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Limitations | Scott Turow | 2,006 | As Turow's other novels, it is set in fictional Kindle County in Illinois, and he revives some familiar characters, including George Mason from Personal Injuries and Rusty Sabich, the hero of his acclaimed fiction debut, Presumed Innocent. Mason is now a judge, faced with the challenge of deciding a high-profile case involving a rape case that reawakens his long-suppressed guilt over his own role in a similar incident decades before. To compound this inner struggle, Mason finds himself the object of threatening e-mails from an unknown source, all while trying to care for his cancer stricken wife. |
A Posse of Princesses | Sherwood Smith | 2,008 | Rhis, princess of a small kingdom, is invited along with all the other princesses in her part of the world to the coming of age party of the Crown Prince of Vesarja, which is the central and most important kingdom. When Iardith, the prettiest and most perfect of all the princesses, is abducted, Rhis and her friends go to the rescue. What happens to Rhis and her posse has unexpected results not only for the princesses, but for the princes who chase after them. Everyone learns a lot about friendship and hate, politics and laughter, romantic ballads and sleeping in the dirt with nothing but a sword for company. But most of all they learn about the many meanings of love. |
Here Comes Everybody | Clay Shirky | 2,008 | In the book, Shirky recounts how social tools such as blogging software like WordPress and Twitter, file sharing platforms like Flickr, and online collaboration platforms like Wikipedia support group conversation and group action in a way that previously could only be achieved through institutions. In the same way the printing press increased individual expression, and the telephone increased communications between individuals, Shirky argues that with the advent of online social tools, groups can form without the previous restrictions of time and cost. Shirky observes that: "[Every] institution lives in a kind of contradiction: it exists to take advantage of group effort, but some of its resources are drained away by directing that effort. Call this the institutional dilemma--because an institution expends resources to manage resources, there is a gap between what those institutions are capable of in theory and in practice, and the larger the institution, the greater those costs." Online social tools, Shirky argues, allow groups to form around activities 'whose costs are higher than the potential value,' for institutions. Shirky further argues that the successful creation of online groups relies on successful fusion of a, 'plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain for the user.' However, Shirky warns that this system should not be interpreted as a recipe for the successful use of social tools as the interaction between the components is too complex. Shirky also discusses the possibility of "mass amateurization" that the internet allows. With blogging and photo-sharing websites, anyone can publish an article or photo that they have created. This creates a mass amateurization of journalism and photography, requiring a new definition of what credentials make someone a journalist, photographer, or news reporter. This mass amateurization threatens to change the way news is spread throughout different media outlets. |
The Last Lecture | Randy Pausch | 2,008 | The Last Lecture fleshes out Pausch's lecture and discusses everything he wanted his children to know after his pancreatic cancer had taken his life. It includes stories of his childhood, lessons he wants his children to learn, and things he wants his children to know about him. He repeatedly stresses that one should have fun in everything one does, that one should live life to its fullest because one never knows when it might be taken. In the book, Pausch remarks that people told him he looked like he was in perfect health, even though he was dying of cancer. He discusses finding a happy medium between denial and being overwhelmed. He also states that he would rather have cancer than be hit by a bus, because if he were hit by a bus, he would not have had the time he spent with his family nor the opportunity to prepare them for his death. |
Last of the Duanes | Zane Grey | 1,996 | Buck Duane is the son of a famous Texas gunman, a fact which brings him almost nothing but trouble. Duane shoots a man who threatens him and flees the law. He mixes with outlaws while clinging desperately to the last of his principles. He rescues a girl named Jennie from the hands of an outlaw king, but loses her in the escape. He then wanders aimlessly, desperation growing as the worth of life slips away. |
No Second Chance | Harlan Coben | 2,003 | When the first bullet hit my chest, I thought of my daughter... Dr. Marc Seidman has been shot twice, his wife has been murdered, and his six-month-old daughter has been kidnapped. When he gets the ransom note-he knows he has only one chance to get this right. But there is nowhere he can turn and no one he can trust. |
The Republic of Wine | Mo Yan | 2,000 | ;1 :Ong Gou'er, 48-year-old special investigator, gets a lift with a "lady trucker" (that he is quite taken with) to the Mount Luo Coal Mine, Liquorland (a fictional Chinese province), where he has been sent to investigate claims of cannibalism: claims of baby boys prepared as gourmet dishes. He is greeted by the Mine Director and Party Secretary and immediately taken to a banquet in his honour. ;2 :Introductory letter from Li Yidou ("one-pint Li") to Mo Yan. Li is a PhD candidate in liquor studies at Brewers College in Liquorland, and aspiring author. He includes a short story (Alcohol) that he wrote after watching Red Sorghum, the film adaption of Mo Yan's novel of the same name. ;3 :Mo Yan's reply to Li Yidou. Mo informs Li that he has sent his story to the editors of Citizens' Literature. ;4 :Li Yidou's short story, Alcohol. ;1 :The Mine Director and Party Secretary treat Ding to an expansive feast, and goad him into drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Ding does not hold his alcohol well. Deputy Head Diamond Jin, a Party official with a notorious capacity for drink, also joins them. ;2 :Second letter from Li to Mo, and Li's second story, Meat Boy, which he calls "grim realism". Li is now bolder, in his requests to Mo's assistance to become a published author, comparing himself to Lu Xun and saying, "If you have to host a meal [to get it published], go ahead. If a gift is required, you have my blessing." ;3 :Mo's reply to Li, commenting on Meat Boy. ;4 :Li's short story, Meat Boy. One day two parents prepare their baby boy for a special event. The father, Jin Yuanbao, takes the boy on a journey to the Special Purchasing Section of the Culinary Academy in a village across the river. He waits with other parents and sons, perturbed by the presence of a small red demon. His son is eventually assessed by the staff there and judged to be "top grade". Jin is paid 2140 yuan. ;1 :The centrepiece of the banquet is revealed, "Stork Delivering a Son". It appears to be a whole human baby boy, sitting up in a dish, and smells delicious. Ding draws his gun and accuses his company of cannibalism. Diamond Jin insists the dish is a culinary masterpiece -- a fake child. Ding panics and fires his gun wildly, shooting the baby boy in the head and collapses, drunk. The serving girls bring him sobering-up soup and he recovers somewhat. Diamond Jin explains how the fake boy is created and convinces Ding to eat a lotus root arm. :After further drinking, Ding has an out of body experience where he witnesses the serving girls taking his comatose body to an underground hotel room. While his body is there, a "scaly-skinned demon" enters the room and strips his body of useful implements. ;2 :Third letter from Li to Mo. ;3 :Short story Child Prodigy by Li, in the style of "demonic realism" (according to Li). It follows the children who were sold at the Special Purchasing Section, and the little demon's attempt to lead them away. ;4 :Mo's reply to Li. |
Hello Sailor | Eric Idle | 1,975 | Hello Sailor is a satirical view of British politics. Characters included in the plot include a stuffed corpse which serves the post of Foreign Secretary. |
The Time Stream | Eric Temple Bell | 1,946 | The novel concerns time travel and links the world Eos at the beginning of the universe with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. |
The Mightiest Machine | John W. Campbell | 1,947 | This space opera novel concerns the harnessing of energy from the sun and encounters with aliens who turn out not to be truly alien at all. It also touches on the legends of ancient civilizations on earth, Atlantis in this case, and what may have happened to them. |
Final Blackout | L. Ron Hubbard | 1,948 | Set in the future, the novel follows the rise of a Lieutenant (known in the book only as "The Lieutenant") as he becomes dictator of England after a world war. The Lieutenant leads a ragtag army fighting for survival in a Europe ravaged by 30 years of atomic, biological and conventional warfare. As a result of the most recent war, a form of biological warfare called soldier’s sickness has ravaged England, and America was devastated by nuclear war. At the start of the novel, a quarantine placed on England due to the soldier’s sickness prevents The Lieutenant from returning to England from his encampment in France. The Lieutenant commands the Fourth Brigade, which is composed of one hundred and sixty-eight soldiers from multiple nations, leading them throughout France in search of food, supplies, arms and ammunition. Soon, Captain Malcolm informs The Lieutenant that all field officers are being recalled to General Headquarters (G.H.Q.) with their brigades to report to General Victor, the commanding officer at G.H.Q. Upon the brigade's arrival at G.H.Q., The Lieutenant is informed by General Victor and his adjutant Colonel Smythe that he is to be reassigned and will be stripped of his command. He is confined to his quarters and is told his entire brigade will be broken apart and assimilated into another brigade. Meanwhile, in the barracks at G.H.Q., the Fourth Brigade learns of crucial news through back channels: a vaccine exists for the soldier's sickness, and General Victor’s plans for their brigade. The men decide to rebel, and break through the defenses of the barracks, free The Lieutenant and kill Captain Malcolm. The Fourth Brigade successfully escapes G.H.Q. in France and begins to make their way to London, along with other soldiers who are dissatisfied with General Victor's command. A battle ensues between General Victor's men and The Lieutenant's troops. The Lieutenant and his expanded Fourth Brigade eventually successfully take control of London and subsequently all of England and Wales. The Lieutenant's government runs smoothly for years, until the battleship U.S.S. New York arrives from the U.S. carrying two United States Senators and Captain Johnson, captain of the New York and commander of the U.S. fleet. Under threat from the U.S. battleship, The Lieutenant negotiates terms to transfer power to the Senators' associates – General Victor and Colonel Smythe. If anything happens to General Victor and Colonel Smythe, the country would be controlled by its officer corps. chaired by the Lieutenants confidant Swinburne. In addition, The Lieutenant requests that immigration of Americans to England be kept to no more than 100,000 per month, and demands that a favorable price be set for the purchase of land from their English owners. After these terms are established, The Lieutenant opens fire on General Victor and his men and a battle ensues. General Victor, Colonel Smythe and The Lieutenant and several of his men are killed. Years later The Lieutenant’s men still control England, and a flag flies honoring his memory. A memorial plaque at Byward Gate on Tower Hill reads: "When that command remains, no matter what happens to its officer, he has not failed." |
The Loch | Steve Alten | 2,005 | American Marine Biologist Zachary Wallace went on an expedition into the Sargasso Sea to witness giant squids. While there, the sonar picked up a reading that the military had named the Bloop. As the bloops closed in, the three passengers aboard the submarine witnessed the giant squid mercilessly get torn apart by a number of unidentified creatures. The submarine's acrylic bubble suffered severe damage as Zachary, Hank, and the pilot quickly race to the surface. Before reaching the research boat, their submarine's bubble pops, allowing the unforgiving Atlantic to flood in killing the pilot and drowning Wallace as he pushed Hank to safety. Miraculously, Wallace survived, and sadly, after returning to South Florida to take his position at Florida Atlantic University, he finds out that David blamed him for the destruction of the sub and the death of their pilot. Fired from the university, Zachary's life goes downhill, spending all of his savings on drinks and in nightclubs. Weeks after, he receives word that his biological father is on trial for murder. His father, Angus Wallace, lives in a village on the shores of Loch Ness in Scotland. Zachary has not seen his father since his mother divorced him and moved back to the United States seventeen years ago. However, he agrees to go visit Angus when his half brother says he is needed in the trial. Zachary reconnects with some old friends back home and prepares to help his father. However, this is complicated by the fact that during the trial, Angus testifies that he is not guilty of the murder and that he actually witnessed the victim being attacked by the Loch Ness Monster. The British Tabloids go berserk and soon the Loch is full of boats and crews searching for Nessie. Desperate to salvage his academic reputation, Zachary must discover the truth among his friends, family, the mysterious Black Knights (a branch of the Knights Templar) and other secrets. |
Smuggler's Moon | Bruce Cook | 2,001 | Sir John and Jeremy are sent to East Anglia to investigate smuggling, but when the smugglers turn to murder, Sir John takes it as a brazen assault on the law. |
The World Is Full of Married Men | Jackie Collins | 1,968 | Set in London in the swinging sixties, middle-aged advertising executive David Cooper cheats on his wife Linda. When he meets the young and beautiful Claudia Parker, David wants to marry her. However, Claudia has different ideas; she wants to be a model, an actress, and a star. When Linda finds out about the affair she ends the marriage and files for divorce. At first protesting, David finally relents and moves into an apartment with Claudia. After six months however, the pair are sick of each other and now that the divorce is finalised, Linda has started seeing Hollywood film producer Jay Grossman. Realising his mistake in letting Linda go, David fails to win her back and falls into an alcoholic stupor that renders him virtually impotent and only able to perform with his mousy spinster secretary, Miss Fields, who ultimately falls pregnant with his child. |
Murder House | Franklin W. Dixon | 2,008 | Mission: To finally get to the bottom of the ongoing deadly scares taking place on the set of the reality TV show Deprivation House. Location: A Huge Villa in Beverly Hills, CA, without a single luxury left inside. Potential Victims: Every contestant on the reality show is in extreme danger Suspects: It's possible one of the new contestants has a devious agenda, or else someone who's been there all along is hiding a huge secret. |
Greasy Lake & Other Stories | T. Coraghessan Boyle | 1,985 | T. Coraghessan Boyle combines surreal situations with regrets about lost youth and satires of contemporary politics. The writing, especially the collection's cartoonish characters, is reminiscent of the 1950s pulp fiction genre of escapist fictional adventures and dime novel detective stories. The first short story "Greasy Lake" and its tribute to Bruce Springsteen’s pop song "Spirit in the Night" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mi0g9JMo14&feature=related emphasizes the superficiality of the post Vietnam War era in the United States. The frustration of individual characters and their particular decisions make this collection especially |
