title
stringlengths 1
220
| author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | pub_year
int64 398
2.01k
⌀ | summary
stringlengths 11
58k
|
|---|---|---|---|
Ways to Live Forever | Sally Nicholls | 2,008 | Sam Oliver McQueen is an eleven-year-old child, terminally ill with leukaemia, who, during one of his special education sessions decides to write a book about his life. In the book he talks about his life while being ill, the things he'll remember when he dies and, in a section called "Things I want to do", Sam makes numerous lists of questions. With the help of his teacher and friend Felix Stranger (who is also ill with cancer), they conduct various experiments, Sam and Felix break world records (including the world's smallest night club). However things take a turn for the worse and Felix becomes ill, this surprises Sam as Felix was known as a 'fighter'. But in this scenario the opposite happens and Felix dies in hospital. This leaves Sam devastated. Sam and his family go to Felix's funeral. Sam is puzzled by the sadness and writes in his book that everyone should have been happy and making jokes and Felix should have worn his favourite top. Having said, that he told in his book he wanted to make sure no one would do that at his funeral. A couple of weeks later, the doctors realize the medication isn't working as well and Sam makes the decision to stop all medication. Sam finishes his list of "Things to do" and about a month later he has a dream: all his family (his dad, his mum and his sister Ella) are all sleeping together… then he wakes up and sees his dads face. His dad says "I love you", but Sam drifts back asleep. Sam dies in his sleep; but he has given his parents a form to fill in about his death so he could finish his book. The last comment is made by his mother, who says, "Sam died quietly in his sleep. He was in no pain." The book was made into a film during 2010. |
Killing For Culture | null | 1,994 | Killing For Culture is a look into death on film including mondo films and snuff films. It's divided into three sections, each with its own focus. This section deals with snuff films as seen in fictional movies. It starts with a chapter on the infamous 1976 film Snuff. Made by husband-and-wife team Michael Findlay and Roberta Findlay in 1971, it was left unreleased until 1976 when Allan Shackleton added a new ending, a scene depicting what was supposed to be the film crew for the preceding movie murdering one of the actresses. Shackleton marketed the film as authentic snuff and the film was a huge hit. The second chapter starts with an examinaion of Michael Powell's 1960 Peeping Tom. The film follows the exploits of a photographer, who in his spare time kills women while filming them. Considered obscene and depraved, even with its lack of nudity or blood, the film ruined Powell's otherwise good career. The next film looked at in this chapter is Joe D'Amato's 1976 film Emanuelle In America, part of the Emanuelle series. Emanualle, played by Laura Gemser, is a photographer and journalist who investigates a snuff film and gets a little too close to the truth. This section of the book covered Mondo films, a series of exploitation "shockumentaries" that presented "actual" footage of deviant sexual activities or death. Many scenes in these films, while represented as real, were false. This section of the book discusses actual deaths caught on film, as presented through the media. One of the main subjects of the section was the broadcast suicide of Pennsylvania State Senator R. Budd Dwyer. |
Pattern for Conquest | George O. Smith | 1,949 | The novel concerns Earthmen who are overwhelmed by alien invaders, whom they then attempt to conquer from within. |
Celia en el colegio | null | null | A sequel to Celia, lo que dice (1929), the story narrates Celia's adventures following her father's decision to give in to her mother's wishes of sending their daughter to a convent school for girls. At the school, Celia has many difficulties adapting to the strict rules of the nuns and is often reprimanded by Madre Loreto, whom Celia describes as "very strict and scolds much". During her first days there, Celia is convinced that her father is not at all happy with the change and that he greatly misses his little girl, thus Celia tries to get herself expelled from the school by trying to make the nuns believe she suffers from a sleepwalking problem. Celia is unsuccessful, but she soon learns that though her father misses her, he is willing to allow her to stay at the school, which is good for Celia, who actually enjoys her new home. Celia is the favorite among many of her classmates, but she does have many quarrels with a few other girls who find her behaviour disruptive and inappropriate. Madre Isolina, an English nun Celia describes as "very intelligent and understanding" is Celia's favorite nun at the school because she sometimes helps her out of mischief. Celia tries desperately to be good, she even wishes to become a saint. The priest, Don Restituto, tries to guide Celia, but when the girl starts creating more trouble than usual in her attempt to become a saint, or at least a martyr, he gives up on her and forbids her from being either. Following the end of the term, the other girls leave the convent, but Celia is left there with the nuns since her parents have left the country hoping to find a better job elsewhere and earn money to stabilize themselves economically. Doña Benita, the old lady that had looked after the girl for some time before, comes to the school and takes Celia with her for some time. During those days, Celia and the old woman visit a circus, and from there Celia imagines all sorts of tales following her imaginary escape with the gypsies (tales she narrates in Celia, novelista). In the summer, en elderly woman, Doña Remedios, who is soon mocked and renamed Doña Merlucines by Celia and some of the nuns and workers at the school, arrives and she and Celia become fast enemies. Doña Remedios, who is very kind to Celia at first, is soon irritated by the girl's wild ways and wishes she had more discipline. After many quarrels between the two, Celia gets her revenge by filling the sleeping Doña Remedios' bed with cockroaches. Another schooling term begins and Celia's popularity with the other girl students begins to largely decrease. One day, an angry Tío Rodrigo, Celia's uncle, arrives at the school and demands to be allowed to take his niece away with him to her parents who currently reside in Paris, France. The book is told in first-person narrative from Celia's perspective, following a brief introduction in third person from the author's. |
Minions of the Moon | William Gray Beyer | 1,950 | The novel is a space opera about a contemporary man who awakens in the far future. |
The Chosen | L. J. Smith | 1,997 | This book begins with an introduction to the central protagonist, Rashel Jordan. Newly turned 5 Rashel is introduced to the Night World with the murders of her mother and her brother Timmy who she was "a whole month older than" by an unknown vampire, who is later revealed to be Hunter Redfern, a respected lamia elder. This traumatizing event is offered as the motivation behind Rashel's decision as a 17 year old to hunt and kill vampires. In the opening chapters the reader is offered an insight into her mind as she goes about her business after dark in Boston. Rashel's eventual love interest is also introduced at an early stage in the book. John Quinn, or 'Quinn' as he is known, is described in a melancholy state, reminiscing on his rebirth as a vampire and his early love, Dove Redfern. Similar to Rashel's inset hatred of vampires, Quinn is presented as hating humans due to the murder of Dove at the hands of his father. In this manner, the two central protagonists are provided with motivation to hate each other, though we suspect this hatred will be short lived. Quinn is discovered and captured by a group of vampire hunters and imprisoned in a cellar. Rashel, who numbers among the group, takes pity on him, and encourages her fellow vampire hunters to continue the hunt while she stands guard over the prisoner. She suspects that the others means to torture him, and intends to kill him honorably. Before Rashel can do this, Quinn engages her in conversation. Rashel finds herself attracted to the vampire and allows him to break free of his constraints. The two fight, however upon touching they find themselves drawn to each other and seem to see into each other's souls . Before Quinn can remove the ninja-type mask that Rashel wears, the other vampire hunters return and the couple are broken up as Quinn is forced to flee. When Rashel returns to the cellar area to search for vampires, she is just in time to rescue a human girl, Daphne, who has been captured by vampires and just managed to escape. With Daphne's help, Rashel goes to a club where vampires, including Quinn, are capturing human girls for the slave trade. Her plan is to be captured herself so she can infiltrate a vampire enclave; the plan works, but on the island enclave, Rashel learns that the girls are not to be normal slaves, but will be drained dry in a Bloodfeast; something illegal in the Night World. Escaping with the girls to the Warf, Rashel, masquerading as a girl called Shelly, is saved from an angry werewolf guard by Quinn, who does not know her true identity as the girl in the cellar first, but later connects the two instances after Rashel fights him and defeats him. Choosing not to kill him, Rashel knocks Quinn out and returns to the house to kill the vampires who were going to participate in the Bloodfeast. Quinn recovers quickly and captures Rashel. Always a stickler to the rules, Quinn tells Rashel he is going to make her a vampire so that they can be together without breaking the Night World law that states a Night Worlder can not fall in love with a human. Despite Rashel proclaiming that she would stake herself as soon as she woke up as a vampire, he bites her anyways, sure that she'll change her mind once he turns her. However, when he drinks from her the Soulmate Principle takes over and their minds merge. Quinn is then able to see that Rashel hates vampires because of the one that killed her mother. Now understanding what drives her, he decides to accept her the way she is and tries to help her stop the Bloodfeast. When they confront the other vampires, they learn that Hunter Redfern is the one who staged the Bloodfeast, and Rashel recognizes him as the one who killed her mother. Cruel as ever, Hunter taunts Rashel by revealing her childhood friend: Timmy, still exactly the same as he was the last time Rashel saw him, a four year old child, now a made vampire, turned presumably by Hunter. Quinn and Rashel face off against Hunter and the vampires from the Bloodfeast. As they prepare to fight, Nyala, a fellow vampire hunter who has gone a bit insane due to the death of her sister and discovering about the Night World, appears with a burning gasoline bottle. Because the house is wood, it is a death trap for vampires, and they flee as Nyala sets the house on fire. Quinn and Rashel escape with Timmy, whom she refuses to leave behind. As soon as they get out, Rashel wants to go back and rescue Nyala who is still in the burning house. Quinn goes instead to Rashel's dismay, but returns alive with Nyala in tow but passed out. While she was waiting for Quinn, Timmy crankily asks her why she saved him, and with tears in her eyes she replies, "Because my mom told me to take care of you." Her mother had asked that of her at the beginning of the book. After Quinn comes out, they leave on Hunter's yacht, the other girls already having left. Rashel knows the place for them now is Circle Daybreak with the "damned Daybreakers," a group consisting of Night People and humans who are trying to work together to make peace among the Night World and the human world. |
Cosmic Engineers | Clifford D. Simak | 1,950 | The novel concerns a group of earthmen and a girl, who is awakened from suspended animation, being contacted by aliens with whom they join to prevent the collision of one universe with another. |
Renaissance | Raymond F. Jones | 1,951 | The story concerns two worlds: the remnants of Earth, which has been destroyed, and Kronweld, which exists in another plane. |
The Starmen | Leigh Brackett | 1,952 | The novel is a space opera concerning the only race that is able to endure the rigors of interstellar travel. |
Iceworld | Hal Clement | 1,953 | The novel concerns an interplanetary narcotics agent who is forced to work on an incredibly cold world (from his point of view — the planet is in fact Earth), where he teams up with natives of the alien planet (humans) in his attempt to stop the smuggling of a dangerous drug (tobacco) to Sirius. Although the story involves both aliens and humans, it is told primarily from an alien perspective. |
Mel Oliver and Space Rover on Mars | Joseph Samachson | 1,954 | The novel concerns the adventures of a boy and his sapient dog as they join a Martian circus. |
The Forgotten Planet | Murray Leinster | 1,954 | The "forgotten" planet had been seeded for life, first with microbes and later with plants and insects. A third expedition, intended to complete the seeding with animals, never occurred. Over the millennia the insects and plants grew to gigantic sizes. The action of the novel describes the fight for survival by descendants of a crashed spaceship as they battle wolf-sized ants, flies the size of chickens, and gigantic flying wasps. |
Erec rex | Kaza Kingsley | null | Life is not easy for twelve year old Erec Rex. His single mother works constantly, but can barely support her adopted kids. They have moved again, into an apartment so tiny that Erec sleeps with the washing machine. And worse, there is a strange force in Erec that makes him to do odd things. No matter how hard he fights it, his urge to obey grows until it is impossible to resist. Usually, it makes him do good things, like putting pillows at the bottom of stairs moments before his sister crashes down. But what if, someday, he is made to do something terrible? Then one morning, Erec's mother is missing. His power commands him to find her, taking him on an adventure that will change him forever. He meets Bethany, a kindred spirit who also lost both parents in a mysterious past. Together, they discover the magical worlds of Alypium,Ashona, and Aorth, where the knowledge of magic is kept. Things in Alypium are amiss: their King Piter is hypnotized, and his castle lies on its side. When Erec tries on his mother's glasses, he finds he can see her wherever she is. She is a prisoner of King Pluto of Aorth, one of the triplets that rule over the Kingdom of the Keepers. Erec can not understand why Pluto would want her ... but secrets start to tumble out. Erec learns he was born in Alypium, and he may not be safe there. He is upset she has hidden so much from him, and loses trust in her. His only hope to rescue his mother is to find ingredients for a formula to blast her free. While searching for them, he enters contests to choose the next three rulers of Alypium. The contests, including the "Pro and Contest", where they are reprimanded by movie characters, and the "Under Mine", are challenging enough, but somebody is attacking the winners, making kids afraid to compete. Erec's magical power helps him save friends from such things as swamp gas, attack fleas, and a minotaur. Balthazar Ugry, not only evil, but with a terrible smell, seems to be the culprit. Just looking at him makes Erec tremble. What's more, Erec discovers someone is planning to take over Alypium, as well as the other magical lands—Aorth and Ashona. Could this be Ugry as well? When the blasting formula is ready, Erec crosses King Pluto's deadly dungeons to save his mother, but he makes a mistake. He doubts her advice, and almost loses his life to the deadly destroyers and shadow demons. Amazed he survived, he puts on the glasses to find he freed his mother. With renewed confidence in each other, they plan a strategy. If he becomes the next king, he can save Alypium from Ugry, and his family could come out of hiding. Odds stacked against them, Erec and Bethany advance to the final contest, but something is not quite right. He must retrieve an eye from a ferocious dragon. King Pluto wants the eye, but Erec learns he must keep it. He escapes to the castle, where he is thrown into the clutches of his most deadly enemy. Ever since Erec Rex returned home, his siblings Danny and Sammy have been acting strange. They follow him, staring like lost puppies. The shock of Erec and their mother missing must have been too much for them. Erec returns to Alypium to tackle the twelve trials necessary to become king. When Danny and Sammy follow him there against his mother's wishes, Erec finds out they are impostors. The real Danny and Sammy have been kidnapped. Erec follows clues that lead him into the Green House, where President Inkle lives. He starts to believe the strange Hermit hanging around the castle might have something to do with the twin's disappearance. Erec wonders what harrowing escapade his first trial will be, and learns he has to . . . open a nestful of dragons eggs. Not only are the eggs difficult to open, but feeding the dragon hatchlings stings his fingers. On top of searching for Danny and Sammy, Erec is attempting to learn magic from his magic tutor Mr. Peebles. To make matters worse, the annoying Balor and Damon Stain, through a loophole in the magical law, are competing against him. Balor, Damon, and Rock Rayson are also working with Erec's enemy, Baskania, and if Erec doesn't win his quests, the future of the Kingdom of the Keepers won't look good. While Erec opens the dragon eggs, Damon Stain keeps interfering with him so Bethany and Jack try to fight him off resulting in one of the baby dragons getting hurt. After all the eggs hatch, it seems as if Balor won. After being defeated, Erec tries to feed them, hurting his fingers in the process, and the dragon mother comes back. After communicating with each other using Erec's dragon eye, the dragon mother thanks them and gives Erec a scroll, the scroll of Alithea which holds all of the answers in the universe. Erec's next trial is to "defeat the monsters in otherness", but he is not sure how to begin. He hears that two children are being held prisoner of terrible monsters called vogum in "Otherness", the wild magical worlds outside of Alypium, and he realizes they might be Danny and Sammy. A "snail mail" love letter, written on a real snail shell from a secret admirer, turns into a correspondence that helps Erec wind his way through the perils of Otherness to find the twins. Erec discovers the "monsters" are actually quite nice. In fact, Tina, his secret admirer, is a hydra herself. Baskania has massed an angry horde to "kill the hydras and save the children", planning to kill the hydra and valkyries for his dark purposes. Erec stands before Tina and her people, arms outstretched, pleading with the mob that the hydras are good, but Baskania twists his words. In a last attempt, Erec holds up the Scroll of Alithea. Shots ring out, and Erec waits for the sting of arrow and bullets, but then there is silence.He didn't get hit because Aosqueth, the dragon, blocks a death spell from Baskania. He then takes Aosqueths eye, giving him 2 eyes. The mob has dropped its arms, but Baskania vanishes. All seems lost, but Erec, using his dragon eye, finds Baskania just as he brought back one of his ancestors from the dead. With the help of this ancestor, and now the dragon eye he will take from Erec, Baskania will rule the world. With the help of an ancestor of his own, and using what he has learned, Erec saves the day, though in the process discovers two dangerous secrets. Baskania is madder still, and more determined to kill Erec and take his dragon eye. In book 3 of the Erec Rex series, Erec is faced with even more daunting tasks, choices, and dangers. Baskania is somehow getting information out of his friend, Oscar Felix. He cannot trust his friend. When Erec goes to collect his quest, Baskania is there. He pulls the quest out of Al's Well, but it is torn. All it says is "get behind". Erec goes in search for the Well of Delphi so he may talk to the fates in person. He does so but the fates are not much help, and just laugh and giggle like fangirls. Oscar suddenly shows up and demands to know how his father died. The fate tell him "Rosco killed him". But they are not alone. Balor Stain shows up just as Erec asks the fates who his father is. The fates become confused and think he means who is Balor's father. Balor turns out to be a clone of Baskania. The latest contest for Erec is to "get bee-hind and set it free". A Bee Hind is a mystical hind (deer) that attracts bees, not to mention the Substance. Erec must take this bee-hind from its home and let it roam free to spread the Substance all over the world. But the Bee-Hind is protecting a man, who had been a lackey of Baskania until he outsmarted him (he apparently did "something bad" to Ugry under Baskania's orders), and his son. If Erec removes the Bee-Hind, his new friends will be killed by a manticore. Erec eventually sets the Bee-Hind free, but instead of running away, he stays behind. He tells Bethany to go home, but she will not, even when he tries to trick her into leaving. Erec later saves the day by luring the manticore into a hole in the Substance, killing it. Erec's next task is to retrieve the five Awen from their mystical hiding places and unite them, a herculean undertaking that has laid waste to all those who have attempted it. Erec collects the Awen with the help of his friends, but the Twyth Boar is a trickier matter. The man who owned it once upon a time was now dead. Erec goes back in time to retrieve it, and discovers something truly shocking - he is one of the royal triplets. Erec goes back to his time and confronts King Piter, his father. Piter reveals that if Erec found out, the castle would collapse, which it promptly does. Erec goes to connect the Awen to the Twyth Boar. He gains perfect knowledge of all things, but gets rid of it to help fix the Substance. But the Boar comes back to him, though the intelligence does not. Erec and Bethany later discover that Baskania has kidnapped her brother. She goes to save him, but Baskania appears and captures her and demands to know her secret. Bethany, put under a spell, tells him that the Final Magic is found in the smallest child of the first king of Alympium's greatest seer, which happened to be Bethany. Erec saves Bethany in the end, but she was shot with an old spell. She is put in a deep sleep. After a day or so, a thought strikes Erec. He kisses her and she wakes up. In the Three Furies, Erec Rex is faced with more challenges than before. His best friend, and secret crush, Bethany, has been captured by Baskania, and he could not get to her in time to save her. She had been writing him letters, but he had been so concentrated on his mixed feelings about her since he kissed her to save her in the last book, and had not answered her. Thanatos Argus Baskania is the Shadow Prince who is after the Great Secret, which will direct him to the Final Magic. Erec has cloudy thoughts that appear in times of crisis, that help him stop bad things from happening. Once before he had a cloudy thought and pretty much turned into a fire breathing dragon. His most recent cloudy though brought him to the realization that Bethany was in danger. And he was correct. She has been taken by Baskania. Erec must return to the Kingdom of the Keepers to rescue Bethany, but he won't be going alone. His family will endure this adventure with him. Erec must visit with the Fates to see if they can help him figure out a way to save Bethany. Of course, like any adventure to save a damsel in distress, the task ahead will not be an easy one. There will be only one way to save Bethany, the steps that Erec must take will be extremely challenging. These steps will guide him down his path to becoming the King of Alypium. He must go to the Nightmare Realm where no one has ever returned from. Despite the dangers, Erec continues forward with these quests, determined to rescue Bethany. By using his mother's Seeing Glasses, he is able to contact Bethany. Her condition is not good, since she is chained to a chair with small metal cones around her head, which pull out her memories and play them on a screen so Baskania can sort through them to try to find the secret to the Final Magic. Bethany tries to persuade Erec not to rescue her, since she is being held in Baskania's most protected fortress, knowing he very well might not come out alive. Erec begins to worry, but continues to plan on helping her escape. After plenty of ordeals and challenges along the way, Erec finally makes his way into the fortress to help Bethany, but not without being caught by Baskania first. Baskania in turn multiplies Bethany so that there are a hundred Bethanys in the room, and he continues to kill them with magic until he hits the right one. Using his own magic, Erec manages to multiply himself and Baskania into different copies. Using his dragon eyes, and a comment to the real Bethany about how he told her he loved her, Erec manages to get Bethany and his friends out of the fortress. But that is not all. After completing his fifth quest, Erec gets his next quest, which tells him to give himself up to the three Furies. In other words, he has to give his soul to them and die, so that they can take revenge on the world. He has a hard time leaving his family, and Bethany, but he manages to sneak away to Tartarus to speak to the three Furies. Initially, he was hoping to find some way out of Tartarus alive, but after speaking with the Furies, he believes it to be impossible. The Furies do escape Tartarus into the real world, but whether or not Erec makes it out too is undisclosed unless you read the book. Erec Rex has had many difficult tasks in the past but none like the task he has to face right now. Erec has lost most of his soul and has to retrieve it from the three furies. If Erec doesn't get his soul back soon, he will turn evil. Meanwhile his brother, Trevor, is in trouble and Erec needs to save him as well. Erec has also received his 7th task which is just as dangerous as the last. Bethany, on the other hand, is stuck at home with Erec's family and Jam. Erec is also trying to release the souls kept by the furies free. To do this, however, he has to give himself up to his worst enemy: Baskania.This couldn't be a worst time for Erec to be facing what he is. For more info read Erec Rex: The Secret of Ashona |
