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Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land | Tom Stoppard | null | A Select Committee of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom meets to discuss a ridiculous scandal on which the tabloid press has begun focusing. The papers allege that some mystery woman has accused 119 members of the House of sexual harassment. The six members of the Committee look into it so as to maintain the House's good name. Ironically, each member of the committee reminds the secretary, Miss Gotobed, not to bring up their most recent rendez-vous. They do not want the press to get the wrong idea. It turns out that the secretary, who is not very adept at dictation, is the woman from the newspapers. The curtain falls and then rises again for New-Found-Land in which an older and a younger man, two other Members of Parliament, briefly discuss the naturalization of an American into British citizenship. They laud the American nation as a whole, including every American patriotic cliché they can remember. Eventually, the Select Committee returns and tries to reclaim its room. |
In Flanders Fields. The 1917 Campaign | null | null | The first chapter "The Deadlock" is a brief description of the causes and events of World War I leading up to the year 1917. It details the military plans of the year by the French, British and German High Commands with considerable references to the diaries and official histories of the commanders and countries involved, the press, journalists, historians and political figures. There are several maps and photographic plates of the battlefields in the book. While Third Battle of Ypres is synonymous with mud, death, futility of battles and horrible conditions of warfare, the writings do not play on these experiences of the soldier in the field too much, but instead gives the reader a somewhat unbiased view of what was really occurring at the very top of the commands: the British Prime Minister of the day, Lloyd George, Sir Douglas Haig, Sir William Robertson, Robert Nivelle, Ferdinand Foch and others. There are short quotes from newspapers of the day and soldiers at the front, with brief but vivid sketches of the actual battlefield, while comparing this with the views at Headquarters (none of the commanders of the armies seems to have ever visited the front or even seen it through field glasses and could not relate to the conditions of the battlefield and the struggles of the men through the unrelenting mud, and thus assessed the situations incorrectly, especially Haig). Sir Douglas Haig is shown to make large assumptions without proper intelligence about the German defences, enemy resources of men and guns, or the conditions of the battlefield. Leon Wolff does not say these things specifically, but gives the readers the facts as presented in official minutes of meetings with Lloyd George and the War Cabinet and diaries of high officers and leaves the reader to unequivocally reach his own conclusion of the characters involved. The book also details all the battles of 1917, from Nivelle's offensive and the French Army Mutinies (1917), Messines Ridge, Poelcapelle, Menin Road, the village of Passchendaele (fought by the Canadian Corps) and Ypres. It ends appropriately with a sequel of the end of the careers, and life after of Sir William Robertson, Sir Douglas Haig and David Lloyd George, quoting a line of Siegfried Sassoon's "On Passing the New Menin Gate" and ending finally with a passage of Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle which seems to truly explain the cause and reasoning of a war as horrible as World War I, if not all wars: |
The Virgin's Lover | Philippa Gregory | 2,004 | The book opens in the autumn of 1558, just after the death of Mary I, and bells are heralding the fact that Mary's half-sister, Elizabeth, is now queen. The book is told from four main perspectives: Elizabeth I's; William Cecil's, the queen's main advisor; Robert Dudley, the queen's favourite; and Amy Robsart's, who is Robert Dudley's wife. Robert Dudley returns to court upon Elizabeth's coronation, and Amy hopes that his ambitions will not get him into trouble. During Mary's reign, Dudley was kept in the Tower of London, his father and brother were executed, and another brother died in Calais. However, her hopes for the quiet life soon die, as Elizabeth and Robert become closer and more intimate. Elizabeth has inherited a bankrupt and rebellious country, in turmoil as a result of the previous two monarch's reigns. Her advisor, William Cecil, warns that she will only survive if she marries a strong prince, but the only man that Elizabeth desires is her childhood friend, and married man, Robert Dudley. Robert is sure that he can reclaim his destiny at Elizabeth's side. And as queen and courtier fall in love, Dudley begins to contemplate the impossible - setting aside his loving wife to marry the young Elizabeth... |
Troll Fell | Katherine Langrish | 2,004 | Troll Fell tells the story of young Peer Ulfsson, whose shipbuilder father has just died, and who is taken to live with his two wicked uncles, Balder and Grim, in a water mill under the shadow of Troll Fell, a mountain inhabited by trolls. Peer’s uncles make him do all the work around the mill, and at first he despairs, especially when he meets Granny Greenteeth, the sinister waterspirit who lives in the millpond. However, he is aided by the Nis (Norwegian Nisse), a mischievous though unpredictable house-spirit or brownie. His other friends are his dog, Loki, and Hilde, the pretty and confident daughter of Ralf Eiriksson, a nearby farmer. Ralf has sailed away on the Viking ship which Peer’s father built. In his absence, Peer and Hilde discover the plot which his two uncles are hatching: to sell children as slaves to the trolls, in exchange for gold. When Hilde’s little brother and sister are stolen away under cover of a blizzard, Peer and Hilde go together into the tunnels under the mountain in an attempt to bring them back. At the climax of the story, at a troll banquet when the troll king raises the top of the mountain on four red pillars, Peer is faced with the decision either to escape alone, or stay forever under the mountain with Hilde. Meanwhile Ralf has returned from his voyage and, along with his crew and many of the neighbours, forces his way into the troll banqueting hall. There is a stand-off with the trolls. Finally Peer discovers a way to trick his uncles into staying under the mountain in his and Hilde’s place, and in gratitude Ralf invites him, with Loki and the Nis, to live with Hilde’s family at the farm. In the last pages, we learn that Ralf’s voyage took him to Vinland in America, in a similar fashion to Leif Eriksson in the Saga of the Greenlanders. |
Out to Canaan | Jan Karon | null | As the story of Father Tim's Episcopalian Mitford parish continues, he finds himself in the very thick of things. Far from the bachelor life he knew for 62 years, he now finds himself opening his home to a myriad of friends, neighbors, and other lost souls, each giving new meaning to his God-centered life. |
The War of the End of the World | Mario Vargas Llosa | null | In the midst of the economic decline — following drought and the end of slavery — in the province of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil, the poor of the backlands are attracted by the charismatic figure and simple religious teachings of Antonio Conselheiro, the Counselor, who preaches that the end of the world is imminent and that the political chaos that surrounds the collapse of the Empire of Brazil and its replacement by a republic is the work of the devil. Seizing a hacienda in an area blighted by economic decline at Canudos the Counselor's followers build a large town and defeat repeated and ever larger military expeditions designed to remove them. As the state's violence against them increases they too turn increasingly violent, even seizing the modern weapons deployed against them. In an epic final clash a whole army is sent to extirpate Canudos and instigates a terrible and brutal battle with the poor while politicians of the old order see their world destroyed in the conflagration. |
The Singer of Tales | null | null | The book is divided into two parts. In the first, the author concentrates on the theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition and its implications for bards who would recite epic poetry and the eventual literary figures who converted that oral material into written form. His development of the theory is firmly rooted in studies of contemporary Serbo-Croatian poets who primarily use oral formulas to remember long passages that make up songs and epic. Chapter One serves as an introduction and gives the reader a brief outline of the history of the oral-formulaic theory while stressing the importance of the contributions of Milman Parry to the theory. Chapter Two, entitled Singers: Performance and Training, attempts to define the performer in question. It asks and attempts to answer the question of who were these traveling bards who would move from province to province to recite great epic. Moreover, the chapter discusses the level of control that Ancient performers had over these tales; it concludes that those who have to memorize such long tales never tell the same story twice with the same wording by examining the examples set by Serbo-Croatian poets. He describes three stages in the training of an oral poet. In the first, passive stage in which a young boy learns the themes and general structures of an epic. In the second stage, he first attempts to put the stories he knows in the context of the meter of poetic verse; finally, he attempts to recite-compose his first complete poem. Chapter Three is called The Formula and discusses what Lord believes to be a classic oral formula. In doing so, he borrows Parry's definition that defines a formula as "a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea." Parry's formulas are almost mathematical in nature; his discussion focuses on repetitions of meter and pitch more than textual content. However, he also notes that oral poets learn their epics like one would learn a living, evolving language. Chapter Four, The Theme, focuses on the repetitions in content that appear in ancient epic. Parry writes that the same theme can be expressed by many different formulas, and analyzes several examples from Serbo-Croatian poetry to demonstrate his points. Chapter Five, Songs and the Song, follows the intrinsic distinctions between the bard's attitude towards his own work and the tendency of modern scholars to think of the oral-formulaic poem as "a given text that undergoes change from one singing to another." In fact, he says, the ancient bard was more likely to think of himself as a "flexible plan of themes.". As a result of this, epic tends to change over time as imperfect memories bend the traditions in new ways. Chapter Six is called Writing and Oral Tradition. In it, Lord goes into the effect of the oral tradition on the writing of a given culture while also examining the transition of stories from an oral to a written (manuscript) tradition. However, he says, while the writing of a culture can have an impact on its oral tradition, that is by no means a requirement. Since oral poems are so fluid in nature, any written records we have of them represent only one performance of them. As a result, as writing replaced oral tradition, the two could not live in symbiosis and the latter disappeared. The second part of the book shows the application of the theory discussed in the first half to the work of Homer in general before more carefully examining its application to the Iliad, Odyssey, and medieval epic. Chapter Seven, Homer, attempts to prove, using the theory developed in the first half of the book, that the poet modern-day readers refer to as Homer was an oral-formulaic composer. Chapters Eight and Nine, The Odyssey and The Iliad, examine those two works in the context of composition by an oral poet. Chapter Ten, Some Notes on Medieval Epic, does the same for medieval French and English poetic epic, with a focus on similarities between Beowulf and Homeric epic, as well as other medieval epics such as The Song of Roland and a medieval Greek poem called Digenis Akritas. |
Sébastien Roch | Octave Mirbeau | 1,890 | That is the emotional story of "the murder of a child’s soul" by a Jesuit priest, a teacher at the private school for boys of Saint-François-Xavier in Vannes, Brittany, where Mirbeau spent four painful years as a pupil, before being expelled, at the age of fifteen, in suspicious circumstances. At age eleven, Sébastien is sent to boarding school by his father, an ironmonger and terrible snob. The boy does not fit into the school and its aristocratic and wealthy students. He is ignored by nearly everyone until a pedophile priest starts to befriend him. The innocent 13-year-old boy is seduced, then sexually abused, by Father de Kern. Sébastien is expelled along with his only friend Bolorec, the boys having been accused of indulging in inapproprite sexual acts. The charges have been trumped up by Father de Kern. Sébastien's life is ruined and he is unable to hold down a job or make friends. He cannot even build a relationship with Marguerite, his childhood sweetheart. Aged twenty one, Sébastien is absurdely killed during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, his body being carried from the battlefield by Bolorec. |
Troll Mill | Katherine Langrish | 2,005 | The hero Peer Ulffson now lives with his friend Hilde and her family. One evening on the beach, having just returned from a fishing trip in stormy weather, he is horrified when a neighbour’s young wife, Kersten, pushes her newborn child into his arms before throwing herself into the sea. As he carries the child home through the windy night, he sees the old deserted mill mysteriously working away ‘all by itself’. Rumours abound in the village that Kersten was a seal woman, and that her husband Bjorn the fisherman, Peer’s friend and mentor, is now cursed, doomed to die at sea. As he struggles to understand these mysteries and protect the vulnerable ‘seal-baby’ from the predatory water spirit Granny Greenteeth, Peer must also learn to cope with his feelings for Hilde, and try to carve out a future for himself. As in the first book of the trilogy, Troll Fell, Langrish uses a variety of folklore motifs such as the Orkney legends of seal people or selkies to create an unusual and believable fantasy. |
Everything Happens for a Reason | null | null | Priya has married a handsome young Indian man living in America. Though she has moved from Delhi to Los Angeles - land of Hollywood excess and celebrity craziness - she still lives the life of an obedient Hindu wife: cooking, cleaning and obeying her in-laws in all things. So when her mother-in-law suggests that she goes out to work, Priya is a little surprised. But not half as surprised as her husband and his family would be if they knew the reality of her new job. Because Priya has just become the hottest, most in demand and most envied showbiz reporter in Hollywood. And they would NOT approve. |
The Dark Hills Divide | Patrick Carman | 2,005 | The 12-year-old Alexa Daley is spending another summer in Bridewell with her father, mayor of Lathbury. She looks forward to exploring the old Renny Lodge where she stays each year, with its cozy library and maze of passages and rooms. The book starts by Alexa going on a walk through the streets of Bridewell with her adventurer friend Thomas Warvold. During the stroll, Warvold tells Alexa a fable that he heard on one of his far-off journeys. The fable consists of six blind men who all felt an elephant and thought it was something different because of the part they were touching. When the fable is finished, Alexa finds that Warvold is dead. The following chapter turns to an event that happened before Warvolds death. Alexa and her father, James Daley, are on the road to Bridewell from their hometown of Lathbury. During the ride, Alexa insists that the story of the walls that surround Bridewell and the cities around it be told to her. The story is of an orphan named Thomas Warvold who wandered off from his hometown on his thirteenth birthday. For years no one knew or cared where he'd gone. After twenty years he eventually persuaded others to join him in a place most everyone believed was haunted, dark and dangerous. But, after time, more people became convinced that the place was safe to live in. The valley where Warvold settled, which is now called Lunenberg, filled up to capacity and provided no room for growth. One end of the valley was the already established town of Ainsworth. Because of the problem, Warvold decided to expand. He would build a walled road out into the unknown, and at the end of it he would build a new town. Only, who would build the wall? People of Lunenburg were afraid of the dangers outside. So Warvold decided to borrow convicts from Ainsworth, branded with a C for criminal, to do the hard labour. There was but one condition: After ten years, Warvold could return the convicts to Ainsworth, no questions asked. In three years, the convicts built the wall to what is now Bridewell and two more walled roads were started. Over the next several years the walled roads to Turlock and Lathbury were finished, completing the kingdom. In the middle of the story, Alexa and her father have a race with a mailman named Silas Hardy whom they meet on the road. Upon arriving at the Renny Lodge (Named after Warvold's wife Renny Warvold), Alexa is greeted by Ganesh, the mayor of Turlock and by Warvold himself. After going up to her room, Alexa uses a spyglass, stolen from her mother, to look over the walls from her window. She is interrupted by Pervis Kotcher, head guard of the Turlock gate, who takes the spyglass from her. Fortunately, Warvold comes just then (Pervis hides the spyglass) and takes Alexa for a walk which, as shown in the beginning of the book, ends in his death. Before getting help, Alexa takes a silver key from the locket around Warvold's neck. During Warvold's funeral Alexa sneaks to the library. While there, she drifts off to sleep in her favorite nook. She is awakened by Pervis, who breaks her spyglass before returning it. At dinner Nicolas (Warvold's son) tells Alexa about his mother Renny's interest in the art of Jocastas. That day, when Alexa is in her favorite nook again, she discovers that the medallions which the library cats Sam and Pepper have hanging from their collars, have Jocastas etched on them. Alexa is successful in looking at Sam's but receives a nasty scratch when she attempts to look at Pepper's. Later on, Alexa uses the silver key to open a passageway hidden behind her favorite nook. At the end of the passageway, outside the wall, Alexa is greeted by a short man named Yipes, who seems to have been waiting for her. Alexa follows Yipes up Mount Norwood and comes to a glowing pond. Inside the pond, she finds a green stone. Once she puts it in her leather pouch, Yipes takes her to his house. Waking up from her sleep, Alexa finds that she has the ability to talk to animals. Darius, a wolf separated from his family, leads her to a tunnel under the walled road between Lathbury and Bridewell. At the end of the tunnel, Alexa discovers that the convicts of Ainsworth inhabit The Dark Hills. Once she is back outside, a rabbit named Malcolm takes her to the forest king Ander, a grizzly bear. Ander tells Alexa that she can talk to animals as long as she has the green stone with her and is outside the walls. He also tells her that the convicts living in The Dark Hills are planning to attack and take over Bridewell. The leader of the convicts is someone the convicts call Sebastian, an escaped convict posing as a citizen of Bridewell. At the meeting Alexa meets Murphy (Squirrel), Beaker (Raccoon), Henry (Badger), Picardy (Female Black Bear), Boone (Bobcat), Odessa (Darius's wife) and Sherwin (Darius's son). The day after the meeting, Alexa is sent back through the passageway she came from. Back in the library she learns that Sam and Pepper are traitors. At her arrival, Silas, who Mr. Daley promotes as his personal mailman, asks her where she had gone. Alexa lies and says she was playing a game. During lunch, Pervis returns drunk from his holiday and is locked up. Later that day, Alexa visits Pervis in his cell and the two play a game of chess, in which the winner gets to ask 5 questions. Pervis is the victor and asks Alexa about the night of Warvold's death and her disappearance. Feeling that she could trust him, Alexa tells him about everything. The next morning, Alexa also tells her father about her disappearance and the plot against Bridewell. Hearing this, Mr. Daley calls for a meeting. During the meeting the group, which consists of Mr. Daley, Grayson (Librarian), Nicolas, Ganesh, Pervis, Silas and Alexa, come up with a plan to defend Bridewell and release Pervis. While looking at one of Warvold's favorite books, Alexa finds a page about Sebastian telling her to read page 194. Having figured out who Sebastian was, Alexa and Murphy go back to the passageway in the library way and come face to face with Ganesh. Ganesh admits that he was the one who poisoned Warvold and that he was Sebastian. The confession is followed by a fight in which Ganesh dies. Alexa is rescued by her father and Pervis, who take her back above ground. The convicts attack Bridewell at midnight but eventually fail. In the epilogue: All the walls are taken down except for the wall around Bridewell. * The plot above does not contain some details and events. The book is narrated from Alexa's point of view. |
Into the Mist | Patrick Carman | 2,007 | Before the walls went up... before the battle between Abaddon and Elyon... before Alexa Daley was born... there were two young brothers, Thomas and Roland Warvold, whose pasts were as mysterious as their futures. Raised in a horrible orphanage and forced to escape into a strange, unknown world, Thomas and Roland found adventure wherever they turned-and danger wherever they looked. Their story is one of magic, exploration, fellowship, and secrets-all of which need to be revealed as the chronicles of Elyon unfold. |
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs | Judi Barrett | null | The book is about a story that a kindly and elderly grandfather tells to his grandchildren about the town of Chewandswallow, where the weather comes three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and is always food and beverages. The rain is juice and soup, the snow is ice cream, and the wind brings hamburgers. Because of this phenomenon, there are no grocery stores. However, the weather soon takes a turn for the worse, at first simply just giving the people disgusting things, like pea soup fog, soggy green beans and Brussels sprout cakes. However, it quickly becomes catastrophic, and the portion sizes of the food grow to massive sizes, and the entire island is bombarded with a severe amount of food that completely buries buildings, crushes homes and blocks traffic. The people decide to use stale bread and pizza to build boats to escape from Chewandswallow, while they still have a chance before the weather completely destroys the island. Soon, the population of Chewandswallow arrive in a new town, where they struggle to adapt to their new lives in the world where the sky doesn't bring food. |
The Jackal of Nar | null | null | This powerful, multilayered saga features a complicated hero: brave yet sensitive General Richius Vantran. Ordered by the Emperor to halt a revolt by a religious faction, Vantran's success wins him both Imperial favor and a wife--though neither sits well with him. For in battle, he fell in love with a member of the very religious faction he put down. Torn between duty and passion, Vantran surprises himself by choosing to love the enemy--and march against his old companions. fr:Le Chacal de Nar pl:Szakal z Nar |
The Wrong Side of the Sky | Gavin Lyall | 1,961 | Jack Clay, an ex-Royal Air Force military transport makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights of dubious legitimacy around the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe in an old Douglas DC-3. His dreams of having his own aeroplane and own charter company are rapidly fading due to age and lack of money, but at least he is flying. While in Athens, Greece he has a chance encounter with an old wartime friend and rival pilot, Ken Kitson, when the latter lands in a luxurious private Piaggio P.166. Kitson is personal pilot to the immensely wealthy former-Nawab of Tungabhadra in Pakistan, who is searching the world for his family's heirloom jewels, been stolen by a British charter pilot during the Partition of India. However, the Nawab is not the only one looking for the missing jewels, and is not the only one who would cheat, steal or murder to find them first. |
Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa | Francis Kalnay | 1,958 | ==Reference |
