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Reflex | Steven Gould | null | Since the conclusion of Jumper, David Rice, a young man with the ability to teleport, has married Millie and occasionally works for the National Security Agency, only accepting jobs that he finds to be morally acceptable. During a meeting with Brian Cox, his handler, Brian is killed and David is kidnapped by a powerful criminal organization with influence over the NSA and other government agencies. Millie discovers that she, too, has the ability to "jump", and sets out to find and rescue David with help from members of the NSA and, later, the FBI. The novel tells the story from David's and Millie's perspectives in alternating chapters. |
Eyes of the Emperor | Graham Salisbury | 2,005 | The story starts in Honolulu in 1941, where a Japanese boy, Eddy, lives. He has a brother, Herbie, and numerous friends. His friends are in the army, and Eddy, who is 16 years old, joins the US army by illegally altering his birth certificate to appear 18 years old. They enlist in Camp McCoy. Eddy's father strongly opposes this as he feels that Eddy is betraying Japan, but soon Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Eddy and his Japanese company must do manual labor, such as digging trenches, while the soldiers of other nationalities go on with regular army training. He then is mobilized by Lieutenant Sweet to Cat Island, Mississippi, along with his comrades. They then embark on a secret mission commissioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which is for training dogs: Dogs are trained to smell the Japanese people, and this is training them so that when they are released in the Pacific theater, the dogs would track and kill the Japanese soldiers. This severely demoralizes the soldiers. Later, when they commute from the island to the mainland, their boat motor stalls. When they call for assistance, the US Coast Guard comes and shoots the boat, suspecting that they were the enemy. Accidental attacks continue, and the treatment of the Japanese-American soldiers becomes worse as the war worsens. Eddy is nearly killed once when his dog's trainer, Smith, calls the dog back slightly late. The soldiers are forced to treat the dogs harshly, which is against their will. After a few weeks of grueling treatment of the Japanese, the government observes and evaluates this project. It is deemed unsuccessful, and Eddy now is assigned to combat in the European theater. |
Something Upstairs | Edward Irving Wortis | 1,988 | Something Upstairs is about a twelve year old boy, Kenny Huldorf, who tells a story to Avi who had visited the school on a book tour. He moves from Los Angeles to Providence, Rhode Island. He lives in a house of past events, built in 1789. Kenny's room is in the attic. One night Kenny wakes to a scraping noise in the old slave room. When he looks inside, he sees a ghost that tries to get out from a stain on the floor. It moves a box full of books out of the way. Once it is out, the ghost feels the attic walls, in search of something. Kenny and the ghost see each other; the ghost does not speak, and flinches away and disappears when Kenny raises a shoe in defense. Kenny tells his father there is something upstairs, but his father interprets that as a metaphor for “something you don’t want anyone to know about. Secrets.” Kenny visits the local library, where he meets an old historian, Pardon Willinghast, who is also curious about the property. Kenny tries to talk with the ghost boy, who mutters the word “slave.” He asks Willinghast if any former owners had slaves, but he doesn’t get a candid answer. After getting a sample of the floor analyzed by a chemist, Kenny talks with the slave boy, whose name is Caleb, who affirms that’s his blood, and that he was murdered in his sleep. He wants Kenny to help him find who did it. Kenny doesn’t think that’s possible, but as he leaves, he finds his room changed. Kenny finds himself in an earlier time period. He follows a man who was staring at his window. Another man sees Kenny and asks him to pass a message, which he does, but he also reads it, noting it concerns a meeting aboard The Gaspee. Kenny runs back to his house and returns to his own time. Kenny asks Caleb why he can’t leave. Caleb says his death was unnatural, so he’s a memory fixed in time and space. Caleb affirms the men were slave traders, and gives Kenny the approximate day he was killed. Kenny confirms in the news articles that Caleb was found dead in the locked attic room in an apparent suicide. Caleb denies the suicide, but Kenny agrees to help him. They go back in time and listen in on the conversation aboard The Gaspee, which also includes Pardon Willinghast! The men talk about how they can preserve their slave trade, by motivating the slave trade workers outside to go to Olney Lane to silence the blacks who live there. Caleb disappears. Kenny tries to leave but is stopped by Willinghast, who tells Kenny that he is a memory as well, and that Caleb’s running and the men leaving are all going according to plan. He takes Kenny’s keychain and states that Kenny could be stuck in this time period forever as a ghost because of altered events. Kenny goes to Olney Lane and finds Caleb who has a musket. Then the angry drunken mob approaches, but Caleb confronts them, and gets hit in the face with a rock before Kenny pulls him back. The mob sets fire to one of the nearby houses. Caleb is furious that he shoots and kills one of the mob. The mob tries to go after Caleb and Kenny, but they escape in the rain. Kenny and Caleb retreat to their house. After figuring a way to lock the room from the inside, Kenny goes out to seek help, but is stopped by Pardon Willinghast, who has a proposal for Kenny. In order to return to the present time, Kenny will have to kill Caleb in the locked room to fulfill the suicide scenario. Willinghast also reveals that he originally killed Caleb, and that others were given a similar situation and had killed Caleb. He gives Kenny a double-barreled pistol. Kenny returns to Caleb and says that he was the murderer, but it was Willinghast who blackmailed him. The boys think of a way to change the situation. They fake Caleb’s death using the blood from his cheek, and lure Willinghast into the room. Willinghast arrives and checks Caleb’s body but finds he is still alive. He orders Kenny to shoot Caleb and dangles the keychain. Kenny shoots. Kenny wakes up in the present time and sees there is no stain on the floor. The library article now reads that Willinghast committed suicide and the slave boy is missing. Kenny wonders if Caleb is truly free or whether he will be stuck in another house as a memory. |
His Dark Materials | Nicholas Wright | null | The play follows the same plot as the books - a story of the coming of age of two children, Will Parry and Lyra Belacqua and their adventures as they wander through a series of parallel universes against a backdrop of epic events. During their quest, the pair encounter various fantasy creatures such as witches and armoured polar bears in a journey which they hope will take them to The Republic of Heaven. There are however some substantial differences, most notably the removal of the character Dr. Mary Malone, whose role in the story is turned over to the witch Serafina Pekala. Similarly the eponymous amber spyglass of the third novel, associated with Malone, is also largely absent. |
The Barbed Coil | Julie Victoria Jones | null | The novel is set mostly in the Kingdom of Rhaize where the coming together of three individuals, Tessa McCamfrey, Ravis of Burano and Camron of Thorn, is about to unleash a series of events that culminate in the fight to save the kingdom from the armies of Garizon. Tessa has suddenly been thrust from her life of telesales in present day Earth into a world filled with danger where she meets Lord Ravis, who is himself delayed in a city which has been "marked for the kill". Camron of Thorn is a man seeking revenge for his father's murder and demands that Lord Ravis help him to achieve it. |
Honor Thy Father | Gay Talese | 1,971 | The book begins when Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno is kidnapped from the streets of New York in 1964 and the Bonanno crime family is thrown into disarray for two years in a power struggle called the Banana War, culminating in an armed-ambush in Brooklyn in which Joe's son Bill Bonanno is nearly killed. Though punctuated by life-threatening encounters, Talese also recounts how much of a mafioso's life is as tedious as any person's: days filled with television, overeating, time spent with family. Prominent mafiosi, like Vito Genovese, Lucky Luciano, Joseph Profaci, feature in Talese's account, but the story is focused on Bill Bonanno's thoughts about his life as mafioso. Talese notes the similarities of Bonanno's life to many ordinary Americans — homogenized from his ancestors culture, an alumnus of the University of Arizona where he belonged to ROTC. But as son of Joe Bonanno, he was an heir to his father's empire, a source of great stress for him. The book's title was suggested by Bill's wife Rosalie as acid commentary on the deleterious effect of Joe Bonanno on her husband's life. A review in The New York Times wrote that Talese "conveys the impression that being a mobster is much the same as being a sportsman, film star or any other kind of public 'personality.'" Talese concludes with the controversial thesis that the Italian mafia was little different than gangs that came with previous waves of immigration, such as Irish gangs in the century before, or black and Latino-gangs that Talese saw as following. Talese attributed the rise of the gangs as a consequence of a majority that oppresses a minority group. |
La Maravilla | null | 1,993 | The novel centers on a young boy named Beto, who has been left by his mother to be raised by his Spanish grandmother Josephina and Yaqui grandfather Manuel, both of whom carry on the spiritual traditions of their cultural heritages, Manuel as a shaman and Josephina as a curandera. The two grandparents each pass on to Beto the knowledge they have preserved, in order to prepare him to return to his mother and enter the larger world. Although the novel centers on Beto around his grandparents, it presents a picture of their 1958 community, a spot-in-the-road outpost of Phoenix, Arizona known at the time as "Buckeye Road" (and which has since become part of the metropole under the name Buckeye). Buckeye Road contains an assortment of characters from various ethnicities: Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Euroamericans, African Americans, even Chinese and Hindu residents. It seems to be a town built by outsiders, including not only ethnic minorities but prostitutes, lesbians and transvestites. Véa uses this collection of people to explore not only the intersection of ethnic marginalization, but also the similarities and overlaps between spiritual traditions. Véa allows a place for Latino Catholicism, African American Christianity, peyote shamanism and Creole spirituality in this generous novel. |
Gather Together in My Name | Maya Angelou | null | The book opens in the years following World War II. Angelou, still known as "Marguerite," or "Rita," has just given birth to her son, Clyde, and is living with her mother and stepfather in San Francisco. The book follows Marguerite from the ages of 17 to 19, through a series of relationships, occupations, and cities as she attempts to raise her son and to "find her niche," or place in the world. It continues exploring the themes of Angelou's isolation and loneliness begun in her first volume, and the ways she overcomes racism, sexism, and her continued victimization. Rita goes from job to job and from relationship to relationship, hoping that "my charming prince was going to appear out of the blue" (p. 114). "My fantasies were little different than any other girl of my age" Angelou wrote. "He would come. He would. Just walk into my life, see me and fall everlastingly in love... I looked forward to a husband who would love me ethereally, spiritually, and on rare (but beautiful) occasions, physically" (p. 141). Some humorous and potentially dangerous events occur throughout the book. While living in San Diego, Rita becomes an "absentee manager" for two lesbian prostitutes. When threatened with incarceration and losing her son for her illegal activities, she escapes to her grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas. Her grandmother sends her back to San Francisco for her safety and "protection" after physically punishing Rita for confronting two white women in a department store. This event demonstrates their different and irreconcilable attitudes about race, paralleling events in Angelou's first book. Back with her mother, Rita attempts to enlist in the Army, only to be rejected during the height of the Red Scare because she had attended the California Labor School as a young teenager. Another event of note described in the book was, in spite of "the strangest audition" (p. 117), her short stint dancing and studying dance with her partner, R. L. Poole, who became her lover until he reunited with his previous partner, ending Rita's show business career for the time being. A turning point in the book occurs when Rita falls in love with the Episcopalian preacher, L. D. Tolbrook, who seduces Rita and introduces her to "the life" of prostitution. Her mother's hospitalization and death of her brother Bailey's wife drives Rita back to her mother's home back in San Francisco. She leaves her young son with a caretaker, Big Mary, but when she returns for "the baby", she finds that Big Mary had disappeared with Clyde. She tries to elicit help from L.D., who puts her in her place when she finds him at his home and requests that he help her find her son. She finally realizes that he had been taking advantage of her, but is able to trace Big Mary and Clyde to Bakersfield, California, and has an emotional reunion with her son. She writes, "In the plowed farmyard near Bakersfield, I began to understand that uniqueness of the person. He was three and I was nineteen, and never again would I think of him as a beautiful appendage of myself" (p. 192). The end of the book finds Rita defeated by life: "For the first time I sat down defenseless to await life's next assault" (p. 206). The book ends with an encounter with a drug addict who cared enough for her to show her the effects of his drug habit, which galvanizes her to reject drug addiction and make something of her life for her and her son. |
The Case of the Gilded Fly | Edmund Crispin | null | Up-and-coming playwright Robert Warner has chosen an Oxford repertory theatre rather than the West End as the venue for the première of his new play, Metromania. He has brought with him Rachel West, his mistress of five years, who is going to be the star of the show. Two other members of the cast are the Haskell sisters—Yseut, who is in her mid-twenties, and her younger half-sibling Helen. While Helen is a quiet beauty, Yseut's sexually promiscuous lifestyle and her condescending way of treating men have gained her many enemies among discarded lovers and jealous female rivals alike, and she has difficulty acknowledging the fact that, about a year ago, it was Robert Warner rather than she herself who ended their brief affair. Among the motley group arriving at Oxford at the beginning of October are also Nigel Blake, a former student of Fen's who now works as a journalist in London; Nicholas Barclay, a university dropout of independent means in search of the good life; Donald Fellowes, organist and choirmaster and desperately in love with Yseut Haskell; and Jean Whitelegge, a "plain but not unattractive" young student who fancies Fellowes and works as the secretary of the theatre club. This in crowd, and some more, are all present at a party thrown by a military officer stationed in Oxford in the course of which Yseut, completely drunk, starts threatening Warner with the host's military revolver. On the following evening she is shot with exactly that weapon while secretly searching Donald Fellowes's rooms at the college. At the alleged time of the murder, Fellowes and Nicholas Barclay are in a colleague's room on the same corridor listening to an opera on the radio, and Gervase Fen and some of his inner circle are discussing playwriting with Robert Warner in Fen's rooms one floor above. When they hear a shot they rush downstairs and discover the body. On the one hand there is no one who mourns Yseut's death or at least pretends to do so; on the other, very few of those who expressed their dislike of her while she was still alive have an alibi. While the police, for want of clues, assume suicide, the theatre people are prone to believe that one of Yseut's numerous affairs has triggered her violent death. Although the opening of the new play is fast approaching and rehearsals become more intense, Robert Warner appears quite glad to be rid of Yseut as he has had an understudy for her waiting in the wings right from the start of rehearsals. Fen is the only one to realize that it was not a sexual motive which prompted Yseut Haskell's killer to commit the deed. However, his reluctance to reveal what he knows, and the subsequent inability of the police to arrest the perpetrator, lead to a second murder just a few hours before the first curtain. When the show is over, and all suspects are assembled inside the theatre, the identity of the murderer is disclosed, and they meet with a violent death before they get a chance to escape. |
Mr. Monk Goes to Germany | Lee Goldberg | 2,008 | Adrian Monk is solving crimes left and right like never before, including the murders of a couple in the Federal Witness Protection Program. However, when Dr. Kroger, Monk's psychiatrist, announces that he is going to a conference in Lohr, Germany, Monk falls completely apart, not the least because he is not going to see Dr. Jonah Sorenson, the one-armed psychiatrist he had seen in the season 5 episode "Mr. Monk Gets a New Shrink" when Dr. Kroger briefly ran into retirement. Eventually, Monk relaxes and makes the decision to actually stalk Dr. Kroger to Lohr. Even more so, his assistant Natalie Teeger is willing to help. Natalie has her own reasons not to stop Monk, mostly because of payback for the time that Dr. Kroger used medication to enable Monk to follow her to Hawaii (Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii"). As Monk has a fear of flying, he is drugged with Dioxynl, a drug that relieves him of his compulsions and phobias (but which also limits his ability to solve crimes, as demonstrated in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine"). When Monk and Natalie land at Frankfurt International Airport, they rent a car and drive into Lohr. Lohr is renowned for its glassworks which produced mirrors that could see the truth, inspiring the magic mirror in most versions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Natalie also mentions the similarities between the fairy tale and the story of Sophie Margaret von Erthal, the baroness who lived in the castle outside of Lohr. Shortly after they arrive, the Dioxynl wears off and Monk is back to himself and he has a sudden outburst when he spots a man with six fingers on his right hand, matching the description of the man who killed Trudy. When Monk shows up at the Franziskushohe, where the conference is being held, Dr. Kroger is at first unable to register the thought of Adrian being in Germany. He angrily criticizes Natalie for enabling her boss to follow him all the way over to Germany. Natalie sets Monk up with his appointment. He emerges more relaxed then ever, and even solves a homicide in San Francisco over the phone (reflecting on a scene in the season 2 episode "Mr. Monk and the Paperboy" where Monk solved a homicide in Paris over the phone). Natalie is prepared to enjoy a European vacation, but they get caught up in the unsolved homicides of magazine journalist Bruno Leupolz and his next-door neighbor Axel Vigg. Monk promises his services over to the local homicide captain, Hauptkriminalkommisar Stoffmacher. Examining the scene, Monk finds that the killer fired a gunshot into the wall to scare Bruno Leupolz to death (but used a pillow as a silencer), and accidentally killed Vigg. So the killer then disguised Vigg's death as a suicide. Later, Monk and Natalie follow the six-fingered man Monk had seen back to the Franziskushohe where Dr. Kroger is staying. The man's name is Dr. Martin Rahner, who runs a mountain retreat for people with physical abnormalities. But when Monk sees Rahner getting his picture taken with Dr. Kroger, he is horrified, realizing that Dr. Kroger is part of a conspiracy: whoever ordered Trudy's death also wanted Monk kept under control to prevent him from ever re-joining the police department. He runs away from the hotel in terror. Natalie also believes it, and shortly after Monk vanishes, she punches Dr. Kroger in a rage. Kroger manages to calm Natalie down and assure her that she and Monk are leaping to unwarranted conclusions. Monk is convinced that Dr. Rahner is guilty of something, whether of killing Trudy or of killing someone else. Natalie later finds Bruno Leupolz's dead body on a hiking trail, and Monk finds the laptop that was missing from Leupolz's apartment. Whoever killed him also took his laptop's hard drive. Monk's next appointment with Dr. Kroger is at the inn where he and Natalie are staying. He asks Dr. Kroger about the injuries on his nose. Kroger explains that he received them the day before when Natalie attacked him, which she proudly admits to doing. Monk's theory that Dr. Kroger is part of a conspiracy is strengthened further when Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher do some digging back in the States and find that Rahner was in the Bay Area two weeks before Trudy's death, on a lecture tour funded by Monk's old enemy, Dale "The Whale" Biederbeck. To prove that Rahner is innocent, Dr. Kroger encourages Monk and Natalie to take a tour of Rahner's special clinic, a mountain retreat for people with physical abnormalities. At the end of the tour, Monk says he's convinced that Rahner didn't kill Trudy - he only killed Bruno Leupolz and Axel Vigg. After doing some background research with the magazine in Berlin, Monk finds that Dr. Rahner was about to be exposed as a fraud who was embezzling money from his clinic. After Monk and Natalie escape a murder attempt by Dr. Rahner, they present their proof to the police. Rahner went to Bruno Leupolz, the journalist, to destroy any evidence against him. He used one of the pillows as a silencer and fired a shot into the wall, scaring Leupolz to the point that he died of a heart attack. Rahner had accidentally killed Axel Vigg, so he made Vigg's death look like a suicide and then took any evidence of foul play from Leupolz's apartment. The drawstring on the trash bag containing the evidence is tied in a way similar to the knots on the shoes Dr. Rahner wears. Although Rahner is angered by Monk's claims, Monk explains that when you have six fingers on your right hand, you can't find a perfect set of gloves. Rahner poked a hole in one of the gloves he used in the murder to fit his extra finger in, and then he cut off a finger from another glove to cover it. Even more so, using the pillow as a silencer caused Dr. Rahner to get feathers all over his clothes. He was still covered in feathers when Monk first encountered him at the conference and Natalie had attacked Dr. Kroger. Rahner confesses to his crimes, and Monk asks him, point-blank, if he killed Trudy. Rahner swears he didn't, and Monk believes him. Impressively, Monk managed to solve the case even while under the influence of his special anti-OCD medication, Dioxnyl, which alleviates his phobias but cripples his amazing observational and deductive abilities, as shown in the season 3 episode "Mr. Monk Takes His Medicine". While under the influence of the drug, Monk cheerfully allows himself to be photographed in a state of abnormal filthiness. Natalie, deciding that she'll never have another chance for a European vacation, uses the photo to blackmail Monk into agreeing to stopping for a few days in Paris, France, on their way home, a direct tie in to the next novel, Mr. Monk is Miserable. |