Edgar Huntly | Charles Brockden Brown | 1,799 | Edgar Huntly, a young man who lives with his uncle and sisters (his only remaining family) on a farm outside Philadelphia, is determined to learn who murdered his friend Waldegrave. Walking near the elm tree under which Waldegrave was killed late one night, Huntly sees Clithero, a servant from a neighboring farm, half-dressed, digging in the ground and weeping loudly. Huntly concludes that Clithero may be the murderer. He also concludes that Clithero is sleepwalking. Huntly decides to follow Clithero when he sleep walks. Clithero leads Huntly through rough countryside, but all this following doesn't lead to Huntly learning much about the murder. Eventually, Huntly confronts Clithero when they are both awake and demands that he confess. Clithero does confess, but not to Waldegrave's murder. Instead he tells a complicated story about his life in Ireland, where he believes he was responsible for the death of a woman who was his patron, after which he fled to Pennsylvania. Clithero claims to know nothing about Waldegrave's murder. One night, soon after Huntly goes to sleep in his own bed, he wakes up in a completely dark place made of rock, which he eventually determines is a cave. He is hungry, thirsty, and feels as though he's been beaten. He is attacked by a panther, which he manages to kill and then drinks some of its blood and eats some of its flesh. Looking for his way out of the cave, he finds that some Lenni Lenape, an Indian tribe, are holding a white girl prisoner at the mouth of the cave. Edgar kills the guard and rescues the girl. In their flight, he kills more Indians, who seem to have begun a war. By the end of the novel, Edgar learns (among other things) that he himself has been sleepwalking, that Clithero was indeed not involved in Waldegrave's murder, that Waldegrave was murdered by a Lenni Lenape Indian, perhaps one he himself had killed, and that he and his fiancee are both destined to inherit nothing. |
No Picnic on Mount Kenya | null | null | Detained at P.O.W. Camp 354 near Nanyuki, Kenya, Felice Benuzzi from Trieste, together with two fellow-prisoners Dr. Giovanni ('Giuàn') Balletto from Genova and Vincenzo ('Enzo') Barsotti from Lido di Camaiore, escaped in January 1943 and climbed Mt Kenya with improvised equipment and meagre rations, two of them reaching a point above the Petit Gendarme, at about 5000 metres, high up the NW ridge. After an eventful 18-day period on the mountain (24 January-10 February), and to the astonishment of the British camp commandant, the three adventurers broke back into Camp 354. As reward for their exploit, they each received 28 days in solitary confinement, commuted to 7 days by the camp commandant in acknowledgement of their "sporting effort". From the flyleaf of the 1952 William Kimber edition of the book: :"One of the most unusual adventures of the war years has now been written by the man who led it, and who has the ability to tell his story with the accuracy and vividness that compels the readers to live through it with him. Felice Benuzzi was a P.O.W. in a British Camp facing Mount Kenya (5,199 m - 17,058 ft). The depressing tedium of camp life and the fascination of the mountain combined to inspire him with a plan. He first put the prospect of escaping to climb it to a fellow prisoner who was a professional mountaineer. The expert told him that the idea was mad, that they would need six months' training on first-class food and porters to carry equipment to a base camp. But Benuzzi was not to be put off. Eventually he got two others to conspire with him, a doctor and a sailor. Surreptitiously they improvised scant equipment and saved what food they could from rations. Their only 'map' of the mountain was a sketch of it on the label of an Oxo tin. :"And then they escaped, and went to climb the mountain. The sailor was ill immediately after breakout but decided to carry on. The lower reaches of Kenya are jungle and forest infested with big game. They were unarmed, and their encounters with the animals are some of the most exciting passages in the story. But Benuzzi writes with a simplicity and vigour that take you with him every yard of the way. At the foot of the highest peak the sailor was too ill to go further, and Benuzzi and the doctor went forward to the climax of their adventure. Their way back was as hazardous as the ascent, and the tension never relaxes until they at last break back into the P.O.W. camp from which they had escaped and give themselves up to the British Commandant." |
Star Bridge | Jack Williamson | 1,955 | The scattered planets are held together by the Eron Company, holder—at least apparently—of the secret of faster-than-light travel through the Tubes. The leaders of Eron are gathered on ancient Earth to dedicate a new Tube. Though aging General Manager Garth Kohlnar is nearing death from natural causes, the adventurer Horn has been hired by parties unknown to assassinate him. Making his way through the desert, past a gauntlet of guards and security forces, Horn encounters Wu, an aging Chinese vendor, and his curious shape-changing companion Lil, neither of whom seem capable of surviving the dangers and harsh conditions of the desert. Yet they are every bit his equal in reaching the celebration, descending from hiding to mingle with the wealthy, entertaining the idle while Lil steals and consumes their diamonds. Horn completes his mission, and in the desperate struggle to escape the ensuing manhunt, he encounters Wendre Kohlnar, the beautiful daughter and now possibly the heir-apparent of the dead man. Escaping through a transdimensional Tube in a space suit, Horn finds himself on the planet Eron, a world consumed by the Eron Company. Here he encounters a corrupt and effeminate aristocracy, a brewing power struggle over the succession, a covert revolution, a secret subway known only to the Directors—and Wu and Lil, at every turn displaying more mysterious knowledge and capability. The mystery of who actually knows the secret of the Tubes becomes increasingly important in the quest to become General Manager. Horn attends a meeting of the Directors in disguise, with Wu playing the role of Director Matal (the real one having been murdered by an agent of the ambitious Duchane, Director of Security). Horn and Wu rescue Wendre and escape while the other Directors are locked in a presumably fatal struggle. They make their way to the North Polar Cap and attempt to turn off the Tubes, finding that mere possession of pure Golden Blood is not, in fact, the secret of deactivating them. Troops and revolutionaries clash incoherently at the polar cap, and Horn is eventually captured and sent to the prison planet of Vantee. Forging an alliance with the outlaws there, he takes advantage of the political conflict in the home world to capture the prison, apparently rescuing in the process Peter Sair, the Liberator, the leader of the failed revolt against Eron wherein Horn learned his skills. Returning with Sair to the chaos of Eron, Horn is able to capture the critical polar cap Tube station and thus take control of the planet, which he hands over to Wendre, and she in turn to Sair. As Horn and Wendre Kohlnar interview the imprisoned Duchane, Horn is tricked into shooting the prisoner just before he can reveal a key secret: the nature of Wu. Wu, in turn, falls victim to the temptation to explain his curious place in history to Horn, his intended victim, but Horn is rescued by Wendre and Wu is apparently (finally) shot dead. Wendre and Horn plan to marry and move to the rural Cluster, far from her Eronian home. Is Wu the puppet master controlling all, or merely an immortal opportunist? Is freedom an illusion or a necessity, or both? The answers are recorded in a manuscript in Chinese that no one but Wu can read. |
Noonshade | James Barclay | null | At the end of the last book Denser had cast dawnthief to destroy the Wytch Lords, and just to make sure they don't come back he opened a dimensional rip leading to nowhere. But unknowingly he had it opening into Sha-kaan's (the golden dragon in the last book) dimension. In this book the Raven have to close the dimensional rip hovering above Parve, which is growing. If they fail then the Khaan brood won't be able to hold the other, larger broods off. |
Address: Centauri | F. L. Wallace | 1,955 | The novel concerns people with incurable injuries and defects who volunteer for the first interstellar flight. |
Kirinyaga | Mike Resnick | 1,988 | The story is set on an artificial orbital colony that recreates an African savannah environment. It follows a man named Koriba, the mundumugu of a Kikuyu tribe living there. Koriba was raised in a Western tradition and received several graduate degrees. Later, he led several Kikuyu colonists to Kirinyaga to recreate a traditional Kikuyu utopia. When he kills a newborn child he believes is a demon, Maintenance (the people who maintain the environment and orbit of Kirinyaga) decide to send an investigator to see if they need to interfere with and regulate the Kikuyu traditions. Koriba is unbending in his insistence that Maintenance not interfere with their traditions no matter how much they dislike them. In the end Maintenance informs Koriba that they will not tolerate the killing of infants, and thus he begins to train the young men of his tribe to be warriors. |
Sargasso of Space | Andre Norton | 1,955 | The novel starts with Dane Thorson getting assigned to work as a Cargo master apprentice on a Free Trader ship named Solar Queen. A Free Trader (not working for any intergalactic trading companies) means that the crew has to take on trading contracts with remote and recently discovered planets, which can be very dangerous and unpredictable. The crew wages all their saving, including their own salaries, to win a bid for trading right with the planet Limbo. Upon their arrival, they learn that intelligent life on Limbo is very limited and trading is almost impossible, and they also discover that they are not the only humans on the planet. The criminal group used sophisticated machinery to crash and loot various ships on the planet. Dane and his friends are able to contact the police and shut down the system the criminals used. At the end, Limbo is handed over to the police and Solar Queen gets a much better trading contract. |
This Fortress World | James Gunn | 1,955 | The novel concerns a man's fight against the power of a future church. |
Play to the End | Robert Goddard | 2,004 | Middle-aged actor Toby Flood is touring the South of England with a recently discovered play by Joe Orton called Lodger in the Throat. When the company arrive in Brighton for a one-week run at the Theatre Royal, Flood is confident that he will be able to use his stay to get in touch with his estranged wife Jenny, who has filed for divorce and is now living with Roger Colborn, a local businessman, on the outskirts of the city. Flood is surprised to find that it is Jenny who contacts him first: She tells him she is being stalked and, as she believes that her husband is to blame for it, asks him to do something about it. This is how Flood meets Derek Oswin, the alleged stalker, an eccentric man his own age who, just like his deceased father and grandfather before him, worked for the Colborns' family business until its liquidation in 1989. It turns out Oswin has written a history of the company but so far has not found a publisher. Talking to Oswin and to other people he meets, either by chance or by design, Flood more and more gets the impression that Roger Colborn is a dangerous man who has something to hide, and that Jenny must be saved from the clutches of the Colborn family before it is too late. Thus, Flood's interest in the affairs of a now defunct company is fuelled by his desire to win back Jenny, so much so that his professional life is affected. Trying to dig up dirt on the Colborns, he is drawn into a quagmire of events he cannot make head or tail of and eventually misses an evening's performance without giving any notice. When, however, on the following day he finds his understudy—the man who saved his neck the previous night—dead in the streets of Brighton he realizes the seriousness of the situation. In the course of one week homes are broken into, evidence is stolen, several people die, family secrets are uncovered, and an inheritance is reclaimed. Justice triumphs in the end. |
Donald Duk | Frank Chin | 1,991 | Donald Duk is a twelve-year-old Chinese-American. He is the son of a Chinese chef father named King Duk, and a Chinese mother named Daisy Duk. Donald has two older twin sisters named Penelope and Venus Duk. From the start of the book we are told how embarrassed Donald is of his name and of being introduced with his family. The story begins with Donald comparing himself to Fred Astaire. Donald believes he dances as well as Fred and throughout the novel considers himself the real "Chinese Fred Astaire" (91). Donald immerses himself in old black-and-white movies, and especially admires Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films. He envies the way "everyone" adores Fred when he dances. Donald wishes he could "live the late-night life in old black-and-white movies and talk with his feet like Fred Astaire, and smile Fred Astaire's sweet lemonade smile" (1). Donald Duk's father, King, feels Donald dreams too much in black-and-white, wanting to become as American as possible. Donald is ashamed of the way his family rejects American culture and that even when they watch television "they make everybody on the TV look Chinese!" (91). Donald does not want to be like them, he considers himself American because he was born in America. Donald's father tells him, "I think Donald Duk may be the very last American-born Chinese-American boy to believe you have to give up being Chinese to be an American" (42). As Donald and his family welcome the Chinese New Year, Donald's best friend, Arnold Azalea, stays over at Donald's home in Chinatown in order to observe Chinese culture and celebrate the new year. On the first day of the New Year, Donald's family begins to talk about Chinese immigrants working on the Central Pacific Railroad end of the Transcontinental Railroad. Donald begins to have dreams of being a part of the Chinese men that built that railroad. Every night he dreams of the days getting closer to the Chinese men finishing and ending up at Promontory Summit. As these dreams progress, he is inspired to research the work the Chinese immigrants put into this track laying and found no credit had been given to the Chinese immigrants in American history books. Suddenly Donald finds himself claiming that white people are racists. Upon reaching this conclusion, King tells his son that not all white people are racist and that up to that point, Donald was the one that was ashamed of who he was. Donald realizes he can be American born and be influenced by his Chinese heritage. |
The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn | null | null | The plot centers on the eponymous hero, Savva Grudtsyn. Savva is the son of Foma Grudstyn-Usov, a merchant from the city of Velikii Ustiug in the northern Vologda region of Russia. As a young man, Savva goes to live in the town of Orel, where he is offered great hospitality by a friend of his father's, Bazhen Vtory. Bazhen is an old, respected, well-to-do merchant who is married to his third wife, a much younger woman who remained unnamed in the story. Savva is seduced by this woman and begins a sexual relationship with her: the narrator makes it clear that the woman and the Devil are primarily to blame rather than Savva himself. However, while attending church on the holy festival of the Ascension, Savva repents and refuses to continue the affair. Bazhen's wife, furious, poisons Savva's wine with a powerful aphrodisiac that causes his lust to return. However, she refuses to submit to him when he approaches him and drives him away from the house. Savva, still desperately lusting for Bazhen's wife, makes a Faustian bargain with the Devil: he realizes he would be willing to serve the Devil in order to sleep with this woman. Sure enough, a demon appears in the guise of a brother figure from Great Utsiug. He informs Savva that he can have his heart's desire if he writes a letter to renounce Christ and God, which Savva promptly does. The extent of Savva's consciousness in writing the letter is unclear: Savva visits a golden city with this demon, a representation of Hell, where he is treated to a lavish meal at the table of Satan and presents his letter to him. They continue their travels to the town of Pavlov Perevoz, where a holy beggar tries in vain to get Savva to repent. He gains the respect of the Tsar and fights against the Poles in the city of Smolensk. The demon tells him he will face and defeat three brave warriors, but the third will injure him; indeed this comes to pass. Shortly afterwards, in Moscow, Savva falls seriously ill while living under the care of a Captain and his wife. His wife calls a priest to get Savva's confession administer the Last Rites, in case he does not survive. He finally confesses to the priest, but a multitude of demons appear and he faces extreme pain and torture when doing so. However, Savva is eventually saved and sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, John the Apostle and Metropolitan Peter of Moscow. He fully recovers physically with the help of the Captain, his wife and the support of the Tsar. He is called by God, and a miracle occurs in church before the Tsar and the Metropolitan: his letter denouncing God becomes a profession of faith to the Virgin Mary and God. Savva renounces his wicked ways, distributes his wealth to the poor and becomes a monk. |
Caddie, the story of a barmaid | null | null | The book tells the story of Caddie, starting with her birth in Penrith, New South Wales, in 1900 to a family living in poverty. They move to railway camps at Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains where her father works as a railway fettler. His abuse becomes worse when her mother dies in childbirth and her brother is killed at the Gallipoli landing. To escape her family, she moves to Sydney to work as a shop assistant with her friend, Esther, while still a young woman. She meets and marries a middle class man, John Marsh, and has two children by him. She feels constrained by the control taken by her mother in law, living next door, who treats her as undeserving of her son, as Caddie is not "pure merino" (i.e. with only free settler, not convict, ascendants). Caddie leaves when she uncovers John's sexual relationship with Esther. John and his mother endeavour to retain custody of the children, although Caddie believes this is really only to spite her. Caddie moves to the first available cheap accommodation, only to find that it is predominantly used as a brothel. Caddie finds better paid work as a barmaid, a morally suspect position- her first employer tells her to shorten her dress, for example, because "she was an artwork, and he liked his artwork on display." She places her children in the care of a Church- run home, having tried leaving them with carers who mistreated and neglected them. She visits weekly, often with her barmaid friend, Leslie. When the Depression hits, tips are less common and both women's incomes drop dramatically. Through Leslie, Caddie meets a Greek immigrant and business owner, Peter, with whom she establishes a loving relationship, with Peter buying gifts for weekend visits with Caddie's children. Caddie and Peter are distressed when Peter's estranged wife and ill father call him back to Greece to run the family business. The couple corresponds, with Peter reporting that his attempts to divorce his wife have been unsuccessful. With the effects of the Depression deepening, Caddie takes additional work by running tabs for the pub's SP bookmaker. She takes back custody of her children and rents a house, furnishing it with fruit cases for chairs. She befriends Bill "the Rabbittoh" (rabbit seller), Sonny his brother and their parents, and Bill helps her sign up for the dole (sustenance food provisions meant for those without income). Caddie saves some money when she starts running the SP books herself, the bookmaker having moved on to legal bookmaking at the racecourse. Caddie decides to leave the city, having been offered work on a farm. She moves house to share with rabbittoh for a week to save rent before moving to mountains for other work, but remains there when the work offer is withdrawn. She emotionally supports, and is supported by, Bill's family, including caring for his elderly father before his death. Around this time, Peter's wife dies, and Peter asks Caddie to migrate. Caddie feels unable to do this, but Peter is tied to Greece to keep the business alive. The story ends in tragedy when Peter returns, following the death of his wife, and the couple is finally able to make plans to marry. When he buys a new car, he takes the whole family driving and dies in a tragic car crash when swerving to avoid collision with a truck, only four days before their planned wedding. Caddie makes a chance reacquaintance with Esther, who has been deserted by John, and has contracted tuberculosis. Against her wishes, Caddie's son enlists at the outbreak of World War II. Bill and Sonny go "on the wallaby track", searching remote areas for subsistence work. |
The French Confection | Anthony Horowitz | 2,003 | The Diamond Brothers win a dream holiday in Paris due to an award from a yoghurt company. On the train, they meet Erica Nice, a French baker, and Jed Mathis, a Texan oilman. The Diamond Brothers mention to them that they are staying at Hotel Le Chat Gris. The steward drops some coffee at hearing this. As the Diamond Brothers get off the train, they are met by the steward who tells them to beware of someone called the Mad American and hands them a sugar sachet. The steward is later pushed under a train. At the hotel, they see a man in gray who seems to be interested in them. Two thugs, Bastille and Lavache, accost the brothers in the street with a knife, and threateningly demand to know what the steward gave to them. While trying to get away from them, Nick and Tim jump from a bridge into a passing bateau mouche. They are locked up by the gendarmes but when they mention Bastille and Lavache they are hurriedly released. They return to find their hotel room has been turned upside down, soon after they are kidnapped and interrogated. They realize they are in a drugs factory, and Nick guesses that the sugar sachet must contain drugs. The criminals try to kill the brothers by giving them an overdose, but fortunately they are taken to hospital just in time, as the Police were out looking for them. The man in grey, who is from the Sûreté, asks for their help. He is revealed to be from a French company fighting against drugs, and says Le Chat Gris is sometimes used by the Mad American, meaning he thought the Brothers had come to buy drugs. Nick remembers some things about the place they were held and realises the place is in the Jewish Quarter, due to a blue star he saw, and they track down the Mad American - who turns out to be Madame Erica Nice. She is arrested for running a drug smuggling racket after Nick and Tim knock her out with a giant cake when entering her cake shop, 'The French Confection'. |
Dogeaters | Jessica Hagedorn | 1,990 | Dogeaters follows the stories of several characters in the Philippines, including members of the Alacran, Avila and Gonzaga families. A dictator rules the country. However, leftists are challenging his authority and his actions, resulting in great turmoil and violence. The book begins with lengthy introductions and character descriptions. Rio Gonzaga plays the role of narrator for her family; other important characters are introduced through a third person narrator, such as the wealthy Severo Alacran, and his wife Isabel. The contrast between the upper-class lives of the Gonzagas and Alacrans and the poorer characters portrays the disparity amongst the different classes in Filipino society. Another narrator is Joey Sands, a local DJ at a gay club and a male prostitute. The book also explores the relationship between aspiring actor Romeo Rosales and Trinidad Gamboa. Despite the beliefs of many Filipinos, the lives of actresses such as Lolita Luna are not glamorous, but are instead a spiraling trap of drugs and sexual exploitation. The novel intertwines these characters and stories through a series of events, including the "Young Miss Philippines" annual pageant, the Manila International Film Festival, and the assassination of human rights activist Senator Domingo Avila. Daisy Avila, the Senator's daughter, wins the beauty pageant, but instead of rejoicing in her victory, she becomes depressed and withdraws into her family home. She later publicly denounces the pageant, enters into a tumultuous relationship with foreign banker Malcolm Webb and then gets involved with political leftist Santos Tirador. Meanwhile, the collapse of a cultural center during construction for the film festival kills many Filipino workers. The First Lady orders cement to be poured over the bodies and the continuation of construction. Rainer, a German director visiting for the film festival, convinces Joey to stay with him for the week that he is there. On the last day, Joey steals money and drugs from Rainer and witnesses Senator Domingo Avila's assassination. Joey ends up escaping to a rebel camp in the mountains. There, he meets Daisy Avila, who has been raped and tortured by General Ledesma and his military men as a result of her relationship with Santos, and hopes her sister and mother have escaped the country. It is revealed that Romeo has been framed for Senator Avila's assassination. Rio then narrates the rest of the story, explaining the life stories of her family members. |
Reprieve from Paradise | H. Chandler Elliott | 1,955 | The novel is set after an atomic war and the world is run by Polynesians. The hero discovers a plot to turn the earth on its axis in order to create an Antarctic utopia. |
