconnected with Jake Faron. The two then work together to discover the truth about Claire's death as well as enjoy the heavenly pleasures Earth has to offer. then had sex with him and came hugely! |
Brat Farrar | Josephine Tey | 1,949 | The story centers around the Ashbys, an English country-squire family. Their centuries-old family estate is Latchetts, in the fictional village of Clare near the south coast of England. It takes place in 1946 or 1947 – the date is not given, but it is after World War II, but no more than eight years after the start of the war. The Ashby family consists of Miss Beatrice Ashby ("Aunt Bee"), a 50-ish spinster, and the four children of her late brother Bill: Simon, 20; Eleanor, 18–19; and twins Jane and Ruth, 9. Bill and his wife Nora died in an airplane crash eight years before. Since then, the Ashbys, like many old families, have been short of money. Bee has kept the estate going by turning the family stable into a profitable business. The Ashbys breed and sell horses, train horses, and give riding lessons. All of them except Ruth ride frequently and work with the horses. The young Ashbys ride in equestrian competitions and win prizes. There is also great-uncle Charles Ashby in the Far East. Charles is coming home for Simon's 21st birthday, which is in a few weeks, though he will be a month or so late. When Simon turns twenty-one, things will change: he comes into a large trust fund left by his mother. He is also the heir to Latchetts. Simon had a twin brother, Patrick, who was 15 minutes older. But soon after Bill and Nora died, Patrick disappeared, leaving what was taken as a suicide note. The title character, Brat Farrar, is a young man recently returned to England from America. He was a foundling. At the age of 13, the orphanage placed him in an office job, but he ran away instead. He ended up in the western U.S., where he worked at ranches and stables for several years, and became an expert horseman. On a street in London, a complete stranger greets Brat as "Simon". He is Alec Loding, a second-rate actor. Alec's real name is Ledingham, and the Ledingham estate (now sold off for debts) was also in Clare. He knows the Ashby family intimately, and even after Brat identifies himself, Alec is certain that Brat is an Ashby. The family resemblance is that strong — including the love of horses. This gives Alec an idea: Brat should impersonate the missing twin, Patrick, and as the elder brother, claim the trust and the estate. Alec remembers a great deal about the Ashbys, Latchetts, and the village, and this, combined with his photographs and other memorabilia will allow him to coach Brat on all the background details, and in return Brat will give him a share of the money. Barring a misstep on Brat's part, there is little to distinguish between himself and Patrick: neither has distinguishing scars or birthmark and the Ashbys' dentist and all his records were destroyed by a German bomb. Conveniently, Brat left the orphanage at nearly the same time that Patrick vanished. Brat is reluctant – but tempted, especially by Alec's insistence that he must be an Ashby, which makes him want to find out about his possible family. He agrees. After two weeks of tutoring, "Patrick" appears at the London office of Mr. Sandal, the Ashby family solicitor. Sandal is astonished, but convinced. "Patrick" says he adopted the name "Brat Farrar" after running away, and gives his own story as the account of "Patrick"'s missing years. Mr. Sandal informs Bee, who meets "Patrick" and is also convinced. Over the next two weeks, Sandal verifies "Patrick"'s story. "Patrick" now comes to Latchetts. Ruth and Eleanor accept him, though Jane is hostile at first. Simon professes to accept him, and shows no apparent resentment at being displaced as heir. But Brat can tell that Simon is not deceived. Brat wonders why Simon seems to be certain that "Patrick" is a fake, and why he keeps silent. "Patrick" settles in at Latchetts, and is accepted by all of the neighbors; he makes a few errors, but these are easily explained by seven years of absence. He has a home and family for the first time in his life. He becomes particularly fond of Bee, and feels guilty about deceiving her. He also wonders how long he can get away with it, though. Simon is clearly though covertly hostile. He invites "Patrick" to ride Timber, an exceptionally fine horse — without warning him that Timber sometimes tries to kill or cripple his rider. He loosens "Patrick"'s saddle-girth just before a race. And once, in a fit of rage, he openly calls "Patrick" an impostor, though he quickly withdraws the statement. Eleanor is confused, because she likes "Patrick" — but not the way a sister should like a brother. Then Simon tells Brat he knows Brat is not Patrick — because he murdered Patrick. Of course, Simon knows Brat cannot repeat this to anyone without destroying his impersonation. Brat recognizes that continuing to impersonate Patrick will make him an accomplice of Simon in the murder of Patrick. While Brat is willing to be a party to impersonating Patrick, he is unwilling to be a party to murder. After a long night of reflection spent wandering the countryside, Brat realizes how Simon killed Patrick while maintaining a solid alibi of spending the day at the blacksmith. He also realizes the trauma the public disclosure of Simon's crime and his own impersonation will have on the Ashby family, and agonizes over whether to expose Simon or let sleeping bodies lie and just "run away" again. To help him decide, Brat pays a late night visit to the family's minister, Alex Loding's brother-in-law, to reveal his own crime and ask the minister's opinion on whether Simon's murder of Patrick should be kept secret. Although the minister is not surprised by Brat's revelation that he is not Patrick, he cannot believe that Simon murdered Patrick. He does, however, state that murder cannot simply be ignored, that to do so invites anarchy. His indecision gone, Brat decides to investigate Patrick's disappearance on his own to find the evidence needed to convince others of Simon's guilt. When he sneaks out the next night to visit the quarry at the bottom of which he has guessed Patrick's remains lie hidden, Simon is waiting and tries to kill him. During a struggle, the two young men fall into the quarry. Simon is killed and Brat seriously injured. Patrick's bones are found, proving Simon's guilt. Great-uncle Charles Ashby arrives. He recognizes Brat as the son of Walter Ashby, a long-dead cousin who drank a bit too much and never married. Brat can now be part of the family, and there is no barrier to his romance with Eleanor (who is only his second cousin). |
The Abyss | Orson Scott Card | null | The novel The Abyss is similar to the movie The Abyss in terms of story but it gives the main characters greater depth and background. It also gives more attention to the aliens’ point of view. Card wrote the novel based on the screenplay and discussions with Cameron. He wrote back stories for Bud Brigman, Lindsey Brigman and Hiram Coffey as a means not only of helping the actors define their roles, but also to justify some of their behavior and mannerisms in the film. For example, Lindsay's mother was a prissy socialite intent on raising well-mannered, popular, "feminine" daughters, while her father was a civil engineer unable to share his interests with his children. Once Lindsey discovers that she inherited her father's engineering skills, it affects her entire family perspective and life goals. Coffey was written as a child of a poor single mother who joined the SEALs as a way to give himself a purpose after her remarriage. Separating his worldview into "Them" (Outsiders) and "Us" (him and his mother) defined some of his thought processes in the film as he worked to protect his men from the perceived "Soviet" threat. Card also wrote the aliens as a colonizing species which preferentially sought high-pressure deepwater worlds to build their ships as they traveled further into the galaxy. Their knowledge of neuroanatomy and nanoscale manipulation of biochemistry was responsible for many of the deus ex machina aspects of the film; an NTI saved a diver's life after a breathing mixture accident, prevented permanent brain damage during Bud's 2 mile dive, which allowed him to properly disarm the warhead, and a number of NTIs microscopically infiltrated the crew upon their rise to the surface to prevent decompression sickness. The alien reaction to human warfare in the director's cut was explained to be a result of their monitoring of radio communications and copying the memories of the dead submarine crew; their interactions with the crew of Deep Core finally persuaded them to halt their attack on the coastlines and instead attempt peaceful contact. |
Falling Angel | William Hjortsberg | null | In 1959, a popular crooner before and during the Second World War, entertainer Johnny Favorite, hasn't been seen or heard since he was critically wounded during a 1943 Luftwaffe raid on Allied forces in Tunisia. When private investigator Harry Angel is hired to locate him on behalf of a mysterious client who calls himself Louis Cyphre, he finds himself enmeshed in a disturbing occult milieu. |
Dave at Night | Gail Carson Levine | 1,999 | Dave Caros, a teenager troublemaker, lost his mother during his birth. More recently, his father dies after falling off a roof of a house he was helping to build. Always having lived under the shadow of his older brother Gideon, he is abandoned by his stepmother Ida while Gideon goes to live with his uncle. Ida sends Dave to a Hebrew orphanage, the Hebrew Home For Boys. When Dave first arrives at the orphanage, he absolutely hates it. The bedrooms are cold, the food is awful (and is often stolen by bullies) and the superintendent, Mr. Bloom (nicknamed Mr. Doom) is abusive and hits the boys with a yardstick. Mr. Doom takes the only thing Dave has left from his father, a wood carving of his family boarding Noah's Ark. However, Dave enjoys the art lessons and explores his talented, creative side. Sick of the austere lifestyle, Dave sneaks out of the orphanage in the middle of the night and roams the streets of Harlem. He finds a nearby party and bumps into Solly, an old man who 'reads cards' to get money. He enters the party with Solly and discovers a whole new world of jazz music, money and glamour—the Harlem Renaissance. Dave even meets Irma Lee, a girl who he is quickly attracted to. However, Dave needs to return to the orphanage every morning and return to the orphanage, but this new lifestyle isn't always what it seems. |