Chilly Scenes of Winter | Ann Beattie | null | As the novel begins in the time between Christmas and New Year's, Charles, several days short of his 27th birthday, is dealing with his mentally ill mother's recent hospitalization. His 19-year-old sister is home from college for the holidays. Neither is fond of their step-father Pete, a friend of their late father, who died of a heart attack at the age of 39. His mother has been hospitalized in a mental institution in the past. Charles is obsessively in love with Laura, a married woman who once worked as a librarian for his employer. After she left her husband, they lived together briefly, but she returned home. He still yearns for a reconciliation with Laura. He must plow through his dull daily life while dealing with his feelings for her and coping with his family and his friend Sam. |
Ironman | Chris Crutcher | null | The story takes place in Spokane, Washington where Beauregard Brewster (Bo) lives with his mother and younger brother Jordan. Motivated by years of fishing with his father and a recent dispute with Coach Redmond, Bo’s football coach and English teacher, the teenager trains vigorously for the Yukon Jack Ironman Triathlon. Along the way Bo is forced to enroll in the school’s anger management program, where much to his surprise he meets a wise old shop teacher and a group of supposed delinquents who inspire and support him further in his efforts. |
Pitcairn's Island | James Norman Hall | 1,934 | After two unsuccessful attempts to settle on the island of Tubuai, the Bounty mutineers returned to Tahiti where they parted company. Fletcher Christian and eight of his men, together with eighteen Polynesians, sailed from Tahiti in September 1789, and for a period of eighteen years nothing was heard of them. Then, in 1808, the American sailing vessel Topaz discovered a thriving community of mixed blood on Pitcairn Island under the rule of "Alexander Smith" (the assumed name of John Adams, the only survivor of the fifteen men who had landed there so long before). |
Born of the Storm | Nikolai Ostrovsky | null | The action of Born of the Storm goes on in autumnal days of 1918 when Poland was regaining its independence after 123 years of partitions. German occupational forces moved away from Ukrainian territories while local Polish legioners had been formed with dreams of adding some Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands to the Polish state bordering on the ruins of Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires. |
The Hills of Varna | Geoffrey Trease | 1,948 | In 1509, Alan Drayton, a young Yorkshireman, has to leave his college in Cambridge after a tavern brawl. His tutor Erasmus sends him to the continent to try to retrieve a manuscript of The Gadfly, a lost play by the ancient Greek writer Alexis from the time of Socrates. He believes that it is in the monastery of Varna in the Balkans. Alan intends to deliver the play to the printer Aldus Manutius in Venice, refusing to take employment with the ruthless Duke of Molfetta, who wants the play for his private collection. He is joined on the arduous journey to the monastery by a young Italian woman, Angela d'Asola, who disguises herself as a boy. They encounter Adriatic pirates, shipwreck, Turkish janissaries and sinister monks, all the while being doggedly pursued by the agents of the Duke. They find the manuscript but lose it again. In the end, their love of learning saves the day. The author avoids the obvious ending of having the two leading characters marry each other, instead following the custom of the time Angela marries an older wealthy man whom she has had in mind for some time. Alan returns to England, on the verge of its own Renaissance, to continue his education. |
Starspawn | null | null | The story begins with the Da’nevl a Rz’uwlian star ship running into a magnetic disturbance whilst in hyperspace. The hyper drive rods are damaged meaning that the ship has to land and make repairs. It finds a previously unexplored Earth which the captain plans to explore. The Da’nevl is revealed to be a cargo ship carrying specimens of species that the Rz’uwlians have collected from all over the galaxy. After they have landed the captain arranges for the oxygen breathing species to be allowed supervised movement on the planet. The specimens from the ship are then penned within force fields to stop them escaping. On the back of a ferocious creature which is being studied are two parasitical creatures which are an intelligent and malevolent parasitical race that once swept through the galaxy like a plague. Through a mistake of the crew the creature is allowed to leave the ship and go into one of the force field pens for fresh air. The creatures use their intelligence to incapacitate a guard and make their escape. Upon leaving the ship the creature attacks a cart overturning it and wounding one of its passengers, it then carries off the second. Sir Morrough of Ely a professional knight finds the cart and upon the request of the father which he mercifully kills goes in search of the second passenger and the creature. Morrough finds him dead in the mouth of the creature, the creature is described as being 9 feet tall, with a snout full of teeth sharp like daggers. It has two heavily muscled rear limbs on which it walked and two shorter limbs similar in size to that of human arms, the creature also has a large serpentine tale. This creature is described by Morrough as “something from out of his nightmares” and he refers too it as a dragon. Morrough on horseback quickly dispatches the creature and one of the parasites is killed by his second pack horse the other parasite is nowhere to be found. Morrough then buries the two men before setting up camp, as the fire is dying down he feels a light pressure on the back of his neck and is subsequently turned into a host of the parasite which refers too itself as Jinui. Jinui tries to tempt Morrough with sexual delights in order to gain his obedience Morrough does not succumb in the way Jinui hopes and so pain has to be administered when Morrough does not cooperate. Jinui describes a resiliency within the host’s mind which unsettles him. Preceding these events Morrough under the control of Jinui engages a scouting patrol of Rz’uwlians and kills three Loiv’thos but through interference from Morrough the first in command escapes to report the matter. The captain deciding that with Morrough on the loose and a threat to the ship apparent that more information should be gathered about the species that the parasite has become master to. A human named Brother Gregory who knew Morrough previously is abducted by the aliens for examination. Through him they develop camouflage technology that renders them human and also acts as a communication devise. Jinui then tells Morrough of his plans to multiply and seeks out the dwelling of Simon Prescote whom he says will be spared if Morrough keeps Jinui a secret from him. Fortunately Simon is blind and Jinui is able to accomplish his task but is detected by Simon’s daughter Alice Prescote. Upon awaking with a newly created Jinui Morrough leaves Simons dwelling and continues on his journey to castle Auckland which the Jinui intend to bring under their control. On the journey there Morrough apprehends Alice Prescote and places one of the Jinui of her neck which attempts to take control of her. They then continue on their journey but get attacked by bandits Morrough kills all of them but Alice to Jinui’s surprise escape’s. Deciding to carry on Morrough and Jinui reach the castle and the Jinui proceed to consolidate their power there. Meanwhile the Rz’uwlians find Alice and keep her confined and with Brother Gregory’s help track Morrough to the castle which is now under Jinui’s control. The Rz’uwlians with the help of their queen create a plan to storm the castle with a newly hatched army. They reach the castle and besiege it with the help of local rivals of the lord of the castle. Countering this Jinui attacks the newly repaired Da’nevl which has been moved closer to the castle to mount the attack. The attack fails and the Rz’uwlians develop a method to remove the parasites tipping the odds in their favour. Through knowledge gained from the Jinui the Rz'uwlians learn of another alien entity that invaded human minds many thousands of years ago. This entity it is revealed is sutained through emotion particully; lust, hate, envy and a desire for violence which leads the Jiniu to believe that this entity is if not their god is most certainly their devil. |
The Intergalactic Kitchen | null | null | The story starts with Mr Bird installing a protection system for the house. Mrs Bird presses the emergency button and the kitchen goes into orbit. When in orbit many events happen. These include: *A Intergalactic Traffic Warden, *A Gossiping Alien, *Gas and Electric Readers *A Salesman *A Bulldozer! |
Go Jump in the Pool | Gordon Korman | 1,979 | Macdonald Hall is losing all of their swim meets to rival school York Academy, which Bruno and Boots attribute to the school not having their own pool. After one meet, where the York Academy spitefully ignores the traditional handshake at the end, the two friends, after retaliating by dumping 20 lbs of effervescent solution into the pool, take this fact into account and ask Headmaster Sturgeon (aka The Fish) if there would be a chance at all of the Hall would be able to utilize its own pool, but he tells them the institution's fifty thousand dollars short of the cost of such a facility. Thus, Bruno and Boots take things into their own hands. They start off with a flea market (without Mr. Sturgeon first knowing about it) and make $1426. After talking through the idea of fund-raising, Mr. Sturgeon allows them to pursue other means of making money and creates a bank account for them. This includes running a talent show, a photo-contest, and an Individual Effort Day. This is all in close cooperation with Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, the girls-only school across the road. Their efforts in raising money are even more important when Boots reveals he might be transferred to York Academy because his parents think they have a better athletic program. After many fund-raisers, Mr. Sturgeon then tells them that they cannot gain any more money from the students and staff of the school because that is not a reliable source of revenue anymore and if they want to raise money, they have to gain it from outside resources. Dejected, Bruno gets the desperate idea to set up a toll booth on a public road. Before anyone pays them, though, Mr. Sturgeon catches them, and after an awful encounter with Ms. Scrimmage and her students, punishes them severely and notifies them that they cannot raise any more money. He also comes to believe that the pool they desire is borne out of jealousy of York Academy. Eventually Mr. Sturgeon learns from a mocking phone call by the headmaster of York that many parents of his students, including Boots', are considering transferring students out of the school and into York Academy due to their better athletic program (mainly their pool). Realizing that the boys' attempts at raising money are not a result of pure jealousy, but a fierce loyalty to the school and each other, he takes them off their severe punishment. While complaining about never getting enough money, Bruno and Boots encounter George Wexford-Smyth III, Boot's wealthy old roommate. He tells them the solution, the stock market, and offers to invest their earnings under his direction. Although leery of this idea, the boys agree and George makes astute investments in a silver mining operation which then makes a spectacular discovery of a major supply of the element. As a result, the boys eventually sell the stock for $64,469.64, which is more than enough for the pool. |
L’Opoponax | Monique Wittig | 1,964 | L'Opoponax is about 'typical childhood experiences like the first day of school and the first romance'. |
Les Guérillères | Monique Wittig | 1,969 | Les Guérillères is about a war of the sexes, where women 'engage in bloody, victorious battles using knives, machine guns and rocket launchers'. |
Le Corps Lesbien | Monique Wittig | 1,973 | According to Wittig's New York Times obituary, 'lesbian lovers literally invade each other's bodies as an act of love'. |
The Danish Girl | David Ebershoff | 2,000 | The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Lili Elbe, the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery. |
A Good and Happy Child | null | 2,007 | Thirty-year-old George Davies can’t bring himself to hold his newborn son. After months of accepting his lame excuses and strange behavior, his wife has had enough. She demands that he see a therapist, and George, desperate to save his unraveling marriage and redeem himself as a father and husband, reluctantly agrees. As he delves into his childhood memories, he begins to recall things he hasn’t thought of in twenty years. Events, people, and strange situations come rushing back. The odd, rambling letters his father sent home before he died. The jovial mother who started dating too soon after his father’s death. A boy who appeared one night when George was lonely, then told him secrets he didn’t want to know. How no one believed this new friend was real and that he was responsible for the bad things that were happening. Terrified by all that he has forgotten, George struggles to remember what really happened in the months following his father’s death. Were his ominous visions and erratic behavior the product of a grief-stricken child’s overactive imagination (a perfectly natural reaction to the trauma of loss, as his mother insisted)? Or were his father’s colleagues, who blamed a darker, more malevolent force, right to look to the supernatural as a means to end George’s suffering? Twenty years later, George still does not know. But when a mysterious murder is revealed, remembering the past becomes the only way George can protect himself–and his young family. |
All That Glitters | V. C. Andrews | 1,995 | The third entry begins with Ruby and her daughter Pearl living in the bayou, Ruby having fled New Orleans at the end of the last book. Paul Tate, Ruby's half-brother, tries to convince her to marry him so he can take care of them both. Ruby is touched by his love but is reluctant to marry, partly because they are related, partly because she knows that Paul's mother, Gladys, hates her. She eventually agrees after she is almost raped by Buster Trahaw. Octavious Tate, Paul's father, tries to convince Ruby not to marry Paul, offering her a substantial amount of money to move away and start again, but Ruby has little respect for his opinion, as he raped her mother, and the marriage goes ahead, on the understanding that it is for show only. At first, Ruby is happy. Paul is a loving father figure to Pearl and treats Ruby with great respect. She has space and time to continue her paintings and her reputation as an artist is growing. Then her twin sister Giselle reappears. Giselle has now fully regained the use of her legs. She brings the news that their Uncle Jean committed suicide at the mental institution and Beau Andreas, Pearl's father, broke up with his fiancée in France. Some point after her first visit, she writes to Ruby to let her know that Daphne died in a horseriding accident. Later on, Giselle marries Beau, mainly out of spite towards Ruby. Tormented by their loveless marriages, Ruby and Beau begin a secret affair. Beau is at ease with the arrangement, as he is sure Giselle also takes lovers, but Ruby feels terrible guilt, as she knows that Paul truly loves her and would be very hurt if he discovered what was going on. After another visit to Cypress Woods, Giselle is stricken with encephalitis from a mosquito bite and becomes deathly ill with no chance of recovering. Beau and Ruby take advantage of this situation to pretend Giselle is Ruby and vice versa. Paul is not happy about it, but goes along with the plan because he knows that it will make Ruby happy. Ruby finds it difficult to act like Giselle, and Paul becomes convinced himself that it really was Ruby who died. Grief-stricken, Paul goes off into the swamps drunk with grief and inadvertently drowns. After Paul's death, Gladys Tate seeks revenge on Ruby, as she knows it was really Giselle who died. Most of the town believe Paul to be Pearl's father, so Gladys tries to get custody of Pearl. At the custody trial, Ruby reveals her true identity, but Gladys sways public sympathy in her favor by disclosing the affair. Left with no other choice, Ruby pleads with Octavious to tell the court that Gabrielle Landry was Paul's mother, not Gladys, which he does to Gladys' horror. Ruby and Beau keep custody of Pearl. The book ends with Ruby having twin boys, Pierre and Jean, named for Ruby's father and uncle respectively. |
T-Backs, T-Shirts, COAT, and Suit | E. L. Konigsburg | null | Chloë Pollack, in order to evade the pressures of her friends, agrees to spend the summer with her stepfather Nick's sister Bernadette, whom Chloë hasn't seen since Nick married her mother. At first, Chloë and Bernadette seem a poor match in personality and lifestyle, but Chloë has promised Nick to "help" Bernadette, and to "give the unexpected a chance". Chloë goes to work in Bernadette's food van, and soon becomes a close part of her life. Bernadette teaches Chloë to swim; they both take up rollerblading; and share duties around the house, especially with Bernadette's dog Daisy. Along the way, Chloë begins to learn of Bernadette's past, how she raised Nick, how they spent time in a commune, how she got Daisy, and what led her to her present life. Their new bond is threatened by the pressure from coworkers for Bernadette to wear a "t-back" (thong) which has been promoting sales, from the opposition group COAT which wants to ban t-backs, and from a religious group that has come to the conclusion that Bernadette is a witch based on a ruse Chloë attempted on a rival boy. In the end, what Chloë learns most is the danger of conformism. |
Family Moving Day | Geneviève Huriet | null | Because there is so little room at the home where they live, Bramble Bellflower () decides that he and his family should move. He does not announce the plan until later, when the seven members come over to the other side of the hill and look at their new property. They do not know that Bramble has actually bought and remodelled the house, which is called The Berries. It will be eight days before the family settles in their new spot. But Periwinkle, one of Bramble's five children, is deeply affected by the change of address; he is afraid he will miss his neighbour, Pimpernelle, and his old home, in the process. He finds his new room, which he will share with brother Dandelion, too large for his liking. Next day, Mistletoe, another young Bellflower, insists that the house's fixing up be finished. He calls on his four siblings for the task, and they secretly set off to do it. However, when Papa enters to get a lost tool, he is dismayed at the mess they have made. Angrily, he and Aunt Zinnia send them back home, and the father cleans up after them. Soon, he announces that two strapping rams will carry the family's furniture in carts; the Pedal Express will be involved as well. When the day comes, Bramble, Mistletoe, Poppy and the Bellflowers' neighbours help out on the goods, while Zinnia and the other children wait for them at The Berries. By afternoon, everything is in place, but the bunnies find out that Periwinkle is nowhere in sight. Instead, the lonely child has set up a small canvas tent near the old home, close to a hazelnut grove. Knowing where Periwinkle possibly could be, Papa searches for him and eventually comes across the tent. Inside, he reminds his son that no one lives at the old Bellflower home any more. But, when Papa tells him of a housewarming at their new place, Periwinkle cheers up, and the two of them head back over the hill to join in the fun. |
The Last Ringbearer | Kirill Yeskov | null | The novel is based on the premise that the Tolkien account is a "history written by the victors". In Eskov's version of the story, Mordor is described as a peaceful country on the verge of an industrial revolution, that is a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the elves. For example, Barad-dûr, Sauron's citadel, is described in chapter 2 as The tale begins by recapping the War of the Ring. The Ring itself is a luxurious ornament, but powerless, crafted by the Nazgûl (a group of ancient scientists and philosophers who take turns as the Nine to guide Mordor through its industrialization) to distract Gandalf and the Elves while Mordor built up its army. Aragorn is portrayed as a puppet of the elves who has been instructed to usurp the throne of Gondor by murdering Boromir (who he had discovered alone after Merry and Pippin were captured) and then Denethor. Arwen, being 3000 years older, holds Aragorn in contempt but uses their marriage to cement Elvish rule over Gondor. Faramir has been exiled to Ithilien where he is kept under guard with Éowyn. The Elves have also corrupted the youth of Umbar, which they aim to use as a foothold into Harad and Khand. After defeating the Mordorian army, the Elves enter Mordor to massacre civilians with the help of Men from the East, supposedly to eliminate the "educated" classes. Two Orc soldiers ("Orc" being a slur used by the West against foreign men), Haladin and Tzerlag, are fleeing the battle plain. They rescue Tangorn, a Gondorian noble who had been left buried in the desert for attempting to stop one of the massacres. They locate the mercenaries and kill the Elf, Eloar, taking his possessions. Haladin is soon visited by one of the Nazgûl, Sharya-Rana, who explains that the physical world, Arda, is linked to the magical world from which the elves came, by the power of Galadriel's mirror in Lórien and the palantíri. He is given the task of destroying the mirror in order to separate the worlds and complete the goal of making men truly free. Haladin is chosen as he is a rare individual in whom there is absolutely no magic, and has a tendency to behave irrationally, for example joining the Mordorian army as a medic to impress his girlfriend and almost dying as a result, instead of putting his talents to better use at home in the university. While the Nazgûl cannot foresee how the quest is to be completed, he is able to provide Haladin with useful information, including the current location of the palantíri. An elaborate plan is devised which involves the forging of a letter from Eloar by a Mordorian handwriting expert. Tangorn manages to arrange a meeting with the Elves in Umbar, while interfering with Gondor's efforts to eliminate him. He is eventually killed, which convinces the Elves to pass his message on to Eloar's mother, Eornis, a member of the ruling hierarchy of Lórien. She is led to believe that her son is captured rather than killed. A palantir is dropped into the forest by a Mordorian researcher developing flight-based weapons (under the secret patronage of Aragorn), and Eornis is instructed to bring the palantir to Galadriel's mirror. This will prove that she is in Lórien, whereupon she will be allowed to communicate with Eloar. At the appointed time, Haladin brings another palantír to Mount Doom. Gandalf figures out his plan, and concerned that magic will be banished from Middle-Earth, casts a spell on the palantír to turn Haladin's hands into stone, but this has no effect. Saruman, despite opposing Gandalf's methods, believes that Sharya-Rana's hypothesis about magic is incorrect and attempts to reason with Haladin. Unfortunately, Tzerlag touches the palantír by mistake and his hands are turned into stone. Being irrational, Haladin decides to drop the palantír into Orodruin because Saruman is unable to reverse Gandalf's spell. This causes the flame to be transmitted to the other palantíri and the mirror, destroying them and the magic of the Elves. Haladin goes into self-imposed exile and Tzerlag's descendants pass on the story orally, although the historical record officially contains Aragorn's version of events. Although despised by the Gondorian aristocracy, Aragorn finds favor with the people as his policies result in an "economic miracle" and after his death, childless, the throne reverts to the "rightful" king Faramir. The Elves end their occupation of Mordor and eventually leave Middle-Earth. |