The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. | George Steiner | 1,981 | From his base in Tel Aviv, Holocaust survivor Emmanuel Lieber directs a group of Jewish Nazi hunters in search of Adolf Hitler. Lieber believes that the former Führer is still alive and following rumours and hearsay, he tracks Hitler's movements through South America, until after months of wading through swamps in the Amazon jungle, the search party finds the 90-year-old alive in a clearing. Lieber flies to San Cristóbal where he awaits the group's return with their captive. But getting the old man out of the swamp alive is more difficult than getting in, and their progress is further hampered by heavy thunderstorms. Meanwhile, broken and incoherent radio messages between Lieber and the search party are intercepted by intelligence agents tracking their progress, and rumours begin to spread across the world of Hitler's capture. Debates flare up over his impending trial, where it will be held and under whose jurisdiction. Orosso is identified as the nearest airfield to the last known location of the search party, and aircraft begin arriving at the hitherto unknown town. But when the search party's radio fails and communication with Lieber is lost, they must make a decision: do they sit out the storms and deliver their captive to Lieber later, or do they try Hitler here and now in the jungle before their prize is snatched from them and Israel by the world at large, who they know will be waiting for them? Their decision is the latter, and against Lieber's advice ("You must not let him speak [...] his tongue is like no other") they prepare for a trial with a judge, prosecution and defence "attorneys" selected from the members of the search party. Teku, a local Indian tracker, who had earlier burst in on their camp, is asked to observe the trial as an independent witness. The attention Hitler is receiving, however, renews his strength, and when the trial begins, he brushes aside his "defence attorney" and begins a long speech in four parts in his own defence: #Firstly, Hitler claims he took his doctrines from the Jews and copied the notion of the master race from the Chosen people and their need to separate themselves from the "unclean". "My racism is a parody of yours, a hungry imitation." #Hitler justifies the Final Solution by maintaining that the Jews' God, purer than any other, enslaves its subjects, continually demanding more than they can give and "blackmailing" them with ideals that cannot be attained. The "virus of utopia" had to be stopped. #Hitler states that he was not the originator of evil. "[Stalin] had perfected genocide when I was still a nameless scribbler in Munich." Further, Hitler asserts that the number of lives lost due to his actions are dwarfed by various world atrocities, including those in Russia, China, and Africa. #Lastly, Hitler maintains that the Reich begat Israel and suggests that he is the Messiah "whose infamous deeds were allowed by God in order to bring His people home." He closes by asking, "Should you not honour me who have made [...] Zion a reality?" At the end of his speech, Teku is the first to react and jumps up shouting "Proven", only to be drowned out by the appearance of a helicopter over the clearing. *Emmanuel Lieber – Jewish Holocaust survivor and director of the search party to find Hitler; after crawling out of a death pit in Bialka he never took the time to mend and embarked on a life-consuming obsession to bring those responsible for the genocide to justice. *Search party (all Jewish with family ties to the Holocaust, except for John Asher) **Simeon – search party leader and "presiding judge" at Hitler's trial; he is Lieber's confidant and torn between leading the party into "unmapped quicksand and green bogs" and turning his back on the "quiet mania of Lieber's conviction". **Gideon Benasseraf – falls ill and dies before the trial begins; during one of his fever-induced ramblings he suggests that Hitler is Jewish; he had sought out Lieber after being released from a sanatorium and spending three years recuperating in Paris where the care-free living consumed him with guilt. **Elie Barach – Orthodox Jew and "prosecution attorney" at the trial; he is the moral compass of the group, but his convictions are disturbed by Gideon Benasseraf's fever-induced assertions that Hitler is Jewish and ends up believing that Hitler may be the second Messiah. **Isaac Amsel – an 18-year old boy and witness at the trial; **John Asher – half-Jewish and reluctant "defence attorney" at the trial; *Teku – local Indian tracker and independent witness at the trial; previously the search party's guide who had abandoned them when they insisted on entering uncharted regions of the jungle, he continued tracking them from a distance before revealing himself. *Adolf Hitler – now 90 years old, the former leader of the Third Reich had not died in the Führerbunker in Berlin, but escaped to South America and hid in the Amazon jungle. |
Highways in Hiding | George O. Smith | 1,956 | The novel concerns ESP and a disease that turns men into supermen. It contains multiple plotlines concerning the interactions of people that can sense things (espers) and people that can read thoughts (telepaths). This is set against the plot of a secret society that is harboring people that are infected with a spaceborne illness called Mekstrom's Disease. The disease is the point on which the plot turns. People get infected and it slowly turns them into a sort of rock. The hardening begins at one of the extremities such as a finger or toe and slowly begins to creep up the infected limb. Eventually all the extremities are hardening and the disease makes its way to the body proper. At this point, the body is hardened until the vitals fail and the patient dies. The plot turns on a secret society that has found a cure for the infected. To hide themselves from the public at large they have devised a hidden highway program that leads the infected to "Mekstrom safehouses" of sorts. |
World Without End | Joe Haldeman | 1,979 | Captain Kirk and a landing party of four have gone aboard an alien starship/planetoid. They are in prison, awaiting questioning. Commander Spock is in command, but is unable to do much. Mysterious tentacles have ensnared the ship, draining power. Spock finds himself with little options, remaining on board and eventually crashing to the planetoid surface or beaming inside to join the Captain. |
Plague Ship | Andre Norton | 1,956 | The main protagonist of the novel is Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice on the Free Trader rocket ship the Solar Queen. Free Traders take on trading contracts on remote and recently discovered planets, which can be dangerous and unpredictable. The Solar Queen has recently obtained a valuable trading contract on the planet Sargol and are building a relationship with one of the races on the planet, the cat-like Salariki. The process goes slowly till the Slariki discover that the Solar Queen is carrying catnip and other plants from Terra that are unknown on Sargol. The traders exchange what little of the plants they have for the rare and valuable Koros stones and collect a native red-colored wood to exchange at home. At the last minute the storm priests of the Slarariki demand that the Solar Queen take a pre-paid contract to return within 6 months with more plants. A few days after leaving the planet, several members of the crew suffer from attacks, which start with severe headaches and end in a semi-coma state. Only 4 of the younger members of the crew are unaffected, including Dane Thorson. Upon exiting hyperspace on return to the vicinity of Terra, the crew discovers that they are pariah and have been declared a plague ship. On the short hop to earth, the crew discovers that pests have invaded the ship and are the cause of the illness. In a final bid to prove their case they kidnap a medic and present his evidence by video to a solar-system-wide audience, which is successful. In the meantime the rest of the crew have recovered, and after a final effort of negotiation the Solar Queen preserves its reputation by selling the contract with the Salariki to a large intergalactic trading company in exchange for credits and a quiet inter-solar mail route, which should lead to no more trouble. |
Cemetery Dance | Douglas Preston | 2,009 | Pendergast returns to NYC in New York Times bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's newest novel featuring the enigmatic FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast. After celebrating their first anniversary, William Smithback, a NY Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archeologist, return home from a romantic dinner. Kelly slips out to pick up a pastry from the local shop, but upon her return to their apartment in the Upper West side of Manhattan, she finds the door ajar, Smithback dead, and is attacked as she approaches. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, the attacker seen leaving the building was an individual who lived in the apartment building along with Smithback and Kelly. The twist: the man that witnesses believe is Smithback's murderer was pulled from the river dead, after committing suicide, two weeks before the attack. D'Agosta, a homicide detective, leads the official investigation, while FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast's and Kelly's involvement leads to a less traditional quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them into a part of Manhattan they never imagined could exists: a secretive and deadly hotbed of Obeah, the West Indian Zombi cult of sorcery and magic. It is here they find their true peril is just beginning. it:Il sotterraneo dei vivi |
Lilith: A Snake in the Grass | Jack L. Chalker | 1,981 | The Confederacy, a massive space empire, duplicates the personality of its best agent and implants it into four brain-dead hosts. These hosts are sent to the four planets of a penal colony, the Warden Diamond, to investigate an alien threat and assassinate the four lords of the planets, the "Four Lords of the Diamond." The original agent is on a picket ship and downloads information from his copies. A copy of the agent wakes up in the body of "Cal Tremon," a criminal on a prison ship heading to Lilith. He must then adapt to Lilith, a beautiful tropical world where its Warden Organism, a symbiotic microorganism, destroys all non-Lilith material, making modernization very difficult. Thus, the several million inhabitants of Lilith's feudal society are serfs. The nobility of Lilith are the few who can control the organisms. The agent thus finds himself a serf, with no hope of advancing unless he harnesses the power of the Warden Organisms. When a girl he liked was being taken away for experimentation, he taps into his Warden powers and kills the overseer, a petty tyrant. While living in the Castle, the residence of the Duke, Cal gains some initial training and knowledge. He escapes when he learns that the nobles plan to kill him. Outside of the castle walls, he gains a secure status in Lilith's society and no longer desires to serve the Confederacy. Instead, he realizes that the Lord of Lilith, Marek Kreegan, a former Assassin of the Confederacy, cooperates with the aliens to preserve peace and order. Cal learns that Kreegan dissuaded the aliens from a genocide against humanity, choosing the slower course of subversion and sabotage instead. Cal does not kill Kreegan. His girlfriend, believing that Kreegan's death would will elevate Cal to Lordship, kills Kreegan by using a potion to draw on Cal's power. The Agent wakes up in the picket ship, worried about his duplicate's behavior in Lilith. |
Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored | null | 1,992 | The beginning of the book describes Cole's background, and that of every member of the band. He also briefly describes the atmosphere of 1960s London. He claims that he always wanted to be in the music business, and that at one point he began to play the drums but did not pursue this path. He recounts his experience as tour manager for The Who and his venture into other aspects of the 1960s London scene, including the mod subculture. The book documents Cole's personal experiences as tour manager for one of the biggest bands of all time. It also shows how the constant pressure of touring and recording was beginning to take a toll on the band's members, even as early as 1969. Cole reveals that he developed close and personal friendships with each of the band members, and recounts the devastating impact that the death of John Bonham had on him. He also discusses the substance abuse problems which he developed in the 1970s, and which ultimately led to him being fired by Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, after the Knebworth Festival in 1979. The book also describes his life immediately after Led Zeppelin's downfall. At the time of their collapse he was trying to shed his heroin addiction in Italy when he was falsely accused of terrorism for involvement in the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing. Whilst imprisoned he underwent forced detox from heroin. Sleepless nights, constant sweat, diarrhea, and pain were some things he experienced while he was in the custody of the Italian police. When released, Cole was no longer addicted to heroin but he had no money as he had spent it all on drugs prior to his incarceration, and he could no longer rely on a steady income from an involvement with Led Zeppelin. He said that for the first time since before he became a tour manager he had to work on the scaffolds. |
Queen of Demons | David Drake | 1,998 | In the introduction, the current King of the Isles, Valence III, and his wizard, Silyon, make a deal with the Beast to regain control of his kingdom from his wife, the Queen. Meanwhile, the main characters are in Erdin where they discover the dead remains of a Scaled Man on their ship, which Tenoctris sees as a bad omen. With the exception of Ilna, they book passage on the ship Lady of Mercy, bound for the Isle of Valles, where Garric intends to declare himself King of the Isles. Before they leave, Ilna gives Liane a sash that she has woven which will notify her if Liane is ever in trouble. Before the ship reaches Valles, a lens appears in the sky and swallows the ship, causing it to wreck. Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris awake, following the shipwreck, in the land of the Ersa. They eventually make it back to their own world. There they are picked up by a hunting party, led by the noble, Lord Royhas. Rather than dispose of Garric, as he was ordered to, Royhas takes Garric back into the city and holds a council with several other powerful nobles. They express their loyalty to the King but ask Garric’s help in overthrowing the Queen. Tenoctris uses a mirror to spy on the Queen and discovers that she is a demon. Garric plans an attack on the mansion. When they’ve passed all the Queen’s safeguards, Garric uses iron to destroy the Queen’s gate to another world, but the she has already escaped. Following this, Garric appoints himself Prince Regent under King Valence III and demands the allegiance of the Lords who backed him in the revolt. Meanwhile Admiral Nitker, of the Royal Navy, has declared himself the new Lord of the Isles. Garric promises to destroy Admiral Nitkers and the rebellious navy if they don’t return to the King’s service. Garric goes before King Valence III and receives his blessing as Prince Regent. Tenoctris discovers that the Queen’s mansion was a nexus of portals to many different worlds, one of which led to the Beast. Cashel uses his quarterstaff to escape the lens that swallowed the ship and saves Sharina as well. They are rescued by Folquin, King of the nearest Isle, and his two wizards, Halphemos and Cerix. Folquin then seeks to marry Sharina. When Halphemos' talking ape, Zahag, throws a fit during a chess game with Liane, Cashel attempts to settle him down. Halphemos, casts a spell to immobilize the ape but the wizardess Silya secretly interferes and sends them to another world. Folquin immediately has Halphemos arrested. Cashel awakes after the transportation on a parallel island of Pandah. He and Zahag meet the lady Sosia who asks Cashel to save her daughter, Aria, who is imprisoned by a wizard Ilmed and the Scaled Men who serve him. Cashel and Zahag succeed in rescuing the princess Aria, but she is less than thrilled. They flee through several magical portals, eventually ending up back on the Isle of Pandah. After they defeat the wizardess Silya, Princess Aria (who has decided to marry Folquin) arranges a boat to help Cashel find Sharina. They arrive in Valles where they run into Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos and then make their way to the palace where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. Sharina and Cerix break Halphemos out of prison and then they go in search of Ilna for help in recovering Cashel. But a wizard with the appearance and voice of Nonnus, Sharina’s one-time protector, shows up and tricks her into leaving with him on another ship. Cerix and Halphemos to continue on their way to find Ilna. Sharina eventually discovers the treachery and jumps ship. She is rescued by a large man, named Hanno, who takes her to his home on the Isle of Bight. A phantasm and a group of Hairy Men sent by the Queen attack Hanno and Sharina, but they defeat them. They later discover that the Hairy Men have destroyed Hanno’s boat. While searching for a way off the island, the false Nonnus and his crew discover Sharina. The spirit of the true Nonnus comes to her, possesses her body temporarily, and destroys her pursuers. She and Hanno make their way to the volcano at the center of the island and climb to the top. From there they can see that the Hairy Men, led by phantasms, are building boats so they can attack Ornifal. One of the phantasms captures Sharina and conveys her to the Queen. The Queen shows Sharina images of her friends (and an image of the Hairy Men on their way to Valles) and implies that she controls their fates through a chess board. The Queen tells Sharina that she intends to use her to find the Throne of Malkar. Sharina watches as the fleet of Hairy Men reaches the Royal Navy and destroys it, but Admiral Nitkers escapes. When the Queen threatens to send a giant ammonite against Cashel, Sharina agrees to help her. Ilna begins setting up shop in Erdin, but this time with the intent to good rather than evil. Using her craft she begins improving the conditions of the city. But Cerix and Halphemos eventually find her and seek her help in recovering her brother Cashel. Cerix realizes that many of Ilna’s patterns contain writings in the Old Script—even though she can’t read or write. She agrees to go with them. Before they can leave Erdin, though, they are captured by a band of Scaled Men. They load Ilna onto a ship and travel through a portal. Cerix and Halphemos find her sash, which she dropped during her tussle with the Scaled Men. It reveals a spell that takes them into a desert world. When Ilna’s captors are attacked by Flyers, Ilna leaps through a portal opened by Cerix and Halphemos. Just as they seem to be succumbing to the desert, The People of Beauty arrive and rescue them. Ilna convinces the People of Beauty transport them to the city of Divers on Third Atara. They seek out the Baron Robilard. In his palace, Halphemos gets into trouble and Baron Robilard has him arrested. Ilna goes to Robilard to seek Halphemos’ release. Robilard makes demands, which Ilna fulfills, though to unfavorable results. A humbled Robilard frees Halphemos and offers to personally escort them to Valles. When they get there, Ilna is relieved when she finally finds Cashel. They make their way to the castle where they find Garric, Liane, and Tenoctris. When all except Sharina have been reunited, they set out to find the lair of the Beast. Admiral Nitkers arrives in Valles to warn them of the oncoming invasion of Hairy Men. Garric immediately orders preparations for battle. The Queen forces Sharina to participate in a spell which is meant to reveal the Throne of Malkar. Instead they learn that it is Garric, not Sharina, that the Queen needs. In the castle, the wizard Silyon and Admiral Nitker kidnap Liane and turn her over to the Beast, fifty meters down a well. At this point Ilna tears her sash and it reveals how to rescue Liane, by giving the key words (in the Old Script) needed to enter its lair. Garric enters the well and Ilna, Cerix, and Halphemos follow him down. The Beast attacks them, revealing that the Yellow King had imprisoned it there long ago and that it had lured them there to release it from its prison. It devours Halphemos and a grieving Cerix finishes the incantation so that the Beast can’t escape. Instead it dissolves into fiery lava, unable to die because of its immortality, endlessly burning. Meanwhile, Tenoctris opens up the Queen’s escape portal and Cashel and Zahag travel through it to where she is holding Sharina captive. He uses his staff to destroy the Queen and rescue Sharina. They meet back up with Tenoctris. A little later, Ilna, Cerix, Garric, and Liane arrive, escaping from the Beast’s lair. Tenoctris and Cashel confiscate the Queen’s chessboard. Tenoctris notes that the Queen herself was a pawn on the board, just like those she tried to manipulate. She and Cashel also notice the appearance of a new piece on the board—representing an island-sized black ammonite that an unknown wizard has just called up from the depths of the ocean. |
Path of Unreason | George O. Smith | 1,958 | The novel concerns a physicist who is trying to explain the mysterious "Lawson Radiation" while his researches drive him insane. |
The White Gryphon | Mercedes Lackey | 1,997 | The story takes place ten years after the end of The Black Gryphon. The k'Leshya tribe of the Kaled'a'in nation, along with the gryphons, some hertasi, tervardi, and kyree, have fled from the gates that they escaped before the Cataclysm from the end of the mage wars. They have traveled very far and have reached the ocean, and now have established a city called, White Gryphon. The city is named based on its shape, a large gryphon preparing for flight over the ocean, and the white gryphon, Skandranon. The city has established a council to govern all aspects of the city life. The council members consist of Skandranon, Amberdrake, Cinnabar, Judeth, and Snowstar. The Cataclysm has led to mage storms that causes magic to be unstable, meaning that many that had the mage ability have lost their powers, or are seriously weakened. Amberdrake as one of the council members brings up a man that is practicing as a kestra'chern illegally. Judeth orders for the arrest of this man, Hadenalith, through her position as the leader of the newly established Silver Gryphons. Hadenalith is arrested while he is molding a woman to be his slave. The city does not have a jail, and his crimes are not severe enough for instant death, so the Silver Gryphons decide to exile him to the forests on one side of the city, presuming that the animals will take care of him. Hadenalith is very upset about the interruption to his deeds and swears revenge on Amberdrake, and White Gryphon. Later, there are ships spotted by a gryphon, and Skandranon is contacted using the city's mind connection, Kechara. Kechara has been recruited by Judeth and is being used to communicate with the Silvers in White Gryphon. Some of the council members, Skandranon, Amberdrake, Judeth, and Tamsin, arrive on the dock and await the people to exit the ships. Amberdrake has identified the crewmen as members of the Haighlei, pronounced "highly", Nation, a nation of all black people. Three of the Haighlei crewmen exit the ship and claim that the land that White Gryphon is part of their country. Judeth makes a stand claiming that the gryphons flew from one part of the land to another and never saw any markers that showed that the land belonged to any other place. At this time, the crewmen finally notice Skandranon and decide that they need to contact their home city. After the discussion with their leaders, the crewmen decide to stay in the city of White Gryphon and then take Skandranon, Zhaneel, and their children (Tadrith and Keeneth), along with Amberdrake, Winterhart, and their daughter (Windsong) back to their nation. |
Starman's Quest | Robert Silverberg | 1,958 | The novel concerns twins, one of whom travels in a spaceship and is subject to the Fitzgerald contraction thus aging slower than the other. |
Tros of Samothrace | Talbot Mundy | 1,934 | The novel concerns the swashbuckling adventures of the title character as he battles Norsemen, pre-Roman Britons and Julius Caesar. |
The Survivors | Tom Godwin | 1,958 | A ship heading from Earth to Athena, a planet 500 light years away, is suddenly attacked by the Gerns, an alien empire in its expansion phase. People aboard are divided by the invaders into Acceptables and Rejects. The Acceptables would become slave labor for the Gerns on Athena, and the Rejects are forced ashore on the nearest 'Earth-like' planet, called Ragnarok. The Gerns say they will return for the Rejects, but the Rejects quickly realise that that isn't going to happen. Ragnarok is not so 'Earth-like.' Its gravity is 1.5 times that of Earth, it is populated by deadly, aggressive creatures and it contains little in the way of usable metal ores. This, combined with a terrible deadly fever that kills in hours, more than decimates the population. The novels follows the stranded humans through several generations as they try to survive there, and their unswerving goal to repay the Gerns for their cruelty. Comic book writer Warren Ellis counts the novel as one of his early favorites, writing, "I must have read that book twenty times. It just rips along (in many senses of the word “rips”), as shamelessly gleeful as a short genre book should be." There is a sequel from 1964 called The Space Barbarians. |
Crossing the River | Caryl Phillips | 1,993 | The novel’s opening is mostly the perspective of Nash, Martha, and Travis’ “father” mixed with the thoughts of the English slave trader James Hamilton, which are expressed in italics. The narrator explains that he had to sell his three children to slavery because his crops failed and he had no money. Nash’s story as an adult is first revealed through the perspective of his white master Edward Williams, who freed Nash so that he could go to Africa with the American Colonization Society to teach black natives. Edward, however, receives a letter saying that Nash had disappeared from the African village where he had been teaching. Edward immediately boards a ship to take him to Africa, and after many days of searching, a former slave of Edward’s informs him that Nash had died from fever. Edward is horribly upset, and his grief is further drawn out when he realizes that his beloved Nash was not the holy Christian he thought him to be. He finds plenty that points out Nash’s negative behavior, such as his large collection of native wives. The chapter ends with Edward gaping at the hovel that was once Nash’s residence while natives stare on, trying to understand the apparent momentary insanity of the shocked and aggrieved stranger. The story then switches to Martha, an old woman who, after losing her husband and daughter at a slave auction, decides to run away from her owners in Kansas and seek freedom in California. She only makes it to Colorado, however, where the group she is traveling with leaves her because she is slowing down the party. A white woman offers Martha a place to room for the night out of the bitter cold, but it is not enough. When the woman returns to Martha the next day, Martha is dead. The white woman decides that she is going to have to “choose a name for her if she was going to receive a Christian burial” (p. 94), which is ironic since Martha hated receiving a new name each time she was passed to a different owner and because Martha didn’t believe in God. The final section is told through the eyes of Joyce, a white Englishwoman who falls in love with Travis, who is the “brother” of Nash and Martha. Since Travis’ story occurs during World War II (about a century after his supposed brother Nash's), it can be assumed that Travis is a sort of reincarnation of Nash and Martha’s brother from more than a century before. In that case, it can be implied that the ancestor narrator is not the children’s true father; rather he is some sort of all-knowing ancestor who has “listened” to his “children” for the last “two hundred and fifty years” (p. 1). Joyce meets Travis at her husband’s store. Joyce’s husband habitually beats her, and when her husband is taken to prison for selling items on the black market, Joyce and Travis have an affair. Joyce has Travis’ baby but has to give it up after Travis dies in the war because it would be unacceptable for her to raise a black baby on her own. The chapter ends with a visit from Greer when he is twenty years old, who meets his mother for the first time after being raised in an orphanage. The book ends with the ancestor narrator once more, who provides an optimistic view even after all his children have died, saying that though he “sold his beloved children … they arrived on the far bank of the river, loved” (p. 237). |
The Bird of Time | Wallace West | 1,959 | The novel concerns the adventures of the Martian bird-woman Yahna and Earthman Bill Newsome and the conflict between their worlds. |
Purple Pirate | Talbot Mundy | 1,935 | The novel concerns the further adventures of Tros of Samathrace who battles intrigue in Cleopatra's court while he woos her sister. |