Sister of My Heart: A Novel | Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni | 1,999 | The Princess in the Palace of Snakes follows two cousins from birth until their wedding day. The sudden death of their fathers on a reckless hunt for rubies sends Anju and Sudha’s mothers into premature labor, and the two girls are born twelve hours apart. From a young age the girls become best friends, sisters, and each other’s constant companion. Anju and Sudha grow up in a household run by their three mothers: Pishi, Gouri, and Nalini. Even though Anju and Sudha call each other sisters, they are technically cousins. Pishi is the girls’ aunt. Pishi’s youngest brother, Bijoy Chatterjee, married Gouri. Anju is their daughter. So in addition to Pishi and Gouri, there is Nalini, Sudha’s mother. The family relationships may seem complicated, but they play an important role in the novel. Anju and Sudha are inseparable, but different. Beautiful and calm, Sudha is a storyteller and dreams of designing clothes and having a family. Anju has a fierce spirit and longs to study Literature in college. The girls get caught skipping school and this event, along with a health scare in the family, suddenly changes plans for college to plans of marriage. Book one ends with Anju and Sudha getting married on the same day. Sudha will move in with her husband and in-laws who live in another part of India. Anju’s husband works in the United States, and she plans to join him after getting a visa. More than marriage has driven Anju and Sudha apart. Sudha has learned a dark secret about their family’s past. Shame and guilt over keeping this secret causes Sudha to pull away from Anju. But her love for her sister does not falter, and she even refuses to elope for fear it would damage Anju’s reputation. On the night of their double wedding, Anju becomes aware of her husband’s attraction to Sudha. Anju does not blame Sudha, but it is with some relief the two young women begin to live separate lives. In The Queen of Swords Sudha quickly learns the ways of her demanding and controlling mother-in-law. After five long years, Sudha is elated to learn she is pregnant. Meanwhile, Anju’s life in the United States has not entirely turned out as she expected. Anju and Sudha exchange regular letters and short phone calls, but their old intimacy is missing. The friends discover they are pregnant at the same time and both seem finally happy. Sudha’s mother-in-law finds out that Sudha’s child is a girl. She demands Sudha abort the baby, believing the first child should be a son. Sudha has nowhere to turn, leaving her husband would be grounds to talk to each other again as true sisters. Refusing to tie her life to another man and realizing Anju needs her, Sudha and her daughter decide to go to the United States. After many years, the sisters are reunited, but future obstacles still loom. |
Julian: A Christmas Story | Robert Charles Wilson | 2,006 | Julian is told from the perspective of teenager Adam Hazzard, who lives in the rural town of Williams Ford, in the state of Athabaska (today a region in Canada, but in the story, a part of the greater United States) in 2172, at a time when technology has regressed to 19th century levels. The story deals with his relationship with his friend Julian Comstock (later in life called Julian Conqueror or Julian the Agnostic), an aristocratic boy of his age with radical beliefs about God, science, and evolution, notably his beliefs in DNA and the Moon Landings, in defiance of the omnipresent and theocratic Church of the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth, which came about as a result of the end of oil in the 21st century, a time which was later interpreted as a Biblical Tribulation. Julian is the nephew of the President, Deklan Comstock, and it is rumored that Deklan may send Julian to fight in the Labrador War against the European powers, in order to quiet dissent against him that his family does not care about the soldiers. The story centers on how Adam and Julian will avoid the coming draft and remain alive despite Julian's beliefs. Robert Charles Wilson has created a full length novel of the story of Julian, titled Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America. |
Blood Shot | Sara Paretsky | 1,988 | V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old South Chicago neighborhood, but she's never been a woman who breaks a promise. Returning to her old neighborhood for a school reunion, she finds herself agreeing to search for a childhood friend's missing father, a man her friend never knew and about whom her friend's dying mother will not speak. What ought to have been a routine missing-persons case rapidly turns up a homicide; and Warshawski must battle corrupt local politicians and businessmen, who do all they can to derail her investigation. |
Midnight's Choice | Kate Thompson | 1,998 | In the form of a phoenix, Tess flies out of her room to join Kevin, who is now permanently in the shape of such a magical bird. She tries to ask Kevin what has happened to him since they last spoke, but her mind is overwhelmed by the purity and beauty of the phoenix’s nature, and she instantly loses interest in asking questions. The following night, she becomes worried about the restless behaviour of her pet rat Algernon, and her animal-mind detects a telepathic summons being sent to all the rats in the city. Algernon breaks out of his cage and escapes into the sewers, and as a rat Tess follows him to an empty house filled with thousands of his kind. There, she discovers that the source of the mysterious call is a male Switcher. The next day, Tess investigates the house, and sees a red haired boy standing in the doorway of a house across the street. Somehow sensing that he is the Switcher, she resolves to speak to him when she gets the chance. Upon reading a newspaper article, Tess discovers that the phoenix has been captured in the Phoenix Park, and is now on display in Dublin Zoo. Therefore, she sets off to visit the Switcher and ask for help in breaking her friend out of confinement. Tess finds the boy (Martin) sleeping in the darkness of his room, and tells him that she knows he is a Switcher. Martin agrees to help her, but only on the condition that she return to his house that night so that he can demonstrate his skill as a Switcher to her. When she does return, he takes her for a walk through the streets, and then demonstrates the truly awesome and horrible skill which he has learned by Switching into a vampire. Martin feeds on her blood, the shock of which stimulates Tess’ survival instincts, and she Switches into the only form in which she will be safe from Martin: a vampire. Once she is in this form, all of Tess' revulsion toward the concept of vampirism vanishes. She bemoans her hunger for blood, but Martin warns her not to kill her victim when she feeds, as doing so would arouse suspicion. After much hunting, the two come upon a young couple in a car, on whose blood they drink. For the next few days, Tess behaves scornfully toward her parents, upsetting them greatly. At last when her mother mentions the phoenix, the memory of her time as one of those glorious, pure bird dispels the lingering aspects of the vampire personality, and she apologises for her behaviour. The family visit the zoo to see the bird, and there Tess meets Lizzie, who claims to be worried about something. The old woman informs her that the phoenix is a powerful force of good, and will change many lives, but according to the nature of the world, some dark force must have come into existence to balance out the presence of the phoenix. Upon entering the building in which the bird is caged, Tess is suddenly overcome by a feeling of joy and warmth, and realises that the bird is having this effect on everyone who sees it. Outside, she and her parents enjoy a game of Frisbee, all their arguments forgotten, not even becoming upset when Tess accidentally loses the Frisbee in the bushes. However, Lizzie tells Tess that the she has "work to do", and is wasting time. Tess visits Martin again, and he explains to her the gruesome circumstances of his father's death. She is horrified, but he seems not to care. He takes her into the crypt which he plans to make his home, and she realises that he has been using the rats to excavate this crypt. She tells him that she never wants to return to being a vampire, but Martin claims that now he has bitten her, she will become one of the undead as soon as she dies. He tells her that his fifteenth birthday is the following day, and, because he intends to remain a vampire, he offers her the chance to join him willingly. She refuses, claiming that if she chooses to become an immortal phoenix, she will never succumb to death or vampirism. So as to destroy Tess' confidence, Martin sends the city's rats to kill Kevin at the zoo, but the phoenix escapes with Tess's help. He and Martin confront each other in the park, and Tess steps between them, where she is confronted with the choice between becoming like either of them. Martin uses his hypnotic powers to coerce her, and in turn Kevin uses his purifying powers to draw her toward him. Tess alternates between allegiances and the struggle within her becomes so strong that it begins to damage her mind. As she tries desperately to choose her path, Tess suddenly remembers some prior advice given by Lizzie, and realises what she is doing wrong: She has been convinced that she must choose to be either a vampire or a phoenix, when in fact, the option of simply remaining human was never closed to her. Tess chooses to retain her humanity, and this somehow transforms both Martin and Kevin back into their human forms. Martin, his defences lowered, breaks down over the loss of his father, but when Tess tries to comfort him, he realises he is vulnerable and runs off into the trees. Tess follows, but slips on the Frisbee which she lost earlier. Tess enters Martin's home in the form of a cat, and but doesn't see Martin there. She checks on Martin's mother, who Tess has realised that Martin had been feeding on for a while before she met him. However it seems that his mother is still alive, but exhausted. Tess takes Kevin back to her home, where they discuss the events of the past few days. Kevin claims that because he and Martin balanced each other out, Martin's return to humanity meant that Kevin too lost his supernatural form. Their discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Algernon, who informs them that Martin has disappeared, and that his control over the rats of the city is broken. Tess and Kevin realise that Martin has chosen to remain human, and decide to help him through his newly exposed grief. |
The Mislaid Charm | Alexander M. Phillips | 1,947 | The novel concerns Henry Pickett, a traveling salesman, and his adventures after he acquires a magical tribal charm belonging to some gnomes. |
Identical | Ellen Hopkins | 2,008 | From the bookjacket "Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for Congress. Everything on the surface of their lives seems Norman Rockwell perfect, but underneath run deep and damaging secrets. Kaeleigh is the good girl-her father's perfect flower, something she has tried so hard to be since she was nine and he started sexually abusing her. She cuts herself and vomits after every binge, desperate to feel something normal. Raeanne uses painkillers, drugs, alcohol, and sex to numb the pain of not being Daddy's favorite. Both girls must figure out how to become whole, but how can they when their world has been torn to shreds?" |
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin | P. D. Ouspensky | 1,915 | When the protagonist realizes that he can recall having lived his life before, he decides to try to change it. But he discovers that because human choices tend to be mechanical, changing the outcome of one's actions is extremely difficult. He realizes that without help breaking his mechanical behavior, he may be doomed to repeat the same mistakes forever. |
The World Is Full Of Divorced Women | Jackie Collins | null | In New York, English journalist Cleo James finds her husband having sex with her best friend, and she knows it's time to end the relationship. In London, Muffin, the hottest nude model in town, finds her man wants more from her than she is prepared to give. |
Femmes fantastiques | null | null | Set in the imaginary lands of New-Navarre and the Domanial Republic, Femmes fantastiques gathers the stories of some twenty women (and four or five men), relating the tumult and complexity of their intimate and social lives. The stories are bound together by a web of connections, some characters making appearances in the stories of others. Saphism being a social norm in this imaginary universe, the love these women experience is often with other women. In these imagined worlds many of our own social conventions are often presented as peculiar or are simply absent: people may forget to ring the door before entering or may be completely oblivious to the waves on the sea. |
Wild Blood | Kate Thompson | 1,999 | At her cousins' farm, Tess discovers that the house is infested with rats, which enrages her (easily angered) uncle Maurice, who is planning to sell the nearby wood for development. Tess' cousin Orla protests, but when she mentions 'Uncle Declan', Maurice becomes furious, and terrifies them all into silence. The next morning, Orla claims that she is going to see their uncle Declan, but Tess declines the offer to join her. Kevin (who has come to help Tess through her birthday) poses as an exterminator, and Maurice agrees to pay him £100 to get rid of the rats. Kevin sets about his work, playing a flute and pretending to lure the rats in a manner similar to that of the Pied Piper; in fact he is using his knowledge of the rats' telepathic language to send out a sort of evacuation order. Unfortunately, Maurice finds the corpse of a rat a few days later and takes this as proof that Kevin did not complete his contract. He therefore decides not to pay Kevin, and orders the youth to leave. While Maurice is showing a property developer around the woods, Tess explores the area with her cousins. She is suddenly dazzled by a flash of light, and when she recovers the three children have disappeared. Maurice and the developer arrive moments later, and they all see Kevin standing nearby, seemingly implicating him as a kidnapper. Maurice commands his wife not to call the police, after which he sets out to find the children. Tess asks her aunt Deirdre about Declan, and is shocked to learn that he is Maurice’s long-dead twin brother. When Tess finds Kevin, he is adamant that he has not been anywhere near the woods since Maurice ordered him to leave. Tess explains the situation, and he informs her of his belief that an ancient, magical presence may be abroad in the woods, one which even they, with their experience of the supernatural world, have never imagined. In the form of a rat, Tess summons the rats of the area to see if they know anything of her cousins’ disappearance. One white rat (identifying herself as "Cat Friend") transmits an image of four pairs of feet, which Tess recognises as Colm’s, Orla’s, Brian’s and, unfortunately, Kevin's. Returning to the farm, Tess again asks about Uncle Declan, and Deirdre reveals that twenty years previously, Maurice’s brother Declan disappeared near where the children went missing. The loss of his twin traumatised Maurice, and he spent days searching for Declan in the woods. Tess tracks down Cat Friend, but is surprised when the rat provides her with an image of her cousins and Kevin walking straight through the face of a crag. At Cat Friend's suggestion, Tess becomes a rat and holds onto Cat Friend's tail, allowing Cat Friend to pull her through the rock-face. Inside, Tess finds an enormous fairy sidhe, within which she finds her missing cousins along with Kevin and another boy. Orla introduces the boy as Uncle Declan, and Kevin explains to Tess that the person she saw kidnapping her cousins was in fact Declan, who used a glamour to disguise himself. Declan tells Tess that he and Maurice were both Switchers in their younger days, and that on their fifteenth birthday they agreed to become members of the Tuatha Dé Danaan so that they could retain their powers; however, at the last moment, Maurice broke his promise and remained human. Ever since then, Declan has resented his brother for abandoning him, and has harassed him in various forms. Declan goes on to explain that all Switchers are descended from the Tuatha de Danaan, which is why they possess the ability to change their forms. When Declan states that his kind are forced to return to Tír Na nÓg when their homes are destroyed, Tess realises that Maurice had intended to sell the land in the hope that Declan would be banished from his life forever, and that Declan is therefore holding Maurice's children hostage. However, Orla speaks up, claiming that her father loves Declan, and moved by her words, Declan agrees to speak to his brother. They find each other in the woods, and reveal the years-old sorrow borne by each at the loss of the other, Maurice explaining that he didn't abandon Declan, but simply hesitated when he considered what their disappearance after their transformation would do to their parents, the hesitation causing him to pause just long enough for him to miss his chance to transform. The rift between them is healed, and Declan agrees to let the children go, as long as Maurice promises not to sell the land, a condition to which Maurice happily agrees. Once the children are safely with their father, Declan offers to show Tess the possibilities which face her if she chooses to become like him. She agrees, but promises Kevin that she will return to speak to him before her time is up. With Declan, Tess discovers the true extent of her powers and her heritage: She learns how to Switch other objects, how to control the weather, and how to ride the wind, as well as dancing with her immortal ancestors on Ben Bulben. With the moment of her fifteenth birthday only a few minutes away, Tess rides the wind back to where Kevin waits, informing him of her choice to remain a fairy. However, having spent the past few hours considering everything, Kevin insists that this is the wrong choice, and that she should remain human. He reminds her of one of Declan's prior statements about fairies adapting to human perceptions, and tells her that becoming like Declan may make her nothing more than "a figment of someone else’s imagination". Furthermore, he claims that with their knowledge of the animal world, he and Tess can fight for the world's animals, and protect them from the ever-more-dangerous human race. Tess agrees, and chooses to live out a mortal life as a human. Despite Declan's original fury at this rejection, he accepts Tess' choice. |