The Spook's Mistake | Joseph Delaney | null | Tom is annoyed that the Spook will not allow him to leave the house, for fear that the fiend will get him. Alice is the same, wanting to do the grocery shopping instead of Tom. While the Spook is away, Tom goes to the village alone to get the groceries ignoring Alice's protests. On the way back, he is captured by a press-gang, a group of men who force boys into the King's army who are currently fighting a war. While tied up one night, Tom senses the presence of a dark force which takes the form of a malevolent witch, scaring the men away. It is only when the witch comes close to him, that Tom realizes that it is Alice using a type of magic called Dread. Keeping this a secret from the Spook, they tell him that Alice got the men to chase her allowing Tom to escape. The Spook decides to send Tom to another Spook, Bill Arkwright, for further training. Soon they are on the way to Caster, where Tom is collected by a ferryman and brought to the boundary of Bill's home. Tom lets himself into the house to find that Bill has left to deal with business, leaving Tom a note saying not to harm the ghosts that live in the house. Tom soon finds out the Bill is a drunk, he almost drowns Tom while teaching him how to swim, and beats him with his staff while teaching him how to fight. On top of that Tom is scared of Bill's two vicious wolfhounds Tooth and Claw. Having enough, Tom leaves in the middle of the night to return home after only the third day. Eventually he realizes that the dogs have been stalking him and Bill is waiting for him ahead. He gives Tom the letter that the Spook had sent to Bill. It said that after the treatment Bill gave previous apprentices, the Spook would never send another to him, but as the greatest threat to the Fiend, Tom is in danger and must learn to fight in order to survive, and Bill is the only one who can teach him that. Tom returns to study with Bill, learning about water witches and improving his swimming. He then is sent to find a path through the marshes to reach an abandoned monastery. The dogs would be sent after him, and if he reaches the monastery first he wins. While running through the marshes he sees a woman in front of him, too late he realizes that it is a water witch. Using her bloodeye to paralyze him, she hooks his ear before dragging him into the marsh. Just in time, Claw saves him by biting the witches finger off. Back at the house, Tom learns that the witch, called Morewenna, is the Fiends daughter, and Bill has been hunting her for years. After Tom sends a letter to the Spook, he and Bill leave with the dogs to hunt for the witch. After speaking with a hermit, who has the ability to find anyone, they come to a village and lodge in a tavern. After eating and Bill getting drunk, they sleep for a few hours before heading towards the lakes. Bill becomes violently ill, and Tom with Claw, leave to look for the witch. After a while they return to find Claw's mate Tooth dead, and Bill's staff broken and boot floating in the water. Back at the inn Tom uses a mirror to contact Alice to tell her of Bill's death. Afterwards he and Claw leave to return to Bill's house. They elude the witch chasing them and reach the house. That night, one of the house ghosts, Bill's mother, tells Tom the he is still alive and is being held captive. The next morning, Tom goes to the river, where the ferryman is delivering salt to the house, he also has a letter for Tom from the Spook, saying that Tom must leave immediately for Caster. While the ferryman insists that Tom leave straight away with him, Tom goes back to the house first to check on the dog and get his staff. At the house, he finds Alice and the two search around in the ferry, when suddenly attacked on their search. They soon realize that the ferryman is actually the Fiend. They are bait for a trap for the Spook, who manages to free them. Later they are able to find Bill and rescue him with the unlikely help of the assassin witch Grimalkin. The Fiend later sends Tom out to fight Morwenna, holding the two Spooks and Alice's lives in the balance. Tom meets Grimalkin along the way who once again offers her help,to ensure the death of Morwenna, and Tom accepts but asks her why she is sure that the fiend will not turn up and kill everyone because she broke the rules. Grimalkin replies that she is the mother of one the fiends children and whoever births a child of the fiend is put under protection by him. It is revealed that Alice contacted her and asked her to protect Tom. After the battle is won Grimalkin asks Tom to visit her on Midsummers (according to tradition it that the midsummer after the 14th birthday that the son of a witch becomes a man) for a gift. Learning that Alice has been using some witch powers, the Spook decides to bury Alice in a pit, but it is only with the persuasion of Bill and Tom, that he relents and banishes Alice to Pendle instead. Before she leaves, she gives Tom the blood jar containing Morwena's blood, so that he can protect himself, but he refuses to use it. Knowing it is unlikely she will see him again, she kisses him on the lips for a few seconds before turning and running to Pendle. The Spook then departs and Tom finishes off his six months training with Bill. On his way back to Chipenden the Fiend once again finds Tom. The Fiend tells him that Alice's mother and father were not her real parents, but rather he and Bony Lizzie are. After Tom later informs the Spook of this, John Gregory reveals he had his suspicions all along, and they together conclude Alice used her own blood in the bloodjar, so desperate was she to protect Tom. |
Midnight Plus One | Gavin Lyall | 1,965 | Lewis Cane is an ex-SOE operative who worked with the French Resistance against Nazi Germany. He stayed in Paris after the end of World War II, making a somewhat precarious living as a business expediter. One day he is approached by a lawyer, Henri Merlin, a former resistance comrade, with a job: a wealthy international financier, Maganhard, needs to be driven from Brittany to Liechtenstein in secrecy and within three days. The fact that the French Sûreté have an open arrest warrant out on Maganhard seems like a simple problem. However, when half the hit-men in Europe start gunning for them, things get complicated quickly. As Cane races the clock, the police, and the assassins across France and Switzerland, whom can he trust? His alcoholic and trigger-happy bodyguard? Maganhard's mysterious private secretary who seemingly goes out of her way to create problems? Or his former Resistance contacts, who might or might not sell him out for the highest price? |
Shooting Script | Gavin Lyall | 1,966 | Keith Carr, an ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot with combat experience in the Korean War is now living in Jamaica, where he makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Caribbean in his mortgaged second-hand de Havilland Dove. After a rival pilot from his Korean War days lands a high-priced job commanding a squadron of de Havilland Vampire jet fighters for the hard-line military dictators on the nearby “Republica Libre”, Carr suddenly finds life more difficult. For some reason, the United States FBI is keeping him under surveillance. Republica Libre at first offers him a job, and then impounds his plane when he refuses – and one of his flying students ends up murdered. Carr is hired by the flamboyant movie director Walt Whitmore, who is filming an action movie on the north coast of Jamaica, and Carr is assigned to fly an old World War II vintage B-25 Mitchell medium bomber as a camera plane. However, it soon becomes apparent that Whitmore has more in mind for Carr and the decrepit bomber than just making a film. The character of Whitmore was inspired by John Wayne, with whom Lyall spent four days at a studio while Wayne was filming. Sounds like the new movie "Argo." Movie people and secret agents. |
Venus with Pistol | Gavin Lyall | 1,969 | Gilbert Kemp is dealer specializing in antique guns in London with a somewhat dubious background. He is approached by the mysterious Carlos MacGregor Garcia, a Nicaraguan and his employer, the very wealthy ex-professional tennis player Doña Margarita Umberto, who are traveling around Europe buying oil paintings to form a private collection which they allege will be donated to the Nicaraguan people. However, as many of the works are to be acquired from private collectors who do not wish the sale to be made public, and as many European governments would block the export of the historically valuable paintings, Kemp's services are needed in order to smuggle the paintings into Switzerland, from where they will be transported to Nicaragua in the diplomatic pouch. It seems like a straightforward matter of art smuggling until Kemp is mugged on arrival in Zürich, and a priceless Cezanne is stolen. On his next commission in Amsterdam, he helps obtain an un-catalogued work of Vincent van Gogh, but the art expert certifying the painting is soon brutally murdered. Things heat up in Venice and culminate in Vienna where Kemp finally unravels the web of treachery and deceit that he has unwittingly stumbled into. |
The Fall of the Templar | Derek Benz | 2,008 | Lord Sumner has unlocked the secrets to the Spear of Ragnarök, unleashing a power that threatens to bring a second Ice Age. All hope seems lost until the Templar Knights discover clues that may lead them to a relic with the power to stand against the Spear. Now Max Sumner, Natalia Romanov, Harley Eisenstein, and Ernie Tweeny must join the Templar in a treacherous journey into the Underworld as they hunt for that lost relic and try and save the planet from extinction. But even if they make it through the underground labyrinth, an ageless dragon awaits at the end of their quest. |
Antony and Cleopatra | Colleen McCullough | 2,007 | McCullough continues her Masters of Rome series with the seventh and final installment, Antony and Cleopatra. The novel spans the years 41 BC to 27 BC, from the aftermath of the Battle of Philippi and the suicide of Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus until the downfall of the second triumvirate, the final war of the Roman Republic and the renaming of Octavian to Augustus in 27 BC. The novel, which is supposed to be McCullough's last in the series, focuses mainly on the famous love story between Mark Antony, victor at Philippi, and queen Cleopatra, earlier the lover of Julius Caesar. This book differs greatly from Shakespeare's treatment of these events; Cleopatra is portrayed as no great beauty, but rather an inept politician who helps ruin Antony's cause by publicly meddling in affairs of state, and Antony is, for much of the book, far more in love with Cleopatra's wealth than her person. Caesarion is portrayed as a gifted, idealistic youth who would be far happier had he never been a king, and who is not happy with his mother's ambitious plans to make him ruler of all the East. Octavian and his wife Livia are depicted as pragmatic to the point of total ruthlessness but not needlessly cruel. |
The Moffats | Eleanor Estes | null | The Moffats are a fatherless family in Cranbury, Connecticut, which Estes modeled after her hometown of West Haven. Mama is a dressmaker with four children: Sylvie, Joey, Janey and Rufus. The two youngest, ten-year-old Janey and five-year-old Rufus, are the focus of these stories. When the book opens Janey watches as a strange man nails a For Sale sign on their house. They've lived there since shortly after her father died, and Janey can't imagine living anywhere else. Mama tells the children not to worry about it until it sells. Each chapter in the book tells of one simple adventure the children had. For instance, when the first day of school arrives and Rufus goes to kindergarten, he takes very seriously the instruction to watch over his young friend Hughie. When Hughie runs away from school and hides on a train, Rufus follows him, and a helpful engineer gets them back just in time for lunch. Another time the children decide to rig up a ghost in their attic to scare the neighborhood bully. They use their Mama's dressmakers form, a pumpkin with real teeth and a scooter. When they take the boy up to see it, they get a big scare themselves, and only later realize their cat had made the 'ghost' move. When Rufus gets scarlet fever, the doctor puts a quarantine sign on their house. Mama, who can always find the good side of any situation, reminds the children that no one will try to buy it while someone inside has scarlet fever. In the meantime she entertains them all with stories of when she lived in New York City. Eventually one family, the Murdocks, becomes interested in the yellow house, but they can't make up their minds to buy it or not. The Moffats get very tired of having one or more of the Murdocks always coming by to look at something, and the little girl Letitia is the worst. She rings the doorbell over and over, and when she gets inside she eats candy, but never shares. Finally the house does sell, and the Moffats move to a different house, with a tiny yard, that turns out to have a girl Janey's age right next door. In the end, "Estes celebrates variety as the source of pleasure and growth." |
The Tale of Fedot the Strelets | null | null | The storyline is based on the folk tale Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What Fedot, a strelets, serves at Tsar's court as the royal hunter. Tsar orders him to provide the game for his dinner with English embassinger. Fedot was unlucky: he got not a single bird. When he tried to shoot at least a dove, it turned into a beautiful maid, Marusia (Maria), which Fedot adopted as his wife. Marusia, possessing magical skills, saves her man from Tsar's punishment: she summons Tit Kuzmich and Frol Fomich (two magical servants being a sort of genie, who could and would perform anything Marusia orders), and they fill Tsar's table with food. Tsar makes his diplomacy with the English noble, in hope to make him marry Tsar's daughter, the Princess, who is not beautiful enough to attract the suiters. Princess and her Nanny, an old angry woman, are not pleased and argue against the match with an ambassador, who seem greedy and stupid to them. After the dinner, the General, leader of the secret police, arrives to the Tsar. He tells his senior about Fedot's new pretty wife, and Tsar begins to plan how to steal Marusia from Fedot. He orders General to find a task for Fedot which he would be impossible to complete and it would let Tsar to execute Fedot for incompetency. General goes to the forest, where old witch Baba Yaga lives, and asks her advice. With her magic, Yaga finds the way. Tsar should order Fedot to bring him next day a magic carpet on which the whole Russia could be seen just like on a map. Tsar calls Fedot and orders him the carpet, Fedot feels low, but Marusia and her magic servants solve the problem and bring the carpet at morning. Tsar, though trying to seem happy, is upset. He calls fo General again, threatening he will be punished if no plan will be given. General, also upset, goes back to Baba Yaga, who gives him another plan. Now Tsar orders Fedot to bring him next day a golden-horned deer, which is thought to not exist at all. But Marusia and her servants bring the deer as well. Tsar forces General, General forces Yaga, and the final plan is prepared. The new task for Fedot is to find Something That Could Not Be in the World. Even Tit Kuzmich and Frol Fomich are unable to find a thing so loosely described. Fedot sets up to journey for his goal, leaving his young wife home. A few days later, Tsar, despite being continually mocked by the Nanny for this, arrives with the weeding gifts to Marusia. The young woman refuses to betray Fedot for old and vile Tsar, she turns into dove and flies away. Fedot is wandering the world in quest for Something That Could Not Be. Shipwreck puts him on an uninhabited island. Its only master is a Voice, a bodyless yet powerful spirit, who is living a boring life: he can summon himself any good he wants, but only thing he longs for is human company. Fedot, realizing he found his goal, persuades the spirit to join his way back to Russian Tsar. Returning home, Fedot discovers his house devastated by Tsar, and Marusia tells him about Tsar's harassment. Fedot calls to the simple Russian people to help him avenge the injustice, and they rise up. Crowd storms into Tsar's palace. Tsar, General and Baba Yaga, caught in charge, cowardly try to translate the guilt on two others. People sentence them to sail away in a bucket overseas. Then Fedot refuses a marriage offering from Princess, leaving her with his promise to find her another man, his twin. The tale ends up with the feast, supplied by Something-That-Could-Not-Be's magic. |
Blind Faith | Ben Elton | 2,007 | Trafford Sewell, the novel's protagonist, sets off for work on a rare "Fizzy Coff" (a day he must be physically present in his office; like most people he usually telecommutes) and, in the short distance he has to travel, he is confronted by the numerous maudlin "tributes" to dead "kiddies", massive overcrowding, and oppressive heat that are typical of his world. His "Confessor", Bailey, confronts him about his lateness in posting an explicit video of Caitlin Happymeal (Trafford's daughter) being born on the "WorldTube". Trafford's given excuse is forgetfulness, rather than the illegal desire for privacy that is his true reason. A "Fizzy Coff" colleague, Cassius, begins to take an interest in Trafford and invites him to lunch at an "old-fashioned" falafel restaurant. There he tells Trafford that he is a "Vaccinator" who belongs to the "Humanist" group. This group believes in reason and science, opposing the Temple's message of blind faith. Having already lost an earlier child to a "plague" as all epidemics are called, Trafford tries to find a way to get Caitlin Happymeal vaccinated. Trafford's wife, Chantorria, is a devout Temple member and is against the idea. Trafford ignores her wishes and secretly vaccinates Caitlin against measles, mumps and tetanus. Vaccination is banned under the "Wembley Laws" as interference in "God's will" and as a result, half of all children born die of preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella and tetanus. When a measles epidemic comes to London, thousands of children die, including all the children in the Trafford's apartment building, but Caitlin Happymeal survives. Chantorria is aware of the fact that Catilin Happymeal has been vaccinated, but rather than accepting this cause and effect, she sees Caitlin Happymeal's survival as God's will. The Sewells become stars in their parish and Chantorria becomes the centre of attention, which she relishes. She gradually becomes convinced that she is one of God's chosen few and begins an affair with Confessor Bailey. During this time, Trafford has fallen in love with Sandra Dee, another "Fizzy Coff" colleague. He has been "Goog'ing" her and discovers that the videos that she "tubes" are not of her and her blog entries have been lifted wholesale from other people's blogs. This fascinates Trafford as he sees a kindred spirit in her: someone else who values privacy in a world where everything is made public. Trafford introduces Sandra Dee to the books that Cassius has lent him from the Humanist group's library. The relationship between the pair develops. The Sewells' world is then shattered by the death of Caitlin Happymeal due to a cholera epidemic, a disease against which she was not vaccinated. Chantorria becomes angry, telling Trafford that Caitlin's death is a punishment from God for his heresy in having her vaccinated at all. They are rejected by their community and arrested by the Temple and are tortured into implicating others. Chantorria accepts the torture as her "just punishment". As Trafford finally breaks and implicates Cassius, the Inquisitor tells him that they already knew everything, the torture was simply to test his endurance. In his cell, Trafford is visited by Sandra Dee, who turns out to be an undercover police officer, and the reason that the Temple knows all about the Humanists. She tries to recruit Trafford. He refuses and he and Chantorria are taken to the stake to be burned as heretics. On his personal PC, Trafford has set up an email bomb (containing a précis of the Theory of Evolution) which he tricks Sandra Dee into releasing under the pretense that it contains a love-letter from him to her. When being tied to the stake, Trafford notices a girl waving an Ev Love ("evolve" backwards) banner, showing that she received the e-mail. He goes to his death in hope of a better world, reasoning that a society which promotes ignorance over knowledge and values mediocrity will inevitably die out and "evolve" into one that values knowledge and excellence. |
The Good Master | Kate Seredy | 1,935 | Young Kate isn't at all what Jansci and his family are expecting. She turns out to be an out-of-control little girl, sent by her father to live with her Uncle's family in the country. Kate's Uncle Marton is the "Good Master", a kind and respected man in the community. Her father has spoiled Kate since her mother died, and now he hopes his brother will be able to do something with her. At first Jansci is repelled by her unpredictable and disrespectful behavior. But he and Kate share many adventures on his father's ranch in Hungary—riding run-away horses, going to a Country Fair, celebrating Easter and Christmas in traditional ways. Eventually he learns to appreciate her spirit, and Kate learns to love and respect the people she has met. When her father arrives at the end of the book, he hardly recognizes his polite, self-controlled daughter, and she persuades him to move to the country to teach. |
Word of Honor | Nelson DeMille | 1,985 | The novel begins with Ben Tyson finding and reading excerpts from Hue: Death of a City, a recently published book by Andrew Picard about the Battle of Hue during the Vietnam War. The book highlights an incident similar to MyLai and is based on information provided to Picard from two men in Tyson's platoon and from a nun who escaped the incident. It names Tyson as the leader of the platoon, which is shot at as it approaches a hospital, suffering one casualty and two injuries. According to the book, a doctor at the hospital refuses to help one of the American soldiers because his condition is too bad; after an American soldier shoots the doctor and others are killed in the hospital, chaos ensues and, according to Picard, the platoon decides to kill all the witness (everyone in the hospital). The book never mentions names except Tyson's, stating that he was the platoon lieutenant. Tyson researches his possible options and learns that a platoon leader can be held accountable for the actions of his men if he should have anticipated them or possibly if he knew of them and did not report them. In this case, the charge would have to be murder since the statute of limitations ran out on other possible charges. Tyson tells his wife, Marcy, of the book and has her read it. He doesn't deny what the book charges but instead says that on the whole it is accurate. Marcy is a liberal, was very active in the 60's anti-war movement, and is somewhat skeptical of her husband's actions but still supports him. The Tyson's social life begins to take a hit and the tabloids begin to focus first on Ben and second on Marcy. A famous picture of a nude Marcy which was first printed in Life in the 60's is reprinted. Tyson is visited by Chet Brown, a mysterious high-level agent, who advices and warns him to play fair and not attack the Army, thereby further dirtying Vietnam and America's role in it. He also learns that the Army is looking into assigning him active orders again so that they will be able to court martial him for murder. Tyson is given the notice that he has been summoned to return to active duty, the first step before he will be court-martialed. The Army enlists Major Karen Harper to lead the investigation to see if Tyson should be court-martialed. The two meet and Tyson explains a different story to her of the Hue Hospital incident that contradicts Picard's. In his version, the platoon did not know the building was a hospital and that it was fortified by Vietnam soldiers. His platoon scored a victory over the Vietcong in the hospital. Tyson visits the Vietnam War Memorial and sees Larry Cane's name on it. Cane served in his platoon and died in the hospital incident. According to Picard's book, he was shot by Vietcong as the platoon approached the hospital. Tyson reflects on the kind letter he wrote to the Cane family, speaking of his bravery, and ensuring them that he died quickly without pain. He then reflects that this latter part was the only truth, something he knew because he "shot him through the heart." Tyson meets Major Karen Harper again and tempers run high as he smashes a glass across the wall. Harper tells him of the two men who told Picard about the story: a medic, Steven Brandt, and a soldier, Richard Farley. She also tells him the other infantry gave exactly the same story he did. Tyson and Harper begin to develop an attraction for each other but neither acts. They talk about truth and justice, the nun who Picard interviewed who is missing (Sister Theresa), and what should be done (whether Harper should recommend Tyson be court-martialed for murder). The reader also begins to learn of the environment that Tyson's platoon was in. The 25-year old Tyson was leading a platoon of 17-, 18-, and 19-year olds who had witnessed and participated in horrific battles over the last few months. Tyson visits Picard and shares a friendly visit with him where both men learn to respect the other. Picard seems to regret indicting Tyson in his book. Tyson decides to swim across the inlet from Picard's to the summer residence his family recently moved into to avoid publicity. His knee which was wounded in Vietnam, gives out and he almost drowns. He reconnects with his wife. And then reports to active duty. He meets with Colonel Levin and is ordered to stay on base and serve as a museum guide. On Levin's recommendation, he gets a good defense attorney. He also meets with Major Harper again who tells him she's found enough evidence to submit a charge of murder but at the same time suspects the government is tampering with the case. Harper asks if he can discredit Brandt. He says that he possibly could but then he would be like Brandt, bringing up war horror that should be left as it was. He denies her accusation that he has no self-preservation instinct by saying that he does but will not lower himself like others have. The two almost embrace but Tyson's wife Marcy comes to the door just before they do. A groundswell of public sentiment has been building for Tyson, as more and more people feel the war is over and the Army is hanging him out to dry. General Van Arken of the Army who started the entire process learns well-respected Colonel Horton that it is just that. Van Arken does not listen and says that it has already begun. Tyson sets up a meeting with and then punches the tabloid journalist who smeared his wife before Chet Brown and his guys intervene and talk with Tyson again. Tyson and his attorney Vincent Corva hear of and begin preparation for the trial process. We also learn that two weeks after the Hue Hospital incident, Tyson was wounded with shrapnel and the medic Brandt tried to kill him by injecting a lethal dose of morphine. A pre-trial Article 32 investigation takes place in which Corva pins Tyson with his medals for bravery in the Hue battle (one was never given to him and Karen Harper just procured it). This irritates Colonel Pierce, council for the prosecution. Major Harper interviews Andrew Picard and identifies that Sister Theresa told Picard that Tyson "spared" or "saved" her life. She spoke in French, however, and used "sauver" which could mean either. She asks Picard why he did not include this and he responds that it was an error of omission that he left out, because it did not fit with Brandt's story. Harper also gets Picard to admit that the nun said Brandt was a man who abuses young girls. Picard then explains that this trial of Tyson is a travesty and that he, now believes Brandt lied to him about Tyson ordering his troops to shoot anyone in the hospital and that he thinks Tyson's troops mutinied. Moreover, he states that even Tyson's platoon, in his estimation, were victims of "war, combat fatigue, and shock." Despite the positive results for Tyson, Col Gilmer decides to recommend a court martial in which Tyson will be tried for murder. The court martial begins with Pierce calling Richard Farley to the stand. Farley, a paraplegic gives wrenching testimony against Tyson. He first explains an incident the morning of the Hue Massacre in which Tyson "ordered" his troops to shoot civilians, then explains the Hue Hospital Massacre, how Tyson had all the platoon swear to never tell of the incident to anyone, and how the group concocted a new, different story to explain it. Corva cross-examines him and it is learned that Farley stated that Tyson said to "waste them" in the hospital. Then, according to Farley, the platoon killed everyone. Corva gets Farley to admit that Tyson said to "waste the Gooks" and that Tyson meant only enemy soldiers. Court is adjourned and Tyson meets Brandt in a back alley. Brandt is terrified and Tyson ambiguously talks about what Brandt did to him the last time they saw each other and how the other men are upset with him, and that there would be payback. Brandt's testimony supports Farley's and is damaging to Tyson. He explains how Tyson was very mad the hospital staff was not helping his wounded soldier and how the soldier was already passed the point of life. Corva gains some on his cross-examination of Brandt as it becomes clear he may not be telling the whole truth. In particular, Corva attacks Brandt's explanation of the first shots that rang out in the hospital and that how he cannot identify who they were from. Corva also gets Brandt to tell the court that Beltran threw a grenade into one room when before he said he couldn't see who did that. A barrage of questions and dialogue ends with Corva asking, "Did you see Larry Cane shoot anyone?" and Brandt responding, "No." To which Corva responds, "Larry Cane was dead, Mr. Brandt." The court members then question