The Root Cellar | Janet Lunn | 1,981 | Twelve-year-old Rose Larkin is an orphan whose parents have died when she was only three years old. Rose originally lived with her grandmother. After her grandmother dies, she is sent off to live with relatives in Ontario, Canada. After being miserable about the way her cousins treat her, she flees down into a root cellar. There, Rose is transported back in in time to the 1860's and the American Civil War. |
Hedwig and the Angry Inch | John Cameron Mitchell | null | The story is told by Hedwig directly to the audience in the form of an extended monologue. The concept of the stage production is that the audience is watching the character Hedwig's musical act as she follows rockstar Tommy Gnosis's (much more successful) tour around the country. Occasionally Hedwig references Gnosis's concert which is playing in an adjoining venue. Hedwig's band (including the character of Yitzhak) appears on stage for practically the entire duration of the musical, as does Hedwig herself. Hedwig tells of Hansel, an East German "slip of a girlyboy" who loves philosophy and rock music, is stuck in East Berlin until he meets Luther Robinson, a U.S. soldier. Luther falls in love with Hansel and the two decide to marry. This plan will allow Hansel to leave communist East Germany for the capitalist West. However, in order to be married, the couple must consist of a man and a woman. Hansel's mother, Hedwig, gives her child her name and passport and finds a doctor to perform a sex change. The operation is botched, however, and her surgically constructed vagina heals closed, leaving Hansel – now Hedwig – with a dysfunctional one-inch mound of flesh between her legs, "with a scar running down it like a sideways grimace on an eyeless face." Hedwig goes to live in Junction City, Kansas as Luther's wife. On their first wedding anniversary, Luther leaves Hedwig for a man. That same day, it is announced that the Berlin Wall has fallen and Germany will reunite. Hedwig recovers from the separation by forming a rock band composed of Korean-born Army wives, which she names "The Angry Inch". Hedwig befriends a shy and misunderstood Christian teenager Tommy Speck, with whom she writes some songs. Hedwig gives him the stage name "Tommy Gnosis", but he later leaves her and goes on to become a wildly-successful rock star with the songs Hedwig wrote alone and with him. "Internationally ignored" Hedwig and her band the Angry Inch are forced to support themselves by playing coffee bars and strip mall dives. The song "The Origin of Love", based on Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium, explains that three sexes of human beings once existed: "children of the sun" (man and man attached), "children of the earth" (woman and woman attached), and "children of the moon" (man and woman attached). Each were once round, two-headed, four-armed, and four-legged beings. Angry gods split these early humans in two, leaving the separated people with a lifelong yearning for their other half. Hedwig believes that Tommy is her soul mate and that she cannot be whole without him. She feels driven to either reunite with him or destroy him. |
Truancy | null | 2,008 | The book starts out with 15-year old Tack just trying to survive a ruthless high school where any infraction means expulsion. And expulsion means death. After a run in with some bullies, Tack escapes into abandoned District 19, where he meets Umasi. Umasi pays Tack to do menial chores like sorting through salt and pepper, and trains him in several fighting ways. On a routine inspection of Tack's school, his little sister Suzie takes the blame for her friend Melissa for throwing a stink bomb at the Disciplinary Officer. Suzie is expelled on the spot and is taken away from the school. Tack immediately follows and leaves the school just in time to see a firebomb fly into the car killing Suzie and the Disciplinary Officer. As he holds his sisters dead body, he sees the person who killed Suzie, calling her "Collateral Damage". Tack runs away and passes out on a dock. When he wakes up he is found by two members of the Truancy, which is a group of children trying to overthrow the City. He joins the Truancy under the name Takan, thinking that he can find the one who killed Suzie if he does. He eventually finds her killer, whose name is Zyid, but he is the leader of the Truancy. Tack sympathizes with the Truancy and feels he can not kill their leader. He eventually replaces a girl named Noni as Zyids favorite because of his fighting skills taught by Umasi. Tack eventually falls in love with Noni. The Mayor hires one of Umasis former pupils named Edward, and appoints him as the Chief Enforcer and leader of the "student Militia", which are students that were promised instant graduation if they fought the Truancy. Zyid confronts Umasi and tells him that he must correct his mistake and kill Edward. Umasi doesn't want to, as he has become a pacifist and has never enjoyed killing people. Umasi eventually agrees to do it, and finds and kills Edward that night. The next day, Zyid tells Tack that the war will end that night, and asks Tack to join him to "plead their case to the city" by breaking into a radio tower and setting a tape to loop constantly. After they do this, Zyid reveals that he knows who Tack is and says "killing me won't bring her back". They agree to a duel to the death. Right before the duel, Zyid reveals that his real name is Zen, his brother is Umasi, and both of them are the adoptive twin sons of the Mayor. What follows is a lengthy duel between the two that gets interrupted several times. Tack eventually wins by kicking Zyid off of the top of his old school. Umasi comes and stays with Zyid as he dies. Zyid asks Umasi to promise to help Tack. The Story ends with Tack becoming the leader of the Truancy under the name Takan. |
Pretend You Don't See Her | Mary Higgins Clark | 1,997 | Real estate agent Lacey Farrell witnesses the murder of a client, Isabelle Waring, in an expensive show home, and just before dying Isabelle tells Lacey that she thinks her killer, psychotic assassin "Curtis Caldwell", is after her late daughter's journal.The novel is based on how the cops find out who assigned Caldwell to kill Isabelle and her daughter with the help of Lacey Farrell. |
Cebu | Peter Bacho | 1,991 | The novel's main character is an American priest named Ben Lucero, who is the son of a Filipino mother and a Filipino American father, as he makes his first trip to the Philippines. When Ben's mother dies, he takes her body to Cebu, Philippines for burial; it is his first trip to his mother's country. In the Philippines, he stays with his mother's best friend from childhood, "Aunt" Clara Natividad, who has become a wealthy and powerful businesswoman but led guerilla fighters during the war and earned her fortune through ethically questionable business practices. The novel follows Ben's encounters with Philippine culture and tradition, both in Cebu City and in Manila, where he spends time with Clara's assistant Ellen but also sees the violence around him, such as a protest at the U.S. Embassy in which Philippine soldiers attacked their own people. Unnerved by his experiences in Manila, Ben returns home to Seattle, where he finds himself caught up in an escalating cycle of violence within the Filipino immigrant community. Ben is confused by his experiences, feeling like an outsider in both his mother's homeland and his own local community. Prologue: Ben's arrival in the Philippines and reunion with Aunt Clara Part 1: The history of Clara's friendship with Ben's mother, Remedios; how Clara became wealthy, how she rescued Remedios from the Japanese, and how Remedios married Ben's father, Albert, and moved to the States. Part 2: The story of Clara's friend Carlito as he tries to save his daughter through personal sacrifice; more on Clara's history during the War. Part 3: The discovery of Carlito's actions. Part 4: Ben's stay with Ellen in Manila as he waits for a flight back to the States Part 5: Ben's return to Seattle and resumption of his priestly duties, which involve a series of killings in the immigrant community. |
Hidden Jewel | V. C. Andrews | 1,995 | Pearl Andreas, Ruby Landry's daughter, is graduating high school and goes to an apprenticeship at a hospital. There, Jack Weller invites her to his house ("to study") and tries to seduce her, saying she is "frigid". Pearl leaves, but begins to wonder about what he said. Whilst Ruby is at Pearl's graduation party, her friend Nina dies. Nina sends a message for Ruby to hurry, but Ruby stays for the rest of the party. When she does get there, Nina is already dead. Soon after, one of Pearl's little brothers, Jean, dies from a snakebite. His twin, Pierre, become catatonic with grief, Beau begins to drink, and Ruby, thinking that this happened because she did not go to Nina when she was asked, flees to where she grew up- the bayou. Pearl follows her there, and while there looking for her, begins a relationship with Jack Clovis. Pearl is kidnapped by Buster Trahaw, to whom Grandpere Jack promised Ruby many years ago. Pearl escapes, and when Buster tries to follow her he is eaten by alligators. Eventually Pearl and Jack find Ruby, who practices a vodoo ritual. Ruby and Pearl return to New Orleans, and Pierre eventually comes out of his catatonic state. Pearl keeps up her relationship with Jack Clovis. |
Truesight | null | 2,004 | Truesight, a novel written by David Stahler, Jr., takes place in the futuristic colony, Harmony Station, which is located on a foreign planet. Everyone in harmony is willingly or genetically blind. They follow the philosophy of Truesight in which people cannot see, so they do not get caught up in external beauty of the world but internal beauty of people. The protagonist, Jacob, is a 12 going on 13 year old boy living in Harmony. While at school, he has a terrible headache that is described as being like “a web of fire.” The headaches eventually leads to Jacob receiving sight. The novel portrays this as a gradual shift from blur to clarity. While in the early stages of his sight’s development, Egan, Jacob’s best friend, proposes that they check out a delivery. Deliveries are the rare occasions in which “seers” bring supplies or food from Harmony’s Earth-based foundation located in Australia. Harmony’s rules state that every citizen must be inside their houses during a delivery following the curfew unless otherwise authorized. Jacob manages to escape his house and he finds a bush to hide behind to check out the delivery. He finds another of his friends, Delaney, who is the daughter of the high councilor, and his mother’s prime music student, there too. Both of them are discovered and run in different directions. Jacob gets back to his house, but Delaney dies. Later, after running down a hill with Egan and falling, Jacob can see clearly. He has to keep his sight a secret. He skips school one day and saves a field worker’s life but cannot tell anyone because he would be discovered. He plays games in which he avoids other people’s detection as he passes them on the streets. He enjoys this sight, but that goes against the very foundation of his community. He tells Egan the secret of his sight, but Egan turns him in. Jacob is taken to the high councilor’s house and is sentenced to surgery to remove his sight as well as his memory of sight. He is conflicted by the idea that sight isn’t necessarily a bad thing. He goes to Delaney’s grave using a tool people in Harmony use to find other people called a finder. However, he concludes that she’s not dead, but that she ran away because the finder points away from the community. He doesn’t run away to find her too due to his lack of preparation. While Jacob is preparing for his surgery, he talks to the high councilor. He learns that the high councilor is having an affair with Jacob’s mother and that the high councilor can see too. Jacob jumps up and runs away. He grabs provisions from his house and exits harmony “for good” |
Genesis Alpha | null | 2,007 | Josh worships his older brother, Max. They look alike, they sound alike, and they both have the same interests, including their favorite multiplayer online role-playing game, Genesis Alpha. But Josh and Max have an even deeper connection. When Max was sick with cancer, it was Josh's stem cells, harvested when Josh was just a baby, that saved Max's life. One day, while the two are playing a game of Genesis Alpha, Max stops responding. Josh soon realizes that Max was arrested in his college dorm room for the brutal murder of a teenage girl. As Josh tries to reconcile the brother he knew with the monster they talk about on television, he also has to deal with his own guilt: If his cells had not saved Max's life, would this girl still be alive? But this is only the beginning, and soon, Josh will come to a number of startling revelations—revelations that have dire implication not only for Max's future, but for Josh's as well. Josh needs to know the truth is it in the real world or did Genesis Alpha have a more sinister part in his life than he knew? |
The Good Dog | Edward Irving Wortis | 2,001 | The story takes place in the town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It is recounted from the dog's point of view with animals able to express themselves to each other in English. The protagonist is a Malamute named McKinley, who protects his "human pup," Jack. While helping a runaway greyhound named Duchess, McKinley meets the wolf, Lupin, who is trying to recruit dogs into her shrinking pack. McKinley must deal with Jack's desire to join the wolf pack, protect Lupin from hunters, and figure out how to handle Redburn, an ambitious Irish Setter. By the end of the book, after overcoming many obstacles some with the help of his best friend Aspen, a retriever (breed not specifically named in book) that lives next door, McKinley is transformed from a happy-go-lucky pet into a true leader. |
Jack, the Giant Killer | Charles de Lint | 1,987 | The plot concerns a young woman living in Ottawa named Jacky Rowan who, after a late-night encounter with a motorcycle-riding version of the Wild Hunt, picks up a red cap which enables her to see into the Faerie realms. She is soon drawn into a supernatural struggle between the weakened forces of the Seelie Court and their ominous enemies, the Host or Unseelie Court. She is regaled as the Jack of Kinrowan, a trickster figure who represents the Seelie Court's hope for victory against the forces of evil. With the help of her friend Kate Hazel and an array of faerie friends and allies she makes along the way (and a considerable amount of good luck), Jacky manages to rescue the kidnapped daughter of the Laird of Kinrowan and defeat the Unseelie Court, thus bringing peace and safety to the land. |
Bad Land: An American Romance | Jonathan Raban | 1,996 | The book begins by going into detail how the area was initially settled. The author places a particularly heavy emphasis on "scientific" developments of the time, sociological conditions, and the exploitation of those developments and conditions by the United States Government and the Milwaukee Road. These were represented in the book by the Campbell's Soil Culture Manual, the desire by those living in Europe and the eastern United States to become landholders, The Homestead Act and government agencies, and advertising by the railroad. As the author states at one point, '... there was real mendacity in the way the scheme (dry homestead scheme) was advertised. The copywriters (who had probably never set eyes on the prairie) and the art editors created a paper-country, as illusory as the Land of Cockaigne. The misleading language and pictures of the pamphlets would eventually entitle the homesteaders to see themselves as innocent dupes of a government that was in the pocket of the corporation fatcats - and their sense of betrayal would fester through the generations.' Further into the book, the author describes the settlement in terms of a grand experiment to impose civilization on a previously wild region. The society of that period is portrayed as one filled with innocent optimism and feelings of unlimited potential to be part of big, important things. This is represented in the book by the barbed wire fence and set piece, half-section farm plots of . The author further delves into the societal development of the settlers by describing many details of the aforementioned society after it becomes established. The Montana plains society is depicted as one that seems to be realizing its dreams, attracting people and commerce, and having all the trappings of an American frontier settlement. It is clearly indicated that this society is at its apex. The stories of various settler families are recounted, particularly that of Ned Wollaston and his family who started out - just like the other immigrants - farming their of dust. Raban acknowledges his debt to Percy Wollaston for his unpublished memoir, Homesteading, and is frequently accompanied by Michael J. Wollaston who helps him 'shape the story over a succession of field trips, lunches and burrowings in the Wollaston family papers.' Reality comes crashing down on the settlers when, as the author puts it, the land asserts its wild self, throwing off the civilization imposed on it. The settlers realize that the land could not support the number of people who were trying to make a living from it. Even back in 1908, when Congress was debating the Enlarged Homestead bill, representative William A. Reeder from Kansas had, in Raban's words, struck a note of dour realism, only to be shouted down as being a pawn of the big ranchers: 'I say that the settler cannot make a living on of [semi-arid land], nor on . There is the trouble. If he could make a living on , it would be all right, but there is where people are deceived. They cannot make a living on , in most cases.' Because many of the settlers felt they had been betrayed by those who convinced them to move to the area and farm there, another societal development is observed: a fiercely independent and rebellious attitude of anti-authoritarian distrust towards Corporate America (particularly 'the dwarfish, rabbit-toothed, fat-lipped figure of James J. Hill and his shadowy son, Louis', owners of the Great Northern railway line) and to a much greater extent, the United States Government. As the realization sets in that the land can't support everyone, many are seen leaving-selling their land to those who chose to stay and continue farming. Even the aging Ned and his wife, Dora, eventually send their son, Percy, to Seattle and are forced to lease their land to a young farming couple, prior to moving westwards in their son's footsteps and settling down Thompson Falls. The downward spiral of the once bustling civilization is seen as having stabilized by the present day. This status quo is one of uneasy teetering between subsistence and poverty. Such is the desperation to "become something" again that some are willing to attempt anything to attract cheap attention, publicity, visitors, and above all, outside commerce and money. The utter disappointment and futility of such efforts are summed up in the failed Ismay/Joe, Montana Day, in which the town adopts the figure of the American football player, Joe Montana, in an attempt to boost its revenues. However, it is from his attendance at a local rodeo and his invitations to the b-b-q lunches during the branding season (the end of May/early June) that Raban really sees how a rural society has emerged from the failures of the past: 'Yet in the last sixty years a form of society has evolved here. It was more modest than the one envisioned by the early settlers. After the great humbling of the Dirty Thirties, people learned how to conform themselves to the place. The land allowed just so much habitation and farming, and no more. The chastened survivors cautiously built their world. And here it was - in the cluster of well-dressed, well-fed families around the coral. One would never have guessed at the amount of ruination that had gone into the making of this scene, of country neighbours, at ease with themselves and each other. This was exactly how the Wollastons, Dockens, Yeargens and the rest would have imagined their new lives on the prairie, as a rooted and stable rural community, with its own language and architecture, costumes and customs.' The book concludes with the author returning home to Seattle, WA from southeastern Montana and following the paths of many who left the area featured in the book. The author expresses joy to be living in a place where reality isn't so sharp, but also reminds himself that not far from where he lives and even in his own backyard, there are places, situations, and circumstances that make his life uncomfortably similar to that of someone living in southeastern Montana. The book is 324 pages long and contains themes, circumstances, and events that repeated themselves in rural areas and towns across the Great Plains during the time period covered. |
The True Meaning of Smekday | Adam Rex | null | The story is told in essay format, to be sent to a committee and put in a time capsule, to be opened in 100 years. The protagonist is eleven year old Gratuity Tucci (sometimes nicknamed 'Tip'), who must survive on her own after her mother is abducted by aliens. The aliens, called Boov, arrive and take over the Earth, which they call Smekland after their leader, Captain Smek. Christmas, the day of the Boov's arrival on Earth, is renamed "Smekday". On "Moving Day", all humans are required to relocate to Florida. Tip decides to drive instead of being transported by the Boov. She soon makes friends with a Boov, who calls himself J.Lo, and is actually very friendly. The two journey to Florida, but discover the Boov like oranges and told the humans to go to Arizona instead. They travel across the United States, running into all kinds of problems and adventures, including two organizations called B.O.O.B., a crazy Indian, cat allergies, and the fact that J.Lo accidentally summoned the Gorg, a more evil group of aliens. The Gorg have taken the Boov's old planet, Boovworld, and are looking to conquer Earth also. They want to eat their planet and enslave the humans. It is up to Tip and J.Lo to find Tip's mother, Lucy, and save the world. |
Killing Time | null | 1,994 | Feyerabend discloses that he did not keep any careful records of his life and destroyed much of the documentation autobiographers usually preserve, including a family album discarded "to make room for what I then thought were more important books", and correspondences ("even from Nobel Prize winners"). The book relies on Feyerabends's own memory as well as the various stray sources that he did manage to keep. His personal and intellectual experiences and his romantic and artistic adventures comprise roughly half the book. He recounts how he survived the depressions and suicide of his mother, his bare survival of World War II as an officer in the Wehrmacht, and his forgone apprenticeship as a tenor to Bertolt Brecht. His stormy relationships with philosophical luminaries such as mentor Karl Popper, friend and colleague Imre Lakatos and department chair of philosophy at University of California, Berkeley John Searle are described in lurid anecdotes. The book contains ruminations on the themes of evil, compassion and anti-Semitism. |