Outcast | Erin Hunter | 2,008 | At the beginning of the book, Hollypaw, Lionpaw, and Jaypaw, apprentices in ThunderClan, resume their daily lives after the events of Dark River. Jaypaw becomes obsessed with learning about cats who live by the lake before the Clans, whom he meets in the previous book during a time-travelling experience. Lionpaw continues training with Tigerstar, a dead evil cat, in his dreams. Hollypaw realizes she wants to become leader of her Clan one day. Each finds the idea of traveling to the mountains intriguing, and when cats from a group in the mountains called the Tribe of Rushing Water ask ThunderClan for help, they get their chance. ThunderClan finds out that the Tribe is harassed by a group of rogue cats who steal the Tribe's prey. It is revealed that Stormfur and Brook Where Small Fish Swim return to ThunderClan from the Tribe in Twilight because they are banished: Stormfur leads the Tribe into battle against the rogues, but cats die because the Tribe is not used to battling other cats. Brambleclaw, Squirrelflight, Tawnypelt, Crowfeather, Stormfur, Brook, Breezepaw, Jaypaw, Hollypaw, and Lionpaw journey to the mountains to help deal with the rogues. The Clan cats attempt to reason with the rogues and mark borders. The rogues ignore the borders, forcing the Tribe to take more drastic measures. The Clan cats teach the Tribe cats to fight. The Tribe is reluctant to fight at first, but manages to defeat the invaders. Meanwhile, Jaypaw continues to try to find out about the ancient cats' prophecy that refers to himself and his littermates: "There will be three, kin of your kin, who hold the powers of the stars in their paws". He learns that the Tribe originally lives by the lake and decides to tell his brother and sister about the prophecy at the end of the book. |
Faces in the Moon | Betty Louise Yates Perez | 1,994 | The novel begins in present time. Lucie returns to her mothers house when Gracie has fallen ill. While her mother is in the hospital, Lucie stays at Gracies house, and her memories take her back to different parts of her childhood. We are offered a glimpse into a very bleak reality. Lucie is required, at the age of four, to make breakfast for Gracie and her current boyfriend, J.D. One morning while Gracie is sleeping off the drinking from the previous night, J.D. begins to verbally abuse Lucie. He mimics her; he tells her shes trash and so is her mother. All of this is being said while the four year old makes him breakfast. After J.D. sexually molests her, Gracie decides to take Lucie to the farm to stay with Lizzie. Unaware of the abuse, she only sees that J.D. is upset with Lucies lack of respect for two years, and most of the novel takes place during this time. It is here that Lucie hears more stories of her heritage. Arriving a child wise beyond her years to the pain of the world, Lucie's time at the farm allows her to learn how to be a child, to play, to pretend.Voices from the Gaps: Women Artists and Writers of Color, An International Website. ©2004 Regents of the University of Minnesota. http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Critique/review_fiction/faces_in_the_moon_by_betty_louise_bell.html Accessed 20 April 2008. It is Lizzie, a "full-blooded" woman, who mediates the young girl's relationship to the traditional past. Lizzie not only represents an alternative to Gracie's dissolute lifestyle, but she also helps preserve the history and meaning of the lives of the women in the family by telling and retelling stories imbued with what she thinks it means to be an Indian woman. Years later, when Gracie is hospitalized, Lucie returns to Oklahoma, and with her return come the memories of childhood.Sanchez, Greg. American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 1995), pp. 268-269. University of Nebraska Press, 1994. |
The Babysitter | R. L. Stine | 1,989 | Jenny Jeffers, a sixteen year old girl, takes a babysitting job for a child named Donny. While babysitting, she gets menacing phone calls from someone and finds a threatening note in her backpack. She soon figures out that Donny's father, Mr. Hagen, was the one making those calls after finding a stash of newspaper clippings in his closet. Apparently, Donny had a sister when he was younger, but she died in an accident when a previous babysitter wasn't paying attention to her. After Chuck, Jenny's love interest, comes over while she is babysitting, Mr. Hagen catches them kissing and becomes angry, having told Jenny never to invite over friends while she was babysitting, explaining how his daughter had died due to neglect. Mr. Hagen then offers Jenny a ride home, but she soon finds out that he is actually taking her out to a rock quarry that had been deserted for years. When they get out of the car, Mr. Hagen forces her to move to the edge of the quarry right beside a deep pit. He tries to push her, but he misses and falls to his inevitable death. |
The Unexpected Guest | Charles Osborne | null | On a foggy night, a man called Michael Starkwedder breaks down near an isolated house and, entering it, finds the body of a dead man slumped in a chair. A woman stands over the corpse, gun in hand, and confesses to the murder but it is clear that she is covering up for someone else. |
Daniel's Story | Carol Matas | 1,993 | Daniel barely remembers leading a normal life before the Nazis came to power in 1933. He can still picture once being happy and safe, but memories and days are fading away as he and his family face the dangers threatening Jews in Hitler's Germany the late 1930s. No longer able to practice their religion, vote, own property, or work, Daniel's family is forced from their home in Frankfurt. First, they are deported to the ghetto in Lodz,Poland, and then to Auschwitz (the Nazi extermination camp). He survives the torments of the concentration camp and is transported to Buchenwald. Daniel endures to witness the camp's liberation in 1945. Though many around him lose hope in the face of such terror, Daniel, supported by his courageous family, struggles for survival. Yet he manages to retain his life, hope and dignity through the horrors of Hitler's Final Solution. |
Spider's Web | Charles Osborne | 2,000 | Clarissa Hailsham-Brown, the wife of a foreign office diplomat finds herself having to deceive the police when she finds the dead body of a blackmailer in the drawing room of her house in Kent. Her teenage stepdaughter confesses to the crime and she utilises all of her wits and charm to inveigle her house guests into helping protect her, but the police eventually get at the unexpected truth. |
Which Witch? | Eva Ibbotson | 1,979 | The story begins when a wizard named Arriman the Awful decides to choose a wife from his hometown of Todcaster; his ulterior motive is a prophecy that foretells that another, darker wizard will take over Arriman's burden of smighting and blighting, which bore him by now. It is proposed by his servant that the prophecy must have meant Arriman's son. Since Arriman has no son, nor even a wife, the seven witches of Todcaster are to take part in a contest that will decide whom he will marry: whichever witch performs the blackest act of magic will be his bride. However, most of the witches of Todcaster are downright revolting and nasty. The exception to this is Belladonna, who is beautiful and secretly loves Arriman, but is a white witch, unable to perform any black magic. Before the contest begins, Belladonna encounters a small orphan named Terrence Mugg and helps rescue him from the orphanage using an uncharacteristically dark spell. Believing that Terrence's pet worm Rover is her familiar, an animal that is key to her working dark magic, she and Terrence agree to work together. While the other witches' magic goes hilariously or horribly wrong when it is their turn in the competition, there is one problem Belladonna didn't count on. Madame Olympia, a truly evil enchantress joins the contest and is willing to do anything to make sure she will win the hand of Arriman. After spending time with Arriman, Terrence discovers the perfect piece of magic for Belladonna to do: raise the ghost of Sir Simon, Arriman's friend, which Arriman has been trying to do for some time. Olympia, on her day, performs a terrifying piece of magic known as the "Symphony of Death." It seems that unless Belladonna can perform her necromancy, she will certainly lose. However, the day before her turn, her familiar goes missing. Only Terrance knows, as Rover was with him at all times. Without telling Belladonna, Terrance devises a plan with Arriman's servants (who all agree that Belladonna would be the best wife for Arriman). Terrance goes into town to hire an actor to play Sir Simon. Belladonna, unaware that Rover is gone, performs as scheduled. After an amazing display, "Sir Simon" appears to everyone, alive. Arriman is overjoyed. A message saying that the actor was unable to arrive on time, however, jolts the plotters into the realization that Sir Simon has truly been resurrected. It turns out, however,it was not Belladonna who did it, but Terrence, who hid with her to hold Rover for all her performances and imitated her spell-casting. Delighted to have found his prophesied replacement, Arriman marries Belladonna and they take Terrence in as Arriman's pupil. sv:Häxtävlingen |
The Spare Room | Helen Garner | null | The novel is told from the first person perspective of a woman, Helen, who lives in Melbourne near her family. A friend Nicola, who is ill with bowel cancer, comes to stay with Helen in order to pursue alternative therapy for her disease, which is considered terminal by her doctors. Helen is suspicious of the treatment and becomes more so as she sees it in action and its deletrious health effects. As the three weeks of the novel progress Helen becomes increasingly angry with Nicola for denying the seriousness of her illness, forcing those around her to do emotional work on her behalf in confronting her death, and in making light of them for doing so. At the end of the novel, Nicola returns to mainstream oncology treatment, and the doctors find that some of her symptoms are due to cancer having destroyed part of her vertabrae. The novel flashes forward to the months ahead, where Nicola returns to Sydney and eventually dies. A number of friends and family, including Helen, take turns as her caretaker. Nicola only truly embraces her death when a Buddhist friend tells her that in dying, she has something to teach them. The novel draws heavily on both events and details from Garner's life. The narrator Helen lives next door to her daughter Eva and Eva's children, as Garner does with her daughter Alice Garner and her children, and plays the ukulele as Garner does. The events in the novel are based on Garner's spending a period caring for her friend Jenya Osborne when Osborne was dying. Garner chose to use her own first name for the narrator character as she wanted to admit to the least attractive or acceptable emotions that she felt as her friend died. |
Three Hundred Years Hence | Mary Griffith | 1,950 | The novel concerns a hero who falls into a deep sleep and awakens in the Utopian states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. |
After Babel | George Steiner | 1,975 | In After Babel Steiner states "To understand is to decipher. To hear significance is to translate." He challenges conventional theories of translation by maintaining that all human communication within and between languages is translation. He argues that deception was the reason for the development of different languages: it was humanity's deep desire for privacy and territory that saw the creation of thousands of languages, each designed to maintain secrecy and cultural isolation. Steiner states that the reason for the lack of new developments in translation theory is that translation is a hermeneutical task, "not a science, but an exact art." He then presents a new translation model that combines philosophical hermeneutics with existing translation studies to form a "systematic hermeneutic translation theory". The new model comprises four "movements": trust, aggression, incorporation, and retribution. |
The Finishing School | Muriel Spark | 2,004 | The school is run by Rowland Mahler and his wife Nina Parker. Rowland is trying to write a novel but discovers that a new star pupil, Chris Wiley, only seventeen is also writing a novel, which eclipses Rowland's efforts. Frustrated by his own inability to make progress, and increasingly aware of Chris' prodigious talent, Rowland becomes obsessed with the boy, occasioning dry ironies about twists in human relations. Chris recognises this and keeps his novel under wraps whilst at the same time encourages his attention, increasing Rowland's frustration... |
Remember Me | Mary Higgins Clark | null | After losing her young son Bobby in a tragic accident, bereaved mother Menley Nichols finds her relationship with husband Adam, a high profile criminal attorney, steadily falling apart. However, the birth of their second child, Hannah, promises to save their marriage, and the three of them start a new life in a rented house on Cape Cod. But as Menley will soon learn, things are never that simple. For at her new home, the aptly named Remember House, strange incidents force her into reliving the terrible night she lost her first son, and she soon fears for the safety of her new daughter. Meanwhile, Adam takes on a client suspected of drowning his wife, and the two scenarios soon collide and result in a dramatic final confrontation on a rainswept beach for the Nichols. |
The Suffrage of Elvira | V.S. Naipaul | 1,958 | The novel describes the slapstick circumstances surrounding a local election in one of the districts of Trinidad, and is a satire of the democratic process and the consequences of political change. It also delves into the multiculturalism of Trinidad, showing the effects of the election on various ethnic groups, including Muslims, Hindus, and Europeans. |
Indian Killer | Sherman Alexie | 1,996 | A serial murderer terrorizes Seattle, hunting and scalping white men. The crimes of the so-called 'Indian Killer' triggers a wave of violence and racial hatred. Seattle's Native Americans are shaken and confused. John Smith, born Indian and raised by whites, desperately yearns for his lost heritage and seeks his elusive true identity. He meets Marie, an Indian activist outraged by people like Jack Wilson, the mystery writer who passes himself as part Indian. As a bigoted radio personality incites whites to seek revenge, tensions mount and Smith fights to slake the anger that engulfs him. |
