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Room For Love | null | null | Jacquie Stuart has just turned 32 and she wants to do a major rewrite on her life. Her salary at a snarky film magazine barely covers her mortgage, her bratty sister has staked permanent claim to her couch, her best friend is in an obscenely happy marriage, and the only guy who really gets her is gay. Worst of all, she keeps falling for broke, self-involved commitment-phobes. In a moment of brilliance (and financial desperation) Jacquie takes a break from celebrity interviews to pitch a wild idea to an editor at a glossy women’s magazine: What would happen if she answered “Roommate Wanted” ads as a ploy to meet men? She would have intimate access to countless single guys. And as a potential roommate, she could unearth all the insights that usually stay buried on a first date: what books he reads, whether he cleans the bathroom sink, whose picture adorns his nightstand. Why, it’s untapped man market genius! And so it is that Jacquie embarks on a hunt designed to find way more than a place to hang her fabulous wardrobe. After colorful near-misses that bring her into the slums of the East Village, the brownstones of Brooklyn, and the dingier digs of the Upper East Side, Jacquie thinks she's finally found her dream guy and stuns her friends by moving out of her beloved apartment—and into his. Complications ensue that force her to question the shaky foundations of the bed she has made for herself. Jacquie’s been looking for love in other people’s homes all over town, but could the key to her happiness lie under her own roof? |
Tree: A Life Story | Wayne Grady | 2,004 | The book consists of five chapters: Birth, Taking Root, Growth, Maturity, and Death. The book opens with an Acknowledgments and an Introduction section, and closes with Selected References and Index. In the introduction, Suzuki describes the tree at his home and the series of ideas and events that led to the writing of the book. Along with the narrative of the tree's life, the book includes digressions into related topics, such as the history of botany and animal life in the forest. The tree written about in the book is not any specific Douglas-fir, but rather a generic one. The first chapter, Birth, begins with lightning starting a forest fire. The heat dries the Douglas-fir cones enough for their scales to spread and release winged seeds. Rain water transports one seed to a sunlit area with well-drained soil. Rodents and insectivores, whose food stashes were destroyed in the fire, eat truffles, which survived underground, and leave feces containing nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil. Following one dormant winter stage, the seed begins to germinate. In the second chapter, Taking Root, the embryonic root emerges through a small opening in the seed coat and through cell division, aided by plant hormones, it grows downward. Water and nutrients enter the root by osmosis and are transported to the seedling. A symbiotic relationship develops between the roots and the truffles. The roots give its extra sugars to the truffles, which it uses for energy, and the truffles assist the roots' uptake of water and nutrients. From excess starches and nutrients gathered by the root, a stem similar to the root but surrounded with thin, grayish bark, grows upwards. As the starch reserves are exhausted, its first needles sprout and photosynthesis begins. The tree anchors itself with a deep taproot and a web of roots begin to grow laterally. Some roots develop symbiotic relationships with near-by red alders which excel at nitrogen-fixation but lack the storage capacity that the Douglas-fir can offer. In early April of every year, a new layer grows between the bark and wood. As this new layer takes over transportation of fluids throughout the tree, last year's layer of cells die and form a ring in the wood. After about 20 years, the tree begins to develop fertile cones. Buds form where auxins accumulate; these become either new needles or cones. The buds remain undifferentiated until July and continue to develop throughout the fall and winter. The next year, some buds will open in mid-May exposing a new set of needles. The cone buds on the lower end of the tree while other buds burst open in April releasing a mist of pollen. The cones at the top of the tree open their scales for wind-borne pollen to enter. Within the cone, the pollen fertilizes a seed which is released in September. The quantity and quality of seed production varies year-to-year but a particularly effective crop is produced about every 10 years. Less than 0.1% of seeds survive Douglas Squirrels, Dark-eyed Juncos, and other seed-eating animals. Over the centuries, the tree grows thicker and taller as successive rings develop around its trunk and new buds grow on the branches. The tree becomes part of an old growth forest with a shaded and damp understory of broadleaf trees, shrubs, and ferns. In the canopy, a mat of dead needles and lichen accumulate on the wide upper branches. Exposed to light, air, and rain, the needles decompose and the mat becomes colonized by insects, fungus, and new plants. In the opening of the final chapter, Death, the tree is 550 years old and stands 80 meters (260 feet) tall. Under the weight of too much snow accumulating on the canopy mat, a branch breaks off. Stresses from a long winter with a dry summer weaken the tree's immune system. The exposed area where the branch broke becomes infected with insects and fungus. Insect larvae eat the buds and the fungus spreads into the middle of the tree and down to the roots. With its vascular tissue system compromised, the tree diverts nutrients elsewhere, resulting in needles turning orange on the abandoned branches. Death takes years to occur as successive parts are slowly starved of nutrients. As a snag, it becomes home to a succession of animals, like woodpeckers, owls, squirrels, and bats. Eventually the roots rot enough that a rainstorm blows it down. Mosses and fungi grow on the deadfall, followed by colonies of termites, ants, and mites, which all help decompose the remaining wood. |
Ah, But Your Land Is Beautiful | Alan Paton | 1,983 | The novel has multiple storylines that alternate one another, all reminiscent of the true-life experiences faced by Alan Paton and his political colleagues in resisting National Party rule in South Africa during the 1950s. The book is divided into six parts: Part One: The Defiance Campaign Part Two: The Cleft Stick Part Three: Come Back, Africa Part Four: Death of a Traitor Part Five: The Holy Church of Zion Part Six: Into the Golden Age It was originally conceived as the first part of a trilogy. |
Harvesting the Heart | Jodi Picoult | 1,993 | Paige O'Toole only has a few memories of her mother, who left her when she was five, one of the most vivid being painting winged horses on the ceiling of her childhood home. After she grows up, marries Nicholas and gets pregnant, she starts to doubt her own maternal love and ability, based on her history and lack of maternal care as a child. After their son Max slips off the couch and gets a nosebleed, she, questioning her own competence as a mother, flees and goes on a journey of self-discovery. Paige revisits her childhood home in Chicago and tracks down her mother, now teaching children how to ride horses. She understands more about her childhood and her mother, and returns to her husband and child. |
Blue Willow | Doris Gates | 1,940 | Janey Larkin is the ten-year-old daughter of a migrant family in San Joaquin Valley, California, in the late 1930s when America is still suffering the effects of the Great Depression. Her most treasured possession is a Blue Willow plate that had once belonged to her great-great-grandmother. The picture of a bridge and a stream and a little house on the willow pattern plate represents the permanent home she dreams of. Janey can barely remember her old home, a farm in Texas, and now that her father is an itinerant worker she has no place to call her own and no lasting friends, as the family has to move constantly. Despite the grinding poverty, the family is close and loving, and fun is had, as when Janey and her friend Lupe attend the county fair, and when the family goes fishing beside the river. When Janey's stepmother falls sick, they have difficulty paying the rent. The rent-collector, Bounce Reyburn, is unsympathetic, and Janey is faced with having to sacrifice her one treasure. |