Anathem | Neal Stephenson | 2,008 | Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but focused on intellectual endeavors rather than religious practice. Here, the avout— intellectuals living under vows and separated from Sæcular society, fraa (derived from Latin frater) for male avout and suur (derived from Latin soror) for female avout — retain extremely limited access to tools and are banned from possessing or operating any advanced technology (at a level beyond paper and pen) and are watched over by the Inquisition, which answers to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power). The avout are forbidden to communicate with people outside the walls of the concent except during Apert, a 10-day observance held only once every year, decade, century, or millennium, depending on the frequency with which a given group of avout is allowed to interact with the Sæcular world. Concents are therefore slow to change - unlike the rest of Arbre, which goes through many cycles of booms and busts. Interaction between the avout and the Sæcular world is not, however, limited to Apert. The secular power may "Evoke", or remove from the concent, members of the avout, when needed to address pressing scientific ("theorical") issues facing Sæculars. Such removal is one of many "Auts" (ritual acts) performed on certain occasions – much like rituals or sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. The act of removing an avout from a concent at the request of the Sæcular Power is called "Voco" (a Latin word meaning "I call": most of the technical words used in Anathem are derivations or puns on Latin words, cf. Lucub – a late-night study session – from the Latin lucubratio), or "evocation", the avout called being "evoked". The narrator and protagonist, Erasmas, is a fraa at the Concent of Saunt Edhar (Saunt, abbreviated St., is a corruption of the ancient word savant and is a title bestowed on influential intellectuals of the past). His primary teacher, Orolo, discovers that an alien spacecraft is orbiting Arbre — a fact that the Sæcular Power attempts to cover up. Orolo secretly observes the alien ship with a video camera which is prohibited by Cartasian Discipline. Erasmas is unaware of the content of Orolo's research until he deciphers it after Orolo is banished in a rite called Anathem (cf. the Christian rite of bell, book, and candle anathematization) as the result of his possession and use of proscribed technology within the concent. The law of the Second New Revised Book of Discipline that governs the lives of the avout at the time of the narration – which bans the avout from owning anything but two pieces of clothing and a sphere with multiple uses, and bans them from using or even knowing how to use any technology but paper and pen – was developed in response to the third large-scale plundering of concents by the Sæacular world, which itself was initiated due to the Sæcular belief that certain avout, especially of the Millenarian Maths, had developed a praxis (technology) that required nothing more than the mind, and was (depending on a specific avout's inclination or area of study) able to effectively change the past ("the Rhetors") or the future ("the Incantors") through an unknown method, making it much more powerful and dangerous than any "real" technology. It was later recognized as some sort of many-worlds interpretation "narrative shifting", in being able to shift consciousness – which is hypothesized as the driving force behind reality, as something is not measurable until it is observed in quantum theory, thus a phenomenon called wave function collapse occurs from many very similar cosmi to the "real" one. This is made possible because the mind is found to inhabit many slightly different cosmi, and moments of thought where everything "falls into place" are recognized as the mind's reaction to waveform collapse. There is much discussion of a methodology by which narrative shifting occurs. In general it is centered on the idea that information may flow between different worldtracks (known in the books as "Narratives") via a method modeled using directed acyclic graphs, in which information may only flow in one direction. This premise, which is discussed in an appendix (a "Calca"), is key to understanding later events in the book. Several months pass, and Erasmas falls in love with Suur Ala, another avout at Saunt Edhar. Immediately after this, the Sæcular Power removes (Evokes) her along with several other avout, and Erasmas expects never to see her again. Erasmas, still upset about Orolo's banishment, throws himself into his work. The presence of the alien ship soon becomes an open secret among many of the avout at St. Edhar. Several weeks later, a laser shines down from the ship and illuminates the Millenarian Math of Saunt Edhar. Now that the aliens have shown themselves openly, the Sæcular Power evokes many avout from Saunt Edhar, this time including Erasmas himself, along with one Millenarian - Fraa Jad. Erasmas and the rest of the avout are told to travel to the concent of Saunt Tredegarh, two thousand miles away. But Erasmas and some like-minded avout also desire to find Orolo first, and subsequently enlist a few extramuros (non-avout) volunteers (including Erasmas' half-sister Cord) on an unauthorized journey to Bly's Butte, where they think Orolo has traveled to continue his astronomical observations. Upon arriving there they discover that Orolo had already left for a destination unknown. Fraa Jad urges Erasmas to continue his search for Orolo towards the North (over the frozen pole of Arbre), suggesting that Orolo has valuable information about the aliens. Erasmas agrees and sets off with just three companions to pursue Orolo, while the others turn back and head to Tredegarh. Along the way, they determine that Orolo's destination is likely to be the isolated former concent of Orithena, far in the opposite hemisphere of Arbre. They also acquire another companion named Yulassetar Crade, a tough wilderness guide with skills important for their trek. By this time, the aliens have come to be known as the Geometers because of a graphical proof of Pythagoras' Theorem (which in the alternate world of the book is referred to as Adrakhones' Theorem) seen inscribed on the hull of their ship. After a dangerous journey over the planet's frozen pole, Erasmas and his comrades eventually arrive at a concent-like establishment called Orithena, and reunite with Fraa Orolo. Orolo holds discussions with Erasmas about the nature of the cosmos and consciousness, and how he believes that the Geometers are not simply from another planet, but from another cosmos which is influenced by Arbre. During the discussions between Orolo and Erasmas, a small spacecraft lands on Orithena. A female Geometer is on board, but dead of a recent gunshot wound. She brings with her four vials of blood — presumably that of the Geometers — and much evidence about their technology. Shortly thereafter, the Geometers propel a massive metal rod at a nearby volcano, triggering an eruption which destroys Orithena. Orolo sacrifices his life to ensure the safety of the dead Geometer's remains, an event that leads to his canonization as Saunt (Savant) Orolo. Erasmas soon arrives at Saunt Tredegarh, which is home to a joint conference (convox; from "convocation", meaning "speaking together") of the avout and the Sæcular Power dedicated to dealing with the military, political, and technical issues raised by the existence of the alien ship in Arbre's orbit. Tredegarh is where the Sæcular Power had brought many of the evoked avout of Saunt Edhar (including suur Ala) to work on methods of collecting and interpreting the limited information regarding the alien spacecraft, as well as researching possible military options. Much research is done on the Geometers, who are found to come from four planets in four distinct parallel worlds (cf. Many-worlds interpretation): Urnud, Tro, Fthos and Laterre ("The Earth" in French: "La Terre"). Through observation and experiment, Erasmas and his companions determine that the conference is infiltrated by the aliens, and unmask a Laterran linguist - Jules Verne Durand, known to them as Zh'vaern. He explains that the Geometers are experiencing internal conflict between two factions. The currently ruling faction intends to attack and raid Arbre for its resources, while the opposing faction favors open negotiation. Jules Durand offers to assist the avout of Arbre in resisting the ruling faction of the Geometers, believing that they can bring the situation to a peaceful conclusion. Under fear of a Geometer attack due to the uncovering of the infiltration, the avout flee Saunt Tredegarh and the other concents on Arbre, dispersing into the Anti-Swarm (an organized dispersal of the avout throughout the planet, amongst regular society). Erasmas and several of his old and new avout friends are taken to a distant sanctuary, where they receive training for a mission to board the Geometers' ship — the Daban Urnud — and disable its weaponry. They are launched into space, unknowingly bringing with them "Everything Killers" (Neutron Bombs), which the Sæcular Power intends to use as a last resort should the explicit goal of the avouts' mission fail. Three people — including Fraa Jad — are issued detonators. The avout team boards the ship and the narrative of the novel splits several ways, in keeping with the book's theory of multiple parallel universes. Several avout trained in martial arts destroy the ship's main weapon, perishing in the attack. In one Narrative, Fraa Jad leads Erasmas into the command center of the "Daban Urnud", where it emerges that the Millenarian avout of one thousand years in the past may have used their "incanting" powers to summon the ship to their cosmos from another parallel (or higher?) one. In yet another Narrative, Jad opens a door into a protected area and, upon being attacked, triggers the Everything Killers; Erasmas dies and most people on the Daban Urnud starship are killed. In the final Narrative (the one that continues ahead) Erasmas awakens in a hospital on the starship to the perplexing news that Fraa Jad had died soon after their launch, contradicting his obvious presence and memories up to that point. It remains unclear which (or how many) of these contradictory narratives is real, and what may have happened in different worldtracks that have crossed and overlapped. However, Fraa Jad had hinted that the Incanters (and possibly Rhetors) were capable of operating simultaneously in parallel universes, so Jad is likely to have survived in other world lines. Erasmas discovers that the Geometers have brought up a high-powered delegation from Arbre, including Ala and his sister Cord. A funeral ceremony for those lost on both sides of the attack forms part of the signing of a peace treaty between the "aliens" and the Arbrans. On Arbre itself, the Sæcular Powers and the avout have agreed to cooperate as equal powers. The people of Arbre inaugurate a second historical "Reconstitution", revising many of the rules that had restricted the work and lifestyle of the avout (which included drug-induced sterility). Erasmas and friends set about the task of building a new concent, though they do not call it such, as a temple dedicated to Saunt Orolo. The closing scene is a rousing double wedding, with Erasmas marrying Ala, and his sister Cord marrying Yulassetar Crade. |
Ma Dalton | René Goscinny | null | Mrs. Dalton, the mother of the Dalton Brothers, spends a relatively quiet life in retirement until she invites her four sons for a visit. At first, Joe uses Ma's reputation among the fellow citizens to commit robberies — and later, Mum, for the love for her sons (Averell in particular), decides to return to family business once more, presenting Lucky Luke with an additional headache: How to deal with a reckless old lady shootist? |
Jesse James | René Goscinny | null | 1880 in The story begins with Jesse James, who idolizes and tries to emulate Robin Hood, but somehow he is not able to clearly define the line between the rich he is supposed to rob and the poor he is supposed to help. With the help of his Shakespeare aficionado brother Frank, he therefore simply redefines the term "poor" for his own benefit, and along with Cole Younger the two begin robbing trains en masse, forcing Lucky Luke to move out and stop them with the somewhat inept assistance of two Pinkerton detectives. |
Billy the Kid | René Goscinny | null | 1878 in The town of Fort Weakling, Texas, is "terrorized" by the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid - or rather, the citizens cower in fear of the things Billy, a bullying type, could (supposedly) do to them. When Lucky Luke, who happens to pass by, does not succeed in bringing in Billy through the local justice, he decides to teach the citizens that desperados are not as bad as they pretend to be by playing the role of a desperado himself, with the help of the only courageous person in the town, the local newspaper editor. And so, much to Billy's increasing consternation, the townspeople begin to view him no longer as their primal terror, but as the one who will free them of this new "menace". This ends in the situation depicted on the cover: Lucky Luke giving Billy a sound spanking before ferrying him to jail. As a result of his unusual action, the people of Fort Weakling find the courage of fending off desperado incursions with nothing more than a smile and cool wits - as Jesse James is quick to discover. |
Dalton City | René Goscinny | null | Lucky Luke closes down the corrupt settlement of Fenton Town, Texas and arrests the owner, Dean Fenton. Fenton brags about his town to the Daltons while in prison. A mixup with the newly installed telegraph results in Joe Dalton being released for good behavior(!). He breaks out the others and they decide to fix up Fenton Town, renaming it Dalton City. They capture Lucky Luke, who agrees to help them with the town. They hire some dancing girls and Lucky Luke plants the idea of staging a wedding to lure people. The wedding is between Joe and Lulu Breechloader, the singer. The guests arrive, but when the wedding is announced, it turns out that Lulu was unaware and is already married to the pianist, Wallace. Initially the guests shoot at Lucky Luke, but turn on Joe. The Calvary arrives to round the criminals up, having been tipped off by Wild Trout, an Indian who won at roulette, having bet a vase, and expecting 36 other vases. After everyone has left, Belle, one of the dancing girls, manages to jumps out of the (abnormally hard) cake. Dalton city eventually becomes Angel Junction, a town of 243,000 people. |
Barbed Wire on the Prairie | René Goscinny | null | Lucky Luke involves himself in a quarrel between peaceful farmers and unscrupulous (and fattened-up) ranchers who indiscriminately drive their cattle right across the farmers' crops in search of new pastures. The only way the farmers can see to stop this continual rampage is to use the titular material to fence off and protect their land: barbed wire. With the assistance of Lucky Luke, both sides eventually come to realize that without greens there can be no meat, and the matter is settled in the usual happy-end manner. |
The Dashing White Cowboy | René Goscinny | null | Lucky encounters a wandering theater troupe, whose specialty play is the titular drama, "Le Cavalier Blanc" (literal translation: The White Cavalier). But in each town where they perform, a major robbery takes place right during the climactic end scene. His suspicions aroused, Lucky Luke decides to keep a sharp eye on the group, but in the course of his investigation nearly ends up being framed as the culprit twice. Only with the help of a repentant member of the troupe can he bring the culprits to justice. |
The Open Boat | Stephen Crane | null | None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. "The Open Boat" is divided into seven sections, each told mainly from the point of view of the correspondent, based upon Crane himself. The first part introduces the four characters—the correspondent, a condescending observer detached from the rest of the group; the captain, who is injured and morose at having lost his ship, yet capable of leadership; the cook, fat and comical, but optimistic that they will be rescued; and the oiler, Billie, who is physically the strongest, and the only one in the story referred to by name. The four are survivors of a shipwreck, which occurred before the beginning of the story, and are drifting at sea in a small dinghy. In the following four sections, the moods of the men fluctuate from anger at their desperate situation, to a growing empathy for one another and the sudden realization that nature is indifferent to their fates. The men become fatigued and bicker with one another; nevertheless, the oiler and the correspondent take turns rowing toward shore, while the cook bails water to keep the boat afloat. When they see a lighthouse on the horizon, their hope is tempered with the realization of the danger of trying to reach it. Their hopes dwindle further when, after seeing a man waving from shore, and what may or may not be another boat, they fail to make contact. The correspondent and the oiler continue to take turns rowing, while the others sleep fitfully during the night. The correspondent then notices a shark swimming near the boat, but he does not seem to be bothered by it as one would expect. In the penultimate chapter, the correspondent wearily recalls a verse from the poem "Bingen on the Rhine" by Caroline Norton, in which a "soldier of the Legion" dies far from home. The final chapter begins with the men's resolution to abandon the floundering dinghy they have occupied for thirty hours and to swim ashore. As they begin the long swim to the beach, Billie the oiler, the strongest of the four, swims ahead of the others; the captain advances towards the shore while still holding onto the boat, and the cook uses a surviving oar. The correspondent is trapped by a local current, but is eventually able to swim on. After three of the men safely reach the shore and are met by a group of rescuers, they find Billie dead, his body washed up on the beach. |
Laura Warholic | Alexander Theroux | 2,007 | The Sexual Intellectual, a column that discusses anything related to sex, is written by Eugene Eyestones, an erudite recluse and spectacled Vietnam veteran, as a contributor to Quink, a monthly magazine published in Boston by (Minot) Warholic prone to pepper his verbal outbursts with Yiddishisms. Quink has a eclectic group of coworkers and collaborators, an unlikely “universe” of colorful and diverse people full of disagreement and prejudice, that include characters named Discknickers, the “pseudo-fascist” accountant, Ratnaster, the atheist interviewer, Duxbak, Eyestones' only friend, Mutrix, the homophobe lawyer, Chasuble, the homphile movie critic, Harriet Trombone, an outspoken Caribbean islander, and the lesbian pair of Ann Marie Tubb and The Krauthammer. Laura Warholic, the estranged former wife of the publisher, had moved from San Francisco to Boston and is being befriended by Eyestones. Younger than he, she is “long and sexless as a rolled umbrella” with the “small white face of a vireo”, lacks charm, interests, drive, and ambition, is unable and unwilling to work, and interested only in rock and rock musicians. He does not find her attractive but feels sorry for her; pity appears his main attractive force, yet he also exploits her for his writings. Eyestones has secret longings for Rapunzel Wisht, a beautiful young woman working at the local bakery. After writing a misogynistic and controversial essay - even Warholic finds it "harsh on the chicks" - , opining that women who create "abrogate their own psychobiology", Eyestones takes a break from writing and invites Laura on a Summer vacation drive across the country. During their tour their incompatibility becomes more apparent. Back in Boston, they start to drift apart, and Laura becomes obsessed with the Craven Slucks, a local rock band, throwing herself at its lead singer Jeff. Eyestones, after the Christmas Party of the office, joins his coworkers for a trip to the strip bar. Crayola de Blu, the seductive main attraction, is none other than his adored Rapunzel; he is angry, feels cheated, lost and deprived. In his crisis he determines that all this was his own shortcoming and that he had exploited Laura. Confessing his failures to Duxbak, Eyestones realizes that he has to ask for forgiveness. He tries to see Laura to amend, but due to a misidentification gets shot and killed. Laura, lonely and desolate, hangs herself. |
Camilla | null | null | Camilla focuses on the story of the Tyrold family. Augustus ("Mr Tyrold") and Sir Hugh Tyrold are brothers who, after a period of estrangement lasting an unspecified number of years, are reunited after Sir Hugh sends Mr Tyrold a letter expressing his desire to move near his parsonage, requesting him to purchase an estate called Cleves and prepare it for the arrival of Sir Hugh, his niece Indiana Lynmere, and her governess Miss Margland (his other ward, Clermont Lynmere, is to be sent to "the Continent" to be educated). His primary motivation for the move is that after years of being an active bachelor and confirmed bachelor, he suddenly finds himself injured and too physically weak to partake of the active physical and social life he once enjoyed. Forced to find entertainment and solace in more sedentary ways, he finds himself woefully unprepared and further engages Mr Tyrold to engage a tutor. Mr Tyrold complies and hires Dr Orkborne, a man better suited to private academic pursuits than pedagogy. This plan proves to be untenable and Sir Hugh is left scrambling to find a permanent "scholar" to place under Orkborne's tutelage, not wanting to offend the academic by dismissing him so soon after dragging him all the way out to Cleves. In the meantime, Sir Hugh becomes enchanted by his brother's middle daughter, Camilla, and decides to make her heiress to most of his fortune. He also requests the privilege of raising her, which makes Mr and Mrs Tyrold uneasy because as much as they value Sir Hugh's kindness and generosity, they both find him unsuitable as a guardian as he is too indulgent and desirous to please. Nevertheless, they allow Camilla to go to Cleves. It is there that Camilla's brother Lionel, elder sister, Lavinia, and younger sister, Eugenia, and her father's ward, Edgar Mandelbert, go to celebrate Camilla's tenth birthday. Mrs Tyrold allowed Eugenia to join the festivities only on the promise that the party of young people are not leave the grounds of Cleves because the girl had not yet been inoculated against smallpox. Unfortunately, Lionel's mischievous and restless nature leads him to convince his uncle to allow the entire party of children to go to a fair. It is here that Eugenia is exposed to and contracts smallpox. Eugenia is disfigured but survives, only to suffer a tragic see-saw accident which leaves her further maimed and crippled. Naturally, this leads Sir Hugh to disown not only Camilla but all of his nieces and nephews in favor of making Eugenia his sole heiress. He justifies this sweeping action by arranging an eventual marriage between Eugenia and Clermont Lynmere. In the meantime, he consigns Eugenia's education to Dr Orkbourne so that if she will not be a beautiful bride, she will at least be a highly intelligent one able to entertain and engage her future husband in what he calls hic hæc hoc -- that is, is to receive the same sort of intensive, classical education that was at the time more generally given to boys and rarely (if ever) to girls. Though at first dismissive of the idea of educating girls in general and the teaching of Greek and Latin to females in particular, Dr Orkbourne discovers that Eugenia is not only an enthusiastic student but one who is also extremely intelligent and capable. At first, Edgar Mandelbert finds himself drawn to Indiana's exquisite beauty. Sir Hugh decides that despite their young ages (13 and ten respectively), Edgar and Indiana are clearly destined for each other. This means that Sir Hugh spends much of the early part of the novel waiting and planning for the day when Edgar and Clermont leave off their educations and finishing tours of the Continent so that they may marry Indiana and Eugenia. When Edgar does finish his education and reaches the age of majority, he leaves university to take over the running of his finances and estate, Beech Park, from his guardian, Mr Tyrold. In re-acquainting himself with the Tyrold sisters and Indiana, Edgar finds himself drawn to Camilla. She also finds herself drawn to Edgar. Unfortunately, the mortifying realization that he is considered to be Indiana's intended complicates his attempts at courtship until he can resolve the misunderstanding. Even so, the machinations of Miss Margland, the jealousy of Indiana, circumstances in general (including Camilla's misadventures in navigating country society and new acquaintances such as the dim-witted Mr Dubster, the rakish Sir Sedley Clarendel, and the beautiful, reputable, witty, but lamentably satirical widow Mrs Arlbery) and Edgar's judgmental nature in particular serve to make his wooing of Camilla extremely protracted. He finally wins Camilla's hand only to relinquish it almost immediately after catching Camilla's debasement at the lips of Sir Sedley Clarendel. Clarendel, a frivolous and flirtatious baronet, in having been mortified to have fallen in love with Camilla, tried to save face by protesting that he had no serious designs on Camilla's affections or pretensions to marriage with her. Once done, he kisses the confused girl's hand. Edgar witnesses this with the same level of revulsion and astonishment usually reserved for catching one's grandparents in the act of sexual congress, which naturally offends Camilla. She frees him from their engagement and with her father's blessing and encouragement, removes to Southampton to visit her new friend, Mrs Berlington with Eugenia, Indiana, and Miss Margland following behind a few hours later to provide company and proper supervision. This is, of course, taken by Edgar as further sign that Camilla is capricious, weak, frivolous, and above all a debased flirt. Dr Marchmont, Edgar's tutor and mentor in matters of the heart, encourages these assumptions. While Camilla suffers through one misadventure after the other, her sister Eugenia attracts the notice of fortune hunter Alphonso Bellamy. He appeals to Miss Margland's vanity by flattering her into pleading his case to Eugenia and Sir Hugh and eventually asks Sir Hugh for Eugenia's hand. He is refused, not being known to Sir Hugh nor particularly welcome as Eugenia is intended for Clermont. Bellamy eventually kidnaps Eugenia and forces her into marriage, Edgar eventually stops listening to the misogynistic Dr Marchmont, Camilla falls into and gets out of debt, Lionel is forced to give up frivolity, Sir Hugh is nearly bankrupted by his nephews, and Mr Tyrold spends some time in debtor's prison. But all ends well as Bellamy accidentally kills himself, Mr Tyrold is freed, Camilla and Edgar are married, Lavinia marries Hal Westwyn, Indiana elopes with a penniless hotheaded military ensign called Macdersey, Clermont gets beaten by a servant he unfairly tried to whip, and Eugenia (it is hinted) eventually marries Mr Melmond, a man whose fine education and extremely emotional outbursts had won her heart early in the novel. |