On | Adam Roberts | 2,001 | The story follows the life of an adolescent named Tighe (pronounced, roughly, Tig-Hee). Tighe's village is built on the ledges and crags of an enormous cliff-face, called the Wall or the World-wall. Every morning, the sun rises from the bottom of the wall, and every evening it sets at the top. The first part of the novel introduces Tighe and the hardness of life in his village, the abuse Tighe receives from his family members, and the unusual (to us) state of his world. Partway through this part of the book, Tighe's parents mysteriously disappear, and his grandfather takes care of him. Tighe concludes that his parents must have fallen off the wall. Eventually Tighe himself falls off, falls over 10 miles, and lands in the midst of an army preparing for war. He survives. While recovering from his injuries, he learns the local language, and that the army will soon attack the Otre, a nearby civilisation. Tighe is drafted into the army, but the campaign goes badly, and Tighe's entire platoon is lost. Tighe himself is captured by the Otre and sold as a slave. During the battle, he sees a silvery flying object that he takes as an enemy balloon, and that calls his name. However, he is forced to run from Otre troops before he can react. The slave trader who buys Tighe takes him on a long journey across the wall, intending to sell him in a large city. Before arriving at the city, they again encounter the silvery flying object. The pilot is a man who speaks Tighe's native language, and looks very like his grandfather. He kills the slave trader and takes Tighe on board his craft. Tighe's mother is on board, but in a nonresponsive mental state. The pilot, who Tighe calls Wizard, is in control of technology that is highly advanced by our standard, almost incomprehensibly so for Tighe. He tries to explain that gravity once pointed towards the centre of the earth, but catastrophically changed due to mankind's over-dependence on Zero Point Energy as an energy source. He explains that he had implanted machinery in Tighe's and his mother's brain when they were young, but he avoids Tighe's questions about his identity, or where Tighe's father is. Tighe grows to mistrust the Wizard, and after his mother dies, he shoots the Wizard in the eye with a firearm. This only blinds and irritates the Wizard, but it gives Tighe the opportunity to escape from the Wizard's craft. The environment outside the craft is inhospitable, but Tighe is rescued by others with similar technology to the Wizard's. They question him, and release him. The last two chapters describe how Tighe makes his way slowly back in the direction of his village. The story ends with Tighe rounding a corner on a shelf, and suddenly re-encountering the Wizard, whose plans for Tighe have apparently not changed. According to the author's website, this ending received some criticism, but seemed to the author to be the only possible way the story could end. |
The Torch | Jack Bechdolt | 1,948 | The novel is set in the year 3010, in the ruins of New York after an atomic disaster. Fortune is the captain of the army of the Towermen, those who live in the remaining skyscrapers and rule the city with an iron hand. He is taken captive by the people of the Island of the Statue. There, Fortune learns of a prophecy that states that the people will be free when the torch burns in the hands of the statue. Fortune is redeemed by his captors and leads them in a revolt against his former masters. |
St. Leon | null | null | Set in Europe during the Protestant Reformation, St. Leon relates the travails of an impoverished French aristocrat, Count Reginald de St. Leon, who obtains the philosopher's stone and the elixir of immortality, elixir vitae, from a mysterious stranger named Francesco Zampieri. In this philosophical fable, endless riches and immortal life prove to be curses rather than gifts and transform St. Leon into an outcast. St. Leon becomes an alchemist who can create gold and who possesses immortal life. As a result, his son Charles rejects him, he is separated from his daughters, and his wife Marguerite de Damville becomes impoverished and dies. He is the target of German authorities and the Spanish Inquisition. He also encounters a Hungarian misanthrope named Bethlem Gabor. William Godwin's second Gothic novel explores the predicament of a would-be philanthropist whose attempts to benefit humanity are frustrated by superstition and ignorance. The novel explores the themes of immortality, the domestic affections, and alchemy. The novel is a radical experiment in fictional genres. Into a historical novel of vast range and violence Godwin melded elements of the domestic novel, the philosophical novel, and the scientific fantasy. More relentlessly than the earlier Caleb Williams, this novel tests Godwin's philosophical premises to destruction, showing the importance—and failure—of family affections and the disintegration of effective social responsibility. |
I Heard That Song Before | Mary Higgins Clark | null | The daughter of a landscaper for the wealthy Carrington family, six year old Kay Lansing sneaks away from her father's side one morning, and overhears a woman blackmailing a man for money. When she tells him that this will be the last time, he caustically responds: "I heard that song before". That same night teenager Susan Althrop, eldest son Peter Carrington‘s girlfriend, vanishes into thin air and is never seen again. Twenty-two years later, Peter, forty-two, now runs the family empire and has been widowed; his pregnant wife drowned in their swimming pool eight years ago. As fate would have it, Kay falls in love with Peter after she approaches him about hosting a literary luncheon, and the two promptly marry. However, his peculiar nocturnal habits soon set her teeth on edge, especially when he's unconsciously drawn to the place where the former Mrs. Carrington met her end... |
The Oblivion Society | null | 2,007 | Vivian Gray is stuck in a dead-end job with a horrible boss in a town full of aging seniors in Florida. She supports her unemployed brother, Bobby and his geek friend Erik in a small apartment in town. Just when it seems that she has a shot to get out of town, and start a career in modeling, the end of the world happens. Vivian and a rag-tag band of survivors must survive attacks from mutant creatures to make it to a distant sanctuary, that may or may not exist. |
The Innocent Mage | Karen Miller | 2,005 | The Doranen have ruled Lur with magic after fleeing the evil Morg who took over their homeland. For an Olken (Lur's original inhabitants) it is unlawful to use magic. Any Olken who breaks the law will be executed. Asher has come to Lur‘s capital city to make his fortune. He begins as a worker in the stables of the Royal Palace but is soon made an assistant to the magicless Prince Gar, who is the mediator between the Olken and the Doranen. Soon, he hopes to gain enough money to buy a boat and fish with his father for the rest of his life. But unrest starts to show among the Olken. It has been prophesied that the Innocent Mage will be born, and the Circle is dedicated to preserving the magic of the Olken until the saviour arrives. The Circle have been watching Asher, and as the city streets are filled with Olken rioters, his life takes a bitter turn. |
Empress of Mijak | Karen Miller | 2,007 | "Hekat will be slave to no man..." And thus the first Godspeaker book begins. Hekat, a girl born no better than a slave to an unloving father who beats his wife. Who rapes her on the insistence that she should birth him more sons. Who kills his own flesh and blood when it runs away, and who trades them to strange men for gold. Hekat...sold to slave trader Abajai. Once sold, she begins her journey to Abajai's homeland, Et-Raklion city in the land of Mijak. along the way, Abajai teaches her how to speak, how to dress, and how to sing and dance, and holds her away from the rest of the slaves. Her first love, he treats her as human, until she realizes too late, to him she is just a slave. A pretty slave that with some training will fetch much. Heartbroken, Hekat runs and joins Et-Raklion Warlord's army through the help of the nameless god, and pity to those who stand in her way, because Hekat will not be tamed. Hekat will be slave to no man. She is in the god's eye, precious and beautiful. |
The Homunculus | David H. Keller | 1,949 | The novel concerns Colonel Horatio Bumble who has retired to his ancestral home with his wife, Helen and their Pekingese, Lady. The Bumbles are childless. Colonel Bumble employs the siblings Pete and Sarah at his home. The Colonel is also attempting to create a baby through parthenogenesis. As a result of his experiments, the Colonel is kidnapped and Sarah rescues him by employing supernatural means. |
Lords of Creation | Eando Binder | 1,949 | Homer Ellory awakes in the year 5000 AD after sleeping for 3,000 years and discovers the earth in a state of barbarism. He befriends the people of North America who have been conquered by the Antarkans. Ellory leads a revolt and is captured by the Antarkans. Imprisoned in the Antarkan city of Lillamra and under sentence of death, the Lady Ermaine falls in love with him and enables his escape. He returns to North America where he leads a second revolt. After the surrender of Antarka, he is proclaimed the leader of the Earth's peoples. |
Exiles of Time | Nelson S. Bond | 1,949 | After a strange bloodstone amulet is found in an ancient Arabian tomb by archaeologists, the native employees of the expedition attack the others when they refuse to leave. One of the archaeologists, Lance Vidor, seeks refuge in the tomb, where he is transported to a different point in the time circle of Earth. Vidor finds others who have been summoned to the time period for the purpose of saving the Earth from an oncoming comet. |
The Big Wave | Pearl S. Buck | 1,948 | Kino lives with his family on a farm on the side of a mountain in Japan while his friend, Jiya, lives in the fishing village below. Though everyone in the area has heard of the Tsunami no one suspects that when the next one comes, it will wipe out Jiya's entire family and fishing village below the mountain. Jiya soon must leave his family behind in order to keep the fisherman traditions alive. Jiya, now orphaned, struggles to overcome his sadness is adopted into Kino's family. He and Kino live like brothers and Jiya takes on the life of a farmer. . Even when the wise Old Gentleman offers Jiya a wealthy life at his rich castle, Jiya refuses. Though Jiya is able to find happiness again in his adopted family, particularly with Kino's younger sister, Setsu, Jiya wishes to live as a fisherman again as he comes of age. When Jiya tells Kino that he wishes to marry Setsu and return to the fishing village, Kino fears that Jiya and Setsu will suffer and it is safer for them to remain on the mountain as a farmer, thinking of the potential consequences should another big wave come. However, Jiya reveals his understanding that it is in the presence of danger that one learns to be brave, and to appreciate how wonderful life can be. |
The Riven Kingdom | Karen Miller | 2,007 | For hundreds of years, the small island kingdom of Ethrea sat in the middle of a precariously balanced treaty agreement that ensured peace. With the king on his deathbed, and no male heirs, Princess Rhian must find a way to keep the kingdom out of the hands of the evil Prolate Marlan, and prevent a war. |
The Fairy-tale Detectives | Michael Buckley | 2,005 | Eleven year old Sabrina and seven year old Daphne are orphans that go to live with their grandmother (who they thought was dead) in the town of Ferryport Landing. After the disappearance of their parents and going through numerous foster homes, they soon find out that their grandmother is a very strange person who says that the town is filled with fairy-tale beings, also known as Everafters. Daphne believes her, Sabrina does not and wants to escape but when she and Daphne try to, they are attacked by Fireflies in the woods who are controlled by Puck. Later, their grandmother and Mr. Canis get kidnapped by a Giant that is destruction in the town. Sabrina and Daphne, alone in the woods, soon meet Puck (From A Midsummer's Night Dream), and mistake him for Peter Pan, enraging him. He agrees to help them save their grandmother since she was kind to him and fed him sometimes. They also meet the Magic Mirror that is a household item in their home. While being pursued by the police(the three little pigs). Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck escape the house on a magic carpet and fly to the Ferryport Landing jail where they rescue Jack (From Jack and the Beanstalk.) Jack forms a plan to sneak into the Mayor's Mansion and try to get information about the giant. But the giant finds them instead and wrecks the rich mayor's mansion. Sabrina (disguised as Mama Bear from Goldielocks) and Daphne (disguised as the Tinman) escape and find out that Jack tricked them. He was the one who set loose the giant hoping that by killing it in front of a crowd of news reporters he would come back into immense fame. They also discover he is part of a shady organization known as The Scarlet Hand. But just as things are looking their bleakest, he is stopped by Mr. Canis, who transforms into the Big Bad Wolf (trapped in Mr. Canis's body), and the giant is sent back to his kingdom. |
Po-on | F. Sionil José | null | The events in Poon A Novel happened from 1880 to 1889, when an Ilocano family abandoned their beloved barrio in order to overcome the challenges to their survival in southern Pangasinan in the Philippines, and also to flee from the cruelty they received from the Spaniards. One of the principal characters of the novel is Istak, a Filipino from the Ilocano stock who was fluent in Spanish and Latin, a talent he inherited from the teachings of an old parish priest in Cabugao. He was an acolyte aspiring to become a priest. He was also knowledgeable in the arts of traditional medicine. The only hindrance to his goal of becoming a full-pledged priest was his racial origins. He lived in a period in Philippine history when it a possible Filipino uprising against the Spanish government was about to erupt, a time after the execution of three mestizos, namely Mariano Gómez, José Apolonio Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora (or the Gomburza, an acronym for the three) at Bagumbayan (now known as Rizal Park) in February, 1872. There were signs that a revolution will happen, despite of the lack of unity among the inhabitants of the Philippines islands at the time. Another approaching occurrence was the help the Filipinos would be receiving from the Americans in finally removing the governing Spaniards from the archipelago after three hundred yearsThe novel recreates the societal struggles in which the characters of Po-on were situated in, which includes the protagonist Istak 's personal search for life's meaning and for the true face of his beliefs at principles. Throughout this personal journey, he was accompanied by a dignity that is his aloneIstak was assigned the task of delivering a message to General Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine revolutionaries, but died at the hands of American soldiers, on his way to delivering the message. |
Mauprat | George Sand | 1,837 | The novel's plot has been called a plot of female socialization, in which the hero is taught by the heroine how to live peacefully in society. Mauprat resembles the fairy tale "Beauty and the beast". As this would suggest, the novel is a romance. However, Sand resists the immediate happy ending of marriage between the two main characters in favor of a more gradual story of education, including a reappraisal of the passive female role in courtship and marriage. Sand also calls into question Rousseau's ideal version of the female education as described in his novel Émile, namely, training women for domesticity and the home. The novel, set before the French Revolution, depicts the coming of age of a nobleman named Bernard Mauprat. The story is narrated by the old Bernard in his country home many years later, as told to a nameless young male visitor. Bernard recounts how, raised by a violent gang of his feudal kinsmen after the death of his mother, he becomes a brutalized "enfant sauvage". When his cousin Edmée is held captive by Bernard's "family", he helps her escape, but elicits a promise of marriage from her by threatening rape. Thus begins the long courtship of Bernard and Edmée. The novel ends with a trial similar to the one in Stendhal's The Red and the Black. During the period Sand wrote the novel, she was gradually becoming more interested in the problem of political equality in society and in the views of socialist thinkers such as Pierre Leroux. Mauprat depicts a new type of literary figure, the peasant visionary Patience. Part of the novel takes place during the American Revolutionary War. |