Grief: a Novel | Andrew Holleran | 2,006 | The narrative takes place in a predominantly gay neighborhood in Washington D.C. near the famous Dupont Circle. The story focuses on the exploits of a middle-aged, gay man who has recently moved to the city after the death of his mother. The novel follows this protagonist as he goes through the grieving process, holding true to the belief our deceased loved ones stay with us forever, or at least as long as we continue to grieve for them. Considering the novel’s exploration of the complex and highly personal emotion of grief the title seems simple, yet remains effective. The protagonist convinces himself the emotion has become one of the major aspects of his life as a survivor. In essence, he lives to grieve both his mother and the numerous gay friends he lost during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Characters frequently debate grief at various instances. Some of these individuals find the emotion unnecessary baggage. The protagonist refuses to accept this argument; he feels strongly that grief provides a crucial link between the living and the dead. The novel opens with a first-person narrator, a nameless, middle-aged, gay man. He has decided to take a teaching position in Washington D.C. He starts his journey waiting for his flight during a layover in Atlanta. Sitting in the departure lounge, he can’t help but think about his late mother. He reminisces how his life used to revolve around her when she was terminally ill. He remembers how he lacked any serious social life because he would spend every weekend with her after picking her up from the nursing home. After she passed, he realized a change in scenery was in order. His life in Florida had become hollow and depressing. The narrator arrives at his new residence on N Street N.W. to discover his landlord and future roommate is out of town. He has mixed emotions about having the new house to himself on his arrival. He enjoys the solitude, but feels a bit lonely. He takes time to observe the furniture, art work, and architecture of his new residence, as well as the exteriors of the other residential buildings throughout the neighborhood. Overall, he rather likes his new environment. During his first night in the house he comes across a book in his room entitled, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters. The work consists of numerous letters written by the former first lady after the death of her husband. The narrator relates deeply to the grief Mary Todd Lincoln expresses throughout the pages of the text. After her husband died, she no longer had a stable home; she simply wandered the world in a permanent state of mourning. The narrator continuously reads this book throughout the novel; comparing Mary Todd Lincoln’s suffering to that of his own. During his first few days alone in the house, he encounters numerous interesting locals around N Street. He meets a homeless man who works as a con-artist, telling people he needs money to take his nonexistent wife to the hospital. He also notices the handsome, yet reclusive, military veteran who cleans leaves off the sidewalk and receives helpful advice from the homosexual couple who live in the townhouse beneath him. The landlord soon returns from his business trip and introduces himself to the narrator. Similar to the protagonist, this character also remains nameless. The landlord is also gay, middle-aged, and currently single. The two men acquaint themselves and discuss current events taking place in the city. Apparently, a racial schism has broken out between blacks and whites after the mistreatment of a local African American politician. The narrator realizes he has picked a very tumultuous time to move to the nation's capitol. After getting settled, the narrator decides to visit his friend, Frank, who recommended him for the teaching position. Frank is also gay; however, he behaves far more flagrantly than the narrator or the landlord. During their visit the two discuss the death of the narrator’s mother and the hardship of living as middle-aged gay men. Frank also mentions he has a new boyfriend, a handsome and muscular young man which he refers to as the Lug. Desperate for the two of them to meet, Frank suggests the three of them should go out to a movie. The narrator declines, explaining he would rather explore the more intellectual aspects of his new city. Over the next couple weeks he peruses the numerous museums and evening concerts Washington D.C. has to offer. He enjoys the culturally experience, but regrets having to do it alone. Walking through the streets alone at night tends to remind him of the grief he feels from his mother. One morning, after the landlord has left for work, the narrator discovers the man keeps his dog, Biscuit, cooped up in the study all day. He opens the door in hope the dog will come out, only to realize the animal enjoys her confinement. The narrator begins liberating the dog from the study on a regular basis and grows fond of her company. He keeps this secret from the landlord, worried it will upset the man. As the days turn to months, the narrator and his landlord develop a platonic friendship with one another. They share meals together and frequently discuss the local gay community. The landlord reveals himself to be a very popular individual on N Street. Unfortunately, personal issues have driven him to leave his previous social life behind. He admits to having been romantically involved with a member of the gay couple living beneath them. The relationship ended badly and the landlord finds it difficult to socialize while his ex-lover lives happily with another man. Nevertheless, the landlord continues to post personal ads in the local newspaper with the hope of attracting a new boyfriend. With time the narrator grows comfortable in his teaching position at the local university. His course focuses on literature specifically relating to homosexuality. He decides to reference the Mary Todd Lincoln book by comparing the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to the homosexual AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This analogy angers one of his students, who viciously argues gays had a choice while Lincoln did not. The narrator proceeds to end the discussion by stating that “AIDS is dead,” considering it was primarily a homosexual disease, which will never impact the remaining population on such a high level. Few middle-age American homosexuals exist as a result of the 1980s epidemic. Such thoughts remind him of the numerous gay friends he lost to the virus. Just for living through the decade, he feels very much like a survivor. The narrator realizes he harbors a great deal of grief not just for his late mother, but for the many gay friends he lost during the 1980s. A few days later, the narrator encounters the belligerent student at the Metropolitan Museum. The student explains he takes the discussion of AIDS personally, because he had a gay brother who died from the virus. Their parents were appalled by their son’s homosexuality, so he tended to his dying brother alone. The student quickly excuses himself, but leaves the narrator with many thoughts about his deceased gay friends and the choices they had made. One day while liberating Biscuit from the study, the narrator comes across a photo album. Flipping through the pages he notices his landlord knew his late friend, Nick. The two discuss their mutual friend in detail. Nick was a beautiful young man who the narrator had known in New York City several years ago. Nick was one of the many AIDS victims during the 1980s. The landlord explains that Nick’s mother lives alone in Washington, not far from their house. The narrator pays her a visit and the two end up spending the day together. Over dinner, the two discuss grief and the impact it has had on both of their lives. In the end, they both agree mourning for lost loved ones remains one of the most human qualities on earth. As spring approaches, the narrator’s teaching position ends and he prepares for his departure. Both his landlord and Frank encourage him to stay in Washington, assuring him the transition would be beneficial. Nevertheless, the narrator feels he must return to his house in Florida. He still has emotional issues he needs to deal with before he can truly move on with his life. Shortly before leaving, the narrator confesses to Frank he had lied to his mother about his sexual orientation. Allowing his mother to die ignorant of his homosexuality fills him with the grief he carries everyday of his life. Upon returning to his Florida home he finds the grief to be overwhelming. He turns to pray in a hope God will bless the spirits of his deceased father and mother. |
Invaders from the Infinite | John W. Campbell | 1,961 | The novel concerns a trio of heroes, Arcot, Morey and Wade, and their attempts to help a race of superdogs. |
The Philosophical Corps | Everett B. Cole | 1,962 | The novel concerns the adventures of the philosopher Commander A-Riman who attempts to re-educate aliens from whom he brooks no nonsense. |
Hotel world | Ali Smith | 2,002 | Hotel World is divided into five sections. The first section, “Past” tells the story of Sara Wilby The second part, "Present Historic", is about a homeless girl (Else) begging for money outside the Hotel. The “Future Conditional”, the third section of the novel, Lise, a receptionist. The fourth part is “Perfect” with its far from perfect character Penny. The fifth section of the novel titled “Future in the Past,” is entirely Clare’s memories on the life and death of her sister Sara. “Present” is the title of the last part of the novel. Edited by Ali Smith, Author of this book |
God of Carnage | Yasmina Reza | null | Before the play begins, two 11-year-old children, Ferdinand Reille and Bruno Vallon (Benjamin and Henry in the Broadway production), get involved in argument because Bruno refuses to let Ferdinand join his 'gang'. Ferdinand knocks out two of Bruno's teeth with a stick. That night, the parents of both children meet to discuss the matter. Ferdinand's father, Alain (Alan in the Broadway production), is a lawyer who is never off his mobile phone. Ferdinand's mother, Annette is in "wealth management" (her husband's wealth, to be precise), and consistently wears good shoes. Bruno's father, Michel (Michael in the Broadway production), is a self-made wholesaler with an unwell mother. Michel's wife, Véronique (Veronica in the Broadway production), is writing a book about Darfur. As the evening goes on, the meeting degenerates into the four getting into irrational arguments, and their discussion falls into the loaded topics of misogyny, racial prejudice and homophobia. One of the central dramatic moments of the play occurs when Annette vomits onstage, all over the coffee table and books. |
The General | Robert Muchamore | 2,008 | The book starts off before Christmas with James Adams taking part in a mass riot organized by the leader of the SAG (Street Action Group), Chris Bradford. He later acts as Bradford's bodyguard during a meeting with a gun supplier and successfully plants a surveillance device, only for the police to arrive unexpectedly and arrest everyone, aborting the mission. Meanwhile his sister Lauren and some of the younger agents are sent to test the security of an air traffic control centre. They capture all the security guards and cause a lot of damage, but miss an engineer who calls in the RAF. The mission is still regarded as successful, having exposed security weaknesses. On New Year's Day a select team of CHERUB agents including James and Lauren fly to Las Vegas for a brief vacation on the way to Fort Reagan, the world's largest urban warfare training compound. They are to take part in a two-week exercise along with forty British commandos, posing as insurgents in an area controlled by an American battalion - a thousand soldiers. Weapons are restricted to paint guns and grenades. Under the leadership of the Ukrainian trainer Kazakov, who is bitterly anti-American, the 'insurgents' soon make their first move, knocking out aerial surveillance by wrecking the American spying drones. During this raid, James and the Sarge sneak into the army base to add a powerful laxative to the base's water system. Before long around nine-tenths of the American troops are disabled by violent diarrhoea. The insurgents persuade some drunken students, posing as 'civilians' in the exercise, to join them in storming the base. At this point the American military leader General Shirley is "killed" (killed in the exercise means that you have to get yourself washed and come back in 24 hours) by a paint grenade dropped by Kevin Sumner. The Americans are overrun and suspend the exercise, after only two days. Kazakov's tactics, though effective, are so controversial, that he and James are asked to leave before the exercise restarts. As they have some free time, Kazakov persuades James to put his mathematical skills to illegal use, playing blackjack in Las Vegas. Despite James almost being caught, they end up winning over $90,000. |
Operation Storm City | null | null | Rebecca and Douglas (known as Becca and Doug in the books) return to their home town of Lucknow, in India, after their adventures in Operation Typhoon Shore. They continue their quest to find their parents and uncover the secrets of the Guild. They become reunited with Miss Liberty Da Vine whom they rescued from Sheng-Fat on Wenzi Island in Operation Red Jericho and travelled with aboard the Expedient in Operation Typhoon Shore. Operation Storm City is the final installment of the trilogy. From India to the desert wastes of China, Becca and Doug must follow every clue and scrap of information discovered so far in their adventures to guide them to the truth about their missing parents. Old friends join them in new alliances, for Becca and Doug know now that they must find Ur-Can the fabled machine at the very heart of the story which is hidden deep in the Taklamakan Desert - the so-called ‘Desert of Death’. They now know Ur-Can holds the answers they seek, as it was the destination of their parents’ lost expedition. But Ur-Can has fallen into the hands of a mad Russian general intent on using the machine’s colossal power for his own evil ends. Becca and Doug are tested beyond anything they have so far endured in the trilogy as they try to conclude their gruelling quest. |
Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse | Ursula Moray Williams | null | The book contains 19 chapters. The little wooden horse is a toy horse originally intended to be sold by his maker Uncle Peder. His only desire is to stay with and serve his maker but when the latter is forced out of business by the availability of cheaper mass produced toys he becomes ill through poverty. The little wooden horse then sets out into the world to make himself a fortune for the two of them to live in peace. Through a combination of misfortune and exploitation the little wooden horse is forced to travel a great distance and earn and lose his fortune through each of the chapters. Eventually he does hold onto a fortune, but returning home he finds his maker has disappeared. Eventually they are reunited through a chance and highly emotional meeting. |
The Case of the Missing Bird Dog | John R. Erickson | null | This is the 40th book in the "Hank the Cowdog" series. |
The Strange Death of Tory England | Geoffrey Wheatcroft | 2,005 | The book begins with the Conservative leadership contest of 1963, following the resignation of Harold Macmillan, which turned into a fight between Iain Macleod, the modernizing chairman of the party, and the Earl of Home, the aristocratic dark horse. Home won, disclaimed his peerage, became Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and was elected to the House of Commons at a hastily-arranged by-election. Wheatcroft depicts this contest as a clash between supporters of "the virtues of an hereditary governing class" and those of "worth proved by ability". Next comes a history of the Tory party from its 17th-century beginnings at the time of the Restoration, followed by an account of the Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath years and Britain's trials and tribulations of the 1970s, culminating in the election of Margaret Thatcher's first government in 1979. Within a few years, while holding onto power, the Conservative Party began to split and to fall apart. Wheatcroft seeks to explain this decline, offering factors long discussed by commentators: internal splits over Britain's place in Europe, political sleaze and a fundamental lack of ideology, and a growing desire in the country for change after eighteen years of Conservative rule, coinciding with Tony Blair's "brilliant cynical sincerity". |
The Ebb-Tide | Robert Louis Stevenson | 1,894 | The story opens by introducing three destitute beggars in the port of Papeete on Tahiti. They are Herrick, a failed English businessman; Davis, an American sea captain disgraced by the loss of his last ship; and Huish, a dishonest Cockney of various employments. One day an off-course schooner carrying a cargo of champagne from San Francisco to Sydney arrives in port, its officers having been killed by smallpox. With no-one else willing to risk infection, the U.S. consul employs Davis to take over the ship for the remainder of its voyage. He carries the other two men along with a plan to steal the ship and navigate it to Peru, where they will sell the cargo and vessel and disappear with the money. Once at sea, Davis and Huish start drinking the cargo and spend almost all of their time intoxicated. Herrick, whose conscience is severely troubled by the plan but feels he has no other way to escape poverty, is left alone to manage the ship and three native crew members, despite having no seafaring experience. However, several days later the would-be thieves discover they have themselves been victims of a fraud: most of the cargo is not champagne but merely bottles of water. Evidently the shipper and the previous captain had intended to sink the ship deliberately and claim the full value of the "champagne" on insurance. Even worse, the now-sober Captain Davis discovers that due to his rushed preparations for departure, and his drunken wastage, the ship is not carrying enough food to reach Peru, or anywhere else except the port they started from, where they would surely be imprisoned for their actions. Just then they sight an unknown island, where they discover an upper-class Englishman named Attwater. Attwater, a devout Christian, has been harvesting pearls here for many years with the help of a several dozen native workers, all except four of whom have recently also died of smallpox. The three men hatch a new plan to kill Attwater and take his pearls, but Herrick's guilt-stricken demeanour and Huish's drunken ramblings soon betray them. Attwater and his servants force them back onto the ship at gunpoint. Unable to live with himself, Herrick jumps overboard and tries to drown himself. Failing even in this, he swims to the shore and throws himself on Attwater's mercy. The next day, Huish proposes a final plan which shocks even the unscrupulous Davis: they will go to meet Attwater under a flag of truce, and Huish will disable him by throwing acid in his face. However, Attwater is suspicious, realises what is going on, and shoots Huish dead. He appears to be about to kill Davis as well, but forgives him, saying "go, and sin no more". A short epilogue set two weeks later shows the surviving men preparing to leave the island as Attwater's own ship approaches. Davis is now repentant and fervently religious to an almost crazed degree, and urges the atheist Herrick to join him in his faith. |
The Gorgon's Gaze | Julia Golding | 2,006 | The Gorgon's Gaze takes place after the events in Secret of the Sirens, and follows the story of Connie and Col. Mallins Wood is under danger, and it is home to the only gorgon left in the world. Connie might be able to help, but the problem is... she's been taken away by her great-aunt Godiva! Connie's parents have asked Godiva and her brother Hugh to stop their world travels to take Connie away from Evelyn and "wean her off of the Society." Thus, Connie is now living in the town of Chartmouth with Godiva and Hugh, where she's denied contact with any mythical creatures. Meanwhile, Col is introduced to the Gorgon, his mother's companion species. On his second visit, Col is taken over by a mysterious creature - one who appears to be a Pegasus, but doesn't feel like one. Col finds himself to be the property of Kullervo, the evil shapeshifter! Connie must go to save her friend, while remaining safe herself and not letting her great-aunt know she's gone. |
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down | Ishmael Reed | 1,969 | Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down jumps into the narrative of the main protagonist, Loop Garoo, a black, silver tongued, circus cowboy, who represents the devil to the white men. The circus troupe heads into Yellow Back Radio, a sparsely populated ghost town overtaken by a child population in Indian garb. The circus troupe and the children are massacred by the adults that were chased out by the children, while Loop Garoo escapes with his life and a desire for vengeance. Drag Gibson, a homosexual and influential land-owner who is head of the city, is also introduced. As Drag deals with the problems from a deteriorating city, Loop Garoo is saved from being eaten by wild animals by Chief Showcase, a Native American who fights his oppressors through suave and underhanded means. Loop begins his Hoodoo curses on Drag, giving him the retroactive itch and other inconveniences, as the conflict builds. Drag murders his sixth wife and orders his seventh through the mail order service. Her name is Mustache Sal, a nymphomaniac who seeks to murder Drag to inherit his vast fortunes. She proceeds to have sex with just about every main and minor male character, showing a complete lack of discrimination. As Drag continues into a progressively more deteriorating state of mind because of the uncontrollable loss of power and influence around him, Loop Garoo continues to gain influence through his appearance in town, soundly whipping the marshal and pushing the Preacher into the brink of insanity. Mustache Sal’s attempt to poison her husband fails and she is fed to the iron-jawed pigs. Drag then brings in John Wesley Hardin, a sharp-shooting racist who kills black people out of pleasure. When Loop Garoo quickly kills him, Drag’s health quickly deteriorates until his savior, the Pope, arrives riding on red bull. He describes to the city’s citizens the Hoodoo Loop Garoo is putting on them and proceeds to capture Loop with no difficulty. However, when the Pope fails in persuading Loop to return to Rome with him, he leaves in defeat. Drag sets the execution of Loop up but fails to execute him; instead through the sudden appearance of children with new technology, Amazonian women, and Field Marshal Theda Doompussy Blackwell's Raygun wielding detectives, Drag falls into the pit of pigs and dies. |
The Drawing of the Dark | Tim Powers | 1,979 | The year is 1529, and Brian Duffy, a world-weary Irish mercenary soldier is hired in Venice by the mysterious Aurelianus to go to Vienna and work as a bouncer at the Zimmerman Inn, former monastery and current brewery of the famous Herzwesten beer. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turkish army under Sultan Suleiman I has achieved its most advanced position yet in their march into Europe, and is poised to capture Vienna. With the Turkish army travels Ibrahim, a magician who intends to use horrific spells as part of the siege. Duffy spent some time in Vienna years ago, and as he returns, he is haunted by memories of past events, and now he also finds himself having visions of mythical creatures and being ambushed by shadowy people and demonic monsters. Upon arriving in Vienna, Duffy meets Epiphany, a former girlfriend from his previous time in Vienna, and her father, Gustav Vogel, who is working on a painting he calls "The Death of St. Michael the Archangel". It seems the painting is never quite complete, and the elder Vogel is continuously adding additional detail to the work, causing it to gradually become more and more obscure. Then Duffy finds himself not only drafted into the city's defensive army, but also led by Aurelianus down mystical paths from the surprisingly old Herzwesten brewery to even more ancient caves beneath the city, in search of defenses against the approaching army and clues to Duffy's very nature. As it turns out, Aurelianus knows more about Duffy and his past than Duffy himself knows, and his real purpose in hiring him is to protect the hidden Fisher King, secret spiritual leader of the western world, and to defend him and the West against the Turkish advance in the siege of Vienna. And the real reason that it's critical that Vienna not be captured by the Turks is because it's the site of the Herzwesten brewery. The Herzwesten light and bock beers are famous throughout Europe, but the dark beer, produced only every eight hundredth year, has supernatural properties and must not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Meanwhile, others are drawn to Vienna in anticipation of significant events. The so-called "dark birds", magically sensitive individuals from far flung corners of the world, arrive in the city hoping for a sip of the Herzwesten dark, and a small group of middle-aged Vikings have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here. |