Brandt, asking him many questions about the incident and why he did not tell anyone until just recently. The prosecution rests, but after their performance Tyson's five platoon witnesses are unsure of testifying. Their lawyers are urging them not to because they could then face perjury charges. These witnesses offer to make statements in extenuation and mitigation if a guilty verdict is given. Tyson considers testifying but realizes it will be better to make a statement in the sentencing phase. The defense rests without calling any witnesses. There is a lengthy wait in which Tyson rejects seeing his family. The court members find Tyson guilty (2/3 concurring). Chet Brown meets with Tyson and tells him that if he reads a given statement he will be pardoned and serve no jail time. Corva also learns that the Army has found Dan Kelly, Tyson's radiotelephone operator. Kelly's testimony is similar to Brandt's but with glaring differences. He first explains Tyson's sarcastic order to shoot the civilians the morning of the Hue massacre. He explains how it was Tyson's men who were overly aggressive in attacking them and that Tyson was irate and sarcastically left them with that remark. In fact, Kelly even reports on hearing Simcox and Farley talking about how Tyson is "too soft of the gooks." Kelly also explains how a while ago, he and Tyson found Brandt raping young adolescent Vietnamese. As punishment, Tyson kicked and threw Brandt into water filled with leeches. Brandt was then cared for and Tyson returned that night to him and told him that if he did not report back to his platoon he would be court-martialed on a variety of charges. Upon hearing the beginning of this, Brandt leaves the courtroom. Kelly then explains the Hue Massacre. Colonel Sproule the judge, interrupts him, asking why he did not mention the death of Larry Cane outside the hospital. Kelly responds that this is because Cane was still alive in the hospital. Kelly explains how Peterson was dying at the feet of Tyson, begging for help. After the doctor refused to treat him, Tyson slapped him. Farley and Beltran then put Peterson on a hospital bed. An Australian then came into the room shouting obscenities at the American soldiers and America in general. Larry Cane screamed at him and then shot him. Beltran then shot two North Viets. Cane then fired his M-16 all over. Kelly and Tyson dove on the floor. Tyson drew his pistol, aimed it at Cane, and ordered him to drop his rifle. He didn't and Tyson shot him dead. Kelly then goes on explaining how pandemonium ensued, how Farley was livid that Tyson shot his friend, and how Beltran and the men mutinied and had their guns locked on Tyson. Tyson said they would all be charged and probably would have been shot, but Kelly punched him to remove the threat from Beltran and the others. Finally, Kelly explains how Tyson was a prisoner for a while, how he had to radio certain comments to remain alive, and how he eventually got control back by explaining that they would take an oath to never mention the incident again. Court adjourns and Tyson sees his wife and son for the first time in a while. The court-martial is concluded with Tyson giving a speech. He explains that he will not give a speech of extenuation and mitigation and how he knows that the crime he committed was nothing that happened in the hospital but instead the fact that he never reported what happened. He explains how he briefly considered reporting it but only briefly. And that, even though he knows it was an immoral and illegal one, he would make the same decision. He does explain how he was somewhat protecting his men and that he is sad for them and their families now that the truth has come out. But at the same time he points out that this sadness is nothing compared to the innocent lives lost at the hospital. He ends by saying he cannot think of anything extenuating and mitigating. Corva then questions him to continue and an awkward questioning phase begins until Tyson admits that everything could come under battle fatigue. Court adjourns and the members reach a decision quickly. They sentence Tyson to be dismissed from the Army and that is all. Pierce storms out of the courtroom. Tyson meets and embraces his family, and states, "Let's go home." |
The Agent of Death | Nelson DeMille | 1,975 | The story focuses on Ryker's attempt to stop an unstable CIA assassin in New York City. |
The Smack Man | Nelson DeMille | 1,975 | The novel focuses on super-cop Joe Ryker's attempt to stop a murderer from poisoning illegal drugs coming into New York City. |
Mayday | Nelson DeMille | 1,979 | A supersonic passenger jet flying over the Pacific Ocean, is struck by an errant missile. Due to the effects of decompression and oxygen deprivation, all but a handful are incapacitated. Three survivors must attempt to land the airplane, despite attempts to cover up the disaster. |
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld | Patricia A. McKillip | 1,974 | In the beginning of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, sixteen year old Sybel lives alone on a mountain, with only the mythical creatures that her deceased father Ogam summoned for company. Sybel cares for the creatures and shares a type of telepathy with them. However, in the dead of night, a man named Coren of Sirle gives her a baby to care for. Coren believes the baby is none other than the child of Rianna, the now deceased queen of Eld, and her dead lover, Norrel, although it is later revealed that he is the son of Rianna and Drede, king of Eldwold. Sybel accepts the baby, Tamlorn, on Coren's conditions that she love it, and cares for Tamlorn with the help of the witch Maelga who lives near the mountain. Twelve years later, Coren comes back for Tamlorn. Sybel refuses to return him, believing that Coren and his brothers would use Tamlorn in their plot against Drede, the king of Eld. She later reluctantly gives Tamlorn to Drede along with the mythical falcon Ter, to watch over Tamlorn. As a result Sybel falls into a depression and resumes her quest to summon the Liralen, a legendary white bird. Instead, she not only finds the Blammor, a creature of shadow that induces fear, but the wizard Mithran who has been paid by Drede to destroy Sybel's will and hand her over to him. However, Mithran desires Sybel and Sybel manages to escape by summoning the Blammor who crushes every bone in Mithran's body to splinters. Upon returning to her home, where Coren is recovering from his injuries caused by one of the creatures in Sybel's care, Sybel induces Coren to marry her, knowing he loves her and she can use him and his love as a tool for revenge against Drede. They journey to Coren's home and get married. Later in the book, Sybel and Coren transport the mythical beasts and Sybel's books to Coren's home. Sybel plans to start a war between Coren's people in Sirle, who oppose Drede, and Drede. Coren discovers this and is upset with Sybel. The Blammor, whom Sybel held on condition of her fearlessness, comes to Sybel in the night, and she sees in her mind, the Liralen with its neck broken. Sybel flees to the now deserted Eld Mountain and sets all the creatures free. They choose to lure Drede and his army, and the Sirle lords and their army, away from each other, thus defusing the war (although it is unknown at the end of the book whether the lords and armies will return, other than Coren). Tamlorn wakes Sybel up and tells her that Drede had died, that he thinks that whatever killed the wizard Mithran also killed Drede, and he is now king of Eldwold. They go to Maelga's house where Sybel meets Coren, who asks her why he should return to her. She tells him he is the only person who can bring her joy, and they reunite. On a hunch, Sybel summons the Blammor which reveals itself to be the Liralen. Sybel asks the Liralen to take her and Coren home. |
Just Above My Head | James Baldwin | 1,979 | The novel tells the life story of a group of friends, from preaching in Harlem, through to experiencing 'incest, war, poverty, the civil-rights struggle, as well as wealth and love and fame—in Korea, Africa, Birmingham, New York, Paris.' |
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone | James Baldwin | 1,968 | Leo Proudhammer, an African American actor who grew up in Harlem and later moved into Greenwich Village, has a heart attack while on stage. This event creates the present tense setting for the novel, which is mostly narrated in retrospect, explaining each relationship with a story from the actor's life. Barbara, a white woman, and Leo, a black man, are artistic partners for life—sometimes sexual partners, sometimes not. Jerry, their white friend, was Barbara's partner for a while, before Barbara revealed her love for Leo. Their life stories are intertwined, but not joined, due both to the racial pressures of society and Leo's bisexuality. One of Leo's lovers, "Black Christopher," is a significant political and emotional figure in the novel. Christopher's friends are all African-American, and his life centers around the struggle for racial justice. Barbara and Christopher have one sexual encounter, but, like much of the sex in the book, it is exploratory, and only significant for what it reveals to each of them. Barbara, Leo, and Christopher remain friends throughout the novel. Caleb, Leo's brother, a WWII vet, was falsely imprisoned when he is a young man, and eventually conquers his anger at white society through his conversion to fundamentalist Christianity. He judges Leo harshly for choosing "the world" over "the kingdom of God." Caleb's religion painfully isolates him from Leo. Black Christopher, the foil for Caleb, advocates violent revolution as the means for creating a just society. Leo recovers from his heart attack and returns to the stage at the end of the novel. |
Blues for Mister Charlie | James Baldwin | 1,964 | In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. In the aftermath of Richard Henry's murder, the trial of store owner Lyle Britten gives way to a reflection upon racism in America. The play is loosely based on the Emmett Till murder that occurred in Money, Mississippi, before the Civil Rights Movement began. "Mister Charlie" is a phrase used by African Americans that refers to the white man. |
Light House: A Trifle | William Monahan | 2,000 | The story begins with a painter named Tim Picasso who suffers critical rejection from his peers and decides to take a break in the Caribbean, where he ends up crewing on a drug smuggling sailboat. When the captain gets drunk and falls overboard, Picasso takes the boat to Florida, and meets up with Jesus Castro, the lead drug smuggler. Castro intimidates Picasso into running the drugs from Miami to Boston, however after Picasso collects the $1.5 million payment from the Irish Republican Army, he escapes by train to the New England town of Tyburn, where a winter storm is picking up force. He decides to lodge at the seaside Admiral Benbow Inn for the weekend, until he can depart for Italy. Meanwhile, Mr. Glowery, a bitter New York journalist and writer who believes that a rival author is sabotaging his literary career, arrives in Tyburn where he is to speak at a fiction workshop being held at the Admiral Benbow Inn. He is immediately tasered by one of Castro's detectives, who mistakenly confuses him for Picasso. Back at the Admiral Benbow Inn, the innkeeper, George Hawthorne, worries about Mr. Briscoe, a cross-dressing contract worker who is stranded in the abandoned lighthouse just off the coast because of the raging nor'easter, while his unhappy wife, Magdalene Hawthorne, threatens to leave him. The next morning, Mr. Glowery is stuck in a restaurant where he is being coerced by a psychotic cook to peddle his novel in order to pay off a debt he incurred during the night. When Professor Eggman, the director of the fiction workshop, comes across Mr. Glowery, he rescues him and brings him back to the inn. However, few people show up for the fiction workshop because of the storm. Hawthorne's wife returns from a spa with Picasso; Mr. Hawthorne informs her that he is trying to procure a prostitute for his new arrival, Jesus Castro, who has registered under the false name of Mr. Wassermann. Mr. Hawthorne asks Picasso if he has had sex with his wife and Picasso meekly admits to it. At the lighthouse, Mr. Briscoe decides to brave the storm in a landing craft, but is immediately swamped with water and carried by the tide towards the mainland. After Castro avails himself of the services of a prostitute, he rampages around the property searching for Picasso. The storm crashes through the inn. A guest is killed by a billiards table that falls on top of him and is dragged off into the sea. Mr. Glowery is also dragged off into the sea by the storm. Castro and his assistant round up the guests and interrogate them about the location of the $1.5 million Picasso stole. In another part of the inn a fire starts. Finally, Mr. Briscoe shows up and kills Castro's assistant before knocking Castro unconscious. While Hawthorne learns his wife is leaving him for the prostitute, the inn becomes completely engulfed in flames. Picasso, Hawthorne, and Briscoe motor a lobster boat over to the lighthouse, and dump Castro's dead assistant into the sea along with Castro himself, weighed down with two cinder blocks chained to his ankles. When they land on the island, Briscoe runs into the lighthouse and blows himself up. Amongst the rubble of the lighthouse, Picasso notices the inscription "MORTE D'AUTHOR" painted on one of the surrounding rocks and says to the innkeeper "He's been thinking about this for some time, George." |
The Salt Roads | Nalo Hopkinson | 2,003 | The Salt Roads is a novel that tells the story of the Ginen fertility god, Lasirén. As she moves through the bodies of female characters, inhabiting them for short and long periods of time, Lasirén helps women find their place in the world and give them the confidence to make decisions that they otherwise would not possess. The novel intertwines the stories of three major characters while illustrating the mysterious ways of Lasirén and her healing, life-giving powers. The novel begins by introducing the character of Mer, who is a healer in the slave community of a Caribbean plantation. In the beginning scene, she is seen delivering a mixed baby that is stillborn. As she, her helper and lover, Tipingee, and the baby's mother, Georgine, go to bury the baby at the river's edge, their mixed prayers to three different deities delivers Lasirén into being, launching her into the lives of the three main characters. She appears to Mer, subsequently, to inform her that it is her duty to pave the sea roads clear. And as her story progresses, her duty becomes clear. As the slaves around her are rallied by the demagogue, Makandal, to rebel against their white slave owners, or backra, Mer must watch as they risk their lives to pursue a dream that one iconoclastic human being is misleadingly placing in their minds. The slaves working in the homes of plantations across San Domingue are encouraged to inject poison into the food and water of their white owners. As Makandal incites more people, Mer's story comes to a climax as he orchestrates the arson of the home of Seigneur Simenon, the plantation owner. Her body finally inhabited by Lasirén's presence, Mer attempts to save the white folk and in essence the wrath they will ensue on her fellow slaves. However, Makandal and the slaves pin her down and cut off her tongue. As turmoil dies down with the burning of Makandal and his absence, the slaves return to their old ways. And Mer, given the chance to escape and be free of her enslavement, declines, knowing that her place is with the slaves on the plantation, healing those in pain and paving the roads clean for Lasirén. Another story that Hopkinson weaves into the story is that of Jeanne Duval. She is an actress and singer in Paris, France, that becomes the mistress of the author and poet, Charles Baudelaire. As he sets her up in her own apartment with her mother, Baudelaire eventually gets his inheritance taken away from him to be managed by a finance manager. As his wealth dwindles, so does the balance of power in his relationship with Jeanne. Scraping by, both Jeanne and Baudelaire must find ways of obtaining their needs. Baudelaire needs to support his mistress and Jeanne needs to help her ailing mother. However, Jeanne's mother dies and soon thereafter, Jeanne becomes infected with syphilis, and suffers a stroke that leaves her right side paralyzed. As she moves from her apartment to the sanatorium and back again, she is visited by her stepbrother, Joël, who ultimately causes a falling-out between her and Baudelaire and later, the selling of her furniture while she is away at the sanatorium. Alone and at an utter loss at her abandonment, Jeanne is confronted by, Moustique, her brother's friend. He takes her in, and in her sadness and loss of beauty and youth, Jeanne finally comes to find herself loved and content. The third character that Lasirén inhabits is Thais, a Nubian prostitute living in Alexandria, Egypt. Thais' journey begins when she and her slave friend, Judah, gather their scarce belongings and even scarcer money and escape their enslavement to Aelia Capitolina, or present-day Jerusalem. However, finally reaching their destination, they find themselves in a foreign place with no money, but what their bodies can offer. As they approach the famous Christian church that Thais desired to see, she finds that she has been carrying a baby, but miscarries it in the church's courtyard. Soon after, she finds herself wandering the desert for months, on little water and barely any food. As she contemplates her surroundings and finds herself trying to listen deeply and intently to nature, her thoughts, and even the thoughts of others, she comes to a revelation. Speaking with Lasirén and learning about the goddess' origins and place in the world. |
Farthing | Jo Walton | 2,006 | At a weekend party at Farthing House, a large country house in Hampshire, Sir James Thirkie, a prominent politician who is considered likely to become a leading minister in an upcoming cabinet shuffle, is found murdered in his room, with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest. Though suspicion immediately falls upon David Kahn, the only Jew invited to the party, the lead investigator, Inspector Peter Carmichael, is unconvinced. Carmichael, who along with Sergeant Royston was sent from Scotland Yard to investigate the murder, suspects that the star was placed on the body to divert attention towards David. Equally skeptical is David's wife Lucy, the daughter of estate owner Lord Eversley, who notes the tension between Thirke's newly-pregnant wife, Angela, and Angela's sister, Daphne, who was having an affair with Thirke. As Carmichael begins his investigation, he requests that the assembled guests remain at the house. Chafing at the oppressive atmosphere, Lucy accepts an offer from her father to go riding; while out, they are attacked by a young man, who shoots at them with a rifle before being killed by Lord Eversley. An inspection of the body uncovers a membership card identifying him as a Communist and an identity card for an Alan Brown, a different name from the one on the party ID. Carmichael is puzzled by the incident, which seems unconnected to Thirke's murder. As pressure grows for Carmichael to release the guests, a search of the Kahns' apartment turns up letters that offer evidence of David's involvement with an underground Jewish organization that sought the murder of Thirke and the other members of the "Farthing Set". Aware that an arrest will mean the effective conviction of David Kahn, yet still not convinced of his guilt, Carmichael convinces him to remain at Farthing House under police supervision. Returning to London, Carmichael is given until Friday to conclude the case. His ability to act is further hampered by the political situation, as Mark Normanby, Daphne's husband, the Foreign Secretary, and one of the guests in attendance at Farthing House, emerges from the cabinet shuffle as Prime Minister. Exploiting both Thirke's murder and the shooting incident, Normanby announces the introduction of identity cards, the expulsion of foreign nationals, the banning of Communists, and a delay in the general election. Resisting political pressure to arrest David Kahn, Carmichael pursues his investigation of Angela Thirke, discovering that her baby was likely the result of an affair with the family's chauffeur. Locating Brown's girlfriend, a young woman named Agnes Timms, in Southend-on-Sea, he travels there with Royston to interview her, whereupon they discover that Brown was approached by Angela Thirke to stage the attack on Lord Eversley, ostensibly as a joke. Returning to London, Carmichael learns that the yellow star was purchased by someone claiming to be David Kahn. With a warrant now issued to arrest David, Carmichael calls to warn the Kahns, giving them time to escape. With the Kahns now on the run, Carmichael goes to Wales to interview Thirke's mother, who recounts Angela Thirke's admission that she helped Lord Eversley and Mark Normanby murder her husband. While returning to London to arrest Angela and Normanby, however, Carmichael discovers that Agnes Timms has been murdered. Undaunted, Carmichael presents his findings to Penn-Barkis, the head of Scotland Yard, identifying the involvement of the three suspects in a conspiracy to murder Thirke and place the blame on the Jews for it. After listening to Carmichael's description, though, Penn-Barkis orders Carmichael to drop the case, using Carmichael's homosexuality to blackmail him into acquiescing in the official story. |
Rich Like Us | null | 1,985 | This historical fiction entwines the fate of two upper-class females, Rose, a British immigrant and wife to powerful native business man Ram with Sonali, a highly educated young civil servant. The former struggles to find a sense of home in this foreign society, filled with ancient customs, including the sati, and exotic social standards. She is entangled in a three-pronged marriage, as she is the second wife of Ram’s. Rose suffers to understand the Indian culture, and its ramifications on the female spirit. As Ram’s health deteriorates, she realizes her rights as wife are in question. Dev, Ram’s son from his other wife, Mona, schemes to take all Ram’s assets by disposing of Rose. In fear, Rose turns to Sonali, her friend and niece. Sonali is an anomaly to the average Indian, aristocratic woman. She deals with the living and working in New Delhi during the political upheaval of the Emergency and is divided between two worlds, one representing her ideals and longing for progression and the other that embodies her upper-crust, conservative culture. From these two characters branch off numerous other tales, which provide a deep and thorough overview of life for all people during this critical historical period. At root of these stories lies the duplicitous role of women in the dynamic, chaotic, new India of the mid 20th century. |
The Sparagus Garden | Richard Brome | null | Brome's play involves the sexual themes, generational conflicts, and the confidence tricks that are typical of his drama. Touchwood and Striker are two London neighbors, both justices of the peace; they maintain a vigorous and long-running quarrel. Their hostility is counterpointed by the affection of their heirs: Touchwood's son Sam and Striker's granddaughter Annabelle are in love. When Touchwood discovers this fact, he forbids their marriage, and insists that Sam inflict some serious injury on the Striker family to stay in his father's good graces (and his will). Sam is fortunate to have two clever friends, Gilbert Goldwire and Walter Chamlet, who work up a plot to resolve Sam's predicament. Sam tells his father that he has impregnated Annabelle; and Touchwood, delighted at the scandal impending over the Striker household, sends his son abroad — or so he thinks; in fact Sam remains in London to carry out his plans. Annabelle's mother was Striker's daughter, now deceased; her father is Sir Hugh Moneylack, a down-and-out gentleman who survives by shady means. Striker is hostile to his son-in-law, and keeps Annabelle, his granddaughter and heir, from seeing her father. (The play confuses the family relationship, often referring to Annabelle as Striker's niece.) Sir Hugh functions as what is called a "gather-guest" for the Sparagus Garden, bringing in profitable trade to the facility. (Moneylack presents asparagus as an aphrodisiac, claiming that "Of all the plants, herbs, roots, or fruits that grow, it is the most provocative, operative, and effective" for that purpose. In actuality, the medical opinion of Brome's day regarded the vegetable as a mild diuretic.) The play shows that the Garden makes its money through private dining rooms made available to its customers — with a clear sexual innuendo in the arrangement: when Sam, Wat, and Gilbert show up at the Garden without female companionship, they are refused a private dining room. Sir Hugh Moneylack also is part of a group of charlatans; with his confederates Springe and Brittleware, he targets a naive countryman named Tim Hoyden who longs to be made a gentleman. The tricksters take every advantage of the man, physically abusing him with "bleeding" (bloodletting), "purging" (vomiting and enemas), and a starvation diet, and cheating him of £400 as they pretend to teach him the ways of fashionable society. Tim's brother Tom Hoyden comes to London in search of Tim, and chases around attempting to rescue Tim from the charlatans' clutches. Tom and his servant Coulter are from "Zumerzetshire," and inject into the play the kind of dialect humor typical of Brome's drama (Yorkshire dialect in The Northern Lass, Lancashire dialect in The Late Lancashire Witches). The charlatans have their own problems, though: Brittleware's wife Rebecca is distressed that she's been married for five years but does not yet have a child. She is vocal in blaming her husband for this, and makes husband Brittleware jump through hoops and pursue her around the town to punish him for his possessiveness and jealousy. The young conspirators manipulate Walter's ridiculous uncle Sir Arthur Cautious, a confirmed bachelor, into an arranged betrothal with Annabelle. Striker, who believes in her disgrace, is so eager for the marriage that he makes generous provisions for her. When their wedding day arrives, however, Annabelle appears dressed in black and apparently pregnant. Sir Arthur is appalled, and offers £1000 to the man who will take the young woman off his hands. Sam suddenly steps forward, and Striker is so desperate that he accepts his enemy's son as his son-in-law. Touchwood, too, is now ready to accept the match. Tom Hoyden has presented documents to the justice, to prove that foolish brother Tim is the long-lost son of Touchwood and Striker's late sister. Those two had had a relationship similar to that of Sam and Annabelle — but Striker had opposed their match, which instigated the thirty-year quarrel between them. Once both old men accept their heirs' marriage, Annabelle pulls a cushion out from under her dress, revealing her pregnancy fictitious and her virtue intact. (Brome's play shares this plot device with Thomas May's 1622 comedy The Heir.) Tim Hoyden is now the son of a gentleman, as he'd always wanted to be; the play's conflicts are resolved. |