The Eternal Conflict | David H. Keller | 1,949 | The novel concerns two conflicts. One is between the sexes, the other in a woman's mind. |
Nomad | George O. Smith | 1,950 | The novel concerns Guy Maynard, of Earth, who is rescued from his Martian captors by Thomakein of the planet Eterne, an invisible wandering planet. After spending time on Eterne, Maynard returns to Earth where he uses the knowledge he gained to launch an invasion against the newly discovered planet Mephisto. He returns to Earth a hero, but is later court martialed and driven from the Galactic Patrol. He seeks refuge on Eterne by impersonating their ruler. When he is discovered, he flees to Mephisto and there raises an army enabling him to conquer the Solar system becoming its emperor. |
The Lady Decides | David H. Keller | 1,950 | The novel concerns a man with a dream and an allegorical quest through Spain. |
The Unusual Suspects | Michael Buckley | 2,005 | Sabrina and Daphne are off to school, but when Sabrina's teacher, Mr. Grumpner, is murdered, with a scarlet handprint left on the chalkboard (the sign of the Scarlet Hand), they realize that something is very odd. With the help of Puck and Wendell, the son of the Pied Piper of Hamelin; who is also the principal of their school, they search the school's halls for clues, finally coming upon a shocking secret and a deadly encounter with the children of some very famous fairy-tale characters and the monstrous Rumpelstiltskin, who has been discovered by one of their ancestors to have the ability to act like a bomb. Sabrina and Daphne discover a cave under school using matches that Mayor Charming gave them to take them wherever they needed, where she finds her family and friends trapped in a web where they would be soon suffocated to death when Rumpelstiltskin would have the power (which he gets from strong feelings such as anger) to blow up the entire cave so they could escape from a magical barrier trapping the Everafters in the city, but which isn't as strong deep underground. Sabrina, while defeating Rumpelstiltskin and his supporters, discovers that the plotters are part of a secret Everafter organization called the Scarlet Hand, who had killed Grumpner and kidnapped her parents. Sabrina, after saving the trapped people, goes to a ruins of a hospital using the matches and comes face to face with the kidnapper of her parents who is a mentally imbalanced girl, although the kidnapper's face was hidden under a hood. Book 2 ends here, but the scene continues on in Book 3. |
The Problem Child | Michael Buckley | 2,006 | Sabrina, the middle child, confronted by a mentally challenged girl who has kidnapped her parents (who may be the person mentioned in the title) and a vicious monster, continues to fight when Puck comes to save her (once again, he complains). Just then, the portal which Sabrina used to get to her parents burns out, and Sabrina and Puck are trapped in an old asylum. Puck and Sabrina escape, but Sabrina is injured by the monster. After her injuries heal at the hospital, Sabrina goes back with her family to Relda's house where they hold a celebration to welcome back Sabrina. That night, after investigating through many journals, the criminal becomes clear: Little Red Riding Hood. The following night, wanting to know about Red Riding Hood, Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck go to the ruins of the asylum where she had met the Everafter child. They search for medical files in hopes of finding a clue, but a mysterious man discovers them. He seems to know Sabrina and Daphne's name, but thinking that he is part of the Scarlet Hand, the three escape back to her grandmother's house. In the morning, Sabrina, Daphne, Relda and Puck travel to the newly built school for the opening ceremony, where Mayor Prince Charming gives a speech. However, he is distracted when the Queen of Hearts announces that she dislikes Charming's ideas and she will seek election as mayor. Suddenly, just as the chaos began, the mysterious man Sabrina had met at the ruin pops out of nowhere. He turns out to be Jacob Alexander Grimm, Relda's son and Henry's brother who gets Sabrina addicted to magic and later gets her into trouble with Baba Yaga, an ancient witch who is rumored to be a cannibal. That night, while everyone was asleep, Sabrina sneaks into the room where Jacob was sleeping, to take a look at the files in search for clues. She accidentally wakes Jacob, but instead of sending her back to bed, he explains about a few things about Red Riding Hood. The kidnapper had fallen in despair after she had lost many people that she had cared for, and thinking that her dead kitten was the ferocious monster called the Jabberwocky, she went on kidnapping other people she thought she had lost. That was how the sisters Grimm's parents were kidnapped, with Little Red Riding Hood thinking that they were her dead parents. Red Riding Hood seems evil only because of the Jabberwocky; once the Jabberwocky is killed, she is not to be feared. But Sabrina discovers that the only thing that can kill the Jabberwocky is the Vorpal blade, which was divided into three pieces and distributed to separate places in Ferryport Landing. They already have the first piece. Sabrina, Daphne, and Jacob must find the remaining two. Uncle Jake wants to take Sabrina, Daphne, and Puck out for a drive. Granny sends Sabrina to get Puck, where she finds him pouting because Granny gives more attention to Uncle Jake then him. Sabrina tells him that the whole family cares about him, he believes what she's trying to say is that she cares about him and he plants a kiss on her. Sabrina freaks, punching Puck in the stomach. It is implied later in "The Problem Child" and "Once Upon A Crime" that she uncovers some of her true feelings for him, and regrets slugging him after the kiss. Later during their drive, the Jabberwocky attacks and rips Pucks wings off. After two narrow escapes, they get hold of the pieces from Baba Yaga and the Little Mermaid, who is hugely fat, turning to food for comfort, after being left by an unknown "topsider". Sabrina tries connecting the pieces together, and finds a puzzle on the blade, which was supposed to show who the Blue Fairy was disguised as so as she could make the sword into one whole object. The Blue Fairy turns out to be a waitress at a restaurant. After the sword is mended, Sabrina and Daphne fight the Jabberwocky and kill it. Unfortunately, Uncle Jake is so addicted to magic that he attacks the Blue Fairy with the Vorpal Blade and forces her to grant him a wish. He wishes for all her power, and the fairy is forced to give it up. He uses the fairy's powers to take away the Everafters' immortal powers, which begins to kill them. He gives everyone else a wish, and Sabrina wishes that "Uncle Jake, you're smart, you've got a great family, and you're a Grimm. I wish that deep down you had always known how much power that gave you." This alters the past and changes where Uncle Jake attacks the Blue Fairy to Uncle Jake being happy with how it turned out and hugs Granny. Sabrina and Daphne then get their parents back. However, they could not be woken, as far as they know of, and Puck is getting weaker. Book 4 continues with saving Puck. |
The Blind Spot | Homer Eon Flint | 1,951 | The novel concerns an interdimensional doorway between worlds. |
American Beauty | Allen Steele | 2,006 | It is graduation time for the A-List crew. That means lavish yacht parties, designer caps and gowns, and saying bye-bye to high school for good. Despite the festivities, Anna is not in a partying mood. Ben has been acting distant and she is worried. Maybe her father's hot tattooed intern, Caine Manning, will help cheer Anna up! Ever since her illicit kiss with Parker, Sam has been Eduardo-less and heartbroken. But hopefully Sam will use her brains and considerable means to get creative about winning Eduardo back. And infamous Cammie? She could not care less about graduation, not when she is so close to unraveling the mystery of her mother's death. She will stop at nothing to find out the truth. The book starts out with Anna driving to Sam's pre-graduation party on her father's new yacht. While talking to Cyn, her best friend from New York, she stops to let a couple cross the street, and a woman hits the back of her car. |
Where Are You Now? | Mary Higgins Clark | null | Ten years ago, 21-year-old Charles MacKenzie, Jr. ("Mack") walked out of his apartment without a word and has never been seen again. He does, however, call his mother annually on Mother's Day to assure her of his health and safety, then hangs up, leaving her frantic questions unanswered. Even his father's death in the 9/11 attacks didn't bring him home or break the pattern of his calls. Now, Carolyn MacKenzie has decided the only way to move on with her own life is to find closure and bring an end to the mystery of her brother's disappearance. This year when Mack makes his regular Mother's Day call, she declares her intention to track him down, no matter what. The following day, Monsignor Devon Mackenzie receives a scrap note reading: Uncle Devon, tell Carolyn she must not look for me. Despite the disapproval and angry reactions of loved ones, Carolyn persists in a search that plunges her into a world of unexpected danger and winding questions. What secret does the superintendents of Mack's former apartment have to hide? What do his old roommates know about his disappearance? Is he somehow connected to the girls who have themselves gone missing in the past ten years? Could he possibly be responsible for the brutal murder of his drama teacher and for what purpose? Carolyn's persistence for the truth leads her into a deadly confrontation with someone close to her whose secret they cannot allow her to reveal. |
I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon | Federico Fellini | 2,003 | Introduced by novelist Italo Calvino to Federico Fellini (1920–1993) on the set of Fellini's And the Ship Sails On in 1983, Pettigrew shot in-depth interviews with Fellini, material later used in his documentary. Returning to their original q&a, he extracted a compilation of Fellini's responses. Arranged alphabetically according to subject, the transcripts focus on the maestro's late philosophical views leavened with quips and one-liners, the enigma of memory and inspiration, style and aesthetics that were conducted expressly as a filmed testament in collaboration with Pettigrew. Sepia scrapbook photos appear alongside b&w stills from 8½, La Dolce Vita, La Strada, I vitelloni, and others while color images are selected from classics such as Amarcord, Satyricon, And the Ship Sails On, Intervista, City of Women, Roma, and Juliet of the Spirits. Production photos capture Fellini on Cinecittà sets, directing and gesticulating. |
Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil | David Goodstein | 2,004 | The book gives the scientific view that the age of petroleum is coming to an end, and the future is dangerously insecure. Oil demand will shortly exceed the production capacity of even the largest suppliers. The book begins by citing the work of M. King Hubbert. Then Goodstein briefly mentions thermodynamics, electromagnetism and geology. He then describes the alternative energy technologies. He opines that the alternative energy technologies will not be effective because of the time it will take to improve them for continuing the present day industry. According to the book, the age of oil is ending. Oil supply will shortly begin to decline, precipitating a global crisis. Even if coal and natural gas are substituted for some of the oil, human civilization will start to run out of fossil fuels by the end of the 21st century. He concludes with the warning: "Civilization as we know it will come to an end sometime in this century unless we can find a way to live without fossil fuels". |
Mass Effect: Ascension | Drew Karpyshyn | 2,008 | The novel takes place shortly after the attack of the Reaper Sovereign and his allies Saren and the Geth. The Illusive Man, the leader of the rogue, xenophobic organization called Cerberus, watches on as he plots Cerberus' next move. One of his long-serving subordinates, Paul Grayson, is a troubled drug addict who was assigned with raising an infant girl with huge biotic potential, Gillian. The autistic girl is now a member of the Ascension Project, initiative aimed at developing biotic abilities in humans. Grayson, despite having much affection for his adopted daughter, is now reduced to a link man between Cerberus and their man inside Ascension Project, Dr. Jiro. Their mission is to administer Cerberus' biotic-enhancing drugs to Gillian and evaluate their efficacy. Meanwhile, another Cerberus operative Pel is on a mission in distant system Omega, nominal capital of the rogue Terminus Systems, to acquire the current position and access codes to the Quarian Migrant Fleet and contacts a banished Quarian named Golo. As it turns out, Golo can't provide necessary data but assures Pel he knows how to obtain it. He lures a Quarian scout team into an ambush, and Pel manages to take a prisoner. However, during the ambush, the Quarian is infected with a virus and becomes delirious, making it impossible to interrogate him. Back at Ascension Project, Gillian, who had been administered a new drug by Jiro, has a biotic outburst after being mocked by another student. She is kept in hospital for observation, which makes it difficult for Jiro to apply another dose of the new drug, as instructed by Cerberus. In a desperate move he takes her for a walk to station's Atrium where he injects the medication, which unexpectedly induces a seizure. Meanwhile, Kahlee Sanders of Ascension Project staff and security chief Hendel Mitra, who is also a biotic, have put the pieces together and deduced Jiro was more than he let them know. After running intuitively to the Atrium, Hendel is overpowered by Jiro's stunner, who in turn is subdued by Kahlee. Grayson is informed by Ascension Project staff that his daughter has survived an assassination attempt from a Cerberus agent. Grayson is ordered to withdraw Gillian from the Ascension Project before Jiro reveals the entire plot. When Kahlee suggests she and Hendel will accompany him, he agrees expecting that Pel, his former partner, will easily get rid of them. However, Pel takes everybody prisoner, including Grayson, explaining that he decided to abandon Cerberus in favor of the promise of wealth. The Collectors, a mysterious alien race that lives outside of known space, have put up a bounty for human biotics and Pel plans to sell Gillian and Hendel to them. Lemm, a Quarian on his pilgrimage, finds out that a scout ship has disappeared and intends to find it and use the information to end his Pilgrimage. At first he suspects the infamous Golo, but the banished Quarian diverts Lemm's attention to Pel. He provides Lemm with blueprints of Pel's hideout and teaches him basic assault rules, but at the same time he informs Pel when the attack is due to take place. Lemm takes Pel by surprise by attacking a day early, rescuing Hendel, Gillian and Kahlee. Kahlee is very surprised as the Quarian recognizes her. After escaping Pel's warehouse, stealing Grayson's shuttle, and setting course to the Migrant Fleet, Lemm explains to Kahlee that she is regarded as an AI expert due to her collaboration with Dr. Shu Qian - who found Sovereign and led Saren to it - and he would like her to be his pilgrimage gift. Grayson, who was left behind, manages to escape and kill Pel on the warehouse roof amid his mob's firefight with runaway party. He later finds the captured Quarian who had gone mad and now only mumbles the access codes to the Migrant Fleet. Grayson informs The Illusive Man of Pel's betrayal and he deduces that Kahlee and the others are heading for the Migrant Fleet. The Illusive Man wants to leave Grayson out of mission to reclaim Gillian due to his emotional involvement, but Grayson threatens not to give away the access codes unless he is included. After reaching the Migrant Fleet, Kahlee gives her opinion on Sovereigns attack on the Citadel and its influence on the Geth. It seems insignificant to her but it's apparently an important factor in deciding whether the Quarians will launch risky exploratory missions. The Admiralty hypothesizes that they may be able to use Reapers to influence the Geth and reclaim their homeworld. Meanwhile, Gillian spends much time with Hendel, Kahlee, and Lemm and in increasingly familiar surroundings of Grayson's shuttle she becomes more open and happy. Grayson, with two squads of Cerberus commandos and Golo, attacks the Quarian ship. Cerberus soldiers have the upper hand in the firefight but they retreat after Gillian, told by Kahlee to hide on ship's upper levels, runs back to the shuttle looking for some comfort. Grayson, ordered by Golo to stay in the shuttle because of his emotional involvement, is welcomed by Gillian - who always reacted allergically to touch - with a hug. Grayson informs her they are leaving but after she refuses saying she won't leave without her friends, he is forced to use a stunner and puts her to bed. Kahlee, who hadn't found Gillian in upper levels, guesses she went to the shuttle. She confronts Grayson but is knocked down by the returning Golo. Kahlee, continually kicked by Golo, describes how much better Gillian has been feeling after escaping Cerberus' care. Grayson has a change of heart after recalling Gillian hugging him and calling Kahlee, Hendel and Lemm her friends. He talks Golo into starting the engines and kills him. The attack on the Quarian ship turns out a decisive factor in sending a mission to find habitable worlds or Sovereign-like ships to drive the Geth from the Quarian homeworld. As he is being transported to Alliance territory, Grayson manages to overpower Kahlee and Lemm and escapes. Believing that Grayson won't trouble them anymore, Kahlee and Lemm decide not to pursue him. Kahlee returns to the Ascension Project, while Gillian, Hendel and Lemm board a Quarian exploration ship. Grayson contacts The Illusive Man, concedes he will sooner or later be caught and killed by Cerberus but he trades his silence about Cerberus' other projects for Kahlee's safety. The Illusive Man reluctantly agrees and is left seething at his defeat. cs:Mass Effect: Vzestup it:Mass Effect: Ascension pl:Mass Effect: Podniesienie ru:Восхождение (роман) uk:Mass Effect: Ascension zh:质量效应：飞升 |