Abbé Jules | Octave Mirbeau | 1,888 | After reading Dostoïevsky, Mirbeau plumbs the depths of psychology to describe a Catholic priest, Jules Dervelle, whose body and mind are rebelling against social oppression and the corruption of the Catholic Church. An indictment of the dreary materialism of provincial French society, where life is governed by cupidity and closed-mindedness, Octave Mirbeau’s 1888 novel, L'Abbé Jules also offers an indictment of the repressive institutions of family and religion. Object of his neighbors’ fearful curiosity, the novel’s eponymous hero, Jules Dervelle, constitutes, for the author, a vehicle for exploring the mysteries of the human psyche, the abuses of religion, and the human longing for the transcendental and the sacred. Returning to his native village of Viantais after a six-year absence in Paris, Jules revolutionizes his countrymen with his scandalous behavior and unorthodox religious views. Consenting to tutor his young nephew, Albert Dervelle – whom Mirbeau uses as an uncorrupted and innocent narrator – Jules exposes his ideas on sexuality, education, and man’s « quest for an ideal ». Retrospective narrative allows Mirbeau to recount Jules’s past, his introduction into the priesthood, and the scandalous behavior resulting in his subsequent exile to a remote parish. After his repatriation in Viantais, Jules installs himself in an overgrown country estate, where he delights in the unspoiled simplicity of nature. Wishing to instill in Albert the artlessness of animals, Jules instructs his young charge to throw away his books. He advises Albert that it is easier to « fabricate a Jesus or Mohammed » than it is to dismantle the adulterated social being that each individual has become so that can return to the original purity of his status as a “Nothing.” Jules is a self-contradictory and self-loathing character. He is a bibliomaniac who despises the artificiality of the knowledge found in books ; when he comes to finagle from Père Pamphile – an old Trinitarian monk, who is both a double and the opposite of Jules – money he needs for his library, Pamphile indignantly refuses. He is an enemy of Catholicism, but he yearns for an experience of the divine. Through Jules and Pamphile, two rich and complex characters, the author elaborates his evolving views on the social evils that pervert man's instincts, artistic sensibilities, and spiritual yearnings for the absolute. Robert Ziegler : « For the most part, the message of Mirbeau's novel is a negative one, aimed at exposing the imposture perpetuated by doctors, judges, educators and priests, demantling the symbolic systems that culture creates. Mirbeau's text designates literature as repository of meaning. » |
The Wonderful Country | Thomas C. Lea, III | 1,952 | Martin Brady, at age 14, flees to Mexico from Texas after he kills the man who murdered his father. Now, fourteen years later, in 1880s Mexico, he is called Martin Bredi. He is a hired gun for a rich Mexican rancher and Chihuahuan warlord, Cipriano Castro. Brady starts to feel like he would like to return to Texas. Castro send him north to Puerto, Texas, to guard a load of silver ore, with the intention of smuggling arms back to the Castros. When he gets to Texas he breaks his leg and has to stay put in the town while he heals. He is approached by the head of the Texas Ranger Division in Puerto about joining after the Captain confirms his identity and lets him know that he, Brady will not be prosecuted for killing his father's murderer. He also is enamored by the ranger captain's daughter, Louisa Rucker. After killing a man who injured a friend, he returns to Mexico again, and is sent on an impossible errand to deliver a load of gunpowder by General Marco Castro, the brother of Cipriano. The wagon blows up before it is delivered. After returning to Chihuahua, Cipriano Castro sends Brady on an errand to assassinate a rival Salcido, however the Castros are suspicious of him and have him followed. During his sojourn in Chihuahua, he meets an acquaintance from Puerto and learns that the man he killed was a criminal with a reward for his death. Wanted in the United States and now distrusted in Mexico, he makes his way back to Texas and on the way assists a lost column of Buffalo soldiers that is deep into Mexico fighting Apache Indians. Back in Texas Brady joins the Texas Rangers, as part of a deal for his being a wanted man, and helps them fight the Apaches back in Mexico. A crucial character to the story is Brady's horse, a black Andalusian stallion named Lágrimas ("tears"). |
The Book of Air and Shadows | null | null | Set concurrently in the 1600's and the current century, the novel is an intriguing and complex thriller based around the mystery of William Shakespeare. Jake Mishkin, a lonely and troubled lapsed Catholic intellectual property lawyer (though he is generally assumed to be Jewish-American despite his Waffen SS Officer grandfather) teams up with a young man, Albert Crosetti, who has taken a job at an antiquarian bookstore in the hope of saving enough to fund his studies at NYU film school. Together they hunt for Shakespeare's elusive lost manuscript. |
The Other Side | Jacqueline Woodson | 2,001 | The narrator and protagonist of the story is Clover, a young African-American girl. She lives beside a fence which segregates her town. Her mother instructs her never to climb over to the other side. Then one summer, she notices a white girl on the other side of the fence. The girl seems to be very lonely and is even outside when it's raining. Clover decides to talk to the girl on the other side of the fence. Both girls aren't allowed to cross the fence, so they simply decide to sit on the fence together. First, Clover's friends won't let Annie, the girl from the other side, play with them but then all of the girls realize that the fence (a symbol for segregation) should not be there. |
Genome | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | Alex Romanov is a pilot-spec, born on Earth, gets out of the hospital on the planet Mercury Bottom, where he spent six months after an accident. Alex meets Kim Ohara, a runaway fourteen-year-old girl, who is an unformed fighter-spec, escaped from her home on Eden. He invites the hungry girl to dine, but, during dinner, her metamorphosis kick in. Unfortunately, the process must take place in a hospital under the watchful eyes of qualified doctors, but Alex is out of money and does not know anyone on this planet. As a pilot-spec, Alex is psychologically incapable of not helping someone in his charge. He takes her to a cheap hotel (the Hilton) and tries to help her through the transformation. For this he needs medicine, but he has spent everything he had left on the hotel room. He uses the network terminal in the hotel to search for work. He surprisingly quickly locates a perfect and extremely attractive offer — the post of captain on a small but new ship Mirror with the right to choose his own crew. While Alex is skeptical that this is just too good to be true, he has no choice but to sign the contract. He gets his advance and uses the money to help Kim. During the metamorphosis, Kim reveals that she has a secret compartment in her body, containing a fairly large gel-crystal — one that is usually used in a supercomputer. The crystal costs a fortune, and the fact that a poor, hungry girl is carrying it around makes no sense at all. With Alex's help, Kim successfully goes through the metamorphosis overnight and is completely fine in the morning. She refuses to talk about herself or of how she got to the planet. She only confirms that she does not know anyone on the planet and has no job or identification. Taking command of his ship, Alex begins the process of hiring his new crew. He hires a Black-race doctor named Janet Ruelo from the quarantined