Gray Matters | null | null | World War III has devastated most of the world, but life is still good for the lucky (and rich) few hundred persons who had their brains preserved in an automated conservatory. Although they have no bodies to move around with, they are free to mentally visit any of the other residents, and engage in all the emotional, intellectual and (pseudo-) sexual congress that they desire. |
Nevermore | null | null | Harry Houdini joins forces with Arthur Conan Doyle to solve a series of murders, which eerily re-enact the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. |
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos | R. L. LaFevers | 2,007 | Theodosia Throckmorton, a clever and shrewd girl of sorts, has the harrowing and busy work of nullifying curses in her father's museum, where the darkest spells abound. However, it is delicate work, and time is running out for her to set things right. A crate arrives from Theo's mother in Egypt, which contains a cursed statue of Bastet. While transferring the curse from the statue to a wax figure, she becomes distracted and redirects it into her cat, Isis. Her hands are full enough when her mother returns from the tombs of Egypt, bringing countless cursed valuables and antiquities with her. While picking her mother up at the train station, Theodosia catches a street urchin named Sticky Will trying to pick her father's pocket. He informs her that someone is following her mother. Theo tells him she will be at the station tomorrow and he can tell her more about the man then. Back at the museum, they unload Theo's mother's trunks.Theo senses the curses on the artifacts. The most powerful is a gem called the Heart of Egypt, with the power to topple the whole of Great Britain and the entire British Empire. The next day, her brother Henry returns from boarding school. The Heart of Egypt is stolen. Theo suspects someone from the British Museum and investigates, Henry tagging along without her consent. A Mr Tetley is acting suspiciously, and they decide to follow him. While traveling through the Seven Dials, they meet Will and witness a man taking the Heart from Mr Tetley, then the same man is stabbed in a churchyard. Theodosia hears the man mumble "Somerset House". She sends Henry and Will to Somerset House while she struggles to keep the man alive using her amulets. Will and Henry bring help, and Theo is introduced to Lord Wigmere, head of the Antiquarian Society and The Brotherhood of Chosen Keepers, a group dedicated to nullifying curses. Theo is relieved to know there are others like her, but disturbed that no one else can sense the curses the way she can. Henry and Will are not told the true nature of the Keepers, although Will is taken on as a message boy. Theo is also angry that Lord Wigmere may suspect her mother of stealing the Heart of Egypt, as she works closely with Count Von Braggenchnot, head of the Serpents of Chaos who will do anything to rain plague and pestilence down on England. After Theodosia escapes, she sneaks onto a ship on which her mother and father are traveling to go to Egypt. While in Egypt, Theodosia finds a hidden part of a pyramid, and fights von Braggenschnot and Nigel Bollingsworth, who turns out to be a spy. She ends up winning, and finding an important artifact. |
Martha in the Mirror | Justin Richards | null | Castle Extremis-whoever holds it can control the provinces either side that have been at war for centuries. Now the castle is about to play host to the signing of a peace treaty. But as the Doctor and Martha find out, not everyone wants the war to end. Who is the strange little girl who haunts the castle? What is the secret of the book the Doctor finds, its pages made from thin, brittle glass? Who is the hooded figure that watches from the shadows? And what is the secret of the legendary Mortal Mirror? The Doctor and Martha don't have long to find the answers-an army is on the march, and the castle will soon be under siege once more... |
The Many Hands | Dale Smith | null | The book opens with the mysterious arrival of a baby in Edinburgh, 1773. The scene shifts to the city fifteen years earlier. The Doctor and Martha are confronted by the walking dead, first a solitary figure which attacks a stagecoach containing Benjamin Franklin, then by an army of the creatures rising from the putrid waters of the Nor' Loch. The British soldiers under Captain McAllister who have arrested the Doctor find themselves following his lead. Meanwhile at the Surgeon's Hall, Martha has met a couple of physicians, Alexander Monro, senior and junior, who apparently brought the first corpse back to life. They lock her in a small room with dozens of hands, disembodied but disturbingly active. The Doctor deduces the presence of a modular alien and discovers its sinister intentions. Benjamin Franklin reappears in the final chapter, set in 1771, meeting Alexander Monro, who reclaims the hand he gave Franklin years before, the last one on Earth. |
Snowglobe 7 | Mike Tucker | null | Snowglobe 7 is set in 2099 when the world's global warming has become a great problem. Snowglobe 7 was one of the buildings set up to contain sheets of ice to preserve them against global warming. It is situated in Dubai. Due to Snowglobes being extremely expensive to maintain, many were sold off as visitor attractions. Snowglobe 7 was one of only three left that were purely scientific. The section of ice within it, unknown to the Humans, contained the last Gappa, bizarre, blood-thirsty aliens that look like a cross between a spider and a monkey with a massive, fleshy nose. While Martha tries to help with an unknown disease spreading through the dome, the Doctor investigates. The Gappa killed some humans on maintenance and used their bodies as hosts for future Gappa. Service robot Twelve collapsed several of the tunnels in the ice of Snowglobe 7 in an attempt to kill the Gappa, but failed. The Doctor detonated the engine of a ship that had crashed in the ice thousands of years ago, killing the Gappa but destroying the Snowglobe and melting the ice. |
Deep Storm | Lincoln Child | 2,007 | Former naval doctor Peter Crane is sent to investigate a mysterious illness that has broken out on a North Atlantic oil rig. He meets his superior officer, Dr. Asher who hints at a fantastic secret being discovered. Government officials transport him to an amazing undersea habitat run by the United States military. He receives a confidential envelope that says that the military has found some evidence of Atlantis. As he is brought down into the "facility" codenamed Deep Storm, he discovers that nearly a quarter of the staff have been acting strangely. Working alongside the psychological doctor, Dr.Corbett and the chief military doctor Michele Bishop, Crane is witness to one of these incidents, one of the workers suddenly grabs a hostage and after screaming about "voices" he stabs himself in the neck with a screwdriver. After interviewing some of the patients there, Crane realizes that there must be some kind of unifying basis to them, that they should all have something in common. |
The Ice Limit | Douglas Preston | 2,000 | Meteorite hunter Nestor Masangkay arrives on Isla Desolación, an island near Cape Horn in Chile, tracking a possible meteorite. Using a tomographic scanner, Masangkay confirms that not only is there a meteorite present under the ground, but that it is incredibly massive. Excited, Masangkay digs down to unearth a small portion of the meteorite and is subsequently killed in a flash of light. Some months later, Masangkay's equipment is recovered by a Yaghan native and eventually makes its way to New York billionaire Palmer Lloyd, a collector of rare and exotic archeological artifacts. Wanting the meteorite for his soon-to-be-opened museum, Lloyd hires Masangkay's former partner, Sam McFarlane, to confirm the meteorite's existence and assist in its recovery. He also hires Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc., a high-priced "problem solving" firm, to design a plan for the unprecedented task of recovering and transporting what has been confirmed by McFarlane to be the largest meteorite ever discovered. Eli Glinn, the president of EES, puts together a comprehensive plan to effect the recovery, accounting for literally every complication he deems possible. To effect this plan he composes a team to augment Lloyd's personnel, notably including Rachel Amira, EES's brilliant yet grating mathematics expert, and Sally Britton, an out-of-work supertanker captain whose last ship crashed while she was drunk and on duty. Despite Britton's public image as a dangerous alcoholic, analysis by EES has led Glinn to peg her as professional, talented, and motivated never to fail again. After meeting her in person, Glinn finds himself becoming attracted to her. Glinn's expedition sets off for Cape Horn in a brand new oil supertanker, the Rolvaag, retrofitted with various high tech equipment but disguised to appear as worn down, barely functional ship, traveling under the guise of a failing mining company searching for iron ore. Despite possessing a legitimate mining agreement to this effect, Glinn is forced to bribe local Chilean officials for access to Isla Desolación, falsely confessing that they are searching for gold in order to allay any further suspicions. Both of these actions are witnessed by Commandante Vallenar, a locally stationed Chilean Navy officer, who objects angrily but is powerless to stop the bribes from being accepted. Once on Isla Desolación, operations start almost immediately. The body of Masangkay is recovered and analyzed by the expedition's doctor, who concludes that he was killed by a lightning strike; McFarlane attributes this to the meteorite acting as a lightning rod. Once properly examined, the meteorite is shown to be much smaller — and denser — than initially expected. However, when Glinn's crew attempts to lift the meteorite using hydraulic jacks the units fail, killing two members of the expedition. Tests McFarlane run on a sample of the meteorite reveal that the exterior of the meteorite is a single element, not an alloy, and has an approximate atomic number of 177. Though this explains why the jacks failed — the weight of the meteorite is somewhere in the area of 25,000 tons, more than double what was expected — it is also staggering scientific discovery: no known element has an atomic number anywhere near 177. McFarlane speculates that this element is part of the undiscovered elemental "island of stability", and further states