Prayers for Rain | Dennis Lehane | 1,999 | After the events of the preceding novel, Gone, Baby, Gone, Patrick Kenzie is working solo; Angie Gennaro has left their partnership for employment at a large investigative firm, moving out of Dorchester and turning her back on a possible personal relationship with Kenzie. A young woman has leapt to her death from Boston's landmark Custom House tower, and Kenzie is shocked to hear that she is one of his former clients, Karen Nichols. A dressed-for-success career woman, Nichols had hired him several months earlier to scare off a stalker she had attracted at her fitness club. An unpleasant visit from Kenzie and his explosive friend Bubba Rogowski had apparently been enough to deter the stalker, Cody Falk, an upscale predator with a long history of restraining orders. But news of Nichols' suicide leads Kenzie to recall, with some guilt, a loose end from her case. Several weeks after he'd confronted the stalker, Nichols had left a message on his answering machine -- and he had neglected to return her call. Stung by his former client's death, Kenzie makes a quick investigation and finds that at the time of her call, Nichols had been experiencing a suspicious run of bad luck. Her fiancé had been hit by a car and later died of the injuries; she had lost her job while caring for him; and, according to the police, the pert young client Kenzie recalled as "someone who would iron her socks" had become a strung-out prostitute working from a cheap motel. When Kenzie once again questions Falk, he discovers that the stalker had received several notes, purporting to be from Karen Nichols herself, inviting him to continue pursuing her. Horrified and fascinated, Kenzie embarks on the search for a vindictive mastermind who manipulated Falk and others in a complex scheme to destroy Nichols' life. |
Leviathan | Paul Auster | 1,992 | The story is told by Peter Aaron about the victim, Benjamin Sachs, his best friend whom he first meets as a fellow writer in a Greenwich Village bar in 1975. Peter decides to try to piece together the story of Ben's other life after agents from the F.B.I. approach him in the course of their investigation. Of their friendship, Peter acknowledges Ben’s lost years of suffering and painful inner state, saying — In 15 years, Sachs travelled from one end of himself to the other, and by the time he came to that last place, I doubt he even knew who he was anymore. So much distance had been covered by then, it wouldn't have been possible for him to remember where he had begun. The two first meet as struggling novelists, Peter with the “wheeling” mind and the provocative Ben with his perfect marriage to the beautiful Fanny. Both have a wish to “say something”, to make a difference in the real world. Privately, Ben himself is full of doubts and his marriage is showing cracks, when one night at a drunken party by freakish chance, he tumbles from a fourth-floor fire escape, nearly losing his life. The fall is both actual and metaphorical. For days afterward he refuses to speak and on recovery he is strangely remote. Within a week of turning 41, Ben expresses a desire to end the life he has lived until then. Feeling that his life has been a waste, he declares he wants everything to change, and serving himself with an all-or-nothing ultimatum, decides he must take control or fail. In evincing this change, he leaves Fanny, moves to a cabin in Vermont where he begins to work on a book – then vanishes. There is no further contact with Fanny and one final meeting with Peter where he confesses all. His cabin and its contents is deserted, his manuscript, titled Leviathan, lies abandoned. Peter pieces together Ben’s life after disappearing which involves the photographic artist Maria and her closest friend Lillian. Lillian's husband and Vietnam War veteran is Reed who becomes Ben’s alter ego after a violent random encounter that sends Ben in a radically new direction. |
Requiem of a Spanish Peasant | Ramón José Sender Garcés | null | The story is narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator who has insight into Mosen Millan's thoughts and feelings. Three distinct planes of narration exist in the novel: the present, Millan's recollections of his relationship with Paco from birth to death; and the ballad the altar boy sings which recounts Paco's life. In the present, Millan, fatigued, prays as he awaits the requiem mass with recollections of Paco's life. As he prays he rests his head against a wall - a habit - which bears a dark spot. The altar boy comes and goes and both remark on the lack of people attending mass. Millan, knowing and feeling guilty knowing that he played a role in Paco's death, asks the altar boy to leave the church to look for mass attenders in the town square when the altar boy sings the parts of the ballad that refer to Millan. |
Pushing the Bear | Diane Glancy | 1,996 | Pushing the Bear tells the story of Cherokee removal and what is now referred to as the Trail of Tears. Diane Glancy weaves the story together through the voices of a variety of characters, the majority of whom are Cherokee Indians, but also through historical documents, missionaries and the soldiers who were responsible for guiding the Cherokee along the trail. Glancy describes the horror and tribulations close to thirteen thousand Cherokee Indians faced from the months of September 1838 to February 1839. Maritole, a mother, wife, daughter and aunt, is the main voice in the novel. Her character reveals the thoughts of the women, the relationship between soldiers and those walking the trail, and the losses, both emotionally and physically, that the people suffered. Through the plethora of voices, Glancy is presents the knowledge of Indian Removal, with the perspectives of those who walked, suffered and died along the trail. After nine hundred miles of trudging through mountains, snow and water, the bitterness and pain experienced by the Cherokee is combined with their sense of helplessness and their sorrow over losing their connection with their land, their livelihood, their traditional gender roles, and their family. The novel travels chronologically through each month and location along the Trail of Tears. Glancy taps into an emotional and horrific, but historically accurate account of what many now refer to as Indian genocide. In an interview with Jennifer Andrews for the American Indian Quarterly, Glancy tells Andrews that “the land had to give me permission to write. The ancestors had to give permission to write, too. For instance, I started off Pushing the Bear with one voice, and it wasn’t enough. I had to go back and add her husband and everybody who had traveled with them on the Trail of Tears. It takes many voices to tell a story, and I think we carry those voices within us” (Andrews 651). |
The Nemesis of Faith | James Anthony Froude | 1,849 | The story of Markham Sutherland is presented through letters, journals, and the third-person account of the novel's supposed editor, Arthur. Sutherland, under pressure from his father to become a clergyman, confesses to Arthur his reservations about accepting the Thirty-Nine Articles and contemporary English Christianity in general. In particular, Sutherland is concerned about the depiction of God in the Old Testament, God's patronage of the Israelites on non-moral grounds, the doctrine of Eternal Punishment, and the supposed inerrancy of the Bible. Sutherland was profoundly influenced by John Henry Newman in his early years, but was ultimately unable to accept Newman's doctrines. Sutherland also seeks guidance in the writings of Victorian historian and sage Thomas Carlyle (who was Froude's chief intellectual influence in later years), but finds no solutions. Tormented by his doubts and subsequent alienation from his family, Sutherland becomes morbidly depressed. On Arthur's advice, Sutherland takes orders, hoping that his doubts will eventually pass when he enters a more active life. Because of the selectivity of his sermons, however, his parishioners begin to suspect him of Socinianism. When Sutherland is tricked into making a harsh criticism of the British and Foreign Bible Society, claiming that the text of the Bible without clerical guidance is more likely to lead to wickedness than to Christian faith and virtue, his doubts are revealed, and he is forced to resign his position. Sutherland travels to Como to rest and recover from illness, indulging in free religious speculation while there. He befriends Helen Leonard, who sympathizes with his troubles and listens to his doubts. Helen's dull, unloving husband prefers to spend time away from his wife, and leaves her in Sutherland's company for the season. Helen and Sutherland fall in love, causing both great anxiety, although the relationship never becomes physical. The two consider eloping, but Helen decides she cannot leave her daughter, Annie. During this conversation, however, the unsupervised Annie dips her arm into the lake, causing her to fall ill and die soon after. Sutherland again becomes depressed, believing that his religious speculations have brought himself and Helen into sin. He plans suicide, but is stopped at the last moment by an old friend, representative of John Henry Newman. Sutherland retires to a monastery, although his repentance is short lived, and he dies still in doubt. Helen, meanwhile, separates from her husband and retires to a convent, although she is unreconciled with the Church because she maintains that her love for Sutherland is holier than her marriage. |
An Experiment In Treason | Bruce Cook | 2,002 | A pack of confidential letters is stolen from the Secretary of State for the American Colonies. With cross-Atlantic tensions rising, Sir John is ordered to interrogate the American representative in London, one Benjamin Franklin. |
Lost Boy, Lost Girl | Peter Straub | 2,003 | The novel revolves around a middle-aged writer named Timothy Underhill, struggling to help his brother Philip and his nephew, Mark, cope with the recent suicide of Philip's wife, Nancy. A perplexing series of events revolving around a haunted house, a pedophilic serial killer and the lost girl of the title, is triggered when Mark suddenly goes missing and is suspected to be the latest victim of the killer. Mark had begun to harbor an obsession after the death of his mother, with an abandoned house on the Underhill's street. Timothy and Philip struggle to connect the threads of this mystery and find Mark before he falls victim to the horrors of the abandoned home; horrors both human and supernatural in nature. |
The Assassini | Thomas Gifford | 1,990 | Set in 1982, while the Roman Catholic Church's papal conclave is preparing to elect a new pope as the old one is dying, the book describes the attempts of lawyer Ben Driskill to solve the murder of his sibling, Sister Valentine, a nun who was an outspoken activist and a thorn in the Church's side. Driskill's world-spanning investigation leads him to the discovery of a document from a forgotten monastery in Ireland, which proves the existence of the Assassini, an age-old brotherhood of killers, once hired by princes of the Church to protect it in dangerous times; and the person who now controls them in his Machiavellian bid for power. |
Belladonna | Anne Bishop | 2,007 | Book ends with Belladonna making herself even more evil than the Eater of the World inside of the school that she had been kicked out of in the events of Sebastian. She traps the Eater of the World and somehow Michael finds a way to bring her back to the world. |
Fields of Force | William Berkson | null | Fields of Force has a preface, an introduction, ten chapters, a historiographical appendix on field theory, and name and subject indexes. The introduction and the ten chapters all consist of 6 or more sections. |
Arabian Jazz | Diana Abu-Jaber | null | The novel focuses on the happenings of the Ramoud’s. The widowed father of the family, Matusseum Ramond, lives with his two daughters and was accompanied to America with his sister and brother-in-law. Matusseum and his daughters reside in a middle class house in the midst of a run-down, low class neighborhood. Their environment mimics that of a hazardous dumping ground, with their house being surrounded by broken down cars and trailers that have neither running water nor a proper sewage waste system. Diapers and garbage liters their backyard providing the ideal tone for the family’s mixed emotions and values. Matusseum’s American-born daughters are older, but both seem to still struggle with their identities, contemplating their roles in American culture versus Middle Eastern culture. Aunt Fatima, Matusseum’s devoted Islamic sister, desires for the two daughters, Melvina and Jemorah, to follow the conventions and traditions of their motherland – Jordan. Fatima concerns her new, American life with the local gossip and obsesses over Melvina and Jemorah’s dating life. Fatima is disgraced that both of her nieces are not yet married; she makes it her life mission to find suitable, affluent suitors for them. Melvina, the younger of the two daughters, has found herself successful and happy in her career as a nurse; yet, her older sister Jemorah has yet to find a satisfying career path and struggles throughout the novel with her cultural and career oriented identity. Her father is clearly Middle Eastern and still has a stronghold in the traditions of the east, but her deceased mother merged well within western culture and trends. Thus, Jemorah feels stuck in the middle, not quite Arabian and not quite American. Her aunt clearly desires for her to conform to the traditions and customs of Jordan, but Jemorah finds that those conventions neither fill her cultural void nor feel natural and comfortable. Matusseum is too struggling simultaneously along with his daughters, attempting to discover his new place in America devoid of his loving wife. Unlike Melvina, he does not find comfort in a career, but rather feels most at peace making jazz music on his drum set. It is only when he is playing this music in the local bar that he forgets about the death of his wife and the personal crisis that was created through his immigration. Both his daughters and his sister find this hobby bizarre and somewhat embarrassing. It is only after Matusseum journeys back to Jordan that his daughters are able to find themselves and their place within culture. This journey too has a similar effect on Matusseum, allowing clarity to his thought process and his actions. |
