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The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate | Ted Chiang | 2,007 | The story follows Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant in the ancient city of Baghdad. It begins when he is searching for a gift to give a business associate and happens to discover a new shop in the marketplace. The shop owner, who makes and sells a variety of very interesting items, invites Fuwaad into the back workshop to see a mysterious black stone arch which serves as a gateway into the future, which the shop owner has made by the use of alchemy. Fuwaad is intrigued, and the shop owner tells him three stories of others who have traveled through the gate to meet and have conversation with their future selves. When Fuwaad learns that the shop keeper has another gate in Cairo that will allow people to travel even into the past, he makes the journey there to try to rectify a mistake he made twenty years earlier. |
Firestar's Quest | Cherith Baldry | 2,007 | Firestar's Quest takes place between The Darkest Hour and Midnight. The novel follows Firestar, leader of ThunderClan on a journey to find a fifth lost Clan of the forest called SkyClan. Firestar and his mate Sandstorm journey upriver in order to rebuild the long-lost Clan. When they arrive at the Clan's former home, they meet Skywatcher, (the remaining survivor of SkyClan), who tells them about SkyClan's story, and shows them the Whispering Cave, they also find SkyClan's old home deserted, the caves strangely marked with tiny claw marks resembling those of rats. Firestar gathers together Leafdapple, Sparrowpelt, Sharpclaw, Echosong, Rainfur, Petalnose, Clovertail, Patchfoot, Shortwhisker, Cherrytail, Sagekit, Mintkit, Tinypaw, Rockpaw, and Bouncepaw. Eventually, Firestar re-establishes the Clan and helps the Clan fight the force that destroyed the ancient SkyClan: rats. Though SkyClan emerges victorious, the warrior Rainfur is murdered and Firestar loses his second life. As Firestar and Sandstorm prepare to return home, Leafdapple is made the leader and renamed Leafstar in the Whispering Cave, which is used to connect to the SkyClan ancestors. Sharpclaw is made deputy of the Clan, and Echosong becomes the medicine cat. In the epilogue, Sandstorm and Firestar's new kits are born. They decide to name one Squirrelkit (after her bushy tail), and the other Leafkit (in honor of SkyClan's new leader, Leafstar, and after Spottedleaf). SkyClan blood runs through ThunderClan in cats such as Spottedleaf from Spottedpelt and Tigerclaw from Gorseclaw. Before Firestar left the forest, a whole series of events happened that weren't shown in the The New Prophecy. Such events included the warrior Longtail losing his sight because a rabbit clawed his eyes, Willowpelt being killed by a badger, and Bramblepaw receiving his warrior name Brambleclaw. warrior ceremony. Also, Sootpaw got a new mentor, Thornclaw. This book is also the origin of the prophecy "There will be three, kin of your kin who holds the power of the stars in their paws." The prophecy was passed on to Firestar by Skywatcher. |
Reize door het Aapenland | null | null | The protagonist, J.A. Schasz, strands on an island inhabited by monkeys, each one numbered by importance. The monkeys mistakenly think that Schasz is a returned primate citizen who has managed to achieve the status of human being. Hereafter, a large portion of the monkeys want to look more like humans, by means of amputating their tails. |
Still Walking | Yaky Yosha | 2,008 | The narrative takes place in Tel-Aviv, at the dawn of the war in Lebanon. Mickey, an ex Special Forces officer, and ex "Shabak" agent (Israeli Security Services), has spent the night in a casino, losing a fortune. Now, at 4 AM, Mickey is lying in a rainy, darken alley, having a severe heart attack. While Mickey recovers, we find out that he is married to Laura, presently an alcoholic, and formerly—like most characters entangled in this story—a vivacious, beautiful and promising young individual. We also find out that Absalom, his son, both condemns and loves him, and that he is involved with Olga, a Russian immigrant and former prostitute. We find out that Mickey was shamefully released from his elite unit, for inappropriate compassion - sparing a young Arab terrorist, and later from the “Shabak”, for unjustified cruelty - killing an innocent Arab, father of six. We follow Mickey as he discovers that his family, mistress, and brothers in arms cannot prevent him from sinking into the pit he dug for himself. We watch as Mickey struggles to compensate for his transgressions, while eluding the mafia goons that are after him for his gambling debts. |
Southland Tales: The Prequel Saga | Richard Kelly | null | June 30, 2008: Boxer Santaros (Dwayne Johnson) wakes up alone in the Nevada desert, he takes out a red syringe and injects himself in the neck. He begins walking through the desert. Fortunio Balducci (Will Sasso) is on a houseboat with Tab Taverner-Former Mayor of Hermosa, his son Ronald Taverner (Seann William Scott) nephew, Jimmy Hermosa and friend, Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Fortunio is currently in an online-poker game with several American soldiers in Syria and loses, but the connection is lost because the soldiers were attacked—which means Fortunio is still going to lose his money. Fortunio owes some bookies in Las Vegas $100,000 so Tab suggests that Fortunio get out of Nevada before the holiday weekend begins; this should buy him some time. Fortunio can’t get across the border because he has no interstate visa to get across and will take sometime for him to get one. Krysta Now tells Fortunio that she can get him a visa and to meet her at a bar called Buffalo Bill’s situated at the border. Fortunio leaves the boat and drives towards the border. On his way, he finds Boxer passed out on the road. He pulls over and approaches him. Boxer stirs and says: ‘I am a pragmatic prevaricator, with a propensity for oratorical seniority, which is too pleonastical to be expeditiously assimilated by any of your unequivocal veracities.’ Fortunio puts him inside the car and they begin to drive off again. Fortunio asks Boxer how and what he was doing out in the middle of the desert. Boxer doesn’t know and asks the date. He seems to suffer from amnesia. At the same time, a Nevada park ranger is tipped off about the whereabouts of an abandoned SUV with a burned-up dead body inside. The SUV is a prototype vehicle belonging to Treer which is powered by ‘Fluid Karma’. The vehicle and corpse is taken away to a facility nearby. The facility is broken into by armed-men, killing everyone inside and taking the SUV and corpse. Fortunio asks Boxer if he can remember anything. The only thing he seems to remember is a maze made of sand. Fortunio says that he is a big fan of Boxer’s. Boxer is confused and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Fortunio tells him that he is Boxer Santaros-a very famous action star and ex-pro-football player. He then tells him of the incidents that occurred on July 4, 2005. The two make it to Buffalo Bill’s where Krysta Now is performing on stage but instead of stripping, she begins to sing poetry. Fortunio explains the situation to Krysta, that he found Boxer lying in the desert, picked him up and that he has amnesia, so now he needs two visas. Krysta will get the visas on one condition-play along a game she has created. Using Boxer’s amnesia to her advantage, she will tell Boxer that the two of them were together in Vegas for the weekend, partying and working on a script that she wrote called ‘The Power’, she was researching a character at Buffalo Bill’s (her character in the movie is an intelligent dancer interested in astrophysics). She then goes on to say that Fortunio has to pretend that he is a private detective and was hired to find Boxer and bring him to Krysta, if he doesn’t do it, she will deliver him to the bookies in Vegas. She ends up convincing the naive Boxer. Apparently, the script (‘The Power’) was written solely by Krysta, and that Boxer never had anything to do with it to begin with, but she has convinced him that he is starring in and directing the film. He asks what it is about and who he plays. Krysta says that Boxer plays a renegade L.A.P.D. cop called Jericho Kane and that it revolves around the end of the world. She gives him a copy of the script to read. Krysta begins talking to Fortunio outside her hotel room. She tells him to contact a lawyer and have him draw up a short form contract for himself for ‘The Power’ and to give himself $100,000 to settle his debt with the bookies. While Boxer is reading the script, the phone begins to ring. He answers and the woman on the other end tells him: ‘is this the Pragmatic Prevaricator?-Stay with the girl, she is your only chance for survival, We saw the Shadows of the Morning Light, The Shadows of the Evening Sun, Until the Shadows and Light were One. Cross the Border At Dawn, Stay with the Girl, and whatever she says, Keep Taking the Injections, and whatever you do-do not board the roller coaster.’ Krysta enters the room and asks about the script. Boxer says he likes it but there is lots of work to be done on it. Later, Boxer signs the contract given to him by Fortunio and Krysta. He goes to get a check from the bank, he places his thumb on the scanner, which is fed back to US-IDent (who are looking for Boxer). Boxer tells Krysta about the phone call and of his dream in the desert; she was in his dream and he remembers the song she sang in Buffalo Bill’s in the dream. She tells him that they have to ride the roller coaster across the road from Buffalo Bill’s. Boxer is hesitant at first but agrees. He takes an injection before they go on. Once they get to the top, Boxer has a vision...a vision of 1902, a Native-America tribe standing there. Boxer waves at one of them. He seems to have created a rupture in the fourth dimension. He goes back to 2008 all of a sudden and he tells Krysta about his vision. The two of them exit the roller coaster together.... The book takes on a classical literature type of story, the title, "Two Roads Diverge" is from a famous poem by Robert Frost. The cover from the book has a quote from T. S. Eliot, stating that our world will not go out with a bang as we expect, but with a whimper. June 30, 2008: Ronald Taverner is still on the houseboat with his father and cousin. We learn that he is suffering from amnesia. His father, Tab, brings him below deck to show him something. Down there is his twin brother-Roland Taverner, he is tied up to a chair. Tab tells him that Ronald kidnapped his own brother to hide him up at the lake for several days. His father tells him that he doesn’t remember it because he hit his head, which caused memory loss and he instructs him to keep taking the injections. His brother Roland was drafted in the Iraqi War and was sent home to work for the U.P.U. (Urban Pacification Unit) and uncovered a conspiracy and if the government found him, they would get the information out of him. They need Ronald to impersonate Roland for several days as a part of a mission to destroy US-IDent. He is to meet with a woman named Zora Carmichaels (Cheri Oteri)-a Neo-Marxist (a member of the revolution against US-IDent) in Venice Beach. Zora takes Ronald and the tied-up Roland to Los Angeles. July 1, 2008: Boxer Santaros and Krysta Now finally arrive in Los Angeles. They and Fortunio Balducci (now a producer due to the contract signed in Buffalo Bill’s) visit a friend of Krysta’s named Tawna McBride for research on the script. She tells Boxer to remain in character the entire time. Inside, Tawna tells Krysta that her husband, Rick, died recently due to a drug overdose, with the same syringe that Boxer had. Boxer shows her the syringe he has and Tawna asks where he got it from and asks whether or not he volunteered for the program. Rick was in the army and volunteered for a Top-Secret program and that the weeks leading up to his death, Rick began to act crazy, wandering off into the desert in the middle of the night saying that he was going to see the Chief. This makes Boxer feel unpleasant so he goes to use the bathroom. Inside the bathroom, a character in the mirror begins talking to Boxer . He keeps asking Boxer: ‘Do You Bleed?...Not Like we Do Future-Man’. Boxer asks who the Indian is. The man says that the Indian is a natural bleeder and that it took long to make contact, he took a shot of Fluid Karma (The name of the substance inside the syringes), The Indian is a natural bleeder (he sees forward in time) and the man in the mirror and Boxer are Chemical Bleeders (they see back in time) but when Chemical Bleeders take Fluid Karma too much, they begin to see both ways...this is why the man in the mirror is seeing into the future-at Boxer. He is 6 months behind in January 2008. The man asks if is he sleeping with Tawna and asks where he is. He then begins to recognize Boxer and his films. The man in the mirror is Rick, Tawna’s husband. Boxer tells him that he is dead. Rick doesn’t believe him and he takes a shot of Fluid Karma and he then falls to the ground and dies. Boxer comes rushing out telling Tawna that he saw her husband die and that he was a part of it. She becomes very upset and she kicks them out of her house. Boxer then faints and falls onto the ground... Boxer seems to be dreaming, he is in a big maze. All of a sudden, a giant snake appears from behind him and it begins to chase Boxer around the maze. Boxer runs up a set of stairs and into a portal. He lands on the other side and sees Ronald standing there. Ronald asks Boxer who he is...Boxer calls himself ‘Jericho Kane’. All of a sudden, Ronald wakes up from his dream. He is still with Zora in her van driving into Los Angeles. He begins to describe the dream for her. In the Treer Plaza, Inga von Westphalen and two fellow scientists are discussing an experiment that they are conducting (several people involved in it is the Taverner twins and Boxer). Boxer was apparently guided to Krysta for a reason (which we don’t know yet). Krysta was part of the experiment also because of her psychic abilities. They believe that her script ‘The Power’ is a ‘guide map for the experiment’ and a work of prophecy. They administered Fluid Karma into Krysta’s system, hypnotised her and also had her read the entire Book of Revelation, then they told her to create a document that would detail the final three days on Earth before the apocalypse. Inga gets a telephone call from Zora, who tells her that Ronald has experienced his first ‘Fluid Karma dream’. Krysta takes Boxer and Fortunio to a barnyard outside of Los Angeles, where many Neo-Marxists are attending a huge party. They meet up with Jimmy Hermosa who leads them into his tattoo parlour. Krysta tells Boxer that this is where he will become Jericho Kane. He is getting numerous tattoos all over his body. At the same time Ronald and Zora arrive at the barn and she introduces Ronald to Dream and Dion (The leaders of the Neo-Marxist movement). Moments later, Boxer Santaros is introduced to the crowd, who cheer wildly. Ronald is shocked...it’s Jericho Kane from his dream. July 2, 2008: Madeline Frost Santaros (Mandy Moore) (daughter of the current Senator) calls her father and tells him that Boxer Santaros has been missing for several days. She and Boxer were married for several years. If word got out of his disappearance, it would effectively ruin Senator Bobby Frost’s chances of being re-elected. June 27, 2008: Boxer and Madeline are at a Charity Scavenger Hunt sponsored by Treer. They are guests of honour at it. Before they go out on stage, Madeline gets pissed off as to why they would be associating with a nut-job like Baron Von Westphalen. But Vaughn Westhouse (Hollywood advisor to the Elliot-Frost campaign and Boxer's agent) gets her to get out on stage or he will tell Boxer that she is having an affair with her assistant - Brandt Huntington. Boxer goes out on stage and talks about the Scavenger Hunt, whoever finds the last mechanical ball (remote antennas for the energy fields) buried underneath the ground will win a brand new SUV powered by Fluid Karma. A person is at the area where the first ball is buried and where Boxer is expected to arrive with the first clue. The person’s mission is to kidnap Boxer and abandon him in the desert. July 3, 2008: Back at the Treer Plaza, General Teena MacArthur was inspecting the body found in the burnt-up SUV, so she calls a long friend named Simon Theory (Kevin Smith) to help her. Ronald Taverner, Zora Carmichaels, Dream and Dion are having breakfast at their restaurant. He wants them to bring himself and his brother to a hospital, believing that there is something wrong with both of them. The Neo-Marxists explain their plan to Ronald. They show him ‘The Power’ script. They are going to get him to go on a ride-along with Boxer for preparation and research for his character. Dion and Dream are going to stage a dispute that Ronald will have to go investigate and pretend to shoot them both dead...and all on Boxer’s video camera. At Fortunio Balducci’s house, he is reading the script when Serpentine (a mistress of the Baron’s) calls him and tells him to facilitate a meeting between Ronald Taverner and Boxer and in return she will pay him for it. At the Neo-Marxist HQ, Roland Taverner is tied up and injected with Fluid Karma. The unconscious Roland begins singing All These Things That I've Done-The Killers. They inject him once more and he stops. Ronald finds a letter belonging to his brother from someone called Pilot Abilene. He asks Zora what he was. She tells him that he was an actor in a comedy troupe and he met Zora, Dion and Dream where they became ‘The Lighthouse Gang’. Pilot Abilene is a former soldier who is now a guard of the generator dubbed ‘Utopia Three’ at the Santa Monica Pier. He was an actor who started out in an action movie with Boxer Santaros. The film was very bad but he became well-known from it, but his career ended when he was drafted to Iraq. It was here where he met Roland and the two became best friends. They learn of an experiment called ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’-all they know is if they sign up for it, you are used as a guinea pig but soon after, you are sent home. They go one night to visit Simon Theory (who is in charge of the experiment). He says no at first, saying that it isn’t for volunteers, but changes his mind once they bribe him. The next morning they are taken to a nearby airbase and each given an injection of Fluid Karma. The next day, the two are about to drop in from a helicopter. Pilot is nervous about it so Roland gives him his iPod to listen to during the drop...the song is ‘All These Things That I Have Done’. They drop successfully and they infiltrate a building where their telepathy kicks in...the drug is working on them. Roland is in a state of dementia, so he throws a grenade into a room, which explodes right next to Pilot, which sends shrapnel into the left side of his face. They never saw each other after that day. The Neo-Marxists are holding another meeting, this time a lottery for thumbs (certain people will be selected to have their thumb cut off to rig the election, they can re-use the same thumb as many times as possible, turning the election in their favour). Ronald, Zora, Dion and Dream are in attendance. The winner is Bing Zinneman who receives a check for $50,000 and then had his thumb cut off his hand. Afterward, Krysta Now and her friends and colleagues Sheena Gee, Shoshanna Cox and Deena Storm are in the middle of a conversation. Krysta tells her three colleagues that she booked a gig on the Mega-Zeppelin for the Baron on July 4th. While this is happening, Boxer is walking the beaches of Venice during the night. He takes out the Fluid Karma syringe and injects himself...before he loses conscious, he murmurs ‘Three Days...Three Final Days’... After Krysta leaves the bar where she was talking with her friends, she is cornered by Fortunio. He tells her to tell him everything about ‘Serpentine Dream Theory’. She says that Serpentine is ‘The Great Mistress of the Great Wizard’ who some call the Anti-Christ... Revelation 22:5 - For It Will Never Be Night Again, And They Would Not Need Lamp Light Or Sunlight, For the Lord God Will Be Shining On Them...And They Shall Reign Forever and Ever |
Cage of Stars | Jacquelyn Mitchard | null | Young Veronica (“Ronnie”) Swan's idyllic life in her Mormon community is shattered when her two younger sisters are brutally murdered by the schizophrenic Scott Early. As a remorseful Early is sentenced to a maximum security facility for the criminally mentally ill, his disability is increasingly tempered by medication and therapy. Guided by their faith, Ronnie’s parents take the unusual steps to visit and ultimately forgive him, as their surviving daughter silently plots to drop her strict religious identity and exact her revenge upon his release. |
The Black Death | Basil Copper | 1,992 | The novel is set in Victorian England and concerns John Carter, an architect who leaves London to become a junior partner in a prosperous building firm in Thornton Bassett, a village in Dartmoor. His hopes for a new life fade as he discovers a sinister mystery. |
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive | Alexander McCall Smith | 2,007 | As winter turns to spring across the red earth, all is not quite as it should be on Zebra Drive. There are the usual number of cases to be pursued, from persistent theft at Teenie Magama’s printing works to the case of three suspicious deaths at the Mochudi hospital, but there is also discontent among the ranks. Charlie is off on another escapade and Mma Makutsi’s impending marriage threatens her happy working relationship with Mma Ramotswe. And when Mr J. L. B. Matekoni decides to try a little detective work, disaster looms. One of the threads in this story that deals with a hospital in Mma Ramotswe's home town of Mochudi is the same as a plot line in an Inspector Frost mystery- the season 8 story "Benefit of the doubt" |
The House of the Toad | Richard L. Tierney | 1,993 | The novel concerns James Kerrick, an archaeologist and black marketeer who sells artifacts from a lost city in Mexico. He soon discovers himself the focus of a conspiracy of ancient cults. Various of the evil characters are servitors of the Primal Ones, incredibly ancient and powerful entities which sowed life throughout the universe and caused it to evolve both intelligence and the capacity to suffer. The novel incorporates references to Robert W. Chambers's King in Yellow mythology as well as to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The God 'Ghanta' is in the story is hinted to be identical to the Ghatanothoa of Lovecraft's story Out of the Aeons. S.T. Joshi provides an extensive description of the plot and a criticism of the work in his The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos (Mythos Books, 2008), pp. 273-75. |
The Miracle at Speedy Motors | Alexander McCall Smith | 2,008 | It has never occurred to Precious Ramotswe that there might be disadvantages to being the best-known lady detective in Botswana. But when she receives a threatening anonymous letter, she is compelled to reconsider her unconquerable belief in a kind world and good neighbours. While she ponders the identity of the letter-writer Mma Ramotswe has a further set of problems to solve, both professional and personal. There is an adopted child’s poignant search for her true family, and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni’s pursuit of an expensive miracle for their own foster daughter Motholeli. |
Catcall | Linda Newbery | 2,006 | The story focuses on a young boy named Josh, whose family goes through a dramatic upheaval. There is a new stepdad and a new baby sister. Josh's younger brother Jamie takes this badly and soon develops an obsession with wild cats and a refusal to speak. Josh uses all his skills, and a cat scrapbook, to help his family heal. |