planet Ebon, a spec with five specifications. Other crewmembers include a nineteen-year-old energetic-spec Paul Lurie and a navigator-natural Pak Generalov. Later, he hires a co-pilot, a spec named Hang Morrison. Instead of looking for a fighter-spec (the crew requirements are very specific in the contract), he decides to give Kim a try. However, this is problematic, given that she has no ID. In order to obtain one without contacting Eden, he has to bend the rules: Alex and Kim get temporarily married, Kim takes Alex's last name as her own, and gets a new ID as Kim Romanova. With his crew ready, Alex is ordered by the owner of the ship to take on several passengers and do whatever they ask. The passengers turn out to be two Czygu tourists, Zei-so and Sei-so, as well their guide-spec Danila C-third Shustov, an employee of the Sky Company, who are also the owners of the Mirror. Apparently, as Alex finds out, their job is to transport alien tourists to see Imperial planets. Unfortunately, the situation is not very pleasant. One of Janet Ruelo's specifications is as an executioner-spec, meaning she specialized in killing aliens and utterly hates them. Kim becomes hysterical, after finding out that one of their stops is the planet Eden, as she is afraid to return to her homeworld. Alex finds out that Pak Generalov pathologically hates clones and has a hard time accepting C-third on their ship. Alex has to convince Kim, demand Janet to give him a warrior's oath not to harm the Czygu, and reason with Generalov. There is another problem, however. After a genetic test, Alex finds out that Kim is not only a figher-spec, but also a hetaera-spec. The latter specification demands the love of her object of desire, who turns out to be Alex. But Alex, being a pilot-spec, is physically incapable of loving Kim. And Kim physically cannot stop loving Alex until he returns her feelings. The tour almost immediately results in a disaster. While entering the hyperchannel, another ship nearly collides with the Mirror which would have forced the ship to end up in Brauni space. Alex's Czygu passengers would have almost certainly been taken prisoner. Fortunately, with Janet's quick thinking, they were able to avoid the collision. During the flight, Kim reveals to Alex the secret of her gel-crystal. Apparently, the crystal contains an encoded personality of a friend of Kim's, an adolescent boy named Edgar. Edgar explained to Kim that his personality was artificially created to become a unique spec — a genetic constructor, a spec creator. Growing up within the crystal's virtual world, Edgar managed to gain access to the public network, meeting Kim. He then programmed his lab's robot to give the crystal to Kim and destroy the lab, so that everyone thinks that Edgar's crystal perished with it. Kim have long protected Edgar's secret, carrying his crystal inside her body. Unfortunately, her mother accidentally discovered the crystal and called the police. Kim and Edgar were forced to flee. Alex, connecting the crystal to his personal computer, enters Edgar's virtual world and meets the boy. While Edgar confirms Kim's story, Alex sees certain inconsistencies in his virtual surroundings and the boy's behavior. Alex asks Edgar for a favor — to create a substance which would temporarily disable a spec's emotional modifications. Alex wants to give this substance to Kim to "cure" her of her love for him. While no one believes that such a thing is possible, Alex finds out that Edgar is truly a genius. He gives Alex a formula to synthesize the blocker, and Alex orders it from a pharmaceutical lab on the planet New Ukraine. However, before risking giving an untested substance to Kim, Alex takes a few drops of it himself. The effect is nearly immediate — Alex loses the pleasurable feeling every pilot-spec gets during the neural connection with the ship. Also, he understands that this feeling, like the usual pleasures of sex — are simply shadows of the true feeling which he has been denied. Still not understanding what it means to love, Alex begins to feel sorrow and the feeling of enormous loss. Before landing on the planet Zodiac, the crew finds out that a crime has taken place on board the ship — Zei-so has been brutally murdered. The ship remains in orbit and receives two visitors: a detective-spec named Peter C-forty-fourth Valk, preferring the name Sherlock Holmes, and his assistant, a natural forensics expert Jenny Watson. While the crime itself is horrendous, the consequences are even more so. Apparently, Zei-so was an heiress to the Czygu throne. As such, the Czygu are preparing for an all-out war with the Empire. Since the forces are about even, the war is bound to devastate both species, and the victor will be too weak to stand against the other races, who will not miss their chance to gain extra territory. This has already happened to the once-mighty Taii, who are now a dying race. The Empire, faced with such prospects, will be forced to lift the quarantine of Ebon. The military power of Ebon is so great, that the Czygu will have no chance, but the other races will forget their differences and united against humanity. There is only one way of preventing the war — find the murderer within two days and show the Czygu undeniable proof that justice has been served. If Sei-so personally executes the killer, the war will be averted. Unfortunately, the murder was committed by a professional — no trace has been left in Zei-so's quarters. Also, every crew member had the opportunity and the motive to perform the deed. After further conversing with Edgar, Alex realizes who he really is. He is not an adolescent consciousness artificially grown in a gel-crystal. In fact, it is the consciousness of a long-dead legendary genetic constructor named Edward Garlitsky, who is credited with founding the science of specification. Garlitsky wanted to create a superhuman, who would unite all the enhancements from all specs. Unfortunately, his work was not only deemed unneeded, it was seen as dangerous. Garlitsky was fired and, at the Emperor's decree, his consciousness was copied onto a gel-crystal and his body destroyed, so he could continue working on specifications but under a watchful eye of the overseers. Unable to find another way out, Garlitsky saw his chance when he was requested to create a new secret agent specification. He made certain unnoticed alterations to the specification, like a hidden pouch in the stomach. This child turned out to be Kim Ohara. Garlitsky made contact with her, falsifying his identity, and convinced her to help him escape. His goal is to become a physical human again. When Alex claims he knows the identity of the killer, the detective-spec allows him to do whatever is necessary to reveal him or her. Using Edgar's blocker, Alex reveals the killer — an undercover agent-spec, pretending to be a member of the crew. The killer is apprehended and executed, although Sei-so is critically wounded in the process. Unfortunately, further investigation turns out to be fruitless, as everything points to people too powerful to accuse. The Sky Company is bankrupted, and the crew of the Mirror is fired. The body of the executed person is bought out by Kim, who plans to give it Edward "Edgar" Garlitsky. Alex begins to understand that the effect of Edgar's substance is not temporary, which means that he will retain the ability to love for a long time, possibly forever. |