Trumpet | Jackie Kay | 1,998 | This powerful novel begins just after the main character, Joss Moody, a famous trumpet player, passes away. It is immediately apparent that big news surrounds his death as paparazzi drive his widow, Millie, to steal away to a vacation home. Soon after, the reader learns that the big news is that Joss was actually born female. No one knew this shocking truth except his wife. Not even Colman, the Moodys' adopted son, knew the truth. The Moodys lived their life as a normal married couple with a normal house and a normal family. But when Joss dies they can hide the truth no longer. Colman's shock spills into bitterness and he seeks revenge. He vents his rage of his father's lie by uncovering Joss's life to Sophie, an eager tabloid journalist craving to write the next bestseller. After time, and a visit to Joss's mother Edith Moore, Colman eventually finds love for his father muddled in his rage. With his new-found acceptance of both his father and himself, Colman makes the decision not to follow through with the book deal. All the while, Millie deals with her grief and the scandal in private turmoil at the Moodys' vacation home, and a slew of characters whose paths have crossed with Joss's give accounts of their memories and experiences. Interestingly, all the characters seem either to accept Joss's identity or to perceive it as irrelevant. The title Trumpet refers literally to the main character, Joss Moody's, instrument. Moody was an amazing trumpet player and became famous in the jazz world. Figuratively, it could be argued, the trumpet embodies more than Moody's fame. Moody's trumpet serves as an equalizer of identity. The character Joss Moody is not a man or a woman, or a husband or a father. He is a trumpet player. The title of the novel gives his identity the opportunity to be that simple. |
Jesus Dynasty | null | 2,006 | By his parents' marriage, Jesus was better placed to be King of Israel than Herod Antipas was. The two contradictory blood lines in the gospels are seen as compatible if one belongs to Mary and the other to Joseph. In such a case Jesus would have united a formidable list of families into his ancestors. Jesus joined John the Baptist's movement - John was a close relative of Jesus - and the two were prepared to bring about an uprising in Judaea, but John's arrest and execution caused Jesus to go underground to avoid the same fate. Eventually he resurfaced to carry on the Baptist's work alone. Jesus was a charismatic teacher and possibly a faith healer. James and Jude were his half-brothers (since Jesus is not Joseph's son, in Tabor's view) and inherited the leadership after Jesus' death. Tabor argues that the later, spiritualist, writings of Paul the Apostle polluted and effectively hijacked the movement, with the later Gospels following the Pauline point of view. Tabor produces many supporting statements from the Bible and New Testament apocrypha, which escaped excision by the later Church fathers, intent on selling the Pauline message at the expense of Jesus' dynastic one. The argument produces a portrait of a real man in a tumultuous time, who really believed that his actions would accomplish the end of the Roman occupation and a return of the Jewish kingdom. The book also speculates about whether the Talpiot Tomb in Jerusalem was the tomb of Jesus or his relatives, and whether Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera, a Roman soldier, was Jesus' father, although it reaches no definitive conclusions about either hypothesis. |
Tango on intohimoni | null | 1,998 | "Many people ask what the meaning of life is. I know: it's tango." So says Virtanen, the hero of Tango on intohimoni, or Tango is my Passion, the definitive Finnish tango novel. Virtanen is a tango obsessive, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject, which he insists on sharing with everybody he meets. He goes dancing every day in the various dance halls of Helsinki and sometimes Turku, but he only dances the tangos. But Virtanen also has principles. At the age of 15 he had read that Plato recommends 24 as the ideal age for sexual intercourse for women, and 35 for men. If Virtanen can hold on to his virginity until the age of 36, he will have beaten the old fraud. But this is difficult for someone with such a passion for tango: "My penis rises and interferes with the dance. So, immediately after the dance, I hasten into the woods, break a handful of twigs off a birch tree, and punish my penis with many sharp little blows. The chastisement makes it calm down, and I can then go and invite a new girl onto the floor."(page 8) Virtanen manages to avoid the blandishments of the various women he meets in the Helsinki hot spots, but when he falls in love with Anja his troubles really start. Interspersed with Virtanen's adventures is a history of Finnish tango, sometimes given by Virtanen himself, and sometimes by an anonymous third person voice, identified by a different typeface. Written by the Finnish bandleader M.A. Numminen, Tango on intohimoni has been translated into German, Swedish, and Italian; but there is no official English translation. |
Gloriana | Michael Moorcock | 1,978 | The novel's plot concerns Lord Montfallcon and his contest for courtly influence against Captain Quire. Each man exploits Albion's shadowy network of espionage and deceit for his own ends, with Gloriana caught in the middle. Montfallcon has maintained peace throughout Gloriana's 13-year reign using terror, oppression, and a network of informants. He is the power behind Gloriana's throne, one of the few survivors of King Hern's court, where he saw most of his family killed to entertain that tyrant king. Montfallcon's sole purpose in life is to keep Gloriana's Albion free of tyranny and corruption but, in so doing, he repeats the worst practices of Hern's henchmen. His own best henchman is Quire. But when Quire feels Montfallcon has insulted him, he seeks revenge through seducing the frustrated Gloriana. He goes into the walls to spy on the court, to muster the rabble there into his personal army, and to make sorties into the court to commit murders and leave evidence that points to other courtiers. Finally Quire exits the walls and claims the role of Gloriana's court champion, later her lord chancellor, and ultimately her lover—threatening her place as sovereign and symbol of Albion. |
As the Green Star Rises | Lin Carter | 1,975 | As Karn and Klygon (betrayed by Delgan on a deserted islet) wait for either an inevitable end by drowning (for the Green Star has risen, and a tide with it—threatening to swamp the islet), they hear the swish of oars. Karn then calls out to the ship (just prior to losing consciousness) and the two are then taken on board. The ship, named Xothun (after a large, inland-sea-dwelling reptile) is captained by Blue Barbarians led by the nasty, brutish Hoggur, who sends the two belowdecks as slave-rowers. Their companions include select citizens of Komar, a peaceful mercantile kingdom recently conquered and ravaged by the Barbarians (under the chieftainship of a mysterious "warlord" immune to their racial madness) including its ruler Andar; the ship is on its way to Komar's ally Tharkoon to espy it out for conquest—which Eryon deems as foolish due to Tharkoon being ruled by a wizard. One day, Eryon states that they approach the Angzar Reefs, an area of unpredictable storms—which prompts some of the desperate Komarians to hope for a quick death. However, it gives Klygon some hope, and he asks Karn if he should pick the locks (a skill Karn did not know Klygon possessed). The prospect pleases Eryon and Andar, who figure on using their release and the storm to retake the Xothun. When the storm strikes, the Komarians (released by Klygon's lock-picking) storm up the decks and attack the Blue Barbarians. When Karn runs up to enjoy his first re-taste of freedom, Hoggur crashes into him; Karn jumps on Hoggur and strangles him—strengthened as a residual effect of the "Elixir Of Light", and further by sheer rage—and is then swept overboard. Shortly after the storm the zawkaw carrying a woman (Arjala) lands on the stern—and Arjala alights while the tired zawkaw takes off elsewhere. The zawkaw carrying Ralidux and the two women lands on an island. The two flee in opposite directions to escape Ralidux—Niamh, into a structure and Arjala into jungled-area. Inside the structure, Niamh disturbs a large serpent or ssalith and flees promptly outside. Ralidux has meanwhile pursued Arjala, who escapes after scratching him to create such opportunity; she jumps on the zawkaw to escape, then hears a voice calling—and wonders whether it is Niamh (whom she doesn't really like) or Ralidux (from whom she is fleeing in terror). Niamh manages to grab the bridle of the zawkaw as Arjala takes off. Ralidux, finding the zawkaw gone, explores further and finds a tubular craft which can fly—and energises it. In the seawater, Karn hears a voice claiming to be Shann, a young boy from Kamadhong (another treetop city), and swims to Shann's rescue; Shann guides Karn to an island. Due to certain reactions of Shann, Karn deduces that Shann is an adolescent girl; he starts loving her (at least platonically, feeling guilty for deserting Niamh). The two construct a hut and survive for a time. One day, Shann sees an airborne craft coming towards her—as Karn asks for its description, Shann is kidnapped by the craft's occupant. As described in the ending of the article By the Light of the Green Star, Janchan has stopped the sky-sled. Unfortunately, he stopped it suddenly and struck his head on the windshield—knocking him unconscious alongside Zarqa. When he comes to, he finds Zarqa conscious—and Nimbalim warning them they are in serious danger, as the sled is held in a xophs web. Janchan tries cutting through the strands, but they are too thick, and prepares to face the xoph with his sword (no mean task, due to the xoph being about elephant-sized). Zarqa then reminisces that it would be nice if he had the zoukar, whereupon Janchan remembers another Kalood weapon, a vial of liquid flame. When Zarqa tells him that Karn had taken it, Janchan tells him of another which he had brought on board. he takes it out, and aims it at the xoph, incinerating it and setting its web on fire—which weakens it enough for the re-energised sky-sled to part. Zarqa then follows the mind-trail of Ralidux to the inland sea, and a small island where they continue searching till Zarqa loses the trail. The liberated Xothun has, meantime, reached Tharkoon where Andar asks its ruler Parimus for aid against the Blue Barbarians. Parimus confesses that he has no great fleet, but does have one large Kaloodha-manufactured advanced airship. The two then plan the invasion, from the Komarians by sea and the Tharkoonians by air. Two delays are then caused when a small aircraft comes in front of Parimus' airship and is shot down. Parimus lands the airship on an island looks to see if any have survived, and is reassured by Janchan and Zarqa that only some of the enamel was scratched—and then dispatches a group of warriors to help them extract the sky-sled. Travelling further over the island (named Narjix) with Janchan, Zarqa (and Klygon who has boarded the Tharkoonian ship), Parimus spots a young boy—whom Klygon recognises as Karn. As the Tharkoonians set down to rescue him, he is attacked by the ssalith--and rescued when Zarqa pursues the monster and makes it attack (and destroy) itself. Parimus then treats Karn's eyes, bandaging them with medicines, in hope of restoring his eyesight. Meanwhile, the Komarians aboard the Xothun, disguised as Blue Barbarians (but not with disguises that will pass muster under strong light) enter their capitol's harbour. Andar attempts to bluff his way past the harbour sentry and finds out (to dismay) that the Warlord has returned. He quickly kills the sentry, and fights his way to the palace where he meets the Warlord—finding the Warlord's swordplay skills to be as good as his own (unlike the rudimentary skills of the Blue Barbarians as a whole). Andar is almost killed by the Warlord, but narrowly escapes due to his own slipping—during which the Warlord slips behind a panel leading to many catacombs (where Andar does not pursue him, as this would take too long). The Komarians fight their way to the palace roof, where there is an idol of their god Koroga. At that point, several of the Komarians, including Ozad (from the Xothun) are killed by lightning blasts from a weapon (the zoukar) held by the Warlord—who forces Andar (and surviving supporters) to drop their weapons. However, at that moment, Parimus' airship arrives, and uses a combination of the airship's laser/electric cannon and his archers to inflict a reverse on the Barbarians—converted to a crushing defeat as the Komarians now re-grab their weapons. After the battle, Karn tests whether the treatment worked—and is able to see the Green Star rising through a gap in the planet's cloud-cover. Just then a tubular aircraft comes in over Komar with two occupants fighting in the cockpit. Janchan recognises one as Ralidux (shouting his name) and Karn recognises the other (by voice) as "Shann"--to be corrected as Janchan also sees her and shouts her real name, "Niamh". Niamh finishes the struggle by stabbing Ralidux with a small knife, the "Avenger of Chastity" (carried inside their garments by all Laonese women), and attempts to land the craft. Just then, Karn sees Delgan (the Warlord) jump inside, and a new struggle between Delgan and Niamh—but is too far away to help. However, one of the Tharkoonian archers, Zorak, jumps into the cockpit to see if he can kill the Warlord. As the craft flies out of Komar into the trees, Janchan and Zarqa follow at a distance in the sky-sled. They see a body fall from the craft, but cannot identify which of the three occupants fell. Arjala tells Karn and Janchan that Niamh had lost her grip on the zawkaws bridle. Arjala, being inexperienced at controlling the huge bird (and also needing, in any case, to flee from Ralidux) was unable to rescue her from the water. The 1976 sequel to this novel, In the Green Star's Glow was the conclusion of the Green Star Series |
Madol Doova | Martin Wickramasinghe | 1,947 | Upali Giniwella is a boy living in a village in southern Sri Lanka. He had lost his mother at a young age, and is under the care of a stepmother. Jinna is the servant boy of their house, and is a close and devoted friend to Upali. The two boys get into a lot of mischief in the village with their boy gang, and is severely punished by Upali's father as a result. Upali is eventually sent to away to a new school, and has to live with a school teacher. When he returns home, the two boys are caught trying to raid an orchard. Afraid that they will be sent away to work or given up to the police, Upali and Jinna run away from home and end up working for a farmer named Podigamarala. While working, the two boys see an island covered by dense forest, and decide to go and live there. They learn that the deserted island, Madol Doova, is believed to be haunted, but start farming there with the help of Podigamarala. After spotting a mysterious light on the island, which was supposedly the ghost haunting it, they follow it and find out that it is in reality a fugitive hiding from the law. Meanwhile another man named Punchi Mahattaya arrives on the island and later helps them with their work. When Upali hears that his father is taken ill, he returns home and helps out his stepmother and stepbrother. After settling up a legal issue for farming on government land, he finally returns to the plantation on Madol Doova, which had now developed into a prosperous venture with the help of Jinna. |
The Day Boy and the Night Girl | George MacDonald | null | The Day Boy and the Night Girl begins by telling of a witch named Watho who, in her pursuit of complete knowledge, undertook an experiment to mold two people from birth by strictly controlling their environments. Watho convinced two expectant mothers to visit her castle. Lady Aurora (whose ambassador husband was away on business) was given spacious, sunlit rooms to stay in; she gave birth to a boy. The witch promptly whisked him away, sending his mother back to her home burdened with the lie that her son had died shortly after birth. The other woman (who had recently been widowed and become blind) Watho settled in windowless, tomblike chambers elsewhere in the castle. Vesper died in childbirth, leaving her daughter to the witch’s keeping. Watho did everything in her power to ensure that the boy Photogen grew up strong, able, and fearless. However, her foremost concern regarding the boy was that he should never see the night. Watho desired the opposite for the girl Nycteris, who knew no other world than the stony chambers she had been born in and no other light than that provided by the single dim lamp. It came about that Nycteris, in her sixteenth year, found her way out of these chambers into a night lit by a full-moon. Nycteris was filled with wonder at this glorious new light and the rest of nature; she returned to her rooms before daybreak, desiring to see the outdoors again and not wanting to spoil her chance by arousing Watho’s suspicions. Around the same time, Photogen (who spent his days hunting) one morning spied a big cat of some sort slinking off to the forest and took it in his mind to hunt this skilled hunter. As the sun went down, Photogen left to hunt the nocturnal beast, violating the witch’s constraint. Once darkness fell, Photogen was beset with terror. He came across Nycteris in one of her outings, and gathered some measure of comfort from the strange girl’s calm. She agreed to watch over him while he slept, and so it was that she was for the first time yet outdoors when the sun rose. Photogen regained his courage immediately; assuring Nycteris that there was now nothing to fear, he went on his way, despite her terrified pleas that he stay and protect her from the blinding light. Photogen (wishing to prove his courage) stayed up for another night, only to experience similar results. Photogen and Nycteris eventually learned to use their strengths to bear the other up through their weakness. In this way they were able to defeat the witch Watho. Photogen and Nycteris married; they continued to rely on and rejoice in each other’s strengths, to the point that Photogen came to prefer the night and Nycteris the day. |
The Vor Game | Lois McMaster Bujold | 1,990 | Miles graduates from the Academy, and is upset to learn he is being sent to replace the weather officer at the Empire's winter infantry training base on remote Kyril Island, to see if he can handle the discipline and military routine. Miles refuses to obey what he deems a criminal order by the base commander, who has him arrested for mutiny, and as he is Vor, treason. He is quickly returned to the capital and sequestered in the bowels of Imperial Security (ImpSec) by Simon Illyan, who, along with his father, conclude that Miles had behaved correctly, but that they have larger problems than insubordinate Vorlings. Young Emperor Gregor has disappeared while on a diplomatic mission to Komarr. Miles, traveling to the Hegen Hub on an unrelated mission for ImpSec, is framed for murder and arrested. While in custody, he is startled to find Gregor, who tells him that he ran away from the embassy on Komarr, but was then shanghaied as a technician by an unscrupulous ship owner. Miles complicates matters in an attempt to extricate Gregor, and is soon up to his neck in a mysterious plot involving an amoral femme fatale, his murderous former Kyril Island commanding officer, and Hub power politics. Miles encounters his mercenary friends and, after outmaneuvering their leaders, resumes command under his Admiral Naismith persona. He is able to rescue Gregor, and as a bonus, unify the Hegen Hub in repelling a Cetagandan invasion fleet, with a little timely help from a Barrayaran fleet co-commanded by his father and Emperor Gregor. Gregor and ImpSec decide to put the Dendarii on permanent secret retainer for covert missions, with Miles officially installed as liaison. Thus begins the portion of Miles' career that ends with his temporary disgrace in Memory. |
Praisesong for the Widow | Paule Marshall | 1,983 | The opening begins with Avey "Avatara" Johnson packing her bags aboard her seventeen day cruise on the "Bianca Pride", during the late 1970s. The reason for her sudden departure began three nights before, when she had a dream about her great aunt Cuney and a disturbing encounter in the Versailles dining room with a peach parfait. Her first since the 1960s, the dream consists of Avey's aunt in Tatem attempting to convince Avey to follow her down the road in Tatem, South Carolina, a childhood vacation spot. When Avey resists, the two have a physical brawl. The next morning, Avey wants nothing more than to be alone, and yet cannot get away from anyone on the cruise ship, no matter where she goes. At this point, she makes the decision to leave the ship. The next morning, she packs her bags and leaves to the next port-of-call, which is the island of Grenada. On Grenada, the atmosphere seems to be festive, as people dressed in bright clothing, carrying packages, are getting onto boats. Confused, Avey Johnson is later informed by her taxi driver that it is the annual excursion to Carriacou, a nearby island. At the hotel, the sick feeling in Avey's stomach returns, and Avey spends her last moments of consciousness painfully reminiscing about her relationship with her late husband, Jerome "Jay" Johnson, and for the first time in four years, she mourns his loss. Avey wakes up the next day in the home of Rosalie Parvay, the widow daughter of Lebert Joseph. Along with Milda the maid, Rosalie washes Avey and feeds her a typical Carriacou breakfast, during which Lebert enters the home to see how Avey is feeling. Despite her sickness of the previous day, Avey decides to go to the dances that will take place that night. That night, Avey, Rosalie, Milda, and Lebert all go to the "Big Drum" dances. There, Avey is at first happy merely to be a bystander and watch Lebert and other elders of the community sing and dance for the ancestors. However, by the end of the night, Avey is dancing along with the other people celebrating their cultural roots to Africa. The next morning, Avey leaves on a plane back to New York, but decides to sell her home that she no longer needs and move to Tatem, in the home left for her by aunt Cuney. There, she will demand that her grandchildren come to see her, so that she may teach them about their heritage, like Cuney did for her. |
Jane and Prudence | Barbara Pym | 1,953 | Jane, a vicar's wife, lives a very different kind of life from her friend, the single and independent Prudence. The book details the period in Nicholas and Jane’s life when they take over a new parish in an (anonymous) English village and encounter the widower Fabian Driver, who Jane decides will make an excellent husband for Prudence. Prudence has an imponderable attraction to her older and completely impervious employer, the head of an unspecified academic foundation. There is, however, competition for Fabian - Miss Morrow, another spinster in the parish who seeks escape from her low-paid job as a companion to the domineering Miss Doggett. |
In the Green Star's Glow | Lin Carter | 1,976 | Janchan and Arjala are married in Komar, where they also honeymoon. Karn, feeling that he needs to do something (almost anything) to help rescue Niamh, takes some of the leftover food/drink items from the wedding feast and stashes them in the storage compartment of the sky-sled which he then energises and heads towards the trees. As it is night, he quickly tethers it to a branch and falls asleep. He is awakened the next morning by a spear-point touching his chest—held by a teenaged girl, Varda. Some of Varda's companions (including one named Iona, at 15 slightly older than Varda) urge her to kill him. Due to Iona being a rival for leadership, Varda decides to spare but enslave Karn. On the tubular craft, Niamh scratches Delgan and advances on him with her knife but Delgan manages to persuade her to sheathe it through some oily words. Then, he forces her to back against the rear bulkhead by pointing the zoukar at her with a threat to use it, and advances to throw her off—only to be prevented as Zorak shoots him in the hand with an arrow. Due to the pain, he cannot use an oily tone, and his further attempts to persuade Niamh that he is "friendly" fall flat. When Zorak comes forward to stop the aircraft, Delgan tells him to back off or die—and is not persuaded of danger when Zorak points out the approaching tree boles. A branch then strikes inside the cockpit and pulls Delgan out—so he was the falling occupant seen by Zarqa and Janchan. After stopping the aircraft, Zorak and Niamh find themselves facing a ythid. Zorak tries to kill it by shooting it in the eye (unscuccessfully, as the lizard shuts its nictitating-membrane), while Niamh tries to poke her knife in from its back—which allows Zorak to shoot it in the throat. Niamh then almost faints from exhaustion and fear; Zorak, putting aside his weapons, prevents this but slips off the branch after stepping in the dead ythids blood. Niamh, taking the weapons, explores the branch until she comes upon a tower of strange design/construction (Karn would have told her that it was built by one of Zarqa's race), where she walks into a lab with a detached head. The head's eyes open and it cries "waa-waa-waaa...", whereupon an odd-looking dwarf, Quoron, comes in and takes her as prisoner. The head is the result of one of his experiments which failed (he believes, due to the brain being disconnected from oxygen for too long). He puts her under the guard of another of his experiments, Number Nine, a giant with four arms and two heads (one male, one female) but almost no intellect (according to Quoron). Niamh quickly figures that Quoron's experiments are just like those Zarqa told her the Kaloodha had conducted—a quest for immortality. Zorak, meanwhile, lands on a flower which tries to swallow him. As he struggles, a voice tells him to relax and wait for night. He finds the source of the voice to be a kraan, Xikchaka. The logic of Xikchaka is that when the petals close, the two of them can then destroy them (Xikchaka with his mandibles and claws, Zorak by pulling them at base)--which Zorak accepts, allowing the two to escape at night. As Zorak attempts to part later from Xikchaka, the latter's horde captures and enslaves him, setting him to manufacture weapons (swords, spears, bows, …) specifically modified for kraan usage. He finds out from Xargo, the chief smith (captive), that this is due to the plans of the horde's ruler, Rkkith, to invade and destroy one of the treetop cities, Phaolon—a plan put into Rkkith's mind by a treacherous, odd human captive. The treacherous captive once accompanies Rkkith on a weapons-manufacturing inspection tour—and is recognised by Zorak as Delgan (to no surprise). Eventually, when the horde nears Phaolon, they find an odd structure and a group of kraan led by Xikchaka (with Zorak along as a slave) is sent to investigate. Quoron eventually boasts to Niamh that he has perfected the technique by which his brain will survive—and trained Number Nine to do the surgery, as it can be performed much faster due to the multiple arms. He then chains Niamh and forces her to watch the surgery, grinning when his head is finally disconnected from his torso—only to react in horror as Number Nine then stabs him in the brain (and to death). Number Nine then destroys the lab, putting WaWa (the head which had made that sound, so-named by Quoron) out of misery. The kraan party has meantime, entered the tower, except for Xikchaka and the two guarding Zorak. They are promptly slain by Number Nine, but not before they maul the giant severely with their jaws and claws. Outside, Zarqa has arrived; when one of the kraan guards tries to stab him (with modified spear), Zarqa grabs the weapon and flings it through the insect's body—allowing Zorak to break the neck of the other. Zarqa then tells him that they must hurry as he has sensed Niamh's mind-radiations from a Kalood-built tower nearby. When they enter the tower, they find the lab destroyed—and no Niamh (though they do see the broken chains that held her, and know she is still alive). Zorak recovers his bow and quiver and the two then leave to search further. Xikchaka has freed Niamh from the chains with his mandibles and claws—and tells her to tell Zorak that at least one kraan (Xikchaka) now understands the meaning of "friendship", and also warns her that the kraan are advancing on Phaolon. Niamh then finds the tubular craft and pilots it away. Meanwhile, the amazons discover Karn's journey-stash and hit it with wild abandon—getting drunk in the process. Varda then forces Karn to lie in her bed—and is warned by him that another is watching. Iona, the watcher, then goes to get the other girls to gang-up on (and kill) Karn and Varda. Karn takes Varda in the sky-sled and pilots it away. Varda then asks Karn to kiss him; the two are then startled by a scream, as Niamh has seen them, leaving Karn dejected. Eventually, the kraan arrive in the neighbourhood of Phaolon and are detected by scouts. Phaolon's warriors, on their zaiphs attack the kraan host, but are not able to blunt the attack much—due to the sheer numbers of kraan pushing forward. Delgan smiles on seeing this, as his plan has been to destroy Phaolon—hoping the grief of its loss will then kill Karn, Niamh and others. Just then, two aircraft with three aboard come into view and land in Phaolon. Delgan recognises the pilots as Karn and Niamh, but does not know the third occupant (Varda). Karn and Niamh quickly take some of Phaolon's archers and fly out over the kraan host to do much more damage (than the frontal attack). At that point, Zarqa and Zorak (who Delgan also recognises) come in—the Kalood determines the kraan officers and directs Zorak to slay them. The loss of officers throws the forwardmost kraan into a state of retreat, and the ones following to continue pressing forward on "last orders", creating a jam which the Phaolonese exploit. This panics Rkkith, who flees. Delgan shouts that he can turn the tide of battle, but Rkkith in his panic fails to recognise him—mauling the Blue Barbarian Warlord (with his claws) and throwing him aside. Delgan then slays Rkkith with the zoukar, and has a last laugh before expiring. Xikchaka now becomes the new ruler of the kraan and negotiates a withdrawal from Phaolon. He promises his friend Zorak (who has served as emissary) that the kraan will never again attack the treetop cities. Varda then explains what happened to Niamh, who promptly announces to the victorious Phaolonese that she and Karn are to be married. Sometime after the marriage, the author puts Prince Karn's body in a state of temporary animation and makes a temporary return to his earthly body—to write down the accounts, and instructions for their release. Before he returns permanently (leaving the crippled, earthly body to die naturally) to Phaolon, he writes "I am caught in the Green Star's spell, and never wish to be free of it!". |