that the meteorite could only have come from outside the solar system. During this McFarlane also becomes romantically involved with Amira. Now properly accounting for its weight, Glinn's crew is able to load the meteorite onto a massive cart which will move the meteorite to the Rolvaag. That evening, Commandante Vallenar sends a member of his crew, Timmers, to investigate Glinn's excavation. Timmers infiltrates the dig site, kills a guard, and enters the area housing the meteorite. Surprised by what he discovers, Timmers reaches out to touch the meteorite and is fatally electrocuted. Though confused at first, the expedition eventually is able to piece together what happened, concluding that the meteorite discharges electricity on contact. Plans to move the meteorite continue, albeit much more carefully. At the same time, Commandante Vallenar positions himself off the coast of Isla Desolación to prevent the Rolvaag from leaving. Glinn meets with the Commandante in an attempt to secure safe passage, admitting that the expedition is there to recover a meteorite, but is rebuffed by Vallenar. The next evening Glinn and his crew load the meteorite onto the ship under cover of fog, leaving lights and running equipment on Isla Desolación to serve as a distraction, then break for the open sea. When Commandante Vallenar fires on the Rolvaag and gives chase Glinn detonates two explosive devices surreptitiously placed on the Commandante's propellers during his visit, disabling the Chilean ship. This proves to be a temporary solution, as Vallenar's crew is able to replace one of the damaged propellers. By this time the Rolvaag is well on its way to international waters, and Glinn predicts that Vallenar will not pass the Chilean border (however, the doctrine of hot pursuit appears to allow this). When the Commandante continues pursuing them, Glinn belatedly realizes that Timmers must have been Vallenar's son; Vallenar has realized that Timmers is dead and intends to kill them out of vengeance. Captain Britton also notes that Vallenar's course has now cut them off from any chance of help. With no other choice, Glinn orders the ship to proceed south towards the Ice Limit, the border of Antarctic waters, where icebergs and even ice islands are common. During the Rolvaags flight the meteorite discharges again, though this time without anyone touching its surface. Eventually McFarlane and Amira figure out what causes the electrical discharges: contact with salt-containing liquids such as human sweat or ocean water. Meanwhile, Vallenar's ship closes on the Rolvaag over the course of several hours, getting into firing range just as the ship enters an area of icebergs. Though Captain Britton is able to avoid destruction by feigning the ship being in distress, eventually Vallenar inflicts enough damage to disable the ship completely. As his vessel closes between two ice islands to destroy the Rolvaag, a team of Glinn's men detonate explosives on one of the towering icebergs, shearing off a massive chunk of ice which capsizes and sinks the Commandante's ship. Though no longer pursued by the Chilean Commandante, the Rolvaag is now dead in the water, and the nearest rescue vessel is unable to approach for several hours due to a storm in the area. The continuing rough seas begin to take their toll on the ship; eventually Captain Britton realizes that the meteorite is severely unbalancing the ship, and must be jettisoned to prevent the Rolvaag from being snapped in half. At first both Palmer Lloyd and Sam McFarlane object vehemently to the idea, but after some argument admit that it may be the only way to save the ship and themselves. Glinn prepares to activate the jettisoning system, but abruptly stops, declaring that he is certain the ship will survive. Attempts to convince him otherwise fail, and as he is the only person with access to the system the crew has no choice but to abandon ship. Glinn moves to the meteorite holding area, attempting to secure the meteorite, only to discover that most of the securing devices have failed. Undaunted, he continues his efforts until he is interrupted by Captain Britton, who begs him to leave the ship with him in a lifeboat, confessing, "I could love you, Eli." Moments later the meteorite makes contact with the ocean, discharging a massive amount of electricity. McFarlane, Amira, Lloyd, and the rest of the crew watch from the lifeboats as the Rolvaag snaps in half and sinks. The lifeboats are ill-prepared for the harsh Antarctic waters, and many of the crew start to suffer from hypothermia immediately. The survivors take refuge on an ice island, where they start to slowly succumb to the extreme conditions. Amira attempts to tell McFarlane something she concluded about the meteorite, giving him a CD containing the test data they collected, but before she can finish she dies. McFarlane begins to slip away as well, but before he can the crew is rescued by a helicopter. Three days later, Palmer Lloyd and the handful of survivors are recovering inside a British Antarctic science station. Sam McFarlane arrives in Lloyd's room and begins to tell him about Amira's attempts to tell him about her discovery. Though Lloyd refuses to engage him, McFarlane continues speaking, describing a series of small ocean floor earthquakes recorded at a specific Antarctic location, and then revealing that the Rolvaag sank at the same location. He finishes by saying that he has figured out what Amira wanted to say: that what they recovered was not a meteorite, it was a seed, and that it is now sprouting. |
Jennie | Douglas Preston | 1,994 | Jennie is a chimpanzee, living in the 1970s. Naturalist Dr. Hugo Archibald delivers Jennie from her dying mother in the Cameroons and brings her home to his American family. His young son, Sandy, becomes extremely attached to Jennie, but Archibald's daughter, Sarah, resents the chimp. Jennie, through her learning of ASL (American Sign Language), starts to converse and interact with the humans around her. Eventually, Jennie is released into a wildlife preserve where she simply can not function. |
Mists of Dawn | Chad Oliver | null | Dr. Robert Nye, a nuclear physicist working at White Sands Missile Range has finally finished his space-time travel machine after 20 years of research. On the eve of its maiden voyage to Ancient Rome, Dr. Nye's nephew Mark is trapped inside and sent back in time to the year 50,000 BC when a nearby rocket test explosion sends him careening into the controls. When Mark arrives at his destination he must survive the two weeks it takes the space-time machine to recharge for the return trip with nothing but a few matches, a pocket knife, and a 6-shot .45 revolver. ==Plot summary<ref name="Chad Oliver 1952"/ |
A Far Country | Winston Churchill | 1,915 | The book follows the career of Hugh Paret from youth to manhood, and how his profession as a corporation lawyer gradually changed his values. The title is a reference to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where Luke 15:13 (KJV) provides that the son went "into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." |
Christian Devotedness | null | null | Subtitled The Consideration of Our Savior's Precept, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth". It is a little Bible study, expounding Jesus' teaching concerning stewardship of material possessions. He exhorted all Christians to live economically, trusting God to supply their needs, and devoting their income to the cause of the Gospel. |
Brotherhood of the Rose | David Morrell | 1,984 | It tells the story of Saul and Chris, two orphans who are adopted by a top espionage agent and trained to be assassins. When their adopted father tries to have them killed, their training, determination and loyalty are put to the test. The brothers find out that the conspiracy is even larger than they expected spanning security agencies of different nations, Each of the brotherhood member is 4th in ranking in the respective organizations and have loyal assassins trained from tender age. Chris died during a duel with one of the loyal assassins of another brotherhood member and the story became that of revenge. Their adopted father Elliot ran into a sort of national safe house for security agents which is where the later part of the book concentrated on. Saul being a Jew later went back to his native land and married his love interest Erica from their training days, who is a Mossad Agent. The other novels in this loose trilogy are The Fraternity of the Stone and The League of Night and Fog. |
Philosophy in a New Key | null | null | "Langer elaborates her thesis in freshly conceived and interesting studies contained in chapters treating of the logic of signs and symbols, a comparison of discursive and presentational forms of symbolism (perhaps the heart of the book), verbal language, life symbols as the roots of sacrament and myth, the significance of music, the genesis of artistic import, and the fabric of meaning." |
Blink | Ted Dekker | 2,005 | Protagonist Seth Border is a college student who has one of the world's highest IQs. One day he begins developing a tremendous skill: the ability to see multiple possible futures. This ability first manifests itself for a few seconds at a time, and gradually exponentiates into an ability to see millions of possibilities that could happen hours and days later. Little does Seth know that when he is thrown together with a Saudi princess, Miriam Al-Asamm, who flees her country to escape oppression, he will soon have the adventure of his life as they explore the truth about Christianity and Seth's gift of precognition while running for their lives. |
Black | Ted Dekker | 2,005 | This book is about a man named Thomas Hunter in Denver, Colorado, 2010, who, after being knocked unconscious from a bullet wound to the head, wakes up to find himself in a strange world full of black, twisted trees. After being attacked by strange, bat-like beings called Shataiki and led out of the Black Forest by a white bat, he is rendered unconscious again due to blood loss. He wakes up to find himself back in Denver. Startled at the sudden change, he can’t figure out which world is real. He soon discovers that every time he falls asleep, he wakes up in the other world, until he falls asleep there. Outside of the Black Forest is the Colored Forest, a paradise inhabited by a civilization of immortal-yet innocent-humans beings who are watched over by Elyon, a God-like being, along with white, bat-like Roush, who are opposites of the Shataiki and act as servants of Elyon. Thomas eventually finds out that this other world is our own thousands of years in the future, and that a virus, mutated from a vaccine, would wipe out his present-day Earth later that year. Thomas is forced to fight evil in both worlds, a difficult prospect, for while evil is portrayed differently in each reality, it is equally as potent, and Thomas quickly finds that putting a stop to an event of apocalyptic proportions is no easy task. |