Escape from Hell | Jerry Pournelle | null | Following events in the first novel, in which Carpenter learned that it is possible to leave Hell, Carpenter wants to help others in the way his benefactor helped him. Carpenter meets and travels through all the circles of the Hell described by Dante. He is accompanied in his travels by Sylvia Plath (whom he rescues from the Wood of the Suicides by burning her tree, causing her physical body to reform itself), attempting to understand the purpose of Hell and free many of the damned. Carpenter discovers that, apparently because he returned to Hell of his own free will to help others, he now possesses powers and abilities such as his mentor, Benito, also displayed. In his travels, Carpenter meets many well-known individuals deceased as of 2009. In addition to Plath, some of the notables encountered by Carpenter include: * Lester del Rey * Anna Nicole Smith * Else Frenkel-Brunswik * George Lincoln Rockwell * Ted Hughes * Charles Francis Adams, Sr. * Albert Camus * Carl Sagan * Seung-Hui Cho * Kenneth Lay * Aimee Semple McPherson * Peter Lawford * J. Edgar Hoover * Melvin Belli * Reinhard Heydrich * Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell * Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet * Jesse M. Unruh * Leon Trotsky * Pontius Pilate * J. Robert Oppenheimer * Frank Harris In the end, and partly as the consequence of some unusual changes to Hell itself, Carpenter not so much escapes as that he is shown the door for being a troublemaker. |
Beware The Fish! | Gordon Korman | 1,980 | Macdonald Hall is having a severe budget problem. The Headmaster, William R. Sturgeon or by his nickname, The Fish, is taking budgetary measures like lowering dormitory temperatures and removing junk food from the menus in the cafeteria. When Bruno and Boots figure this out after being forced into Dormitory 2 with Elmer Drimsdale when he closes the third dorm building, they decide to try to gain Macdonald Hall some publicity in order to enroll more students and solve their money problems. Elmer Drimsdale comes up with a new machine that mimics a broadcasting system, with a lens and microphone pointed at a labeled diagram of a Pacific king salmon, but he informs the hopeful two that it won't broadcast further than the room. Still, Bruno uses it to channel his frustrations by pretending to be a conspirator of an evil fish organization (never appearing on camera but narrating the plans of the conspiracy). Unknown to Elmer and Bruno, the device can actually broadcast a radius of 43 kilometres around the school and overpower all commercial television broadcasts on its frequency within that range. Meanwhile, everyone is trying to think of ideas of coming up with publicity. This leads to the idea of breaking the world record of the largest tin can pyramid. During the nights of the weekend almost the entire student body leaves the property to go and collect soda cans from nearby townships and villages. Bruno and Boots go all the way to Toronto, hitching a ride in the morning on a school bus field trip back to Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School For Young Ladies, the girls' school across from Macdonald Hall. Throughout the novel two undercover agents stay in separate rooms right next to each other at a hotel in the town of Chutney, one from the RCMP, the other from the OPP, investigating the fish conspiracy that people had been complaining about seeing on their televisions. They are both at first under the impression that the other is “The Fish,” the head of the evil organization, but soon trace the investigation back to Macdonald Hall. During a night of interruption from Ms. Scrimmage who catches the boys from the hall trespassing on the property, she along with Mr. Sturgeon unwittingly come upon all the stored cans in the vacant dormitory three. The boys had been coming to get all the cans from the girls who'd also been collecting them. Mr. Sturgeon expects Bruno and Boots to be the culprits, but just before they tell him of the whole process, they are saved by Cathy Burton, one of their friends from Scrimmage's, who tells him that the cans are her collection. Thus, the cans are removed from the property to be stored at Scrimmage's and Sturgeon does not dispute this claim considering that Ms. Scrimmage, who has been annoying him, will have to deal with them herself. In the climax, the police form a barricade around the school to attempt to arrest Sturgeon, whom they believe to be The Fish, due to his surname and the nickname "the Fish" that the students have given him. All the students, from both schools, come out in wonder. Everything is exposed as Bruno reveals it was Elmer's device that had caused it, but he hadn't known it was that powerful. Due to all the exposure from the police, the explosion due to Elmer's equipment being buried with the chemicals reacting to the shotgun blasts from Ms. Scrimmage, and most of all the press that had arrived to capture The Fish being caught, the right message gets through and the school gets its publicity. A record enrollment comes up for next year, solving all the school's money problems. In the end, Ms. Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies wins the world record for the largest tin can pyramid, to Bruno's severe chagrin. Macdonald Hall is stated to be located along Highway 48 and seven miles south of the fictitious town of Chutney, Ontario. (pop. 3100) |
Land of Terror | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,944 | The novel relates the adventures of David Innes on his return from Lo-Har to Sari in the wake of the events of Back to the Stone Age. It is divided into five adventures: * The Oog Women (chapters 1-4) * Among the Jukans (chapters 5-15) * With the Azar giants (chapters 16-18) * Captured by the giant Ants (chapters 19-21) * On the Floating Island of Ruva (chapters 22-28) |
Savage Pellucidar | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,962 | 'The Return to Pellucidar'. David Innes goes for a war and becomes a POW again, while Abner Perry makes a balloon, which escapes with Dian the Beautiful in it. 'Men of the Bronze Age'. Dian meets the people who have advanced to bronze age and is made a goddess. 'Tiger Girl'. David Innes goes after Dian in another balloon, he plays the role of a god. 'Savage Pellucidar'. Two separate search parties are looking for the lost ones without knowing the other has already found the ones they are seeking. |
The Remorseful Day | Colin Dexter | 1,999 | Morse tries to solve the unsolved murder of Yvonne Harrison as his health deteriorates. Morse dies of cardiac failure at the end of the story. |
Logan's World | William F. Nolan | 1,977 | Logan and Jessica have lived on Argos (the fabled Sanctuary), a space station in orbit about Mars, for four years, along with three thousand other Runners. They have a two-year-old son named Jaq. On Earth, Ballard's escape line for Runners at Cape Steinbeck is discovered and destroyed by Deep Sleep operatives. Ballard escapes to Crazy Horse Mountain, and sabotages the Thinker complex buried in the catacombs below the statue. Although he is killed in the explosion, he succeeds in destroying the computer network and making the world free. With Ballard's death, supply ships to Argos cease. For six more years the Runners there hang on, until there are less than a few dozen of them. They have no more food, and plague is running rampant. They draw straws—a handful will return to Earth. Logan, Jessica and Jaq are among those chosen. Logan and family settle with a group called the Wilderness People along the Potomac River in Washington D. C. Life is tough—learning to farm is not easy—but good until Jaq falls deathly ill. Logan sneaks back into the Angeles Complex to get medicine for his son. While he is gone, an insane pack of devilstick-riding Borgia gypsies murders Jaq and kidnaps Jessica. Logan finds himself on the run again, this time to save his wife, and to avenge his murdered child. As the story unfolds, he meets blind mystics who live on the rusted shell of the Golden Gate Bridge, he travels to the New York Complex, and finally back to Crazy Horse Mountain where he discovers the Thinker is being reactivated by Gant, a former DS man, one who passionately hates Logan for his part in destroying his world. Gant has purchased Jessica from the gypsies to lure Logan into a trap. Mary Mary, a young woman, who as a "Cub" met Logan and Jessica on their earlier run, helps them defeat Gant's plan to reenslave mankind. |