Eat a Bowl of Tea | Louis Chu | 1,961 | Eat a Bowl of Tea begins by describing newlyweds Ben Loy and Mei Oi sleeping peacefully in their bed in New York City. They are abruptly awakened by a prostitute ringing the doorbell. Ben Loy, ashamed of his pre-marital history with prostitutes, lies to protect his secret from his "innocent, pure" wife. The story then jumps backwards several months to the "Money Come" gambling house and the men who spend their days there: Wah Gay, Lee Gong, Chong Loo and Ah Song. The text depicts the close friendship between Wah Gay and Lee Gong (both Chinese immigrants with wives back in Guangdong (Canton)), and a conversation concerning their unmarried children ensues. Upon learning that Wah Gay has a marriageable son (Ben Loy) here in the States, Lee Gong spies on him at his restaurant and decides that he is the right man for his daughter (Mei Oi), who is still in China. He and Wah Gay decide that Ben Loy will go to China and bring back Mei Oi as his bride. The two men write their wives (Lau Shee and Jung Shee) in anticipation. Although Ben Loy seems to be the epitome of a "good boy," he has a secret life. When he is not busy working at the restaurant (in the fictional suburb of Stanton, Connecticut), he and his roommate Chin Yuen visit white prostitutes in New York City, a habit Ben Loy picked up while serving in the Army during World War II. Ben Loy becomes addicted to these sexual flings, often sleeping with numerous prostitutes in a night. Without the permission of his father – who wants Ben Loy to stay in Stanton, away from the temptations of New York – Ben Loy and Chin Yuen move to an apartment on Manhattan's Catherine Street. When Wah Gay approaches Ben Loy about going to Sunwei, China to find a bride, Ben Loy is skeptical and unwilling. But he eventually warms to the idea of bringing a bride with him back to America and raising a family, and he assents to his family's wish. When he meets Mei Oi in China, he decides that he made the right decision – he is immediately enthralled by her beauty and pleased by her modesty and courtesy. After such ceremonial practices as the employment of matchmakers and the approval of the Fourth Uncle, the families plan a traditional wedding. Their Chinese wedding is mirrored by a Chinese wedding banquet back in Chinatown. Her arrival in New York should be a happy time for Mei Oi, as she is finally able to meet her father and to experience life in a big city. However, she feels lonely in the city and spends her days sobbing over her deteriorating marriage, not understanding the causes of Ben Loy's impotence. Although they made love during their first few weeks of marriage, since their arrival in New York he no longer appears to desire her affection, even when she attempts to arouse him. This rejection deeply hurts, frustrates and confuses Mei Oi, and she concludes that Ben Loy no longer loves her. It is not long before the novelty of living in Chinatown and marrying a gimshunhock ("Gold Mountain sojourner"--someone living in America) wears off. Mei Oi insists that Ben Loy consult a doctor about his impotency – he tries both an American doctor and a Chinese herb specialist, but to no avail. In July, an unexpected visitor appears at their apartment: Ah Song, a frequent Money Come guest who flirts shamelessly with Mei Oi while Ben Loy is at work, claiming to be deeply in love with her and divulging Ben Loy's secret shameful past. Confused and overpowered, Mei Oi surrenders to Ah Song and they make love – whether this is truly rape or not is left to the discretion of the reader. Regardless, they kindle a relationship and a secret affair begins. Mei Oi soon discovers that she is pregnant, but does not know who the father is (since she and Ben Loy had successfully slept together during a visit to Washington, D.C.). She continues her affair with Ah Song, oblivious to the increasing gossip that she is "knitting Ben Loy a green hat" – sleeping with another man. Eventually Soon Lee Gong, Wah Gay, and finally Ben Loy learn of the affair. The tong mocks the family and Mei Oi realizes the magnitude of shame she has brought upon them. The neighborhood eventually assumes the identity of the man as Ah Song, and Ben Loy and Mei Oi move to Stanton to avoid further embarrassment. Even the affections of Chin Yuen, Ben Loy's closest companion, cannot distract Mei Oi from the pain she feels away from Ah Song, and she eventually convinces Ben Loy to move back to New York. Back in the old apartment, the affair resumes right where it left off. Wah Gay, crazed by the shame this affair has brought upon his family, lurks near the apartment and attacks Ah Song as he leaves, slicing off his ear. When Ah Song presses charges, Wah Gay flees to a friend's home in New Jersey. However, because he is so well-connected in his tong through multitudes of devoted and powerful family members, he is not penalized for his actions. Ah Song, on the other hand, is exiled for five years. But Wah Gay and Lee Gong are too embarrassed to remain in the community and leave New York, heading their separate ways in solitude. Ben Loy and Mei Oi decide to free themselves of all family and community ties by starting anew in San Francisco. The birth of their child, Kuo Ming, and a new environment allow them to grow closer and mend previous wrongs. Ben Loy visits another Chinese herb specialist and decides to take the doctor's advice and "eat a bowl of tea" to treat his impotence. Whether it is the herbs or the increase in Ben Loy's independence, his masculinity is finally restored in all senses of the word. |
Honoured Enemy | William R. Forstchen | null | Hartraft's Marauders, a band of kingdom raiders have come across a Tsurani patrol at a garrison overrun by moredhel (dark elves). This forces them to band together to survive. |
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence | null | null | It considers violence in chimpanzees and its relationship to violence in human beings, while also reflecting on the more peace-loving bonobo. It also considers the relation of gender to violence, noting that in humans it is males which are violent, while in other animals e.g. hyenas it is the female that is more violent; according to Philip Regal the book is partly an attack on the deconstructivist feminist theory that male violence is a purely social construct. Regal also considers the book to be "a broadside against the old utopian dreams of Atlantis, Eden, Elysium, a Golden Age, Romantic paintings, and the late Margaret Mead" which imagined human beings as naturally peaceful. |
Klipgooi | null | null | The story starts off from the perspective of a person (who's gender is at first unknown) that returns to the town of their childhood (Klipgooi) for reasons also as yet unknown. As the story continues, it becomes evident that this person, a woman, has come back to the town of Klipgooi to face the demons from her past. She is however, at first very scared and on edge upon her return as she is scared that some of the residents that resided in the town from her childhood, may still be present and may recognise her. As she starts walking through the town the chapters from her past begins to play out and the reader is given an insight into what exactly happened in this woman's past that has left her with such a deep scar and a seeming genuine fear for the town. |
The Albatross | Susan Hill | null | It concerns Duncan, a mentally retarded 18-year-old who has grown up with his domineering wheelchair-using mother. Duncan finds it difficult to cope with anything outside his daily routine, but is forced to interact with a wider world when his claustrophobic relationship with his mother reaches breaking point. |
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio | null | null | In 1948, twelve-year-old Peg Kehret starts to notice some twitching in her leg during her school choir class, and then she also falls. When she gets home, she and her parents call a doctor. It turns out that she is diagnosed with not one, but three types of polio. She spends the next several months in a hospital fighting for her life. She moves hospitals a few times, and she has to get rid of contaminated things along the way, like a teddy bear from Art, Peg's older brother. She has new room-mates, including Tommy, a younger boy in an iron lung, and "the iron horse",Peg's wheelchair. She struggles to overcome paralysis and learn to walk again. She also fights to stay off of a medical ventilator /respirator, and to swallow milkshakes (while in an oxygen tent) without choking which ends up saving her life. During her stay at a different hospital, she becomes friends with several other girls with polio: Renee, Shirley, Alice, and Dorothy. She learns that Alice had been at the hospital for 10 years, because her family didn't want her. Together, they endure hardships and celebrate accomplishments as they attempt to live normal lives in the hospital while fighting polio. |
Special Delivery | Steven Mark Sachs | 1,997 | Danielle Steel explores finding love when, and from whom you least expect it in Special Delivery. Jack Watson was a man hardened to the idea of love. The death of his one true love followed by a messy divorce led him content to lead the ultimate bachelor’s life. Written about in the society pages, and despite his reputation, he never had trouble finding a date. It didn’t hurt that he owned one of the most successful women’s boutiques in Beverly Hills. Amanda Robbins was a successful actress who had already claimed an academy award when she met her husband Matthew Kingston and fell in love. Amanda gave up her acting career to be a devoted mother of two children. Her husband Matthew wasn’t interested in a working wife and Amanda was happy to oblige, until his sudden death from a heart attack. With the center of her life suddenly gone Amanda fell into despair and depression. Jack and Amanda didn’t travel in the same social circles however, the marriage of their children, Paul and Jan, created an undeniable connection. In the past, while Jack and Amanda were cordial with one another they didn’t go out of their way to spend much time together. One day Jan offers to take Amanda to one of Jack’s infamous parties. Amanda surprises herself when she accepts and has a great time. This sparked a new beginning as she and Jack began spending more time together, initially just to talk about their children. However, they soon discover that they have more than just children in common. This new relationship helps Amanda heal from the loss of her husband and causes Jack to realizes that life isn’t as fulfilling when you’re alone. An unexpected pregnancy nearly destroys their love, but ultimately brings them closer together. They end up seeing this new life as an opportunity to support Jan and Paul who have had trouble conceiving. At the last moment Jan finds out she’s pregnant and have decided not to adopt Amanda and Jack’s baby. Interwoven throughout Special Delivery are the stories of family challenges for both the Robbin’s and the Kingston’s. Tension between Amanda’s daughters, the difficulties of starting a family, and healing from the loss are all included as we watch Jack and Amanda fall in love with each other and learn how to make both of their families stronger in times of need. |
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence | Doris Pilkington Garimara | 1,996 | The book tells the story of Molly Craig, a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl, who is deemed "half-caste" by the Australian government. Along with two members of her family, her 8 -year-old sister Daisy Craig and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie Fields, Molly is taken by police officers from her mother in the community of Jigalong and transported 1,600 kilometres to the Moore River Native Settlement. In 1931, the three girls escape from Moore River, and with no maps or compasses, they use the immense State Barrier Fence which crosses Western Australia to navigate home. |
The League of Youth | Henrik Ibsen | null | Taking a different tack than Ibsen's earlier political play The Pretenders, The League of Youth features a protagonist Stensgaard, who poses as a political idealist and gathers a new party around him, the 'League of Youth', and aims to eliminate corruption among the "old" guard and bring his new "young" group to power. In scheming to be elected, he immerses himself in social and sexual intrigue, culminating in such complexity that at the end of the play all the women whom he has at one time planned to marry reject him, his plans for election fail, and he is run out of town. |
The World My Wilderness | Rose Macaulay | 1,950 | In the summer of 1945, Helen Michel is living in the south of France in the difficult aftermath of the Second World War, grieving for her late husband, a French collaborator called Maurice Michel who was mysteriously drowned in the final months of the German occupation of France. Helen is beautiful, lazy, the daughter of an Irish peer, a painter and scholar who is fond of gambling. Her seventeen-year-old daughter Barbary Deniston (Helen left her first husband, an English barrister) and her fifteen-year-old step-son Raoul Michel have run wild, associating with the Maquis, helping a guerrilla band with schemes of sabotage and harassing the Germans. Helen also has a two-year-old son by Maurice Michel, whom Barbary dotes on, but mother and daughter have grown apart. Helen is visited in Provence by her English son Richie Deniston, Barbary's brother, who after fighting in the War is now a Cambridge undergraduate. When he returns to England, Helen sends Barbary back with him to live in London with her father, Sir Gulliver Deniston KC, and to attend the Slade School of Art. Sir Gulliver has a new wife, the ultra-conventional Pamela, and she and Barbary take a dislike to each other. At the same time, Raoul's grandmother Madame Michel also sends him to London, to live with an uncle who is in business there. Barbary has no wish to adjust to the respectable life of her father and stepmother. She discovers the bombed but flowering wasteland of the City of London in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral. Here she and Raoul find an echo of the wilderness of the Maquis and make friends with the spivs and deserters living on the fringes of society. Barbary and Raoul adopt an empty flat in Somerset Chambers and a bombed-out Anglican church, St Giles's, where Barbary paints a mural of the Last Judgment and confronts the fear and emptiness within herself. Poetic descriptions of the past and present of the City of London and its ruined churches are intertwined with Barbary's moral and religious confusion. On a family holiday to the Scottish Highlands, staying with an uncle who is a leading psychiatrist, Barbary becomes alarmed by his wish to question her, steals money from her aunt, and runs away back to London. There, she takes to shoplifting, but in running away from the police she has a terrible fall among the ruins of the City and is nearly killed. With Barbary hanging between life and death, her mother returns to London, staying with her former husband. The novel reaches its conclusion with a reconciliation between Barbary and her mother (Barbary explaining that she had nothing to do with the drowning of Maurice) and with a revelation about her conception. |
Belinda | Maria Edgeworth | 1,801 | Belinda is a young lady who lives with her aunt, Mrs. Stanhope. Being unwed, Belinda is sent to live with Lady Delacour, whom Belinda considers fascinating and charming. Lady Delacour believes herself to be dying of breast cancer. She hides her emotional distress caused by her impending death and poor relationships with her family from Belinda through wit and charm. The first half of the novel is concerned with the blooming friendship between Belinda and Lady Delacour, which is broken by Lady Delacour's fear that Belinda plans to marry Lord Delacour, expressed in the line, "I see...that she [Belinda] who I thought had the noblest of souls has the meanest! I see that she is incapable of feeling." Belinda subsequently moves to the home of the Percival family, the embodiment of the ideal family. Once Lady Delacour seeks treatment for her illness, Belinda returns to support her. Upon her visit to the doctor, Lady Delacour discovers her disease is not terminal and reconciles herself with Belinda. She eventually makes a full recovery from her illness. |
Portrait in Sepia | Isabel Allende | null | Portrait in Sepia is the sequel to Daughter of Fortune and follows the story of Aurora del Valle, the granddaughter of Eliza Sommers (Hija de la fortuna). The daughter of Lynn Sommers (the daughter of Eliza and Tao Chi'en) and Matías Rodríguez de Santa Cruz (son of Paulina del Valle and Feliciano Rodríguez de Santa Cruz) has no memory of her first 5 years of life. She has recurring nightmares of men in black pyjamas looming around her, and losing the grip on the hand of someone beloved. Lynn died giving birth to Aurora, known also by her Chinese name Lai Ming, in Chinatown, San Francisco, while Aurora's biological father never acknowledged that he had a child until the end of his life; he died a slow and agonizing death of syphilis. After Lynn's death, Aurora's maternal grandparents raised her until the death of Tao Chi'en. After these events, Eliza approaches Paulina to raise Aurora while Eliza goes to China to bury Tao's body. Paulina makes Eliza agree to cut all contact with Aurora so she will not get too attached to the girl and have her taken away later on in life. So, Paulina del Valle tries to hide Aurora's true origins. Nevertheless, when Aurora talks to her real father, Matías, he tells the truth about her past. In this first part the writer also describes the War of the Pacific in which Severo del Valle is involved as a soldier. The descriptions of the war is very cruel; that can be seen in the scene where Severo del Valle loses his leg to gangrene. The second part is about the transition of Aurora's childhood to adulthood. She learns to be a photographer and she becomes an expert artist in that field. The family moves from San Francisco to Chile and Frederick Williams becomes Paulina's husband, so he will be accepted in Chilean society. Everyone there see him as a true English lord, but no one knows his origins are not noble. Allende also describes a civil war which affects them directly and the way Paulina del Valle endlessly creates new businesses such as growing French wine and selling cheese, in Chile. The Del Valle family then travels to Europe because Paulina has a tumor and needs an operation. The operation is successful and Paulina becomes healthy and strong once more. She is more than 70 years old, but does not show signs of being tired, ill or soft; she imposes her will on her body and thus she continues to rule the family as a matriarch. Thus, the novel is divided into three parts and an epilogue. The first part describes Aurora's infancy and family members, and the second is where Aurora's life comes more into play. The third part is where Aurora grows up, becoming a photographer, marrying Diego Domínguez and eventually leaving him. She takes a lover, Dr. Ivan Radovic, and their relationship is explained more fully in the epilogue. In the end, the mystery of Tao Chi'en's death is revealed and it plays an important role. |
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | H. G. Bissinger | 1,990 | The book opens with Permian's regular-season ending game against their arch-rival, the Midland Lee Rebels, then flashes back to the teams trials and tribulations throughout the season. Interspersed with the football team's saga is the history of Odessa and West Texas. The role of Permian football in the town is examined. The Panther booster club is one of the largest social groups in the city. Many school children look up to the players and hope to play for the team one day. Many high school girls hope to become Permian cheerleaders, but the competition is fierce. Others become "Pepettes" who are assigned to one football player. Peppettes bring their assigned player gifts every Friday, are in charge of pep rallies, and personally decorate the exterior of the homes of their assigned player. In the 5A playoff semifinals, Permian meets Dallas Carter, a predominately black team. Carter's system is even more corrupt than Permian's, and in a hard fought game in the rain, the Panthers are defeated. Carter goes on to win the state championship, but faces severe penalties the next year for their grade tampering, giving the state championship to Judson High School. The book ends with Coach Gaines erasing names of the graduating seniors from his board and replacing them with names of the juniors who will replace them next season. Permian goes undefeated the next year, with future NFL player Stoney Case as quarterback, and becomes the 1989 Texas State football champions. |
True Talents | David Lubar | null | It's been over a year since fourteen-year-old Eddie "Trash" Thalmeyer and his friends from Edgeview Alternative School found out about their special powers. Trash can move things with his mind; Flinch can predict the future; Lucky finds lost objects; Cheater reads minds; Torchie is a fire-starter and Martin can see into people's souls. They are now back home with their loved ones and are trying to get back to their normal lives, start attending high school and keeping in touch with their Edgeview friends. When Trash tests his power in the bank, accidentally stealing fistfuls of cash, he is kidnapped by a ruthless leader of an unknown organization trying to gather info on psychic phenomena and willing to do anything to get it. Martin and his friends team up to and use their hidden talents to rescue their friend while each figure out their own true talent in the process. |
Point Blanc: The Graphic Novel | Antony Johnston | 2,007 | Alex Rider is assigned by MI6 to investigate the deaths of billionaires, Michael J. Roscoe and General Viktor Ivanov. Each of them had a son attending Point Blanc, an academy in the French Alps run by a South African scientist, Dr Hugo Grief, and both died under mysterious circumstances. Alex's cover is that of the son of a supermarket magnate, Sir David Friend. Alex is taken to a hotel on the way to Point Blanc, where his dinner drink is drugged. His bed is then transported where Mrs. Stellenbosch (the lady who took him from Mr. Friend's house) strips Alex and photographs his entire body. After the examination, Alex's clothes are put back on and he is returned to his hotel room. Upon arriving at Point Blanc, Alex befriends a student who goes by the name of James Sprintz. James thinks something is wrong with the academy because the other boys were rebellious before and then suddenly became complacent. One day, James is taken and replaced with a look-alike who is no longer rebellious. The following night, Alex examines the forbidden third floor to find replicas of the boys' rooms upstairs, with TV screens monitoring the boys' behaviour downstairs. Following later investigations, Alex's finds the real boys locked in a basement jail. Alex sees James and tells him the truth, his identity and the reason why he was sent to Point Blanc. A teacher named Mrs Stellenbosch is told this after someone overhears it and knocks Alex unconscious, captures him and turns him over to Dr. Grief, who then reveals his plan to take over the world, named "Project Gemini". In the 1980s, Grief cloned sixteen copies of himself in his home country of South Africa (where he greatly supported the apartheid regime). While the real boys are at Point Blanc, a plastic surgeon named Baxter surgically alters Grief's 14-year-old clones to resemble them. Soon, the clone and the real boy are swapped. The replica rooms are used by the clones to imitate the boys' behaviour so the parents will not notice that they have been swapped. When the parents die and pass on their inheritance, Dr Grief will take the assets from the clones. Eventually, he will be the most powerful man in the world, and reinstate apartheid globally. Grief imprisons Alex, planning to dissect him alive the next day for a biology class. Alex uses his exploding ear-stud that was given to him by MI6's gadget genius Smithers to escape his cage. He fashions a makeshift snowboard to escape, but crashes and Alex faints and is taken to a hospital, where a visiting Mrs Stellenbosch is told that Alex has broken several bones, fractured his skull and died. However, MI6 then sends him out again with a team of SAS soldiers (among them is Wolf, an SAS soldier introduced in Stormbreaker) to help liberate the school. As Dr Grief attempts to escape, Alex kills him with a snowmobile by driving it up a ramp and crashing it into Grief's helicopter, jumping off at the last minute. In the final chapter of the novel, Alex goes to his school to find a clone that resembles him, who avoided capture and escaped. The clone and Alex fight, starting a fire in the science building, ending with one of them falling to his death. It is left ambiguous as to whether the clone or Alex survived, though at the beginning of Skeleton Key it is revealed that the clone was killed and the real Alex lives. |