Ivan the Terrible | Anne Fine | 2,007 | It is Ivan's first day of school. He can only speak Russian and it's Boris's job to look after him and translate for him. St Edmund's is a civilized school, but Ivan isn't civilized. Boris knows that he is going to have trouble teaching Ivan. |
Armance | null | null | It concerns Octave de Malivert, a taciturn but brilliant young man barely out of the École Polytechnique, who is attracted to Armance Zohiloff, who shares his feelings. The novel describes how a series of misunderstandings kept the lovers Armance and Octave divided. Moreover, a series of clues suggest that Octave is impotent as a result of a severe accident. Octave is experiencing a deep inner turmoil; he himself illustrates the pain of the century's romantics. When the pair do eventually marry, the slanders of a rival convince Octave that Armance had married only out of selfishness. Octave leaves to fight in Greece, and dies there of sorrow. Armance is based on the theme of Olivier, a novel by the Duchess Claire de Duras, whose scabrous nature forbade publication. But Stendhal has very quietly inserted the secret, without talking about it openly. |
Shanghai Baby | Wei Hui | 1,993 | The novel's narrator and main character, supposedly a semi-fictionalised version of the author, is a 25-year-old Shanghainese woman named Nikki, or Coco to her friends, a waitress in a Shanghai cafe. Coco is trying to write a first novel after previous success publishing a collection of sexually frank short stories. At the cafe, Coco meets a young man, Tian Tian, for whom she feels extreme tenderness and love. However, Tian Tian – an artist – is reclusive, impotent and an increasing frequent user of drugs. Despite parental objections, Coco moves in with him, leaves her job and throws herself into writing. Shortly afterwards Coco meets Mark, a married German expatriate businessman living in Shanghai. The two are uncontrollably attracted to one another and begin a highly charged, physical affair. Torn between her two lovers, and tormented by her deceit, her unfinished novel and the conflicting feelings involved in love, lust and betrayal, Coco tries to understand who she is and what she wants from life. |
Stoneheart | Charlie Fletcher | 2,006 | After getting in trouble on a school trip to the Natural History Museum, George takes off in a huff and, out of anger, breaks off the head of a stone dragon on the side of a wall. This sets off a stone pterodactyl literally peeling itself off the top of the building and chases George. As George runs away he sees three stone salamanders too chasing him. During the chase, George bumps into the Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier who helps him escape the pterodactyl and salamanders. He explains to George that by breaking the stone dragon, he has entered a different world - an unLondon - where statues move and talk. There are many worlds and the world George has entered is one where all the statues and sculptures and spits and taints are at war with each other. No one else can see what is happening to him, except Edie Laemmel, a glint. She has the power to experience past events recorded in stones by touching them. But unknown to them the Stone has alerted the Walker, one of its servants, who stalks them with the help of his own servant, the Raven. On his journey, George discovers he has special powers. The Black Friar identifies George as a maker, someone with a special gift for sculpting things from stone or metal. The Friar also tells them to find the 'Stone Heart' and put the broken dragon carving back to make amends for the damage George has done. But on the way the Gunner has sacrificed himself by breaking his promise sworn in the Maker's name to the Walker to try and save Edie, and ultimately falls into the clutches of the Walker. It is left to George to use his new-found gifts as a maker to rescue her. In so doing he sacrifices his own safety and is fated to take 'The Hard Way', remaining with her in this dangerous unLondon. In Ironhand, the gunner is imprisoned below the city in an old water tank. At the moment George and Edie set off to try and rescue him they are separated, as George is snatched into the air by the cat-faced gargoyle named Spout. Edie sets off on her own. George is seemingly rescued from Spout by Ariel, a spit who is also an Agent of Fate come to ensure he takes The Hard Way. She takes him to receive the challenge issued by a statue called The Last Knight. He has to fight three duels: on land, on water and in the air. He is rescued from certain death on the end of the Knight's lance by the timely arrival of Spout who snatches him into the sky. George mends Spout's broken wing, and the two form a bond. Spout calls George Ironhand, which he pronounces as 'Eigengang'. Although he has cheated death, the legacy of The Hard Way is inescapably carved into George's flesh, as three veins of marble, bronze and stone twine up his arm, each representing a duel to be fought. Each one will only stop moving fatally towards his heart as he fights and wins the duel it represents. Edie meanwhile has gone back to the Black Friar for help but, helped by an urchin-like statue named Little Tragedy, tries to escape the pub when it appears the Walker has come to the door. Only when they arrive at their destination through the mirrors does it become apparent that Tragedy has betrayed her to the Walker, since they are now in a past London, the London of the Frost Fair where she once glinted herself being killed. Meanwhile the Gunner has discovered that the Walker has killed many glints and stolen their sea-glass heart stone in his search for power. He escapes the water tank by crawling through London's underground rivers, taking the stones with him. He expects to die at midnight (turn o' day) but survives because George stands his watch on his plinth in his place. While he does this, he experiences what the Gunner and his brother soldier, the Officer, experience every night, an hour in the trenches under bombardment during an artillery duel in World War One (this is his first duel). While he does this, he meets a soldier with his own dead father's face and, though the soldier dies, George is able to heal his guilt at his father's death and realize he was both loved and known to love him back. The Gunner and George and the Officer are reunited, along with the Queen (Boadicea) and her daughters who have taken an interest in saving Edie. They travel through mirrors into the past to try and rescue her. Edie escapes briefly from the Walker but is recaptured, after she has buried her sea-glass heart stone to save it. He takes her to the Frost Fair, where, despite having foreseen it, she is unable to prevent her own death beneath the ice. George fights the Walker on the ice (his second duel) while the Gunner retrieves Edie's body. The Queen takes them all through the mirrors in her chariot but, at the moment they almost run down the Walker, he escapes into the Outer Darkness beyond the Black Mirrors. Unseen by any of the others, but felt as an icy blast, an Ice Devil enters our word as he exits it and follows them back to the present. Edie is revived by the power of all the stolen heart stones the Gunner saved from under the city, and she finds, among them, her mother's own stone. This is doubly shocking for Edie - she knows her mother didn't realize she had been a glint, and the fire remaining in the stone suggests her mother, believed dead, may actually be alive. George has one more duel to fight before the last stone vein twines into his heart and kills him. The arrival of the Ice Devil has frozen time and the city, which is disappearing under a heavy snow fall. And the ordinary people seem to have disappeared, leaving George and Edie the only normal humans in a city now only populated by warring statues. The city of London is in the middle of one of its most destructive wars in history. And yet most of its inhabitants don't even know it. The battle between the spits and taints of London rages on. The stakes are high, with the spits engaged in a struggle against the evil taints that will determine the fate of their very souls. Twelve year old George Chapman and his friend Edie are caught in the middle. A glint with the ability to "see" the past, Edie has become a crucial asset in the ongoing war. The Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier, continues do his part to help them in their quest. But George knows that he is the one who must play the biggest role in helping to bring an end to the war. With the Walker intent on forcing his evil designs on London and the world, George realizes that his destiny is inextricably tied to the Walker's destruction. In the end, the most important soul he manages to save might just be his own. Filled with intriguing suspense, invigorating action sequences, and well developed characters, Silvertongue is a thrilling conclusion to the international blockbuster Stoneheart trilogy. |
Change of Heart | Jodi Picoult | 2,008 | A man is killed by a drunk driver, leaving his wife June and his daughter Elizabeth behind. At the scene of the accident, June meets a police officer named Kurt Nealon, who becomes a close friend and later marries June. Years later, June is pregnant and Kurt plans to create an addition to their home. A young man named Shay Bourne offers to help with the addition, which June says is "the beginning of the end." Elizabeth and Kurt are found murdered, and Shay is identified as the only suspect. The case and his trial become a media sensation. The jury convicts Shay of two counts of capital murder. The jury deliberates on the death penalty. After much time, they all agree, with Michael Wright, a young man about Shay's age, being the last juror to agree on the death penalty after being coerced by other jury members. Shay Bourne is transferred to the I-tier at the Concord state prison. Shay is in the cell next to Lucius DuFresne, an artist with HIV who killed his gay lover, Adam. During the night Shay tells Lucius that he wants to donate his heart to a little girl he saw on TV. She is revealed to be June and the late Kurt's daughter, Claire, who has a terminal heart condition. Michael the juror has become the junior priest at a parish in Concord, New Hampshire. He tries to change the stereotype of a priest. June agrees to meet Shay in a restorative justice meeting. There she asks him, "Why did you do it?" Shay answers, "She was better off dead." June agrees to take Shay's heart out of spite. A lawyer, Maggie, starts the legal process to petition the commissioner of corrections to allow Shay to be hanged so his heart can be donated to Claire. Claire's doctor determines that Shay is a perfect heart transplant match. Maggie brings Father Michael to her parents' house for dinner. During a religious discussion, Rabbi Bloom gives Father Michael a book about the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, written by Ian Fletcher. (He is a character in a previous Picoult novel, Keeping Faith.) Shay has quoted parts of the Gospel of Thomas. One of the prisoners in the I-tier attacks a guard guard with a broken broom handle while cleaning his cell. He is pronounced dead by the EMT's, as Shay huddles in the corner of his cell praying. The dead guard comes back to life while the EMT's are moving his body. Another prisoner using the confusion attempts to kill Shay. Father Michael visits Ian Fletcher to discuss the Gnostic gospels. Maggie arranges a dinner meeting with Dr. Gallagher to discuss organ donation for Shay. The dinner turns into a date. June sneaks Dudley (a spaniel) into the hospital to make Claire feel better; and a nurse reveals the upcoming transplant, which June has not discussed yet with Claire. Shay's trial begins, and Father Michael testifies to the prisoner's religious belief that he needs to donate his heart to Clarie to obtain redemption. Father Michael uses Shay's quotations from the Gnostic gospels as his religious foundation. Ian Fletcher testifies as an expert on the Gnostic Gospels. Father Michael admits to Shay that he was on the jury that convicted him. Father Michael locates Shay's sister, Grace, and tries to convince her to forgive Shay for setting the fire that disfigured her face. Grace started the fire in an attempt to kill their abusive father. Shay took the blame to protect his sister. While Shay testifies, all of his chains fall away from him for no apparent reason. It is later revealed that Kurt was sexually abusing Elizabeth. At the time of the murders, Shay walked in on Kurt sexually abusing Elizabeth. He killed Kurt, who had shot Elizabeth accidentally instead of Shay. Shay had picked up Elizabeth and put her panties in his pocket, where they were found by the police. Three weeks after her surgery, Claire goes home, where Grace visits her. Claire sees that her dog Dudley has died in her room but, when she picks him up and holds him to her chest, his heart starts beating again. |
The Accidental | Ali Smith | 2,005 | The novel consists of three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End." Each part contains four separate narrations, one focusing on each member of the Smart family: Eve, the mother, Michael, her husband, Astrid (12) and Magnus (17), two children of Eve’s from a previous marriage (to Adam Berenski). Opening and closing the novel, and between each part, we have four sections of first-person narration from ‘Alhambra’ – who we can assume is Amber, the Smarts' uninvited house-guest. The novel opens with Alhambra telling us of her conception in ‘the town’s only cinema’. We then come to “The Beginning”, which consists of a third-person narration focused first on Astrid, then Magnus, then Michael, then finally Eve. Through each character we obtain a different view of how Amber came into their lives, and who they believed her to be, when she arrived unannounced and uninvited at their Norfolk holiday home, claiming her car had broken down. Through “The Beginning”, we learn of Astrid’s obsession with video-taping her life, seemingly as proof it existed; of Magnus’ involvement in a school prank which resulted in the suicide of one of his classmates; of Michael’s affairs with his students (he is a university lecturer); and of Eve’s writer’s block. The second first-person narration we have from Alhambra is altogether different to the first – here we are not offered her history, but rather a history of 20th century cinema – a past which she seems to adopt as her own, as if she were each of the characters in those films. “The Middle” deals, again, with each of the family members’ experiences of Amber: she throws Astrid’s camera off a bridge into the road, she seduces Magnus, and reveals flaws in Eve and Michael’s relationship. “The Middle” ends with Eve throwing Amber out of their holiday home. The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have “The End”, which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday. The house has been emptied of all possessions – we must assume, as the family do, by Amber – leaving nothing but the answering machine, which contains messages forcing Magnus, Michael and Eve to face up to their past. Magnus and Astrid seem freed and excited by the experience of losing their possessions, their past – Michael also seems to find some redemption. Eve, however, runs away from the family, embarking on a round-the-world tour – eventually ending up in America, where she goes in search of her old family home. “The End” ends, ominously, with Eve seeming to take up Amber’s mantle, arriving at someone’s house as an uninvited guest. The book then finishes with a short section from Alhambra, reinforcing her connection to the cinema. |
A Dog's Tale | Mark Twain | 1,904 | The book is told from the standpoint of a loyal household pet, a dog self described by the first sentence of the story; "My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a Presbyterian." The story begins with a description of the dog's life as a puppy and her separation from her mother, which to her was inexplicable. Her puppy and her owner's new child were soon added to her new home. When a fire breaks out in the nursery, the dog risks her life to drag the baby to safety. In the process, her motives are misunderstood and she is cruelly beaten. Soon however, the truth of the situation is discovered and she receives no end of praise. Later in the story, her puppy dies as a result of the owner's biological experiments. Only a servant seems to realize the irony, exclaiming, "Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!" In the end, the dog pines inconsolable over the grave of the puppy with the clear implication that she will do so until death. |
Daughter of the Forest | Juliet Marillier | 1,999 | From the novel's jacket: “Lord Colum of Sevenwaters is blessed with six sons: Liam, a natural leader; Diarmid, with his passion for adventure; twins Cormack and Conor, each with a different calling; rebellious Finbar, grown old before his time by his gift of Sight; and the young, compassionate Padriac. But it is Sorcha, the seventh child and only daughter, too young to have known her mother, who alone is destined to defend her family and protect her land from the Britons and the clan known as Northwoods. For her father has been bewitched, and her brothers bound by a spell that only Sorcha can lift. To reclaim the lives of her brothers, Sorcha leaves the only safe place she has ever known and embarks on a journey filled with pain, loss and terror. It seems there will be no way for her to break the spell that condemns all she loves. But magic knows no boundaries, and Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.” Sorcha, the seventh child of Irish Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, has been raised almost entirely by her six older brothers. Having lost her mother at birth, Sorcha is more or less completely ignored by her father. When her father's new wife, the Lady Oonagh, attacks Sorcha and her brothers, Sorcha alone is able to flee into the forest and escape. Sorcha's brothers, however, have been turned into swans. What follows is a twist on the classic tale of "The Six Swans." Sorcha learns that if she can spin six shirts from starwort, remaining absolutely silent until the last one has been completed, she can free her brothers from Oonagh's spell. Sorcha agrees to this and spends several years in the forest, hiding from Oonagh as she works on the shirts. At first she survives in the Forest, relying on the help of the Fair Folk and her only companion—Cormack's dog, Linn. Her brothers are able to visit her twice a year as humans as she labors on her task, which is to make shirts out of starwort, a needle-like plant whose touch is poison and disfigures the hands. One day, she is found and raped by several brutal men, who are led to her by the village idiot who thought she was a faery. They also kill Linn, and her brothers find her weak and bleeding. Padriac heals her while three of her other brothers, (including formerly peaceful Finbar), go out and kill her rapists with the help of the Fair Folk. After several years of solitary struggle, Sorcha is saved from drowning by a British lord, Hugh of Harrowfield (a.k.a. "Red"). When Red returns to Britain, Sorcha unwillingly accompanies him. Red correctly believes that Sorcha has information concerning his brother, Simon, whom Sorcha had nursed back to health after Simon's capture by Lord Colum. Sorcha remains with Red as she continues to work on the shirts. Though under Red's protection, Sorcha encounters a new danger in the form of Lord Richard, Red's uncle and the one who has been attacking Sevenwaters. Sorcha must fend off the attacks of Richard even as she continues silently working to save her brothers. Though she earns true friends in John, Ben, and John's wife Margery, the majority of Red's household believe her to be a witch, and they play cruel tricks on her. As the days go by, Red and Sorcha gradually fall in love, though they are separated by his need to find Simon and her fear of men after her rape—as well as her belief that he only loves her because the Fair Folk bound him to her as her protector. While his marriage to Elaine, who is Lord Richard's daughter, draws nearer (they had been engaged since before Red and Sorcha met) and while Elaine is kind to Sorcha, Lord Richard continues to constantly threaten her. Then, Red takes Sorcha off to the shore, where only he and Simon ever went, and proposes to her, asking him to marry him and telling her that he's canceled his marriage with Elaine. She is fearful that he will try to claim his rights as a husband, but he assures her that, if she wants, the marriage will be only in name and that it will protect her. He gives her a ring and then leaves to search for Simon and find out the truth about Lord Richard's involvement in his brother's capture. One summer, in Harrowfield when Red is still gone, Sorcha meets with Conor, her brother. She was spotted meeting him at night, and everyone accuses her of adultery, since she is married to Red. Because of this crime Red's uncle turns everyone against Sorcha and decides to burn her at stake. On the day the shirts are finished, all six swans come flying to her. Red returns home, and is outraged when he sees Sorcha tied at the stake. Unable to speak, Sorcha quickly throws the finished shirts on her brothers, but because she did not have time to finish one of the sleeves Finbar is cursed with one wing. Her brothers are extremely protective of her, and declare her marriage to Red invalid. They refuse to allow her to be alone with him until Sorcha insists on it herself, and she is the one to tell Red good-bye, believing that he will forget her once she is gone and still under the delusion that he only loves her because of the Fair Folk's intervention. He lets her go, and Sorcha and her brothers return to Sevenwaters, where they find it a mess. Some peasants recognize them and inform them that their father is not well, and they hasten to the palace, where Donal, the former leader of the King's armies who was fired for letting Simon escape, informs them that Lady Oonagh has disappeared. The family slowly rebuilds Sevenwaters, and Sorcha finds out from the Lady of the Forest that Red was under no spell, and that he truly loved her. This causes her much pain until one day, he shows up and declares that he has abdicated his rule and wants to stay with her, and Sorcha kisses him so passionately that she makes Liam, her eldest brother, blush. Almost all of the mysteries are solved, except for their half brother (the son of Lord Colum and Lady Oonagh). Two of the brothers set out to find this brother, while Conor travels aways with the Druids. The seven children of Sevenwaters separate to lead their individual lives. Liam stays with Sorcha in Sevenwaters, and Finbar disappears in the waters, leaving only a feather behind. = Characters in "Daughter of the Forest" = |
The Animal Family | Randall Jarrell | 1,965 | A man, a boy, a mermaid, a lynx and a bear - all orphans - find a home together in a log cabin in the woods by the sea. Through their shared experiences and self-created myth of their own origins, they create their own unique identities. |
Saving Faith | David Baldacci | 1,999 | The botched attempt on Faith's life led to an all-out hunt for her by three parties - the FBI, the CIA and her boss, Danny Buchanan. Fleeing for her life, Faith was not sure who she can trust, including the stranger Lee Adams who saved her life and admitted being hired to watch her. While Faith was on the run, Buchanan planned on turning tables on Thornhill before it was too late, but found himself outclassed as an amateur against a professional spook. Meanwhile, the FBI began to look among their staff for a traitor, with suspicions falling to the dead agent, and Brooke Reynolds. Despite the setbacks, Thornhill began mastermind several separate moves to deal with Buchanan, Faith and the FBI. |