Bones of the Hills | Conn Iggulden | 2,008 | Genghis Khan, powerful leader of a nation united from the tribes, is victorious in the long war against the Chin, the Mongolians' ancient foe. Now trouble arises from another direction: his embassies to the west are rebuffed, his ambassadors murdered. The nation must embark on its greatest journey, through present day Iran and Iraq, to the edges of India. They face enemies as powerful and ancient as any they have known and the Khan's path will lead them either to victory or utter destruction. Genghis has proved himself as a warrior and a leader. He must now face the challenges of civilisation, what it will mean for his people and those who come after him. His sons have become generals. He must choose between them before they destroy all he has built. sv:Bergens väktare |
Synthetic Men of Mars | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,940 | Like several previous novels in the Barsoom series, Synthetic Men introduces a completely new character as its protagonist: Vor Daj, a warrior from Helium and a member of John Carter's personal guard. Vor Daj narrates the action in the first person, so that when John Carter appears in the story, he is described in the third person (unlike other Barsoomian novels that feature Carter as the first-person narrator). Synthetic Men also brings back a familiar character, Ras Thavas, a brilliant but evil scientist who functions as the villain in The Master Mind of Mars. |
Jumper: Griffin's Story | Steven Gould | null | The novel focuses on the character Griffin which was created by screenwriter David Goyer specifically for the film. Because Griffin had not appeared in Gould's two prior Jumper novels (dealing with David Rice and Millie Harrison), Gould developed Jumper: Griffin's Story as a backstory of the character's early childhood before the film. When writing the novel, Gould had to work closely with a producer of the film to ensure that the story did not conflict with the film's premise. |
Bella at Midnight | Bagram Ibatoulline | 2,006 | ,Maud sister Catherine has just married Sir Edward of Burning Wood when he forbids her to see her family again. Three years later, Maud receives an urgent summons from her brother-in-law to aid her sister in childbirth. The child is delivered safely, but Catherine falls ill and dies. Edward flies into a fury and orders Maud to get rid of the child. Maud christens the child Isabel, after her late mother, and gives her to the family of a blacksmith named Martin. His wife, Beatrice, recently served as a wet nurse to the fourth son of the king, Prince Julian. The prince frequently returns to visit over the course of his childhood, and he and Isabel, or "Bella", become fast friends. One day, when Julian is older, he is approached by Bella in front of his peers. But instead of acknowledging her as a friend, he pretends not to know her. Later, he is on his way to apologize to her when a messenger stops him to inform him that he is to be a hostage in a neighboring kingdom, Brutanna, with which they had been at war. The captivity is to enforce a peace treaty between the two kingdoms. Some time later, Maud returns to Bella's village with a summons from her father, who has recently remarried. Bella sorrowfully leaves her family and journeys with her aunt to meet her father. Once there she finds him still cold and cruel, and her stepmother Matilda and stepsister Marianne unkind as well. Her other stepsister Alice has been silent ever since the death of her father. Marianne becomes lady-in-waiting to the queen, and thus is privy to some royal secrets. When she comes home she gossips with her family about the plot to attack Brutanna at the expense of Julian's life. Bella cries out in protest and expresses her intent to save him, but her stepmother, trying to protect Marianne's place at court, locks her in the storeroom. Alice sneaks to the storeroom and gives Bella a hairpin to pick the lock with. Once she is free, Alice gives her a ring that shows her the person she wants to see. Bella flees to Maud's house, and Maud gives her the means to save Julian, including a gown and glass slippers. Bella rides to Brutanna as quickly as possible and warns Julian of the king's plot. Julian rides out to convince his brother to leave, but he is captured. A battle begins between the soldiers of the two kingdoms when the Worthy Knight appears, halting the battle and blinding King Gilbert. Julian searches for Bella, but only finds her possessions. Sadly, he returns home to act as regent for his brother. He visits Sir Edward's family, where Alice shows him how to use the ring. He sees the Knight and asks Alice to accompany him to find the Knight. They return to Brutanna to discover that the Worthy Knight is none other than Bella. She is heavily wounded but recovering in the care of a poor man and his son. Julian brings her back to Moranmoor and takes her to visit her adoptive family. He asks Martin for Bella's hand in marriage, and, having consulted Bella and receiving a positive answer, accepts. |
The Forbidden City | Ian Page | 1,986 | The series plays for the most part at the tip of south-eastern Magnamund, in the land then known as the Shadakine Empire. A tyrant called Shasarak the Wytch-King has subjugated the people and with the help of seven Shadaki Wytches is ruling with an iron fist. The Second installment of the World of Lone Wolf series takes place after Grey Star has found the Lost Tribe of Azanam. Grey Star begins his journey with the aid of a Kundi mystic named Urik, and journeys through Desolation Valley, beyond the Mountains of Morn. There, he makes new allies, faces new dangers, and helps to stoke the flames of a fledgling rebellion against the Shadakine Empire, all in a desperate attempt to find the Shadow Gate and travel through it to the Daziarn plane and retrieve the Moonstone of the Shianti. |
The Beggar of Volubilis | Caroline Lawrence | 2,008 | Flavia takes a vow to the goddess Diana to renounce men, and almost immediately her vow is tested by a proposal of marriage from Flaccus. Her father is furious at her refusal and orders Flavia and Nubia to stay inside the house while he goes to Alexandria. Defying her father's orders, Flavia takes on a mission from the emperor Titus to find a lost gem, an unusual emerald which is the subject of a prophecy. She is particularly keen to do so because the emperor wants them to start looking in North Africa, which is where she believes her uncle Gaius has gone, despite the general opinion that he has committed suicide by drowning. She and her three companions take a boat to Sabratha, but there lose all their money and possessions. Narcissus, a pantomime performer, hires them as musicians and they join a caravan to cross the Sahara desert. In the weeks of travel they become accomplished performers, learn to handle camels and discover the dangers as well as the beauties of the desert. In Volubilis they find both Gaius and the emerald, but it is not as easy to take them back to Italy as they had supposed. During the adventure, they meet a woman who claims to be descended from Cleopatra and a man who could be the late emperor Nero. |
The War With Mr. Wizzle | Gordon Korman | 1,982 | Macdonald Hall starts off the year in a fix due to a new dress code, and Bruno, Boots, and the rest of the ensemble soon find out that a new assistant, Walter C. Wizzle, is instituting the new functions. He institutes a dress code, a demerit system, schedules psychological tests for the students, and worst of all, calls the institute in danger of becoming 'a dinosaur' and starts installing a new software program called Wizzleware (that he wrote himself) to handle all office, school, and teaching functions. The school atmosphere becomes strict and restricted for everyone, including the teachers, staff, and Headmaster Sturgeon. The only person not standing for it is Bruno Walton, who starts up a committee against Wizzle and his functions, and with the gradual help of other students comes up of ways to remove Wizzle from the school. They write a Free Press newspaper, exchange his anticipated printer paper with toilet paper and napkins, and work at night in the gym building a large comic Wizzle balloon. With the help of genius Elmer Drimsdale and a device he created (along with a convincing presentation supporting the "fact" that Wizzle's guest cottage is along a fault line), they give Wizzle earthquakes at night. But the problems aren't only at Macdonald Hall - across the