The Underdogs | null | 1,915 | The book tells us the story of peasant Demetrio Macías, who becomes the enemy of a local cacique (leader, or important person) in his town, and so has to abandon his family when the government soldiers (Federales) come looking for him. He escapes to the mountains, and forms a group of rebels who support the Mexican Revolution. Some of them are prototypes of the sort of people that would be attracted by a revolution, like Luis Cervantes, who is an educated man mistreated by the Federales and therefore turning on them, or Güero Margarito, a cruel man who finds justification for his deeds in the tumultuousness of the times. Also Camila, a young peasant who is in love with Cervantes, who cheats her into becoming Macías' lover, and whose kind and stoic nature gives her a tragic uniqueness among the rest. With a concise, unsympathetic tone, Azuela takes us along with this band of outcasts as they move along the hills of the country, seemingly struggling for a cause whose leader changes from day to night. The rebels, not very certain of what or whom they are fighting for, practice themselves the abuse and injustice they used to suffer in the hands of the old leaders. So the Mexican people, as the title of the book hints, are always the “ones below”, no matter who runs the country. In the end, Macías has lost his lover and most of his men, and reunites with his family with no real desire or hope for redemption or peace. He has forebodings of his destiny, and the last scene of the book leaves him firing his rifle with deathly accuracy, alone and extremely outnumbered by his enemies. |
Kyle XY: Nowhere to Hide | null | null | The story begins by introducing a high school classroom, and introduces a small portion of Kyle's past. After Kyle learns about an unknown event, the Monster Mash, he begins to question the concept of costumes and Halloween, which he had no previous knowledge concerning. Josh takes it upon himself to teach Kyle all about Halloween by taking Kyle to a costume store. There Josh dresses in a football costume, which causes one girl, Samantha Jeffries, to mistakenly believe him to be a quarterback (with Josh's help). Kyle finds himself upset with the entire concept of "pretending" for Halloween and considers it lying. Nicole tries to ease Kyle's pain by explaining the fun of Halloween, but Kyle struggles with this concept. Due to his amnesia he believes he is already pretending to be someone he is not. As Kyle questions his role in Halloween, Lori and Josh experience their own problems. Lori continues to struggle with her relationship to Declan. While Lori wants to go with Declan and attend the Monster Mash together, Lori refuses to ask Declan to go, believing that the man should ask the woman, much to Hilary's chagrin. As Josh prepares for his date with Samantha, whom he considers to be the hottest girl around, he realizes he needs to learn how to handle alcohol consumption, as many of the football players drink. When he fails to get into his parents' locked liquor cabinet he finds a bottle of vodka and begins pouring shots. After several drinks, he passes out. The next day, Lori notices that Josh is hungover, and the incident helps Josh to realize he never wants to drink again. Kyle's quest to get Amanda to notice him takes an interesting turn when Hilary decides to launch Operation Make Her Jealous, in an effort to get Amanda away from Charlie and with Kyle. Hilary begins spreading rumors about Kyle, while a rumor that Declan had a date put Lori on edge. When the Mash finally arrives, Josh is forced to reveal that he is not a football player, which immediately disgusts Samantha. As she drunkily stumbles away Josh realizes that it was better if he wasn't with her, and ironically, he runs into Ashleigh Redmond, the girl who skinny-dipped with Josh in Diving In. Kyle decides he doesn't want to lie to Amanda when he sees her look of disappointment at the notion of Kyle and Hilary together. Amanda disappears from the Mash, while Kyle tries to look for her and explain. On the school roof, a fight breaks out as Kyle arrives to look for Amanda. In the midst of the fight, Kyle and Asheigh are thrown from the roof, and Kyle instictively grabs Asheligh, but cannot land evenly, crashing onto his back. Having worn a Halloween mask, Kyle escapes without anyone realizing his identity. Declan visits Lori at home, where she stayed and the two reconcile their feelings. After returning to the Mash sans mask, Kyle finds Amanda and the two connect for the first time. Amanda is unsure what to say to Kyle, but she is interrupted by Charlie. After Amanda leaves, Kyle and Hilary have a discussion in which Hilary, for the first time tells the truth, admitting her crush on Kyle. As the dance ends, Kyle cannot wait to return home. |
Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir | Mark Salter | 1,999 | Slew McCain commanded the aircraft carriers of Task Force 38 in the Pacific War in late 1944 and 1945, ultimately having 15 carriers and 8 battleships, plus their escorts, under his control for operations against Japan in July 1945. Jack McCain was a submariner in the U.S. Navy during the Pacific War, and later rose to four star rank and became Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater from 1968 to 1972. John McCain writes forthrightly of his rebellious and misspent youth, and his conflicts about following in his forefathers' steps. The centerpiece of Faith of My Fathers is a lengthy account of McCain's five and half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnamese camps, of the torturing and suffering he and his fellow prisoners endured, and the various kinds of faith that enabled him to carry on through the ordeal. It describes the injuries he sustained during his shoot-down and imprisonment, and the origin of why he cannot lift his arms above his shoulders. The book concludes with the release from captivity of him and the other POWs in 1973. The following passage explains the book's title: |
The Return | K. A. Applegate | 2,000 | The book begins with a cold open into Rachel's dream-within-a-dream to give the impression of reality; the Animorphs are taking a tour of the White House just as the Yeerks launch an attack. Hork-Bajir and Taxxons try to prevent the President from being airlifted away from the scene, but Rachel attacks them and lets the helicopter fly off. Jake approaches her and tells her that he had already told her to de-morph and stay out of the fight, as she was badly injured, but Rachel tells him not to tell her what to do. They have a brief fight for superiority, and Rachel is defeated as she is bleeding to death, however immediately awakens (at the time, believing she has actually awoken from the whole dream) screaming after thinking a stream of blood rather than sweat is running down her cheek. Following this are a succession of events in the dream, including: Marco, Ax, Tobias and Rachel at Ax's scoop discussing their current situation and the Yeerks' plans, as well as stories appearing on the Internet of first-hand accounts of Yeerk battles (which Rachel notes as actually happening in the real world) and Rachel feeling victimized and set apart by the others for her opinions; Tobias and Rachel flying over the forest, further talking about Rachel's attitude to battle, with Tobias clarifying that "I don't think anyone really understands where you're coming from." Rachel then finally wakes for school, and attends but feels disillusioned and disconnected from everyone and everything; asking Cassie to meet her after school at her farm, Rachel walks to Cassie's barn but is set upon by a large pack of rats, as is Cassie. It is eventually revealed that this strange event was a manipulation of reality by Crayak, the recurring red light in her dreams and at school. With the help of Crayak, David, the boy who betrayed the Animorphs after being recruited to the team, has returned for revenge on Rachel after she trapped him in rat form (explaining the recurrence of rats earlier). As part of the manipulation of (but still) reality, Rachel awakens in a small cube underground, and David is set in front of her outside the cube by two teenagers. He brags to her about commanding an army of rats to escape from the island, climbing into a boat which belonged to scientists counting the bird population, and doing all sorts of deeds for him once making it back to the mainland, including swarming Rachel and Cassie at her farm. He also claims to have stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars since being trapped as a rat by getting into places no human can. He says this is how he has bribed the two teenagers to bring him to Rachel. He also brags and tries to manipulate and sway Rachel, telling her she is a bully for what she did to him, and showing her a locked-up Cassie and forcing Rachel to morph to rat to become a nothlit like him or Cassie will suffocate. Soon Crayak arrives, and Rachel concludes that David has for the most part been lying about his exploits, and he admits he has, and that he has been brought to her by Crayak. The Drode, who has accompanied Crayak, reveals, however, that David's desire for revenge is not their reason for appearing to Rachel. Crayak intimidates Rachel and shows her what she could be (a far more powerful, taller version of herself with retractable metal claws and all kinds of advanced reflexes) if she accepts his offer to be a leader and stop the Yeerk invasion of Earth; all she has to do is kill Jake. She says "I am one of the good guys," but Crayak tries to sway her by switching her between her rat morph (fighting with David) and "Super-Rachel". He then brings Visser One to her, and they fight, with Rachel triumphing until Crayak switches realities again as Rachel refuses to eliminate him. He and the Drode eventually disappear, calling her a fool and a coward, and insisting she is weak for not living up to her potential. Rachel appears back in rat morph, but convinces the two teenagers, offering them David's fake stashed cash as a reward, to free her just in time for her to de-morph. They escape when she morphs to grizzly to scare them. David also tries escaping, and Rachel frees Cassie, but tells her to leave without her, telling her she is going after David. Ultimately failing to escape after Rachel follows him, David finds himself in Rachel's clutches again and he begs her to kill him, insisting putting him back on the island would be a fate worse than death. David's ultimate fate is unexplained. |
John Dies at the End | null | 2,007 | The main characters, John and Dave, are friends from an undisclosed town in the Midwestern United States. The story opens as Dave is discussing the unusual events he has experienced with a reporter named Arnie. The first story opens as Dave goes to help John's band play at a local party, just outside of town at a lake. At the party, Dave finds Molly, the dog, and meets a strange "Jamaican" dealing a drug called "Soy Sauce." After taking the drug, John begins to see things. Thinking John is having a bad trip, Dave decides to take John to the hospital but, after Dave receives an impossible phone call, they end up at the home of "Big Jim" Sullivan and his sister Amy, trying to return Molly to its owner. Amy tells Dave that she's afraid that Jim is dead, and he didn't come home after the party. Not knowing what else to do, and wanting to put the whole episode behind them, the two go to work at the local video store. At work, Dave accidentally cuts himself on the syringe that contained John's dose of the Soy Sauce and begins having unusual experiences as well. Dave and John are brought down to the police station for questioning regarding others who have taken the drug, and are now missing or dead. While they are being questioned, John mysteriously collapses and is taken to the hospital. Dave receives another strange phone call, telling him to go to the pseudo-Jamaican's trailer. Dave finds the fake Jamaican's stash of 'Soy Sauce', but is interrupted by the police, getting shot in the process. However, due to a miraculous occurrence, he survives relatively unharmed. Molly rescues him from the burning trailer and leads him to John's comatose body, which has been kidnapped by an evil force on its way to Las Vegas. That evil leads them to the Luxor Hotel, where Dr. Albert Marconi is having a conference on the paranormal. The conference descends into chaos as the evil attacks, and Dr. Marconi helps send it back to where it came from. The second major incident Dave explains to Arnie happened a year later. Dave and John are called in to help investigate a strange death apparently caused by Molly. It turns out that the evil is on the loose again in Undisclosed in the form of a sports reporter, Danny Wexler, who has been possessed by a shadowy entity, likely after taking Soy Sauce. With the help of Wexler's girlfriend, Krissy, John and Dave have a car chase with a man made of cockroaches, and are led on a video-game inspired chase through the abandoned mall, where they have a stand off with the entity that has taken Wexler. There the evil possesses Dave, but it is ultimately defeated. The third story starts the next summer as Dave notices that someone is watching him through his television set. The feeling continues until one winter night he has an episode of missing time just as Amy disappears. While they investigate Amy's disappearance, Dave begins to feel that he may have killed her, and peeking into his tool shed and seeing what appears to be a dead body, he is sure of it. When Amy reappears, however, the mystery deepens. As the darkness descends on them, Dave has to come to terms with how his paranormal encounters have irreversibly affected him. |
The Land of Laughs | Jonathan Carroll | 1,980 | In a used book store, Thomas Abbey, an avid fan of Marshall France, a deceased writer of unique children's books, has a chance encounter with Saxony Gardner, another enthusiast of that reclusive man. Together, they set out to the town of Galen, to meet Anna France, the writer's daughter, in order to obtain her permission to write Marshall France's biography. Prepared for rejection, they are warmly welcomed and settle into the community and their literary endeavor. However, they find an uncanny resemblance between the town of Galen and its inhabitants, and the literary world of their idol. Figures from Marshall France's books are alive in Galen, and Thomas and Saxony begin to question if the books were patterned onto Galen, or if the writer's magic created Galen. Equally disturbing is Thomas' role as biographer, who appears to create reality by his writing, and begins to question the motives of Anna and the inhabitants of Galen. Events reach a crisis point when Thomas' biography reaches the time of Marshall France's arrival in Galen. |
Echohawk | null | null | Echohawk was a little boy when he was taken from his white family and adopted into a Mohican tribe. For years Echohawk has been speaking and thinking in the Mohican language. He enjoys hunting with his adoptive father Glickihigan and younger brother Bamaineo. Yet as time passes, Glickihigan thinks an English education will help his sons in the changing world and sends them to be schooled by white people. It's then that Echohawk's earliest memories return. Soon the time will come for him to choose between the world of the Mohicans and the world he came from long ago. |
Betsy Zane, the Rose of Fort Henry | null | null | Toward the end of the Revolutionary War, Betsy sets out alone from Philadelphia to rejoin her five brothers in western Virginia. ---- Thirteen-year-old Betsy Zane is bored with her privileged life in Philadelphia, bored with her great-aunt"s stories about the old days, and bored with trying to be a lady. She longs to rejoin her brothers at the family homestead along the Ohio River, where she can finally be free to enjoy the unspoiled countryside that she has missed ever since she was forced to leave it as a child. When her great-aunt dies, Betsy has the opportunity to return to her frontier home. She frees the house slaves, bundles up the few belongings she can carry, and sets off to find safe passage to the homestead she has dreamed about for so long. At Zane Station she finds much excitement-and some tough choices. Her new life forces her to think more deeply about slavery, loyalty, and family. Betsy begins a romance with a dashing young soldier, and takes part in the greatest adventure of her life, a heroic run for gunpowder-a historical event-that saves Fort Henry in what proved to be the final battle of the Revolutionary War. Based on the true story of Betsy Zane, this exciting account of a real-life heroine"s adventures on the western frontier is rich with vivid and carefully researched historical detail. Author"s note, bibliography |
Tornado | null | null | To calm the fears of his boss's sons as they wait out a tornado in a storm cellar, Pete tells some well-worn stories of his childhood dog, Tornado: how he arrived intact in his doghouse during another tornado; how he could do a card trick; how he met the cat Five-Thirty; how he was reunited with his previous owners. Other stories will have to wait for another storm. |
Kyle XY: Under the Radar | null | 2,008 | The story once again begins with the rather strange life of Kyle Trager. A few days after the bonfire and the release of the infamous "list," Kyle is trying reconnect with Amanda Bloom, while Lori struggles with her own relationship to Declan, who has become distant unexpectedly. After a freshman student cuts through a park near the school, he finds himself being chased by a football jock, who catches up with him on school grounds and brutally attacks him. When Kyle sees the student in trouble, he immediately steps in and delays the larger and more muscular jock with ease. Immediately Kyle's popularity rises, which quickly has an unintentional effect on Josh, who has grown jealous of Kyle's new status. Kyle's popularity jumps once more when he is nominated for school student government president. Once learning of the job and responsibility required, he believes he can live in Baylin's words and make a difference, while also winning back Amanda. Josh grows even more jealous of Kyle and wants to find a way to get himself noticed, against Andy's best advice. While Kyle is excited at the thought of becoming school president, his trainer, Tom Foss, disagrees. Foss believes that the election could be a trap meant to lure Kyle out into the open. Foss attempts to teach Kyle to see through an object, a talent Baylin used only once and discovered shortly before his death. Upon the end of the training session, Foss presents Kyle with Baylin's journal hoping it will bring Kyle to his senses, but the early entries only exaggerated Kyle's quest to make a difference. As Kyle prepared to run for the election, Lori used her newly self-appointed position as campaign manager to avoid thinking about her failing relationship with Declan, and avoid the fact that she really isn't over Declan. Josh attempts to hatch a scheme to bring himself into the center of attention, as everyone goading over how awesome Kyle was had begun to prey on his mind. Against Andy's judgment, Josh sneaks into the school at night and steals the donkey and elephant stuffed animals put out every year during the election, previously thought to be impossible. On the day of the election, every student was impressed with the prank Josh performed, only another student tried to take responsibility; Josh foolishly told the students the prank was his own idea. As Kyle began his speech, the assembly chanted for a Trager, but Josh, not Kyle, and Josh was escorted from the assembly and disciplined. Kyle's speech went over extremely well, and it seemed Kyle was a shoo-in for victory, but when Kyle discovered a strange metallic device in his backpack, and read more of Baylin's journal, he realized how dangerous being in the spotlight had become. After flushing the device down the toilet, Kyle made his way to the votes room, attempting to prevent himself from winning, but a locked door stood in his way. Finally realizing what all his training had been for, Kyle used telekinesis to toss out some of his votes. When being brought on stage to announce the winner, Kyle feels incredibly sick, collapses and goes into seizures. When the ambulance arrives, Foss sneaks aboard and changes Kyle's test and symptoms to dissuade any questions. Kyle realizes that he must stay under the radar to avoid bringing any danger to himself or the Tragers. Josh's parents reconcile with him, realizing that they all had got swept up by Kyle's success. Kyle was now prepared to focus on his training, finally committed, and keeping his secrets at all costs. |
Russka | Edward Rutherfurd | 1,991 | The narrative spans 1,800 years of Russian history. The families that provide the focus for the story are the Bobrovs, Romanovs, Karpenkos, Suvorins and Popovs. Between them these five families span the main ethnic groups and social levels of the society in this northern empire. Historical characters encountered through the narrative include Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible and his secret police, the westernizing Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and the Bolsheviks of the twentieth century. The stories of different characters in those families use real known stories of different Russian families. For example, the peasant family turned nobility thanks to their business is based on the Stroganovs. The noble who was a friend of Ivan IV of Russia and asked his territory to be part of the Oprichnina was also based on a member of the Stroganovs, but at a different period. |