Kampung Boy | null | 1,979 | The Kampung Boy tells the story of a young ethnic Malay boy, Lat, and his childhood in a kampung (village). A graphic novel, it illustrates the boy's life in pictures and words. Aside from being the protagonist, Lat is also the narrator. The story opens with his birth in a kampung in Perak, Malaysia, and the traditional rituals surrounding the event: the recitation of blessings, the singing of religious songs, and the observance of ceremonies. As Mat grows older, he explores the house, gradually shifting the story's focus to the comic activities of his family outside their abode. Lat starts the first stage of his formal education—reading the Qur'an. At these religious classes, he makes new friends and joins them in their adventures, swimming in the rivers and exploring the jungles. Lat's parents worry over his lack of interest in his studies; he acknowledges their concern but finds himself unmotivated to forgo play for academic pursuits. When he reaches his tenth year, he undergoes the bersunat, a ritual circumcision. The ceremonies that precede the operation are elaborate, with processions and baths in the river. The circumcision proves to be "just like an ant bite!" Sometime after recovering from the circumcision, Lat trespasses on a tin mine with his friends. They teach him how to gather the mud left in the wake of the mining dredges and pan for valuable ore. The activity is illegal but often overlooked by the miners. Lat brings the result of his labour back to his father, expecting praise. Instead, he is punished for neglecting his studies and future. After overhearing his parents' laments and being shown the family's rubber plantation, Lat finds the will to push himself to study. He is rewarded for his efforts, passing a "special examination" and qualifying for a "high-standard" boarding school in Ipoh, the state capital. Rushing home to inform his parents, Lat discovers his father in negotiations with a tin mining company, which is surveying the land. The company will offer a large sum of money for the family's properties if they discover tin on it. Other villagers are hoping for similar deals with the company. They plan to buy houses in Ipoh if their hopes are realised. The day for Lat to depart the village has arrived and he is excited, but as he is about to depart, sadness washes over him. He acknowledges the emotions as his love of the village and hopes that the place where he was born will remain unchanged when he returns. |
Scenes from a Bourgeois Life | Mervyn Jones | null | The book is an apologia for the paradoxes and anomalies of the author's own career. Jacob had drifted into journalism and become a Reuter's correspondent, first in London and then in Washington. He followed the war closely in North Africa, the Far East and finally in Russia where his resentment against the pursuit of wealth through industrial capitalism, found an expression in the socialist ideals of the Soviet Union. The novel is written with wry humour and with Dickensian names which lightly disguise the real people Jacob had known. It contains many amusing incidents, such as his account of losing his virginity to a bored married woman ("Madame Bovary"). It also introduces some original reflections, ranging from how easy it is for an Englishman with the right accent to seduce American girls, to an analogy between his great-great-uncle General John Jacob and the spirit of Marxist revolution. The opening chapter "Post Bellum Omne Animal Triste" describes the author travelling home to England after the war in the company of "Harrington Square" the railway shunter's son who had risen to the top strata of the Foreign Service. Jacob expresses great nostalgia for an England which he saw becoming swamped in mediocrity, typified by the ribbon development of the 1930s. Jacob's father was Harold Fenton Jacob of the Indian Civil Service, sometime Political Agent in Aden, but was not so rich as his status might have suggested. Jacob describes his family as having devoted itself selflessly to serving the church and the Empire and regrets the displacement of an old order by the nouveaux riches who have dedicated themselves to the greedy pursuit of money. This resentment showed early when young Jacob, given a place at his prep school on reduced fees, associated with the sons of families much better off than his own. He failed to achieve his educational potential and became a provincial journalist in the West of England. During this time the charming young man was chased successfully and unsuccessfully by older women, but tiring of this life moved to London where he lived a bohemian life in Chelsea. An interesting range of characters and liaisons crossed the screen before he met Miranda the officer's wife whose marriage had been doomed before it started. Jacob briefly saw British fascist Oswald Mosley's New Party, as a hope for putting England to rights, but quickly realised that the remedy was worse than the disease. Instead, concerned at the hunger marches and unemployment of the 1930s he saw his position as a gentlemen proletariat leading him to socialism. English snobbery, which seems to foreigners at once ludicrous and pathetic, is in reality a mighty force which adroitly handled, could be turned to revolutionary ends. There are many ways to socialism; the snob’s way may be the English way. The American worker is ambitious to own the factory he works in. The English worker desires to become a gentleman who, only incidentally owns the factory. Once let him feel that such ownership is incompatible with the status of gentleman, and factory-owning would cease to be a respectable occupation. For though the word gentleman does not exist in French, and is rarely used in the American language, it is with us a master-word which unlocks many a closed English cupboard. Immemorial usage has given it an almost mystical quality. Woe to him who debases its sovereign gravity in the coinage of English words. The English do not really love a lord. What they love is the principle that originally lay behind ennoblement. This was to impose a standard above that of mere wealth by rewarding outstanding services to the crown, which preceded the nation-state as the unifier in men’s lives, by admission to the orders of chivalry. It is foolish in foreigners to sneer at the Englishman for loving titles when this reveals a reverence for something higher than money. In practice robber-barons may have become viscounts, knavish viscounts earls, and so upwards, but the process only became finally ridiculous when it was extended beyond the owners of acres and peasant “souls” to the owners of pieces of machinery and shafts of coal. At this point the Englishman, seeing chivalric values being debased, clung to one standard that he felt still rang true – what was, and was not done by a gentleman. And more often than not his definition of gentleman was one who “puts more into life than he takes out of it”. Which comes very close to the quality which Lenin required from the knightly missionaries of his Communist Society.” Posted to Washington, he admired F. D. Roosevelt, but he regarded Americans in general with a mixture of fascination and distaste, particularly in the light of aggressive capitalism. The rise of the United States, displacing the British Empire as a world power, mortified him. Being at the centre of power at the time, he presents an interesting analysis of attitudes leading up to the war. “Then there’s really no hope of getting American weight on to our side of the scale until the shooting actually starts?” “Probably not,” said Harrington, crushing his Melba toast into a handful of dust. A little man with a yellow complexion and wearing inexpensive, steel-rimmed glasses came and sat down at our table. “Our young friend here,” he said indicating me, “is a regular fire-eater. Most Englishmen here give the impression that Hitler is just a vulgar fellow but he really seems to feel that he’s a s----.” And out came a raw, four-letter word. “I get the impression” said Harrington, “that many Americans hate Hitler more than we do because they have fixed hatred as the limit of their responsibility in the matter, Whereas we shall have to both hate him and fight him.” “You are right,” said the little man, sliding off towards an adjoining table. “But do be sure, whatever war you get into, that it is really the right one.” Harrington asked me who the man was. “Constantine Oumansky, the Soviet Ambassador”. His war reporting culminates in the USSR, where after watching the Battle of Stalingrad he spent time in Moscow meeting an interesting range of characters, particularly women. What impressed him was the raw spirit of commitment and involvement which he saw in Soviet Russia and the way this influenced the arts. He compared this with the stay-at-home intellectuals he knew in England, people with comfortable jobs in the BBC and the Ministry of Information who carried on writing as if there was no war. He particularly targeted Cyril Connolly, another pupil at his old prep school, St Cyprian's writing in The Unquiet Grave under the name Palinurus. :On the same page on which he empties these dregs of his despair, Palinurus vows that there can be no going back to Christianity. People cannot be expected to revert to threadbare myths, he implies. They demand new ones. :"Communism," says he, "is the new religion which denies original sin. Yet seldom do we meet a Communist who as a man seems either complete or happy.” :Oh the ignorance of the sophisticated person who thinks all the best thoughts! Is there anything in the wide world to equal it? :The one place in all my travels where I met men and women who seemed complete and happy was in Russia, in the darkest days of the war. In Russia I encountered a character long missing from the world which Palinurus and I once shared. The Hero. I put my hand on the shoulders of such men. They were real. We in the West had written off the type as the obsession of that dead bore Carlyle. But now the Hero was resurrected and in this war he spoke in the Slavonic tongues. I do not mean that Russian bravery was superior to English bravery – the boy Matrosov who silenced a machine gun by thrusting his own body into its embrasure was perhaps less imaginative but not more courageous than the British soldiers who knowingly went to their deaths in obsolete tanks. I refer not to bravery at all but to the heroic view of life which departed from English society long before the war and never returned during it. Never returned because, I think, it would not in any case have been in keeping with the kind of war we fought. We fought to survive. We fought not to win a new world but to keep the old one. And in any case there were two wars. I saw both of them. In the West a relatively gentlemanly affair, with quarter given and prisoners cared for; in the East, an inferno of unrestricted extermination. Jacob's final chapter "England our cow" laments the feeble socialism of the post war Labour government and the missed opportunity of Britain holding the balance of power between Russia and America rather than submission of British interests to the United States. It concludes with an empty bottle of gin. |
Keeper of the Doves | Betsy Byars | null | Amen McBee is born in 1891, the disappointing sixth daughter of a wealthy family; but grows up well-loved and into an awareness of everyone's strengths and weaknesses. Her twin sisters Arabella and Annabella teach her boldness and humour; older sisters Augusta and Abigail inspire more kindness. Her father is stern but loving, her mother loving but frail, and she also lives with her father's cold spinster sister. Amen's maternal grandmother, a progressive spirit bearing gifts of cameras, arrives during her daughter's new pregnancy, which culminates with long-awaited arrival of a son. Amen is also learning of the more secret parts of the family history, especially the death of an infant sister, and the mysterious Mr. Tominski, who might have saved her father's life as a child, but now inspires only fear in the children. He lives as a hermit on their property, caring for trained doves, until a misunderstood word brings tragedy and changes the lives of Amen's family. Amen starts to write poems. |
Son of the Shadows | Juliet Marillier | null | In this novel, Liadan grows up in Sevenwaters with her twin brother Sean and her older sister Niamh. They are the offspring of Sorcha and Iubdan (formerly Hugh of Harrowfield). Liadan follows in her mothers tradition in learning the healing arts. Niamh has great beauty and is 'expected' to wed Eamonn, a neighbouring chieftain. Eamonn actually asks for the hand of Liadan, she says that she will give him an answer in one year. While staying at Sevenwaters, Eamonn tells a tale of a recent attack by a band of mercenaries. Upon this attack, all his men were killed, and his life was spared by a man called the Painted Man. He swears that he will kill him. During the festival of Imbolc, a young druid named Ciarán tells the tale of Aengus Óg and Caer Ibormeith and catches the fancy of Niamh, they are soon having a secret love affair. Liadan discovers their secret during a walk in the forest. When the truth comes out, Ciarán leaves the Druids and Sevenwaters and Niamh is forced to marry the Uí Néill chieftain, Fionn. Liadan goes with her sister on the trip to her new home and on the way back she is kidnapped by an outlaw and brought to the camp of "The Painted Man." In order to attempt to save the life of their smith who was injured in an accident. She accepts the task and eventually falls in love with Bran, their leader. When Bran finds out that she is actually daughter of Hugh of Horrowfield, he sends her back home. When she returns to Sevenwaters, she finds she is pregnant with Bran's child. The Tuatha Dé Danann demand that she and her son remain in the forest, but she refuses to comply. With the help of Finbar she realises that she has his gift of sight and the ability to read and heal the minds of others. Sean, Liadan's brother and heir to Sevenwaters, wants to purchase the Painted Man's fighting force in their long battle for the sacred islands. All of the leaders go to a counsel to discuss the feud with the Britons. Liadan and her sister visit Sean's future bride and Eamonn's sister at his estate called Sídhe Dubh. During this visit Liadan discovers that her sisters husband has been beating and abusing her, she uses her mind gifts to help Niamh. With the help of Bran they plan on secretly taking Niamh out of Sídhe Dubh and take her to a Christian nunnery where she can be safe. At the last moment Eamonn and Fionn return and attack Bran and Gull as they escape with Niamh. Eamonn returns from the chase and tells the tale of how Naimh slips on the rocks and fell into the bog and died, all that remained was a cord that Liadan made for Niamh that held a white stone given to her by Ciarán. Liadan finally gives birth to her son and her mother and father realise when the child is born that his father (Bran) must have been the son of John and Margery, kinsman of Iubdan when he was Lord of Horrowfield. Liadan names the child Johnny. Shortly after the birth of Johnny, Sorcha dies. But before her death Liadan tells Sorcha, Iubdan and Finbar the story of Niamh's abuse by her husband; the escape from Sídhe Dubh with the help of Bran; and her belief that Niamh is not dead. On her deathbed Sorcha tells Iubdin that he must return to Harrowfield and learn the truth about John and Margery's son. Ciarán returned in hiding as a tinker during the ceremory for Sorcha. He tells Liadan that Niamh is indeed alive and safe. He also tells her the truth of why they could not wed. Ciarán is the son of Lord Colum and the Lady Oonagh, he is half brother to Niamh's mother. So their union was forbidden by blood. This was why they were not allowed to wed and that he could never be a druid since he carried the blood of the sorceress Lady Oonagh. Ciarán gives Liadan a gift for helping rescue Niamh for her abusive husband and returning her to Ciarán, a mysterious raven Liadan names Fiacha. Bran comes to Sevenwaters in secret to meet with Sean and meets Liadan, she tells him of his son. After Bran leaves, Liadan has a vision of her Uncle Liam's death; a vision of Eamonn telling Aisling that she could not marry Sean and then her suicide. They then learn that Fionn was recently strangled in his sleep. Liam was indeed killed by a Britons arrow and his nephew Sean takes control of Sevenwaters. Sean fearful for Aisling convinces Liadan to go to Sídhe Dubh to bring Aisling back so they can be married. Liadan has had visions of Eamonn torturing Bran. When she arrives at Sídhe Dubh she learns from Eamonn that he indeed has Bran held prisoner. She makes a deal with Eamonn, in exchange for not revealing that Eamonn betrayed his kinsman Liam and sacrificed his life in exchange for the Painted Man capture. Aisling will be allowed to go Sevenwaters and Liadan can leaves with Bran and Gull if she can find them and leave before dusk. With the help of some magic and Fiacha they make it safely through the bog that surrounds Sídhe Dubh. Liadan learns Bran's hidden truth about his childhood during her fight to bring him back from the torture inflicted on him. She reveals this to her father Iubdan and she convinces Bran that his future might lie in returning to his roots at Harrowfield in Briton, while his men talk of setting up a school for warriors. |
Child of the Prophecy | Juliet Marillier | null | Fainne is a sorcerer's daughter growing up in Kerry. Her mother, Niamh (Son of the Shadows) had drowned in the sea when Fainne was quite young, her father Ciarán, the son of Lady Oonagh (Daughter of the Forest) and a former druid (Son of the Shadows), teaches her the art of sorcery during her childhood, including the Glamour, the art of changing one's appearance at will. Fainne becomes close friends with Darragh, one of the tinkers who returns every summer. When Fainne is old enough, Ciarán decides that she must go to her mother's family at Sevenwaters to learn of her heritage, after her grandmother teaches her some new lessons. Fainne's grandmother arrives just after Ciarán departs and teaches Fainne with very strict and harsh methods how to use her gift to make people bend to her will and do her bidding, especially men. After her grandmother's training is over, Fainne is told that she must go to Sevenwaters and thwart the long scheme of the Túatha Dé Danann to get back the sacred islands. The alliance that is preparing to take back the islands forcibly from Edwin of Northwoods is led by her cousin Johnny, the child of Liadain and Bran (Son of the Shadows) and child of the prophecy (that a child of Briton and Erin and of neither, marked by the raven, would save the sacred islands). To force Fainne to do this, her grandmother threatens her father with sickness and a slow death. Her grandmother gives her a charm to wear to protect her from the people of Sevenwaters; in reality, this charm allows her grandmother to see Fainne and to partially control her thoughts. During the trip to Sevenwaters, Fainne and Darragh's easy friendship is broken when they quarrel over the use of her sorcerer's gift. Darragh gives up the travelling life and accepts a job taking care of horses. Fainne arrives at Sevenwaters and gradually becomes accepted as part of the household. After she settles in, she is goaded by her grandmother to start a fire which disfigures her young cousin Maeve and kills a visiting druid. While Maeve is slowly recovering, Fainne and the other young girl cousins are invited to visit their Uncle Eamonn at Glencarnagh, where Eamonn shows great interest in her. Disappointed at Fainne's continued lack of progress, her grandmother threatens harm to all those Fainne loves, including Darragh, who visits one day. Fainne then bargains with Eamonn for marriage in exchange for information that will allow Eamonn to kill his longtime enemy the Painted Man, Johnny's father. Fainne returns to Sevenwaters and Eamonn's formal proposal of marriage is refused by her uncle Sean. She turns into a moth to spy on a secret meeting at Sevenwaters. Johnny and his mother Liadain decide to take Fainne to the island of Inis Eala where they are preparing for the final battle for the sacred islands. Darragh forces his way into the band of warriors by showing his prowess as a swimmer. Given hope by an unexpected encounter with her uncle Finbar (Daughter of the Forest), Fainne transforms into a dove and follows the warriors to the final battle for the islands. Johnny and Bran lead a small secret mission to sink the Britons' ships, during which Eamonn's spy mistakenly attacks Johnny instead of Bran and is killed. An injured Johnny is captured by the men of Northwoods. Johnny's men believe him dead but go on with the attack under Bran's leadership. Fainne transforms back to human and awaits the right moment to act, coached by the Old Ones. During the battle, the overrun Britons use Johnny as hostage to force the alliance to retreat. Johnny challenges a Northwoods champion to single combat, with the terms being complete control of the islands. During their fight, Fainne comes out of hiding, pushed by her grandmother to kill Johnny at this pivotal moment. Eamonn saves Fainne from death but dies from the Briton arrow himself. At the last moment, Fainne defies her grandmother with the help of her uncles Finbar and Conor the archdruid and is punished by the sight of Darragh being pushed off a cliff. Ciarán then appears to protect his daughter from his mother, who boasts of killing his wife Niamh. Ciarán is almost killed by her himself, but Finbar throws himself in the path of Lady Oonagh's death bolt and dies in his stead. Thwarted, Lady Oonagh reveals the second part of the prophecy, that once the child of the prophecy has retaken the islands that person must climb up to The Needle and remain in solitude watching over the islands. Johnny, a warrior and leader, is not suited to this task; all believe the prophecy has failed. Then Fainne volunteers, as she meets all the criteria of the prophecy: she is both of Erin and Britain and has a scar given her by her father's familiar Fiacha, a raven. Her childhood learning the lore in silence and solitude has prepared her for this task. The Túatha Dé Danann reveal themselves to take Fainne away. The Lady Oonagh still threatens to kill Fainne and is finally turned into a mouse by Fainne and is quickly eaten by a passing bird. The Fair Folk then tell everyone that they all must leave the islands that night or else they die, as the prophecy has been fulfilled and they must begin their lives anew. Fainne is brought by the Fair Folk to the Needle where her and her descendants must remain performing the old rituals, shrouded in the mists hidden from the world until men again remember his bond with the earth, his mother once more. How will she have descendants she asks? It seems that the Fair Folk and the old ones saved Darragh and turned him into a selkie and Fainne sings him back into a man. Darragh tells Fainne that he is willing to give up his original life to be with her. They are left alone on the island. The island is then shrouded in the mists only to be seen briefly by the occasional seaman until that time in the far future when men again remember. There is an excerpt in the end that gives the readers a peek into Fainne's life. She has two children, a boy and a girl. |