Red | Ted Dekker | 2,005 | In Red: The Heroic Rescue, Thomas has spent fifteen years in the "dream world," having been persuaded by his wife Rachelle to eat the "Rhambutan" fruit which will prevent him from dreaming. Only eight hours have passed in the world of Earth, but the plague has been released in several cities. During this time Thomas is in a world torn by conflict. Followers of Elyon live in the seven forests and continue to bathe daily, as instructed. However, the deserts outside of the forests are home to the Horde, with a much larger population than the forests. Members of the Horde (individually referred to as "Scabs") are subject to the degenerative skin disease of the fallen world and are constantly trying to conquer and destroy the inhabitants of the forest. Moreover, they actually worship Teeleh, carrying banners with images of the Shataiki. Thomas is now referred to as "General Thomas of Hunter" and is commander of the Forest Guard, a legendary figure among the Forest Dwellers and the Horde alike. However as the story of Red unfolds, it is revealed that the Horde also have a legendary General emerging known as Martyn. One whose strategies are bolder and more clever, and have yet to be seen by the Forest Guard. In the forests, the people keep Elyon's seven rules but have added to them, scrupulously trying to make it as difficult as possible to violate the actual rules. The people continue to celebrate the themes of their life in the colored forest, before the Great Deception. Interpretation of the rules is vested in a priest-like figure named Ciphus, from the Southern Forest. Members of the Horde are allowed to come and bathe and become part of the forest dwellers, but this is actively discouraged as Ciphus has determined there is not enough water in the lakes to support a much larger population. This is generally not an issue, as the skin disease of the Horde makes any contact with water agonizingly painful, and the Horde view themselves as "normal" and the forest dwellers as "defective." Occasionally, however, a Horde member will be washed, as is the case with a wise village elder named Jeremiah. Also, forest dwellers who go too long without bathing in Elyon's water begin to develop the skin disease, eventually losing the ability to think rationally and becoming members of the Horde. The Forest Guard has developed extensive procedures for carrying bathing water with them while on patrol in order to try to prevent this. A new figure in the book is Justin, a former member of the Forest Guard under Thomas. When Thomas offered him the rank of second in command, Justin declined and left the Forest Guard entirely, leading to the young woman Mikil becoming Thomas' second in command. Justin begins to anger the leadership of the forest dwellers, however, by his unorthodox attitudes. He actively seeks peace with the Horde. Interestingly, as the story progresses, it is revealed that Justin always seems to be clean of the disease even when he seems to have been unable to bathe. Justin attempts to broker a peace between the Horde and the forest dwellers, on one occasion speaking with Martyn in the middle of a battle to secure the safety of the Southern Forests Guard and their leader Jamous(Who is in love with Mikil)and to encourage good will between the two cultures. However, Justin is betrayed and sentenced to death by the leadership under Ciphus. Initially he is forced into a Gladiator-style face off against Thomas of Hunter (whom the crowd and leadership are sure will be victorious). Justin does exhibit equal if not superior skills in sword and hand-to-hand combat though he never actually harms Thomas and seems to view the contest almost in a comical sense. As Justin emerges the victor he leaves the arena and greets a waiting Martyn at the crest of the arena to a shocked audience including Thomas. As Thomas signals his guard to move in on Justin and Martyn, Thomas himself confronts them face-to-face. When he draws his sword on Martyn he is horrified when Martyn reveals himself to actually be the once innocent Johan, Thomas' brother-in-law. Johan had once been part of the guard under Thomas' command and was assumed to have been killed in battle when in fact he became stranded and the disease took him. Later, it is showed that Justin is Elyon in an adult form. However, Thomas doesn't know this and makes a deal with Johan to pretend that Justin had betrayed both the Forest and the Horde, so that they can get him killed. Eventually it is known that an overwhelming Horde Army is encroaching on the Forest, and demands the right to carry out the execution as they consider Justin to have betrayed them, too. Justin is sentenced to death with the Horde's most feared form of execution: drowning in water. He is first hung over the lake and beaten until his bones are broken and he is severely disfigured. Mysteriously, during his drowning, Justin's body begins to be covered with the Horde skin disease. Upon his death, Johan in a fit of rage attacks Justin and thrusts his sword into his abdomen, his blood pours into the lake, violating Elyon's prohibition about blood entering the water. The next day, the water itself has turned to a blood red color and the forest dwellers are all completely infected with the skin disease. Yet Justin's dead body cannot be found in the depths of the lake. Rachelle remembers a command he had once given her to "follow me". First she, Thomas, Johan, and then others including both forest dwellers and members of the Horde, give up their lives in the red water, finding that they, too, are returned to life and completely cleansed of the skin disease. In fact, these new followers of Elyon through Justin discover that they need never be cleansed again: they are immune to the skin disease. Meanwhile, the leadership of the former forest dwellers have been corrupted by the disease and merge the religions of Elyon and Teeleh, inviting the Horde to come dwell in the forest. The sacrifice of drowning in the red water is unthinkable to those infected with the disease, and they view the cleansed people as defective "albinos." The "albinos" flee for their lives into the desert. On the way, however, Thomas’s wife Rachelle is shot with three arrows and dies. There, Justin himself meets them and excitedly proclaims his happiness over them. He proclaims the new group to be his "Circle" (a symbol of marriage dating back to the days of the colored forest) and to be his "bride," and ecstatically thanks his father for what he calls his "beautiful bride," referring to God as his "father." Justin reveals to the Circle that they will find more red pools hidden in the desert and that for the rest of their lives they will be his and will be charged with the mission of saving as many members of the Horde as possible by inviting them to drown in the pools. The title "Red" thus refers to the color of the blood shed by Justin to redeem his followers from the Fall, and to the blood-red pools in which his followers give up their lives in order to be reborn as Justin's people. |
White | Ted Dekker | 2,005 | In White: The Great Pursuit, all those who follow Elyon through Justin's sacrifice have formed "The Circle". The roles have switched in the sense that the Horde has taken over the seven forests and The Circle now resides in the deserts, able to survive by the aid of Johan(formerly Martyn) who is familiar with life in the desert. They usually try to avoid the Horde but it is evident that in the 13 months since Justin gave his life The Circle has led roughly 1,000 Scabs to drown in the red pools and join The Circle. One night during a council meeting(composed of Thomas, Mikil, Jamous, William, Suzan, Johan and Justin's disciple Ronin) the new and more vicious commander of the Horde armies Woref orchestrates a massive invasion on Thomas' tribe. In an attempt to cover the tribes escape into the desert Thomas, Suzan, William and the brothers Stephen and Cain ride out towards the approaching army, leading to Thomas and the others capture. Subsequently they are imprisoned in the newly constructed Horde village in an underground dungeon. Qurong, the Horde leader takes his prisoners before his wife Patricia and daughter Chelise, whom Thomas met some time earlier in the desert when the disease had nearly overcome him, calling himself then by another name. When Qurong is presenting his 'prize' he also announces that Chelise is to be wed to the beast of a general Woref who was responsible for the capture of Thomas and the other "Albinos". Soon after, Thomas appeals to Qurong and Chelise's desire to learn the Books of Histories, knowing that the Horde cannot read them but members of The Circle can. Chelise pleads for Thomas to be spared his execution and instead made her servant. He is imprisoned in the library where he has access to the Books of the Histories and for a few days after spends his time searching out the blank books of history while also reading some historical stories to Chelise that effect her in ways she's never experienced - because she's hearing the truth. Unbeknownst to Thomas, he begins to fall in love with her, having not had feelings for a woman since the death of his last wife Rachelle, thirteen months before. The others in the Circle at first believe him to have gone mad but when they find out he truly does love this Scab, and Scab royalty at that, they're willing to risk themselves alongside Thomas to help. The problem is that she, being diseased, is completely forbidden from falling in love with an albino and is utterly terrified of the thought of drowning in the red pools. However, after willingly accompanying Thomas to the desert(though her family believe she's been kidnapped, while Woref remains suspicious) she begins to see Thomas' heart and realizes how deeply he loves her. Finally she embraces the notion that she does too in fact love him and they embrace the passionate moment by the campfire. She still does not decide to follow Elyon, seeing herself as incapable. Upon the groups return to their tribe, they're greeted by an angry William. Who informs them that the Horde has attacked killing 