The Forest | Edward Rutherfurd | 2,000 | Set in the New Forest of southern England, this novel covers the lives of number of families tracing their history from the Saxons and Normans in 1099 through to "Jane Austen" style world of the early 19th century. Story and characters combine to reveal and decorate the narrative in an important region in England not often used by writers. |
Ireland: Awakening | Edward Rutherfurd | 2,006 | This sequel to Dublin: Foundation also set in Ireland follows the clans or families of the O'Byrnes, Walshes, MacGowans etc. In addition to the previous novel other families appear on the scene and together they live through the Cromwellian period, the Protestant Ascendancy and the Famine. |
A Walk in the Sun | Geoffrey A. Landis | 1,991 | The story follows Trish, the only survivor of a terrible crash landing on the moon. After regaining her senses, she contacts Earth and learns that it will be thirty days before she can be rescued. In the meantime, she depends on a wing-like solar panel to provide power to her suit's recycling facilities. While she waits for the rescue party, she has to continually walk westward in order to stay in the sunlight. |
Witness | Karen Hesse | 2,001 | Witness tells the story of the Klan's attempt to recruit members in a small town in Vermont in 1924. A young black girl, Leanora Sutter, feels isolated by racial prejudice and her mother's recent death. She is befriended by Esther Hirsh, a younger Jewish girl, whose innocence and natural optimism provides a sharp contrast to the other characters. The Klan's hate-filled message of white supremacy is voiced by Merlin, a teenager, and Johnny Reeves, a minister in the town, who both become members. Other characters — the town constable and newspaper editor — try to walk a careful line of neutrality until they realize the importance of taking a stand. Storekeepers Viola and Harvey Pettibone represent two opposing reactions to the Klan's methods as they discuss the issue in their own home. Iris Weaver's character reflects a new freedom for women who had just gained the right to vote. Over the course of many months, residents are affected in many ways by pressures that build in the community, leading up to a climactic moment of violence. In the voices of eleven residents of the town, we experience this series of events from many different points of view, in the form of a poetic play in five acts. As the characters speak directly to the reader and relate the juxtaposition of acts of hate and love, violence and peace, terror and kindness, they illuminate the full range of human strengths and weaknesses in one small town. |
The Informant | Kurt Eichenwald | 2,000 | The Informant is a true-crime account that takes place in Central Illinois during the early 1990s at the Fortune 500 company Archer Daniels Midland, known as ADM. ADM is an agri-business powerhouse and one of the largest companies in the world. Its former chairman, Dwayne Andreas, had extensive political connections to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party and was also connected indirectly to President Nixon's Watergate. Whitacre was a young rising star at ADM where he was president of the bio-products division and corporate vice president of the company. As a result of some very odd circumstances, Whitacre also became the highest-level executive to turn whistleblower in U.S. history. One night in early November, 1992, the high-ranking ADM executive did something extraordinary. He confessed to an FBI agent that ADM executives—including Whitacre himself—routinely met with competitors to fix the price of lysine, a food additive. Whitacre’s wife, an elementary school teacher, forced Whitacre to become a whistleblower by threatening to go to the FBI herself if he did not inform the authorities of ADM’s illegal price-fixing activities. The meeting between Whitacre and an FBI agent marked the first time a participant in a price fixing cartel voluntarily tipped off law-enforcement officials. After informing the FBI, Whitacre assisted in gathering evidence by clandestinely taping the cartel’s activity in business meetings in locations such as Tokyo, Paris, Mexico City, and Hong Kong. During Whitacre's undercover work, which spanned almost three years, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes documenting crimes committed by executives from around the world in fixing the prices of food additives, in the largest price-fixing case in history at the time. In a stunning turn of events immediately following the covert portion of the case, it was reported in headlines around the world that Whitacre defrauded $9 million from his company at the same period of time he was secretly working for the FBI and taping his co-workers. No sooner did an army of federal agents stage a dramatic raid on ADM's Decatur, Illinois, headquarters than the company hit back with damning evidence that the government's star witness had his own agenda. Whitacre became delusional and lied extensively to the FBI in a failed attempt to save himself. The FBI quickly learned Whitacre was suffering from manic-depression, also known as bipolar disorder, with resulting grandiosity and embellishments in full bloom. Worst of all, Whitacre told stories to the media about FBI agents trying to force him to destroy some of the tapes (stories he later recanted). The Informant focuses on Whitacre's meltdown and bizarre behavior resulting from the pressures of working undercover for the FBI, going into great detail. Whitacre became extremely manic, stopped sleeping most nights, and was seen using a gas leaf blower on his driveway during a thunderstorm at three o’clock in the morning. Whitacre attempted suicide a few months later, but was saved by his groundskeeper. Whitacre, who earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in nutritional biochemistry, is the most improbable figure of the story. With his extremely poor judgment associated with bipolar disorder, he believed up to the end that he would become chief executive officer of ADM when the dust settled. His wife tried to convince him otherwise. He was also peculiarly suggestible. After seeing the movie The Firm he imitated its hero, Mitch McDeere, played by Tom Cruise, and began taping the FBI agents and storing the tapes for later use. Indeed, at one point, corporate investigator Jules Kroll, founder of Kroll Associates, was convinced Whitacre was acting out a delusional fantasy based on The Firm and came up with forty-six parallels between the ADM case and the Grisham tale. In the end, because Whitacre violated his immunity agreement with the government, he was also charged for price-fixing, the same case that Whitacre exposed for the FBI, in addition to wire fraud, tax fraud, and money laundering. In order to save Whitacre, his first attorney, James Epstein, presented a sterling performance to the top U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, convincing them the government was not duped by Mark Whitacre; that, instead, the government had created Whitacre. Epstein emphasized Whitacre was not trained for FBI undercover projects; he was simply thrown into it with no training whatsoever and with no support to prevent him from cracking under pressure. Epstein told DOJ officials he would go public in a trial with everything Whitacre went through for three years working undercover only to be punished after helping crack one of the largest white-collar cases in history. He convinced the government that Whitacre solved a billion dollar case for the FBI, and that the case was a hundred-fold larger than Whitacre's fraud case. Epstein was successful in getting a very light sentence for Whitacre. However, Whitacre, with his manic-depression fully out of control, saw it differently and fired Epstein because he was not willing to do any jail time. Whitacre then hired another attorney. They distanced themselves from the government, where Whitacre was no longer of value as a witness. The government used the tapes in the ADM trials, but not Whitacre. Whitacre received a federal prison sentence three times longer than the sentences of the white-collar criminals he exposed in a much larger criminal conspiracy. Kurt Eichenwald, author of The Informant, and several FBI agents adamantly disagreed with the nine-year sentence Whitacre received. The story ends with the FBI agents, along with John Ashcroft, working on their attempt to obtain a presidential pardon for Whitacre. Both during Whitacre's prison tenure and afterwards, Dean Paisley, former FBI supervisor of the case, lobbied for a presidential pardon with support from all three FBI agents and one of the former prosecutors on the case. Paisley traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with government lawyers in his quest for a pardon for Whitacre. With remarkable support from Whitacre's wife and the FBI, Whitacre eventually bounced back after years of jail time and years recovering his mental health, and later, as reported in Forbes magazine, was promoted to COO and president of a California biotechnology company. As a result of the hundreds of tapes made by Whitacre, the lysine conspirators, including ADM, ultimately settled federal charges for more than $100 million. ADM also paid hundreds of millions of dollars in class action settlements to customers it gouged with the price-fixing schemes. Several Asian and European lysine and citric acid producers, who conspired to fix prices with ADM, paid criminal fines in the tens of millions of dollars to the U.S. government. A few top executives, including the vice chairman of ADM, who was the son of the former powerful chairman, received three years of federal prison time. The ADM investigation, in turn, convinced antitrust prosecutors price-fixing is a far more pervasive problem than they had suspected and led to prosecutions of cartels in vitamins, fax paper, and graphite electrodes. Billions of dollars have been paid in antitrust fines to the U.S. government since Whitacre first blew the whistle in 1992. |
Leaving Fishers | Margaret Haddix | null | Dorry Stevens, a lonely new transfer to Indianapolis, is befriended by a group of attractive and attentive young classmates who invite her to a number of church functions. Their warm welcome has quite an effect on her, and she is soon baptized into her new faith at a Fishers retreat. After returning from the retreat, she finds out that her mother has had a heart attack. Her family life becomes more difficult as bad grades pile up and the pressure from the Fishers to gain "virtue" points and abstain from sin increases. Eventually, after a particularly bad incident concerning children that she babysits, she takes the initiative to leave the oppressive cult and forms a group of her own of "Seekers", those hollowed from their experiences in Fishers. Her faith in God remains strong, and she considers herself to be searching for the truth. |
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian | Sherman Alexie | 2,007 | The novel opens with Arnold's explanation of the fact that he was born with an excess of cerebrospinal fluid in his skull (an event that he describes as being "born with water on the brain"). The brain damage that resulted from this and the surgery that he underwent to remove the excess fluid, left Arnold with many physical problems. Some of these problems are that he has forty-two teeth (which are pulled out to make him have the right amount), is skinny, and has an over-sized head, hands, and feet. He also suffers from poor eyesight, experiences frequent seizures, stutters, and has a lisp. Mistreated by others on the reservation because of these problems, Arnold is regularly beaten up and given such nicknames as "retard" (for the brain damage that he has sustained) and "globe" (for his large head). His family, like the majority of the other reservation families, is incredibly poor: This point is emphasized when Arnold's adopted dog Oscar begins to suffer from intense heat exhaustion and Arnold's father is forced to shoot him to avoid having to pay the expensive veterinary treatment necessary to save him. Arnold's life on the reservation is brightened by his friend Rowdy, described by Arnold as being "the toughest kid on the rez". Rowdy's father abuses him and his mother, thus they are constantly and noticeably covered in bruises. Despite the hardships that he experiences and his cold, tough attitude, Rowdy stays true to his friend Arnold and tries to protect him from some of the physical abuse he is dealt. On Arnold's first day of high school, his geometry teacher, Mr. P, hands out textbooks to the students and Arnold realizes that his book has his mother's maiden name written in it. She was thirty years old when she gave birth to Arnold, thus making the textbook at least forty years older than Arnold himself. Arnold is angered and saddened by the fact that the Spokane reservation is so poor that it is unable to afford new textbooks for its high school. Because of this, Arnold violently throws the book, which ends up colliding with Mr. P's face and breaking his nose. The school subsequently suspends Arnold. During Arnold's suspension, Mr. P meets with Arnold to reveal to him his sister's dream to be a romance writer, he is not angry with him, and that "You [Arnold] have to leave this reservation". A week into the school year, Arnold transfers to Reardan High School, a school full of rich white kids in the countryside. Arnold is the only Indian at Reardan besides the team mascot. Although Arnold's mother is an ex-drunk, his father a drunk, and they are poor, they still allow him to transfer to Reardan. Despite his initial troubles adjusting to the new school, Arnold begins to enjoy Reardan, developing a crush on a white girl, Penelope, and making friends with a student named Gordy. Arnold tries to talk to Rowdy about his crush on Penelope, but their relationship is strained by Arnold's decision to go to Reardan. In contrast, Arnold and Penelope develop a closer relationship and even go to a dance together. Arnold makes the Reardan varsity basketball team and plays two games against his former school, Wellpinit, and specifically Rowdy. Before their first game begins, someone in the crowd hits Arnold with a quarter splitting open his forehead. Arnold gets Eugene to give him stitches in the lockerroom and returns to the game. Wellpinit wins after Rowdy elbows Arnold in the head and knocks him unconscious. In their second meeting, Reardan wins with Arnold guarding Rowdy and holding him to only four points. Arnold believed he wanted to win, but after seeing the Wellpinit players' faces after their defeat, he cried and felt ashamed of himself. Throughout the novel, Arnold is struck by many tragedies—his grandmother is run over by a drunk driver, Gerald, while walking home from a powwow, his father's best friend Eugene is shot in the face by his friend Bobby after fighting over the last drink of alcohol, and his newlywed sister and her husband die when their mobile home is accidentally set on fire after a night of heavy drinking. In the end, Arnold and Rowdy reconcile at turtle lake and resolve to correspond no matter where the future takes them, concluding the story. |
The 5th Horseman | Maxine Paetro | 2,006 | Somebody dies. A young mother is recuperating in a San Francisco hospital when she is suddenly gasping for breath. The call button fails to bring help in time. The hospital's doctors, some of the best in the nation, are completely mystified by her death. How did this happen? Apocalypse nears. This is not the first such case at the hospital. Just as patients are about to be released with a clean bill of health, their conditions take a devastating turn for the worse. Accompanied by the newest member of the Women's Murder Club, Yuki Castellano, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer probes deeper into the incidents. Could these cases just be appalling coincidences? Or is a maniac playing God with people's lives? When someone close to the Women's Murder Club begins to exhibit the same frightening symptoms, Lindsay fears no one is safe. The 5th horseman rides. It is a wild race against time as Lindsay's investigation reveals a hospital administration determined to shield its reputation at all costs. And while the hospital wages an explosive court battle that grips the entire nation, Lindsay and the Women's Murder Club hunt for a merciless killer among its esteemed medical staff. |
City of the Sun | David Levien | 2,008 | A 14 year old boy is kidnapped on his usual newspaper round. His parents' relationship suffers through the unknowing of their child's fate. A former police officer, who lost his own son at a young age and who has issues with the police hierarchy, accepts the case. |
Each Little Bird That Sings | Deborah Wiles | null | This book tells about how death is a part of life. Comfort Snowburger's Aunt Florentine dies in her garden, and her Uncle Edisto dies the day had planned a picnic. Comfort is very worried about her next funeral, which will be her 248th, and whose it will be. She is also annoyed with the burden of having to care for her cousin, Peach, after the funeral. After a while, this is when Comfort realizes that her true friend had been there all along with Peach. All Comfort wants to do now is hide in her closet with Dismay. However, Comfort, Peach and Dismay are caught in a flash flood at the cemetery, and struggle to stay above water on an oak tree. Comfort tells Peach to let Dismay go, but Peach doesn't hear her, submerged underwater. Comfort pries Peach’s fingers off of Dismay's collar, leaving the dog to float down the stream alone. Dismay's collar is found by Declaration close to a drainage ditch near Lake Tallyhoma. Knowing he is dead, Snapfinger holds a memorial service for Dismay,but Declaration and Comfort are still upset with each other. Main Characters: *Comfort Snowberger is the 10 year old main character of the series, and the whole book is told from her point of view. Her family owns the Snapfinger funeral home. *Merry Snowberger is Comfort's little sister. *Tidings Snowberger is Comfort's older brother. *Uncle Edisto Snowberger is Comfort, Tidings, and Merry's great uncle. *Great Aunt Florentine is Comfort, Tidings, and Merry's great aunt who loves studying Snapfinger. *Peach Shuggars is Comfort's 8-year-old cousin. At the beginning, he is described as a spoiled and annoying little boy, who ruins every family occasion. However, throughout the book, he shows his sensitive side. *Declaration Johnson is Comfort's best friend from the beginning of the book. Her father owns the company which makes the local newspaper called, "The Aurora Country News". However, halfway through the story, Declaration made friends with mean, snobby, and very spoiled other girls, and alienated Comfort, leaving her alone. After Dismay's incident, Declaration wanted to befriend Comfort again, but Comfort becomes upset and rejects her pleas. *Dismay is a Black Labrador that Comfort got as a gift for her 4th birthday and gained everyone's love very quickly. Dismay dies in chapter 20, and Comfort and Peach are very upset. |
The Clone Republic | Steven L. Kent | 2,006 | In a galactic military largely consisting of clones raised to be unquestioning soldiers, Wayson Harris initially has difficulty as he seemingly isn't a clone and he does not follow orders as quickly. His first official posting, a desert planet named Gobi, seems like a punishment as there are many things wrong with it (poor discipline, contaminated drinking water). After Harris and a mercenary named Ray Freeman prevent an ex-general from killing all the marines and raiding the armory, Harris is promoted and transferred to the flagship Kamehameha. The Kamehameha deploys to the planet Ezer Kri, which is attempting to leave the Unified Authority and establish a nonstandard culture (namely, a Japanese one). After a platoon is killed by locals (they ignite a fuel pumping station), marines are ordered to occupy the largest town on the planet, where Harris runs into Freeman. Freeman sends another soldier back with Harris's helmet on, then leads Harris to the hotel across the street where they ambush Kline, a man they'd dealt with in Gobi, wielding a rifle that has been set to track Harris's helmet signal. During his interrogation, Kline is revealed to be a Morgan Atkins separatist (an influential terrorist group). Shortly thereafter, a fleet of separatist ships carrying the deserters from Ezer Kri flee from the planet before anyone can react. ; Wayson Harris: The protagonist of the book, born the (novel) year 2490, Wayson has better than average tactical skills, responds fast to orders for a human (though not fast enough to avoid some mild reprimands). He originally thinks he's the only human at the orphanage he came from, but it is later revealed he is a newly minted Liberator-class clone. He was created at Unified Authority Orphanage #553. Like all Liberator-class clones, he is engineered to be ambidextrious, but has a preference to be right handed. ; Vince Lee: A clone who has partial realization that he is a clone, or at least enough doubts to make him worry that he will activate the gene that would kill him for that knowledge. He originally transfers Harris to the Kamehameha via shuttle, which is where they become friends. He is an avid bodybuilder and hates other clones. He ends up finding a way to suppress the death reflex by heavily abusing medications, and starts a small band of similarly realized clones. ; Ray Freeman: A massive, tall, black, bald freelancer. In a time when race normally doesn't exist anymore, Ray really stands out. A humorless mercenary, Ray sometimes goes to extremes to get the knowledge he wants. His physical strength is roughly the strongest in the series, only potentially being matched by the Seal-class clones, though their fighting style relies less on brute strength and more on speed. He also has in his possession various types of robots and at least two ships, all heavily armoured and armed. He wears pitted and scratched up body armour over coveralls, made of stiff bulletproof canvas. Normally has an oversized particle beam pistol, a low yield grenade (described as only having the power to take out a few buildings) and a grenade launcher. He is described by Harris as being intimidating and having intensity radiate from him, and also has intimate knowledge of UA standard equipment. ; Tabor Shannon: One of the last Liberator-class clones, Shannon is standoffish on duty, (being described as gruff, ruthless and profane by Harris) but is considerably more relaxed off duty. He is described physically as tall, thin and wiry, with steep shoulders, fine white hair and sunburned. He is presumably killed on Hubble in a type of cave in, trying to flush separatist enemies out. He is very self-sacrificing as an officer, and indeed, his last command was to try to save as many of his unit as possible, at cost of his own life. ; Captain Gaylan McKay: Under Klyber, he had been given access to high profile assignments, color guards, and generally bypassed many other officers despite his rank. He has an informal style of command, treating all as equals. He also is mindful of the equipment the soldiers use; something else uncommon for ranking officers. He explains this as being due to his visor once blacking out in the middle of a fight and him nearly shooting his commanding officer. This was later revealed to be part of a more elaborate way to retrieve the camera footage in Harris's helmet for study; allowing the UA to confirm who had attacked Gobi station. ; Fleet Admiral Bryce Klyber: Klyber is the commanding officer of the Kamehameha. He is one of the highest decorated officers in history. He is described by Harris as looking incredibly gaunt and skeletal, the impression is that he could be physically snapped like a twig, but in contrast, his personality and charisma are very pronounced. The only black mark on his record is the Liberator clones he made, which ended up attacking whole worlds. He has an unusual style of command in that, while his fleet is