Loitering with Intent | Muriel Spark | 1,981 | Fleur Talbot is struggling to complete her first novel, Warrender Chase, in early 1950s London. She manages to secure a job working for Sir Quentin Oliver as secretary for the 'Autobiographical Association', whose eccentric members are seeking to write their memoirs. Fleur assists in this and gains valuable source material for her novel whilst growing increasingly suspicious that Sir Quentin may be blackmailing the association's members. Sir Quentin meanwhile discovers Fleur's novel-in-progress and seeks to suppress it as it reveals his evil plans. Here fact and fiction imitate each other as Fleur and Sir Quentin compete for the truth... |
The Big Rock Candy Mountain | null | null | In this section, Elsa leaves her family home after breaking with her widowed father when he becomes remarried to Elsa's best friend. She moves to North Dakota where she meets Bo Mason, who runs an illegal saloon or blind pig. Despite being disturbed by Bo's sometimes violent behavior, Elsa strikes up a romantic relationship with him. Against her father's advice, she becomes engaged to Bo. The second section describes the Masons' failed attempts to run a hotel, as well as the early childhood of their sons Chester and Bruce. Bo's relationship with Bruce becomes increasingly abusive, especially around issues of toilet training. After an especially strong outburst of violence against Bruce, Bo abandons his family. In this section Bo has begun to establish a relatively stable life for himself running a bunkhouse in Saskatchewan. In the meantime, Elsa moves back in with her father after her son Chester gets in trouble for engaging in sexual play with a girl in the orphanage he attends. After returning home, Elsa considers getting a divorce and marrying a former suitor, but eventually she accepts Bo's offer of reconciliation. This short section of the book is told from the perspective of Bruce and addresses an idyllic summer spent at the family's homestead. This section will later be important as a memory as the adult Bruce reflects back on his life. Also, in this section Bruce the child begins to regain memories of the abuses he suffered in infancy. This section is set against the historical backdrop of the 1918 flu epidemic. Down on his luck, Bo realizes that because of the flu epidemic he stands to make a small fortune if he begins bootlegging whisky to Canada, due to the perceived medicinal benefits of alcohol. While Bo is away in the United States purchasing whisky, the flu epidemic hits his home town and eventually Chester is forced to guard the family homestead himself while all the other family members are sick. The sixth section is set during the Prohibition Era. Bo has supported his family for several years by bootlegging, but eventually the family decides to leave the small Canadian town they live in on the Canada/Montana border after Bo is arrested for bootlegging on the same day his son, Chester, is arrested for arson. The seventh section of the book takes place in Salt Lake City, Utah. Chester Mason is about to graduate from high school. His parents attempt to steer him away from his romance with an older girl, Laura, and into a promising career as a baseball player. However, when the Masons' house is raided by the police, Chester quits his baseball job and elopes with Laura. During this section Bruce's study at law school is interrupted when he learns that his brother, Chester, has died. In addition, his mother's cancer is worsening, and eventually Bruce returns to his family for his mother's sake. This section deals with the death of Elsa Mason from cancer, and the subsequent rift that develops between Bo and Bruce Mason, during which Bruce considers murdering his father. This final section is told first from the perspective of Bo Mason, who is now an aging widower in Salt Lake City, oppressed by frequent feelings of self-hatred. Eventually Bo kills himself after murdering a former lover. The end of the section deals with Bruce's attempts to look back on the tumultuous history of his family and trying to come to terms with his role as the sole survivor. |
Love & Sleep | John Crowley | 1,994 | The previous novel is briefly addressed in the book's first section "To the Summer Quaternary" with the pretension of being a synopsis Pierce is preparing of book project for possible publication. From here, the shifts abruptly to Pierce's boyhood, describing his early life with his cousins near the Cumberland Mountains in Kentucky. While cleaning the ashes from burning garbage one day, Pierce sees some embers escape, and cause a minor forest fire. His older cousin, Joe Boyd, immediately blames Pierce for the whole incident and frequently arises in conversation for the rest of the novel. As a result of his blame, Joe Boyd often excludes from the secret clubs he forms with his siblings. After the death of Pierce's Aunt and his cousins' mother Opal Oliphant, the children are neither homeschooled nor attend school, and Sam Oliphant instead orders a large number of books at a time from the State Library to keep the children busy. Pierce finds great interest in the encyclopedias of mythology and occult, and eventually constructs his own mythology, presenting to his cousins as another secret club called the Invisible College, rival to that of Joe Boyd's. Sam eventually comes to request for the children a tutor, answered by a local Nun, Sister Mary Philomel, who trains the children in strict traditional Catholicism, despite Sam's antipathy for religion. For a short period, the children secretly shelter a girl known as Bobby Shaftoe in their home. The plan backfires when Bobby becomes violently ill and eventually infects the other children. At this point, they reveal to Sam their having her in the house. Her father Floyd eventually returns for her. When the children try to visit Bobby at her home, they are terrified by Floyd's apocalyptic threats. In the Renaissance, Giordano Bruno is revealed to have safely made the journey to England and is living in the household of John Florio. Bruno serves on some diplomatic meetings with Florio, and eventually comes to lecture at Cambridge (nearly missing a performance of Dido, Queen of Carthage). He meets John Dee who, impressed by Bruno's intellectual daring, invites him to his home. Dee and Edward Kelley abruptly leave England following the supernatural child-like being from the previous novel, Madimi, to the continent eventually to the court of Rudolf II who commissions them to create a Alchemical stone. In the present, Pierce is continuing to work on his book, exploring various systems of thoughts with possible modern applications. At the same time, his neighbour Beau Brachman independently happens upon many of the same topics including Hermeticism, though he interprets each through a strongly New Age influenced approach. Rosie Mucho continues with her separation proceedings from her husband Mike Mucho, coming to trust Mike to care for her daughter Sam for periods of time. Mike is expanding his work from psychotherapy to exploring speculative religious practice with his patients. Rosie is very much distracted with the declining of health of Boney Rassmussen, who is on his own quest to find the Philosopher's Stone which Fellowes Kraft had, while alive, teased him existed in Prague. In short order, Boney dies leaving a Will containing many impossible requests, including being buried in a private field he did not own. Rosie Mucho confides in Pierce in this time, who comforts her during the funeral proceedings. Eventually Pierce becomes frustrated with his book project, taking a grant Kraft's foundation had offered him to take a research trip to Prague. |
Lady Lazarus | Andrew Foster Altschul | null | As an adult, Calliope has become one of the best-known poets in America. But she has also been famous since birth. She is the daughter of rock stars Brandt Morath and Penny Power, whose resemblance to Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love is underscored by Brandt's suicide at the height of his fame, while his daughter was still a small child. Unlike the real-life Frances Bean Cobain, Calliope is a presumed eyewitness to her father's death, an event that traumatizes her into not speaking for several years. When she does regain her voice, it is as a poet, and ultimately as the book's co-narrator (she shares the task with a music journalist who, in a post-modernist trope, bears the same name as the author). |
Marrying Buddha | Wei Hui | 2,005 | Set four years on from the events of Shanghai Baby, Marrying Buddha continues the story of Coco, a writer from Shanghai, now aged 29. The plot intersperses Coco's adventures in New York, and later in Madrid, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, with her journey in China from Shanghai to the Buddhist monastery on Mount Putuo, (Putuoshan). In New York, Coco meets a Japanese-Italian documentary filmmaker named Muju, and after a short romance moves in with him. Muju is a divorcee with strict ideas about women's roles and behaviour. He prefers his girlfriends, for example, to be competent cooks and willing to demonstrate their expertise for him. Coco, who cannot cook, finds it difficult to adapt to life with Muju. After a few months, Coco meets another man, the all-American Nick. When she travels to Spain without Muju, she resists embarking on an affair with Nick, who coincidentally visits the same cities and stays in the same luxury hotels as Coco. In Buenos Aires, Coco and Muju meet again, but Muju is disappointed with what he feels is Coco's snobbery and arrogant, self-centred behaviour. The two argue, and soon after returning to New York, Coco travels home to Shanghai without knowing whether she and Muju are still lovers. In Shanghai, after resuming her old, pleasure-filled life, Coco travels to the place of her birth, Mount Putuo, where she spends time with an elder in a Buddhist monastery. Later, Nick pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco finally relents and sleeps with him. After he leaves, Muju pays a surprise visit to Coco in Shanghai, and Coco sleeps with him, too. Shortly afterwards, Coco learns she is pregnant, but she does not know who is the father, Muju or Nick. Marrying Buddha is supposedly a continuation of the Wei Hui's semi-autobiographical story of Nikki/Coco, a young Shanghainese author of erotic literature. The novel is set in various locations, but mainly New York, Shanghai and Mount Putuo, site of Coco's birth and a Buddhist monastery. Although there is some mention of the events and people from Shanghai Baby - in Marrying Buddha, Coco embarks on a tour of Spanish-speaking countries to promote that novel - some key characters and plot points, including the suicide of Coco's then boyfriend Tian Tian are not referred to at all. In addition, new facts that were not mentioned in Shanghai Baby emerge: including that shortly before the events of Shanghai Baby, Coco attempted suicide by slashing her wrists and that she had a boyfriend with Mafia connections. In New York, Coco is a student at Columbia University, an observer of American life and an avid consumer of American brands and culture. She visits Chinatown, shops at Barneys New York, Barnes and Noble, and Bloomingdales, and is perplexed by the American men she dates. Soon, she meets Muju, a half Japanese, half Italian documentary filmmaker. At first, Coco is not impressed: Muju buys her a humidifier as a gift. However, Coco is soon won over by Muju's knowledge of tantric sex practices and Eastern wisdom. After a few months, Coco moves into his apartment. Things do not always run smoothly though: Muju expresses his deep respect for women who can cook delicious meals, just like his ex-wife, who one day turns up and does just that. When Coco tries to cook Chinese food in Muju's kitchen, disaster occurs - she burns the shrimp and a drop of fat jumps out of the frying pan and burns her cheek, temporarily marring her complexion. Muju and Coco fight, and when Coco throws a jar of designer face cream into the toilet, Muju is disappointed by her immaturity. Later, Coco and Muju try out new tricks in the bedroom, and Muju displays his knowledge of Eastern wisdom by refusing to ejaculate and sharing a variety of Japanese traditional sex aids. Coco suggests a threesome, and Muju is impressed when she is not jealous of the American prostitute whom they invite to their bed. The two are happy, although the relationship is not perfect. It is shadowed by the fact that Muju has some faults that Coco cannot reconcile. For example, he refuses to ever accompany anyone to the airport, he refuses to ejaculate, and he is missing a joint on one of his fingers. Muju is similarly frustrated by Coco's lack of self-control, her inability to cook, and her desire for a baby despite her immaturity. Whilst out one evening in New York with her visiting Chinese cousin Zhu Sha, Coco meets Nick, a middle-aged but very attractive New Yorker: He looked very like George Clooney, but even more handsome, slim and stylish, dressed entirely in black Armani. He seemed about forty-five years old...When he spoke I was startled by his magnetic voice. Hearing him talk was like ice-cream to the ears Initially, Coco refuses to embark on an affair with Nick, rejecting his advances despite her attraction to his magnetic, ice-cream voice. When Coco travels to Madrid to promote her now best-selling novel, she bumps into Nick in a restaurant. Coincidence following coincidence, Nick is also traveling on to Barcelona at the same time as Coco, and is staying in the same hotel. Coco is very attracted to Nick, but manages to reject all his advances. After Barcelona, she leaves for Buenos Aires with only his contact details. In Buenos Aires, Coco meets up again with Muju. Things seem to be going well, until Muju criticises Coco for her behaviour towards the wait staff in the hotel: Muju took a sip of tea. "Perhaps you weren't aware of it, but for a second there you demonstrated unnecessary arrogance". I nearly spat the bread out of my mouth. "I've no idea what you're talking about." My voice trembled and my hands clenched themselves into fists. Coco is extremely upset at Muju's criticism, and although the two are reconciled in New York, Coco decides to return to Shanghai to start work on her new novel. In Shanghai, she is surprised to learn that Nick is also in the city. Coco is delighted, and the two meet in the Shanghai Ritz-Carlton hotel, where Nick is staying. To impress Coco, Nick buys her a very expensive Ferragamo Christmas tree. Back in his hotel suite, Coco is overwhelmed by this purchase and lets Nick make love to her without contraception. The very next day, Nick flies back to New York. Shortly afterwards Muju flies to Shanghai to see Coco. The two make love in her apartment, without using contraception. Muju ejaculates for the first time, surprising Coco. After Muju leaves, Coco discovers that she is pregnant. She decides to keep her baby, although she is not certain which of her two lovers is the father. The novel is interspersed with the story of Coco's visit to her birthplace on Putuo Island. There, she gains wisdom from her discussions with a Buddhist elder at the monastery in which she was born. It is this wisdom that allows her to cope with her pregnancy. |
Unleashing the Ideavirus | null | null | Interrupting people is an inefficient approach to marketing, and one doomed to failure. Instead marketers should strive to spread ideas. An Ideavirus is an idea that moves and grows and infects everyone it touches. An Ideavirus is based on customers marketing to each other. The book refers to hives and sneezers. Hives are the groups of people to whom the idea has some specific relevance, sneezers are the people likely to spread your idea. A successful Ideavirus requires the sneezers and weezers infecting the hive. |
Flight of the Nighthawks | Raymond E. Feist | null | Flight of the Nighthawks focuses primarily on the adventures of two young boys, Tad and Zane, and the organization they become involved with, the Conclave of Shadows. The story picks up shortly after the end of Exile's Return (2004), the final book in the preceding Conclave of Shadows series by Feist. The book begins in the town of Stardock, where the two boys are still living at home. Marie, Tad's biological mother and Zane's surrogate mother (Zane's parents having died years earlier during an attack by trolls on the town) is concerned about the boys' tendency to get into trouble, and when her lover, Caleb (son of the magician Pug), comes back to Stardock, she begs him to take the boys to be apprenticed. Caleb consents and travels with the boys to The Empire of Great Kesh to find them an apprenticeship. Along the journey they are ambushed by bandits and Caleb is gravely wounded. The boys manage to bring Caleb to a friend, and unbeknownst to them, and agent of the Conclave. The Conclave is able to heal Caleb, and while they decide what to do with the boys, Caleb decides to formalize his long relationship with Marie and marries her, adopting the boys as well. The Conclave becomes aware of trouble in the capital of Kesh, where nobles are being murdered, ostensibly as part of political maneuvering between two factions to establish the next emperor. The Conclave sends three sets of agents to investigate: Talwin Hawkins and his assassin-turned-servant Petro Amafi, Kaspar and Pasko, and Caleb and the boys. During their time in the city, Tad and Zane are aided in a fight by a boy named Jommy who has been living in the streets, whom Caleb also takes into his care. The Conclave's agents discover that the necromancer, Leso Varen, has entrenched himself and intends to use the secret guild of assassins, the Nighthawks, to cause utter chaos in Great Kesh. Kaspar realizes that Varen has taken over the body of the Emperor, while Caleb falls into a trap set for them by the Nighthawks, and barely manages to escape alive. The Conclave agents regroup, and make plans to root out the nest of Nighthawks and foil Varen's plan. Pug and Magnus (his eldest son and Caleb's older brother) venture into the sewers to locate the Nighthawks' hideout, but both possible locations are empty. The Conclave realizes the Nighthawks have established themselves in the palace itself, and the entire royal family is in danger. On the eve of Banapis, the midsummer celebration and the biggest festival of the year, Varen reveals himself and attempts to kill the members of the royal court. He is stopped by the Conclave, with Caleb and the boys stumbling into a Nighthawk staging area and assisting in its destruction, Kaspar managing to aid in securing the safety of the emperor's heirs, and Pug, Miranda, Nakor, and Magnus opposing Varen's deadly magic. In the end, Varen's body is destroyed, but his soul manages to escape again through a rift into the world of Kelewan. |
Wrath of a Mad God | Raymond E. Feist | null | Wrath of a Mad God finishes the Darkwar saga. Pug, Magnus, Nakor and Ralan Bek have reached the Dasati home world, and are now working with the followers of the White, what they called their pantheon of gods who were evicted from the second plane by the Dark God. Macros learns that the living Gods of Midkemia -- including the Nameless -- made an agreement with the gods of the second plane of reality (if they are not one and the same), and a result was that the soul of Macros was forced into the second plane of reality after his encounter and subsequent death at the hands of Maarg the demon king of the 5th plane of reality. Ralan Bek is not the God Killer, containing not a sliver of Nalar the nameless one, but he carries a sliver of the Dasati god of war to prepare the way for the true God Killer. The Dark God turns out to be an obese Dread Lord, feeding off the countless souls of the dead in the Dasati realm. The Dreadlord had previously invaded the third and fourth plane of reality, consuming all life within both realms. His ultimate goal is to devour enough souls in the second plane to transport himself into the first plane, where the world of Midkemia resides. As the invasion of Kelewan begins, the Dasati take many prisoners and throw them back through the rift to the Dasati world straight towards the waiting Dreadlord who consumes the souls of the falling bodies. The Dreadlord is eventually defeated by a combination of two factors as it tries to travel through the rift to Kelewan; the God Killer, which is revealed to be the tiny sliver of Nalar sheltered by Leso Varen, is released by Nakor in his final act and attacks the Dreadlord from behind, whilst Pug puts a rift in front of Kelewan's moon and slightly adjusts its orbit, forcing a massive chunk of rock to collide with the Dreadlord as it tries to emerge from the rift. For once, Nalar, the mad God of Evil, worked in concert with the other gods of his pantheon, to prevent the Dreadlord from subverting his role as the ultimate force for evil in the first plane of reality. Continuing on with the two stories, one book -theme started in the preceding book, Miranda, who remained behind in the first plane of reality, escapes from the Deathpriests of the Dasati. She travels to Kelewan, and there leads the Tsurani in the defense of their, ultimately doomed, home-world. There are several small continuity errors in this book if considered as part of the wider Feist canon: Lord Erik von Darkmoor is described as regretting that he never "married and had children", in contradiction to Rage of a Demon King, where Erik married Kitty before the fall of Krondor. On his website in the FAQ section, Feist states that while Erik did marry, that "Erik and Kitty didn't stay married long, because of the 'married to two wives, me and the Kingdom' sort of thing, but it got cut because it was too soap opera. No kids, though." When Jim Dasher arrives with Tomas on the back of a dragon to aid Kaspar and the anoredhel elves, Kaspar asks to be introduced to the Warleader and says "I know him by reputation only". It is also stated that Kaspar's only previous contact with an elf had been a "most fleeting" encounter with an envoy at Sorcerer's Isle. However, Kaspar journeyed to Elvandar with Pug and the Talnoy in Exile's Return, met various elves including the Elf Queen herself, and fought alongside Tomas to defend Elvandar. The Dread are also retconned as being from the 'void', as opposed to the Sixth Circle. Also, the Dread were retconned to be unkillable, which is in direct opposition to actions in Magician. The Minwanabi reappear in the Empire despite the destruction of that house in Servant of the Empire, with only an inadequate explanation as to their reappearance. On his website's FAQ section Feist states "I did not detail how the Minwanabi gained back their estates under the Acoma generosity (nor the end of House Lujan) as that was too much backstory for what I was writing about and would only confuse those who hadn't read the Empire Trilogy." Sezu, Emperor of Tsuranuanni, and grandson of Justin mentions that no one has lived on the ancestral lands of the Acoma since Justin was proclaimed emperor. Yet at the end of Mistress of the Empire an imperial proclamation was issued naming Lujan head of House Lujan and giving him title to live on the ancient Acoma lands. On the FAQs on his website, Feist writes "There was a minor plot point that got lost, really, regarding Lujan. I'll fix that when I do the paperback fixes; mostly his line didn't last very long, in a story I'll reference, but never get around to writing." and "It was a minor gaff on my part, not putting in a line or two to explain that. At one point Lujan's heir did not have children, so the estate reverted to the crown." Chapter 8, "Threats", of the Harper Voyager paperback edition includes the line "No one has lived there since the son of Lord Lujan died without an heir and it reverted to the crown" (spoken by Sezu to Miranda.) In explaining the errors, in the FAQ section of his website Feist writes "A lot of things have happened in my life and in the series between Eric and Kitty (for one example) and the new book. So the fan can go, 'Oh, that annoys me,' with justification. Me I go, 'Damn, I was going to toss in a line about how things didn't work out and I forgot.'" and further explains "It used to be it would be copy-edited. ... Now, copy-edit is done on the fly by the editor or is out-sourced to a copy edit service. That means internal stuff may be caught, such as 'he was wearing green in chapter 1 and now it's blue. Did he change?' What it doesn't give you is continuity over a span of books." |