Fablehaven | Brandon Mull | 2,006 | Kendra and Seth Sorenson are shipped off by their parents to Grandma and Grandpa Sorensons house for seventeen days while their parents go on a cruise set up by Grandma and Grandpa Larson for their children and spouses after they died. When they get to the house, Grandpa Sorenson tells them that their grandmother is visiting their dying Great Aunt Edna and introduces them to Lena, the half-Asian housekeeper, and Dale, a man who helps Grandpa Sorenson tend to the grounds. Once Seth and Kendra's parents are gone, Grandpa Sorenson sets up two rules, which are that they must keep out of the woods, and that they cannot go in the barn. They visit their attic bedroom, and much to Kendra and Seth's delight, it is filled with many toys and activities to keep them busy. Also, there is a pet chicken named Goldilocks. Before he leaves, Grandpa Sorenson gives Kendra three keys so that they can, as Grandpa says: "See if you can figure out what each unlocks." Seth and Kendra go swimming the next day and Kendra brings out a mirror to shine light in Seth's eyes. When she leaves it out, hoards of butterflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds flock over to it. When Kendra and Seth flip over the mirror, the obsessed critters flip it back over again. Later, Kendra finds that the biggest key unlocks a jewelry box full of costume jewelry, and the tiniest key unlocks an armoire inside the dollhouse. In the armoire is a piece of chocolate shaped like a rosebud, and a small golden key, bigger than the key that opened the armoire, but smaller than the key that opened the jewelry box. Kendra searches a telescope that stands near a window for keyholes, but finds nothing. She is about to turn away when she sees Dale carrying something in both hands. When she goes to the yard to confront him, it turns out that it is just milk. Dale tells Kendra that their milking cows make a little extra milk than they need, so he puts it out for the insects, and also not to tell Grandpa Sorenson in case he disapproves. Seth disobeyed direct rules and was wandering the woods when he found a creepy old lady in an ivy shack. He ran back to the yard once she dared him to do something almost certainly dangerous. Back at the house, Kendra finds the Journal of Secrets with 3 keyholes, but none of the keys she has fits except the golden one she found in the dollhouse. Seth shows Kendra a hidden pond with gazebos, a boardwalk, and a boathouse. That night at dinner, Grandpa asks a rhetorical question, stating, "What do you suppose makes people so eager to break rules?" When Seth says that they weren't afraid of ticks, Grandpa tells them the real reason why they have to stay out of the woods: He really runs a preserve full of endangered, poisonous animals. Seth goes into lawyer mode and manages to worm out of trouble. Since they have disobeyed his orders, they have to stay inside the house until their parents come to get them, but luckily, Kendra talks him out of it and they get partial punishment as a warning. Soon after, Kendra figures out how to open the journal completely, and inside all she finds is a single phrase, 'drink the milk'. Deciding that she needed a guinea pig to test the milk that Dale claimed to be hazardous, Kendra dared Seth to drink the milk. When Kendra drinks the milk, the insects flying around suddenly turn into fairies. Grandpa explains that his property is not a preserve for endangered animals, but for magical creatures such as fairies, trolls, and centaurs. This piece of information would completely turn their visit around, though not at first. Seth made a bad choice concerning a fairy, and was turned into some sort of mutated walrus. Luckily, the old lady Seth found in the woods managed to sort him out, though at a high price to his family. Later, Grandpa explains that Midsummer Eve is a time when all creatures, light or dark, can roam into the yard and warns to not, never, open the window, for whatever reason. Seth, giving in to his curious, disobedient reality, opened the window. That single action put his grandparents in danger, his sister in danger, and ultimately, he put the world in danger. |
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony | Eoin Colfer | 2,006 | In Barcelona, Spain, Artemis Fowl II and Butler, his bodyguard, wait for a demon. They eventually encounter a demon who would have taken Artemis through time had Butler not touched Artemis and worn a silver bracelet. The silver allows Butler to pull Artemis back through time. Meanwhile, Wing Commander Vinyáya brings Holly Short and Mulch Diggums, who have recently been working on their semi-successful PI business, to secret organisation Section Eight which monitors demon activity. There, Foaly informs them that Artemis Fowl was able to predict a demon materialisation that they were not. Holly is sent to ask Artemis how he could do so. On the demon island of Hybras, which is suspended in "Limbo" (where time is nonexistent), №1, an imp, is bullied because he has not "warped" (changed into a mature demon). After turning a wooden skewer into stone, №1 wonders if he is a warlock, though they all supposedly died. Leon Abbot, the leader of the demon pride, uses something suspiciously like mesmer to urge №1 to leave for the human world. Artemis, Butler, and Holly arrive at the Massimo Bellini Opera House, where Artemis has predicted a demon appearance. Here again, they see a blond girl they had encountered in Barcelona. Artemis concludes that she knows something about demons. She is identified as Minerva Paradizo. №1 materialises in a dark corner of the stage and is immediately shot with a tranquillizer dart using a rifle disguised as a crutch by Billy Kong, who is one of Minerva's henchmen, and is also known as Jonah Lee. Minerva leaves for her residence with Holly following. №1, in Minerva's home, tells her about demon culture. He also learns that Leon Abbot visited this very place under care and that the spell holding Hybras in Limbo is failing. Holly has feigned unconsciousness and is in a cell with Kong. Holly manages to knock him out. When Artemis distracts Minerva, Holly and №1 escape. Kong, who has some inaccurate knowledge of demons, demands that Minerva obtain another demon to avenge his deceased brother, for which he holds demons accountable. She is unable to comply, and he takes her hostage. Artemis, however strikes a deal in which he will trade №1 for Minerva at Taipei 101 in Taiwan. Kong plans to strap a bomb onto №1 and remove the silver bullet anchoring №1 to this dimension. However, Artemis has already removed it, and has instructed №1 to drop the silver bullet which he has been holding in his hand. When №1 drops the bullet, he almost immediately dematerialises but the large pendulum coated with silver, which is near where №1 is standing, keeps №1 in this dimension. Holly puts a silver bracelet around №1's arm when he materialises at the apex of the pendulum. Holly flies up to the next story, which is another observation deck under renovation, and encounters a worker. Holly has already mesmerised the worker so he suspects nothing. They then go down to the 40th floor in the elevator and meet with Artemis, Butler, and Minerva. They go to the Kimsichiog Art Gallery, which has not yet opened. Holly mesmerises the curator to grant them access to the main exhibition, a 10,000 year old sculpture of "dancing figures" which is really 4 of the 7 demon warlocks, frozen in stone. One of them had died instantly when his head had snapped off, two more had lost arms and legs. Two more had died from shock and one was missing. Only Qwan, who knew what was coming, had survived. №1 manages to release Qwan. Kong and his group reach the gallery and try to break the door open. Butler shoots the lock with his SIG Sauer 9mm handgun and destroys it. Kong's group manages to shoot the door until it is "Drooping slightly on its hinges". Butler rips the door open, drags Kong inside and with the help of Holly's Neutrino, knocks him to the ground thinking he was unconscious. Minerva kicks him in the leg against Butler's warnings. Kong grabs Minerva's ankle and Butler steps on Kong's wrist, then knocks him unconscious by hitting him between the eyes with his knuckle. In the time this took, Kong's gang gets in the door and one of the men throws a grenade into the room, but Holly shields it with her Section 8 helmet. The bomb gets handcuffed to №1 and Artemis, Qwan, №1, and Holly devise a plan to use Holly's wings to carry Artemis, Holly, and №1 to the next building over. Their plan fails when Holly's wings cut out and they fall against the side of the building. Artemis takes off №1's silver bracelet and they all dematerialise to Hybras. Artemis reasons that the bomb will provide sufficient energy for a spell to reverse the original time-spell. Qwan tells him that at least five magical beings will be necessary. They all think (with the exception of Artemis, who stole some magic in the time tunnel) that there are only three. On Hybras, Abbot crowns himself the demon king. He is notified that four figures, Artemis, №1, Holly, and Qwan, have appeared on the volcano. They accuse him of using the mesmer, but he states that demons cannot use magic. Artemis claims that Abbot took magic from Qwan's apprentice and stole it from the time tunnel. When Abbot asks for proof, Artemis reveals that he stole some magic himself. When Abbot states that this is not possible, he demonstrates the fact by creating a spark out of the magic he took from the tunnel, unknown to his companions. With this development, then there will be five magical beings present (Abbot included), enough to reverse the time spell. Holly dies, but Artemis takes advantage of the time spell's disintegration and consequent irregularity to bring her back to life. Artemis, having no experience with magic, is guided by Qwan, and the 'magic circle' is formed. However, not enough magic is available, as Abbot does not contribute enough. At that moment, Qweffor, Qwan's former apprentice, makes his appearance, revealing he has been living in Abbot after the first time spell was interrupted. With Qweffor's increased magic, the party is able to return to Artemis and Holly's dimension. When they land back in the 21st century, Artemis notices that he has switched an eye with Holly. Even though Qweffor's consciousness has once again been taken over by Abbot, №1 manages to expand Qweffor's consciousness enough to shut Abbot out. Unfortunately, the party is three years off into the future. Artemis now has twin brothers, Ark Sool has been fired, and Mulch has continued the PI firm, also recruiting Doodah Day, a pixie that he arrested with Holly at the start of the book. When Artemis sees Butler, now with a beard, Butler reveals that Minerva has grown to be "quite a beautiful young woman" who talks about Artemis extensively and that he is now the big brother of twins. |
What's Mine's Mine | George MacDonald | 1,886 | The story of a poor Scottish chief and his brother, and their influence for good on two English girls, daughters of their supplanter. |
The Warriors of Spider | W. Michael Gear | 1,988 | The human race consists of billions of people spread throughout a relatively small area of space containing Earth and several other inhabited planets. The majority of the population lives on giant space stations, either in orbit or moving like giant ships. A change occurred over the generations that was caused by zero-gravity conditions and exposure to different radiations. Most are pale-skinned, thin and frail-boned; some would die if they experienced gravity. The human race is ruled over by the Directorate, a group of three genetically modified humans, through whom all information must pass before it is released; this has given the Directorate complete control over information for the last 600 years. They stopped all war and religion and caused humanity to be composed of mostly obedient cowards. Before this 600-year period, the Soviets ruled humanity after conquering North America. The Native American tribes, angered that the position of reservations had not changed, fought back against the Soviets and succeeded, to the point that they were all loaded onto a giant prison ship and deported to deep space along with other rebels of Latino and Caucasian decent—a population of over 5,000 consisting entirely of people with the will and heritage to survive. The ship crashes onto a planet that they name World. 600 years later the survivors have mixed into many different clans that comprise two distinctly different and opposing peoples, the Spiders and the Santos. Their culture is mainly Native American with the addition of large bore rifles, hand-forged from metal of the wrecked prison ship and used to deal with beings they call "bears," natural predators existing on World. The World bear is similar to a dragon-squid combination, having two spines that connect at the base and a tentacle on each side with suction cups on it that it shoots toward its prey. The Directorate accidentally picks up a bit of radio chatter from World, as the warriors use hand radios. They send out the Patrol, a combination military/police force that, under the guidance of the Directorate, has had no violence or wars to quell in over 200 years. They arrive at World expecting to find civilized people barely surviving, as with most other lost stations or colonies. On the contrary, the native warriors are savage fighters following the Native American tradition of "coup" taking, or scalping killed enemies as a method of showing how many they had killed. They then try to conquer the Romanans, as they take to calling the descendants of the crashed star ship the natives arrived in, the Nicholai Romanan, but find that these natives aren't going down without a fight, as the Spiders, who believe Spider is the name of God and the Santos, a mix of Christian and Mexican beliefs, who call God Haysoos, are all about warfare and following what they interpret God is telling them what to do. |
Love Creeps | Amanda Filipacchi | 2,005 | Love Creeps is about a triangle of stalkers composed of two men and a woman. They stalk each other obsessively, and then the stalking order changes, illustrating the changeability of an individual's attraction to another, as well as that individual's attractiveness to others. |
Now, Now, Markus | null | null | Markus's parent's never really listen to what Markus has to say and instead often react with standard phrases ("Oh my goodness!" said his mother. "Now now now" said his father). So Markus has to attract their attention by dropping dead. When he finally gets them to agree that he can have a bird he comes home with a swan. Of course he is not allowed to keep it, so he decides to live in the woods. There he is eaten by a giant, but his swan saves him. When Markus comes back home and his parents, as usual, don't believe his story, all the beings that have been saved from the giant's stomach march into the house. |
The Blue Boy | null | null | The Blue Boy lives on a war -torn planet. When his parents get killed he does not want to love anyone anymore, because he has cried so much that he has no more tears left. He declines the company of a little dog, an old woman, a girl. Instead he builds himself a giant armoured robot to travel around in and starts looking for someone who cannot be killed by a gun. At last he meets an old man on the moon who cannot be killed by guns because there are no guns up there. But the Blue Boy has brought his gun with him. Only when the old men offers him to use his telescope to study the people down there on the blue planet and to find out why they fight wars and how this could be stopped he agrees to drop his gun so he can stay with the old man. "Who knows? Maybe he'll fly back one day and tell his people everything he's learned". |
My Booky Wook | Russell Brand | null | This "warts and all" account of Brand's life follows, in vivid detail, the star's life from his troubled childhood in Gray's End Close, Essex to his first taste for fame in Stage School up to his turbulent drug addiction and his triumphant rise to fame from RE:Brand to Big Brother's Big Mouth to Hollywood. |
Imperial Stars | E. E. Smith | 1,976 | The year is 2447 and the Empire of Earth comprises more than a thousand inhabited systems. A threat to the Empire has developed and the Imperial secret service "SOTE" has been unable to foil it. In desperation they turn to the Family D'Alembert for assistance. The Family D'Alembert are natives of the high gravity planet DesPlaines, giving them unusual strength and speed. Travelling the galaxy under the cover of their famous circus, they are the Emperor's super secret force. |
Ports of Call | Jack Vance | null | Myron's family intended for Myron to follow a staid and respectable career in economics; however, when his wealthy and eccentric great-aunt Dame Hester came into possession of a space yacht, Myron suddenly found his long suppressed dreams of adventure within reach. Serving as Dame Hester's nominal captain on her journey to find a clinic reputed to restore lost youth to wealthy clients, Myron soon finds that his aunt is capricious as she is flamboyant, and after an argument, finds himself castaway on a remote planet. With no resources to return home, he obtains the position of supercargo on a tramp freighter, which enables him to travel further across the Gaean Reach to exotic lands. |
Carpentaria | null | 2,006 | The novel tells the interconnected stories of several inhabitants of the fictional town of Desperance, situated on the Gulf of Carpentaria in northwest Queensland. There, the Aboriginal people of the Pricklebush clan are engaged in a number of argumentative conflicts with various enemies in the community, including the white inhabitants of Desperance, the local law enforcement and government officials, and a large multinational mining operation that has been established on their traditional sacred land. The narrative chronicles the interpersonal relationships shared between three men embroiled in these disputes: the wise, pragmatic, and blunt Normal Phantom; the nomadic, overzealous shamanic practitioner of Aboriginal traditional religion, Mozzie Fishman; and Norm's son, Will Phantom, who deserted his father's house to undertake a cross-country spiritual journey with Fishman, but who has now returned home with something of Fishman's character in him. |
Gangster | Lorenzo Carcaterra | 2,001 | The novel opens in 1996 as Gabe, now middle-aged man, keeps watch over an old Angelo Vestieri on his hospital deathbed. Slipping back in time to the Depression, the narrative tracks the rise of the famed mob boss from a simple Italian immigrant to the most powerful man of Manhattan's underworld, when a ten year old Gabe, by chance, walks into Vestieri's bar. Vestieri takes the boy under his wing and ushers him into the world of organized crime. Gabe learns what it takes to rule an empire with his mentor, yet when the time comes for Gabe to take over Angelo's operation, he refuses, choosing a normal life despite his deep love for Vestieri. |
Baltimore, or The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire | Mike Mignola | 2,007 | Each chapter begins with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." The novel consists of several tales all interlinked around a fictional Captain Lord Henry Baltimore who leads a night attack on a battlefield during World War I, and the men who know him. His entire squad is killed by enemy fire and Baltimore himself is wounded in the leg and left for dead, he awakes some hours later to see giant bat creatures feeding on his dead men. When one attempts to feed off him, he slashes at it with his bayonet and scars its face hideously. The giant creature in return wounds him and infests his leg with such terrible gangrene that when he is later brought to hospital, it is amputated, leaving him with a jointed wooden leg. Unknowingly, Lord Baltimore struck a powerful vampire who is so angered by Baltimore's permanent blinding of his right eye that he causes a "plague" in warring Europe. People think this to be a sickness which spreads quickly across countries, but in truth it is vampirism. Baltimore returns home from war haunted by his encounter on the field, yet happy to be home early on account of his leg. But upon arrival, he discovers his parents and sister have succumbed to the plague - only his wife Elowen survived. The plot turns to three of Baltimores' companions who have helped in the past - battlefield surgeon Doctor Lemuel Rose, gentlemen trader Thomas Childress Jr., and sea captain Demetrius Aischros. They have all been called to meet at an inn with Baltimore, and while they wait for him, each tells two tales: how they met Baltimore and why they believe his tale of the vampire encounter to be true. The Doctor treated his leg, Childress grew up on his island home and Aischros shipped him home after the war. From their tales of Baltimore and the supernatural it becomes apparent that Baltimore has become a man bent on a mission to kill the "Red King vampire" (also known as Haigus), who infested his family and then murdered his beloved wife. He travels to kill the lesser vampires in hope of reaching the Red King, and has called his three friends forth in hope of their aid. |
The Primrose Path | Bram Stoker | 1,875 | Jerry O'Sullivan, honest Dublin theatrical carpenter, moves to London, seeking a better job. Against the better judgement of the people surrounding him, Jerry decides to go to the metropolis with his faithful wife Katey. O'Sullivan is hired as head carpenter in a squalid theatre in London, but after several misfortunes he is strongly tempted by and eventually brought down by alcohol. |
The Touchstone | null | null | Stephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee. He happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain. Glennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him. Glennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another. However, his mounting shame and his guilty conscience ultimately force him to confess his betrayal to his wife. He fully expects (and even desires) that his confession will cause her to despise him. However, her wise and forgiving response opens a way for him to forgive himself and to make what limited amends he can make for his actions. |
Treading Air | Jaan Kross | 1,998 | Treading Air is the story of Ullo Paerand. It is narrated partly in the first person from the principal character's point of view, and partly in the voice of Paerand's schoolmate Jaak Sirkel, a character in several of Kross' recent novels. The novel opens with Ullo's reminiscences of a childhood trip to Germany in the 1920s, and ends with his vision of meeting his aged father who fled to the West together with his lover. The talented Ullo preserves memories of the happy childhood he knew before his father left and leaner years began. Together with his mother, Ullo fights for a better future. Despite minor humiliations, he gets a secondary education in one of Tallinn's best grammar schools. Soon after, due to his excellent memory and enterprising spirit, he enjoys professional success, rising to a position in the Prime Minister's Office. But fate lets Ullo down. The Soviet and German occupations deny him the chance of an upstanding career. Ullo joins with the nationalists to work towards the restoration of the Estonian Republic, and passes over an opportunity of escaping to the West offered by a representative of the Vatican. He lives the remainder of his life - some forty years - doing menial work, and making suitcases in a factory. Treading Air is one of the Kross' most successful books. It is on a par with Keisri hull (The Czar's Madman), regarded by many until now as Jaan Kross' best novel. de:Paigallend et:Paigallend |