Leyendas de Guatemala | Miguel Ángel Asturias | 1,930 | Leyendas de Guatemala is made up of a series of short stories, which transform the oral legends of popular culture into relevant textual manifestations. Guatemala serves as the first introduction to the legends about the Central American nation bearing the same name. This story presents Guatemala as a palimpsest, in which the duality of past vs. present and the Maya-Quiché vs. the Spanish identities becomes prominent. The story begins with a winding road and a cart approaching an unnamed city and focuses on a pair of goitered elders, Don Chepe and Niña Tina, who are laden with the country's heritage. To stitch together the legends that compose the rest of the book told by these elders, the character, “Cuco de los Sueños,” is introduced. The narrator then tells two anecdotes, one about Brother Pedro de Betancourt and another about Fray Payo Enriquez de Rivera. Both stories emphasize transformation and contrasting elements. Asturias' main argument is that Guatemala is a nation built on nations and that change is possible. Asturias makes references to the main cities and sites of Guatemala, such as Guatemala City and Antigua, which were formed during the colonial era of Guatemala. He also mentions the Guatemalan sites of Quiriguá, Tikal, as well as Palenque and Copán, which although they are not part of modern-day Guatemala, were part of the "Maya Empire". It is explained in this leyenda that the modern cities of Guatemala have been physically constructed upon previous colonial and indigenous cities, which creates an image of Guatemala as "a house of several levels" and gives legitimacy to the "unity of the Hispanic and Maya races". Asturias emphasizes that ancient cultures are preserved within these layers. This first introduction is about the reinstitution of the past culture and lost traditions. As such, "Guatemala" can be understood as a personal declaration of its own aesthetic, since it is a text where, as in the buried and overlapping cities, everything is combined. This discursive strategy marks the complexity of Guatemalan identity that Asturias tried so fervently to understand and delineate in literary terms for most of his life. Asturias presents himself at the end of the story. Upon arriving to the capital he exlaims, “Mi pueblo! Mi pueblo!” Thus it is argued that this first story reveals Asturias' feelings of nostalgia. (I Remember Now) This story serves as a second introduction and presents creation as an inseparable element of destruction. This is the first of seven legends that the figure Cuero de Oro will tell. Cuero de Oro is the mythical manifestation of our newcomer, pale-skinned narrator. This figure engages in a narrative interplay with don Chepe and doña Tina, who are also mysterious figures that represent the elders who tell the tales of Guatemala. These elders speak of a tree that destroys the notion of time. "At the beginning of the narrative, the three initial paragraphs are in the present [tense], and then become the past tense once the story of Cuero de Oro (...) begins. This provokes a certain surprise, not to mention a certain (...) temporal confusion". That is to say, mysterious and almost magical elements enter within the context of this story. The emphasis on the oral qualities of traditional story telling are also evident in this short story. The narrator is telling us about his journey, and his anguish during his delirious night. This narration is full of voices, for example as don Chepe and Niña Tina respond to Cuero de Oro's exhortation. Asturias even ends the tale with the final sentence: and the conversation ended. The textual interplay between Cuero de Oro and don Chepe and Niña Tina can also be interpreted as representative of a child who is searching for the roots of his identity, questioning those who have access to this knowledge of another (mythical) time and space. (Legend of the Volcano) Leyenda del Volcán teaches that destruction is always followed by rebirth, implying that Maya-Quiche culture can be reborn. It relates the origin of the people in Guatemala in "one day that lasted many centuries". It begins with six men, three of whom appeared from the water and three of whom appeared from the wind. Asturias' emphasis on the number three throughout the legend is in reference to the number's importance in Nahuatl tradition. The three men from the water nourish themselves with stars and those from the wind walk through the forest like bird-men. In addition to these men there are two gods, Cabrakán, who provokes earthquakes, and Hurakán, who is the giant of the winds and the spirit of the sky. Hurakán produces a tremor and all of the animals flee from the forest. One of the six men, who is named Nido (the word for "nest" in Spanish), is the only being that remains and is ordered by a trinity, consisting of a saint, white lily, and a child, to build a temple. Afterwards the trees begin to fill with nests, illustrating how this story exemplifies the process of renewal. This legend narrates a clear struggle between religions. It contrasts Catholicism (e.g.: references to "little crosses" and the trinity) with the forces of Cabrakán and Hurakán, who represent Maya-Quiche religion. Set in the seventeenth century, this legend illustrates the capacity humanity has to overcome oppression. In the first paragraph we are presented with the protagonist, a beautiful novice at a convent who, with time, will later become Madre Elvira de San Francisco. This character changes names various times in the story. The next several paragraphs are dedicated to describing the ambiance of the convent that encircles her, subtly moulded by her emotional perspective. She is plagued by her braid because it incites the physical arousal of men. Eventually she becomes mortified, therefore cutting off her braid, which then turns into a snake. The snake coils around a candle, putting out its flame, and sending the man to hell. Preito shows how the Cadejo was "...born out of temptation and ready to haunt humanity until the end of time. Through the description of how Madre Elvira de San Francisco was able to rid herself of her braid, Asturias demonstrates how humanity possesses the means to liberate itself from the "yoke" which binds it, regardless of how oppressive it may be. In this story there are frequent images of death and dead bodies, as well as instances of magical happenings. In the last paragraph of the story it is unclear whether or not Asturias indicates that the events were nothing more than a dream. This legend aims to describe ways in which humanity can and will regain its freedom. The legend is about an almond tree, that is described as a "priest-tree". This tree guards the Maya traditions and recounts the passing of the years. The tree divides its soul between the four paths that one encounters before the underworld known as Xibalbá. These four paths are marked by different colors: green, red, white and black. Each portion of the soul embarks on a different path on which they each face temptations. The black road, which in Mayan tradition leads to the underworld, trades part of its soul with the merchant of Priceless Jewels, who then uses in exchange for the most beautiful slave. The slave escapes, and the character of the tree, searching for the missing part of his soul eventually finds her. The Inquisition then intervenes and sentences to kill them. In the end, the beautiful slave escapes the night via the magic of a boat drawn on her prison wall. On the morning of the execution the only thing the guards find in the prison cell is an old almond tree. In this legend, Master Almond represents the Maya-Quiche civilization and the Inquisition represents a foreign power. This legend shows that "the soul is not at the mercy of external forces" and "therefore humans always have the means to recover their independence". In this legend, Asturias takes the idea of the child/demon, el Sombrerón, and explores it through a lens of magic; he creates a ball which appears and disappears, in which he encloses a Sombreron or devil. The protagonist is a monk, who becomes tempted by a ball that bounces through his window into his cell. He find himself enthralled by the ball and even begins to wonder if it may be affiliated with the devil. He spends countless hours playing with the ball, and when he talks to a woman whose son had lost the ball, and feels pressured to return it, the neighbors claim he appeared to look like the devil. He then eventually throws the ball out his window, and the ball transforms into the Sombrerón. Thus again, Asturias is showing that humans "are capable to breaking the ties that bind them to the undesirable". This legend, like Leyenda del Cadejo, corresponds to the Spanish colonial period in Guatemala, and is written in a simple colloquial tongue. It focuses on the Spanish and a Christian aspects of Guatemala and it takes place in the city of Antigua. Sáenz asserted in his analysis that the ball that the monk enjoys and plays with symbolizes an ancient Maya ball game. Thus, in this legend Christian and Maya traditions are combined as the ball equates an element of Maya ritual, but also has the characteristics of a devil. (Legend of the Treasure from the Flowerying Place) This legend takes place at the time when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Guatemala, while the natives celebrate the end of a war. It is situated near the lake Lago de Atitlán, where the Tz'utujil people live. Near this lake is a volcano named Abuelo del Agua, which means "grandfather of the water". This volcano hides the treasure from the bordering tribes who escaped from the plundering of the Spanish. The legend begins at twilight, which, according to Sáenz, can be seen as a comparison to the decline of the indigenous civilization. The end of the war is announced and a night-long celebration of peace ensues among the aboriginal people in the story. There's a list of the squadrons of soldiers, and each one is distinguished by the colors of the feathers they wear. The head of the local Maya brings together those who are to be sacrificed. The moment of destruction begins as the priests exclaim ritual sentences to the volcano, while the Spaniards ("white men") approach. The tribes are terrified and flee to the lake to protect themselves against the invasion, leaving the treasure behind. Out of all eight texts which compose the original first edition, this last one is the only one which is set in the pre-Hispanic era, even if it is set right at the moment of the arrival of the Spanish. Asturias contrasts the two cultures; he describes the natives as connected to the natural world (their arms green with plant blood) and associates them with abundance and a sense of richness (they had flowers, fruits, birds, beehives, feathers, gold and precious stones), while emphasizing the scarcity and want of the Europeans by repeating the preposition "without" over and over again in their context. (The sorcerers of the spring storm) This legend is an interpretation of the creation of the world by the work of gods, and contains many magical and symbolic elements. It is divided into six parts and it describes the mythological fights for the survival between the three kingdoms: animal, plant, and mineral. Juan Poye is the protagonist of the legend and is a "man-river" that symbolizes fertility and the living. When the humans forget the rules of love and act cruelly, the river becomes a source of punishment for the immoral humans. All that remains at the end of the legend is cities covered by the vegetation of the Quiché land. In this story Asturias creates a new magical language in which he mixes Maya and Judeo-Christian ideas of an apocalypse and combines them to create this Apocalypse of Juan. (alternate spelling: Kukulkan) This is the last story in Leyendas, and was written in the form of a play. It was added to the legends in the second edition. The three scenes are separated by colored curtains that indicate the passing of time; the curtain colors (yellow, red, and black) and scene changes follow the movement of the sun. The main characters are: Guacamayo, a bird of a thousand colors, who is deceitful, Cuculcán, or Plumed Serpent, and Chinchinirín, who is Cuculcán's warrior-attendant. Yaí is another character who is a "woman-flower" and is to be sacrificed. Guacamayo and Cuculcán dispute the legend of the sun, and behind his back, Guacamayo accuses him of being a fake, and argues with Chinchinirín. Finally, plotting to take Cuculcán's place, Guacamayo makes a deal with Yaí, but Cuculcán is saved. In the end the moon is born from Chinchinirín's body as he tries to reach Yellow Flower. This final legend is a lucid re-elaboration on the Maya legend of the Plumed Serpent in order to permit an approach to the question of identity as a social construction. The tricky mirror which appears in the story (which confuses Guacamayo and Cuculcán about what is "real") is a metaphor for a brutal relativism which Asturias introduces in order to express the dual and complementary character of reality. That is to say Asturias presents the reality of an identity as dual, diglossic, and relative in the universe of Cuculcán, and applies this to the newly constructed, hybrid Guatemalan identity |
The Tale of Frol Skobeev | null | null | The story begins in Novgorod in 1680, where Frol Skobeev, a poor nobleman and legal clerk known locally as a cunning rogue, has designs on marrying Annushka of the prominent and well-placed Nadrin-Nashchekin family. Annushka’s father is described as a stol'nik, meaning he was a ranking official in the Tsar’s court and probably one of the richer and more influential members of the Russian aristocracy. Knowing that there is little chance of meeting Annushka in person, or of her father agreeing to their marriage, Frol concocts a devious plan to meet with her. He gets acquainted with Annushka’s nurse, offers her money – asking for nothing in return at first – and from her learns that Annushka will shortly be having a Christmas party. He arranges to get his sister invited to the ball, and disguises himself as a noblewoman and comes with her to the party. There, he bribes the nurse to get close to Annushka. The nurse orchestrates matters so that the disguised Frol and Annushka are together in her chambers, and tells him to play a game of ‘bride and groom’. Frol reveals himself to Annushka and takes her virginity. While Annushka initially resists him, she quickly finds pleasure in their relationship and keeps Frol in her home for three days under cover, during which time he remains disguised as a woman. The Nadrin-Nashchenin family, including Annushka, then relocate from Novgorod to Moscow. Frol follows them and again devises a plan to outwit Annushka’s parents with the aid of the nurse. This time he sends a carriage to the family home and pretends Annushka is to be taken to her aunt, who is a nun in a local convent. In reality, Annushka elopes with Frol and they marry shortly afterwards. When Annushka’s father discovers she is missing, he publicly campaigns for the return of his daughter and threatens to punish ruthlessly anyone involved in her disappearance. After reflection and taking counsel from a friend, Frol decides to come forward, confess and ask for Nadrin-Nashchekin’s mercy. His ingratiating attitude persuades Nadrin-Nashchekin not to punish him. Frol and Annushka also manage to wangle money and valuable items from them. Annushka feigns an illness and her parents send a bejeweled icon; they also begin to send carriages with money and food on a regular basis. Finally, Nadrin-Nashchekin offers Frol Skobeev a large estate, three hundred rubles and Frol secures a position as his heir. The story concludes by telling us that Frol also managed to arrange a propitious marriage for his sister, and that he and Annushka lived happily after ever. |
Night Walk | null | null | Emm Luther is a planet ruled by a single, worldwide theocracy. It is sparsely populated, and a couple of railroads run up and down the coasts of the largest continent. Earth sends secret agent Sam Tallon to Emm Luther to infiltrate the theocracy, and extract the coordinates of the jump points, a closely guarded secret. When the religious secret police discover he has false credentials, and has entered the world under false pretenses, a frantic chase and flight ensues, terminated only when they break down his hotel room, and a high-ranking Security Agent fires his dart gun into Sam's eyes, permanently blinding him. He is taken to a secret prison complex in the southernmost tip of the most distant continent to convalesce. While he is there, he enlists the aid of the scientific elite in the ranks and files of the political prisoners there, and together they design a pair of electronic "sonar" eyes. Equipped with an audio feedback system depending on which direction he turns his "eyeglasses" or headgear, he discerns a different kind of audio tone. Then, with the aid of two other prisoners, they have a chance at escaping the prison, traveling across the diameter of the planet, and reaching his secret contact. Managing to get the necessary equipment, they escape, wading through 20 miles of swamp and shallows. Tallon manages to cross the single continent of Emm Luther, rendezvous with secret agents whose covers are not yet blown, and escape the planet by boarding a spaceship and departing from the local planet. Later, he finds he must master the intricacies of the "jump stick," a form of jump drive via portals to "null-space" (a hyperspace parallel universe passing through which instantaneous space travel is achieved). |
Doom 3: Worlds on Fire | Matthew J. Costello | null | The year is 2144 and the battle over Earth's precious resources has raged for a century. With global economies in ruins and all-out world war more than a possibility, the U.S government turned to the Union Aerospace Corporation, giving it carte blanche on the legendary red planet of Mars in a desperate bid to construct an off-world outpost that might provide resources and a military advantage, as well as something so secret that even members of government do not have a clue about it. Special ops marine lieutenant John Kane was once a careerist simply glad to have a job, and could not care less about politics as long as Uncle Sam's check cleared. But that was before he listened to his conscience and disobeyed a direct order. Busted down to private, Kane has been reassigned to the "U.S. Space Marines" - the private army of the UAC - with the prospect of becoming little more than a glorified security guard on Mars. Now Pvt. Kane's fate leads him to Mars City - part environmental community, part lab center, and all owned and protected by the UAC. It is a strange world with a fatal environment, and the thousands who live and work within the city have already begun to think of themselves as Martians. And away from Mars City, at the strange ancient sites uncovered on the planet, a small squad of marines stand guard while scientists uncover wall glyphs and search for artifacts, having already found something that is so far amazing and inexplicable - including the relic called "U1," nicknamed "the Soul Cube" - and unknown to all, the bringer of destructive chaos and unspeakable horror... |
Pursuit of the Screamer | Ansen Dibell | null | Jannus is the son of Mistress Lillia, the ruler of Newstock, a village near the river in Bremner. The competing villages are protected by the Valde, strange female warriors who serve ten years in the villages. The few that reach the end of their service are allowed to get married with one of the rare male Valde. The Valde are tall, beautiful, filled with quick animal instincts, sexually mature at nine and dead of old age around thirty, are also gifted with empathy; the power to feel one's emotions. While watching a duel to the death between Poli - Jannus's favorite Valde - and another Valde, Jannus discovers a Screamer, a fragile humanoid creature that is hunted without pity by the Valde. He saves the Screamer who tells him that he is an immortal Tek. Each time when a Tek dies he is reborn again. The Tek wants to return to Kantmorie to end his thousand years of regenerations. The Tek, called Lur by Jannus, persuades Jannus to accompany him. Together with a merchant family, the Yrsmits and a number of Valde warriors Jannus follows the river downstream. Among the Valde is Poli who served her ten years. After a number of adventures the Tek, Jannus, Poli and the leader of the merchant family find themselves in the desert trying to reach the location where the Shai is, the huge intelligence guiding the star ship that brought the Teks to the world, to end the endless cycle of rebirthing. * Pursuit of the Screamer, DAW Books, June 1978, ISBN 0-87997-386-2 * Circle, Crescent, Star, DAW Books, February 1981, ISBN 0-87997-603-9 * Summerfair, DAW Books, July 1982, ISBN 0-87997-759-0 * Tidestorm Limit, 1983, (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Stormvloedgrens, Dutch edition **Aux confins de l'ouragan, French edition * The Sun of Return, 1985 (published in Dutch and French translations only) **Gift van de Shai, Dutch edition **Le soleil du grand retour, French edition |
Union Street | Pat Barker | 1,982 | The novel is divided into chapters each covering the same few months but centering around the life of one of seven working class women living the area of Union Street in northeastern England. The characters range in age and circumstance, Alice Bell is in her seventies and dying whereas Kelly Brown is eleven, but all of them face struggles and poverty. The book begins with the character of eleven year old Kelly Brown and deals with her rape and the response of Kelly and her community to the rape. When the people on the street find out about her rape they will not deal with it openly with her; instead, they react with general sympathy, in the way they would have if she had been ill, but both the adults and children talk about the incident behind her back. Kelly becomes increasingly isolated, distrustful of adults and no longer feeling at home with the other children; she spends an increasing amount of time by herself at night in the neighbourhood. As time passes Kelly's silence turns to anger, responding to the trauma of the events with acts of rebellion and violence, such as cutting her hair short and breaking the windows of a school. This culminates with Kelly walking away from the area of Union Street. |
Going, Going, Gone | Jack Womack | null | Set in 1968 New York in an alternate universe to the Dryco universe of the previous five iterations of the series, Going, Going, Gone nevertheless disposes of several of the series' characters in its closing chapters. Its protagonist is Walter Bullitt, an egocentric expert in psychoactive substances who freelances for various branches of the United States government spy apparatus. Though he passes for white, Bullitt is in fact of African-American descent in a world where almost all full-blooded members of that race died sometime in the early twentieth century in an apparently engineered plague and all black music is banned. Walter becomes subject to increasingly strange experiences, hearing voices and seeing ghosts from a parallel New York which is blending into his one. Walter is taken to this alternative New York which has been flooded and moved north, populated by black people and an analogue of television absent from his world. The novel ends with the two epistemic worlds converging into a New York which is, in the words of critic Paul Dukes a "morally better place than either of the two which composed it". |
Ladies' Night | Jack Ketchum | null | The novel takes place in New York City, where a chemical truck gets into an accident and spills its contents on the street. Curiously, the trucker has fake identification, and no one seems to have heard of the company name on the truck: "Ladies, INC." Later that evening, Tom Braun and his family go to a party. Tom gets into a shouting match with his wife, Susan, which their son, Andy, overhears. Andy retreats to his room to pack for a scout camping trip. After Tom leaves the apartment for the night, the women of New York who inhaled the spilled chemicals (including Susan) begin to have severe headaches. Within a short time, the women are overcome by a desire to have sex with any man they can find. Finally, the women begin attacking those who have not been similarly affected by the spilled chemicals. In increasingly gruesome scenes, women kill their children, husbands, brothers, etc., and the seemingly few unaffected women of the city. As Tom works with a small band of men to make it home to Andy, Susan first tries to mate with her son, then tries to kill him. Andy hides in a bathroom until an unaffected woman unknowingly saves his life by knocking on the door. The woman is subsequently attacked by Susan and other crazed women. Tom is wounded on his journey home, but manages to severely injure his wife before she can kill their son. Susan then kills Tom, whereupon Andy shoots his mom with several arrows (which he had for his camping trip) to make sure she is not able to recover from her injuries. |
The Five Chinese Brothers | Claire Huchet Bishop | 1,938 | Long ago in China lived a family with five brothers who resembled each other very closely. They each possessed a special talent. One can swallow the sea; one has an iron neck; one can stretch his legs; one can survive fire; and the last can hold his breath forever. When one of the brothers, a somehow very successful fisherman, agrees to let a young boy accompany him on his fishing trip, trouble results. This brother holds the entire sea in his mouth so that the boy can retrieve fish and treasures. When the man can no longer hold in the sea, he frantically signals to the boy, but the boy ignores him and drowns when the man releases the water. The man is accused of murder and sentenced to death. However, one by one, his four brothers assume his place when subjected to execution, and each uses his own superhuman ability to survive (one cannot be beheaded, one cannot be drowned, one cannot be burned, and one cannot be smothered). At the end of the story, a judge decides that the brother accused of murder must have been innocent, since he could not be executed, and the five brothers return home. |
Storm Thief | Chris Wooding | 2,006 | The book opens with a scene of a seabird flying through the clouds. It falls out of the sky with exhaustion and crashes through a window, dying, where it is found by a strange golem-like creature. Then later that day in the other side of Orokos in the Ghetto's, the two protagonists, Rail and Moa, are sent on a mission to steal from the hideous creatures called Mozgas. They sneak through a large building and find a small box with different sorts of treasure within. Rail also finds an artifact that is known to be Fade-Science. They manage just to escape from the Mozgas and report back to the obese thief mistress Anya-Jacana. Rail debates about whether to give her the Fade Science but chooses not to. They depart and leave for their small living place. Anya-Jacana sends a small group of boys, led by her favourite Finch, to get the artifact off them. They arrive soon enough and Rail and Moa are trapped. Moa then puts the artifact on her finger and manages to fall through the wall behind them. She pulls Rail through just as the gang enters. They discover the artifact can open 'doors' though solid objects. As Rail and Moa escape, they meet a golem named Vago. He had escaped from his own master after getting beaten. The three proceed to discover the truth behind their unjust society. |
Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold | Jack L. Chalker | 1,982 | "He" wakes up on a prison ship, and discovers that "he" is a copy. But he receives another shock, as he discovers that he is in a woman's body, a criminal named Qwin Zhang, who was mindwiped so that his recording could be inserted. He quickly learns that this is not an insurmountable problem, as the Warden powers on this planet are such that everyone has them, but it manifests itself as body swapping, a process that occurs when both parties are asleep. The Warden Organisms exchange information pertaining to memories and personality, so that if given sufficient time, the two sleepers will fully exchange bodies. The agent arranges to sleep next to a male during the newcomer orientation, and so has a male body again. He also learns that Cerberus is covered completely in water, with the only "land" being the tops of underwater trees that grow tall enough to extend beyond the water's surface. Given that Cerberus is a world of white collar criminals, and that their technology is 20 years behind the times, "Qwin" can do quite well, and quickly establishes himself as "president" of a minor subsidiary of a large company. He does this with the help of Dylan Kohl, a boat captain, and Sanda Tyne, a host mother. Host mothering is an important profession, as the body swapping allows for people to live forever, so long as there are enough new bodies to swap with. After a series of improbable adventures that gain him the position of company president, he attempts to carry out his mission of assassinating Wagant Laroo, the Lord of Cerberus. In the process of this, he comes across Dr. Dumonia, a psychologist who is later revealed to be a part-time Confederacy agent, though not especially loyal at all times. Qwin also learns that the human imitating robots are given human minds on Cerberus, specifically on Wagant's island. With the help of his friends, he manages to get on that island, and even arranges to come up with the solution to a problem of Wagant's. The problem Wagant had was that the robots are better in every way, and nearly immortal and invulnerable. But Wagant does not want to put his mind into one, as the aliens who provide the robots have hidden commands in them that make the person the slave of the aliens. Not being able to get rid of those commands, Wagant accepts Qwin's help in getting rid of those commands. Qwin does so by asking his over-Agent in the picket ship to do so, which not only gets him in good with Wagant, but lets the Confederacy have a sample of the robot body and brain for examination. Wagant, while very untrusting of Qwin, does eventually transfer his mind into the body of a "cleared" robot. What Wagant doesn't realize is that it wasn't quite fully cleared, and when Qwin recites a Lewis Carroll poem in front of him, it places Wagant under Qwin's complete control. Thus assassination is not necessary, as Qwin and Dumonia are in effect the rulers of Cerberus. The book closes with the Agent in the picket ship feeling more concerned, as he saw himself change again, this time putting other people above his own needs and mission. This increases his turmoil and soul searching. The saga continues in the third book of the series, called Charon: A Dragon at the Gate. |