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging | Louise Rennison | 1,999 | The story is told through the journal of a teenage girl named Georgia Nicolson. Georgia is growing up in England with her best friend Jas and the rest of the Ace Gang, a group of best friends who share secrets, have sleepovers, and talk about boys whom they have snogged. She lives with her mother, father, her mad little sister Libby and her half Scottish Wildcat, Angus, whom the family found on a small family holiday to Scotland. Angus gets into trouble from Mr and Mrs Across the Road, the Prat Poodles, and his Kitty Girlfriend Naomi. Georgia falls for a boy named Robbie and her best friend Jas falls for Robbie's brother Tom, But Robbie starts to go out with a "wet weed", Lindsay, a year older than her. Eventually the two of them fall in love, and Georgia is hoping to start a relationship with Robbie, the sex god. The stories then continue on in the other books, following Robbie and Georgia's growing relationship until Robbie, Georgia's "first love" moves to Kiwi-a-go-go land (AKA New Zealand) to snogg Wombats. Soon Georgia falls for the "Italian Stallion" Masimo. As the series progresses, readers wait in anticipation to see who Georgia chooses in the end; Robbie, Masimo, or the one who really and truly loves her Dave (the Laugh). We follow through Georgia's mad adventures through 10 books. |
The Saturdays | Elizabeth Enright | 2,008 | The four Melendy children live with their father, a widowed professor of economics, and Cuffy, their beloved housekeeper, in a brownstone in New York City. There's thirteen-year-old Mona, who has her heart set on becoming an actress; twelve-year-old mischievous Rush, who plays the piano; ten-year-old Miranda "Randy" who loves to dance and paint; and thoughtful Oliver, who is six. Tired of wasting Saturdays doing nothing but wishing for larger allowances, the four Melendys jump at Randy's idea to start the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club (I.S.A.A.C.). If they pool their resources and take turns spending the whole amount, they can each have at least one memorable Saturday afternoon of their own. Before long, I.S.A.A.C. is in operation and every Saturday is definitely one to remember. Each Melendy child is able to do exactly what he or she pleases, discovering new ideas along the way. Randy becomes friends with an old lady who was once kidnapped by gypsies, Rush brings home a stray dog, and Mona shocks her family by takes a first step toward adulthood. But when Oliver wants to be out on his own, too, the rest of the family has second thoughts. |
A Year in Provence | Peter Mayle | null | Peter Mayle and his wife move to Provence, and are soon met with unexpectedly fierce weather, underground truffle dealers and unruly workers, who work around their normalement schedule. |
Sputnik Caledonia | Andrew Crumey | 2,008 | *Book One Robbie Coyle, nine years old at the start of the book, lives in Kenzie in Scotland’s Central Belt in the early 1970s. He dreams of going into space; but because of his father’s anti-American, pro-Soviet views, he wants to be a cosmonaut rather than an astronaut. He picks up an Eastern European radio station called Voice of the Red Star, imagines it to be a telepathic signal from another planet, and begs to be taken there. *Book Two Nineteen-year-old Robert Coyle lives in the British Democratic Republic – a Communist state founded after the overthrow of Nazi occupation in the “Great Patriotic War” – and has arrived at the Installation, a secret military base in Scotland, to take part in a space mission. A strange new object has been detected in the solar system, believed to be a black hole, and the volunteers are to explore it telepathically. Robert has confused memories of the time before his arrival, and the reader is left guessing the connection between Books One and Two. Perhaps the Robbie of Book One has been transported to the other world as he wished; or perhaps the Robert in Book Two is a “parallel” version of the younger Robbie in Book One. The Installation itself is like a “black hole” in the sense that people arrive from the outside, but nobody ever seems to leave - except perhaps in death. *Book Three In a present-day recognisable reality, Robbie’s parents from Book One are now pensioners. Their story alternates with that of “the kid”, a runaway 13-year-old obsessed with science fiction stories such as Doctor Who, and with the idea that “in an infinite universe everything is possible”. He meets a middle aged man (“the stranger”) who claims to be a spaceman on a mission. The stranger could be the parallel-world Robert grown older - or a terrorist engaged in identity theft. Resisting logical resolution, the novel reprises and reworks themes that have recurred throughout the course of the book, creating an aesthetic unity that is emotionally ambivalent: a juxtapostion of the comic tone of Book One with the dark pessimism of Book Two. |
Aetheric Mechanics | Warren Ellis | 2,008 | Aetheric Mechanics is set in an alternate history March 1907, where steampunk technology is advanced far beyond the technology of the modern real world, including two-way television communications, air- and spacecraft powered by reactionless drives, and large combat mecha. The British Empire (which in this setting, includes realms on other planets) is engaged in a war against Ruritania. The war is not going favorably for Britain; however, the British government is covering up just how badly the war is going, including the fact that Ruritania is preparing an invasion of Britain. Dr. Robert Watcham, a captain and doctor in the British army on the French front, returns to London at the start of the story after his tour of duty is over. His friend, roommate, and colleague, Sax Raker, is the greatest detective in London, and one of the finest minds in Britain, with Watcham having written a number of exploits about him for the popular press. At the time of Watcham's return, Raker has been commissioned by Inspector Jarratt of Scotland Yard to investigate another case. A number of observers witnessed a spectral figure, flickering in and out of existence, murdering an engineer specializing in aetheric mechanics outside of the Royal Society, with several others having gone missing. Investigating outside the Society, Raker notices traces of mud beneath the victim, then is drawn to a figure standing in the crowd. Raker reveals it to be none other than his persistent rival, Inanna Meyer, whom Watcham (in a period of narration) notes that Raker is obsessed with but is unable to face that fact. Originally surmising that Inanna was hired by the Ruritanian government to destabilize Britain's vital science and engineering community, she reveals that she is now working for the British government: Raker's brother, Dunmow, recruited her into the British Secret Service, and she was also investigating the murder. With that piece of information, Raker is able to solve the case, deducing that the mud near the victim came from the River Fleet. He therefore surmises that a villain has been kidnapping scientists in order to create some type of weapon directly beneath London, and the murder was done to silence a failed kidnapping. Raker, Watcham, and Inanna head into the River Fleet's underground channel as the Ruritanian airplanes begin a heavy fire-bombing of London in preparation for their final assault on Britain. Beneath London, they indeed find a large colony of kidnapped scientists, now escaping from the Ruritanian bombing. The "man who wasn't there" is also found, and identifies himself as Jonathan Vogel. Vogel explains that he is actually from the future, and that the reason he is fading in and out if existence is due to an accident he experienced. Vogel was a scientist working on an addition to the Large Hadron Collider which would have enabled ansible-like communication with a space probe being sent to Pluto using a quantum string. However, the "other" end of the string became loose, fixing onto 1905 - the year the special relativity was proposed by Albert Einstein, thus eliminating the theory of aether that had been held before. Vogel was sent back through time, along with his personal handheld computer - containing, among other things, the stories of Sherlock Holmes and Sexton Blake, The Prisoner of Zenda, and a number of old movies and Japanese anime. Vogel explains that, in order to 'bridge' between the two realities, the stories contained in his handheld were merged with the real-world 1905, creating the world of Aetheric Mechanics - and that neither Sax, nor Watcham, nor Inanna, nor Ruritania were real. Vogel states that the flickering is him being stranded between two worlds, and he has constructed a computer which, within a few hours, will finish its calculation to repair the damage caused to time, allowing Vogel to return home by destroying the fictional world he created. Seeing that as a chance to prevent Britain's destruction by Ruritania, Inanna and Watcham agree to let Vogel continue. They do not notice that Raker is horrified and outraged at the thought of not existing. Raker removes his pistol and shoots Vogel in the chest, killing him. He explains that he has finally realized the one thing he can't do: bear to think of a world where Inanna doesn't exist. Leaving Inanna and Watcham dumbstruck behind him, Raker races back through the tunnels below London, promising that using his intellect, he will still manage to find a way to prevent Britain from losing the war. |
The Narrows | null | null | The novel’s non-flashback narrative arc occurs within the period of a few months. At the beginning of this time, the Powthers move in as Abbie Crunch’s boarders. The main action begins when Link “rescues” Camilla Treadway Sheffield (who gives her name as “Camilo Williams”) from the advances of Cat Jimmie, a disabled veteran. Link does not realize that Camilo is white until later in the evening. Eventually, Link and Camilo begin a clandestine affair, primarily meeting in New York, though sometimes spending the night in Abbie’s house in The Narrows. On one of these occasions, Abbie finds the two in bed together and angrily throws Camilo out of the house. Link finds out, when Bill Hod leaves an old newspaper around for him to see, that Camilo is really Camilla Treadway Sheffield; in other words, not only is she white, but she is also rich and married. Link fears that Camilo is merely repeating a pattern from the days of slavery: “I bid two hundred; look at his teeth, make it three hundred; look at his muscle, look at his back; the lady says one thousand dollars. Sold to the lady for a thousand dollars. Plantation buck. Stud.” He breaks off the relationship with Camilla, but she is convinced that he must be seeing another woman. In revenge, she screams and tears her clothing, accusing him of attempted rape when the police arrive. There is little circumstantial evidence for her accusation and, in the intervening time before the trial, Camilla begins drinking too much. One day, while driving intoxicated, she hits a child with her car (thereby destroying what credibility she might have had in court). Her mother, Mrs. Treadway, bribes Peter Bullock to keep the story out of the newspaper. However, Mrs. Treadway and Captain Sheffield still want to assure Camilla’s victory in court, so they kidnap Link and try to make him sign a confession. When he “confesses” that he and Camilla were in love, Captain Sheffield shoots and kills him. In the aftermath of Link’s murder, Mrs. Treadway and Captain Sheffield are arrested. Abbie, however, realizes that Bill Hod will not rest until Camilla has paid for her part in Link’s death. At the end of the novel, she resolves to go to the police, tell them of her suspicions, and therefore end the chain of violence. She takes J.C. Powther along with her, symbolizing her “adoption” of him and her resolve to care for him as she had failed to do for Link. |
The Best Man | Gore Vidal | null | At the Presidential primaries in the summer of 1960 in Philadelphia, an ethical man running for the Presidential nomination runs against an "unscrupulous" man. Populist southern senator Joseph Cantwell is a "bigot and a charlatan", while William Russell, who prides himself on his honesty, is the liberal candidate, "likable, forceful and humorous." Both candidates try to get the endorsement of the popular outgoing president, who enjoys not telling them which one he'll endorse. |
The Sand Dwellers | Adam Niswander | 1,998 | The novel is set in the Superstition Mountains where the commander of a secret military installation is affected by strange forces that take over his mind. |
A Prisoner of Birth | Jeffrey Archer | 2,008 | After proposing to his childhood sweetheart Beth Wilson, Danny Cartwright takes her brother Bernie and her to celebrate at a nearby pub. In the pub, they are accosted by four people. Danny, Beth and Bernie attempt to leave the pub without getting involved in a fracas, but Spencer Craig, one of the four that confronted them, follows them out of the pub along with his friends. A fight breaks out; Bernie is stabbed and dies. Danny is blamed for his murder in a well-orchestrated plot by Spencer and his friends: a popular actor, an aristocrat, and a young estate agent. Danny is arrested and convicted. Sentenced to 22 years in Belmarsh prison, the highest security jail in South-east London, United Kingdom, he encounters two prisoners, Albert Crann, known as "Big Al," and Sir Nicholas Moncrieff. Meanwhile, outside the prison, Beth is pregnant with Danny's daughter. Sir Nicholas slowly teaches Danny to read and to write. Their friendship grows closer, and Danny decides to dress like his friend in the hope that it will help his upcoming appeal. Danny begins to gather evidence for his appeal with the help of a young lawyer, Alex Redmayne, but unable to present the new evidence, Danny's appeal is denied, and he must serve his complete sentence in Belmarsh prison. Nicholas is murdered by a fellow inmate and his death is made to be seen as a suicide but he was thought to be Danny himself. The timely intervention of Big Al leads to the subsequent escape of Danny. On the outside of the prison, Danny pretends to be Nicholas. He finds that he must sort out his friend's family affairs before pursuing his goals of clearing his name and taking revenge upon the four individuals who framed him for Bernie's murder. A lengthy legal battle between himself and Nicholas' hated uncle Hugo leaves Danny Cartwright in the possession of over 50 million dollars (20 million pounds) with which he plans to expose Spencer Craig and clear his name, so that he will be able to live with Beth and his daughter. Dann is caught out by Nick's friends and is held in custody, while his counsel begins Danny's bid for freedom the Barrister (QC), Actor and friend are all brought to justice. Alex's father (ex Barrister QC and Judge at the High Court) gains Danny's freedom and his name is cleared. Danny has another child (male) and it's called Nick in honour of his friend and Alex his Barrister is given title of Godfather for all his hard work in freeing Danny. |
Great Sky River | Gregory Benford | null | After the events of Across the Sea of Suns small groups of humans have settled on other star systems. However there is a constant threat from the Mechs, a civilization of machines leftover from other civilizations and evolved to see all biological civilization as unstable and dangerous. Great Sky River tells the story of the Bishop family, who fight for their very existence on the planet Snowglade, which has been taken over by the Mechs. The Bishops are one of a number of families on Snowglade, all named for chess pieces. These "families" are more like clans or tribes. All use cybernetic implants and mechanical aids to enhance their perceptions and physical abilities. Personalities of dead members of the Family can be stored in memory tabs and accessed by plugging them into ports implanted in the neck. Bodily functions, such as the sexual drive, can be turned off to remove distractions. The Families seem to be equipped for long conflicts and periods of privation, migrating to avoid the Mechs. The novel takes place during a period when the Mechs have invaded Snowglade and are slowly altering its climate to suit themselves, drying it out. This adversely affects the humans, who otherwise seem to exist in a wary truce with the Mechs. Then the Mechs begin destroying human settlements. For some reason they are interested in Killeen Bishop, leader of the family. As the series progresses, it is revealed that the Bishops and related colonists are post-humans, or as the text describes them, a "fourth species of chimpanzee". (This may be a reference to Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee.) The adults are actually 3 meters in height and have a better skeletal structure than humans. They are the survivors of thousands of years of conflict with the Mechs on Earth, the beginnings of which were described in the previous novels. Having defeated the Mechs in the Solar System, they have traveled to near the galactic center using slower-than-light space vessels, meaning that the setting is tens of thousands of years in the future. The remainder of the series describes the Bishops' progress to the center of Mech power, and the great secret they carry, which the Mechs fear. |
Chasseur de primes | René Goscinny | 1,972 | Following a short introductional treaty on the general status of bounty hunters in the Old West, we get introduced to the titular character, Elliot Belt, a notorious and unscrupulous representative of his trade. His current target is Tea Spoon, the Cheyenne caretaker of the horse ranch of Bronco Fortworth, who is accused of stealing the rancher's price stallion, Lord Washmouth III; the bounty has been set at a dizzying $100,000. Not caring about whether or not Tea Spoon is innocent, Belt takes up the task of hunting him down, while Lucky Luke tries his best to stop him. Eventually, Elliot Belt himself ends up on the wrong side of the law as he nearly triggers a war with Tea Spoon's tribe to get his hands on the bounty, and now he is pushed into the role of the hunted. |
Le Grand Duc | René Goscinny | 1,973 | A Russian grand duke pays a diplomatic visit to the United States, but in order for an important treaty to be completed, he first wants to have a recreational trip through the West, complete with bandits and Indian attacks! Lucky Luke is assigned as a bodyguard to the duke, who is quickly targeted by all sorts of villainous persons - first and foremost a Russian spy who tries his best (or worst) to assassinate the grand duke. |
La Guérison des Dalton | René Goscinny | 1,975 | A famed psychologist announces that crime is a psychologically-based personal inefficiency which can be cured by therapy, and he chooses the Dalton Brothers as his test subjects. But the story experiences a major twist: not only does the experiment fail spectacularly, the doc also decides to participate in the Daltons' exploits! Once more it is up to Lucky Luke to remedy this delicate situation. |
Dread Mountain | Jennifer Rowe | 2,001 | The trio is journeying to Dread Mountain when they come across a spring. Although initially distrustful of its contents, they drink the water out of thirst, noting a nearby sign saying: "Drink, gentle stranger, and welcome. All of evil will beware." and several oddly shaped rocks encircling the spring. They decided to take a rest there and Lief awakens to find one of the "rocks" unfurling. It reveals itself to be a mammalian flying creature called the Kin, which most Deltorans believe to be extinct. It explains to Lief that the water from the spring makes one dream of whomever one is thinking of during ingestion. The three head to Dread Mountain with the help of the Kin, landing there only to find the mountain thickly overgrown, deserted of its inhabitants, the Dread gnomes, and overrun by beasts. However, the companions find the entrance into the Mountain, and after avoiding the numerous traps the gnomes have set up to repel invaders, it was discovered that there is a monstrous toad named Gellick that was controlling the gnomes. The trio makes a bargain with the head of the gnomes to rid Gellick for them in return for freedom and the emerald that was studded onto Gellick's head. The fight ends with Lief tossing water from the Dreaming Spring into Gellick's mouth, as it also has a deadly, paralyzing effect on "those with evil intent". The gnomes thank Lief by making peace with their longtime prey, the Kin, and agreeing to hamper the progress of their common enemy, the Shadow Lord in finding the trio. The companions then continue their journey to the Maze of the Beast. |
A Contract with the Earth | Newt Gingrich | 2,007 | A Contract with the Earth's is, broadly, a manifesto that challenges those on the right to provide a strategy for repairing the planet and calls on government to embrace the concept that a healthy environment is required for a healthy democracy and economy. This approach, alternately branded mainstream and entrepreneurial environmentalism by the authors, requires that companies should lead the way in environmental issues while governments provide them with incentives to reduce their carbon footprint. With its 10 "commandments", A Contract with the Earth calls for politicians to abandon adversarial politics and for business and conservationists to form compatible partnerships. In one of the book's themes, Gingrich and Maple argue that environmental efforts shouldn't be exclusive to one political philosophy and reject the idea that free enterprise and a cleaner world are opposing forces. The book generated a storm of media attention in late 2007 and early 2008 as the U.S. presidential campaign began to heat up. Gingrich in particular made numerous media appearances arguing that the Republican Party was losing popular support because their response to environmental policy was simply, as he put it, "NO!" Maple toured the country as Gingrich's stand-in, most notably before the Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP, www.repamerica.org) during their annual meeting (at which John McCain was endorsed as the most "green" of the Republican presidential candidates). In 2008 Gingrich published another book that advocated oil drilling, Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less, and many pundits called his environmental commitment into question. However, this book's fifth chapter provided an argument for environmental protection. Like many aspects of Gingrich's career, his interest in environmental issues has generated controversy. The book, whose title is similar to Gingrich's co-authored book Contract with America, criticizes the Democratic Party's legislation and litigation on environmental protection issues. |