10 of their members, wounding some others and taking 24 prisoner back to the Horde village. Thomas in an attempt to free those 24, offers Qurong what he really wants: himself, Thomas of Hunter. Thomas returns to the forests with Mikil and subdue a border guard, instructing him to inform Qurong of their offer. He does and returns with a group of warriors who exchange the 24 albinos on horseback for Thomas. He is then imprisoned and beaten and ordered to renounce his love for Chelise to her face or she'll receive the same punishment that he will: death by drowning (traditional Horde execution). The thought is unbearable to Thomas, but the thought of Chelise dying before she has a chance to drown in the red pool is even more heart wrenching. He reluctantly goes through with it, utterly destroying himself in the process and nearly convincing Chelise when he knocks himself out to get away from the pain. When he reawakens he decides not to go through with it and rushes for Chelise professing his love for her as sure and true as it's ever been. At that moment as they're weeping together Woref bursts through the door (having been spying on the whole event) and in a fit of rage grabs Chelise and throws her against the wall, violently striking her in the face at the very moment that Qurong walks through the door, led in by a captive Mikil. Woref, Chelise and Thomas are all sentenced to death by drowning unless Chelise tells her father she doesn't in fact love Thomas (which Thomas tries to get her to do) but she does not. Upon Mikil's release she meets with Johan and Suzan and they begin to trace a portion of the lake that was not emptied by Ciphus when it had turned red after Justin's drowning for it was in fact a spring. They dig and eventually reach the flowing waters which they channel into the larger lake just before Thomas, Chelise and Woref are sent to the depths. As they all sink Chelise pleads with Elyon to take her, suddenly realizing that the water is turning red she drowns in the red water and experiences Elyon's sacrifice and love for her. Eventually she rises, simultaneously as Thomas does (much in the same fashion as when Thomas and Rachelle drowned at the end of Red). Qurong appears to be somewhat stunned by the turn of events, but allows Chelise, Thomas and the other albinos safe passage out of the forests to the desert, though he will not drown himself. Thomas, Chelise and the others leave the forests to the desert where their tribe is waiting. All while this is happening, events are still in motion in Ancient Earth. Thomas has successfully turned Carlos by allowing him to sleep while in contact with his blood, in which Carlos dreams of the other reality as Johan. He then believes and somewhat reluctantly decides to join up with Thomas in an effort to stop Svensson and Fortier from executing their full plans: Only releasing the antivirus to a small list of people they deemed worthy of its reception. Upon hearing this America has already turned it's naval fleet, airforce and nuclear arsenal over to the French, as a last-ditch effort to resist Thomas along with high-ranking U.S., British and Israeli officials order the USS Nimitz to fire on the fleet sinking all of it. When Thomas returns to Washington D.C. he meets with President Blair, Monique and his sister Kara at Genetrix Labs to check on the progress of the antivirus. They inform him that the only feasible cure is through his blood. Somehow it instantly eradicates the virus, and Monique and Kara believe it to be because he swam in Elyon's lake and breathed the water in effectively making his blood immune. However, since the virus is so widespread they need all twelve pints of his blood. A transfusion is out of the question because of the risk they would run of "watering down his blood with infected blood". Thomas agrees knowing that it's the only hope they have left of defeating the pandemic, his blood is dubbed the "Thomas Strain" by Monique. His only request is that he is allowed to sleep before they begin the procedure. As he does he reawakens in the other reality, the book concludes with Thomas at the oasis where his tribe stays, waiting on the top of a dune with Mikil, Jamous, Suzan and Johan (Suzan and Johan are planning their own marriage)as his bride Chelise is preparing for their wedding. A loud rumble is soon heard throughout the desert and a mass of Roshuim (white lions that were at the high lake with Elyon) begin to swarm around their oasis, lead in by a rider on a white horse - Justin. He rides straight for Chelise and dismounst, approaching her and grasping her hands. He exclaims his satisfaction to his father, Elyon, saying "she's perfect, my bride is perfect!". He then rides for Thomas where he lovingly embraces him and tells him "Well done, Thomas". He then mounts his horse and in the same fashion as when The Circle was first born, he rides around them with his sword in the sand symbolically carving a circle around them in the sand. He then proceeds to leave them, riding over the crest of the dune with the Roshuim in pursuit. It is stated in the few short days since Chelise drowned in the red water, some 5,000 Scabs followed in pursuit of Elyons gift through Justin. |
The Coxon Fund | Henry James | null | At Wimbledon, outside London, the Mulvilles entertain with their guest Frank Saltram, a man “who had found out something” and they claim its everything; he poses as an intellectual when in fact he is a con man or perhaps a holy fool (possessed, regardless, of a real and powerful gift to delight with his conversation), conning the Mulvilles into paying his debts; the story revolves around Saltram and people who are fascinated with the man; Mulvilles also want to reunite Saltram with his estranged wife who plays the role of troublemaker in the story. Saltram is unsuccessful on all fronts, other than being entertaining as a dinner guest. Includes frequent common theme of James, interplay between Americans and British. Ruth Anvoy, an American woman, comes to see her aunt, Lady Coxon, who though born in the United States married a Brit and is now a widow; she meets George Gravener who has a future in politics and real intellect, he despises Saltram for being a fraud; Gravener and Ms. Anvoy become engaged, her father is very rich and she is a free spender, part of their relationship revolves around the large sum the couple will receive upon marriage; this changes as her father gets hit in the panic of 1893 and loses most of what he has, then he dies as Ruth Anvoy has returned to America to check on her family; she does not return for some time, neither does Gravener attempt to bring her back, so the engagement is in question, and her money is gone, there is no large inheritance now. Saltram has moved out from the Mulvilles and has gone to the Pudneys, who have more money, quite disrespecting all the Mulvilles had done for him; Ms. Anvoy returns to London and her aunt dies, a fortune is left to her, but there was a stipulation in the original Will when the money was left to her aunt that requests a sum of 13,000 pounds be set up into a fund for a forward thinker, money for a great man to publish and find “Moral Truth”; yet she has the option of keeping the money, this is Gravener’s preference, he wants to use the money to buy a house after they are married, but Ruth says no I must honor the request. This results in a reversal of their engagement. She picks Saltram as the candidate to receive the Coxon Fund, though she has suspicions about him. The narrator has information that will prove Saltram a fraud and he offers to show it to Ruth but she says no, destroy it, her decision has been made; The narrator liked Ruth from the first, yet neither gets married, Gravener marries a woman who is “criminally dull,” the Mulvilles suffer from boredom and they all miss the good ole days; Saltram produces nothing, ceasing to publish anything from the day he comes into the money from the Coxon Fund, proving that he was a complete fraud. Classical reference to old man of the sea, also in Homer’s Odyssey and the Arabian Nights. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/search/Search.aspx?SearchBy=4&Word=old+man+of+the+sea&Search=Search&By=0 This is found in chapter two. Issues of inheritance and marriage based upon a dowry. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, perhaps today also, it was fairly common for a wealthy American heiress to marry a Brit for the prestige of his title, with she receiving the benefits of said title and the Brit to become well funded and maintain the family estate. |
The Death of the Lion | Henry James | null | The narrator suggests writing an article on Neil Paraday; his new editor agrees. The former spends a week with Neil and writes the article whilst there, alongside reading Paraday's latest book. His editor rejects the article however; he decides to write an article for another newspaper, but it goes unnoticed. Neil Paraday gets excited about writing another book, despite the fact that he doesn't seem successful still. However the narrator comes across a praiseful review in The Empire. Mr Morrow, a journalist suddenly interested in writing about Neil Paraday's life now that he is successful, comes round and ends up scaring the writer; the narrator manages to see him off. He tells Mr Morrow all there is to know about Paraday is in his work; the journalist is not amused. Later, he publishes an article on Neil's house in the Tatler. Embracing his fame, Paraday takes to going to London luncheons with women. The narrator meets Miss Hurter, an American admirer of the writer's, in his house. As the writer is again busy with Mrs Wimbush, he explains to the girl that the best thing she can do is not to bother Paraday and only admire him from afar, so as not to interfere with his writings. Nevertheless, he keeps her autograph album to show it to him. Later, he meets with her to read passages from Paraday; once while they are at the opera he points Paraday out to her. The narrator is annoyed with Mrs Wimbush for inviting Paraday to a party at Prestidge. Subsequently, he quotes from a letter sent to Miss Hunter while he was at the party. In this mise en abyme, he describes the way the other guests have not read Paraday's works; worse still, Lady Augusta confesses to having mislaid the text is expected to read out the next day - there is no extra copy. Paraday falls gravely ill; the guests, enhanced by the Princess, are merry since the party seems to be a success. Dora Forbes joins them - later to become Mrs Wimbrush's next 'henpecked' writer. The party is called off on doctors order; the Princess lets him pass away in one of her houses. Before his death, Paraday had asked the narrator to publish an unfinished text by him. Although the one lost by Lady Augusta has not been found again, the narrator and Miss Hunter shall keep Paraday's memory alive through their dedication to his texts. |