road at Scrimmage's Finishing School for Young Ladies, Ms. Scrimmage hires a new assistant for herself, Ms. Peabody, who is from the Marines. She turns the school into an army camp with her strict physical training exercises and morning calisthenics. Both schools have their share of problems and both have their own number of counter-attacks on the assistants. Eventually, Sturgeon, who loathes Wizzle himself, realizes what his students are doing and orders them to stop the harassment and disband the committee, even while he refuses Wizzle's advise to have Bruno expelled for his disrespectful behaviour (although the assistant is unaware of the true scope of the boy's resistance). However, Bruno and Cathy, from Scrimmage's, joining their forces as The Coalition, get the idea to marry the two assistants off. Through romantic talking and dinners they actually manage to get them married, and the two schools turn back to normal. However, Sturgeon, although pleased at the departure of Wizzle, takes a firm hand at his students' flouting his prohibition of the resistance. He institutes a new school rule forbidding the formation of any student organizations without the approval and participation of the faculty and creates a new committee to order Bruno and his upper echelon comrades in The Committee to wash dishes for a few months as punishment. |
How to Survive Summer Camp | null | null | Stella goes to summer camp while her mother and stepfather are on their honeymoon.Since Stella is scared of swimming her mother promised her that she will not have to swim eventhough later on she is forced to swim by the brigadier. At summer camp she befriends a girl called Marzipan but does not get on with Louise and her friend Karen, two rather vile girls who nickname the main character Baldy due to her short hair cut. There are some strange goings on: a crying noise in the night, Stella's fairytale book falling apart and a wet patch in the bedroom. Stella soon discovers this was all caused by a fox, who was being looked after by the cleaning lady,as he had hurt his paw. |
Very Hard Choices | Spider Robinson | 2,008 | In this novel, Nika and Russell discover that protecting the secret of Smelly's telepathic abilities has brought them into conflict with the Central Intelligence Agency, who have been pursuing him since his escape from the MK Ultra Project in the 1960s. |
Brigands M.C. | Robert Muchamore | 2,009 | The book begins in 2003 with the death of Dante Scott's mother, father, older sister and brother at the hands of the Brigands M.C. South Devon President, The Führer, after Dante's father refuses to go through with the plans to redevelop the Brigands' clubhouse, turning it into shops and flats. After saving his eighteen-month-old sister Holly from the burning house (the Führer attempted to burn all evidence), nine-year-old Dante escapes, is put under the wing of child psychologist Ross Johnson, and is questioned by police in an attempt to convict the Führer. On the night of the murders he was forced into a boxing fight with Martin, the Führer's eldest son, and got blood on his shirt; he lies to the police telling them that it was a 'nosebleed'. The defence solicitors could use the unreliability of his statement to clear the Führer. Much to Dante's fury, the courts decide that there is insufficient evidence to convict the Führer, and he is released. After moving in with a foster family, a member of another Brigands chapter attempts to murder him with a bomb inside a toy car on his birthday. Shaken, Dante moves in under the care of Ross again. Dante is drugged by Jennifer Mitchum (the same person that drugged James Adams in "The Recruit") and is sent to CHERUB where he befriends Lauren Onions (soon to be changed to Lauren Adams). 4½ years later Neil Gauche, an undercover policeman who is a part of a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C., tries to join them. Unfortunately, the Führer realises he is a policeman and knocks him out. Ross and Neil visit CHERUB Campus and James Adams, Dante and Lauren are assigned to a mission to infiltrate the Brigands M.C. with their last names changed to Raven. To avoid Dante’s old friends recognizing him, Dante also changes his first name to John. Dante and Lauren make friends with Joe Donnington (the Führer's younger son). Meanwhile James purchases a new bike, and is invited on a run with the Brigands. He ends up being ‘hero worshipped’ by Dirty Dave after James saves his life when a member of the Vengefuls tries to stab him with a sharpened hammer. At the same time Jake McEwen and Neil attempt to uncover a weapons deal orchestrated by the Brigands, worth £600,000 by following two friends of James: Julian and Nigel. When James gets to The Rebel Tea Party, a biker war breaks out between the Brigands and three other gangs (The Vengeful Bastards, Satan's Prodigy and the Bitch Slappers), but James manages to escape. Meanwhile Dante and Lauren end up at Joe’s house party which is invaded by sixth formers ending in police being called after windows get broken and a fight breaks out between Joe, Dante, Lauren and the party-crashers. Unfortunately, Julian later gets scared and confesses to his father, who is a judge. This leads to riot police arresting McEwen and Neil, blowing the operation and McEwen ‘nutting’ a riot officer who insulted his intelligence, resulting in McEwen being forced to six months file sorting in the basement of CHERUB’s mission building. Since the mission is ending, the agents are sent back to campus. Before Dante leaves, he sneaks into the Führer's house, intent on killing him, but can't bring himself to do it. Instead he carves a message into the Fürher's table, implying he is a member of the Vengeful Bastards, to give the Führer something to think about. Dante takes an old photograph from the Führer's study of his and the Führer's family together. James also gets invited to become a stripper at "Dirty Dave's" Devon Strip Joint but refuses and leaves. Lauren, Chloe Blake (the mission controller and posing as the mother of the family) and Dante get a good laugh out of this. |
The Forever King | Molly Cochran | 1,992 | From the front inside flap of The Forever King: In a darkened house not far from the place where Camelot may once have stood, a madman schemes. Once the cup that men call the Holy Grail was his. Soon it will be his again. The Grail’s protectors are few and weak: an alcohol-soaked ex-FBI agent; a courtly old gentleman who once, long ago, held awesome power; and a ten year old boy. Arthur Blessing is no ordinary boy. The Grail is his by chance, this time, but the power to keep it-is his by right. Now he must stay alive long enough to use that power. Arthur needs a defender, a man of great strength, skill, purity, and faith. Fate has given him Hal Woczniak, a broken-down drifter plagued by nightmare memories of a dead child. When Hal quit the FBI, he practically quit the human race as well. Now, at the darkest time in his life, he is offered the chance to redeem himself. One he failed to save a child. Once he failed to save a world. He will not fail again. |
Beyond the Nightmare Gate | Ian Page | 1,986 | The series plays for the most part at the tip of south-eastern Magnamund, in the land then known as the Shadakine Empire. A tyrant called Shasarak the Wytch-King has subjugated the people and with the help of seven Shadaki Wytches is ruling with an iron fist. In an attempt to find the lost Moonstone of the Shianti and destroy the Shadakine empire, Grey Star made his way to the location of the Shadow Gate and beyond into the realm of the Daziarn itself. The Daziarn is a shadow realm with many strange beings and fearsome creatures inhabiting it. Grey Star is forced to travel across the gray plains of the Neverness to find the Moonstone but comes upon an unexpected ally; one he thought he would never see again. With her help, he must retrieve the moonstone and find a way to return to Magnamund if the Wytch-King is to be defeated. |