Into the Out Of | Alan Dean Foster | 1,985 | The Maasai people become aware that a global crisis is approaching. Malevolent, unearthly creatures called shetani, which inhabit another dimension the Maasai know as the “Out Of” (because all things, such as humans, animals and plants, originally came "out of" it), are finding their way into the world. They are fomenting trouble between the superpowers, intent on causing mischief up to and including war. If not prevented, the barriers between the two dimensions will be breached and uncountable hordes of shetani will overrun the world, destroying all life. Olkeloki, a Maasai elder, comes to Washington DC to warn the US President and seek help. He encounters Joshua Oak, a disenchanted FBI agent, and Merry Sharrow, a shy and unfulfilled call centre worker. He is convinced that they are the key people he has been seeking, and his persuasion, coupled with several dangerous encounters with shetani, convince them to return with him to Africa, where they join in Maasai attempts to hold back the shetani. Eventually Olkeloki takes Merry and Oak into the Out Of, where, with their help, he performs a ritual which seals the breach between dimensions, sacrificing his own supernatural powers in the process. All three return to this world, where the shetani’s tricks have ended and the diplomatic crisis is receding, and Oak and Merry realise they have found what they have been looking for in each other. |
The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog | John R. Erickson | null | The setting is in the panhandle of Texas probably during the 1980s when the book was written. It starts off with Drover, Hank's assistant, coming to him and waking him up saying there's been a murder. They find a dead chicken and Hank says it was a 'raccoon' who did it, and he says he knows where it is. But the thing he finds in a bush is a porcupine, and later the local barncat, Pete, teases Hank for having quills in his nose. Later that day around dark, Hank assigns Drover to watch the chicken house while Hank goes on patrol. A couple hours later, Drover starts yelling there's a monster, Hank comes running and attacks the 'monster' which turns out to be a cow. The next day Hank and Drover sneak a trip on the back of a truck to town. In town the two dogs anger Bruno, a large boxer. The next day back at the ranch they find another murdered chicken, and Hank can't resist and he eats it. He wakes up and finds that he is in pile of feathers, and Sally May finds him and thinks that he is the murderer,so High Loper then ties the chicken's head around Hanks neck. Hank then realizes that he has to leave the ranch. He heads out and meets two turkey vultures, Wallace and Junior, in the end he gives them the chicken's head and they fight over it, but in the end a hawk swoops down and grabs it. The next day Hank finds a female coyote named Girl-Who-Drinks-Blood (who he calls Missy), they become good friends but then Missy's family shows up. And the next thing Hank knows, Missy is his fiancée. Her brother Scraunch has met Hank on the field of battle before. He and Hank are now worst enemies. Hank becomes good friends with the two coyote brothers named Rip and Snort. After a long time with the coyotes, Scraunch decides that if Hank wants to prove himself to the coyote tribe and marry Missy, he must join in for a raid on the ranch. So Scraunch, Rip, Snort, and Hank along with other coyotes raid the ranch. But Drover, during the middle of the raid, convinces Hank that what he is doing is wrong. So Hank turns on them, and in the end Scraunch is about to kill Hank when a gun goes off. The coyotes then run off. It ends with Hank being back on ranch as Head of Ranch Security. |
Louis Lambert | Honoré de Balzac | null | The novel begins with an overview of the main character's background. Louis Lambert, the only child of a tanner and his wife, is born in 1797 and begins reading at an early age. In 1811 he meets the real-life Swiss author Madame de Staël (1766–1817), who – struck by his intellect – pays for him to enroll in the Collège de Vendôme. There he meets the narrator, a classmate named "the Poet" who later identifies himself in the text as Balzac; they quickly become friends. Shunned by the other students and berated by teachers for not paying attention, the boys bond through discussions of philosophy and mysticism. After completing an essay entitled Traité de la Volonté ("Treatise on the Will"), Lambert is horrified when a teacher confiscates it, calls it "rubbish", and – the narrator speculates – sells it to a local grocer. Soon afterwards, a serious illness forces the narrator to leave the school. In 1815, Lambert graduates at the age of eighteen and lives for three years in Paris. After returning to his uncle's home in Blois, he meets a woman named Pauline de Villenoix and falls passionately in love with her. On the day before their wedding, however, he suffers a mental breakdown and attempts to castrate himself. Declared "incurable" by doctors, Lambert is ordered into solitude and rest. Pauline takes him to her family's château, where he lives in a near coma. The narrator, ignorant of these events, meets Lambert's uncle by chance, and is given a series of letters. Written by Lambert while in Paris and Blois, they continue his philosophical musings and describe his love for Pauline. The narrator visits his old friend at the Villenoix château, where the decrepit Lambert says only: "The angels are white." Pauline shares a series of statements her lover had dictated, and Lambert dies on 25 September 1824 at the age of twenty-eight. |
G Is for Gumshoe | Sue Grafton | 1,990 | Three things happen to Kinsey Millhone on her thirty-third birthday: she moves into her remodelled apartment, which has finally been finished; she is hired by Irene Gersh, a sickly Santa Theresa resident, to head out to the Slabs in the Mojave Desert and locate her mother; she gets the news that Tyrone Patty, a particularly dangerous criminal she helped the Carson City Police Department track down a few years back, has hired a hitman to kill her. After her first night in her new place, Kinsey heads out early the next day in search of Mrs Gersh's mother, Agnes Grey, who lives in a trailer in the desert. Agnes isn't home, and the trailer seems to be occupied by two teenage runaways, but Kinsey eventually tracks Agnes down at a local convalescent hospital, where she has been since being taken suddenly ill on a trip to a local town sometime before. Agnes, 83 years old, hasn't exactly been a model patient, and the hospital staff are delighted to hear that she has relatives who can take responsibility for her. Irene makes plans to transfer Agnes to a facility in Santa Teresa, but Agnes seems terrified of going there, and tells Kinsey a confused story about a number of people from the past, including Lottie, and Emily who died. Kinsey makes plans to come home, but before she can do so, a man in a pick-up truck deliberately runs her off the road, seriously injuring Kinsey and totalling her treasured VW. Kinsey recognises the driver as a man she has seen travelling with his young son a couple of times on the journey to the Slabs, and realises she needs to take the death threat against her seriously. She hires Robert Dietz, the PI who helped her briefly by phone in A is for Alibi, as a bodyguard. His vigilance initially frustrates Kinsey, used to making her own decisions, but they soon begin an affair. Dietz discovers the hitman is Mark Messinger, who absconded with his son, Eric, eight months previously. He arranges a meeting with the child's mother, Rochelle, who is desperate to get her son back, and offers to help her. Meanwhile Agnes goes missing only a few hours after getting to Santa Teresa, and although she is soon found, she is dead within a day - of fright, according to the pathologist - and they suspect she has been kept prisoner somewhere. Irene suffers a serious panic reaction when she sees a tea set Kinsey found amongst her mother's possessions, and Kinsey suspects this has triggered a buried childhood memory. Further anomalies occur when Irene tries to fill in the paperwork relating to the death: Kinsey realises that Irene's birth certificate is faked, and that Agnes Grey is a pseudonym. It's Kinsey's CFI colleague Darcy who points out Agnes Grey is the name of a novel by Anne Brontë, which seems to link to the names Emily and Lottie (Charlotte) Agnes had mentioned. She tracks down a family called Bronfen who match the circumstances Agnes described, and surmises that the surviving brother of the family, Patrick, murdered Lottie and Emily. She is convinced that Agnes Grey was Anne Bronfen, a third sister, who took off with Irene to protect her when Patrick killed Irene's mother, Sheila, changing their identities and posing as her mother. The three daughters were presumably named for the Brontë sisters, which explains the alias Anne chose to use. Patrick faked Anne's death in order to gain sole possession of the family property. Kinsey is convinced that Patrick is responsible for Agnes's death, to cover his past crimes, and discovers evidence of further killings at his home. When she confronts Patrick, she is interrupted by Messinger, who kills Patrick. Dietz and Rochelle have managed to get Eric away from Messinger, and Messinger's stated intention is to use Kinsey as a hostage to exchange for Eric. As she drives Messinger to the airport at gunpoint to intercept Rochelle, Kinsey is convinced Messinger will kill them all. However, Rochelle outsmarts Messinger and kills him first. |
H Is for Homicide | Sue Grafton | 1,991 | The eighth novel in the Kinsey Millhone series opens in the midst of troubling times for California Fidelity, the insurance company Kinsey does occasional freelance work for in return for office space. First, a recent employee and friend of Kinsey's, Parnell Perkins, is shot and killed - and the police investigation seems curiously lacking in results. Second, in the wake of poor profit figures, company troubleshooter Gordon Titus (or 'tight-ass' as he is immediately nicknamed) arrives to shake things up. The informal arrangement with Kinsey seems high on his list of targets. In the new mood of nervous efficiency prevalent at CFI pending Titus's arrival, Kinsey is passed the claim file of Bibianna Diaz to investigate for possible fraud. Kinsey assumes a false identity as Hannah Moore in an attempt to befriend Bibianna, who by co-incidence is in a relationship with a former schoolmate and associate from police academy days of Kinsey's, Jimmy Tate, recently relieved of police duties on the grounds of corruption. Bibianna has problems too, it seems: her former boyfriend Raymond Montanaldo, of whom she is - rightly as it turns out - terrified, is the jealous type, and is hunting her down. Kinsey realises that a CFI colleague has inadvertently given away information on Bibianna to Raymond's gang, and things come to a head while she is out drinking with Bibianna and Tate. Raymond's brother Chago and his girlfriend Dawna accost Bibianna, and in the fracas which ensues Tate shoots and kills Chago. Bibianna is taken into custody with Kinsey deliberately sticking to her in order to cement their relationship. Kinsey's enforced overnight stay in the police 'tank' is interrupted by Lieutenant Dolan, who has a job offer for her: Raymond is the head of a huge insurance fraud gang and the police want Kinsey to use her new position as Bibianna's confidante to get the evidence they need; there seems to be a leak somewhere in the police department and they need someone unconnected they can trust to bring Raymond to justice. Kinsey withdraws her initial gut refusal when Dolan tells her Raymond killed Parnell, but they have been stalling the murder investigation in order not to jeopodise the longstanding fraud case. Kinsey agrees to help out of a sense of duty to Parnell, but the police plan to have Kinsey wired for her own protection goes awry and she is left to fend for herself. Thus begins a dangerous and stifling few days for Kinsey, undercover and up to her neck in an a criminal ring headed by a deluded killer. Raymond effectively keeps both Kinsey and Bibianna under house arrest in Los Angeles, with the aid of his second in command, Luis. Raymond can't accept Bibianna's rejection of him and is determined to force her into marriage. The snag in the plan, which Bibianna doesn't dare confess, is that she has actually just married Tate. Tensions run high, while Kinsey learns much about the car insurance fraud business, keeps her eyes open, and eventually establishes the leak is a clerk at the County Sheriff's office, whose father is a crooked doctor heavily involved in Raymond's ring. Matters come to a head when Bibianna escapes, and is pursued almost to her death by one of Raymond's henchmen. Visiting her in hospital, the doctor inadvertently lets slip to Raymond that Bibianna's next of kin is her husband, Jimmy Tate. Enraged, Raymond shoots Jimmy. Kinsey sets off in hot pursuit and received unexpected help from Luis, who turns out to be an undercover LAPD cop. Kinsey makes it back to Santa Teresa in the nick of time for her friend Vera Lipton's wedding. Both Bibianna and Tate survive, but despite her success in wrapping up the insurance fraud claim, Gordon Titus fires Kinsey from CFI. |
The Year of Living Dangerously | Christopher Koch | null | Guy Hamilton, a neophyte foreign correspondent for an Australian network, arrives in Jakarta on assignment. He meets the close-knit members of the foreign correspondent community including foreign journalists, diplomatic personnel, and a Chinese-Australian dwarf of high intelligence and moral seriousness, Billy Kwan. Guy is initially unsuccessful because his predecessor, tired of life in Indonesia, has departed without introducing Hamilton to his contacts, and Guy receives only limited sympathy from the journalist community, which competes for scraps of information from Sukarno's government, the (Communist) PKI and the military. However, Billy Kwan takes a liking to Guy and gets him interviews, and Guy's reputation soars. Billy introduces Guy to Jill Bryant, a beautiful young assistant at the British embassy. Billy and Jill are close friends, and Billy subtly manipulates Guy and Jill's encounters. After some initial resistance because she's scheduled to return to the UK, Jill falls in love with the equally smitten Guy. Jill discovers that the Communist Chinese are planning to arm the PKI and passes this information in confidence—or so she believes—to Guy. But Guy, now overly focused on his career and unconcerned with the well-being of his friends and allies, wants to be the one to break the huge story, and the civil war that he believes will ensue when the arms shipment reaches Jakarta. Guy visits Central Java and accompanies a march of PKI sympathizers marching towards the capital, and at one point his car is surrounded by a hostile crowd and he fears for his life. Upon returning to Jakarta, Guy accompanies one of his fellow journalists, Pete Curtis, on a visit to a seedy area of the city in search of prostitutes, but then realizes his folly. At the Wayang bar in the luxury hotel (Hotel Indonesia) where Guy is based, Billy outs one of Guy's fellow foreign correspondents who has been having homosexual relationships with Indonesian men. As a result Billy is ostracized and loses contact with Guy and the rest of the foreign correspondent community, leaving Guy to depend on his assistant Kumar, who is secretly PKI. Catalyzed by the death of a poor child, whose mother Billy has been assisting with food and money, Billy becomes outraged by Sukarno's failure to meet the needs of the majority of Indonesians. He protests Sukarno's lack of help to the needy by hanging an anti-Sukarno banner from the window of a room of the Hotel Indonesia, which Sukarno is about to visit, but Billy is pushed from the window and is found dead. Guy and Jill are present at the hotel at the time, and Guy becomes aware of evidence that Billy was shot before his fall by agents of the Indonesian security service. Following Billy's death, Cookie drives to Billy's bungalow to remove files that Billy has been furtively compiling on various subjects including the various foreign correspondents in Jakarta, as well as Jill and Sukarno. Guy, who is still in search of "the big story", then visits the Presidential palace following reports of a coup. Guy is viciously struck down by an Army officer, suffering an injury that threatens to blind him in one eye. Guy rests alone in an apartment rented by the British Embassy. Kumar visits him, but Guy fails to persuade him to abandon the PKI. Risking permanent damage to his eye, Guy disregards his doctor's advice and insists on being driven to the airport. He leaves Jakarta and is reunited with Jill, who is now pregnant, and the two fly to Europe. |
The Will of an Eccentric | Jules Verne | 1,900 | William J. Hypperbone, an eccentric millionaire, living in Chicago, has left the sum of his fortune, $60,000,000, to the first person to reach the end of "The Noble Game of the United States of America." The game he devised is based upon the board game "The Noble Game of Goose"; however, in his version, the players are the tokens and the game board is the United States. The contestants are Max Réal (with his companion Tommy); Tom Crabbe (with his trainer John Milner); Hermann Titbury (with his wife Kate); Harris T. Kymbale (on his own); Lizzie Wag (with her friend Jovita Foley); Hodge Urrican (with his companion Turk) and the mysterious player only known as "XKZ." And who is this mysterious "XKZ" who was added to the game by a codicil to the will? Time and completion of the game will tell. (Courtesy djk) In 1897 the first Baedecker guide book for the U.S. was published, and Verne used this as the source for his descriptions of the modes of transport, timetables, and geographic descriptions of the numerous places the twelve participants were required to visit in order to claim the prize. |
Foundling Mick | Jules Verne | 1,895 | The story begins in Westport, Connacht, with the wandering puppeteer Thornpipe demonstrating his puppets to the destitute populace. After the mechanism animating the puppets unexpectedly goes off, the onlooking public with a priest among them discovers that the mechanism was operated by a tortured, hungry, pale boy of scarcely 3 years, concealed in the cart, whom the master spurred with a whip, claiming that the mechanism was operated by a dog. Revealed later to be abandoned while only 6 months old, the boy does not know his proper name; being the protagonist, he is known only as Lit'l Fellow (P'tit-Bonhomme) for the remainder of the story. The public confronts Thornpipe and stands up for the boy, driving Thornpipe out of town. With no local family able or willing to raise the foundling, he is given to an orphanage known as Ragged School in the neighboring town of Galway. Neither O'Bodkins, the principal of the school, nor his assistants (with the exception of the 16 year old Grip) care much about the well-being of children, let alone their conduct or education, and Lit'l Fellow continues to suffer, now at the hands of his peers (particularly Carker, the leader of the gang) for honesty and dignity which he has begun to show at such early years, and hence refusal to follow the gang's ways of theft and panhandling. Lit'l Fellow recalls what he remembers of the early years of his life to Grip (who has become a close friend of the boy), mentioning an evil woman Hard and a compassionate girl named Sissy—the only person who cared for him in his early years, and whom he indeed came to think of as an elder sister. After the death of yet another child who lived with them, Lit'l Fellow ran away from Hard's hut, only to be found by Thornpipe. This chapter of Lit'l Fellow's life ends when he finds a bottle of vodka, which he decides to bring to the orhpanage in order to consult with Grip regarding how to return it to the owner. Unfortunately, he is noticed by Carker, who proceeds to appropriate the bottle, lock up Grip and Lit'l Fellow in the attic, and throw a drinking party. In the orgy that ensues, the drunk boys set the school building on fire, and Grip, without any way out of the attic, in desperation throws Lit'l Fellow off the roof to the ground, where the latter is caught by the onlookers. Lit'l Fellow is then noticed by the young and popular actress Anna Waston, who happened to travel through Galway when the Ragged School building caught fire. She immediately adopts the boy, much to the dismay of her middle-aged servant Elisa, who knew the pretentious and emotionally unstable nature of her master too well. At first, Anna takes care of the boy and shows promise of being a good foster parent, but Lit'l Fellow's hopes of a good childhood again meet an end when the boy travels with Anna to Limerick, where the actress decides that her newly found "angel" would make a good actor, and drags him into playing a role in a popular performance. But the boy, only 5 years old at the time and not yet able to tell reality from a show, takes the play literally and ruins the performance. Offended, Anna dumps the boy in Limerick and leaves Ireland, never to return. The boy is found at the steps of a cathedral near a local cemetery by the visiting farmers, Martin and Martine MacCarthy, a middle-aged couple with 3 grown-up children. The family shelters Lit'l Fellow to live with them on their Kerwan farm in County Kerry, Munster, where the boy spends the next 4 years of his life. Having proven himself to be hardworking and honorable even before settling on the farm, Lit'l Fellow now desires to be of help in the household, occupying himself on par with the rest of the family, altogether 5 people: Martin's elderly mother, known simply as Grandmother; Martin and Martine themselves, their younger son Simeon, their elder son Murdock with his wife Kitty. Absent was the couple's second son, Patrick, who entered the service as a seaman. Becoming a good farm worker, Lit'l Fellow requests only one thing for his payment—a small rock for every day he would spend in service of the family. But after becoming an integral part of the MacCarthy family, getting a formidable secular and religious education (the family being devout Roman Catholics), even becoming the godfather of Kitty's newborn daughter Jenny and saving her life from a wolf who dug its way into the house during the family's absence, Lit'l Fellow again sees his hopes of a good life reduced to naught when, after a year of natural disasters and poor harvest, the family is left with no money to pay the rent and is evicted from the farm by the landowners. Murdock is imprisoned for half-year due to his participation in the nationalist movement for home rule, supported by Martin and Simeon by the circumstances which led to their eviction. The Grandmother, severely ill at the time, meets death at the hands of the landlord's manager and police guards come to evict the family. Lit'l Fellow, who was absent at the time walking several miles to a neighboring village trying to obtain a medicine for the dying Grandmother, arrives to see the family gone and the farm demolished. Burying a pot containing all the little pebbles earned during his 4 years on the farm under a fir tree which he planted on Jenny's birthday, the boy leaves for Limerick, where the family was supposedly taken. After nearly perishing in the freezing cold, Lit'l Fellow is saved by the family's shepherd dog, Birk, who was driven away at the time of eviction. Birk, however, leads Lit'l Fellow away from Limerick and into Newmarket, County Cork. There, Lit'l Fellow happens to find a briefcase lost by a local landlord, marquis Piborne. After returning the briefcase containing £100 to marquis' residence, Trelingar Castle, Lit'l Fellow is invited to serve in the castle as a groom to marquis' son, count Ashton. The boy accepts and serves in the castle for several months, once again suffering constant ridicule from other servants and antics of the spoiled Ashton. Birk, being at odds with Ashton's dogs, cannot be taken by the boy into the castle and has to be taken care of in secret either by him, or (in his absence) by his only friend in the castle, the aged laundress Kat. But the boy must yet again hit the road when Birk, roaming the surroundings, encounters one of Ashton's dogs. The latter attacks Birk, who defends himself and kills Ashton's dog. When Ashton learns whom the attacker belongs to, he sets up a hunt on Birk, and Lit'l Fellow, having rescued his dog, has nothing else to do than leave while still in one piece. Now 11 years of age and having earned around £4 while in lord Piborne's service, the boy with his faithful dog decide to make their way into the city of Cork, but on their way Birk rescues another boy out of a river. It is revealed to be Bob, a 7-year-old whom Lit'l Fellow once saved from Ashton's whip, risking his position of a groom. Together, the boys make it into Cork. This is where Lit'l Fellow's merchant inclinations, first become manifest while still at Kerwan farm, are finally put to practice as he sets up a newspaper kiosk—a small trolley dragged around the streets by Birk. Prior to their departure from Cork, the boys already own £30. The city of Cork is also where the boys reunite with Grip. After barely surviving the fire at Ragged School which separated the friends, Grip settled as a fireman on a steam vessel Vulcan, making regular trips between Dublin and the United States. Grip, foretelling Lit'l Fellow to become a successful merchant, advises him to move to Dublin, where he also appears regularly. Lit'l Fellow agrees, and soon after he and Bob leave for Dublin. Instead of spending money on the journey, they decide instead to earn more along the way, and continue to operate the kiosk as they take on a 250-mile journey on foot. When 2 months later they make it into Dublin, they again reunite with Grip. Having earned £150 at this point, Lit'l Fellow decides to start his own business. After renting a few rooms from an old retired businessman, O'Brien, he opens the collectible store "Thin Purses" by Little Boy & Co. The store quickly becomes popular among the residents of the city, earning the 12 year old businessman a fortune of £1000 by the close of the first year. Grip, now a regular customer and assistant during the times free from his duties as a fireman on board Vulcan, is reluctant to join the business despite Lit'l Fellows' and Bob's pleas. Kat, however, is invited by Lit'l Fellow as well, and arrives from Trelingar Castle on a short notice. With poverty left behind, now only one thing troubles Lit'l Fellow—the fate of people dear to him; of those who, at one point or another, were a family to him. With the help of O'Brien he learns that MacCarthy's family has left their homeland and migrated to Australia, but no further information could be obtained at the moment. At some point, Lit'l Fellow leaves to visit Belfast in order to negotiate over an issue with his supplier; negotiations having been successful, he prepares to leave but is caught in a thick crowd during a worker strike, when he notices a young female worker calling for help shortly before collapsing of weakness. It was Sissy, now 18 years old, barely recognized by the young merchant. Without hesitation the boy takes Sissy to the train and leaves for Dublin, where the girl becomes a gladsome addition to the store personnel, marrying Grip some time afterwards. Thus, the young merchant was able to repay his first debt, tearing from the clutches of poverty the first person who ever did a service to him—his adoptive sister. Only one thing disturbs the boy's peace of mind now—the MacCarthy family. One day O'Brien finds out that, having met no better luck in Australia, the family was returning home on a sailing vessel. The trip was taking a long time, while the boy, having himself nearly perished during a tempest on board a cargo vessel for refusing to abandon the cargo (into which he invested most of his fortune), perseveres in his trade and earns a capital of £20000. When MacCarthy family finally arrives, Lit'l Fellow, having offered them a sum of £100, anonymously invites them to meet him and his friends at the ruins of the Kerwan farm. Following the unexpected reunion, Lit'l Fellow instructs his goddaughter Jenny, now 8 years of age, to dig up from under the fir tree the pot of pebbles he earned during his stay at the farm. The old farmer is then stunned to find out that the pebbles, of which there were 1540, are now returned to his family as pounds sterling—enough for them to buy their familial land off the landowners and reconstruct the farm. This was the manner in which the young merchant, now 16 years old, repaid his debt to the family which had sheltered him in the time of need. |