La Ballade des Dalton | René Goscinny | 1,978 | The story opens in a Western saloon, where a young musician with a banjo begins to tell a tale of Lucky Luke and his sworn enemies the Dalton brothers: Joe, William, Jack and Averell. Luke has, once again, as he has done many times before, thrown the four outlaws into jail. The prison is also the abode of a guard dog named Rin Tin Can (Rantanplan in the original French language version). No sooner have the Daltons entered the jail than they are met by a lawyer named Augustus Betting. Betting informs the brothers that their Uncle Henry Dalton has died by hanging. However, over the course of his criminal career, Henry Dalton amassed quite a fortune, and has chosen to leave it all to his nephews on the condition that they kill the judge and jury who sentenced him to death. To make sure that the task is completed, Henry Dalton states in his will that his nephews must be accompanied by the only honest man that he has ever known, Lucky Luke. If the task is not successfully completed, the entire fortune will instead be given to charity. The brothers then decide to tunnel out of the jail, but end up digging into the dynamite storage building. When Averell lights a match, the building blows up. The Daltons, along with Rin Tin Can, are blown far away from the remains of the jail. Their disappearance along with Rin Tin Can leads the prison officers to believe the Daltons are now dead. When Rin Tin Can recovers from the explosion, he assumes that the prison was stolen, and upon seeing only the Dalton brothers nearby, suspects them. He then follows them on their journey to find Lucky Luke. The brothers first hold up a travelling hardware merchant. When the merchant stops at the nearest town, Lucky Luke overhears his talk, confirming that the Daltons are indeed alive. Luke heads out to find the Daltons, who offer to make a deal with him. If he refuses to help them, they will kill him. If he accepts, he gets a share of the inheritance (a ruse by the Daltons, who plan to still kill Luke if he helps them). Luke agrees to help supervise the killings and offers to help kill the judge and jury as well. However, he reveals to his horse, Jolly Jumper, and to the audience, that he was only attempting to deceive the Dalton brothers when he said that. Luke and the Daltons then cross the plains in search of the judge and jury. However, every time they find one of their intended victims, Luke manages to play some trick on the Daltons so that they believe their target has been killed. Once they believe their task is done, the Daltons and Luke head off to meet Augustus Betting. However, also waiting for them are the judge and jury they thought had been killed. The Dalton brothers are accused of attempted murder, and with Luke having witnessed their intentions, the jury that had found Henry Dalton guilty, now finds his nephews guilty as well. The Daltons are returned to the prison, along with Rin Tin Can. Henry Dalton's fortune is then given away to charity. |
La Corde du pendu | René Goscinny | 1,981 | This volume contains a number of short stories, including the titular story: * La Corde du pendu: In a small town, a rope seller named Ropey regularly instigates the local mob into hanging every culprit for even the smallest of offenses - a method Lucky Luke decides to put to an end. |
Isle of the Dead | Jennifer Rowe | 2,004 | The Shadow Lord has been defeated by the power in the Belt of Deltora, and also by the magic from the Pirran Pipe, but now King Lief has realized a great danger. He finds out that he has put four evil creatures known as the Four Sisters, in Deltora, which by their poisonous songs, kills the people slowly by making harvest hard for many. Lief, Barda and Jasmine now must destroy them all, and to do that they need the help from Deltora's ancient protectors: the dragons of Deltora. Aided by a part of an ancient map of Deltora that the great explorer Doran the Dragonlover drew Lief, Barda and Jasmine find the first dragon, the topaz dragon in the Os-Mine Hills and also found the second dragon, the ruby dragon, in Dragon's Nest, and destroyed the first Sister. They then found the next map part, and traveled to Shadowgate and found the lapis lazuli dragon and the emerald dragon on the way there, and destroyed the second of the Four Sisters, but now they have arrived at Dread Mountain to get help from the fabled creatures, the Kin. By the help of the Kin they fly away in their pouches, but a great wind comes and separates them, and Lief and Barda arrive at the wrong destination in the western part of Deltora: in the Toran/amethyst territory. Here they find an old ghost ship and flowing casino known as Lady Luck. It was once owned by the criminal Laughing Jack who then he used his real name Captain James Gant. He is now evil and has been given magical powers by the Shadow Lord in exchange for him to work as one of his servants. Lief and Barda comes on board the ship as it's too dangerous to remain in the water of the sea. On their time around here, they all see strange visions created by magic, which tells and shows the past of the places they are in. They tell of Laughing Jack who makes a contract with the old lighthouse keeper, Red Han, and Red Han by that promises to pay back, but then he doesn't do that, so Jack takes his daughter and ties her to the front of the ship, but Verity, Red Han's daughter had developed magical powers since her birth and is a skilled painter, and creates a magical painting. Lief and Barda then get trapped in the gambling room with all the games, and the rule is that people must play and finish their games to get out. But Lief and Barda don't have any money, but luckily James Gant loans money to people from a case inside the room, but what Lief doesn't know is that you must pay three coins back for one coin and they gets trapped and the dead rowers, Laughing Jack's old crew which he promised gold, comes up from the floor to take Lief and Barda. They come because Lief and Barda finds the painting by Verity, and as verity means truth in Latin, they soon see that things are wrong in the painting and touch the places that aren't right, which gets warm and glows, and changes. Lief and Barda manage to flee the ship before getting killed, and they rush to the water, pass out and wake up in the place called the Dreaming Dunes. Here they meet the amethyst dragon Veritas, which has been sleeping under the sands for years, but Lief had awakened it. He unites its power and strength with its matching gem, the amethyst, and gives it its power back and makes it fresh. Then Jasmine, the Kin and some of the Torans appears. After all this, Lief, Barda and Jasmine gets some goods from Tom's shop: A bottle of fire beads, and some candy for Ava the fortune-teller, Tom's sister. They travel to Ava's house which is used as a kind of shop too, and get their fortune told: that danger is ahead, but Barda thinks she is an evil witch which uses trickery. They loan a little boat, and take it to Blood Lily Island, a scarlet isle with red flowers known as blood lilies, and fleshbanes which sucks and eats the flesh of people's legs then walking among them. They find that the diamond dragon Forta is dead, but a diamond dragon's egg is hidden under the skeleton of the fallen dragon, and helps open the egg with the diamond. They then take off to the Isle of the Dead, located next to Blood Lily Island which is located next to the Finger, a finger of rock which stretches out from the land of Deltora. Here on the isle they find that Doran the Dragonlover has been turned into the guardian of the Sister of the West on his quest to find and make the seven dragons sleep a magical sleep. With the help of Veritas they destroy the Sister, and also Doran as he wanted for years. They then buried Doran on a grave in a harsh windy rock where the Isle of the Dead can be seen from. And they find the fourth part of the four-part map, which tells that the next and last of the Four Sisters is located in the city of Del. |
Kingsblood Royal | Sinclair Lewis | 1,947 | The protagonist, Neil Kingsblood, a white middle class man, discovers that he is partly of African American descent while researching his family background. He then begins to see himself as black, despite his lack of racial features, and is forced to choose between continuing what he now sees as a hollow existence in the white community and the oppressed minority existence of the black community. After he admits his heritage to several white friends, the news quickly spreads, and he engages in a quixotic struggle against the racism prevalent in the community. The climax of the novel comes when a mob comes to evict Neil from his house in a white suburb, and he is able to stand them down. |
Merlin Effect | T. A. Barron | 2,004 | Kate Gordon travels to a remote lagoon in California, hoping to help her father discover a sunken ship that disappeared centuries ago. In time, she learns that the ship may have carried a mysterious drinking horn out of Arthurian legend, which possibly ended Merlin himself.. As she explores alone in her kayak, Kate encounters several pieces of the puzzle: a terrible whirlpool, a group of ever-singing whales, a seemingly ageless fish, and a prophecy that, under certain conditions, the ancient ship may rise and sail again. She plunges into an undersea world of bizarre creatures and terrifying foes. But to save the life of her father, she must find some way to regain her own free will, and to succeed where even Merlin failed. |
Klingsor's Last Summer | Hermann Hesse | null | The story is an account of the final months of the life of Klingsor, a forty-two-year-old expressionist painter. A lover of poetry, a heavy drinker and a womanizer, he spends his final summer in southern Switzerland, torn between sensuality and spirituality and troubled by feelings of impending death. |
The Nonexistent Knight | Italo Calvino | 1,959 | The Nonexistent Knight is set in the time of Charlemagne, and draws material from the literary cycle known as the Matter of France, referencing Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Agilulf is a righteous, perfectionist, faithful and pious knight with only one shortcoming: he doesn't exist. Inside his empty armour is an echoing voice that reverberates through the metal. Nevertheless, he serves the army of a Christian king out of "goodwill and faith in the holy cause". |
Death of a Gossip | Marion Chesney | 1,985 | Eight people of varied background meet in the fictional village of Lochdubh in Northern Scotland. They attend the Lochdubh School of Casting : Salmon and Trout Fishing, owned and operated by John Cartwright and his wife Heather. What should be a relaxing holiday amid glorious Highland lochs and mountains becomes a misery. One of the party, Lady Jane Withers, a society widow and notorious gossip columnist, upsets everyone with her snobbishness, sharp tongue and rudeness. Lady Jane soon learns that each of her fellow guests has a secret in their past that they would prefer to remain unknown. When her Ladyship is found dead in Keeper's Pool, no-one is surprised and everyone is relieved. Hamish Macbeth, Lochdubh's local policeman, has to search for a murderer amongst the many suspects. No-one is willing to talk. With the assistance of Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, the love of his life, Hamish solves the mystery in his usual unorthodox style. Hamish's success does not endear him to Chief Inspector Blair, a senior detective from the nearby fictional town of Strathbane. |
Tom Swift and His Sky Racer | Victor Appleton | 1,911 | A $10,000 prize lures Tom into competing at a local aviation meet at Eagle Park. Tom is determined to build the fastest plane around, but his plans mysteriously disappear, which means Tom must redesign his new airplane from the beginning. A side-plot through the story is Mr. Swift's failing health. |
Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle | Victor Appleton | 1,911 | While Tom Swift is working on his latest new invention, the electric rifle, he meets an African safari master whose stories of elephant hunting sends the group off to deepest, darkest Africa. Hunting for ivory is the least of their worries, as they find out some old friends are being held hostage by the fearsome tribes of the red pygmies. Swift builds two major inventions in this volume. The first is a replacement airship, known as The Black Hawk. This new airship is to replace The Red Cloud, which was destroyed during his adventures in Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice. This airship is of the same general construction as The Red Cloud, but is smaller and more maneuverable. Of foremost notice is Swift's invention of the electric rifle, a gun which fires bolts of electricity. The electric rifle can be calibrated to different levels of range, intensity and lethality; it can shoot through solid walls without leaving a hole, and is powerful enough to kill a rampaging whale, as in their steamer trek to Africa. With the electric rifle, Tom and friends bring down elephants, rhinoceroses, and buffalo, and save their lives several times in pitched battle with the red pygmies. It also can discharge a globe of light that was described as being able to maintain itself, like ball lightning, making hunting at night much safer in the dark of Africa. In appearance, the rifle looked very much like contemporary conventional rifles. |
Ally | Karen Traviss | 2,007 | The worlds orbiting Cavanagh's Star are in turmoil. Civil war on Umeh—ignited by outsiders—threatens to annihilate the teeming masses of a grossly overpopulated planet. On Bezer'ej, the handful of native aquatic creatures who survived extermination must take extraordinary and terrible steps to ensure the future of their kind . . . And the interlopers from a distant planet called Earth can only watch the chaos they helped, in part, to create—knowing their home world will be next to suffer. The day of reckoning is rapidly approaching when the powerful Eqbas will remake the Earth at the expense of its dominant species. And Shan Frankland—once a police officer, once human, now something much more—must decide where her loyalties truly lie: among the gethes, on a planet she once called home, or here, where a dying species presents her with a new and unexpected crisis. Harper Collins Books |
Body Bags | null | null | Jenna Blake begins her freshmen year at Somerset University meeting new friends, new teachers, and a distant father she barely knew due to her parents' divorce. She lands a job at Somerset Medical Center as a medical examiner's assistant, assisting in paperwork and autopsies. When a congressional aide goes insane and drops dead, the pathology team at Somerset Medical Center discover his brain infested by insect larvae during the autopsy. As more people turn up with the same disease, including one of her teachers, Jenna Blake begins piecing clues together that even the police have been missing, which draws her dangerously close to truth behind the mysterious infections and whoever is behind it. |
Tom Swift in the City of Gold | Victor Appleton | 1,912 | Tom receives a message from his missionary friend whom he saved from captivity in Africa during the adventures of the preceding volume. The message describes a wonderful underground city, filled with treasures of gold, somewhere deep in the heart of Mexico. Not one to turn down adventure, Tom accepts the challenge to find the lost city. Around this time, Andy Foger and his father had lost their fortunes and are off after Tom's trail in order to steal the treasures from him. In order to make the trip possible, Tom must remodel his previous airship- a hot air balloon with an enclosed cabin. Accompanying him on the journey is Ned Newton, Mr. Damon, and Eradicate. They set off on a tramp steamer to Mexico. On this steamer, they uncover two mysterious passengers who they confirm to be the Foger's. In Mexico, they hire a team of Mexicans who catch onto the city of gold plot and chase after it in competition with Tom as well as the Foger's. To make things worse, Tom had been warned about "Head Hunters" by his missionary friend. After finding the underground city and losing the trail off the two competing parties, Tom's gang end up accidentally sealing themselves into the city for about a week. They finally escape when their enemies release them unintentionally. The Foger's and the Mexican team show up at the entrance with the escort of the Head Hunters. By trying to get in, they let Tom and his team out. Before the others can explore the city, an underground river floods it and they make off with a huge wealth of salvaged gold. |
Tom Swift and His Air Glider | Victor Appleton | 1,912 | While testing out one of his many airships, Tom needs to make emergency landing for repairs. He complains of the poor quality platinum used for his magneto, and is overheard by an escaped Russian exile. The man tells Tom of a secret platinum mine, deep in Siberia. The man also explains that his brother is still in exile, and will be more useful in locating the mine. Tom organizes an expedition to save the exile and find the platinum mine. It is to note that the Russian revolutionaries in the book are referred to as the Nihilist movement. However, given the time in which the book takes place, the author would more likely have been referring to Bolsheviks. |
The Getting of Wisdom | Henry Handel Richardson | 1,910 | Henry Handel Richardson was the pseudonym of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, a writer who was born in 1870 to a reasonably well-off family which later fell on hard times. The author's family lived in various Victorian towns and from the age of 13 to 17 Richardson attended boarding school at the Presbyterian Ladies' College in Melbourne, Victoria. It's this experience that feeds directly into The Getting of Wisdom. Laura Tweedle Rambotham, the main character, is the eldest child of a country family. She is a clever and highly imaginative child, given to inventing romantic stories for the entertainment of her younger siblings, and an avid reader. She is also both proud and sensitive and her mother finds her difficult to handle. Her mother is the widow of a barrister who supports her family in genteel poverty on her earnings from embroidery. At the age of twelve Laura is sent off to boarding school in Melbourne. Her experiences at school shock and humiliate the unworldly Laura. The girls at the school are generally from rather wealthy families and those, like Laura, who come from less fortunate backgrounds learn very early not to divulge their circumstances for fear of ridicule. From time to time Laura lets little snippets of information about her family slip out, and she suffers for it. In fact, these seem to be the main forces controlling the action of this book: fear of the judgements of one's peers, the desire to "fit in", embarrassment about one's family—it is shameful to have a mother who works for a living—and the desire to "better" oneself by belittling others. None of the girls in the school, nor the teachers for that matter, come across as anything but self-serving and boorish. Even Laura, who starts out so young and strong and idealistic, surrenders to the role expected of her. Essentially, this is a story about the destruction of innocence. Laura undergoes a form of redemption at the end of the book, convincing herself that cheating in an exam is actually God's will, and then later deciding that while she was wrong to do so, she got away with it and therefore God had no actual hand in the matter or else he would have punished her for the sin. A neat case of self-delusion. At the end, when Laura is walking away from the school for the last time, she is overcome with a desire to run, and the last we see of her is a rapidly diminishing form disappearing through a park. She is free at last: free of the overwhelming constrictions of the school, the teachers' expectations and the other schoolgirls' callous disregard. |
The Well Dressed Explorer | Thea Astley | 1,962 | The novel follows journalist, George Brewster, who moves from city to city, from empty love affair to empty love affair, until he dies. He is married, but faithless to his wife...and is ultimately a "pathetic figure". |
She Came to Stay | Simone de Beauvoir | null | Set in Paris on the eve of and during World War II, the novel revolves around Françoise, whose open relationship with her partner Pierre becomes strained when they form a ménage à trois with her younger friend Xaviere. The novel explores many existentialist concepts such as freedom, angst, and the other. |
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic | Sophie Kinsella | 2,000 | Rebecca Bloomwood lives in a flat in fashionable Fulham, London, that is owned by her best friend Suze's wealthy, aristocratic parents. Becky works as a financial journalist for the magazine Successful Savings, a job she says that no one who works there is very excited about, and they all say that they just "fell into", while in fact being unable to get better jobs. The book emphasises that her cycle of debt is not easily broken, as, even as she is thousands of pounds in debt, Becky still receives letters offering her credit and department store cards. She often rationalises her overspending, for instance by referring to items as an 'investment' or necessary. Unfortunately for Becky, she considers things such as birthday presents for her friends as necessary. On her way to a press conference held by Brandon Communications, Becky notices a sale sign in the window of the Denny and George shop. She sees that the scarf she has long craved for is on sale at a discount of 50%. Becky sees this as a unique opportunity but realizes that she has left her Visa card at the office and asks the shop assistant to reserve the scarf until she can retrieve her credit card. The assistant reluctantly agrees to hold it until the end of the day only. Upon arriving at the press conference, she is greeted by a staff member of Brandon Communications, who mentions that there's been some surprising news in the banking field and asks Becky her opinion on the news. Becky has no idea what the woman is referring to and has to feign knowledge. After the staffer leaves, Luke Brandon, head of Brandon Communications, realizing that she was feigning knowledge of what was happening, tells her that one financial group recently bought another, and it was recently rumored that Flagstaff Life was going the same way. Halfway through the conference Becky is given another errand by her employer and realizes that she will not have time to return to the office for her credit card, but only needs twenty pounds more to buy her Denny & George scarf. She asks her friend Elly Granger if she can borrow some money, but Elly has none. Luke hears Becky ask for twenty pounds, and stops the whole Press Conference just so he can hand a twenty pound note to her, once she has made up a story of needing the money to buy a present for her aunt who is in hospital. Right after she has bought the Denny & George scarf she bumps into Luke Brandon and has to make excuses to leave, before he finds out that she's lied. Later on during the week, Becky's flatmate Suze asks her to go to a restaurant with her and her cousins, including Tarquin. There, Becky sees Luke and his parents having dinner. The mother comments on Becky's scarf, and she blabs about getting it as a bargain. Then she realizes her mistake, and abruptly tells a suspicious Luke that her aunt died. Becky is mortified. Luke runs into Becky after that and asks her to come shopping with him at Harrods. Initially she really enjoys shopping with him for luggage and goes up and down the shop wheeling around the luggage playfully, helping Luke choose the best purchase. After he reveals that the luggage is actually for his girlfriend, Sacha, Becky is very upset, telling Luke that she feels he's used her and not treated her with respect. Throughout the story, a man named Derek Smeath, who is the manager of Becky's bank, is constantly trying to get hold of her so he can set up a re-payment schedule for her overdraft. Becky always has some excuse as to why she cannot send a cheque or meet with Mr. Smeath and his assistant, Erica. The excuses range from a broken leg, a dead aunt, etc., etc., until it becomes obvious to Mr. Smeath that Becky is quite unable to repay the overdraft. He becomes quite insistent upon setting up a meeting with her. Suze and Becky happen to be flicking through a magazine and see a list of eligible millionaires. Tarquin is the fifteenth richest there, but also on the list happens to be Luke Brandon. Tarquin asks Becky out, while there Tarquin compliments Becky on her scarf and she continues the pretense that it's from her deceased aunt. She further embroiders that her aunt had set up a charity for children abroad to be given violin teachers. Tarquin writes out a cheque for £5000, which would solve Becky's financial problems, but she feels she can't possibly accept it, and painfully refuses. While Tarquin goes to the bathroom, Becky sneaks a look at his chequebook, wondering if a millionaire gets to buy a lot of lavish items. The content isn't extraordinary. Tarquin returns and Becky is sure he saw her looking at the chequebook. Becky gives up trying to date Tarquin, as he is just not her type, even if he is very rich. At this point her bank manager is trying to arrange a meeting. Unable to come up with any more excuses, Becky goes back home to hide at her parents' house, lying to them when he calls and saying he is a stalker, Becky learns that her next door neighbors made a financial decision based on advice that Becky had absentmindedly given them and stand to miss out on thousands of pounds in a windfall resulting from a bank takeover. The bank had sent an offer of a carriage clock to people who would get the windfall, if they change their account to a different plan. The bank knew of the planned takeover and upcoming windfall, while the customers do not, but if they accepted the plan for which they are offered a gift, the customers will not receive the windfall. Becky is horrified by being partly culpable for her kindly neighbors losing out, and sets out to make things right by writing an article that exposes the bank's duplicity. The article is a success, and leads to Becky appearing on a daytime television show called The Morning Coffee. Unfortunately, Becky did not know that the bank was a client of Luke Brandon's PR firm. Luke became very angry with her, and thought she wrote the article just to get back at him for treating her poorly. Becky and Luke square off during her appearance on The Morning Coffee. After arguing with Becky, Luke conceded that she was right, the bank had defrauded their customers. So Luke Brandon announces that Brandon Communications will no longer be representing that bank. Becky gets a regular slot on the show. Luke Brandon invites Becky out for a seeming business dinner at the Ritz Hotel. When Becky arrives at their meeting, business is not on the agenda and instead they eat their fill of the food, including a selection of all the puddings they liked the sound of, and then end up spending the night at the Ritz together. Becky has to miss yet another meeting arranged with her bank manager, but he writes and tells her this can be postponed, as due to her regular slot on television, her finances are now rosy. But the bank manager, Derek Smeath, will continue to keep an eye on her account. |