The Mucker | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,921 | Billy Byrne is a low class American born in Chicago's ghetto. He grows up a thief and a mugger. "Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough." He is not chivalrous nor kind, and has only meager ethics - never giving evidence against a friend or leaving someone behind. He chooses a life of robbery and violence, disrespecting those who work for a living. He has a deep hatred for wealthy society. He trains as a prizefighter but can not stop drinking. When falsely accused of murder, he flees to San Francisco and is shanghaied aboard a ship. Ironically, enforced sobriety, brutal ship's discipline and productive work improves him. The ship's secret mission is soon enacted - the hijacking of a specific yacht to take a millionaire's daughter, Barbara Harding, for ransom. Billy Byrne brutally beats her suitor, Billy Mallory, leaving him for dead. "He knew that she looked down upon him as an inferior being. She was of the class that addressed those in his walk of life as 'my man.'" After Barbara confronts him and calls him a coward, a change begins in Billy Byrne. He saves the life of one kidnapper, Theriere, rather than letting him be washed overboard, though he cannot fathom his own reasons. After a terrible storm, the ship is damaged and only makes it to land with Billy's help at the wheel. He rescues Barbara from the wreck and brings her ashore. Barbara is kidnapped by headhunters descended from medieval Japanese. Byrne and Theriere race to rescue her from the daimyo's hut in the middle of the village, but Theriere is fatally wounded in the escape. Billy protects Barbara from the jungle for weeks while his own wounds heal. After realizing he's in love with her, he agrees to let her teach him how to speak properly. When he is again wounded while rescuing two of her father's ships officers from savages, she confesses her love for him also. Learning that Mallory is still alive, and being held by the headhunters along with her father, Billy sets off to free them. During their escape, Billy is severely injured. Certain he is mortally wounded, he sends Mr. Harding and Mallory to care for Barbara. However, the next day finds him clinging to life, and he slowly retraces his steps to where he left Barbara. Believing him dead, they have all left. Months later, he is picked up by a ship. Upon returning to the States, Billy gets a job as a fighter. As he reads about his victory in the papers, he spots a small notice that Barbara's engagement to Mallory has been broken. Coincidentally, Barbara sees the news about Billy's fight, and sends for him. As he enters her father's posh home, he realizes that he can never fit in there. He explains that the gulf between them cannot be bridged, and that she and Mallory must marry. PART TWO - The Return of the Mucker (or "The Man Without A Soul") Billy returns to his old Chicago haunts intending to clear his name. His time with Barbara imbued him with faith in the law and justice. However, he soon realizes that the system is more interested in finding someone guilty than in finding the guilty party. Awaiting the verdict, he reads that Barbara and Mallory are about to marry. He is found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Disillusioned, he jumps from the train carrying him to the state prison. He falls in with Bridge, a poetic gentleman tramp who refuses to turn him in after finding out he's on the lam. He and Bridge head south, pursued by a detective. To avoid capture, Billy determines to cross to Mexico, and Bridge elects to come along. Mexico is torn by internal warfare, and they are quickly captured by a bandit general, Pesita. He hires Billy into his private army, but Bridge has to seek work at a nearby American ranch. The ranch is owned by Mr. Harding, who has foolishly brought his daughter Barbara to this unstable country, at her insistence, to escape questions about her cancelled marriage. In the meantime, Billy is sent to case a garrisoned town to plan for Pesita's force to storm and rob the bank. Billy finds the layout trivial and stealthily robs it himself. Coincidentally, Bridge has been sent to the same town to collect the payroll from the bank. Bridge notices a figure on horseback as Billy leaves town. Bridge gives chase to the unknown horseman, and the two exchange fire before recognizing each other. Billy's horse is killed, so Bridge insists he take his ranch horse, Brazos, and escape before the garrison catches him. Back at the American ranch, some hands spot a large American riding Brazos during a raid by Pesita. The foreman demands that Bridge explain, but he cannot without betraying Billy. All assume Bridge robbed the bank, and the foreman plans to turn him over to general Villa, who will hang him. Barbara helps him escape, but he is later captured. Barbara pays a shady native, Jose, to take a message to the unknown large American, asking him to aid the imprisoned Bridge. Billy rescues Bridge from jail and they ride back to Pesita's headquarters. When Billy learns that Brazos belongs to an unnamed girl Bridge admires, he decided to return the horse regardless of his own safety. An errand for Pesita stops him at Jose's house, where he is captured by the American foreman and some of Villa's men. Knowing he robbed the bank, they secure him for the night at the ranch. Barbara comes to talk to the unknown American, and discovers Billy. She helps him to escape, and immediately afterward she is kidnapped. Billy learns about the kidnapping and races back to the ranch. He and the American hands ride out to search for her. The Mexican hands decide to go into town, leaving only Mr. Harding and three servants. Pesita learns that the American ranch is ripe for a raid. Bridge overhears this, takes off to the ranch and organizes its pitiful defences. Billy tracks Barbara to a native village and rescues her. They return to the ranch in time to save Bridge and Mr. Harding, and they all ride for the USA. At the border military compound, Billy tells Barbara he won't give her up again, and they plan to leave the country. Billy runs into the detective who had chased him, and finds out the guilty man has confessed and Billy himself has been pardoned. Mr. Harding, Barbara and Billy depart for New York, and Bridge returns to his vagabond life. |
The Blade Itself | Marcus Sakey | 2,007 | The novel, set in Chicago, is the story of two childhood friends and young criminals, Danny Carer and Evan McGann. Years after their criminal partnership dissolved, just as Carter has reformed himself and started a respectable new life, his former partner soon returns from prison to threaten Carter's peaceful new existence with demands of re-teaming. |
A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living | Michael Dahlie | 2,008 | The book is about a man, named Arthur Camden, who is the great-grandson of the owner of a club which is named Maidenhead Grange. The club is a beloved Catskills fly-fishing lounge. The lounge is home to the Hanover Street Fly Casters, a group that was founded in 1878 by 12 Manhattan financiers. Arther burns Maidenhead Grange to the ground. He didn't burn down the club on purpose, he did it on accident. Arthur has also destroyed his marriage and an import-export business that is owned by his family. |
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules | Jeff Kinney | 2,008 | Greg is enrolled into swimming class. Meanwhile, his older brother, Rodrick, tries to push him, holds a wild party in the house, writes an embarrassing essay about "100 years ago" and gets in a fight. The next day, he gets his band, Loded Diper, to perform at a school talent show. During the song, Greg filmed them performing but when he filmed Mom, the person who started the "Mom Bucks" program, he stayed there till the song was over and they find out that all the acts were shared with another act. A few days later they spend a night Grandma's house as he spits milk on Greg then Greg runs after Rodrick in his underwear then he goes in the ladies bathroom when a women thinks he's a peeping tom. The story ends with Greg uploading a video on the internet called "Dancing Mom" then it becomes an instant hit because of his mom dancing to Rodrick's band in the video. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is the second book in a seven book franchise. The third, The Last Straw was released January 13, 2009, has been on the list for 65 weeks (peaking at number 1). The fourth, Dog Days was released October 12, 2009. The book was peaking at #1 for all 25 weeks of publication, making Dog Days the #1 Best Selling Book of 2009. The fifth, The Ugly Truth was released November 9, 2010. The sixth, Cabin Fever was released November 15, 2011. The seventh, The Third Wheel will release on November 13, 2012. Rodrick Rules has been on the sellers list for 117 as of April 4, 2010. |