The Romance of the Forest | Ann Radcliffe | 1,791 | Monsieur Pierre de la Motte and his wife, Madame Constance de la Motte, are fleeing Paris in an attempt to escape his creditors. Pierre, Madame, and their two domestic servants, Peter and Annette, are waylaid when the path they’re on becomes too dark to follow any longer. Pierre exits the carriage and continues on foot toward a light he notices some distance away from the carriage. Upon knocking on the door of a small and ancient house, Pierre is admitted into the house by a stranger. He is given a bed and promptly locked in the room. Sometime later, the door to Pierre’s room is unlocked and a beautiful young lady, Adeline, is being dragged behind the stranger who admitted Pierre to the house. The stranger states that “if you wish to save your life, swear that you will convey this girl where I may never see her more; or rather consent to take her with you.” Upon agreement to take Adeline with him, Pierre and Adeline are conveyed to the carriage by the ruffian stranger with Madame still inside. The family, with the addition of Adeline, proceeds into the darkened interior of a forest, hoping to elude discovery and heeding the warnings of the stranger to not come back on the land they just left. Eventually, they find refuge in a ruined abbey after their wagon wheel breaks. Initially, everyone in the group except Peter is afraid of what lies in waiting behind the abbey walls; however, closer inspection by Peter shows the only inhabitants are mice, owls, bats, and the like. Still afraid of being pursued by creditors, the family and Adeline stay close to the abbey. Peter is sent into the town of Auboine for supplies to fix their broken wagon wheel. After returning to the family, Peter confides to Pierre that while he was in town he got in a fight and was unable to procure the necessary supplies for fixing the wheel, but he did purchase some food to tide them over. The family and the servants settle into the rooms of the abbey, making each one more inhabitable the longer they stay. After some time passes, while in town, Peter comes across a gentleman who inquires about the La Motte family. Thinking the people inquiring about the La Motte family are creditors, the family, Adeline, and the servants all go into hiding through the trap door Pierre has found in one of the bedrooms. They spend the night in the dark and terrifying rooms, where unbeknownst to everyone else, Pierre discovers a skeleton in a chest. The next day, everyone agrees to send Adeline out to check if anyone is at the abbey since she is the only one who would be unrecognizable to creditors. Upon greeting one of her woodland animal friends, a young male stranger approaches her. Soon Adeline discovers that this stranger is actually Pierre and Madame’s son, Louis. They left Paris without giving notice to his regiment, and he had come searching for his parents. Soon after, Madame confides to Louis her jealous fears that Adeline seeks to have an affair with her husband. Louis is supposed to find out the truth of where Pierre has been spending his days, but is unable to do so after losing sight of his father in the dense forest. Madame stays hostile to Adeline, believing the worst of her in relation to her supposed affair with Pierre. At the same time, Louis has fallen in love with Adeline and pines for her saying “I should esteem myself most happy, if I could be of service to you.” Meanwhile, "Louis, by numberless little attentions, testified his growing affection for Adeline, who continued to treat them as passing civilities. It happened, one stormy night, as they were preparing for rest, that they were alarmed by a trampling of horses near the abbey." The riders introduce themselves as the Marquis de Montalt, who is the owner of the abbey, and his attendants, one of which is named Theodore. Pierre becomes more distressed after the appearance of the Marquis. Louis notes this distress, but must soon leave to return to his regiment. During this time, Theodore attempts to warn Adeline that he fears she has been deceived and danger is upon her. Before he can formally speak with Adeline, he is sent to return to his regiment as well. Pierre and the Marquis, at this same time, have been speaking in private to one another. After Theodore’s departure, Adeline fears her father will return for her when overhearing a conversation between Pierre and the Marquis. She relates her fears to Pierre, and he allows her to believe that is what the conversation’s subject consisted of. Throughout this time period, as well, Adeline also finds a manuscript written by someone who had been held captive inside the abbey during 1642. The writer of the manuscript relates his dire circumstances and impending death at the hands of an unknown perpetrator. Adeline notes when reading the manuscript that it "is in a barely legible and fragmented condition. It suggests much more than it can say.” Adeline ultimately informs Pierre of the manuscript once she reaches particularly terrifying point while reading it. Adeline is then warned of danger again, but this time Peter is the person who warns her. He attempts several times to tell her the issue at hand, until finally he is able to relate his findings. Adeline finds out the reality of the conversations between the Marquis and Pierre: The Marquis wants to make Adeline his wife and was discussing the matter with Pierre. However, Adeline discovers through Peter that the Marquis actually already has a wife and she would have really had a “fake marriage” and became the Marquis’ mistress. At no point, however, is Adeline inclined to become either the Marquis’ wife or mistress. Peter and Adeline concoct a plan to help her escape the abbey and a potentially reputation ruining situation. Unfortunately, when making her escape, Adeline is tricked, and instead she is taken to the Marquis’ residence. Adeline soon attempts to escape the Marquis by climbing out the window where she runs into Theodore, who is there to rescue her. The two leave in a carriage and the Marquis quickly follows once he realizes what has happened. Adeline and Theodore stop at an inn where the Marquis finds them. Theodore, who initially is ailing but eventually recovers, wounds the Marquis. Now instead of him being in trouble for just deserting his regiment, he also must face the consequences for wounding a superior officer. Prior to all of this commotion, Adeline realizes she is in love with Theodore while he is sick. Theodore is imprisoned, and Adeline is returned to Pierre de la Motte at the abbey. The Marquis informs Pierre that he wants to kill Adeline, not marry her, now. Pierre finds that he is "entangled in the web which his own crimes had woven. Being in the power of the Marquis, he knew he must either consent to the commission of a deed, from the enormity of which, depraved as he was, he shrunk in horror; or sacrifice fortune, freedom, probably life itself, to the refusal." Pierre finds he is unable to allow Adeline to be killed, thus he sends Adeline with Peter on horseback to Peter’s sister’s house in Leloncourt. When Peter and Adeline finally reach Leloncourt, Adeline is taken ill and is nursed to health first by Peter’s sister and later by Clara la Luc. Here, "Adeline, who had long been struggling with fatigue and indisposition, now yielded to their pressure ... But, notwithstanding her fatigue, she could not sleep, and her mind, in spite of all her efforts, returned to the scenes that were passed, or presented gloomy and imperfect visions of the future." After her illness, Adeline is essentially adopted by Arnaud la Luc, Clara’s father, and spends the remainder of her time with the family. Clara also has a brother, but he currently is not present. Yet, soon Monsieur la Luc’s health is failing (he is take with consumption), and the family must relocate to a different climate for a time. Eventually, Louis de la Motte finds Adeline and brings her news of Theodore. He informs her that he is imprisoned and his death is imminent because of the assault he made on his general officer. Here, Monsieur la Luc finds out that the Theodore in reference is actually his son that he has not seen for many years. Meanwhile, Monsieur and Madame de la Motte are facing their own troubles. Pierre de la Motte is placed on trial for a robbery he previously committed against the Marquis before he knew who the Marquis was. The Marquis would not have pressed any charges had Pierre assisted the murder of Adeline. Presently, however, Monsieur and Madame de la Motte are in Paris. Pierre is imprisoned and Madame is with him. Unaware of this, Adeline, Clara, and Monsieur la Luc travel to Paris to be with Theodore prior to his execution. While Pierre is on trial, witnesses come forward, and it is discovered that the Marquis is not who he claims to be; he had previously murdered a relation to Adeline and stole the person’s identity. Because of these recent developments, Theodore is released from his imprisonment while the Marquis poisons himself, but not before he confesses all his wrongdoings. "It appeared that convinced he had nothing to hope from his trial, he had taken this method of avoiding an ignominious death. In the last hours of his life, while tortured with the remembrance of his crime, he resolved to make all the atonement that remained for him, and having swallowed the potion, he immediately sent for a confessor to take a full confession of his guilt, and two notaries, and thus established Adeline beyond dispute in the rights of her birth, also bequeathing her a considerable legacy." *Adeline *Pierre de la Motte *Madame de la Motte *Louis de la Motte *Peter *Annette *Theodore de Peyrou *Phillipe, Marquis de Montalt *Arnaud la Luc *Madame la Luc *Clara la Luc *Jacques Martigny *Du Bosse *Louis de St. Pierre |
The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne | Ann Radcliffe | 1,789 | The novel tells the story of two clans, those belonging to the Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. It begins by relating that Malcolm, the Baron of Dunbayne, murdered the Earl of Athlin. The Earl’s son, Osbert, is driven by a passionate desire to avenge his father’s murder. Despite the entreaties of his mother, Matilda, to conquer his passion and abandon his quest of revenge, Osbert launches an attack on Malcolm with the help of Alleyn, a noble and virtuous peasant. Alleyn is in love with Osbert’s sister, Mary, a virtuous and delicate lady whom he desires to impress. The attack on Malcolm’s castle fails, and both Alleyn and Osbert are taken captive as prisoners of war. Alleyn, however, manages to escape. Malcolm’s passion for destroying Osbert is supplanted by a passion to possess the beautiful Mary, and he sends men to kidnap her. Alleyn, on his way back to Athlin, intervenes, and after much fainting on the part of Mary, manages to rescue her. Mary, after recovering from the excessive fainting fits, falls in love with Alleyn, despite their class differences. Upon confiding in her mother however, she is urged to forget her love. Malcolm, angry at Alleyn’s escape and the thwarted attempt to kidnap Mary, demands a ransom for the release of Osbert: he will release the Earl only if he is allowed to marry Mary. Both Alleyn and Matilda are distressed by such news. Osbert, meanwhile, has found comfort in the fellow prisoners of the Baroness Louisa, Malcolm’s sister-in-law by way of his elder (and now deceased) brother, the former Baron, and her daughter Laura. Laura and Osbert fall in love. After many complications, Osbert is able to escape the restraints of Malcolm, whom he eventually challenges. Malcolm is then killed in the ensuing battle. Before he dies, Malcolm confesses to Louisa that her son, whom she had thought dead, was really alive. Malcolm had hidden him away with a peasant family in order to procure the title for himself. Laura and Osbert prepare to wed, but Mary and Alleyn are both unhappy. It is then miraculously discovered the Alleyn is in fact Philip, Louisa’s long-lost son. He is recognized by his mother by a strawberry mark on his skin. This makes Alleyn the rightful Baron of Dunbayne. The novel ends with the double wedding of Laura and Osbert, and Mary and Alleyn. |
Clermont | Regina Maria Roche | null | Clermont relates the story of the beautiful Madeline, who lives in seclusion with her eponymous father until they are visited by a mysterious Countess from Clermont's past. Madeline travels to complete her education with her and a series of assaults by shadowy foes cannot dissuade her from unravelling the mystery of her father's past and pursuing her paramour De Sevignie. She uncovers the secret of her own noble origins and her virtue proves its strength through a series of trials and tribulations. |
Le Calvaire | Octave Mirbeau | 1,886 | Le Calvaire is an autobiographical novel, in which Mirbeau romanticizes his devastating affair with a woman of dubious morals, Judith Vimmer, who appears as "Juliette Roux" in the novel. The main character, Jean Mintié, who has literary ambition and the potential to become a good writer, is incapable of overcoming his sexual obsessions. Victimized by a woman and reduced to a state of humiliated impotence, he tries to transform his suffering into an impulse to create. His redemptive passion is modeled on the Passion of Christ. In the final pages, the image of Christ is replaced by the corpses of men fallen in the battle of love. |
Goodbye California | Alistair MacLean | 1,978 | Set in the United States, an Islamic terrorist kidnaps nuclear scientists and steals radioactive material from a California nuclear power plant. The plot focuses on the plan of the kidnappers to build their own atomic bombs which if exploded along California's earthquake fault lines could kill millions of people and destroy California's major cities. The inspiration for the plot appears to be acknowledged by Maclean himself in his preface to the 1977 edition of the book where he describes his first experience of an earthquake while in California on 9 February 1972. |
Theologus Autodidactus | Al-Nafis | null | The protagonist of the story is Kamil, an autodidactic adolescent feral child who is spontaneously generated in a cave and living in seclusion on a deserted island. He eventually comes in contact with the outside world after the arrival of castaways who get shipwrecked and stranded on the island, and later take him back to the civilized world with them. The plot gradually develops into a coming-of-age story and then incorporates science fiction elements when it reaches its climax with a catastrophic doomsday apocalypse. |
Skeleton Man | null | null | When two passenger airplanes collide over the Grand Canyon in the 1950s killing all aboard, John Clarke's body is lost, as is the briefcase of diamonds he had locked to his wrist. Scorning Mr. Clarke's pregnant fiancee, the wealthy Clarke family disclaims the out-of-wedlock daughter, Joanna Craig. When Clarke's father dies without heir shortly after the crash, the family fortune is entrusted to the estate's attorney, Dan Plymale, to create a charitable foundation. Mr. Plymale then proceeds to live well as executor of the foundation's funds, while Joanna Craig and her mother struggle in comparative poverty. Decades later, Billy Tuve, a Hopi, is arrested on suspicion of burglary and murder based on his possession of a rare diamond. Tuve's cousin, Cowboy Dashee solicits help from his friend Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee to clear Tuve's name. When retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn learns that his old acquaintance "Shorty" McGinnis acquired a similar diamond many years ago from a man whose story matches Tuve's story, the search begins in earnest for the missing diamonds and whatever may remain of John Clarke's body. |
The Christmas Mystery | null | null | Joachim buys a magic advent calendar on November 30 and every day, a piece of paper falls out of the door of the calendar. Each page tells the story of Elisabet Hansen, who chases a toy lamb that has come to life from an Oslo department store. While chasing the lamb, she meets the angel Ephiriel; the shepherds Joshua and Jacob; Caspar, the King of the Orient; and the cherub Impuriel. |
A Special Providence | Richard Yates | 1,969 | Robert Prentice is drafted after graduating high school and enters World War II during its final days. His hopes of glory are dashed by the fact that the fighting is almost all over. He proves to be an incompetent soldier and soon spends time in an infirmary with pneumonia. When he returns to his unit he continues to struggle but finally achieves a kind of acceptance. This narrative is interspersed with scenes from his childhood viewed from the perspective of his mother, Alice Prentice. She spends Robert's childhood moving from place to place mainly within New York accruing increasingly larger debts as her sculpting earns less and less money. She increasingly slips into despair as the novel ends and Robert decides not to return home. |
Good Morning Midnight | Reginald Hill | null | The plot involves Dalziel and Pascoe's investigation into the suicide of local businessman Palinurus 'Pal' Maciver, who has killed himself in similar circumstances to those of his father, who shot himself ten years earlier. However, what begins as a routine case of an apparent copycat suicide soon develops into something of a more sinister nature, revealing family secrets, corporate chicanery involving the arms trade, government agents and Iraq. |
To Kill the Potemkin | Mark Joseph | 1,986 | In 1968, a dangerous period of the Cold War, U.S. and Soviet forces engage in brinkmanship across the world. At sea, their submarines play a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. To Kill the Potemkin tells the story of a confrontation between these submarines - one being a new and advanced class of submarine whose existence must remain a secret. Jack Sorensen, one of the Navy's best sonar operators, is sonar chief of USS Barracuda, a nuclear-powered Skipjack-class submarine. Sorenson is a veteran who jokes about submarine warfare as a game (which he calls "Cowboys and Cossacks"), and he's determined to never lose. Using his sonar gear, Sorensen can find and identify submarines as few others can. Fogerty, a promising but inexperienced sonar analyst newly assigned to Barracuda, is determined to learn from Sorensen. Sorenson is something of an eccentric and also has a drug addiction (with drugs provided by one of the vessel's medical officers) and when in port, as a heavy drinker and partier, but this is tolerated because his determination and expertise make him so valuable. The novel begins as Barracuda departs it's east coast base for the Mediterranean Sea. Once there, Barracuda engages in anti-submarine warfare exercises with other Western submarines. Its mission is to "hunt" the U.S. Navy's 6th Fleet and the flagship, the aircraft carrier. The Barracuda "sinks" several of the American submarines playing the Soviet Navy vessels. The drill is interrupted by the appearance of a vessel that Fogarty correctly determines, that one of the submarines, which has the sonar signature of the American submarine USS Swordfish, is actually a Soviet submarine using special gear to mask its identity. The story then shifts to the bridge of the other submarine, which in fact is a Soviet vessel, and the first of new class of submarine. The first of its kind, Potemkin is equipped with an experimental stereo/sonar system designed to reproduce recorded tapes of American, British, and other submarines to fool the sonar nets stationed in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. As the Potemkin places itself into the Western navies' exercise, the political officer takes command of the vessel and places the captain under arrest for his repeated insults against the political officer and what he deems "un-Soviet remarks". Unfortunately, his incompetence leads to a collision with Barracuda. The American submarine is damaged in the bow area and the compartment is evacuated. Sorenson records the Soviet vessel sinking, and breaking up (being crushed by the water pressure as it sinks) on the sonar equipment. To his amazement, he hears what he thinks is torpedo being fired from the sinking vessel before it plunges to the ocean floor. The tape is sealed under orders from the submarine's captain. Everyone, the officers and crew, are all stunned and amazed to think that they managed to sink a ship of the Soviet Navy and are terrified of what the Soviets may do in retaliation. The injured vessel makes its way back to port and dry-dock for repairs. While Barracuda survives and reports the accident to higher authorities, it is revealed that the Soviet ship was damaged by the collision but was not sunk. It was able to duplicate the sound of an actual submarine breaking up and playing it through the sophisticated stereo system. Potemkin was seriously damaged; the ship briefly capsized, causing the reactor to automatically scram. Sorenson soon comes to suspect that the mystery sub did not really sink. Unbeknownst to the superior officers of the ship, he made a separate recording of the collision and the sinking and after listening to it, suspects something is wrong. The sound mistaken for the torpedo firing was actually the Soviet's electric motors driving the submarine away. He tells the captain of the sub his theory and he comes to believe him. When titanium fragments are found on a repaired portion of the bow that came contact with the other submarine during the collision, the crew now have reason to believe that there is a revolutionary class of submarine, using titanium instead of high-tensile steel, is in service with the Soviet Navy and it is still on the loose somewhere in the Med and most likely on the way to the Atlantic. The new class is designated an Alfa class submarine. The American vessel is assigned the top-secret mission of tracking down the Potemkin. With the ship's zampolit under arrest for negligence and the captain back in command, Potemkin makes a break for the Atlantic Ocean and a rendezvous with Soviet vessels working undercover in Cuba. The environmental system was damaged in the collision so the atmosphere can not be maintained leading to a build-up of carbon dioxide that slowly poisons the crew. Potemkin is unable to escape the Mediterranean before being located by Barracuda. Nevertheless, once out in the open Atlantic Ocean, the Soviet ship reaches full speed, and outpaces Barracuda - which, as a Skipjack-class submarine, is one of the fastest submarines in the world. Potemkin reaches Cuba and makes a rondezvous with the secret submarine stationed off the coast. This was supposed to be a top-secret meeting because of the Cuban missile crisis no Soviet vessels were supposed to be operating within Cuba's waters. Just as the two vessels are about to make contact, Barracuda arrives on the scene. Crew members on all three vessels realize the disastrous consequences of the Barracudas arrival at that exact time. The Russians realize that the American must be sunk from reporting the presence of Soviet vessels in Cuba's waters. Potemkin fires first but the torpedo misses. The Soviet vessel is too deep to shoot with the standard American torpedo so Sorenson orders the firing of a nuclear Mk 45 ASTOR torpedo. The explosion from the nuclear torpedo destroys the Potemkin and all the crew members. Sorenson and Fogarty retire to Sorenson's bunk. All the crewmen of the sub are horrified to realize they have just committed an act of war. The torpedo that was fired earlier by the Russian sub malfunctions and goes to "active seeking" mode and homes in on the noise made by Barracudas reactor pumps. The explosion blows the American sub in two; the vessel sinks in eight-tenths of a second and is crushed by the pressure of the deep sea killing the whole crew. |
Dragon of the Lost Sea | Laurence Yep | 1,982 | Shimmer, an exiled dragon princess traveling incognito in human form, senses powerful magic emanating from a small village. Investigating its source, she determines that it is the witch Civet, who sealed up the waters of her homeland, the Inland Sea, centuries ago in the form of a blue pebble, now making it known as the Lost Sea. Civet is staying at a local inn in disguise. Shimmer soon encounters a young, orphaned kitchen servant named Thorn who is being harassed by the local children because he claims to have seen the mythical Unicorn, one of the Five Masters. Supporting him, Shimmer is defended by Thorn when the children are about to turn on her, earning a beating from his master the innkeeper. She visits Thorn at the inn out of gratitude, and accepts his offer of a meal and a place to stay for the night, having never met with such hospitality during all her years of exile. Later that night, she saves Thorn from an attack by one of Civet's servants, an enchanted paper warrior sent to kill him because of his purported Unicorn sighting. The two are forced to flee the village after Shimmer defends Thorn against his master. To escape, Shimmer uses the dream pearl, a treasure which she was exiled for supposedly stealing hundreds of years ago, to change into her true form as a dragon in order fly away with Thorn. During the course of their flight, Thorn resolves to stay with Shimmer and help her with her quest, which she reluctantly accepts. The two fly to the forest of the Keeper, a once powerful wizard known for keeping a "menagerie of monstrous pets"., where Shimmer believes Civet is headed. In the ruins of his former city, they encounter the Keeper, who still has enough magic left to have recreated some of his pets. He reveals that Civet was able to steal his mist stone, a gem which can turn its user's form into cloud. Shimmer realizes that this will now make him covet her dream pearl. The Keeper tries to take it, but Shimmer and Thorn manage to escape. Pursued by the Keeper and his pets for hours, Shimmer manages to defeat them in an aerial battle near her former home, the Lost Sea, but her wing is injured and she is forced to land. She and Thorn have to traverse the vast expanse of salt the Lost Sea has now become for a few days on foot on the trail of Civet, who is bound for the city of River Glen, a city the dragons of the Inland Sea used to trade with. At River Glen, Shimmer and Thorn encounter Monkey, a powerful mage and formerly notorious troublemaker who has been charged by his master, a wizard known as the Old Boy, with protecting River Glen from Civet. Monkey welcomes Shimmer and Thorn, but drugs their tea, putting them to sleep to prevent them from interfering with his plan to apprehend Civet singlehandedly. Civet herself attempts to get into River Glen in disguise, but does not fool Monkey. Before he can subdue her, she manages to unleash the waters of the Lost Sea by destroying the blue pebble, leaving River Glen nearly totally submerged. Civet escapes by using the mist stone that she stole from the Keeper to transform herself into cloud. Monkey decides to try to steal the magical cauldron, known as 'Baldy's Bowl', from Shimmer's uncle, the High King of the Dragons, to boil the waters of the Lost Sea away. Shimmer tries to convince Thorn to go with him so he can be brought to a human city, but he vows to stay with her and help her catch Civet. Monkey gives them one of his hairs which will turn into an unbreakable magic chain on command to help. Shimmer and Thorn then set off for Civet's lair, the Weeping Mountain. At Weeping Mountain, they manage to fight their way past various opponents to reach a cavern where they summon Civet, who manages to capture them both despite having used up a great deal of her magic by having destroyed the blue pebble. As she is about to kill Shimmer, Thorn is able to convince her to allow him to prepare a meal for her because all her paper servants have been destroyed. During the meal, Civet reveals her past, which Shimmer was previously unaware of. She was a teenager from River Glen who was demanded as a bride by the King Within the River, a powerful magical being who could have destroyed River Glen at will. Her body was preserved as it was at the time of her death by drowning to join her husband, but she resented her marriage because the King was hideous and kept her sequestered in his palace. It took her a thousand years to learn enough magic from him to be able to turn him into a stone and escape, by which time River Glen had been transformed from a village into a prosperous, industrial city which had grown wealthy from its trade with the dragons of the Inland Sea. Wanting revenge against both the dragons and River Glen led Civet to seal up the waters of the Inland Sea and use them to punish River Glen. After she finishes her story, Thorn manages to disable Civet with Monkey's hair that he had planted in her noodles, which turns into a chain that gets into her stomach. After Shimmer is freed, she tries to kill Civet but cannot, because her perception of her has changed, making her realize that they are both alike in that they have lost their former homes. However the spell on Monkey's hair cannot be undone, leaving Civet paralyzed. Shimmer decides that the chain disabling Civet can be removed for any help she can give in restoring the Lost Sea, but she will need to journey to the dragon kingdoms in search of Monkey or a powerful mage. Thorn is determined to go with her, after which the two acknowledge their partnership and informally "adopt" each other before setting off. |