Tom Swift in Captivity | Victor Appleton | 1,912 | Tom Swift is approached by Mr. Preston, the owner of a circus, and begins to tell the story of Jake Poddington, Mr. Preston's most skilled hunter. As it turns out, Jake went missing just after sending word to Preston that Jake was on the trail of a tribe of giants, somewhere in South Africa. That was the last Preston has heard of Jake Poddington. Preston would like Tom to use one of his airships to search for Poddington, and if possible, bring back a giant for the circus. |
Procession of the Dead | Darren Shan | 2,008 | The story begins with Capac Raimi getting off a train to begin his new life as a gangster in a city controlled by a man known simply as 'the Cardinal'. Leaving the train station, Capac hailed a taxi and headed to his uncle's home. His uncle Theo was a gangster who lost his wife during the birth of their child, who died shortly afterwards. Because of this Theo became severely depressed and his power in the city slipped. Capac joined him as his heir and learnt the tricks of the trade. Soon they got a deal that would aid them massively in the gangster business. Capac, Theo and three guards went to meet the gangster. Before anything was arranged, Theo and the guards were shot dead by gangsters and Capac was taken to the 'Party Central' to face the Cardinal, head of all gangsters and the most powerful man in the city. As Capac worked under the Cardinal, he eventually discovered his real identity, the secrets behind his past and a group of individuals known as 'the Ayuamarcans'. |
The Melting of Maggie Bean | null | 2,007 | Maggie Bean is the average 7th grader, having a tough year. Her dad lost his job, and her mom is stressed about money. So Maggie focuses on keeping up her straight A average and eating chocolate—lots and lots of chocolate. But it all changes when Maggie gets a chance to try out for the synchronized swim team. Becoming a Water Wing has always been Maggie's dream. She and her friend Aimee work to complete their goal and Maggie might finally stop being a social outcast. Who would not want a cute silver bathing suit, an awesome circle of friends, and the boyfriend of her dreams? But it is all up to Maggie, and who she thinks she is. She also is forced to join the "Pound Patrollers", a club of other heavy people, where she meets Arnie, another chunky boy her age who turns out to be Peter (her dream boy's) cousin. She forms a friendship with him. At school, she also gets a little closer to Peter, though not boyfriend-girlfriend close. Her sister, Summer, Aimee, and of course Maggie herself, work to help find her dad a job. She also begins to lose weight and takes nearly 20 pounds off her original 186. She eats less, gets rid of her chocolate, and practices for the Water Wings tryouts, which she eventually nails. However, cocaptains Julia and Anabel keep her off the team, causing Maggie to become depressed. Later, her gym teacher realizes this and offers Maggie a chance to join the Water Wings OR the regular swim team. She chooses the latter. Her dad also makes progress towards getting a job through Maggie's help. Maggie Bean a self-conscious 7th grader whose father has recently lost his job. Because of this, Maggie goes from 149 pounds to 186 and that's not good when you're 5' 7". Her measurements are 42-34-44. Maggie is a straight-A student. Maggie has a crush on Peter Applewood, a baseball player. Maggie dislikes Anabel Richards and Julia Swanson, the captains of the Water Wings, but she envies them for their bodies and popularity. To deal with the stress of her father losing his job Maggie does what she knows best: she eat lots of chocolate and get straight A's. Peter Applewood A popular, good looking baseball player and Maggie's crush. He's quite nice to Maggie and is her locker neighbor at school. Aimee thinks he may like Julia Swanson, though it's revealed she was actually just stalking him and only thought they were going out. Arnie Peter Applewood's cousin and a boy that Maggie met at the Pound Patrollers. Arnie is also overweight like Maggie and he plays the flute. He hopes to start a business someday. Aimee McDougall Maggie's well-intentioned, athletic best friend who encourages her to try out for the Water Wings. She's prettier and skinnier than Maggie and has a long list of admirers, but still sticks up for Maggie and helps her. "Anabel Richards and Julia Swanson" the popular queens of the seventh grade and also the cocaptains of Water Wings. Julia seems to be the more evil one, who more openly mocks Maggie and tries to get Peter, while Anabel seems a little nicer, as at the Water Wings tryouts she actually encourages Maggie and seems to express a little guilt at keeping her off the team. Summer Bean Maggie's encouraging younger sister. She's ten years old. Aunt Violetta Maggie's overweight aunt who convinces Maggie to try the Pound Patrollers to lose weight. |
Careful, He Might Hear You | Sumner Locke Elliott | 1,963 | Careful, He Might Hear You is based on the author's childhood. The secure world of an orphan living with his working-class aunt and uncle is changed forever with the arrival of another aunt from London who wishes to raise him as her child. |
Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera | Victor Appleton | 1,912 | Tom Swift is still working on his long-term project, a noiseless airship, when he is approached by James Period, the owner of a motion picture company. Mr. Period wants to hire Tom to travel around the world and take motion pictures of strange and exotic places. These films will be shown in theaters, hoping that the exciting content will draw crowds. At first Tom declines, but eventually his adventurous streak wins out, and Tom sets out with friends for some old-time reality motion pictures. |
The Slow Natives | Thea Astley | 1,965 | Set in sub-tropical Queensland, the novel examines the relationships between suburban Brisbanites including a priest, nuns and a couple and their teenage son. |
Owls to Athens | Harry Turtledove | 2,004 | Sostratos and Menedemos arrive in Athens in time for the Dionysia. Sostratos spends much of his time visiting with his old teachers. His cousin, Menedemos finds himself having a sexual encounter with an important Athenian woman. |
Mahōtsukai no Yoru | null | null | Near the end of the Shōwa era in the late 1980s, an old mansion is rumored to be the home of a witch. After moving into the mansion, Aoko Aozaki begins to learn sorcery from a young mage, Alice Kuonji, the rumored witch of the mansion. Unexpectedly, a young boy named Sōjūrō Shizuki is drawn to the mansion and comes to reside with them as well. |
Frostbite | Richelle Mead | null | The story begins with Rose and Dimitri traveling to meet the legendary guardian Arthur Schoenberg for Rose's Qualifier Exam. Once they arrive at the home of the Moroi family he protects, they discover a bloody massacre of the entire family and their guardians, including Arthur. Rose also discovers a silver stake, a magical device which Strigoi cannot touch, meaning the Strigoi must have had human assistance in their attack. The massacre puts the vampire community on high alert. To keep the students at St. Vladimir's Academy safe, a ski trip to a lodge owned by a wealthy Moroi family is required right after Christmas. During the ski trip, panic sets in when news of another Strigoi attack on a royal Moroi family spreads, where one of the dead was Mia's mother. During her stay at the lodge, Rose meets a royal Moroi named Adrian Ivashkov, who shows obvious interest in Rose, and later becomes friendly with Lissa after they both discover they are Spirit users. During Adrian's pool party, Mason, his friend Eddie, and Mia begin voicing their opinions about hunting Strigoi. After a heated argument with Dimitri, Rose tells Mason confidential information about the possible whereabouts of the Strigoi's hideouts. Using Rose's information, Mia, Mason, and Eddie sneak out of the ski lodge and travel to Spokane, Washington, to hunt down the Strigoi themselves. Rose discovers their plan, and she and Christian run out to stop them. Rose and Christian find the group and convince them to return to the lodge. However, they are ambushed by Strigoi, who hold them captive for days, threatening to kill the young novices and convince either Christian or Mia to turn into Strigoi by killing one of their friends. Rose eventually comes up with a plan to escape, and they all manage to get out of the house into the protection of the light, except Rose, who is left fighting two Strigoi. Mason's neck gets snapped, killing him instantly when he returns and attempted to help Rose. Rose then kills both of the Strigoi by beheading them in rage from Mason's death, and collapses into shock, just as Guardians arrive. Once back at St. Vladimir's, Rose receives two molnija marks for her Strigoi kills. Dimitri also tells her that he turned down Tasha's offer to become her guardian, admitting that his heart is with Rose and wiil never leave her,then he kisses her. |
Switchers | Kate Thompson | 1,994 | Having recently moved to Dublin, Tess finds solitude in her power to Switch (shapeshift), escaping city life in favour of the animal world. However, she is troubled by a boy named Kevin, who constantly follows her home when she gets off the school bus, and claims to need her help. He soon reveals that he is also a Switcher, and that he has joined her on several of her recent excursion as an animal. However, Kevin is almost fifteen years of age, and once a Switcher turns fifteen, they lose their powers (something of which Tess was not aware). After much prodding, Tess agrees to follow Kevin to a house owned by an elderly former Switcher named Lizzie, who reveals that enormous, ice-dwelling Arctic slugs called krools have been roused from a millennia-long slumber by recent oil drilling in the area of their hibernation. Now that they are wakeful, they have begun to lower the temperature of the Earth so as to make it more comfortable for themselves, and will not stop until they have brought the entire planet into a new Ice Age. Only Tess and Kevin have the power to stop this. In the forms of whales the two Switchers swim to the Arctic, where they rest as polar bears. During a dream, Tess suddenly realizes the meaning of Lizzie's advice about "being what isn’t". She explains to Kevin that because they have been so focussed on what exists in the here and now, they have closed their mind to alternative possibilities, such as Switching into creatures which once existed and are now extinct. Armed with this knowledge, the two transform themselves into mammoths, in which form they continue their journey. A krool sees the mammoths approaching, and resolves to consume them to appease its hunger. As its enormous body rears up to swallow them, however, Tess makes a sudden leap of imagination by Switching into a dragon. Kevin follows suit, and together they melt the krool with their fiery breath. Unfortunately, an American military helicopter sees them, and, mistaking them for UFOs, attempts to destroy them with missiles. The creatures evade these attacks, and begin to move about the Arctic, killing all the krools they can find, thus causing the snowstorms all over the world to die down. While Tess and Kevin are returning to Ireland, the war-planes pursue them once more, this time attacking with a napalm bomb. They swerve away from the explosion, Switching into birds as they do so, but Kevin's Switch comes a few seconds too late, and he is caught in the blast. Tess waits in the sky above the bomb-site until the dawn of Kevin's fifteenth birthday, but it is clear that he died in the explosion. She returns to Dublin, and speaks to Lizzie, who is not nearly as upset about Kevin's death as Tess had expected. Lizzie explains that she does not know whether there is an afterlife or not and therefore is not in a position to think about where Kevin now is. Tess returns home, and her parents are overjoyed to have her back. However, they notice that she has gone through considerable changes during her absence, and is more isolated than ever before. For the next several months, she considers what to become when she turns fifteen, and finds a downside to almost every option. Tess becomes increasingly lonely as time passes, until one night, she is visited by Kevin, now permanently in the form of a phoenix. Her friend made an immense leap of faith as he was swept up in the explosion, allowing him to survive because phoenixes by nature rise from their own ashes when killed. The book ends as Tess prepares to become a phoenix and fly with Kevin over the city. |
Banaag at Sikat | Lope K. Santos | 1,906 | The novel is about two friends: Delfin and Felipe. Delfin is a socialist, while Felipe advocates the works of an anarchist. As a socialist, Delfin believes and wishes to spread the principles of socialism to the public, where the citizens could have more right in all the businesses, properties, and other national activities. Although he is poor who studies law and works as a writer for a newspaper, Delfin still strongly believes that a society inclined to the cause of the poor through peaceful means, a challenge that could be achieved through violence. On the other hand, Felipe – who advocates anarchy – believes in the forceful way of destroying the existing powers and cruelty harbored by the rich landowners. He wants to dispel the abusive members of society who rule society. Even though he is the son of a rich town leader, Felipe hates the cruel ways of his father. He would rather see a society with equal rights and equal status for all its citizens: where there is no difference between the poor and the rich classes. Due to his hatred of his life as a son of a cruel and rich landowner, Felipe left his home to live a life of poverty. He left his life of luxury in order to join the common class of society. He decided to live with Don Ramon, a godfather through the Catholic sacrament of confirmation, in Manila. Later on, Felipe also felt hatred against his godfather who was just like his father: a rich man cruel to his helpers. Felipe fell in love with Tentay, a commoner but with dignity despite of being poor. Felipe was forced by his father to return to their home in the town of Silangan, but was only forced to leave the home after teaching the farmers at household helpers about their inherent human rights. Don Ramon, Felipe’s godfather, has two siblings. Thalia was the eldest and Meni is the youngest daughter. Delfin - Felipe’s friend – fell in love with one of these two siblings, a woman named Meni. Meni became pregnant and was disowned by Don Ramon. Meni decided to live with Delfin to live as a commoner. Because of what Meni did, Don Ramon left the Philippines, together with a favored household helper named Tekong, but was murdered while in New York. Don Ramon’s body was brought back to the Philippines by Ruperto, the long lost brother of Tentay, Felipe’s lover. It was Ruperto who revealed the reason why Don Ramon was killed by an unknown assailant: he was ruthless to his household helpers. The novel ends at a scene when Felipe and Delfin decided to stay for a while at the grave of Don Ramon. They talked about their principles and social beliefs. They left the cemetery while approaching the darkness and the depth of the night. |
TIM Defender of the Earth | Sam Enthoven | 2,008 | The story begins with the newly appointed Prime Minister, Mr Sinclair, being taken by Dr Mckienzy to a top-secret underground lab. There he views TIM (Tyrannosaur Improved Module) sleeping in a giant tank. Mckienzy explains that the military have been developing hybrids to fight their wars, but all except Tim have died. Mr Sinclair then tells her that he considers her experiment a failure, as over twelve years of work has only produced one monster, and she has to close it down, killing Tim in the process. He sees himself out, but not before telling Mckienzy that her funding will go to another project – "but it's classified." Meanwhile, a class visits the British Museum. Chris, who is desperate to fit in with the cool kids, is dismayed when he is paired with geeky Anna. He wanders off in a huff, and comes to the museum basement. There, he meets a female security guard, who shows him a strange bracelet, which glows when Chris goes near it. The guard clamps it on his wrist and tells him that he is now joined to the Defender of the Earth. Chris dismisses her as mad, and leaves to join the rest of his class, having discovered that he is unable to remove the bracelet. Dr Mckienzy floods Tim's enclosure with gas, to poison him. However, Tim breaks out, and rampages over London, scared and confused by the world that he finds himself in. As he accidentally crushes buildings and tramples streets, he blocks London Bridge which Chris and his parents are driving over. As he gets close to Tim, Chris's bracelet starts glowing, and Tim suddenly feels peaceful. He trots into the Thames and wades off. The next morning, Anna's father, Professor Mallahide, is giving a demonstration to an audience that includes the head of the army and Mr Sinclair. He reveals to them that he has created a swarm of nanobots for the military, which can apparently do 'anything'. His audience is unimpressed when he demonstrates by changing a squirrel from grey to red, but when his nanobots eat the squirrel alive on his orders, increasing the swarm, they immediately give him permission to continue his work. Once they have departed, Mallahide restores the squirrel to full health, calling the prime minister and his friends morons. Swimming in the sea, Tim is surprised when he runs into the Kraken, who is many times larger than he is. The creature informs hims that he is going to be the 'Defender of the Earth'. Tim does not really understand this, so the Kraken begins to explain. Meanwhile, Chris returns to the museum, to ask the guard that gave him the bracelet to remove it. She tells him that her sacred task was to guard it until it choose its bearer – Chris. It is a focus for the Earth's power, and if used correctly, can do great things. Chris is unimpressed and demands to know how to take it off. When he learns that the guard has no way of doing that, he stalks off. Mallahide has prepared his machines to do the unthinkable – to devour him, and make him one with the swarm. He enters a steel box, and orders them to take him apart. The nanobots obey, and begin stripping him down. At first, there is no pain, but when they have almost finished, he is struck by a hot, unbearable itching, and, just as he is almost gone, thinks of Anna and regrets his decision. Then he is completely eaten, and the experiment appears to have failed. Anna waits in her family's flat for Mallahide. He does not appear, and at 11 o'clock, his work rings to tell her that there was an accident at the lab, and her father has died. She fumes at this, because she and her father have argued about him doing an experiment like that with the nanobots for years, and he never listened. She is lying in bed, with a counselor sent over by the government sleeping on the sofa, when her father turns up. She begins to argue with him. The noise in her room wakes the counselor, who comes up the stairs. Mallahid hears her coming, and disappears into thin air. |
Buckskin Brigades | L. Ron Hubbard | 1,937 | The book references a journal entry from Meriwether Lewis during the Lewis & Clark Expedition. In a July 27, 1806 entry, Lewis describes how he had killed a Blackfeet Native American chief during the expedition, and in another entry in the journal he mentions a white man living with the Blackfeet tribe. Part of Hubbard's story is based on this white man, referred to in the book by his Native American name, "Yellow Hair". After the death of the Native American chief, Yellow Hair attempts to protect his adopted people from fur traders. Yellow Hair is sent to join the fur traders and learn how their future operations will affect his people. The white fur traders are portrayed as evil savages. |
The Girls of Slender Means | Muriel Spark | 1,963 | It is set in 'The May of Teck Club', established "for the Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London". It concerns the lives and loves of its desperate residents amongst the deprivations of immediate post-war Kensington between VE Day and VJ Day in 1945. The frame story, set in 1963, concerns the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual turned Jesuit, has been killed in Haiti. Journalist Jane Wright, a former inhabitant of the Club, wants to research the backstory of the priest's martyrdom. The bulk of the novella is taken up by flashbacks to 1945, concerning Farringdon and the Club. The narrative slowly builds up to the unfolding of a tragedy that killed Joanna Childe, the elocution instructor, and led to Farringdon's conversion through the evil heartlessness he perceived in Selina's behavior. |