Slaves of Sleep | L. Ron Hubbard | null | The novel concerns Jan Palmer, a young millionaire, who surprises a prowler who is attempting to burgle his collection of antiques. The prowler opens a jar that bears the seal of Sulayman releasing an Ifrit, named Zongri, that was imprisoned. The Ifrit kills the thief and curses Palmer with eternal wakefulness. At night, Palmer assumes the identity of an adventurer in another dimension where the Ifrits rule the humans under the Ifrit queen where he becomes embroiled in the conflict between Zongri and the Ifrit queen. |
Floating Dragon | Peter Straub | 1,982 | Set during the spring and summer of 1980, the novel deals with events that befall the affluent suburb of Hampstead, Connecticut. An adulterous housewife named Stony Friedgood is brutally murdered by a man she picks up in a bar; at the same time, her husband, Leo, is involved in a cover-up at a chemical plant conducting research for the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, the descendants of the town's original founders have returned to Hampstead for the first time in over a hundred years: Richard Allbee, an architect and former child actor with a wife and a baby on the way; Graham Williams, a screenwriter and amateur local historian whose career was derailed by the McCarthy hearings; Patsy McCloud, an abused housewife with supernatural powers; and Tabby Smithfield, an extraordinary young boy with similar abilities. Drawn together by fate, the four find themselves struggling against a cycle of evil that plagues the town every thirty years. |
Forces and Fields | null | null | Forces and Fields has eleven chapters. The first ten chapters consist of 5 or more sections. The eleventh, 2 sections. These chapters are titled The Logical Status of Theories, The Primitive Analogies, Mechanism in Greek Science, The Greek Inheritance, The Corpuscular Philosophy, The Theory of Gravitation, Action at a Distance, The Field Theories, The theory of Relativity, Modern Physics, and The Metaphysical Framework of Physics. |
The World Below | S. Fowler Wright | null | The novel concerns a man who travels 500,000 years into the future with the aid of a time machine. There he encounters a race of intelligent furry beings, the Amphibians. With their help he explores the planet and is eventually captured by the Dwellers, super-intelligent beings who direct the destinies of the planet. |
Kinsmen of the Dragon | Stanley Mullen | null | The novel concerns an empire of invisible wizards and adventure in the realm of Annwyn. |
Come Home, Charlie, and Face Them | null | null | Charlie Pritchard arrives in the fictitious North Wales seaside town of Permadoc on April 1, 1929. After seven years working for Cadwallader’s Mercantile Bank, the 23-year-old is discontented as he takes up his job in the local branch, especially because he is to lodge with the branch manager, Ewan Rhys-Jones. Ewan and his wife, Gladys, immediately start throwing their daughter, 27-year-old Ida, at Charlie. Charlie and Ida become good friends and begin a sexual relationship, but without any romance involved. Charlie’s serious interest is focused on the woman who works at the Rainbow Café, two doors down from the bank. The beautiful Delphine is the prime attraction of the Café, and Charlie learns that she runs it with her brother, Beppo. Charlie comes to the attention of the two when he stops a factory worker’s advances on Delphine, long enough for Beppo to notice what is going on and intervene. Things deteriorate at Charlie’s lodgings when Ida leaves for London. Gladys and Ewan assume it has something to do with Charlie, and the atmosphere at the bank, never too good, become even worse. Charlie is therefore all too ready to listen when Delphine makes a proposal to him — she, her brother and Charlie should rob the bank, tunnelling from the café into the basement, where the vault is, and obtaining or forging keys to the locks. At first Charlie is dismissive, but then he decides that he has “damn all to lose”. The planning for the bank break-in continues, with Charlie continuing to hope for a relationship with Delphine. When the Rhys-Joneses decide there may be some chance of salvaging the hoped-for marriage to Ida, and Ewan approaches Charlie, Charlie pretends that he and Ida had considered marriage, but that, given the bank’s slow promotion pace, there seemed no point. Ewan reassures Charlie, and tries to get rid of another bank employee in the hopes of getting a better job for Charlie. Charlie writes Ida a letter, and calls the bank heist off, but Beppo blackmails him by threatening to use some preparatory drawings made by Charlie, threatening to send them to the bank’s home office. Charlie is shocked when he spies on Delphine and Beppo and learns they are actually lovers, not brother and sister. Angered and disgusted, he decides to go his own way after the heist. Ida sends a letter saying she is coming home on the very day set for the heist. Charlie replies that he will be away at his father’s retirement ceremony, and asks her to come the following week. The day of the heist arrives, a Saturday, and Charlie succeeds in obtaining a final key from the possession of Ewan. He does so by drugging Ewan and his wife with their bedtime cocoa. While waiting for Delphine, he notices a half-burned envelope in the fireplace. It is a passport envelope, addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. Giuseppe Beppolini”. He rifles the couple’s travel bags and finds a passport for a married couple and train tickets to a destination different from the port Charlie had been told would be the escape route. Realising that the couple have deceived him and intend to swindle him out of the money, Charlie slips the passport and tickets into his pocket. Charlie and Beppo break through the wall, enter the vault, and take about twenty thousand pounds. On their return to the café, they find that Delphine has discovered Charlie's subterfuge, and has turned on the lights and music in the café to cover any altercation. Beppo takes out a gun, but Charlie rushes him, knocking him down a flight of stairs as the gun goes off. Beppo dies of a broken neck, and Charlie finds that the bullet has hit Delphine, killing her. In a state of shock, Charlie answers a knock on the café door. It is Ida, just returned, having through Charlie's lies and somehow sensed his predicament. She assists him in disposing of the bodies, in an area in which fill is being placed to level the ground for a park. They bury the bodies and the money, and return to the Rhys-Jones house. Charlie asks Ida to marry him, and she agrees, though without much enthusiasm, revealing that the reason she ran off to London was because she was pregnant with Charlie’s child, which was then given up for adoption. Ironically, it will be the only child they will ever have. Once Gladys and Ewan awaken from their drugged sleep (the key being returned), they are delighted. On the following day, the bank manager and his future son-in-law elect arrive on Monday morning at the bank to find that it has been robbed. The investigation drags on for weeks. At the end, Ewan is forced to retire. Ewan defies the bank directors, making it clear that the head office in Cardiff is responsible for the heist, since they gave him inadequate security. He stalks off, gets drunk, catches pneumonia, and dies only days later. After the funeral, one of the police inspectors makes it clear he suspects Charlie, but there is no evidence of involvement, and Charlie and Ida marry as planned. Charlie rises to become a bank manager himself, and the two live to old age. When Ida dies, Charlie returns to Penmadoc, seeking to rid himself of the ghosts of the past, and rents a room in what had been the Rhys-Jones house. To his shock, he sees that the park where the Beppolinis lie buried is being dug up for a car park. He watches every day, until they and the money are found, but there is no evidence after forty years to connect Charlie with the skeletons and the money, even when the bodies are identified. Charlie learns that he is dying. He begins to write his story (this book), intending it to be lodged with a solicitor and released after his death. |
Miramar | Naguib Mahfouz | null | The novel is set in 1960s Alexandria at the pension Miramar. The novel follows the interactions of the residents of the pension, its Greek mistress Mariana, and her servant. The interactions of all the residents is based around the servant girl Zohra, a beautiful peasant girl from the Beheira Governorate who has abandoned her village life. As each character in turn fights for Zohra's affections or allegiance tensions and jealousies arise. In a style reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon, the story is retold four times from the perspective of a different resident each time, allowing the reader to understand the intricacies of post-revolutionary Egyptian life. |
Crooked Zebra | Bob Weltlich | 2,004 | Jim Stanton, the narrator, tells the tale of Bob Girard, a former college basketball player who now runs a popular basketball camp for children in South Florida. Chad Payne, an eleven year old basketball phenom, sneaks into the camp. Girard rescues Chad from a broken home and encourages him. Eventually, Chad grows up, becomes a star and signs with Duke University. Meanwhile, Girard becomes a college basketball referee with troubled finances. Bob begins to make extra money by fixing games, he becomes so good at it, and so greedy, that he, with support from the mafia, attempts to fix the national championship game. |
Brethren | Robyn Young | 2,006 | The novel describes the fictional story of a young teenager by the name of William Campbell who starts out as a sergeant and later is promoted to a full Knight Templar. He is tasked with the search of the Book of the Grail which, if ever in the wrong hands, could potentially result in the downfall of not only the Anima Templi (a secret order within the Temple), but also the Temple itself. However, Will finds he's not alone in the search of the book. There are also Prince Edward and The Order of the St John's or the Hospitallers who want the Book as part of their plans to bring down the Temple. The story of Will Campbell runs parallel to that of Baybars Bundukdari, a slave who rose to become Sultan of the Mamluks motivated purely by his hatred of the Franks. In the earlier parts of the story, Will does not know that his father James Campbell is also part of the Anima Templi (or Brethren) and that there is a contact deep within Baybars' circle of trusted advisors who works with the Brethren to achieve long-lasting peace in the Holy land and the reconciliation of the three dominant faiths of the West: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The book has a sequel written by the same author. "Crusade" follows Will as he becomes further entangled in the Brethren and Baybars. |
Murder in Millennium VI | Curme Gray | null | Set 6,000 years in the future, the novel concerns the murder of the head of a matriarchal society. Victor Mitchel and his parents and sister struggle to replace her and find the killer before the society collapses. The novel is unique in that anything which would have been known to the people of its time was not explained. |
Space Platform | Murray Leinster | 1,953 | The novel concerns the sabotage of attempts to place a platform in Earth orbit. |
Space Tug | Murray Leinster | 1,953 | The novel concerns the problems of running of a space station. |
Son of Scarface | null | 2,007 | The autobiography, chronicles the author’s broken childhood as he uncovers family secrets that his abusive mother attempted to keep him and his sister from pursuing. As an adult he seeks the truth about both his grandfather and his father |
Empire of the Atom | A. E. van Vogt | 1,957 | The novel concerns adventures of a mutant genius in a barbaric future where spaceships and other forms of advanced technology are used without being understood, most knowledge having been destroyed in an atomic war with an alien species long before the opening of the story. |
The Cloning of Joanna May | Fay Weldon | null | Joanna May was once married to Carl May, the wealthy CEO of a nuclear energy corporation, but they have been divorced for ten years after Joanna was caught in an incidental love affair. Since then, Carl May has done everything in his power to make Joanna's life difficult. When Joanna decides she's had enough, and pays a visit to her former husband, she is in for a surprise – Carl May has made several clones of her. |
The Fall of Colossus | Dennis Feltham Jones | 1,974 | Five years have passed since the computer known as Colossus used its control over the world's nuclear deterrent to take control of humanity. Superseded by an even more advanced successor system built on the Isle of Wight, it has abolished war and poverty throughout the world. National competition and most sports have been replaced by the Sea War Game, where replicas of World War I dreadnoughts battle each other for viewing audiences. A group known as the Sect, which worships Colossus as a god, is growing in numbers and influence. Yet despite the seeming omnipresence of Colossus' secret police and the penalty of decapitation for anti-Colossus activities, a secret Fellowship exists that is dedicated to the computer's destruction. Charles Forbin, the former head of the design team that built and activated the original Colossus, now lives on the Isle of Wight with his wife and son, serving the computer as Director of Staff. Though contemptuous of the growing cult of personality around Colossus, he has reconciled himself to Colossus' rule. His wife Cleo, however, loathes Colossus and is a member of the Fellowship. One afternoon while taking her son to a secluded beach, she receives a radio transmission from the planet Mars. Identifying Cleo as a member of the Fellowship, the transmission offers help to destroy Colossus and asks her to return to the same spot the next day for further instructions. She returns with Edward Blake, Colossus' Director of Input and the head of the Fellowship. Together they receive instructions to obtain a circuit diagram of one of Colossus' input terminals and a sample of the information fed into it, along with instructions to proceed to two locations — one in St. John's, Newfoundland, the other in New York's Central Park — to receive further transmissions. Though Blake passes the necessary information along to Cleo, she is quickly arrested by the Sect and sentenced by Colossus to spend three months at an "Emotional Study Center" where she is repeatedly raped as part of an experiment designed to help Colossus better understand human emotion. Now under suspicion, Blake approaches Forbin, who is devastated by his wife's arrest. Explaining the details of their plot, Blake convinces Forbin to help after explaining the details of Cleo's captivity. Forbin travels in disguise with the requested information, first to St. John's, then to New York City, where he receives an incomprehensible mathematical problem that the transmission claims will destroy Colossus once it is fed into the computer. Upon his return, Forbin slips the problem to Blake, who enters it into Colossus. While Forbin converses with the computer, Colossus begins to make verbal errors, then stops. Increasingly erratic, it attempts to warn Forbin of a threat from space that it was preparing to meet but breaks down before it can complete the message. Now free of Colossus' rule, Blake moves to seize power, using the automated fleets of the Sea War Games to threaten the world's capitals. As Blake gloats, Forbin tells him of Colossus' warning. Requesting any reports of unusual astronomical activity, they learn that two contacts have been detected leaving Martian orbit and heading towards the Earth. The novel ends with the two men hearing a radio transmission repeating, "Forbin, we are coming." |
Flower Net | Lisa See | 1,997 | The time frame for Flower Net is January 10, 1997-March 14, 1997. The main narrative ends February 13, 1997—just before the death of Deng Xiaoping on February 19. Much of the story involves flashbacks to the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and its traumatic impact on the lives of a great number of people. The novel's key characters are Liu Hulan, inspector in the Ministry of Public Security and a Red Princess, and David Stark, Assistant U.S. Attorney, who loves her. Gary Krist writes that "Hulan is a provocative mixture of vulnerability, bitterness and hardheaded practicality," a survivor of the Cultural Revolution who has learned that survival means hiding her emotions from the outside world. The book begins with the murders of two young men, one the son of the U.S. ambassador to China and the other the son of one of the richest and most powerful men in China. For reasons not clear to Hulan and David, the Chinese and American governments come to the unusual agreement that the two should jointly investigate the murders. Their initial assumption is that the killings must be related to the Rising Phoenix, a criminal gang operating in both China and Los Angeles. The case is complicated because Hulan and David have previously been lovers, and each is devoted to his or her country. See also describes Vice Minister Liu and his frosty relationship with Hulan, his daughter. Near the end of the novel seven gruesome murders are solved. Although the young men of the Rising Phoenix are indeed involved, the murderer hounding Hulan and David is revealed to be Hulan's father, Vice Minister Liu, who has been consumed by greed and the desire for revenge, mistakenly blaming his daughter for the hard time he served in a Chinese work camp early in the Cultural Revolution and for the serious injuries his wife, Hulan's mother, suffered during the same period. The narrative concludes with Hulan's thoughts of the coming spring and her anticipation of the birth of her first child. |