The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You | null | null | A ruthlessly "successful" man is transported to an unknown island whose location is never revealed, the implication being that it doesn't physically exist in our world. The island is inhabited by whom he gradually learns are a deceptively primitive people where every aspect of their waking lives is governed by their dream life. Initially in conflict with their ways, the unnamed protagonist, according to Bryant, "is dragged kicking and screaming to his own salvation." He realizes that the people of this island, through their dreaming, support and maintain the real world, and that he needs to incorporate this world view so he can successfully return to his former life. It can be read as an allegory of spiritual growth, and shows the influence of modern anthropological writings on indigenous peoples and the writings of psychologist Carl Jung. |
Alerte aux Pieds Bleus | null | 1,958 | Convinced that they will find firewater among the palefaces, blue-foot (like the Blackfoot) Indians besiege the town ... Lucky Luke will see all the colors! |
A Cage of Eagles | James Follett | 1,989 | The book centers on the battle of wits and the ambiguous relationship developing between U-boat ace Otto Kruger, leader of the captured Germans, and Ian Fleming in his real-life WWII role as an intelligence officer which would later inspire the James Bond books. It ends on December 1941, with an open-ended conclusion clearly leaving the possibility of a sequel. |
Brown Girl in the Ring | Nalo Hopkinson | 1,998 | The story takes place in the city core of Metropolitan Toronto (Downtown Toronto) after the economic collapse, which saw investors, commerce and government flee to the suburbs. After the police left, the city erupted in chaos and the Riots occurred. As a consequence of the Riots, Toronto is isolated from other satellite cities in the surrounding Greater Toronto Area (North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke) by roadblocks and Lake Ontario has become a mudhole. In the twelve years since the Riots, the city is now ruled by a criminal mastermind named Rudy Sheldon. Rudy is commissioned to find a heart for the Premier of Ontario, who needs a heart transplant. Normally, the Porcine Organ Harvest Program is used, but Premier Uttley deems the program "immoral" and prefers a human donor instead. Ti-Jeanne is the heroine of the story. She's a new mother who gets visions of people's deaths, and her grandmother, Gros-Jeanne, is a well-respected apothecary and spiritualist who runs an herbal and medicine shop. Ti-Jeanne left her former lover, Tony, but, after Tony defies Rudy, whom he works for by refusing to kill someone for their heart, he arrives on her grandmother's doorsteps asking for protection. Ti-Jeanne decides to help him with the aid of her grandmother. Later in the novel, Rudy is revealed to be Ti-Jeanne's grandfather, Gros-Jeanne's husband. It turns out that Rudy was an abusive husband and Gros-Jeanne kicked him out and found a new lover, named Dunston, and since Rudy has been vengeful. Meanwhile, Rudy summons the Calabash Duppy spirit and commands the duppy to kill Gros-jeanne, Ti-Jeanne and Tony, who was sent to kill Gros-Jeanne and take her heart for Primier Uttley). It's revealed that the duppy is Mi-Jeanne (Ti-Jeanne's mom). In the CN Tower, Rudy sets the Calabash spirit on Ti-Jeanne who has come to confront him after Tony killed Gros-Jeanne. Ti-Jeanne is trapped and injected with Buff, a drug that paralyzes her. While in a state of paralysis, Ti-Jeanne slips into an "astral" state or spirit state, and she calls upon the ancestor spirits to help her. They kill Rudy by allowing the "weight of every murder he had done fell on him." Meanwhile, Premier Uttley's new heart (Gros-Jeanne's heart) attacks her body. Eventually, it takes over her spirit and when she wakes up from the surgery, she has a change of mind about human heart donorship and declares that she will make an attempt to help Toronto return to a rule of law by funding small business owners. On Gros-Jeanne's Nine Night event, all her friends arrive to help out, and so does Tony. Ti-Jeanne has trouble forgiving him for killing Gros-Jeanne, but Jenny tells her "he wants to do penance." She lets him into the event to say goodbye to Gros-Jeanne and is surprised that Baby doesn't cry around him anymore. It ends with Ti-Jeanne sitting on her steps, thinking of what she'll name Baby, who is possessed with the spirit of Dunston, Gros-Jeanne's former lover. |
The Tale of Peter and Fevronia | null | null | Apanage prince Paul () is disturbed, as a guileful snake has gotten into the habit of visiting his wife disguising himself as the prince. His wife finds out that the only man who can defeat the snake with a magiс sword is Paul's brother, Peter (). Peter defeats the snake, but its blood spills on him and his body is covered with aching scabs. No doctors can help, but suddenly Peter hears of Fevronia (), a wise young peasant maiden, who promises to heal him. As a reward she wants to marry Peter. When healed, he does not keep his promise and instead sends rich gifts to Fevronia. However, soon Peter's body is again covered with scabs. Fevronia heals him again and this time they get married. Prince Paul soon dies and Peter and Fevronia come to reign in Murom. The boyars are unhappy to have a peasant woman for princess, and they ask Fevronia to leave the city taking with her whatever riches she wants. Fevronia agrees, asking them to let her choose just one thing. The boyars find out that the wise maiden's wish was to only take her husband, so Peter and Fevronia leave Murom together. The city remains without a prince. The boyars start strifes over the reign, Murom is in havoc, and finally Peter and Fevronia are asked to return. They reign wisely and happily until their last days, which they spend in monasteries. They know they will die on the same day and ask to be buried in the same grave. The Russian Orthodox tradition does not allow for a monk and a nun to be buried together, but the bodies are twice found to disappear from the original coffins and finally remain in the common grave forever. |
Dragons of Summer Flame | Margaret Weis | 1,995 | After a battle, the Nightlord Steel Brightblade finds Palin Majere, nephew of the famed mage Raistlin. He allows him to return with the bodies of his two brothers, slain in the battle, to their parents, Caramon and Tika. The Knights of Takhisis visit an island where the hidden race of Irda make their home. The Irda hide themselves with an illusion, pretending to be primitive humans, and the knights leave. This fearful encounter causes the Irda to believe that another invasion will come, and convinces them to break open a magical item known as the Greygem of Gargath. The Irda did not know that the Graygem holds the entity known as Chaos inside it, long thought too dangerous to dabble with, which sets in motion the Chaos War. Among the Irda is Usha, an orphaned human girl they had raised among them. They believed while their kind would be immune to the effect of the Greygem, that she, being a human, might be affected by it. So they decided to send her away, giving her a message to deliver to Lord Dalamar, master of the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. After she is gone, they crack open the Graygem and release the god Chaos. |
The Borrowers Aloft | Mary Norton | 1,961 | With the help of their friend Spiller, the Clock family have relocated to the miniature village of Little Fordham where they try to live in secret. They were discovered by a couple who own a rival model village and are kidnapped with the intention of being put on display as an attraction when that model village opens for tourist season. Imprisoned through the winter in the couple's attic, the Clocks are able to use materials they find to create a balloon and basket which lifts them out of a window and to freedom before they can be put on display. Knowing they cannot risk moving back into Little Fordham the family again take to the great outdoors, in search of a new place to call home. |
The Monster of Florence: A True Story | Mario Spezi | 2,008 | The book recounts the authors' personal experiences while investigating the case and their problems of being accused by the Italian criminal justice system. Preston and Spezi are outspoken critics of the tactics and theories pursued by the Italian police and prosecutors in the Monster of Florence case. |
The Cloven Viscount | null | null | The Viscount Medardo of Terralba, and his squire Kurt, ride across the plague-ravaged plain of Bohemia en route to join the Christian army in the Turkish wars of the seventeenth century. On the first day of fighting, a Turkish swordsman unhorses the inexperienced Viscount. Fearless, he scrambles over the battlefield with sword bared, and is split in two by a cannonball hitting him square in the chest. As a result of the injury, Viscount Medardo becomes two people: Gramo (the Bad) and Buono (the Good). The army field doctors save Gramo through a stitching miracle, the Viscount is “alive and cloven.” With one eye and a dilated single nostril, he returns to Terralba, twisting the half mouth of his half face into a scissors-like half smile. Meanwhile, a group of hermits find Buono in the midst of a pile of dead bodies. They tend to him and he recovers. After a long pilgrimage, Buono returns home. There are now two Viscounts in Terralba. Gramo lives in the castle, Buono lives in the forest. Gramo causes damage and pain, Buono does good deeds. Pietrochiodo, the carpenter, is more adept at building guillotines for Gramo than the machines requested by Buono. Eventually, the villagers dislike both viscounts, as Gramo' s malevolence provokes hostility and Buono's altruism provokes uneasiness. Pamela, the peasant, prefers Buono to Gramo, but her parents want her to marry Gramo. She is ordered to consent to Gramo's marriage proposal. On the day of the wedding, Pamela marries Buono, because Gramo arrives late. Gramo challenges Buono to a duel to decide who shall be Pamela's husband. As a result, they are both severely wounded. Dr. Trelawney takes the two bodies and sews the two sides together. Medardo finally is whole. He and his wife Pamela (now the Viscountess) live happily together until the end of their days. |
Midnight Robber | Nalo Hopkinson | 2,000 | The novel is set in the far future, where interplanetary and alternate-dimension travel is possible. In addition, an Internet-like information system, known as “Granny Nanny”, dominates daily life, with each person being injected with nanomites that allow mental access to Granny Nanny at birth. This access takes the form of an eshu, a mental voice within the head that provides information upon request and operates as a sort of sixth sense. The use of Granny Nanny is so widespread that the word has somewhat of a religious overtone (characters will often swear to Granny Nanny, for example). The story is eventually revealed to be narrated by Granny Nanny, speaking to Tan Tan’s child as he is being born. Its protagonist is Tan Tan Habib, a seven-year-old girl living in Cockpit County on the Carib-colonized planet of Toussaint, with her father Antonio and mother Ione. The story begins during Carnival season, of which the highlight for Tan Tan is the Robber Kings: performers who dress up as the mythical figure of the Robber King and tell exaggerated, boastful tales of their adventures. Antonio (an adulterer himself) discovers that Ione has been having an affair. After driving out the lover and separating from Ione and Tan Tan (who becomes distraught over the incident, blaming herself for Antonio’s abandonment), he then challenges his wife’s lover to a duel for her honor during Jour Ouvert. During the duel Antonio ends up killing the lover with a poisoned machete blade, causing him to escape Toussaint with Tan Tan. The two take a shift portal to New Halfway Tree, an alternate universe version of Toussaint that serves as a place of exile for convicts. They are met by Chichibud, a douen (one of several alien species on New Halfway Tree), who takes them to the nearest human settlement, Junjuh Village, run harshly by One Eye the sheriff and his deputy Claude through a system of punishment (being locked in a tin box for several hours at a time) and death (hanging). Tan Tan eventually adjusts to life in New Halfway Tree, growing familiar with the other locals of the town such as, Michael and Gladys the local blacksmiths, and Janisette her father’s new wife. She even befriends the local boy Melonhead, and together the two plan to move to Sweet Pone together, a better settlement on New Halfway Tree. As Tan Tan grows older, her father slowly slides into alcoholism and depression, until he takes to raping Tan Tan on a regular basis. On her sixteenth birthday, Tan Tan kills him in self-defense and, pregnant with his child, flees into the forbidding bush that surrounds their small settlement with the help of Chichibud, who takes her to live among the Douen in his village tree. The Douen, concerned about letting a human into their home tree and learning their secrets, reluctantly allow her to live with them. Tan Tan struggles and fails to adopt to the Douen lifestyle, although she does end up likewise befriending Abitefa, Chichibud’s daughter. She eventually hears of and visits a human village, looking for a doctor to abort her baby. While there, she defends a man being abused by his mother, assuming the persona of the Robber Queen as she does so. Over time, she returns to the village night after night in the persona of the Robber Queen, seeking to right wrongs and make up for the guilt she feels over killing her father. She is finally found by Janisette who, with a car and rifle built by Michael and Gladys, has been looking for her and seeking vengeance for Antonio’s death. In the process of running away she inadvertently leads Janisette and the other two to the Douen tree, forcing them to destroy it and move on to other trees. Tan Tan and Abetifa are left behind, to fend for themselves. The two take to wandering through the bush, looking for a town for Tan Tan to live in, still being hunted by Janisette. Tan Tan visits the villages they pass in the night, under the guise of the Robber Queen, seeking to do good for others. As the two travel on she hears stories being told about her exploits, both real and imagined. After some traveling she arrives in Sweet Pone. She runs into Melonhead, who is now the local tailor, and the two strike up their friendship once again. Tan Tan becomes torn between her desire to stay with Melonhead and her fears of Janisette, all the while still feeling guilt over her father's death and disgust at her still-unborn child. She ultimately stays for Sweet Pone’s carnival, dressing up in the Robber Queen costume Melonhead made for her, until Janisette arrives in a tank, demanding Tan Tan’s return to Junjuh village and her revenge. Tan Tan finally confronts her face to face, accusing her of knowing that Antoine was raping her all those years and admitting to both herself and to Janisette that she killed Antoine out of self defense. Janisette, ashamed, leaves while Tan Tan, relieved from her guilt and sensing the oncoming delivery, returns to the bush. There, accompanied by Melonhead and Abitefa, she gives birth, accepting her son as her own and naming him Tubman. |
Vita Brevis | null | null | In the introduction, Gaarder claims that he found the old manuscript at a bookshop in Buenos Aires and translated it. According to his plotline, it was written by Floria Aemilia, Augustine's concubine, who after being abandoned by him, got a thorough Classical education, read his Confessions (where she is mentioned but not named, unlike their son, Adeodatus) and felt compelled to write this text as an answer. |
Enchantress from the Stars | Sylvia Engdahl | 1,970 | Elana belongs to a peaceful, technologically advanced, space-faring civilization called the "Federation", which monitors worlds which are still "maturing", allowing them to grow without any sort of contact or intervention. Elana stows away on a ship in order to accompany her father on a mission to a planet where intervention has been deemed necessary because a technologically advanced empire has invaded the planet in order to take advantage of its resources. In order to lead a young woodcutter (a native of that planet) against them (without exposing him to the truth about either alien civilization) Elana takes on the role of an enchantress. She gives him various tools, leading him to believe that they are magical. |
Eager | Helen Fox | 2,003 | The plot is set in England at the end of the 21st Century, and revolves around an experimental type of robot that can think for itself, EGR3 (called Eager). Eager learns by experience as a child does, is intellectually curious and capable of emotion. He can feel wonder, excitement and loss. His inventor sends him as an assistant to an old-fashioned robot, Grumps, who acts as butler to the Bell family. Though much-loved, Grumps is running down and can no longer be repaired. Mr. Bell works for the all-powerful technocratic corporation, LifeCorp, who supply the robots which cater to every human need. His children Gavin and Fleur learn of an underground group which opposes LifeCorp, and there is danger of a robot rebellion brewing. The ultra-high-tech, eerily-human BDC4 robots are behaving suspiciously and the Bell children and Eager are drawn into a great adventure. Eager's extraordinary abilities are tested to the limit and he tries to find out the answer to the question: What does it mean to be alive? |
13 Little Blue Envelopes | Maureen Johnson | 2,006 | Virginia "Ginny" Blackstone, a seventeen-year-old girl who is on summer break before her final year of high school, has received 13 blue envelopes from her self-proclaimed "Runaway Aunt" Peg, who is now dead. Ginny is told that she is about to leave for several weeks and will travel to foreign lands. Her aunt leaves her four rules to follow: you can only bring what fits into your backpack, you cannot bring any kind of journal or foreign language aid, you cannot bring extra money of any kind, and you cannot use or bring anything electronic with you. She is only allowed to open the next envelope once she has reached the destination or has completed the task set in the previous letter. The envelopes lead her to London, where she meets a "starving" artist named Keith, and Aunt Peg's best friend and roommate, Richard. She realizes she has a crush on Keith, and they go to Scotland to meet her aunt's guru, artist Mari Adams. Ginny then has an argument with Keith and they part ways. She meets him again in Paris. Later, she encounters a horrible hotel in Amsterdam, along with a very hyperactive family. Following, she goes to Denmark and meets four Australian students, Emmett, Bennett, Nigel, and Carrie. Together they form the "Blue Envelope Gang" and follow the second-to-last envelope to Greece. On the way, the 12th envelope tells her she can open the last one whenever she feels ready. While there, her backpack is stolen, along with the 13th envelope. She enlists Richard's help to return to England; upon arriving there Richard tells her that he and Peg were married during her final illness, which makes Richard Ginny's uncle. This last bit of information completely unsettles the already-distressed girl, who runs to Keith's house for the night. Returning to Richard's apartment the next day, she manages to discover a trove of her aunt's final paintings, in the attic of Harrods, a large department store in London, which her aunt used as a private art studio. The painting collection is sold at auction, and the proceeds become her inheritance. She writes a letter to her aunt, letting her know that even though she never read the 13th envelope, she knows what it said. Ginny finally makes her way back home to New Jersey, after leaving half the inheritance to Richard. |
B Is for Burglar | Sue Grafton | 1,985 | In the second installment of the "Alphabet Mysteries", private investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired by Beverly Danziger to locate her missing sister, Elaine Boldt, whose name is needed on some paperwork regarding an inheritance. Elaine was last seen getting into a cab with the intention of flying down to Boca Raton, Florida, where she spends her winters, but appears to have disappeared along the way. It seems a relatively straightforward matter, so much so that Kinsey is not sure Beverly needs a PI, but she agrees to take the case. Things are not as easy as they seem however, as Kinsey can find no trace of Elaine anywhere in Florida, although she does find a woman called Pat Usher, who claims Elaine agreed to let her sublet the Boca Raton apartment where Elaine lived while she was off travelling. This claim rings false to Kinsey, since no one but Pat Usher has received a postcard from Elaine on her supposed trip, so she secures the able detective assistance of Elaine's elderly neighbour, Julia, to keep an eye on things in Florida while she goes back to California. Kinsey suspects there is a link between Elaine's disappearance and the death of her Santa Teresa neighbour, Marty Grice, who was apparently killed by burglars who then set fire to the Grice home a week before Elaine left. Someone breaks into the home of Elaine's Santa Teresa apartment supervisor, Tilly, apparently on the track of some bills of Elaine's which Tilly was holding ready to forward on to her. Someone also searches Kinsey's apartment, and Kinsey realises it is Elaine's passport which the thief is after. Gravely concerned for Elaine's safety, Kinsey suggests to Beverly that Elaine's disappearance should be reported to the police, but Beverly objects so violently that Kinsey terminates their relationship and starts working for Julia instead. Kinsey reports the disappearance and meets Jonah Robb, a recently-separated cop working on missing persons - but despite her attraction to him she is reluctant to get involved. A visit from Beverly's husband, Aubrey, complicates matters further, as it turns out he was having an affair with Elaine, which Beverly had discovered, and Kinsey begins to wonder if Beverly herself could have had a hand in Elaine's disappearance. Kinsey becomes increasingly convinced that Elaine is dead, and that Pat Usher is involved. Pat has now disappeared, after totally trashing the Boca Raton apartment. Eventually, she discovers that Pat Usher has applied for a driving licence in Elaine's name, thus proving Pat's involvement. Marty's nephew Mike, a teenage drug dealer, confesses that he was at the Grice home the night of the murder, and from the discrepancy in times between his account and what was told to the police, Kinsey realises that it was Elaine who died in the Grice fire, not Marty. Marty and her husband killed Elaine to steal her identity (which Marty assumed) and her money. They then passed Elaine's dead body off as Marty's by switching the dental records. Marty departed for Florida as Elaine, and arrived as Pat Usher, with some cosmetic surgery to help. Having been unable to find Elaine's passport, she and her husband have been forced to wait for a new one to come through before they can skip the country. Kinsey returns to the Grice home to look for the murder weapon, but while she is there, the Grices find her. Kinsey is shot in the left arm during the fight that ensues, but she manages to detain the two criminals, and calls for help. |
C is for Corpse | Sue Grafton | 1,986 | The third Alphabet Mysteries series installment finds Kinsey at the gym, rehabilitating herself after the injuries she sustained at the end of B is for Burglar. Also working out at the gym is Bobby Callahan, a twenty-three-year-old who was nearly killed when his car went off the road nine months before. Bobby is convinced that the road accident in which his friend Rick died was an attempt on his life, and suspects that he may still be in danger, so he hires Kinsey to investigate. The downside, however, is that Bobby lost his memory after the crash, and can't remember any of the details surrounding it. He can't even explain why he thinks someone wants to kill him; it's just a feeling he has. Kinsey takes the case, despite the vague information, because of her personal liking for Bobby. She meets his rich but dysfunctional family: mother Glen is an heiress on her third marriage to Derek Wenner, whose daughter Kitty is a 17 year old drug-user seriously ill with anorexia. Glen has spared no expense in seeking treatment and counselling for Bobby but he is struggling to come to terms with Rick's death, his own injuries and the loss of his prospects at medical school. A few days later, Bobby dies in another car accident and Kinsey is convinced that this too is the result of a murder attempt more successful than the first. There are several people with a motive: Kitty stands to inherit 2 million dollars from Bobby's will, Derek has insured Bobby's life for a large sum without Glen's knowledge, and Rick's parents are still very bitter about their son's death, for which they blame Bobby. However, Kinsey thinks the solution lies elsewhere. A friend of Bobby's gives her Bobby's address book which shows that Bobby was on the track of someone called Blackman. Bobby's former girlfriend tells her that Bobby had ended their relationship because he was having an affair with someone else, and she thinks Bobby was trying to help this woman with a problem involving possible blackmail. Kinsey eventually finds out that the woman with whom Bobby was involved was his mother's friend, Nola Fraker, who confesses to Kinsey that she was being blackmailed by someone who knows that Nola accidentally shot her husband, a well-known architect called Dwight Costigan, during a supposed struggle with an intruder at their home years before. The blackmailer has the gun with Nola's fingerprints on it. In seeking answers to what Bobby might have discovered at the hospital where he was working before his accident, Kinsey realises that 'Blackman' is code for an unidentified corpse which has lain unclaimed in the morgue for years. She suspects that Bobby had discovered the gun was concealed in the corpse, which turns out to be true. However, while she is at the hospital, she finds the recently-murdered body of the morgue assistant, and realises the killer is on her track at the hospital. It is Nola's current husband, Dr Fraker, a pathologist from the hospital, who is the blackmailer and killer. Bobby found out what Fraker was up to, but Fraker rigged the first car accident before he could do anything about it, and then cut the lines on Bobby's car when Bobby put Kinsey on the trail. Fraker traps Kinsey and gives her a disabling injection but she manages to cosh him and escapes to a phone to call the police. |