up to date and generally devastating, his own personal command ship is currently the single oldest ship still in service. He has actually upgraded almost everything on the ship itself so that it can easily match anything the newer ships have, but because of its smaller profile and obsolete nature, it is continually underestimated. ; Admiral Robert Thurston: A prodigy, Thurston bests Klyber in a simulated battle so effortlessly, that he gets to control the UA fleet and redesigns most of it. Most of the officers give him grudging respect. ; Admiral Che Huang: Secretary of the Navy, Che Huang, in a bid to get more power, manages to overthrow Klyber and install his own man (Thurston) aboard the UA's flagship the Kamehameha. ; Kasara and Jennifer: Two ladies that Harris and Lee met while in Honolulu. The pair had been saving up all year to go. Kasara is easily the more fun loving and reckless of the two, and is the one that suggested Harris to fight the Adam Boyd clone. Jennifer has a fling with Lee, and Kasara has a fling with Harris. Nearer the end of the book, there is a small mention that Kasara got married when she went back home, but it is debatable on if it lasted. They both are in the second book. ;Lector, Marshall, Saul: three other liberators who also fought in the Galactic Eye and went around killing many people thus getting liberators banned. They also knew Klyber was making more Liberator Clones so they went around killing them but they could not find Harris until he was on the Kamehameha with Klyber. When they were discovered by Huang they were instantly put back into service under Thurston. ;Kline: A pathetic fool who takes orders from Crowley which managed to get a grenade glued to his hand by Ray Freeman, which he later cut off because the grenade was timed, on Gobi and a rifle butt to the face when Harris takes the rifle from him before it locked on to his helmet to shoot, on Ezer Kri. ; InterLink: A type of catch-all media technology. Radio, TV, phone, email/internet all in either civilian headset form, or built into the bubblehead armor. Used frequently to communicate over large distances in civilian application, used as a squad radio in combat. Can be jammed and disabled fairly easily by experienced saboteurs. The civilian version is called mediaLink, and is essentially the same, but with no expectations of security. ; Cloning: Most soldiers are clones, bred in vats, and raised in what the government calls orphanages. There are currently only three classes of clones; Liberator class, Seal class, and Bubblehead class. They are demonstrated is being able to have sexual intercourse, but none shown yet able to bear offspring. Part of their Neural Programming is that they would rather be "in the thick of it" than sitting around idle. ; Standard Clones: The UA has countless clones, and for the most part, they are treated like expendable equipment. They wear combat armor, and are generally referred to as bubbleheads because of the shape of their helmets. They are all cut from the same helix and are unquestionably loyal, responding to orders before thinking about them. They are designed to think that they are not clones, and a gland in their bodies releases a deadly toxin into their blood, killing them instantly, if they ever accept that they are clones. This has been called the death reflex. ; SEAL Clones: A new type of clone designed by Huang and Thurston. Harris calls them "Adam Boyd" after fighting against one, who had been given that name. Undersized, thin, and with clawed fingers, they are easily identified by a branding tattoo. The military uses an establishment in Hawaii to give them real fighting experience; each pretends to be 'Adam Boyd' and collectively they have only ever lost one fight, to Harris who killed the clone he fought. They are far faster than the standard clones, meant for guerrilla operations, assassinations, and surgical strikes. They have no death reflex. ; Liberator Clones: These clones were originally bred to fight an unknown enemy in the Galactic Central War approximately 40 years before the start of the book. Liberator clones were designed with a special gland that releases a synthetic hormone during combat that gets them addicted to battle. Following the massacres on several planets by Liberators, this type of clone was outlawed, and all clones since then were bred with the death reflex. The history books refer to them as 'Liberators' because the more accurate 'Butchers' would have been too disrespectful. ; Particle Beam Pistol: Extremely accurate pistol. Has roughly the same range as the m27 but has a higher armor penetration value. Can be set to self-destruct. Can be considered useless if there is enough particles and debris in the air. Is preferred in low gravity and thin air, but is unreliable in sandy locations as sand that gets trapped in the housing can scratch up the mirrors. Costs 2000$ on the open market. Has internal components that have to be replaced on a regular basis. ; m27: A lightweight, standard issue assault rifle. This is the standard weapon for clones, as it is reliable and easy to maintain. It is depicted as being scoped, with a detachable rifle stock, ; Armored Transport "Kettle": Orbital dropship. Has effective atmospheric shields that burn ozone upon entry causing the cabin to smell bad and heat up. The name 'kettle' is not its specific name, nor the name of any one specific ship; it is the universal nickname given by all marines to the class of ships. ; Kamehameha (ship): The oldest ship to still be used in the UA standing army and the last of the Expansion-Class of fighter carrier. Continually upgraded by its commander, named after the Hawaiian king. Its age by comparison to the rest of the fleet makes it be continually underestimated by foes. This is normally a fatal error as the ship has the best shields possible, and has a weapons load out capable of matching, if not besting, any of the newest ships in the galaxy. Retrofitted to be modern, this is the flagship of roughly every commanding UA officer. Can carry approximately 2300 marines and 15 Armored Transports. ; Doctrinaire (ship): The newest ship, under the command of Klyber, a bat-winged shaped assault vessel. Roughly the biggest ship of the fleet, it was originally meant to be kept a secret. It has multiple launch bays and a fuel supply that takes up two-thirds of the remaining internal space because it has engines that are 5 times the size of those used on Perseus-Class fighter carriers. Self broadcasting. It is 2 miles wide, twice as wide as a Perseus-Class fighter carrier.It is that large that it needs Dual-Cold fusion reactors to power the onboard electrical systems. It has 13 decks, including the bridge. If one chose to walk from one of the two hangar bays to the bridge, it will take approximately 25 minutes.The Doctrinaire has two forward-facing fixed cannons that are used for bombarding stationary targets, that are both laser and paticle beam enabled. The Doctrinaire also has 300 particle beam turrets, 20 missile stations and 15 torpedo stations positioned around its hull. The Doctrinaire has a complement of 280 Tomcat Fighters. ; Perseus-Class Fighter Carrier : New class of fighter carrier which replaced the old Expansion-Class, like the Kamehameha. This class is 45 hundred feet long and 51 hundred feet wide, twice as big compared to the Expansion-Class. Can carry 11000 marines and can carry 3 times more tanks, transports, gunships and fighters than the Expansion-Class. ; Broadcasting: A series of mirrors between Earth, Mars, and countless other destinations. In effect, it is essentially a relay transporter. Plans are found of the main facility among the Morgan Atkins separatists intel. Without the broadcasting array, countless worlds would not be able to sustain life for more than a few months. When destroyed later in the series, it causes galaxy wide panic, and many planets simply die off due to unsustainable populations having insufficient resources. Ships that Self-Broadcast capable need to be at least 1'000 miles from any Broadcast Discs to prevent causing any damage to the Discs. It is believed that Mogat (GEF - Galactic Eye Fleet) have been modified in some way not to have this effect. |
Between Two Seas | null | 2,008 | The story starts in 1885, Grimsby, England. Marianne is the illegitimate daughter of a once wealthy English woman and a Danish father, who left her mother not knowing that she was pregnant, and promising to return to England one day. Marianne's mother is dangerously ill and on her deathbed, gives Marianne some money, telling her to search for her father in Denmark. Marianne's mother dies, poor and friendless, living in squalid surroundings in Grimsby. And so Marianne starts the perilous journey to Skagen, Denmark to find her father. The journey is long and hard, and finally she arrives at Skagen, now penniless and destitute, and foreign, unable to speak Danish, only to find that her father, Lars Christensen, has been dead for years! So that was the reason why he did not return for her mother! Marianne is stranded in Skagen with nowhere to go, and so is forced to stay with a poor fisherman's family as a servant. They live in a horribly dirty house with grime on the walls and windows, where the children are covered with lice, the mother suffers from post-natal depression, the father is a drunk and they have barely enough food to live on. Nevertheless, Marianne works and lives there in exchange for a little bit of food and lodging. Marianne is afraid to tell anyone of her birth, fearing that they will despise and ridicule her, as everyone did in London. However, she befriends a girl called Hannah, who is also an illegitimate child. She is surprised at how everyone in Skagen accepts Hannah into society and does not seem to mind about her origin. She is still afraid to tell anyone, even Hannah, about her birth, though. She discovers that her father had a brother, who still resides in Skagen! So now she has an uncle! She contemplates on telling him about her existence, however, she decides against it on finding that he has a reputation for being a very strict man. She is afraid that he will despise her birth, even though they are family. She becomes close friends with his son, and grows to treat him like a cousin, although he himself is unaware that they are related. She falls in love with a young fisherman named Peter, but her love for painting and rumours about her friendship with a French painter, separates them. They come together again at the end, and Peter proposes. She accepts but, saying she wants to carry on learning to paint. She is also reunited with her father, who was really the man she thought was her uncle. |
Born To Rock | Gordon Korman | 2,006 | This book centers on the life of 18 year old teen Leo Caraway, a member of the "Young Republicans" group at his school. He discovers that his biological father is not the man he thinks he is, but a punk rocker named King Maggot (real name: Marion X. McMurphy). Leo's scholarship to Harvard University is revoked after giving a classmate help on an exam. He joins Maggot's band, Purge, as a roadie, to convince Maggot to pay his tuition. He has many adventures working as a roadie. Further on in the novel, however, he discovers that King Maggot is not in fact, his biological father. It is instead Bernie, the man Leo considered up until that point to be his cousin. Even though Maggot is not his father he chooses to help because Bernie is an unfit father. Maggot pays for Leo's tuition money for Harvard university. |
Plum Lucky | Janet Evanovich | 2,008 | Diesel and Stephanie end up teaming up with a strange man who thinks he's a leprachaun in an effort to save a horse named Doug and Grandma Mazur. |
Backup: A Story of the Dresden Files | Jim Butcher | 2,008 | Thomas Raith discovers that his younger half-brother, Harry Dresden, has taken a case that could cost him his life. Lara tells Thomas to meet a courier with the latest intel on the Oblivion War. Lara and Thomas are the only Venatori, Oblivion combatants, in the White Court. But first, he feeds on Michelle Marion - a vampire has to eat. Thomas obtains his nourishment by feeding on the clients in his hair salon. During the shampoo phase, his Hunger feeds upon Michelle’s life energy. Thomas feeds lightly, holding his Hunger in check by sheer force of will. Without this restraint, Thomas' Hunger would control him, which would be fatal for Michelle. After lunch, Thomas goes to meet the courier. The courier is Justine. The message is the Ladies of the Dark River, aka The Stygian Sisterhood, are in town. While Thomas was dithering around at the salon, a Stygian took a child. Then, she used the kidnapping to dupe the one person in Chicago who could hinder their cause, Harry Dresden. He doesn't know that his client is using him to bring one of their Old Demon-Goddesses into this plane of existence. The deity of the Stygians gains power from the knowledge and belief in its existence. The more people who know about the deity, the greater its power. Part of Thomas’ duties as a Venator is to obliterate all knowledge and talk of the Old Gods and Demons. Thomas cannot tell Justine and Dresden about the Oblivion War. But, Thomas can help Dresden from the shadows and give him some backup. Using a tracking spell, Thomas locates Dresden near the Pavilion in Millennium Park. It's an ambush. The Stygian has a glamor, making her look and track like Dresden. She and two ghouls attack Thomas. Instead of killing Thomas, the Stygian casts an illusion to change Thomas' appearance. Thomas kills the ghouls, but the Stygian escapes. Thomas has been careless and reckless; she could have just as easily cast a killing spell. For some reason, she wants Thomas alive. In over his head, Thomas goes to Dresden's apartment to consult Bob and have the illusion removed. Thomas asks for Bob's help, but he cannot reveal the true identity of Dresden’s client. Bob refuses to help. If Thomas will divulge the whole truth about the danger Dresden is facing, Bob will reconsider. Thomas makes a bargain. He will tell everything, but Bob can only tell Dresden - or anyone else - if it will not endanger Dresden’s life. Thomas relates the perilous knowledge about the Old Gods and Demons. At a certain level of human awareness, these Old Gods and Demons can return to the mortal world. Dresden’s client is a member of one of the many factions working to restore that awareness. Dresden is being set up. When he finds the kidnapped child, he will also find a grimoire, the Lexicon Malos. As a warden, Dresden is honor bound to give the book to the White Council. The Council will publish the grimoire, believing that the mass dissemination will weaken the rituals. This is how they dealt with the prior incident. By publishing the Necronomicon, its summoning rituals became diffused and weakened. The Lexicon poses a different danger. The publication would raise the human awareness to the point where the Old Ones could re-enter the world. In one night, Dresden’s involvement and the aftermath could help the Stygians win the Oblivion War. If Dresden finds out about this plot, the Stygians will kill him. If Dresden tries to give the grimoire to the White Council, the Venatori will kill him. Either way, Dresden will die. If Thomas can find the grimoire before Dresden, he can save Dresden's life - but only with Bob's help. Bound by his word, Bob must help Thomas save Dresden while never revealing the true identities and motivations of the factions. Bob speculates that the Stygian didn't kill Thomas because Dresden would sense Thomas' death in her aura. Thomas realizes that she cast the illusion on him, hoping that Dresden would mistake him for the kidnapper and kill him. Clever, actually. Thomas decides to use this illusion to his own advantage. Bob helps Thomas locate the real Dresden. He and the Stygian have staked out an abandoned warehouse guarded by ghouls. At 4 AM, Dresden makes his move. He takes out the ghouls and breaks into the warehouse. Thomas uses the diversion to get into the warehouse ahead of Dresden. He finds the Lexicon and puts it in his backpack. He could leave, but the Stygian has messed with his little half-brother. Payback time! Thomas jumps into the role of a bloodthirsty cultist just as Dresden bursts through the door with the Stygian in tow. Disguised by the Stygian's illusion, Thomas threatens to harm the child tied to the altar. The Stygian is surprised. Dresden hits Thomas the cultist with a blast that blows him across the room. Thomas kills the lights and goes after the Stygian. Able to see in the darkness, the Stygian slashes Thomas with a poisoned dagger. Thomas leaves with the grimoire before Dresden or the Stygian can do any more damage to him. By poisoning Thomas, the Stygian awakened his Hunger. To overcome the poison, Thomas must feed very deeply - fatally. He stalks the Stygian until she is alone. In her hotel room, Thomas gives in to his Hunger. The Stygian never has a chance. When the sun rises, the illusion melts. Thomas looks like himself again. After a long cleansing shower, he visits Dresden's office. Dresden relates the events of the past night. The rescued boy ran home to his real parents. The real parents want the police to arrest Dresden. His client skipped out without paying. Thomas commiserates and offers to buy him breakfast. After all, it's a terrible thing to be unappreciated. |
One for the Road | null | null | The book is a non-fiction travel book, narrated in the first person by the independently travelling author. Three different journeys from the period 2001-2003 are described in three main chapters: The Utterly Deep South While traveling in Patagonia the author manages to get a discounted "last minute ticket" to a cruise to Antarctica. He has to wait a couple of weeks in South America for the cruise to begin, and spends the time hiking in Torres del Paine National Park in Chile and near El Calafate in Argentina. The main part of the chapter is dedicated to describing what visiting Antarctica is like. In and Out of Africa A travelogue from two months of independent travel ("[backpacking]") in Southern Africa. The trip begins and ends in Cape Town, looping through South Africa and its neighbouring countries, most of the time visiting national parks and small towns. Summer in the Pity A month of travel on and along the Trans-Siberian Railway, starting in Vladivostok and ending in Moscow, with several stops in between. A part of the distance is done by boat, from Kazan to Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River. |
Poison Study | Maria V. Snyder | 2,005 | Not everyone is pleased by Yelena's acceptance of the role of food taster, especially not General Brazell, whose son Yelena was in prison for killing, despite it being in self defense. His want for her death causes Valek, the assassin and right hand man to the Commander, who rules Ixia with an iron fist without ever bending the rules, to take her under his protection, despite having fed her Butterfly Dust to prevent her escape: if she doesn't have the antidote every day, she will die. But unfortunately for Yelena, she is developing strong magical abilities that she cannot control, which are illegal and a cause for death in Ixia. But she must use her abilities to protect herself not only from other magic users coming into Ixia, but against those who plot against the commander and against Valek, who she is slowly developing feelings for. In the end, she and Valek discover that General Brazell and a rogue magician from Sitia are behind the plot, as well as the kidnapping of many children from Sitia, including Yelena, for their magical abilities. The magician has stolen the souls and magic of many of the young children, and has opened the Commander's mind to magical influence. Yelena and Valek defeat him and capture Brazell, but the Commander's mind has fled and it is up Yelena and her magic to find it. She discovers that the Commander was born a woman, and promises to keep that secret. But for her use of magic in the inflexible land of Ixia, she must be put to death. Valek delays the death order long enough for her to leave with the other kidnapped children to return to Sitia, where she nervously hopes to be united with her family and to learn to control her magic. |
The Queen's Gambit | Walter Tevis | 1,983 | Named after a chess opening favored by the protagonist Beth Harmon, The Queen's Gambit traces Harmon's life from her childhood in an orphanage through her struggles with tranquilizer and alcohol addiction to her triumphant rise through the Grandmaster ranks. Eight-year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable -- until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. |
Bone Dance | Emma Bull | 1,991 | In the opening scene, Sparrow cannot recall what took place in the preceding 36 hours. Awakening yet again in a novel place with new hurts, the urge to fix the problem is intense. On the way to enlightenment comes a cryptic Tarot reading from friend Sherrea, abduction by a dead man animated by what might as well be a Loa, and introduction to a Vodun-based community that is dedicated to replacement, and if necessary to overthrow, of the status quo in the city. The latter has the individual most responsible for the inter-continental war near its power apex, a character who is also the revenge target of another survivor from his kind. Those are the "Horsemen," modified people who can move their consciousness from body to body, much like the central figure in Mind of my Mind by Octavia Butler. The second half of the story shows Sparrow's awkward progress toward a fully human condition and becoming a valued member of a community, and is capped by a closing conceit: that the whole telling has been an autobiography. |
The Gypsy Game | null | null | In this sequel, the children have decided to play that they are Romany, and begin their usual practice of copious reading and reproduction of authentic practices. While April plunges in with enthusiasm, the more Melanie learns, the more something seems to be holding her back. Meanwhile, Toby Alvillar reveals that he actually has some Gypsy ancestry. He believes he can get some of his grandmother's things to use as props for the new game. However, the children never get around to playing the Gypsy Game. Toby becomes the subject of a custody dispute between his eccentric artist father and his wealthy, conservative grandparents. Under the extreme pressure, Toby runs away and begins a life on the street. Along the way, the kids discover some nasty historical facts about the Romany, not to mention the hard lives of the homeless people Toby meets. The story goes on to describe how the children locate Toby and decide to abandon their fantasy games, taking on real-world responsibilities. |
Caverns | Ken Kesey | 1,989 | According to Kesey's "Introduction," the novel was inspired by an actual news clipping, an Associated Press story on October 31, 1964 entitled "Charles Oswald Loach, Doctor of Theosophy and discoverer of so-called 'SECRET CAVE OF AMERICAN ANCIENTS,' which stirred archaeological controversy in 1928." The rest of the novel appropriates Loach as its central character. Set in the 1930s, Loach is imagined as a convicted murderer (he killed a photographer to protect the secret of the cave) who is released from San Quentin Prison, in the custody of a priest, to lead an expedition to rediscover the cave. The novel—described by The New York Times as Indiana Jones meets The Canterbury Tales—features a motley crew of characters: Father Paul, an unbalanced priest; an archaeologist, Dr. Jocelyn Crane; Loach's brother, a museum curator; publisher Rodney Makai and the "Blavatskian Makai sisters"; their African-American driver, Ned; and Juke and Boyle, World War I veterans still suffering the ill effects of mustard gas. The characters spend most of the novel together in a military vehicle making their way to Utah where Loach says the cave is located, and getting caught in various comic misadventures along the way. |