Glamour Girl | null | 2,008 | Leanne has turned the tables on her career and is now managing her little sister Jodie's glamour career. Jodie will do anything to get to where she wants to be and is determined to be even more famous than Leanne ever was. So she hits all the parties with one thing in mind – get noticed. She decides that to top it all of she wants the perfect man – Ben Ridely, the owner of a leading property company. But she's too busy spending his money to realise that it's not coming in the legal way. Jodie needs to be careful because if she's not she could end up in big trouble. |
The Janissary Tree | Jason Goodwin | 2,006 | In June 1826, the Sultan Mahmud II disbands and slaughters the Janissaries, once elite troops of the Ottoman Empire but long an unruly element beyond the control of the Sultan or anybody else. Ten years later, the new Westernized corps which replaced the Janissaries are to perform a military exercise. Ten days before the event, four officers disappear; subsequently, one officer is found dead. The general entrusts Yashim the eunuch with solving the mystery. Meanwhile, the Sultan's newest concubine is murdered and the Sultan's mother's jewelry stolen. Yashim must simultaneously investigate three different cases. The cases bring Yashim in and out of the palace, to various embassies, a mosque, and the alleyways and streets of Istanbul. To solve the cases, Yashim employs the assistance of a Polish ambassador and the wife of a Russian ambassador. He discovers that the cases are related, and that they not only involve a plot for revenge by surviving Janissaries hidden somewhere but also the power struggle between the palace eunuchs and the military's extreme pursuit of democratization. In the end, Yashim, against all odds, succeeds in preventing several conspiracies. |
An Episode of Sparrows | Rumer Godden | null | The novel focuses on children in Catford Street, a working-class London street of much stone and asphalt but only few green spots. A difficult young girl named Lovejoy Mason, living with the aspiring restaurateur and his wife with whom her irresponsible mother has left her, finds a packet of cornflower seeds and plants a small garden in a wrecked churchyard, filled with rubble from the Blitz. Although other children dislike her, Tip Malone, the boss of a boys’ gang, takes an interest in Lovejoy and her small project. Ultimately, several adults become involved in the children's lives as a result of Lovejoy's garden, with significant consequences for their future. |
Blart III: The Boy Who Set Sail on a Questionable Quest | Dominic Barker | 2,008 | The book starts the day after Blart II: The Boy Who Was Wanted Dead or Alive - Or Both ends, with Blart about to be murdered in his sleep by two assassins. He reacts while dreaming and manages to knock the two assassins unconscious when the emergency bell, the Gigantic Bell of Disaster, rang. It is a bell that rings only in times of national emergency. (It didn't ring in the past books because its clapper was being serviced.) Blart rushes to the throne room, along with Sir Beowulf the Knight(Beo for short), who had been newly appointed by the King of Illyria to fulfill Beo's dream of becoming a knight. There, the King and his Queen address the crowd gathered outside for the ringing of the Gigantic Bell of Disaster. Princess Lois has been kidnapped an hour ago in the night, thus starting a prophecy about Illyria's doom, aptly titled "The Chilling Prophecy of Endless Torment". This prophecy states that if a newly-wed princess goes missing at dead of night for one month, Illyria should BEWARE! Unless the husband of the bride, that is Blart, returns her before the month is up, then all of Illyria would be saved, except for her husband who must die. Obviously Blart refuses to go on a quest to fulfill that prophecy as that would result in his death. Capablanca the Greatest Sorcerer in the World is recovering from a poison-induced fever from the Guild of Assassins. Thus, he is unable to accompany Blart on this quest. Beo and Blart, then, interrogate the two assassins in Blart's bedroom, only to find that they have regained consciousness and are escaping. Beo and Blart manage to catch one, Mika, while the other, Uri escapes. Blart and Beo then drag Mika to Capablanca's room to hear his confession. Capablanca is currently being cured by Lowenthal, the Court Physician, with leeches. It turns out that there is another prophecy of doom for Styxia, claiming that the people of the Kingdom of Gregor the Grizzled would rise up in a great revolution, slaughter the royal family and declare itself a republic. Only when Gregor's son, Prince Anatoly, married the heir to the Illyrian throne, that is Princess Lois, would the royal family be saved. But Princess Lois rejected Prince Anatoly's suit. He was determined to persist until he finds out that Princess Lois was married to Blart. (in order to fulfill a prophecy in the previous book) Thus the King decided to kidnap Princess Lois and arrange for a huge bounty to be put on Blart's head for the Guild of Assassins, as well as poisoning Capablanca with a deadly toxin to prevent him from intervening. Beo was not seen to be quite a big problem as Capablanca, and was ignored, much to Beo's indignation. Capablanca, after hearing Mika's confession, lapsed back into deliriousness. Beo and Blart then informed the King of the latest news and repeated the last words that Capablanca said: soup, earwig, hamster, promise and suitors. The last two words reminded the King of a plan Capablanca set in place to deal with the prophecy. Each suitor for Princess Lois, before pressing their suit, must make a solemn vow to defend Princess Lois's marriage with all their power. As Princess Lois has rejected 75 suitors, there are 75 noblemen all over the world sworn to defend her marriage. Messengers will be sent to all of them, asking them to bring a ship of fully armed men to the Illyrian harbour to form the greatest fleet ever seen. This armada will be led by Illyria's new flagship and its captain will be Princess Lois's husband, Blart. The armada will set sail to Styxia and lay siege to the capital until the Princess is returned. Before they set off, Capablanca gives Blart the Misty Mirror of Miracle, which may sometimes clear and show the user something far away. After a brief fiasco where Blart names the new flagship "The Golden Pig", they set off to Styxia. |
Last Bus to Woodstock | Colin Dexter | 1,975 | Two young women are waiting for a bus to Woodstock, and they decide to hitch a lift. Later that night, one of them, Sylvia Kaye, is found murdered and apparently sexually assaulted in the car park of the Black Prince pub in Woodstock. Suspicion falls on various characters. The body is reported found by John Sanders, a young man who, it later transpires, is addicted to pornography and sometimes paid Sylvia for sex. He admits to waiting for her on the night of her murder but found her dead. It turns out he interfered with the body but did not murder her. Inspector Morse discovers the lift was offered in a red car and guesses various bits of information about the owner. His discoveries lead him to calculate the chances of finding a red car in North Oxford which meets all the criteria. There is only one, and it belongs to Bernard Crowther, a don at the university who lives on Southdown Road. Crowther admits that, although married, he is having an affair with another woman. He admits giving a lift to two women and dropping them in Woodstock while on the way to meet his mistress. Crowther's wife kills herself, mistakenly thinking that her husband is the murderer; Crowther himself dies shortly afterwards from a heart attack, thinking that she is the killer. In the end it turns out it was neither of them but rather the other girl at the bus stop, Sue Widdowson, who was Crowther’s mistress. Crowther had dropped her off and had sex with Sylvia. Widdowson became insanely jealous, crept up behind Sylvia in the car, and hit her on the back of the head with a tyre lever lying in the lot. A further complication involves Jennifer Coleby who worked with Sylvia in an insurance office. Jennifer is having an affair with her boss, Palmer, and shares a flat with Sue Widdowson. Crowther types coded messages to a girlfriend who proves to be Widdowson. He leaves the messages with Coleby at her work, and she delivers them to Widdowson. The police are sent on a merry dance chasing them. |
Revelation | C. J. Sansom | 2,008 | The plot centres around the challenges of post reformation England and draws on the prophesies of the Book of Revelation and features Archbishop Cranmer. |
How It Happened in Peach Hill | null | 2,007 | The story is about Annie, a teenage girl, and her mother, the amazing Madame Caterina, a self-styled clairvoyant. They move from town to town swindling people out of their money, trading on their suffering and secrets. The mother uses her daughter to follow people around posing as an idiot so she can listen in on their conversations. Caterina then uses the common gossip the daughter has procured to predict the troubles that the person (usually a woman) is suffering. When they arrive at Peach Hill in New York, Annie decides she wants to be a normal girl with a normal life. When her mother begins to flirt with a supposedly wealthy man, Annie seizes the opportunity to have an episode and magically gain intelligence. The mother and daughter spend the book trying to outthink each other to get what they want: Caterina wanting money and a steady stream of customers, Annie wanting to go to school, make friends, and impress the handsome Sammy Sloane. |
The Waltz Invention | Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov | 1,938 | Act 1:In the office of the Minister of War: The minister of war receives Salvator Waltz - " a haggard inventor, a fellow author" - who declares that he controls a new machine of immense destructive power called Telemort or Telethanasia that can blow up cities, mountains, even countries. The minister dismisses him as a nut. Shortly thereafter a mountain in the vista of his windows blows up exactly at the time predicted by Waltz. He is called back and explains to the dubious minister that this was indeed the planned experiment to showcase his weapon; the minister and his advisor are not yet convinced and do not know what to do. Trance (in Russian her name is son, meaning dream), a journalist who becomes Waltz's assistant suggests to appoint a committee. Annabella appears and indicates that on the mountain lived once an old enchanter and a snow-white gazelle. Act 2: In the Council Hall of the Ministry: A committee of bumbling old generals is in session to decide what to do after more experimental explosion have made it clear that the power of the weapon is enormous. Trance suggests to buy it. Waltz is called and offered money but refuses to sell it. He declares that he has the weapon to create a new world order, war and military and politics become superfluous. Waltz shows his side as a poet when he extols the New Life where he will be the "keeper of the garden key". Annabella, the daughter of a general, objects to the "bad dreams" Waltz has, but Waltz prevails and is welcomed as the new ruler. Act 3: In the office of the Minister of War: Waltz is in charge but bored by the day-to-day drudgery of governing. There was an assassination attempt on him presumably by a foreign agent, and in response he blows up the city of Santa Morgana. He plans to move to the island of Palmera and from time to time check on the affairs of government which should be easy as no country will be able to resist him. He demands luxury and servitude. His dream is becoming a nightmare. A parade of women is shown to him to please him, one of them citing a poem he had written a long time ago, but he wants Annabella. He summons her father who, however, refuses to submit; he will not deliver his daughter to Waltz. Waltz threatens to blow up everything, but Trance now makes it clear: there is no Telemort machine. It all was the imagination of Waltz. Reality now sets in, the real interview of Waltz takes place. The minister rejects him in less than a minute, opens the window, the mountain is still there, and Waltz is taken to the madhouse. |
Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight | Victor Appleton | 1,912 | Tom has finally perfected one of his latest inventions, a noiseless airship. This is a project Tom has been working on since the last few volumes, and now that it is finished, it appears that Tom is suddenly under scrutiny by United States border agents, who are tracking smuggling operations which utilize airships to move goods out of Canada, and avoid paying duty tax. Once Tom convinces the agents that he is not involved in smuggling, he is hired to help break up the operations. |
Skinny | Ibi Kaslik | 2,004 | Skinny is about two sisters, 22-year old medical student Giselle and 14-year old track star Holly. Giselle suffers from anorexia possibly linked to the love-deprived relationship with her father, who has been dead for nine years and had always favoured Holly. The story is told from the perspective of both girls. |
Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa? | Lualhati Bautista | 1,988 | The novel began with an introductory chapter about the graduation day from kindergarten of Maya, Lea’s daughter. A program and a celebration were held. In the beginning, everything in Lea’s life was going smoothly – her life in connection with her children, with friends of the opposite gender, and with her volunteer work for a human rights organization. But Lea’s children were both growing-up – and Lea could see their gradual transformation. There were the changes in their ways and personalities: Maya’s curiosity was becoming more obvious every day, while Ojie was crossing the boundaries from boyhood to teenage to adulthood. A scene came when Lea’s former husband came back to persuade Ojie to go with him to the United States. Lea experienced the fear of losing both her children, when the fathers of her children decide to take them away from her embrace. She also needed to spend more time for work and with the organization she was volunteering for. In the end, both of Lea’s children decided to choose to stay with her – a decision that Lea never forced upon them. Another graduation day of students was the main event in the novel’s final chapter, where Lea was the guest-of-honor. Lea delivered a speech that discusses the topic of how life evolves, and on how time consumes itself so quickly, as fast as how human beings grow, change, progress and mature. Lea leaves a message to her audience that a graduation day is not an end because it is actually the beginning of everything else that will come in a person’s life. |
Celia en el mundo | null | null | Published after Celia novelista (1934), the book picks up the story that was left off in Celia en el colegio (1932). Celia's uncle, Tío Rodrigo, had arrived at the school where Celia attended class with the nuns and had rudely taken her away, without her parents permission or consent, because he strongly believed that the nuns were a poor influence for Celia, and her mind would only be filled with uncultured foolishness rather than educational nourishment. Celia is taken to her uncle's home in Madrid, to live with Basílides, Rodrigo's servant, and Maimón, a young Moor boy; two characters who could hardly stand each other's presence. Rodrigo wants the nine-year-old girl to "see the world", but not the world as in "earth", the world as in "real life". Living with her uncle, Celia spends many days without the company of boys and girls her own age, but rather that of older people. Her uncle asks her to behave when he takes her out with his friends to restaurants or to the park, but Celia hesitates; the grown-ups she spends time with make such curious, sometimes silly, remarks that Celia feels she must have a say in their conversation. Rodrigo's rule for Celia in order for her to be a well-behaved little lady, is for her to speak only when spoken to and to remain still the rest of the time. At home Celia deals with constant arguments between her uncle and Basílides, as well as the latter's beloved pet owl, and the battling between the servant woman and Maimón. Celia, Rodrigo, Basílides and Maimón, as well as the animals, the owl Casimira and the cat Pirracas, spend their summer in a French villa. Basílides has a hard time adapting to this strange place where no one can understand her Spanish, but Celia manages to make a couple of very good friends. The young girl Paulette becomes Celia's best friend and companion during the summer, visiting each other at their houses or spending time at the beach. The two have another friend, a girl named Claude. Claude is from a poor family and has an older brother named Raymund that cannot join her during her vacation, because their family cannot afford to send them both on holiday to the beach. Celia comes up with a plan to help Claude's brother through numerous schemes to earn money from people, including the selling of Rodrigo's berries and flowers as well as telling the people she meets at the beach about the sad situation of Claude's family, especially her brother's. Celia's aunt and Rodrigo's sister, Julia, arrives just in time to help Celia's cause, but soon the aunt contributes to a lot of bothersome hassle within the French villa. When summer's over, Tío Rodrigo bids farewell to Basílides and Maimón as he sends them back to Madrid, Spain on train. Rather than return home, Celia and her uncle and invited to spend Christmas with Paulette's family in a grand castle, where Celia again stirs up plenty of trouble. When the two girls are severely punished over a series of mischief, Celia tries to escape with Paulette, who's being sent off to a school in Paris, and manages to crash the car she had stowed away into against a tree. Unconscious and believing herself dead, Celia wakes up to the voice of her own father, who's come to return her to Spain, because he wants his daughter to bloom as a Spaniard, and believes the constant changing of culture and language is too much for her young mind. The book is told in first-person from Celia's perspective, like in all previous books, following a third-person introduction from author Elena Fortún's. |
Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon | Victor Appleton | 1,913 | The story opens with a discussion between Barton Swift and an old friend, Alec Peterson. Alec is trying to convince Mr. Swift to finance an expedition to locate a hidden opal mine, but Mr. Swift is reluctant. In the middle of the conversation, Tom is flying one of his airships, but gets tangled up in power lines. Mr. Peterson cuts the wires, saving Tom's life. Tom is so grateful to Mr. Peterson that Tom is willing to finance the expedition himself. In the meanwhile, the story segues to Tom's next invention, a cannon bigger than any that has been built to date. Tom hopes to sell his invention to the United States government, for use in protecting the Panama Canal, which was still under active construction at the time of the story. |
Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone | Victor Appleton | 1,914 | Tom and his father are arguing about Tom's latest idea, a photo telephone. Mr. Swift is adamant that the idea will not work, but Tom has some ideas in mind, and refuses to back down. Tom read about a recent news event where a photograph was transmitted over telegraph lines, and there is no functional difference between the wires used for a telephone to those used in telegraphs. In the meantime, some shady occurrences are happening in the neighborhood. Tom and Ned are almost run over by a speeding motor boat, operated by a con-artist known as Shallock Peters. The feud between Mr. Peters and Tom begins when Mr. Peters refuses to acknowledge the accident. The animosity between the two only grows deeper as Mr. Peters tries to buy Tom out of some of his inventions, under the guise of making a profit. Tom refuses to allow anyone other than himself permissions to his patents, and this infuriates Mr. Peters. Later, Tom learns that his good friend, Mr. Damon, is having serious financial troubles. As the plot gets thicker and thicker, one of Tom's airships is stolen, and then Mr. Damon unexpectedly disappears. All this while Tom is desperately trying to get his latest invention working. |
Shame the Devil | George Pelecanos | 2,000 | Two ruthless killers head into a pizza place to rob the joint while one of the men's brother waits in the car. The robbery goes wrong and the men kill the restaurant's employees. The robber in the getaway car is killed by a cop and the robbers hit a little boy in their escape. The novel jumps forward two and a half years and introduces the character of Dimitri Karras, the father of the young boy. He attends grief counseling sessions with the family members of those who were killed that day. Karras begins to get used to living again when his friend, Nick Stefanos sets him up with a job at, "The Spot" where he is bar tender. Meanwhile, the robbers are plotting revenge. It all leads up to a showdown of good versus evil. |
Almost Like Being in Love | null | null | The book centers around the relationship between two men, Travis and Craig, who meet and fall in love in 1978, during their senior year of high school. Travis is the school nerd, obsessed with musicals and constantly picked on. Craig is the school jock, lauded with the school's Victory Cup for athletic achievement. The two meet on the set of the school's production of Brigadoon, and the unlikely couple began a whirlwind romance. However, after their summer together, they part and set off to different colleges. The book moves forward 20 years later, to 1998. Travis and Craig have fallen out of touch, and they both have strong careers and potential suitors. Travis is the first to realize that his first love is his only true one, and he embarks on a cross-country journey, risks his job and enters the great unknown to try to get Craig back. |
One L | Scott Turow | 1,977 | One L tells author Turow's experience as a first-year Harvard Law School student. |
The Laws of Our Fathers | Scott Turow | 1,996 | When last seen in Turow's The Burden of Proof, Sonia Klonsky was a prosecutor in Kindle County Courthouse with a failing marriage, an infant daughter, and a single mastectomy. She becomes the narrator here. Now she is a Superior Court Judge presiding over the murder trial of one Nile Eddgar, who is accused of arranging the murder of his ghetto-activist mother. The story is told in two parallel narratives, one regarding the current trial and the other taking the reader through the 1960s. Many of the minor characters in The Laws of Our Fathers also appear in Turow's other novels, which are all set in fictional, Midwestern Kindle County. es:The Laws of Our Fathers (novela) |
Personal Injuries | Scott Turow | 1,999 | In Personal Injuries, Turow continues to explore the justice system through Faulknerian characters such as attorney Robbie Feaver, agent Evon Miller, U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett, and Justice Brendan Tuohey. These individuals drive the mystery at the core of the book. The novel begins with Robbie Feaver seeking advice from attorney George Mason, the narrator. Feaver admits that he has been bribing several judges in the Common Law Claims Division to win favorable judgments for years. U.S. Attorney Stan Sennett has uncovered Feaver's secret and wants Feaver to strike a deal to get at the man he believes to be at the center of all the legal corruption in the metropolitan area, Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of Common Law Claims and heir apparent to the Chief Justice of Kindle County Superior Court. An undercover scheme is put in motion to trap the guilty parties. The novel follows the FBI as it pursues the legal community of Kindle County in a web of tapped phones, concealed cameras, and wired spies. |
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