New Found Land | Samuel Youd | 1,983 | In the first novel, Fireball, Simon and Brad are cousins who are mysteriously transported to an alternate history Earth, where the Roman Empire did not break up and Europe remains in pre-Dark Ages technology. In an attempt to improve their status in the new realm, Simon and Brad aid the Church, which is oppressed, to launch a coup by introducing the stirrup and the longbow. The coup succeeds, but the boys did not anticipate the Church as a state power would force everyone in the Empire to convert or die. At the end of the first book, they sail away to the New World, which in the realm, was not discovered yet by the Old World. At the beginning of this novel, they managed to reach the American continent safely. They are received warmly enough by the native tribes in North America, but soon find themselves yearning for more advanced civilizations. Trekking across the continent, they head for the only civilization in America which has significant urban living - the Aztecs. As the Roman Empire has persisted in Europe of this realm until the 20th century due to unchanging externalities, the Aztec too has continued without encounters from the Europeans' discovery of the New World. In order to quickly gain wealth and status to enjoy a comfortable living, they take part in the sacred games, which is a cross between squash, tennis and handball. Their aim though is to finish second, as the victors will be sacrificed to the gods. Unfortunately, they win. To escape the fate of the winners, they escape again, and this time, are captured by sailors from the Far East. Their story continues in the last book of the trilogy, Dragon Dance. |
Dragon Dance | Samuel Youd | 1,986 | At the end of New Found Land, Simon and Brad are in North America where they are captured by sailors from the Far East. When they awaken after losing consciousness during the capture, they find themselves aboard a Chinese junk crossing the Pacific Ocean. The junk is a paddle steamer that sails without human intervention. The crew have apparently put themselves into hibernation, indicating that they are accustomed to the trip and are expecting an uneventful journey. On their arrival in China they are taken to the Imperial Court, where the boys display their knowledge of modern technology. There, Brad becomes besotted with the Dowager Regent and became estranged from Simon. Unlike the other civilizations that they have encountered, which remain at a pre-Dark Ages technological level, the Chinese have continued their technological innovations and have come up with new inventions, even though their social development has stagnated. Simon is sent to the north to serve the general of the powerful Northern Army in charge of resisting nomadic barbarians. The arrival of the boys catalyses the ongoing court intrigue between the dowager regent and court officials. A series of bad news arrives in the north from the capital this implies that the young emperor is being held incommunicado, or has been secretly deposed and killed by the dowager regent. The general of the Northern Army, the most powerful army in the empire publicly declares that the dowager regent as a usurper, and mobilises his army to rescue the emperor, whose fate is unknown. He candidly admits to Simon that should the emperor be dead, that he the general would be the most likely to succeed to the throne. Simon attempts to help the general by the introduction of armoured tanks, but lacks detailed knowledge. Nonetheless Chinese engineers in the service of the general were able to build on the concept to produce some prototypes. The Chinese themselves use flying kites to give the appearance that dragons are aiding their military. However, the expedition becomes a disaster at the gates of the capital. Simon discovers that Brad has introduced airplanes to the dowager regent's forces. While the airplanes work, Simon's tanks do not. Having rid herself of all opposition, the dowager regent callously discards Brad and attempts to have him killed. The two boys manage to escape once again, only to encounter another fireball similar to the one which brought them into this world. Though he is given the option to go home, Simon follows Brad when the latter refuses to go home and instead decides to try for better luck in a new realm. |
Missing Men of Saturn | Robert S. Richardson | null | ~Plot outline description~ --> |
Rocket Jockey | Lester del Rey | null | Jerry Blaine, a young man studying at the Space Institute, is kicked out just after his second year exams at the request of his brother, Dick, in order to help him get his ship, the Last Hope ready for the 18th Armstrong Classic. Jerry is initially bitter, but realizes that how he conducts himself in the classic will go a long way toward proving himself as a spaceman, and eventually being readmitted to the institute. The Last Hope is a refitted asteroid mining ship using the Jerry and Dick's father's experimental fuel which is supposed to be a radical improvement upon existing technologies. Their parents were both killed in the first test of the fuel however, and it is only now, years later, that improvements in materials and engine design will allow the fuel to be tested again safely. Just before liftoff, Dick is injured when fuel splashes in his face, temporarily blinding him. Jerry is forced to take control of the Last Hope while his brother is incapacitated below decks. The qualification run to the moon is begun, and Jerry is racing against 10 other ships from earth for the right to represent their home planet in the classic proper. Jerry manages to win, but only after he witnesses the first fatality of the classic; a fellow earth pilot pushes his engines too hard and his ship overheats and is destroyed. After some political wrangling on the Moon that puts Jerry officially in charge of the Last Hope despite his brother's seeming recovery, they head out to touch on the 4 Galilean moons, Mars, and Venus. Heading for Mars first they make good time and land with high spirits. The Martians are not happy to see them, however. There has always been a bitter rivalry between the two worlds, and Mars has a reputation for winning the classic at all costs and through any means, scrupulous or otherwise. When they try to refuel the Last Hope they discover their shipment of fuel has somehow disappeared from the warehouse in which it was stored. A long drawn out search finally locates the missing fuel in a pile of garbage that was ready for destruction. Jerry, Dick, and Tod all believe that Mars was intentionally responsible for the delay of 18 hours searching for the fuel. They take off from Mars and head towards Jupiter. Halfway however, Jerry discovers that Dick has not fully recovered from his injuries. He becomes sick and delirious, and they are forced to turn back to Mars to get Dick the medical care he needs. By the time the Last Hope leaves Mars for the second time, they are nearly 100 hours behind schedule, and their carefully planned course is now useless. On route to Jupiter for the second time the Last Hope loses power due to a blockage of the rocket tube. Losing more time, they coast while making repairs. Unfortunately, they coast so far, they no longer have the distance necessary to decelerate to rendezvous with the Jovian moons. Jerry is forced into a nearly suicidal braking maneuver into the Jovian atmosphere known as the "Dead Man's Orbit". Despite Jerry's vague recollections, such a feat had never before been accomplished, and he receives admiration and applause upon arrival on Io. After visiting the other 3 Jovian moons and experiencing an unfriendly reception on Ganymede, considered by many to be a puppet of Mars, the Last Hope set course back to the inner planets: Venus, Mercury, and Earth. While approaching the asteroid belt, they intercept a distress call, and come to the aid of what appears to be the Martian racers. After rendering assistance and parting ways, Jerry realizes his asteroid chart has been stolen. He must now navigate the belt by memory and luck. After some close calls and an actual impact with a small pebble, the Last Hope makes it through the belt relatively unscathed. Because of the delay with the decoy Mars racer, they are no longer in a position to rendezvous with Venus. Mercury is now their best stop. |
Stadium Beyond the Stars | Stephen Marlowe | null | - ~Plot outline description |
Rocket to Luna | Evan Hunter | null | - ~Plot outline description~--> |
Origin in Death | Nora Roberts | 2,005 | When Lt.Eve Dallas and Detective Delia Peabody are called to the murder scene of Dr. Wilfred B. Icove Sr., things already don't make sense. Dr. Icove was renowned as a sainted genius of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, and no one, not even his son Wilfred Icove Jr., benefits from his death. What's even stranger are the security disks that reveal a woman (with initials DNA) walking into Icove's office, killing him with a single stab in the heart and walking out again. When Dr. Icove Jr. is killed in the same way, Eve begins looking for another mystery woman, while her husband Roarke begins investigating an organization run by the Icoves and their partner, Dr. Jonah Wilson. Soon, they uncover a secret world inside a private school of young girls and women, created by the Icoves and Wilson. A world of children by design, where people aren't born, but cloned. |