D Is for Deadbeat | Sue Grafton | 1,987 | In "D is for Deadbeat," Kinsey is asked by ex-con Alvin Limardo to deliver a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to a fifteen-year-old boy named Tony Gahan. According to Limardo, Tony helped him through a tough time in his life, leaving Limardo indebted. However, when the retainer check Limardo made out to Kinsey for four hundred dollars bounces, she learns that Alvin Limardo is actually John Daggett, a man known by all and liked by few, recently released from a local prison. He was also a bigamist: his first wife Essie's fanatical religious views have kept her married to Daggett, while Daggett, in disregard of his marital status, underwent a second marriage to Lovella on his release from prison, but has subjected her to repeated violence. In her search to find Daggett and get her money back, she discovers that he was found dead on the beach only a few days after hiring her. Through Daggett's daughter Barbara, Kinsey learns that Tony Gahan was the sole survivor of a family killed in a car accident caused by Daggett, for which he received a conviction on charges of vehicular manslaughter. Tony's been a wreck since the death of his family, rarely sleeping and doing poorly in school. He now lives with his uncle and aunt, Ramona and Ferrin Westfall. Also killed in the accident was a friend of Tony's young sister, and a boy called Doug Polokowski, who had hitched a ride in the car. Kinsey tracks down an ex-con friend of Daggett's, Billy Polo, now living in a trailer park with his sister, Coral. Billy is the one who introduced Lovella to Daggett. Kinsey finds out that Doug Polokowski was Billy and Coral's brother. There's no shortage of people with a motive for Daggett's death, but the police are classifying it as an accident. Kinsey discovers that shortly before his death Daggett was staggering about drunk at the marina in the company of a blonde woman in a green outfit. She sets out to discover which of the numerous blonde women in the case might be the killer. She also suspects that Billy Polo is not giving her the full truth about his involvement with Daggett, a suspicion confirmed when Polo is also murdered at the beach, shot with Kinsey's own gun, stolen from her car a few days earlier. Coral finally levels with Kinsey: she, Billy, and Lovella were plotting together to rob Daggett of money he had come by illicitly in prison, not knowing that Daggett had given the money to Kinsey to pass on to Tony. The police investigating Billy's murder discover a home-made silencer used in the killing. Kinsey immediately recognises the towelling used as padding as coming from the Westfall household, and Ramona jumps to the top of her suspect list. This means confronting Tony, who has given Ramona an alibi for the time of Daggett's death. In pursuing Tony, Kinsey realises Tony himself, dressed as a woman in his aunt's wig, was actually the killer. He was also the one who stole her gun, and killed Billy Polo, who had recognised Tony at Daggett's funeral. Killing the man who killed his family has done nothing to ease Tony's torment, however, and he commits suicide by throwing himself off a building in front of Kinsey, who has been unable to talk him down. |
Tale of Woe and Misfortune | null | null | The tale begins with a variation on the story of Adam and Eve before introducing the reader to a nameless youth who, having reached "the age of discretion," receives counsel from his parents. His parents advise him not to attend feasts, drink too much, be tempted by beautiful women, fools, or riches, visit taverns, steal or rob, deceive or lie, and last but not least, not to disobey his parents. The youth, ashamed to submit to his father and mother, goes out into the world and ends up gaining much wealth and many friends. One day, a friend of his tempts him to a tavern and convinces him to drink mead, wine, and beer, promising the youth that he will watch over him and make sure he gets home safely to his parents. The youth drinks the mead, wine, and beer, falling into a drunken slumber. When he wakes up toward night time, he realizes everything he had, including his clothes, have been stolen. He is covered with tavern rags, at his feet lay ragged sandals, and under his head is a brick serving as a pillow. Being ashamed to return home or to his former friends in such a condition, he travels to another town and comes across a feast. He approaches the merry guests, who welcome him to their festivities. Upset over what has transpired, he is not enjoying himself and the guests notice and ask him what is wrong. After telling them what happened to him, they offer him practical advice and he sets off to another town with their counsel in mind. He begins to live wisely and acquires even greater wealth than before. At a feast he has organized himself, he begins to boast about his success. Woe (a personification-"spirit") overhears him and threatens the youth not to boast anymore, appears in two of the youth's dreams, and convinces him to spend all his money on drink. Ending up yet again with nothing, he is again ashamed and moves on to the next town. He comes across a river, and despite Woe's taunting, manages by virtue of a song he sings to have the ferrymen take him across. When the youth decides to return home, Woe gets in his way. The youth then transforms into several different life forms and ends up being able to protect himself from Woe only by entering a monastery, which he does, leaving Woe at the holy gates. |
Prince of the Blood | Raymond E. Feist | 1,989 | Twin sons to Prince Arutha, the Princes Borric and Erland have lived a life of relative luxury. Though well educated and talented swordsmen, they spend their time brawling, gambling, and disrupting their father's court. After the twins show no sign of maturity after a year stationed at the Kingdom's northern border, and with Borric being Heir Presumptive to the throne in Rillanon after the drowning of King Lyam's only son, Arutha decides that his two sons cannot afford the luxury of youth anymore. He sends them as ambassadors to the Empire of Kesh for the Empress' 75th birthday jubilee. Baron James ("Jimmy the Hand") and Baron Locklear accompany the twins, their presence made all the more vital after an assassination attempt on Borric before their departure is narrowly averted, and the assassin is found to be of Keshian nobility. On the way to Kesh, the embassy stops at Stardock. There James meets Gamina, Pug's adopted daughter, and they fall in love at first sight. James and Gamina wish to marry but James must seek Arutha's permission as a member of his court. Along with granting permission, Arutha promotes James to the rank of Earl, and the two are married. Gamina then joins the group as they continue their journey south. Upon entering Kesh, the party is attacked during a sandstorm, and Borric is captured by slavers. His companions scout the slavers' camp, but are unable to locate the prince, and certain that he has been killed, continue onward to the capital, grief-stricken. At the capital, the embassy is introduced to imperial customs and meet the various people who form the Empire, and begin to gather information on the plot against Borric and the political unrest within the Keshian government. Erland enjoys an affair with the Empress' granddaughter, Princess Sharana, while Locklear also pursues a relationship with the Empress' daughter, Princess Sojiana, rightful heir to the throne. Later, after expressing unease about some of the things he has learned, Locklear suddenly disappears and is accused of the murder of Sojiana. Meanwhile, Borric manages to escape from the slavers, and with the help of a beggar boy, a mercenary named Ghuda Bule, and a trickster named Nakor, makes his way to Kesh, learning more about the plot against him and the Empress on the way. Eventually, the plot is uncovered, the Empress' life is saved, and the conspirators are revealed and punished for their treasonous acts. The brothers and their companions, happy to be reunited, but mourning the loss of Locklear, who was found murdered by the conspirators, return to Krondor. |
E Is for Evidence | Sue Grafton | 1,988 | The fifth "Alphabet" mystery novel opens just after Christmas, with Kinsey discovering that five thousand dollars has mysteriously been credited to her bank account, and flashes back a few days when she was asked to investigate a fire claim at a factory in Colgate as part of her informal office space rental arrangement with California Fidelity Insurance. The business in question, Wood/Warren, is owned and operated by the Wood family, whom Kinsey has known on a personal level since high school. Company founder Linden Wood is dead, but his son Lance now runs the company, and his four other children, Ebony, Olive, Ash and Bass all have a stake. Ash is Kinsey's former schoolmate, and Bass was an acquaintance of her second ex-husband, Daniel Wade. Olive is married to Terry Kohler, Lance's second-in-command at the company. After a solitary Christmas, with Henry away visiting relatives, and Rosie's Tavern shut down till the new year, Kinsey writes off the fire as an industrial accident, but upon submitting her report to her boss, she finds that significant papers have been removed from the file and others substituted, giving an appearance that Lance Wood has bribed Kinsey not to label the fire as arson. In the middle of protesting her innocence, the five thousand dollar credit takes on a sinister significance. Temporarily suspended from California Fidelity, Kinsey takes up her own investigation to prove her innocence, aided (unwillingly at first) by CFI administrator Darcy. Darcy's united with Kinsey in her dislike of claims manager Andy Motycka, who is Kinsey's chief suspect in the set-up, although she's at a loss who he could be working for. Kinsey reconnects with the Wood family, and learns some of their dark family secrets: that Ebony, the oldest sister, wants control of the business and that Lance was practically a criminal in high school. She also learns that a former Wood/Warren employee, Hugh Case, committed suicide two years before, but the suspicious disappearance of all the lab work on Hugh's body seems to support his widow Lyda's claim that it was murder rather than suicide. Kinsey remains unconvinced by Lyda's conviction that Lance was Hugh's killer but can't seem to find any other leads. Her spirits are at a low ebb and it's the worst possible moment for Daniel to show up, eight years after leaving without a word. Kinsey finds it hard it cope with but eventually agrees to store a guitar for him while he sorts himself out. On her way to a new year party at Olive and Terry's home, Kinsey is almost killed when a bomb, disguised as a gift left on the doorstep, explodes. Olive is killed and Terry is badly injured. Kinsey does her best to resist Daniel's attempts to nurse her, and her distrust is proved right when she finds out the guitar she has been storing for Daniel is bugged, and he has been reporting on her investigation to Ebony and Bass Wood. She discovers Daniel and Bass are lovers - Bass is the person Daniel left her for. Shortly afterwards, Kinsey finds Lyda Case's dead body in a car outside her apartment. Forcing answers from the Wood family, Kinsey learns an even darker family secret: that Lance had an incestuous affair with Olive when they were teenagers leaving Olive emotionally and sexually scarred for the rest of her life. Kinsey's suspicions immediately jump to Terry Kohler, and when the police identify fingerprints on the car Lyda was found in as belonging to an escaped convicted bomber called Chris Emms, she realises Terry and Emms are the same person. Unfortunately, Emms has anticipated her solving the case and is waiting at her apartment with another bomb. Before it explodes he explains he killed Hugh Case because Hugh had realised his true identity, and Lyda because she had belatedly found Hugh's records of that. He engineered the fire at Wood/Warren and set up Kinsey (with the aid of Andy Motycka) to get revenge on Lance, after Bass spilled the family incest secret to him. Kinsey manages to shoot Emms and disables him sufficiently to get out of the bathroom window just as the bomb is exploding, killing Emms and destroying her garage apartment. After Daniel leaves with Bass, the only loose end is the five thousand dollars Emms put in her account, and on the advice of Lieutenant Dolan, Kinsey keeps it. |
F Is for Fugitive | Sue Grafton | 1,989 | The sixth novel in the series sends Kinsey to Floral Beach, California, while back at home, Henry Pitts is having her garage apartment rebuilt after it was destroyed at the end of E is for Evidence. She has been hired by Royce Fowler, who wants her to delve into the past to exonerate his son of the murder of Jean Timberlake, seventeen years before. Bailey, who had been a teen tearaway, pleaded guilty to killing Jean, his sometime girlfriend, but escaped from prison soon afterwards. He's apparently been living the life of a model citizen under an assumed name but has just been recaptured and is claiming his innocence. Kinsey heads to Floral Beach, a tiny local community, to pursue the cold trail, and stays with the Fowler family at their motel. Royce is dying of cancer, his wife Oribelle is sick with diabetes and their daughter, Ann, Bailey's senior by 5 years, has taken leave of absence from her job as a counsellor at the local high school to provide care. Bailey's lawyer, Jack Clemson, fills her in on the details of the case: Jean, 17 when she died, was a 'problem' child who was doing badly at school and engaged in numerous sexual encounters with the local boys at school - and, as it turns out, some of the local men too. She was pregnant at the time of her death. Everyone knows everyone in Floral Beach and Kinsey acquaints herself with a number of the locals in pursuit of the truth: Pearl, the local bar-owner, whose son's evidence put Bailey on the spot at the time of Jean's death, Tap Granger, who was Bailey's accomplice in several robberies before the murder, the unattractive local pastor Reverend Haws and his wife, and the local doctor Dr Dunne, whose wife Elva turns out to have a violent objection to being questioned. The High School Principal, Dwight Shales, who was in post at the time of the murder, offers some help, but Jean's single mother, Shana, whose friendship with Dwight is causing raised eyebrows around Floral Beach, and who is struggling with longstanding alcohol problems, is less co-operative, and refuses to identify Jean's father. Nobody seems convinced that the killer could be anyone but Bailey. At Bailey's arraignment, Tap Granger stages a hold-up, allowing Bailey to escape once more, and is himself killed in the process. Kinsey gets confirmation from Tap's widow that Tap was paid to do it - for the first time providing concrete evidence that someone wants to keep Bailey discredited. Kinsey's room at the motel is broken into, and she receives threatening calls in the middle of the night as she pursues the case. Ori is murdered when her insulin, administered regularly by Ann, is tampered with. Kinsey eventually establishes that Dr Dunne is Jean's unknown father, but Shana is murdered when she sets out to keep a rendezvous with him. Kinsey ends up running from the cops herself after she finds the body, and seeks refuge with Dwight Shales, who finally confesses that he was also having an affair with Jean, and was probably the father of her child. Kinsey wonders whether Dwight could be the link between the two, having realised that Ann Fowler seems jealous of anyone who comes into contact with Dwight. She searches Ann's room, and finds evidence that Ann supplied Tap with the hold-up gun and made the anonymous phone calls. Unfortunately, she also finds Ann waiting for her, armed with a shotgun. Jean had confided in her, as school counsellor, that Dwight was the father of the child. Motivated by jealousy, Ann killed her, and being equally jealous of her brother's position as favoured child of their parents, Ann was happy to see him take the rap. Her plan is to use the money she'll eventually inherit from her parents to tempt Dwight, to whom she has been fanatically devoted for years, into marriage. She killed her mother to hasten the plan along, and Shana because she was jealous of her friedship with Dwight. Before Ann can kill Kinsey, she is accidentally interrupted by Royce, who wrestles the gun away from Ann, shooting her in the foot accidentally in the process. Ann is arrested for the murders of Shana and Ori, and although there's insufficient evidence to prove her the killer of Jean as well, the circumstances are sufficient to ensure that Bailey is cleared. |
I Is for Innocent | Sue Grafton | 1,992 | After being unceremoniously fired by California Fidelity Insurance at the end of H is for Homicide, Kinsey has found herself new office space with her attorney, Lonnie Kingman, at the beginning of I is for Innocent. Lonnie has a case he wants Kinsey's help with - 6 years ago, David Barney was acquitted of killing his estranged wife, talented but insecure society house-designer Isabelle Barney, by shooting her dead through the spy hole of her front door. David's desperation to rebuild the marriage after the split netted him an injunction for harassment, so he was the obvious suspect, particularly since he inherited Isabelle's multi-million dollar business, but the prosecution couldn't make it stick. Now Isabelle's previous husband, Kenneth Voigt, is trying again in the civil courts, in an attempt to secure the fortune for his and Isabelle's daughter Shelby, and Lonnie needs some evidence. The previous PI on the case, Morley Shine, has just died of a heart attack, and Lonnie asks Kinsey to step in. Kinsey agrees, and knowing Morley of old, is surprised to find his files in a mess, with crucial witness statements missing. One new witness has come forward: Curtis MacIntyre, a habitual jailbird who shared a cell with Barney for a night and claims that Barney confessed to his guilt just after the acquittal. Kinsey is very doubtful of this story, especially when she finds out Curtis was in custody on another matter on the date in question. In trying to fill in the other blanks, she uncovers more evidence in Barney's favour than against him, not least that Barney appears to have a cast-iron alibi; he was the victim of a hit and run whilst out jogging at the time of the murder some miles away. Kinsey tracks down both the driver - Tippy, the daughter of Isabelle's best friend Rhe Parsons - and a witness who can swear that Barney was knocked down by her. Kinsey also finds out that Tippy, drunk, and in her father's pick-up truck, was the perpetrator of a previous, and fatal, hit-and-run on the same night, the victim being an elderly man called Noah McKell. She realises Morley was on the same track, and begins to have suspicions about his death. She eventually establishes that Morley was poisoned by a pastry left at his office made with lethal mushrooms. She also finds out that Kenneth Voigt has been paying Curtis 'expense money' for years, which casts further doubt on his testimony. Curtis comes up with an alternative story: the confession was actually made some time after the acquittal during a drunken evening at Barney's home. This sounds even more unlikely to Kinsey's sceptical ears. She begins to suspect that someone else from Isabelle's immediate circle might be the guilty party - Isabelle's sister Simone, Ken Voigt's new wife Francesca, or Isabelle's former business partner, Peter Weidmann and/or his wife Yolanda. Meanwhile, at home, her octegenarian landlord, Henry Pitts, is entertaining his hypochondriac elder brother, William, for a visit. Both Henry and Kinsey are astonished to find that romance begins to bloom between William and Rosie, the proprietress of Kinsey's local Hungarian tavern, which has recently been taken over as a favourite haunt by some local sports fans. Rosie charms William with her acceptance of his imagined illnesses. Back on the case, Kinsey has a sudden flash of inspiration looking at the time gap between Tippy killing Mr McKell and knocking down Barney. Tippy admits that, panic-stricken after the first accident, she went to confess what she'd done to her 'aunt' Isabelle, but didn't get an answer at the door. Kinsey realises Barney's alibi is worthless: having just killed Isabelle, he could have hitched on Tippy's pick-up and then rolled off it later at an appropriate time in front of witnesses, to establish his 'alibi' miles away. Kinsey's train of thought is interrupted by a call from Curtis, asking her to meet him at the bird refuge. He sounds terrified, and Kinsey suspects he has been taken hostage. She arranges for Jonah, her ex-boyfriend cop, to provide back-up and calls in at the office to pick up her gun on the way. Barney has anticipated that she would do this and is waiting for her, along with Curtis's corpse. They play a cat-and-mouse version of Russian roulette with their respective guns until Kinsey, in possession of a gun with an extra chamber in the barrel courtesy of Robert Dietz's advice in G is for Gumshoe, emerges victorious, having shot and killed Barney. Kinsey's prized Volkswagen Beetle, a mirror of the one author Sue Grafton owns in real life, is destroyed in this novel. |
J Is for Judgment | Sue Grafton | 1,993 | July 1984 contains two surprises for Kinsey Millhone in the tenth of the 'Alphabet' murder series, both connected to her past. First, California Fedelity Insurance reappears in her life in the form of Mac Voorhies, who wants her help with a case some seven months after his boss Gordon Titus terminated Kinsey's loose employment relationship with CFI. Secondly, in the course of the investigation, Kinsey makes a shocking discovery about her own past when she discovers she has a family she knew nothing about. The case Mac hires Kinsey to investigate is that of Wendell Jaffe, assumed to have died five years previously when his boat, the Captain Stanley Lord, was found drifting off the Baja coast. He left behind a suicide note, a whole bunch of creditors who had invested in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, and a family: wife Dana, and sons Michael and Brian. It seemed certain Jaffe had killed himself to avoid the disgrace and jail sentence which fell instead to his business partner, Carl Eckert, but with no body to prove death, CFI made Dana wait the full statutory five years to presume death before paying out on Jaffe's half million insurance claim, and she has been making ends meet by working as a wedding planner. Michael, now 22, has coped reasonably well with suddenly being the man of the house, and is a new husband and father himself. Eighteen year old Brian on the other hand is in a mess, currently residing in juvenile hall. Two months after the insurance money was finally paid, a former colleague of Mac's has spotted a man he is convinced is Jaffe in Viento Negro, Mexico. Mac hires Kinsey to go there and check it out. After a little hotelroom breaking and entering, she finds Wendell is now known as Dean DeWitt Huff, travelling with a woman called Renata Huff, who has a residence on the quays in Perdido, near Santa Teresa, as well as a boat of her own. Before Kinsey can prove his identity, they skip out; on the same day, Brian is arrested in the middle of a botched escape attempt in which a female motorist, as well as his three conspirators, are killed. Kinsey is convinced Wendell will be heading back to California to reconnect with his son. Doing a door-to-door back in California, Kinsey is astonished to be asked if she is related to the Burton Kinsey family of Lompoc, as she looks so like them. Kinsey denies the connection, but undertakes a little detective work on her behalf and is amazed to find her mother's father was indeed Burton Kinsey. Far from being family-less, Kinsey has cousins, aunts and a grandmother living less than an hour away. Her cousin Liza shows up to tell her the family scandal: Kinsey's mother was cut-off from her family for marrying Kinsey's father. Kinsey is aghast that no one has tried to track her down in the 29 years since her parents were killed and is resentful of any intrusion into her solitude at this late date. Her thoughts are dragged back to the case at hand when through an apparent police clerical error, Brian is suddenly released from prison. Kinsey is certain Wendell has engineered it, and is planning to slip through her fingers again with Brian. Renata catches Kinsey red-handed searching on her property but when Kinsey turns the tables (and her own gun) on her, Renata admits Wendell is visiting Michael. At last, Kinsey has tracked Jaffe down, but her success is short-lived when someone takes potshots at them both, and Wendell escapes once more. The day after, the Captain Stanley Lord, where Eckert has been living for the past few years, also goes missing while Eckert is away, and when it's found drifting uninhabited a few miles off-shore there's a distinct sense of deja-vu about Wendell's disappearance. Nevertheless, it's enough for CFI: Kinsey has proved Jaffe didn't die and therefore the insurance money can be reclaimed from Dana. But Kinsey is dissatisfied... she wants the truth, and is prepared to pursue it on her own time. She finds Brian, and also finds out from Eckert that there was three million dollars from their fraudulent business scheme on board the missing boat. Renata confesses that she killed Wendell, dumped his body at sea and then set the Lord adrift, making her way back to shore in her own dinghy. She then wades out into the sea to kill herself, and Kinsey is unable to stop her. Renata's story is apparently confirmed when Jaffe's body washes up on the shore. But Renata's never does, leaving Kinsey wondering if she has managed to fake her own death just like Wendell. "J" Is for Judgment was a New York Times best-seller and had an initial press run of nearly half a million copies. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.