The Dragons of Babel | Michael Swanwick | 2,008 | Following the same time period as the Iron Dragon's Daughter; a crippled dragon crawls to a village in Avalon, somewhere in Faerie minor, and crowns himself king. He makes young Will his lieutenant and by night, he crawls in the young fey's mind to get a measure of what his subjects think. But, the dragon’s arrival sets Will on a life-changing adventure where he will encounter danger, deceit, and a truth that was conceived with his birth. Later on, Will travels with Centaurs, acquires a surrogate daughter named Esme who has no memory of her past and may be immortal, witnesses the clash of Giants, and travels to Babel as a refugee. There, Will rises as underground politician, and finds his one true love, a high elven woman to whom he dare not aspire. |
The Dead of Jericho | Colin Dexter | 1,981 | Detective Chief Inspector E. Morse of the Thames Valley Police meets Anne Scott at a party hosted by Mrs Murdoch in North Oxford. Six months later Anne Scott is found hanging in her kitchen at 9 Canal Reach, Jericho, Oxford. Initially Chief Inspector Bell, from the closer Oxford Central station on St. Aldate's Street, is assigned to the case; but a fortnight later Morse takes over the investigation and subsequently both of Mrs Murdoch's sons, Edward "Ted" Murdoch and Michael Murdoch, as well as Anne Scott's former employers, brothers Charles Richards and Conrad Richards, and Charles's wife, Celia, come to the attention of Morse. As do Ms Scott's neighbours, including the nosy handyman George Jackson, and Sophocles's Oedipus Rex (the latter also figures in episode 3.1 of the spin-off TV series Lewis). |
How I Paid For College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater | Marc Acito | 2,004 | The novel begins with a discussion of the character’s summer goals: Paula losing her virginity and all of the characters having “madcap adventures.” Then Edward meets his father’s girlfriend, Dagmar. While driving around they spot a green Ceramic Buddha and come up with their plan called Creative Vandalism, which means bringing “flair and vitality” to the suburbs without doing anything illegal. Ed then finds out Dagmar and his father Al are getting married. Edward throws a big party at his house to celebrate the end of the summer and a lot of people he doesn’t really know show up. He ends up revealing that he has strong sexual feelings for Doug. Edward learns that his step mom, Dagmar, is a “raving lunatic.” Then Edward’s world falls apart when he learns that his dream of going to Juilliard and becoming an actor may be hindered because his father refuses to pay for Edward’s college unless he goes into business. Natie decides that Edward needs to get a job to pay for college. Doug asks Edward if he bisexual, Edward says yes. Edward quits the school play in order to do his job, and in his absence Doug and Kelly grow close. Kelly wants to have sex, but Edward keeps avoiding it. Edward declares himself financially independent of his father and needs somewhere to live, so he moves in with Kelly. Edward grows more in love with Doug and eventually admits it to him. Edward needs to go to an audition for Juilliard so he goes to New York. He goes to a gay bar and sees his teacher, Mr. Lucas, who takes him back to his apartment to get him out of the bar. In the morning Edward wakes up hung over and late for his audition. During the audition Edward can’t remember his lines and breaks down ranting about his father and how much he hates him, which fits his speech. He leaves convinced he has not got in, but he does. Edward breaks up with Kelly, so now Kelly and Doug are dating. Doug (who is fluent in German; Dagmar's native language) and Edward learn that Dagmar has been stealing money form Edward’s father they decide to steal it and put it into a scholarship that Edward will be sure to get. On a choir trip to Washington D.C. Doug and Edward almost have a gay moment. However, Ziba invites a past boyfriend to hang out at the hotel but he refuses to leave. He is reduced to repeated vomiting followed by passing out. They then take incriminating pictures of him to use as blackmail to get Edward money for college. Edward then visits Paula in New York and Edward finds out that he didn’t get the scholarship. Dagmar knows that Edward stole her money but can’t prove it. Aunt Glo gets arrested. Her car was used in vandalism cases over the past summer and the Buddha was reported stolen. When Edward goes home he finds Ziba and Kelly fooling around in bed, They go to pick up the Buddha and on the way back are stopped, the Buddha is discovered and they are arrested. After some negotiating and phone calls they are let out and must return the Buddha. Kelly and Edward have sex and it progresses for a while but ultimately Kelly goes back to Ziba. To create the scholarship they steal a dead little girl’s identity, and it turns out to be the late sister of one of Doug’s friends: he keeps quiet and even gets a scholarship out of it. The school production of Godspell goes really well, phenomenally well and Edward is just reassured that this is what he wants to do for his whole life. The good feeling form the play is cut short however because Dagmar is getting closer to finding out about the money. To counter this they decide to take incriminating pictures of Dagmar to get Al to divorce her so that he will pay for Juilliard. While they are taking the pictures Edward’s mother returns form her spiritual journey in South America. After some discussion with her Edward finds out that Al must pay for him to go to the college of his choice, it says it in the divorce papers for his mother and father. Al agrees to pay if that’s what Edward wants also him and Dagmar split up. In the end everybody goes their separate ways for college. |
Fateless | Imre Kertész | null | The novel is about a young Hungarian boy, György "Gyuri" Köves, living in Budapest. The book opens as György's father is being sent to a labor camp. Soon afterwards, György receives working papers and travels to work outside of the Jewish quarter. One day all of the Jews are pulled off of the buses leaving the Jewish quarter, and are sent to Auschwitz on a train without water. Arriving there, Georg lies about his age, unknowingly saving his own life, and tells us of camp life and the conditions he faces. Eventually he is sent to Buchenwald, and continues on describing his life in a concentration camp, before being finally sent to another camp in Zeitz. György falls ill and nears death, but remains alive and is eventually sent to a hospital facility in a concentration camp until the war ends. Returning to Budapest, he is confronted with those who were not sent to camps and had just recently begun to hear of the terrible injustice and suffering. |
The Whitby Witches | Robin Jarvis | 1,991 | After the deaths of their parents, eight year old orphan Ben and his older sister, Jennet, have been pushed from foster home to foster home for the majority of their young lives. After living at a dreary hostel for a few months, the mistress Mrs Rodice has the children hauled off to live in the seaside village of Whitby, with relish. Ben and Jennet do not get along as Ben possesses a sixth sense meaning that he can see the spirits of dead people, including his parents. Jennet does not share this gift and therefore assumes he is lying and deliberately causing trouble. It is Ben's uncanny ability to see the dead that has caused him and his sister to be shunted between homes, as the families fostering them are unnerved by Ben. Upon arrival in Whitby, the children are adopted by a kind and eccentric elderly spinster named Miss Alice Boston, a former university lecturer. She and the children take to each other almost immediately, despite the children being a little bemused by Miss Boston's (or Aunt Alice as they grew to call her) odd mannerisms and lifestyle. Miss Boston tells Ben the scary stories of Whitby much to his delight as he adores horror stories, but Jennet does not approve as she believes it will encourage his lies and his stories that he can see their dead parents. Miss Boston is friends with many of the elderly spinsters in the Whitby community. The widowed Mrs Prudence Joyster, whose late husband was in the army; the batty, cat-loving Miss Matilda Droon, Miss Edith Whethers the postmistress, and the wealthy and grossly obese Dora Banbury-Scott, twice the widow who refuses to grow old gracefully. Ben and Jennet settle into Whitby and Ben encounters the "Fisher Folk", or the "Aufwader" as they call themselves, a reclusive and mysterious tribe of humanoid dwarf-like beings who are unseen by all except those with the sixth sense. Ben meets Nelda Shrimp, the youngest of the diminishing tribe and her aunt, Hesper Gull. They tell them that their kind are forbidden to fraternise with humans as it has done nothing but cause grief in the past. But Nelda has a premonition that Ben is involved in the fate of their tribe. The Fisher Folk were once plentiful in centuries past, but after the witch-doctor of the tribes, Oona, fell in love with a human fisherman and together they produced a half-breed child. Enraged with this act of violation the Lords of the Deep, spirit-lords of the oceans, killed the fisherman and Oona committed suicide. Cheated of revenge, the Lords of the Deep turned to the Fisher Folks and condemned all the females to die in childbirth, meaning that the tribes would never prosper. Nelda's own mother fell victim to this terrible fate along with so many other female Aufwaders. Meanwhile, a newcomer in town, Mrs Rowena Cooper, opens up a new antiques shop, and begins making herself very popular with the Whitby residents, by donating large sums of money to charity and charming even the most disagreeable neighbours. After being invited to tea at Mrs Cooper's house, Miss Boston and Mrs Joyster are instantly suspicious; Mrs Cooper appears ditzy, childish and too friendly for their liking. However, she has managed to woo over Miss Whethers, Miss Droon and Mrs Banbury-Scott most of all, whom she practically force-feeds expensive chocolates. After they leave, Miss Boston and Mrs Joyster share their doubts about Mrs Cooper, and Mrs Joyster is certain she has seen her before, but cannot recall where or when. She returns to her seaside cottage and reads her late husband's journal. In its pages, she discovers a horrifying truth. Rowena Cooper is in fact an evil woman named Roslyn Crosier, who, along with her diabolical husband Nathan, tormented and tortured an African tribe, inflicting unspeakable cruelty on them using black magic. The journal briefly mentions a gigantic black dog which terrified the tribe. Overcome with fury, she confronts Cooper, but is killed on the way home after an enormous black dog attacks her. |
A Warlock in Whitby | Robin Jarvis | 1,995 | Set in the seaside town of Whitby just before Bonfire Night, the novel is set a few months after The Whitby Witches. Having failed to retrieve the moonkelp, Nelda is forced to marry the wicked aged Esau Grendel. A fish Demon from the distant past that was imprisoned beneath the Earth after the imprisonment of the Monstrous serpent Morgawrus, awakes once more and haunts Whitby, eating cats. Rowena Coopers husband, Nathaniel Crozier travels to Whitby to find out what happened to his wife. Tricking Aunt Alice into leaving Whitby for London to see her dying friend Patricia, Nathaniel realizes the staff of Hilda was one of four magical objects created to defend the world against Morgawrus. Nathaniel plans to destroy these guardians and unleash Morgawrus upon the world, planning to use him to take over. Followed by Ben, Nathaniel goes to a church where he finds one guardian and destroys it. He then discovers that the second guardian belongs to the elderly Mr Roper, a friend of Bens whom he kills although not before Roper is able to give the guardian to Ben. Nathaniel threatens Jennet who is bewitched by him, forcing Ben to hand over the guardian which he promptly destroys, loosing Morgwrus. He then goes to try and take over Morgawrus while setting the Fish Demon loose in the Aufwader caves, knowing that the last guardian is somewhere there. In exchange for allowing Esau to make love to her, conceiving their child, Esau gives Nelda the last guardian which she gives to Tarr. Esau is killed by the Fish Demon before it is killed as the caves are destroyed as a result of Morgawrus breaking free. Nathaniel attempts to bewitch Morgwrus but is stopped by Aunt Alice who has returned from London, Patricia having been murdered by a slave of Nathaniels. Nathaniel is killed by Morgawrus who attempts to kill Aunt Alice. However the old woman uses the book of shadows, given to her by Patricia, a book which contains all she knows, to defeat Morgawrus who is imprisoned once more. But this brave act is to much for the old woman and her body gives up. She becomes a feeble helpless old thing, reliant on the work of her friends, family and Doctor to just continue living. |
Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice | Victor Appleton | 1,911 | Tom Swift & friends journey to the Arctic in his custom airship to seek for the legendary Valley of Gold. When his map is stolen by his longtime nemesis, Andy Foger, who has himself built a competing airship, the race is on across frigid Alaska to see who will be the first to find the limitless fortune. |
Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers | Victor Appleton | 1,911 | Tom Swift flies his airship to the mountain tops of Colorado to seek for the secret of the Diamond Makers: criminal scientists who have figured out the formula of manufacturing a limitless fortune in diamonds. But these rogues will stop at nothing to keep their secret. Tom & friends are soon captured and left to die in a collapsing mountain. |
Tom Swift and His Wireless Message | Victor Appleton | 1,911 | Tom Swift & friends decide to trial an experimental airship near the New Jersey coast, and are unexpectedly swept out to sea by hurricane winds. Unable to steer or navigate without tearing the airship apart, the hapless crew must simply let the storm take them wherever it will. Unfortunately, the storm proves too much for the craft and Tom makes a crash landing on the uninhabited and crumbling Earthquake Island. |
Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout | Victor Appleton | 1,910 | Tom Swift enters an upcoming race with his specially-designed prototype electric race car. But as he makes the final preparations and adjustments, days before the race, he discovers a plot that would bankrupt not only his family, but also everyone else that relies on the local bank (which is the target of a nefarious bank run scheme). Tom must solve the mystery and stop the criminals behind the plot before he will test himself on a 500 mile race against some of the best cars and skilled drivers in the United States. |
Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat | Victor Appleton | 1,910 | Tom Swift's father has been working diligently on a secret project, which he reveals at the beginning of the book as a submarine. With the submarine, named the Advance, he plans to enter a contest for a government prize of $50,000. While in New Jersey to launch the submarine, Tom reads in a newspaper that a ship named the Boldero sank off the coast of Uruguay during a storm, taking down with it the sum of $300,000 in gold bullion. Tom persuades his father to pursue this treasure as opposed to competing for the government prize. While picking up a hired sea captain, Tom's plans are overheard by a contestant in the government contest, and a rivalry for the treasure begins. The other submarine, named the Wonder, soon sets off to follow Tom and his crew after they embark on their journey. Tom's crew consists of Tom Swift, his father, Mr. Sharp, Captain West, and Mr. Damon. Each of these take chores on board, including Mr. Damon, who seems to be the cook of the voyage. The submarines hold up at an island to resupply, and during the night, the Advance tries to slip away from the Wonder. Tom knows that the Wonder and its crew is not certain of the location of the wreck, and is merely following the Advance, hoping to steal the treasure at the last moment. After the Wonder tries to ram the Advance, Tom and his father take to the heavy underwater cannons, and successfully disable the Wonder, leaving her damaged and immobile. Tom and the Advance seize the opportunity to push ahead. An engine mishap forces the Advance to surface off the coast of Brazil, where they are soon confronted by the Brazilian battleship São Paulo. Tom and his crew are captured and scheduled to be executed two days later, and the submarine turned over to the Brazilian government. Tom and his friends are held prisoners aboard the battleship. The night before their execution, a hurricane strikes, and the São Paulo is pushed aground by the winds. The crew take this opportunity to break out and escape, while the battleship's crew are busy trying to save the ship. Using cover from the ship, which is acting as a shield from the waves and winds, Tom's group take to a lifeboat, and escape to the Advance, diving just in time to escape the Brazilian crew of the São Paulo. It is not long before the Advance arrives at the wreck. They struggle to find it at first, but soon are successful. In their extreme-depth diving suits, Tom and Captain West enter the waters where the wreck is, which is at a depth of over 2 miles—similar to the RMS Titanic. Sharks attack but are fought off. Gold was found in a secret compartment behind the Captain's safe, and recovered from the Boldero just in time to escape from the now-arriving Wonder. With the $300,000 in gold as a deposit at Tom's local bank in Shopton, the bank considers Tom one of their biggest investors, and with this new power, Tom manages to bring his chum, Ned Newton, a promotion. |
Tom Swift and His Airship | Victor Appleton | 1,910 | In Tom Swift and His Airship, Tom Swift has finished his latest invention- the Red Cloud, a fast and innovative airship. Tom is anxious for a cross-country trial, but just before he and his friends take off, the Shopton bank is robbed. No sooner is Tom in the air than he is blamed for the robbery. Suddenly, he's a wanted fugitive but doesn't know why until he's half-way across the country. With no safe harbor or friend on the land below, Tom must race back to Shopton to clear his name before he's shot out of the sky. |
Tom Swift and His Motor Boat | Victor Appleton | 1,910 | Tom Swift's father, a world famous scientist, has been robbed of one of his greatest inventions, and it's up to Tom to bring the criminals to justice without getting himself killed in the process. Unfortunately, Tom himself quickly becomes a target of the rogues' anger when he unknowingly buys a boat in which they had hidden a stolen diamond. Tom must use every bit of his wit to keep himself ahead of the gang of hardened felons. |
Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle | Victor Appleton | 1,910 | Tom Swift, in his first adventure, has purchased a motorcycle and immediately gets busy modifying it. Eager to test his enhancements, Tom volunteers to transport his father's revolutionary turbine design plans across the country roads to Albany. Unaware of the evil corporate investors who want to steal the invention for themselves, Tom falls into their trap and finds himself facing the greatest peril of his young life. It is up to Tom not only to retrieve the blueprints and turbine prototype, but also to bring a gang of hired thugs to justice. |
Conflict of Interest | null | 1,992 | (from Amazon) A propane truck falls from an overpass, killing dozens of innocent people on the freeway below. When Robert Kerrick, one of Houston's most respected trial lawyers, agrees to represent the families of the victims, a bizarre chain of events is set into motion that ultimately threatens his career, his family, even his life. Pitted against the ruthless lawyer Jimmy Coleman, partner in the mega-firm Booker & Baine, Herrick finds himself careening between black-tie balls and opulent private jets to an underworld populated by drug pushers and topless dancers. With hundreds of millions of dollars and his own life and practice at stake, one lawyer struggles to find justice for his clients even while a psychopathic murderer lurks in the shadows. |
The Cancer Journals | Audre Lorde | 1,980 | The book consists of an introduction and three chapters, each featuring passages from her diary. The first chapter, 'The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action' is a speech first given on December 28, 1977 at the Lesbian and Literature Panel of the Modern Language Association. Starting with an excerpt from The Black Unicorn, Lorde calls on the reader to relinquish silence and speak out. The second chapter, 'Breast Cancer: A Black Lesbian Feminist Experience', is a day-to-day account of her cancer experience, from biopsy to mastectomy. Lorde focuses on the importance of the love received from the women around her throughout her experience. She also harbours her solace at talking about it with other lesbian cancer survivors. Further, she mentions her refusal to wear a silicon breast after the operation. In the third chapter, 'Breast Cancer: Power vs. Prosthesis', Lorde dwells on her coming to terms with the outcome of the operation, with one breast. She explains that although it would be fine for women to resort to a prosthesis if they wanted to, it seems like a cover-up in a society where women are solely judged on their looks. She also harbours the possibilities of alternative medicine, arguing that women should look at all the options. |
My Mortal Enemy | Willa Cather | 1,926 | Myra and her husband Oswald return to their fictional hometown of Parthia, Illinois, to visit their relatives. Nellie and Aunt Lydia then leave to spend the Christmas holiday in New York City with them. They live on Madison Square. They dine with Ewan Gray, a friend who has an infatuation with another actress, Esther Sinclair. Oswald receives silver-buttons for his shirt from an old Western acquaintance, and asks Lydia to pretend she gave them to him to thwart his wife's jealousy. Later Myra and Nellie go to the opera; in a loge they spot an erstwhile friend of Myra's, which makes her sad. Later they take a hansom around a park and chance upon a rich acquaintance of Myra's, which leads her to be scornful over her own poverty. They spend Christmas dinner with friends of the Henshawes - both artists and people of privilege. Later they spend New Year's Eve with artists again. A few days later Nellie witnesses the Henshawes argue; the husband takes her out to lunch. Soon after, she and her aunt are to return to Illinois. On the train, they are joined by Myra, who has argued with her husband again and is going to visit a friend in Pittsburg for a change of scenery. Ten years later, Nellie moved into a shabby flat in a little town on the west coast, and bumps into the Henshawes. Myra is now bedridden and Oswald works full-time; their upstairs neighbours are atrociously noisy, regardless Myra's illness. Nellie takes to visiting her at tea-time; she also takes her out by the sea. Myra expresses her regrets over her husband. (If she had not married him, her great-uncle would have bequeathed her his fortune. Instead, she eloped and he gave it away to the church.) Oswald takes to having lunch with a young woman Once, Nellie asks her why she is so harsh on her husband, and Myra dismisses her. Shortly after, her condition gets worse. She dismisses everyone and runs away; she is found dead by the seaside the following day. Her husband expresses no remorse about his wife; he loved her despite her difficult conduct. After her death he moves to Alaska and later Nellie hears about his death. |
The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind | Fuyumi Ono | 1,993 | Born in Japan and raised as a human, Taiki is overwhelmed when he's brought back to the kingdom of Tai, where he's told he's a kirin. With little knowledge or guidance, he must trust his latent instincts to choose a king for the Kingdom of Tai from among dozens of men and women who seek the position. Will the frustrated Taiki, who can't even figure out how to transform into animal form, make the right choice? And more important, will he discover the kirin that lives within? |
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