Memory in Death | Nora Roberts | 2,006 | Following the events in Origin in Death, Lt. Eve Dallas only wants a break as Christmas nears, but her past is coming back to haunt her. A television news special about her and her husband Roarke's involvement in the destruction of the Icove center airs on national television, and in Texas, catches the eye of Trudy Lombard, who promptly comes to New York City with her son and her daughter-in-law. Lombard shows up at Eve's office, and Eve remembers everything about her. Eve was taken in by Lombard, after she killed her father. Lombard was an abusive woman, who often made Eve go without food, clean the floors with a toothbrush, locked her in her bed room without light, and scrubbed her skin raw in ice cold baths, all the time telling her she deserved it because she was a 'filthy' little girl who'd already 'engaged in sexual relations' (referring to the beatings and rape committed by Eve's father) before the age of ten. Eve realizes Lombard wants something, and her suspicions come true when Lombard tries to blackmail her for $2 million dollars. When Eve refuses, Lombard tries to blackmail Roarke, who also refuses. Shortly after, Lombard is found dead, at first it seems like a classical murder, Lombard has been hit on the head by a blunt murder weapon and articles of clothing, her purse, and her tele-link are missing. Eve Dallas however, who is familiar with Trudy Lombard does not believe it to be so clear a homicide, and Trudy Lombard's daughter in law, Zana Kline, seems too innocent to not have a hand in the murder, however, because there is no evidence pointing to her, Eve becomes extremely frustrated. At the end of the book it is revealed that Zana is in fact one of the children Lombard had fostered. |
The Raven's Knot | Robin Jarvis | 1,999 | Something ominous is happening in Glastonbury. Two mysterious deaths and the women of the town are falling ill. Could the strange crow dolls appearing in their houses be involved? Back in London, Neil Chapman living in the Wyrd Museum (a strange building owned by the three mysterious Webster sisters) once more enters the 'Separate Collection,' and discovers a stuffed raven that has come back to life. Then one of the Webster sisters go missing, along with Edie Dorkins, the elfin girl brought out of the past to carry on the sisters' work. What has called Miss Veronica away from the safe-haven of the museum? A memory of a past life and a lost love, enough to risk her life and the destruction of her sisters and the powerful secrets they keep. Will Neil get there in time to save the women of Glastonbury from a terrible fate, and to save the Websters from the great Battle that is coming? |
The Fatal Strand | Robin Jarvis | 1,999 | The final chilling chapter in the Wyrd Museum Trilogy sees Neil Chapman and Edie Dorkins returning exhausted from the harrowing scenes at Glastonbury Tor only to find all is not well at the museum. Having lost one of her sisters, Ursula is behaving suspiciously - is she hiding another great secret? And will her iron will be enough to stave off the madness that has claimed her remaining sister? Who is the mysterious ghost-hunter who insists on entering the museum and discovering its ancient secrets? The museum knows it is being violated and its past reincarnations blur together with the present, putting all those inside in danger. The final great battle for the future of the world is coming, and the Wyrd museum is at the centre of the battleground, but it still has some help to give... |
1st to Die | James Patterson | 2,001 | The prologue introduces main character Inspector Lindsay Boxer, San Francisco P.D., who is in a depression and holding a gun to her head as a result of losing a love interest on a case called "The Honeymoon Murders". Book One begins with David and Melanie Brandt, freshly married, in their hotel room at the Grand Hyatt. A man outside the door calls "Champagne" and David opens the door. The man, Phillip Campbell, then violently kills the bride and groom and immorally brutalizes the corpse of Melanie. The book then cuts to Inspector Lindsay Boxer in her general practitioner's office. The doctor, Dr. Roy Orenthaler, tells Lindsay that she has a rare, and deadly, blood disease called Negli's aplastic anemia. Throughout the book, Lindsay struggles with the physical side-effects of getting blood transfusions for Negli's, and the emotional aspect of having a life-threatening disease. During the appointment, she is called to the crime scene of a double murder at the Grand Hyatt. At that scene she is introduced to Cindy Thomas, covering the story. A second pair of bodies are found, and after Lindsay is told she has a new partner due to the sensitivity of the case, Cindy, Lindsay and medical examiner Claire Washburn join forces to attempt to solve the case. A third pair of bodies is found in Cleveland, Ohio, which are thought to be connected to the San Francisco cases. As Lindsay and company go through the case they acquire a fourth friend, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt. Together, the four friends attempt to pin down a suspect, leading to the shocking conclusion. A subplot features Lindsay's attraction to Chris Raleigh, her new partner, but will the attraction last until she soon realizes that there is absolutely nothing to lose? |
The Unicorn Girl | Michael Kurland | null | The novel is the second part of the Greenwich Village Trilogy, with Chester Anderson writing the first book (The Butterfly Kid) and the third volume (The Probability Pad) written by T.A. Waters. This novel follows the adventures of Michael and Chester though unknown worlds in a quest to assist a damsel in distress - which turns into a quest to save reality. One of the parallel worlds visited is that of Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy. |
Monster | Jonathan Kellerman | null | A mutilated body of a wannabe actor is found in the trunk of a car parked near an industrial area. Weeks later, another body appears in similar conditions at another location. This time it's a female psychology doctor working in a state facility for psychotic criminals. One similarity of the mutilations was obvious. The eyes were targeted. The case goes to LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, assisted by Dr. Alex Delaware, an old friend and psychological consultant. The two find out that the eye mutilation was infamously performed in the case of a family mass murder some years ago, and the culprit is now in the same facility where the female doctor worked. The media had described him simply as a 'monster' following his arrest. Facing him, Milo and Alex find the 'monster' in a deteriorated condition locked within a highly secured cell. To add to the drama, the detectives get a tip-off that the killer, who hardly speaks, had said something that implied the doctor's mutilated eyes. |
The Blue Man | Kin Platt | 1,961 | Steve Forrester is a teenager who goes to live for a summer with his aunt and uncle, who run a rural motel. On his first day running the desk by himself, a strange man checks in, dressed in a scarf, hat, trench coat and gloves, unusual attire for summer. The light on the desk starts to flicker as the man signs in with an illegible scrawl. Later, Steve brings a towel to the stranger's room and sees something that launches him on an unusual and singular adventure: the man's skin is bright blue and he seems to be draining energy from a nearby lamp. After his uncle is seemingly murdered by the fleeing Blue Man, (who appears to possibly be of alien origin), Steve sets out on a cross-country search for justice and revenge. |
Warrior Scarlet | Rosemary Sutcliff | 1,958 | In Britain during the Bronze Age (about 900 BC) a young boy, Drem by name, dreams of becoming a warrior. He has first to overcome the fact he has a crippled arm and pass the tribe's test of manhood. This test is killing a wolf, on his own. Should he fail, he will be doomed to farm sheep for the rest of his life. When his friend and blood brother, named Vortrix watches him nearly die on his wolf slaying attempt, he cannot help himself but intervene. He attacks the wolf, meaning that the kill is void, as Vortrix has had a hand in the killing. Although Drem is badly injured by the wolf, he survives. Apparently Drem will never be a warrior, nor wear the scarlet cloth reserved only for warriors. He contemplates suicide, rather than face the shame of telling his family that he has failed. However, he goes to the sheep, and lives for a year with his friend Doli, a farmer. However the next winter, he kills his first wolf as it attacks the sheep flock. It bites him in the same place, removing his old scars, so removing the record of the old failed slaying. As the mark of his first attempt is still visible on the wolf, it is accepted as a legitimate kill. He is allowed to become a warrior, and passed through the terrifying initiation ceremony, which apparently involves all the candidates being knocked out. |
The Secret of the Swordfish | Edgar Pierre Jacobs | null | The first volume, "Ruthless Pursuit," opens on the eve of a World War. Details are scarce, but the reader is told that the enemy is an Asian superpower known as "the Yellow Empire," ruled by the Emperor Basam Damdu; the free world and the Yellow Empire have been locked in a cold war for the past three years. Within the first few pages of the book, the Yellow launch a worldwide aggression with modern rockets, bombers and paratroopers that quickly destroy and conquer the world's other major powers. However, the British military has been secretly working on a new type of superweapon known as the Swordfish, in anticipation of the war. Forewarned of the attack by a traitor in the Yellow army, Captain Francis Blake, a British officer, and Professor Phillip Mortimer, the scientist developing the Swordfish, escape with the superweapon's plans, their destination being a secret base in the Middle East where they will be able to finish their work. The rest of the episode follows their attempts to escape the pursuing Yellow forces, led by the cunning and conniving Colonel Olrik, Basam Damdu's chief of security. They initially escape from Britain in a jet-powered airplane called the "Golden Rocket," but are shot down somewhere over Iran by Yellow interceptors, and must continue the trek to the secret base on foot. Along the way, they encounter resistance fighter Ahmed Nasir, who becomes an invaluable help to them, and finally seek refuge in a small town in the Herat province. There, they are quickly betrayed by a Yellow spy. The episode ends with a cliffhanger: the soldiers of the Yellow army are directed to the room where Blake and Mortimer are staying and as they enter they find an astonishing surprise (naturally the reader can only see their reaction, not the cause of it). "Mortimer's Escape" takes place in two distinct halves. The first one picks up right where "Ruthless Pursuit" left off. After finding the room empty, the enraged Yellow commander orders his troops to search the city until they find Blake and Mortimer; however, he executes one of the community's elders in the process when the latter refuses to cooperate. This sparks an immediate insurrection in which the outraged townsmen quickly massacre the Yellow troops; in the ensuing chaos, Blake and Mortimer emerge from hiding and take off again, still with Nasir