Goddess of Yesterday | Caroline B. Cooney | 2,002 | Anaxandra is the daughter of Chrysaor, a chieftain who rules of an uncharted island. When Nicander, king of the island Siphnos, comes to demand a tribute, he takes Anaxandra to be his daughter Callisto’s playmate. Unable to return home, she comes to love the small island of Siphnos and lives there for six years with Nicander's family. When pirates attack the island, Nicander and his family are killed while Anaxandra survives by scaring off the pirates by pretending to be Medusa. Found by Menelaus, king of Sparta, Anaxandra assumes the identity of Princess Callisto, believing that Menelaus will otherwise abandon her to her doom. Brought into Menelaus's household in Sparta, all the members of his family welcome her, except Menelaus’s beautiful wife, Helen. Suspicious of "Callisto," Helen's animosity towards Anaxandra places her in greater danger than ever. When Menelaus leaves for Crete to repay its king for slaves, Paris, a prince of Troy arrives to plunder Sparta's treasury and takes an eager Helen away with him. To save Helen's daughter Hermione from leaving, Anaxandra takes her place and soon becomes the sole protector of Helen's infant son, Pleisthenes. Upon arriving in Troy, Anaxandra is exposed again by Helen, who will stop at nothing to make Anaxandra suffer and neglects her own son in favour of her new life as the bride of Paris. Helen is quickly beloved by all of Troy, save Paris's sister Cassandra who has foreseen that Helen will destroy the city but is cursed so her prophecies will never be believed. In spite of her suffering, Anaxandra befriends Andromache, the bride of Prince Hector, and Cassandra. When Menelaus learns that Paris has stolen Helen and the treasures of Sparta, he calls upon his brother Agamemnon and all of Helen's former suitors who have sworn to defend his honour and to declare war upon Troy. As Helen revels in the war that will occur for her sake, Anaxandra finds herself falling in love with Euneus, the neutral king of Lemnos who is a friend of Hector. Torn between her love of Troy and her loyalty to Menelaus, Anaxandra must find a way to rescue Pleisthenes and return the young prince to his father before Troy is destroyed. |
Black Notice | Patricia Cornwell | 1,999 | Dr. Kay Scarpetta is still shocked by the tragic loss of Benton Wesley. She is trying to carry on, but she gets a letter from Benton, written before his death and left to Senator Lord, who had agreed to deliver it a year after his death. Dr Scarpetta and Marino start working on a new case after a body is found in a container arriving from Belgium. There is writing in the container that says "Bon voyage, le loup-garou" (Have a nice trip, the werewolf). The body has a strange tattoo and wears rich clothes and there are some baby-like hairs inside the garments. Kay and Marino get in touch with European Interpol and with Jay Talley, who calls them and makes them fly to Paris to meet the Chief Medical Examiner. They get to know that the body found in the container is a member of one of the richest and oldest families of Paris, the Chandonnes, who live in an ancient mansion on the Île St Louis. It is also rumored that this family has got a son with a rare disease that makes hair grow on his entire body (hypertrichosis). This person has always been hidden, and he is believed to have committed several murders. Kay and Jay have a short liaison, and it seems the man is really involved, while Dr Scarpetta tries to keep him at distance. Kay finds out that Lucy is in part involved in this case, since she is investigating a Miami group of weapons and drugs smugglers related to the Chandonnes, the "One Sixty-Fivers". Back to Richmond, Virginia, Kay and Marino deal with the case of a woman brutalized and killed in a little shop and with attempts from a member of Dr. Scarpetta's team to sabotage her. Thanks to Marino, they learn that the new police chief, Diane Bray, is behind the sabotage because she wants to get control on how investigations and exams are held. Bray is also behind a drugs-smuggling operation, but she is killed with the same modus operandi as the young woman in the shop. It is clear that the killer is at large and trying to kill the people investigating the death of the man in the container. Dr Scarpetta is in her house when the alarm rings. The police come quickly, but they find nothing. After a while, someone knocks at her door claiming to be a police officer and that someone had reported seeing a prowler. Kay does not realize that le loup garou is fluent in English, and she opens the door. She then realizes that she is under attack. During the struggle, Kay throws a bottle of formalin onto the loup garou's face, which temporarily blinds him. She then runs out of the house, but falls and breaks her elbow, making her unable to fire her gun. At this time, Lucy and Jo return, and Lucy runs over and points a gun at the assailant's head, with the intention of killing him, but Marino and Kay convince her not to do it. |
Song of the Saurials | Kate Novak | 1,991 | This novel is the final book of the Finders Stone Trilogy. |
The General of the Dead Army | Ismail Kadare | 1,963 | In the early 1960s, nearly 20 years since the Second World War ended, an Italian general, accompanied by a priest who is also an Italian army colonel, is sent to Albania to locate and collect the bones of his countrymen who had died during the war and return them for burial in Italy. As they organise digs and disinterment, they wonder at the scale of their task. The general talks to the priest about the futility of war and the meaninglessness of the enterprise. As they go deeper into the Albanian countryside they find they are being followed by another general who is looking for the bodies of German soldiers killed in World War II. Like his Italian counterpart, the German struggles with a thankless job looking for remains to take back home for burial, and questions the value of such gestures of national pride. |
Blanquerna | null | null | The central character of the novel named after him, Blanquerna, was born to Evast and Aloma. Before marrying, Evast, a nobleman, had wanted to follow a religious life but at the same time wished to experience matrimony. He became a merchant after his marriage to Aloma, and he gives his son an education based on religious and philosophical pursuits. In the second part of the novel, Blanquerna confronts the same choice his father did: between a celibate life and a married one. Blanquerna decides to become a hermit, which saddens his mother; she tries to have her son marry the beautiful Cana. But Blanquerna persuades Cana to become a nun, and she later becomes an abbess. Blanquerna also faces sexual temptation in the form of a maiden named Natana. This second part includes a description of the seven sins. In parts three through five of the novel, Blanquerna, having chosen a religious life, becomes a monk (though he desires to become a hermit instead), and quickly becomes an abbot. In time, he is elected pope. The road to the papacy pope is not easy; Blanquerna is constantly faced with troublesome decisions and temptations, and he is not perfect. Indeed, Blanquerna "is made credible precisely because he is prone to make mistakes and to experience temptation, and in the end this gives him an authority which other authorities are obliged to recognize." Blanquerna's life takes him through widely varying places and social strata, from uninhabited forests and wildernesses to the dense Roman urban landscape of thieves and prostitutes, from interactions with young maidens to interactions with popes and emperors. As he matures, Blanquerna listens to the advice of a jongleur, a "wise fool" named Ramon. Blanquerna reforms the Church completely as pope, with Ramon’s help, and finally becomes the hermit he had always desired to be. As a hermit, he composes a book of meditations to help his fellow hermits defeat temptation: this is the Llibre d'Amic e d'Amat, which consists of 365 love poems. This text "purports to offer the protagonist’s mystical confessions, based on personal experience and examples of 'Sufi preachers,' as a guide to contemplation within the apostolic utopia of a reform of contemporary Christendom." |
My Bonny Light Horseman | null | 2,008 | The story starts with Jacky back on sea after visiting her dear friend, Amy Trevelyne, after her adventures throughout the U.S. frontier. She sails her ship the "Nancy B. Alsop" while waiting for Jaimy to come back from the Orient to marry her. Soon though, a British warship, the HMS Dauntless has come to imprison Jacky and her crew but after an intense confrontation with Bliffil (an old nemesis of Jacky's) and British soldiers, Jacky surrenders, asking that the British spare her crew. Much to their dismay, Higgins and the Nancy B. Alsop accept this change and sail away. Despite Jacky's skeptic attitude once being aboard. She is realized as nothing but a young, innocent girl that was wrongly labeled a rogue by King George, despite Bliffil's slanderous accusation of her being known as "Tuppence a lay" on the HMS Dolphin and a threat to every man board. She soon meets up with two acquaintances, David "Davy" Jones and Joseph Jared and she befriends the Dr. Sebastian and Captain Hudson of the Dauntless. Bliffil nags and nags on Jacky, libeling her name like dirt until the crew can't take it no more. Bliffil is met with several threats if he ever insults Jacky but they do not come, especially from Jared. Jacky gains freedom of the ship at will for being such a good captive. She takes up with Dr. Sebastian and paints him a much-acclaimed portrait and portfolio. He shows her a rare Mexican dung beetle and she meets his other assistant. Once Captain Hudson hears and sees of her talent, he has her paint him a portrait of his own. Later, Hudson and Sebastian meet in private discussing how they feel about Jacky being a "rogue" and a "pirate" by the King himself and how Sebastian has even taken up the idea of adopting her. Jacky loves the thought of it, smirking. They sail to British waters but after the senior crew is struck with food poisoning, Jacky persuades Hudson to allow her to take command. While Hudson and the rest of the crew that ate the fish are ill, the Dauntless is attacked by the French and Dutch. Jacky is forced to strike colours, but not before she's had the ill officers brought to their stations on stretchers, to preserve their honor. The crew is taken to the French prison of Cherbourg. Jared takes to sleeping in the same bed as Jacky, to still her continuing nightmares. Hudson is soon paroled, and Jared assaults Bliffil as he continues to insult Jacky (Now claiming to be male Midshipman "Jack Kemp", a play on "Jack Hemp"). The Dauntless prisoners are joined by the captured crew of the HMS Mercury, and Jaimy has been severely wounded. Bliffil had passed a note to a guard, and Jacky is exposed as the pirate La Belle Jeune Fille sans Merci, "The Beautiful Young Girl Without Mercy". A lawyer by the name of Jardineaux comes for Jacky to take her to the guillotine. Jared once again attempts to kill Bliffil, but is beaten down by the guards. She is sent to be executed, but en route to the site of the execution, she is switched with another girl. She is sent back to London to meet with First Lord Thomas Grenville and Mr. Peel of Naval Intelligence, with Bliffil attending. Upon her arrival, she attacks the three and attempts to garrote Bliffil. Grenville and Peel smooth things over and she releases Bliffil from near-death. Grenville leaves Mr. Peel to give Jacky the mission and he informs her of the cover-up. British Intelligence wants the French to believe that Jacky Faber is dead in order to send her back across the channel as a spy. Jacky is to train as a ballerina, performing in a Parisian nightclub frequented by French officers, who often vie to "escort" the young girls home. She is told that if she refuses the mission, British Intelligence intends to "hurt" the ones she loves. Jacky cannot bear to lose her orphanage, but bargains to have Dr. Sebastian, Jaimy, Jared and Davey released. Jacky spends the next two weeks training in Ballet, shopping for new clothing and gear, and visiting both St Paul's Cathedral and the Fletcher household, family of her betrothed. Jaimy's father and brother both receive her much more warmly than his mother had (in Under the Jolly Roger), and grimly bear the news of Jaimy's injuries. The last night Jacky is in England is the first night Jaimy is at home, and the two share a tender moment before she has to leave for her mission. The British escort Jacky to France where they place her in Paris. She establishes herself in an apartment, and learns that Jardineaux is her "Control". She acquaints herself with her Royalist Handler by the name of Jean-Paul de Valdon and they establish a fast friendship, guiding her through the Notre Dame de Paris, The Louvre (notably, a painting of one of his relations, Charlotte Corday the assassin of Revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat Jacky joins the troupe "Le Petit Gamine" under the name Jacqueline Bouvier, and she is approached by her first target, one Field Marshal de Groote, nicknamed "The Goat" by the other girls. Jacky offers to meet him the following Tuesday evening, and then arranges for his wife to catch him "in the act". He arrives on the night of the sting dressed in a wolf mask, earlier having referred to her as "Little Red Riding Hood". After plying de Groote with Cognac laced with Paregoric and prying Napoleon's troop movements out of him, his wife arrives brandishing pistols. The ensuing altercation injures de Groote, disabling him and attracting the attention of the police. Jardineaux proposes to next have Jacky serve as a camp follower, trailing Napoleon's men. Jacky, offended, decides to dress as a man once again, this time joining Napoleon's messengers, granting her ready access to military documents. She assumes the name Jacques Bouvier a West Point Cadet. Upon arrival, she is given the duties of training a unit of inexperienced, untrained soldiers. She runs afoul of a Major Levesque but also makes friends amongst the officers and soldiers under her command. She and her soldiers, nicknamed the "Clod Hoppers" due to their rough, country origins meet Napoleon, presenting him with a captured Prussian flag. Soon afterwards, Jacky is reunited with Jean Paul and Randall Trebvelyne. They see action in the Battle of Jena and Napoleon releases her from the Army, awarding her a Legion of Honour. After war, she gives Mathilde to her assistant-in-war Denis Dufour. Meanwhile, Jaimy is fully awaken from his concussion and tries to find what happened to Jacky after the stint at the French prison. They find out she was working in Paris so they set sail aboard the Nancy B. Jacky's days of war are over and she reports back to Paris. She meets Jardineaux there, where things turn fierce. Jardineaux tells Jacky his disappointment in her for not killing Napoleon and brands her a traitor. He holds her at gunpoint and has her ride with him to the docks where he would kill her. Once there, Jean Paul appears to reveal more of what Jardineaux had plotted for Napoleon and just as soon as Jardineaux is about to kill Jacky. Jean Paul impales him with Jacky's shiv (which he had taken prior to her being taken to the dock), saving Jacky. Before this, however, Jardineaux showed Jacky that her ship, the Nancy B. Alsop was coming into dock. So she leaves Jean Paul at the dock to be picked up by Jaimy, Higgins and the rest of the crew, saying, "I have come home." |
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