Dragon Steel | Laurence Yep | null | Shimmer and Thorn, transporting a disabled Civet, are met with a hostile reception while flying over the human capital of Ramsgate. The biggest threat to them is a massive, enchanted bird of fire, which they narrowly manage to escape and defeat after luring it out to sea. Arriving at an outpost of her uncle, High King of the Dragons Sambar XII, Shimmer does not receive the warm reception that she was expecting from the guards, but convinces their commander to let her see her uncle. On the way to his underwater palace, she discovers that relations between the humans and dragons have deteriorated as a result of increasingly provocative actions on the part of the human king known as the Butcher. The reception at Sambar's court does not get any better, as Sambar is not impressed by Shimmer's news that she has defeated Civet nor is he mollified when Civet and the Keeper's mist stone are presented to him as gifts, as he covets Shimmer's dream pearl. Shimmer creates an illusionary pearl to hand over, but Thorn, not knowing what she is up to, tries to take it back forcefully, getting them both thrown into the dungeons. There they meet Monkey, who was caught trying to steal Baldy's cauldron and has had a magical needle implanted in him which prevents him from using magic and cannot be removed without killing him. Thorn and Shimmer are placed in a cell, but Shimmer manages to create illusionary needles to take the place of the ones meant to restrain them. When they are left alone, Indigo, a servant girl working in the dungeons, helps them escape by suggesting that Shimmer try changing the tumblers on the locks to their chains and cell door. However Shimmer is unable to free Monkey, who suggests that he bring her a flower so that he can attempt to summon the Lord of the Flowers, a very ancient and powerful, yet whimsical being, one of the Five Masters, and the only person he can contact from his cell. Indigo, seeking a chance to escape the palace, convinces Shimmer to take her along, but earns Thorn's jealousy. The three manage to escape the palace after the alarm is sounded by being disguised as fish. Making their way out into the open ocean in the opposite direction of their anticipated escape route, they eventually run into a raiding party of krakens. Shimmer returns to her dragon form to fight them, but is outnumbered despite Thorn and Indigo's best efforts as fish to help her. Defeat seems certain until a patrol of dragons arrives. They turn out to be members of Shimmer's clan from the Inland Sea, who welcome her back and are overjoyed at the news of Civet being captured. Shimmer, Indigo and Thorn are taken to an underwater mountain fort and welcomed by hundreds of Inland Sea dragons from the oldest to the youngest, all battle-scarred, ready to fight, and bearing signs of the treatment they have had to put up with from Sambar. At the fort Shimmer discovers that a single stalk of a flower known as Ebony's tears, which used to grow abundantly around the shores of the Inland Sea, still exists and was magically preserved, having become a symbol to the entire clan. It is currently being guarded by a branch of the clan led by Lady Francolin, Shimmer's former history teacher. Shimmer seeks Lady Francolin out, who lives the undersea volcanoes where the Inland Sea dragons forge dragon steel, "the truest of all metals", which never rusts nor breaks and is so strong because it is "tempered long and often", which the dragons use for their weapons. Shimmer is able to convince Lady Francolin to relinquish Ebony's tears, and she, Thorn and Indigo manage to sneak back into the palace in disguise with the flower. The plan is nearly ruined when some guards find and decide to eat some of it, although Indigo is able to save some of its blooms. After foiling an attempt by Sambar's grand mage disguised as Monkey, he manages to summon the Lord of the Flowers, who agrees to help them by removing the needle implanted in Monkey and giving them access to Sambar's treasure vault where Baldy's cauldron is stored for 1,000 seconds. In the vault, they manage to fight off a massive guardian creature and Sambar's guards, retrieve Civet, Monkey's rod, and the cauldron, barely managing to escape. However the cauldron gets cracked in the process. Shimmer and her companions are then transported to Indigo's homeland, the massive forest known as Green Darkness on her request and left there. Monkey reverses the spell that transformed his hair into a chain that Civet had swallowed, and Shimmer strikes a bargain with her for help in restoring the Inland Sea in return for letting her settle in the Green Darkness. Indigo's homecoming proves to be bittersweet as she finds that much of the forest has been chopped down to construct warships and the young people of her village conscripted as labor. Shimmer and Thorn convince Indigo to come with them, just as war between the humans and dragons begins. |
The Castle of Wolfenbach | Eliza Parsons | 1,793 | Matilda Weimar and her servant Albert arrive at a cottage inhabited by two peasants, Pierre and his wife Jaqueline. Matilda is ill for unknown reasons and there is no bed for her to rest in, so they go to the neighboring haunted Castle of Wolfenbach. Bertha and Joseph, the castles’ caretakers, take in Matilda and Albert. That night, Matilda hears chains and groans and Matilda asks Joseph about the noises the next morning. He says him and his wife never hear them. Bertha then explains that Count Wolfenbach is the owner and he is a cruel man who locked up his wife and children and they died. They are the ghosts that one hears. Matilda ventures up into the tower where the noises came from and encounters a lady and her servant. Matilda tells them the story of her life: her parents died while she was an infant and she was brought up by her uncle. She had a good upbringing with her servants Agatha and Albert, but her uncle started to “caress” her and she overheard his plan to rape her, so Matilda and Albert fled. The lady then says that she has a sister, the Marquis de Melfort in France and that Joseph knows she resides up there. The lady offers Matilda to live with her sister in France. The next day, Matilda goes to converse with the lady of the castle again, but she is gone and the room is in disorder. Joseph and her find the lady’s servant murdered on the bed. Matilda leaves to go to France and tell the lady’s sister about her kidnapping. Count Wolfenbach arrives after Matilda leaves and tells Joseph that he has sold the property and Bertha and him are moving to another property of his. That night, Joseph wakes up to a fire in his room and escapes, but Bertha does not. The castle is burnt to the ground and Bertha is dead. In France, Matilda is staying with the Marquis de Melfort and we learn that the Lady of the Castle is the Countess of Wolfenbach. Matilda tells Charlotte, The Marquis, of her sisters kidnapping. Matilda receives a letter from Joseph telling her about the castle and Bertha’s ill fate. She shows the Marquis, and the Marquis decides to tell her about the Countess of Wolfenbach’s past. Victoria was in loved with a man, Chevalier, but their father made her marry Count Wolfenbach because he was rich and had power. The Count later sent the Marquis a letter saying that Victoria had died in childbirth along with their newly born child. A few weeks after that, the Marquis received a letter from Victoria saying she was alive. Matilda sees the Count de Bouville and falls in love with him right away and the love is reciprocated. Matilda’s uncle shows up at the Hotel de Melfort to get Matilda to marry him, but the Marquis sends him away and Matilda falls desperately ill after hearing this news. Matilda agrees to see him under the circumstance that the Marquis is in the other room listening to their conversation. Matilda and her uncle, Mr. Weimar, meet and he explains that she misunderstood his intentions of raping her. He then says that he is not her uncle, but rather Agatha found her at the gate and they decided to keep her and he now wants to marry her. The Marquis receives a letter from Victoria saying she is safe with a lady named Mrs. Courtney in England. Mr. Weimar tells Matilda she has to marry him, but she refuses, saying she is joining a convent. The Marquis and Matilda go to London where they meet up with the Countess of Wolfenbach and she tells them the story of her kidnapping. The Count and a servant burst into her apartment at the Castle of Wolfenbach accusing her of breaking her oath by talking to Matilda and Joseph when she is supposed to have no communication with anyone. They killed Margarite, her servant, so she wouldn’t tell anymore secrets and they took Victoria to the woods to kill her. The Count’s horse threw him off and the servant went to aid him while Victoria escaped. Mrs. Courtney found her and went with her to London. Next, the Countess tells the reader of her fatal marriage to the Count; she was exchanging letters with her true love, Chevalier, but the Count intercepted one of them and killed Chevalier right in front of the Countess and locked her in a closet with his bloody corpse. The Countess went into labor and delivered a son whom the Count took away from her and faked both of their deaths. Her punishment for communicating with the Chevalier was having her son taken away and she was to be locked up in the Castle and he made Joseph take an oath to never tell anyone, even Bertha of her occupancy there. The second volume of The Castle of Wolfenbach begins immediately after The Countess of Wolfenbach reveals the story of her past. Then the reader finds out that Mr. Weimar is in England and has spoken to the French Ambassador in an attempt to regain control of her. The reader also finds out that the Count de Bouville has travelled to England to join his friends after the wedding of his sister and the death of his mother. The Marquis consults first the French Ambassador and then the German Ambassador concerning Matilda’s situation. It is agreed that Matilda will remain under the protection for one year, during which time her parentage will be investigated. If no information about her ancestry is discovered, Mr. Weimar will regain custody of Matilda. The Count de Bouville, realizing he loves Matilda, proposes to her. “Your story, which the Marquis related, convinced me you had every virtue which should adorn your sex, joined with a courage and perseverance, through difficulties which might do honor even to our’s. Since I have been admitted a visitor in this house, I have been confirmed in the exalted opinion I entertained of your superiority to most women, and under this conviction I may justly fear you will condemn my presumption, in offering myself and fortune to your disposal.” Matilda rejects the Count de Bouville’s proposal, not because she doesn’t love him, but because she comes from an obscure background. “Ah! Sir, (said she, involuntarily) hate you! Heaven is my witness, that did my birth and rank equal yours, it would be my glory to accept your hand; but as there exists not a possibility of that, I beseech you to spare me and yourself unnecessary pain; from this instant determine to avoid me, and I will esteem you as the most exalted of men.” Attending the ball at night in the Lord Chamberlain’s box, Matilda meets Mademoiselle De Fontelle once again. Unbeknownst to Matilda, Mademoiselle has spent her time in England spreading vicious rumors about Matilda’s past and causing harm to Matilda’s reputation in the eyes of society. Once Matilda learns of the rumors Mademoiselle de Fontelle has spread about her, she decides to retire into an Ursuline convent in Boulogne, France. At the convent, Matilda strikes up an intimate friendship with Mother Magdalene, a nun who has lived at the Ursuline convent for ten years. Meanwhile, Mrs. Courtney has misconstrued the niceties and pleasantries of the Count de Bouville as overtures towards a more intimate relationship. In short, she becomes convinced that the Count wishes to marry her. For this reason, Mrs. Courtney writes a letter to Matilda informing her of the so-called romance between herself and the Count and intimates that they will soon be married. Matilda, now under the false impression that the Count’s affections were only cursory, congratulates Mrs. Courtney on the match. She incorrectly assumes that the marriage has already taken place and resigns herself to an austere life at the convent. One day the Marquis receives a letter from London from the German Ambassador. The letter states that the Count of Wolfenbach is dying and wishes to make amends to his wife. The Countess of Wolfenbach travels to see her dying husband and hears his confession before his death. After Matilda’s friends leave the area on matters of either business or pleasure, Mr. Weimar travels to the convent where she is staying and demands that she accompany him. The Mother Superior tells Matilda that she cannot legally protect Matilda. Mother Magdalene advises Matilda to write a few lines explaining her situation to both the Marquis and the Countess of Wolfenbach before leaving with Mr. Weimar, who, after a long journey, embarks with Matilda on a boat to Germany. A few days into their voyage, the boat is attacked by Barbary Corsairs. Mr. Weimar, thinking he is undone, stabs Matilda before turning the knife on himself. “I am undone, unfortunate girl; you have been my ruin and your own, but I will prevent both.” The pirates spare Matilda’s life and, upon her request, nurse Mr. Weimar back to health. While on his sickbed, Mr. Weimar reveals that Matilda is actually the daughter of his older brother, the Count Berniti (who Mr. Weimar murdered) and the Countess Berniti, who is still living with her family in Italy. The pirate captain, unhappy with his profession, promises to deliver Matilda to her newly-discovered mother. Meanwhile the Count de Bouville has learned of Matilda’s abduction and follows her path through Europe before finally finding her in the company of her mother, the Marquis and Marchioness, Lord Delby, and the Countess of Wolfenbach. The novel ends with Lord Delby’s marriage to the Countess of Wolfenbach and Matilda’s marriage to the Count de Bouville. Mr. Weimar enters a Carthusian monastery and plans to spend the rest of his life in penitence for his criminal and immoral actions. |
Duel for the Samurai Sword | null | 1,984 | Richard Duffy received urgent summons to Japan where his mentor, Ohara Noburu, was dying. Ohara was the last steward of a sword crafted by the famous swordsmith Masamune. During his adventuring days, Richard had been seriously injured when his ship was sunk. After ending up in a hospital in Tokyo, Richard managed to recover and got even better under the tutelage of Ohara. He also became one of Ohara's best disciples and incurred the enmity of a fellow student named Sakuma Mori by besting the latter in a sparring match. As Ohara was on his deathbed, Sakuma, who had become a yakuza gang leader, wanted to get hold of the famous sword in order to win respect of other yakuza chiefs and become their leader. Most of Ohara's other students were injured by Sakuma, and Ohara summoned Richard to entrust the sword to the American to prevent it from falling into criminal hands. After the funeral the following morning, Richard and Stephen had to keep the sword safe until they make it to their flight back home in the evening the same day. But a lot could happen in a day, a lot of dangerous things especially when one was a Westerner in faraway Tokyo. Mentioned in the novel were historical characters ) and who were famous swordsmiths. Their products clashed in the final battle to determine whether Richard would survive. |
The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest | Karl Friedrich Kahlert | 1,794 | Herman and Hellfried, two former university classmates and friends, reunite on a stormy night after thirty years of separation due to employment that forced them to travel. While recounting their past travels, the conversation quickly turns to the supernatural, and the two begin to relate a series of wondrous adventures. Hellfried begins the narrative with a story about a mysterious English lord who is lodging in the same inn as him. During his stay there, Hellfried is plagued by nightmares and apparitions, and loses several valuables and all of his money. The lord inexplicably returns several of his belongings and provides a loan. Hellfried, seeking an explanation to the series of events that have befallen him, meets an unknown figure in a late night rendezvous that claims to have the answers he seeks. The meeting ends in disaster, as Hellfried somehow fractures his leg and is bedridden for months. The story concludes with Hellfried returning to the inn and continuing on his travels. After a night of rest, Herrman continues the exchange of tales with an account of his travels with a ‘Baron de R–,’ for whom he was a governor. While the two traveled through Germany, they came upon a village in the titular Black Forest. Herrman and the Baron soon discover that the vacant castle in the village is haunted by its former lord, “a very wicked and irreligious man who found great delight in tormenting the poor pesants.” After joining forces with a Danish lieutenant, the group encounters a slew of supernatural and horrific events, culminating in a dark ritual in a dungeon involving an old sorcerer who is revealed as the Necromancer. They eventually escape, and arrive to their destination safely, thus concluding the story. Following several more days of conversation, Herrman and Hellfried part ways. Before Herrman leaves Hellfried’s estate, he gives him a manuscript of further adventures that comprise Part II of the novel. Part Two continues the novel in epistolary form, with a series of letters from various sources (50). The first is from the Baron to Herrman, describing the former’s unexpected reunion with the Lieutenant 20 years after their original adventure in the Black Forest. During this time, The Lieutenant gives the Baron a written account of his adventures. Having lost one of his favorite servants during the adventure in the Black Forest, the Lieutenant begins a search for new comrades and “hasten[s] to return to the skirts of the Black Forest” (54). He becomes acquainted with an old Austrian officer who also shares tales of the supernatural. The Austrian relays the story of Volkert, a sergeant in his former garrison who “was reported to perform many strange and wonderful exploits” (56). Volkert often dabbled in mysticism as a service to his fellow servicemen and the people of the village in which he was stationed. Volkert channels the husband of a recently widowed woman so that she can learn why he forbade their daughter from marrying her fiancée. The ghost of the father reveals that the fiancée is in fact her brother, and the girl dies of grief soon thereafter. As a result, Volkert ceases to experiment with the occult. At the behest of several soldiers, however, Volkert returns to magic by summoning another foreign Baron who is feuding with an officer in his cohort. The Austrian and his comrades are “chilled with horror” following the incident (66). This foreign Baron later writes to the officer, accusing him of “infernal torrents by supernatural means,”(70) and hastens his arrival to the town to proceed with the duel. Volkert leaves the town knowing that he is at risk of being implicated in the conflict, but not before he informs the town authorities of the duel the morning before it happens. The duel occurs, and the officer from the village is injured while the foreign Baron is arrested. Here the Austrian concludes his story. When the soldiers ask what happened to Volkert, the Austrian says, “he is dead” (76). The Austrian and the Lieutenant depart together and return to the Black Forest in an attempt to get to the bottom of the mystery. When they return to the Haunted Castle, they find a secret passage and overhear a conversation between a band of thieves. They learn that the Lieutenant’s servant is still alive. The thieves manage to escape before the heroes can confront them. After another series of minor supernatural events, the heroes decide to confront the Haunted Castle one more time, knowing that the Necromancer is still somehow tied to the myriad supernatural misfortunes that have befallen them. Part II and Volume I ends with the preparations for this endeavor. The third part of The Necromancer continues the story of the Lieutenant, as he prepares for his adventure with the Austrian and a miscellany of other officers. They manage to surround the Necromancer in a village inn near the Haunted Castle. After they witness a séance in which the Necromancer summons a phantom, the heroes assault the room. The Austrian realizes that the Necromancer and Volkert are the same person. After a round of brutal interrogation, the officers decide to leave the now enfeebled Necromancer to his own devices. While traveling, the Lieutenant seeks lodging at a suspicious woodman’s cabin and is ambushed in the night by “three fellows of a gigantic size” (116). These men capture him and bring him before an assembly of criminals. Among them is Volkert. The Lieutenant is freed from capture thanks to his leniency with Volkert back in the village. As the Lieutenant continues his travels, he is reunited with his lost servant. The servant describes how he was captured and forced to join the same band of thieves that now pervaded the narrative of the novel. With this knowledge, the Lieutenant is able to assist in the capturing of the band and their subsequent trial. Among the imprisoned is Volkert, who explains his origins to the Lieutenant. It was during his work as a servant to a German nobleman that he began to experiment with the occult. He admits the dubious nature of his craft, admitting that he “did everything in [his] power to drain the purses of the weak and credulous” (142). The Necromancer starts to recount all of his deceptions and supposed sorceries, including the story of the fiancée and the village and the duel, which was staged. He admits his devious machinations shamefully: “[I] suffice to say, that a complete account of my frauds would swell many volumes…I had, for the space of six years, carried on my juggling tricks with so much secrecy, that few of my criminal deeds were known…I always suffered myself to be blinded by the two powerful charms of gold and false ambition” (151). The narrative then commences with the trial of the bandits, including the testimony of an innkeeper named Wolf who often led the criminals (“the captain of the robbers”) and who made a majority of the deceptions possible (190). After naming his accomplices and their locations, Wolf is eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in the Black Forest “where he will have ample scope to reflect on his life past” (196). |
Dragonsword | Gael Baudino | 1,988 | Suzanne Helling has been living a nomadic life since she went through the 1970 Kent State shootings, and she winds up in Los Angeles as a teaching assistant to history professor Solomon Braithwaite. Ten years earlier, his marriage ended, and he tried to kill himself. While comatose from his drug overdose, his unconscious mind took flight and created the land of Gryylth, which he patterned subconsciously on 5th-century Roman Britain, in a corner of the cosmos. Though Gryylth bears a superficial similarity to ancient Britain, there are anachronisms: the inhabitants speak modern English; no one remembers more than ten years back; and Gryylth is an incomplete land—it ends in mist and nothingness in the surrounding ocean. In this realm, Braithwaite has an alternate persona: Dythragor Dragonmaster, the protector of Gryylth and rider of the dragon Silbakor. There he is tall, strong, and a skilled fighter. In the real world, though, he is an old man with a failing heart. Silbakor has been pressuring him to choose a replacement in anticipation of his eventual death. When Braithwaite proves unwilling to choose, Silbakor chooses Suzanne and transports both of them to Gryylth. There, Suzanne also adopts a new persona: Alouzon Dragonmaster, who, like Dythragor, is tall, strong and skilled with weapons. A new peril faces Gryylth: the Dremords, invaders from the sea, have taken the Tree of Creation from the Blasted Heath and are planning a new invasion. This tree embodies uncontrolled change and chaos, and in the hands of Tireas, the Dremords' magician, it becomes a potent tool for war. While Dythragor and Alouzon clash on their leadership styles, Alouzon also realizes that Braithwaite's biases have colored Gryylth: the Dremords are unquestioningly feared as enemies; women are little more than chattel unable to bear weapons in their own defense; and magic is feared and distrusted. As the war with the Dremords grinds on, Alouzon makes friends and allies among the inhabitants of Gryylth and begins to see in it something worth fighting for and defending. At the same time, Dythragor's grip on reality is slipping, as both the war and Alouzon challenge everything he wants to be true. The magic of the Tree proves unstoppable, turning the soldiers of the First Wartroop into women and decimating the Second Wartroop. The Gryylthians decide to make a final stand at the Circle, which is a pristine replica of Stonehenge, where Mernyl, Gryylth's sorcerer, can tap the energies of the Circle to counteract the energies of the Tree. In this final standoff, Tireas and Mernyl wind up in a stalemate, with neither one able to gain a decisive victory and losses mounting on both sides. Remembering her history, Alouzon realizes that the megalith that the two magicians are standing by is only loosely anchored in the soil. She and her friends work to topple the stone on both sorcerers, hoping to end the struggle decisively. Seeing they are unable to topple the stone, Dythragor has Silbakor dive at high speed toward the stone, and he then launches himself off of the dragon's back at the stone, toppling it onto the sorcerers and the Tree and ending the conflict with his sacrifice. With the creator of Gryylth dead, the land begins to fade into nothingness. Alouzon realizes that she has the choice to become protector of Gryylth and save it from destruction. When she accepts, Gryylth becomes real again. Leaving Gryylth and flying over the ocean, she realizes that a new land was created out of her subconscious when she became protector: Vaylle. She returns to Los Angeles and finds Solomon dead. |
The Dragon | Ray Bradbury | 1,955 | The story concerns two men, a moor, and a full blown dragon. The story begins with two knights, who, we are told, have a mission to go and slay a dragon. The dragon as they described, is huge, fire-breathing, horrific, and only has one eye. They charge at the dragon, and they fail. Presumably they died from the attempt. Readers find out that the 'dragon' is actually a train, a modern-age steam train. And the dragon's single eye is, in fact, the train's head light. |
Degeneration | Max Nordau | 1,892 | Nordau begins his work with a 'medical' and social interpretation of what has created this Degeneration in society. Nordau divides his study into five books. In the first book, Nordau identifies the phenomenon of fin de siècle in Europe. He sees it as first being recognised, though not originating, in France, 'a contempt for the traditional views of custom and morality.' He sees it as a sort of decadence, a world-weariness, and the wilful rejection of the moral boundaries governing the world. He uses examples from French periodicals and books in French to show how it has affected all elements of society. Nordau accuses also society of becoming more and more inclined to imitate what they see in art. He sees in the fashionable society of Paris and London that 'Every single figure strives visibly by some singularity in outline, set, cut or colour, to startle attention violently, and imperiously to detain it. Each one wishes to create a strong nervous excitement, no matter whether agreeably or disagreeably.' Nordau establishes the cultural phenomenon of fin de siècle in the opening pages, but he quickly moves to the viewpoint of a physician and identifies what he sees as an illness. 'In the fin-de-siècle disposition, in the tendencies of contemporary art and poetry, in the life and conduct of men who write mystic, symbolic and 'decadent' works and the attitude taken by their admirers in the tastes and aesthetic instincts of fashionable society, the confluence of two well-defined conditions of disease, with which he [the physician] is quite familiar, viz. degeneration and hysteria, of which the minor stages are designated as neurasthenia.' The book deals with numerous case studies of various artists, writers and thinkers (Wilde, Ibsen, Wagner and Nietzsche to name but a few) but its basic premise remains that society and human beings themselves are degenerating, and this degeneration is both reflected in and influenced by art. |
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