helping them. Eventually, the three of them make it to the Strait of Hormuz, but Blake is injured and loses the wallet containing the Swordfish plans while trying to escape a Yellow patrol. Mortimer then tells Nasir to take Blake to safety, while he returns to search for the plans. He is himself then captured by Yellow troops, but not before he is able to find and conceal the plans. The second half of the episode begins three months later in Lhassa (the Yellow capital), with Colonel Olrik making a report to the high council of the Yellow Empire. The Yellow are having more and more difficulty controlling their new empire; rebellions and acts of terrorism have continued worldwide, and despite their best efforts, they have still not been able to sweat the Swordfish plans out of Mortimer. As chief of the Empire's security service, Olrik is the natural scapegoat for this state of affairs; he therefore decides to take the gloves completely off and torture Mortimer as harshly as necessary, hoping to finally elicit a confession. Under instructions from Nasir, who has managed to infiltrate his prison, Mortimer pretends to relent, and agrees to reconstitute the Swordfish plans for the Yellow. After this, we are finally shown the secret base, where Blake and the admiral in command, Sir William Grey, have been conducting resistance against the Yellow (including many of the incidents that Olrik is being blamed for). They now have two urgent priorities; first, to find the lost plans and second, to break Mortimer out of prison. The first problem is resolved when Mortimer is able to pass a message to Nasir telling him where the plans are hidden. Soon after this, Mortimer almost manages a prison break on his own; before the Yellow are able to capture him, he is rescued by Blake and Nasir, who then take him to a submarine and manage to escape under the nose of the Yellow navy and air force. "SX1 counterattacks," the third part of the saga, begins soon after Mortimer's escape. In the first pages, British commandos attack and capture a Yellow train taking imprisoned scientists to a forced labor camp. The scientists are freed and taken back to the Hormuz base, where they also begin to work on the Swordfish project. Soon after this, acts of sabotage begin to disrupt the base, and Blake suspects that one of the captured scientists was actually a Yellow mole. This is eventually revealed to be none other than Olrik himself, who personally undertook the operation in an attempt to reestablish his reputation before the Emperor. Olrik manages to escape from the base, and the British are faced with an imminent Yellow invasion. Mortimer suggests a drastic solution; concentrate all the base's efforts on the assembly of only two working Swordfish, which should be enough to destroy a Yellow invasion force. He estimates thirty hours are all the time needed to accomplish this, and Admiral Grey gives him his word that the base will hold. The next morning, a vast Yellow task force, composed of an aircraft carrier battle group and a number of land and air forces, appears and surrounds the base. The initial attacks are defeated and turned back by the heroic efforts of the British. However, Olrik then deploys new chemical weapons against the base, which allow the Yellow to gain a foothold and slowly begin to work their way inwards. However, both Mortimer and Grey keep their word, and the two Swordfish (designated SX1 and SX2, hence the title) are finished in time. The weapons, piloted by Blake and Mortimer, are unleashed and destroy the Yellow task force in minutes, though one of them is lost in combat. The base is saved, and Sir William Grey launches a radio call to the resistance movements of the world telling them the news and urging them to revolt. In the following week, open rebellions erupt worldwide, taxing the overextended resources of the Yellow to the limit until the Emperor decides to end the war by launching ICBMs against all the rebel targets (with Olrik strapped to one of the rockets as punishment for his failures). Before he can do this, however, an entire squadron of Swordfish arrives over Lhassa and nukes the city, killing Basam Damdu and decapitating the Yellow Empire under the mocking eyes of Olrik. The last scene shows Blake and Mortimer back in a ruined and destroyed London, with Blake commenting that they will rebuild and that civilization, once again, has had the last word — "hopefully, this time, for good." |
Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint | Jay Williams | 1,956 | Through a mishap in Professor Bulfinch's laboratory, Danny accidentally creates an anti-gravity paint. In time, the government constructs a spaceship which uses the paint as a propulsion system. The spaceship is launched prematurely after Danny and Joe follow Professor Bulfinch and Dr. Grimes on a tour of the ship. A mechanical failure dooms the four to a trip out of the Solar System unless they can repair the ship. Should they fail in this, they will drift too far from the Sun and freeze to death. |
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine | Raymond Abrashkin | null | Danny uses a computer that Professor Bulfinch has created for NASA to prepare his homework, despite Professor Bullfinch's warning that Danny is to leave the machine alone. With his friend Joe Pearson and his new neighbor, Irene Miller, Danny has some success with the machine before it is sabotaged. Danny figures out what is wrong with the machine and corrects the problem. Danny's teacher also learns about the machine, and has her ideas for the Homework Champions. Once she finds out, she thinks of a way to trick the kids. |
Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine | Raymond Abrashkin | null | Danny accidentally discovers that an ionic transmitter Professor Bulfinch has been working on can be used to create miniature rainclouds. |
Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor | Raymond Abrashkin | null | Another accident in Professor Bulfinch's laboratory, instigated by Danny, results in the creation of a transparent, resilient material. The material proves useful in creating a bathysphere, and Professor Bulfinch, along with his friend Dr. Grimes, Danny, Joe, and Irene, descends into the Pacific Ocean on an experimental voyage. Unfortunately, the bathysphere's pilot is rendered unconscious, and the bathysphere becomes trapped in a cave. |
Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave | Raymond Abrashkin | null | Danny and his friend Joe Pearson discover the entrance to a cave in the woods near their home. Professor Bulfinch has just invented a portable x-ray machine, and he, along with his geologist friend Dr. Tresselt, see an opportunity to use the device in the cave. The two adults, plus Danny, Joe, and Irene, enter the cave on an expedition. What they find is astonishing...but will they be able to escape to reveal their discovery? |
Dark Universe | Daniel F. Galouye | 1,961 | The Survivors live deep underground in a world of complete darkness, divided into two clans, one living in the Lower Level and one in the Upper Level. Their legends tell of the Original World where man lived alongside the Light Almighty (a concept of which they can no longer conceive) and away from the ultimate evil, Radiation, with its two Lieutenants the Twin Devils Cobalt and Strontium. The Lower Level Survivors venerate a relic known as the Holy Bulb. "So compassionate was the Almighty (it was the Guardian of the Way's voice that came back [to Jared] now) that when He banished man from Paradise, He sent parts of Himself to be with us for a while. And He dwelled in many little vessels like this Holy Bulb." Jared is the son of the Prime Survivor, the leader of the Lower Level clan. He is himself due to become a Survivor (i.e. an adult clansman), but Jared is too busy with his quest to find Light. He rationalize that to find distant Light he must first locate its opposite, Darkness, which is near and "abounds in the worlds of men!" He goes on to theorize that: "Darkness must be something real. Only, we can't recognize it." ... "There's a clue [however]. We know that in the Original World - the first world that man inhabited after he left Paradise - we were closer to Light Almighty. In other words, it was a good world. Now let's suppose there's some sort of connection between sin and evil and this Darkness stuff. That means there must be less Darkness in the Original World, Right?" ... "Then all I have to do is find something there's less of in the Original World [than there is here]." ... "If Darkness is connected with evil and if Light is its opposite, then Light must be good. And if I find Darkness, then I may have some kind of idea as to the nature of Light." By leaving the safety of the central echo-caster, with only a pair of click stones with which to listen, Jared exposes himself to soubat (once common cave bats that either "Cobalt or Strontium took ... down to Radiation and made [them] over into ... super-creature[s]") and Zivvers (people with the unfathomable ability to 'hear' their surroundings despite having poor hearing compared to the fine tune senses of the Survivors). The soubats and Zivvers are thought of as similarly, or even related by the Survivors because of their ability to navigate the subterran world perfectly without 'proper' hearing. "It was an uncanny ability nobody could explain, except to say [soubats and Zivvers] were possessed of Cobalt or Strontium." Jared's quest for Light is interrupted by unexplained disappearances and an arranged marriage to Della, a girl from the Upper Level, the daughter of their chief 'the Wheel'. Things get progressively worse as strange monsters roam the world and the hot springs begin to dry up. Along with his betrothed, Jared sets out for the Zivver world, hoping it will bring him closer to Light, instead they finding themselves fleeing from the monsters once again, and being pushed closer to the Original World. |
Danny Dunn, Time Traveler | Raymond Abrashkin | null | Professor Bullfinch's experiment with a time travel invention is being secretly observed by Danny, Joe, and Irene. The youngsters are startled by the appearance of a second Joe. During the following confusion, the time travel device transports them all into the past. Aided by Benjamin Franklin, the Professor works to return them to their present. In the meantime, the youngsters explore the society of American life under British rule, only to find one of their number in danger of being marooned in the past. |
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