Trelawny of the 'Wells' | Arthur Wing Pinero | null | Trelawny of the 'Wells tells the story of Rose Trelawny, a popular star of melodrama plays at the Barridge Wells Theatre (a thinly disguised Sadler's Wells Theatre). Rose gives up the stage when she decides to marry her sweetheart, Arthur Gower, in order to please his conservative family. She finds life with Arthur's grandfather and great-aunt, Sir William and Lady Tralfagar, unbearably dull and they detest her loud and unrestrained personality. Rose runs back to the theatre, abandoning Arthur. But her experience of the 'real world' has killed her talent for melodrama, and she cannot recapture the liveliness that had made her a star. Meanwhile, Arthur has secretly run away to become an actor at the Bristol Old Vic. The problem is solved when Rose encounters Sir William again, and she reawakens his memory of admiring the great actor Edmund Kean as a young man. Sir William offers to help Rose's friend Tom Wrench, an aspiring playwright who dreams of staging plays in a more realist style than the melodramas that dominate the stage. Tom stages the play with Rose as the star, and her newfound seriousness fits his style perfectly. Tom secretly arranges for Arthur to play the leading male role, and the lovers are reunited on stage. |
City of Bones | Cassandra Clare | 2,007 | Fifteen-year-old Brooklynite Clary Fray is at a nightclub with her best friend Simon when she witnesses a murder by a group of teens at the club she is at, surprised that Simon and the club's security guard cannot see the killer, a teenage boy called Jace. Jace claims that the boy he murdered was a demon before Clary leaves with Simon, confused by how she can see them yet no one else could. The next day, while at a coffee shop with Simon, Clary sees Jace yet again, once again invisible to everyone but her. After Clary hesitantly goes outside with him, he offers to introduce her to his "tutor." Before she can respond, she receives a distressing phone call from her mother, who frantically demands her not to come home, obviously to avoid some type of danger. Clary ignores her mother's warnings and rushes home anyways. Upon her arrival, she finds her mother missing, the apartment trashed, and a monstrous creature (later revealed to being a Ravener demon) waiting. She defeats the creature by shoving a weapon of Jace’s, called a Sensor, down its throat, but is injured in the process. Jace, who is a demon fighter known as a Shadowhunter, finds her and takes her to his home, called "The Institute." The Institute is an old Gothic cathedral that humans, known by the term "mundanes" or "mundies" in the Shadowhunter world, can't see, because it is shaded from human eyes with magic called glamour. Here, she recuperates; sleeping for three days. After she wakes up, she meets Hodge Starkweather, Jace's tutor, as well as his adoptive siblings Isabelle and Alec Lightwood. Hodge then acquires the help of a monk with magical powers, called a "Silent Brother," Jeremiah, to discover how Clary is able to see Shadowhunters despite being a mundane, and why she and her mother were attacked. Jeremiah discovers a block on Clary's mind, keeping her memories sealed, and takes her and Jace to the City of Bones, where the other Silent Brothers attempt to break it. Although the attempt fails, Clary discovers flashes of information, particularly the name Magnus Bane. With Isabelle's help, Clary traces Magnus Bane to a party, which she attends with Jace, Simon, Alec and Isabelle. There, they discover that Magnus is the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and he placed the block on Clary at her mother's request. Magnus reveals that when Clary was little, her mother, an ex-Shadowhunter, realized she could see creatures of the Shadowhunter world. She initially hoped Clary hadn't developed this ability, known as the Sight, hoping she would live a normal, mundane life. However, when she caught a two-year-old Clary trying to play with faeries one day, she realized her daughter would discover the Shadowhunter world if she continued to see its creatures. She went to Magnus with hopes of repressing Clary's memories so she would never discover the Shadowhunter world. She had been sending Clary to Magnus every two years ever since, where he would continue to block her memories and Sight; keeping her in the dark about her true self. Clary, Simon, and the Shadowhunters confront Magnus, asking him to bring back Clary's memories. However, Magnus refuses to bring them back, claiming it will be too difficult, although he says they may slowly come back to her over time, now that she knows the truth. During the party, Simon ignores Isabelle's protests and consumes a drink offered to him by a faerie, which consequently turns him into a rat. He is then abducted by a vampire from Clary's bag, leaving her and Jace to rescue him from a vampire-infested lair. Clary and Jace are helped into the lair, the abandoned Hotel Dumont, by a teenager named Raphael, who then betrays them, revealing that he is the current leader of the vampire coven that is residing inside that hotel. Soon, Clary and Jace are fighting for their lives. They are saved by werewolves who claim they want Clary, but Clary and Jace escape, and manage to rescue Simon, who eventually returns to his human form. Here she and Simon share an intimate moment where they hug each other in relief for the other's safety; however Jace, upon seeing this moment, "looks away as though the sun is too bright." At the Institute, while Jace and Simon heal, Clary is approached by Alec in the hallway. The two begin fighting when Alec demands she return to her own world, claiming she is only hurting Jace by putting him in danger. Clary then reveals that she knows he is gay, and how he feels about Jace - he's in love with him. Alec pins her against the wall, demanding she never reveal his feelings to Jace, before walking off, clearly stunned by his actions. Later, Simon finds Clary and they talk together on Clary's bed. Clary wakes up suddenly when she hears someone knocking on her door. Clary finds Jace outside her room looking for her, wanting to take her to celebrate her 16th birthday. He takes Clary to the Institute's greenhouse, where the two talk and eat a meal. He then shows her how the flowers in the greenhouse bloom every night at midnight. As they return back to her room, Clary and Jace share their first passionate kiss outside the door of the room. However, things are left on something of a sour note when Simon walks in on them kissing when leaving Clary's room, causing Jace to leave. In Clary's room, Simon and Clary argue when over her taste in men. However when Clary brings up Isabelle and how he had been flirting with her, Simon, on impulse, angrily reveals to Clary he had only been trying to get her jealous. Simon then confesses to her how he has been in love with her for over ten years and had only flirted with Isabelle to see how she felt about him back. He says how he's upset that she failed to notice his feelings for her despite how obvious it had been to everyone else. Later on, while drawing in her sketchbook to calm herself about the night's events, Clary realizes where the Mortal Cup is and she, Jace, Isabelle, Alec, and Simon go and retrieve it at a neighbor of Clary's apartment. They are attacked by a Greater Demon, but Simon saves them all by shooting an arrow at the roof. Alec gets injured by the Greater Demon and nearly dies, but Magnus Bane manages to heal him at the Institute. When Clary and Jace give the Mortal Cup to Hodge, he reveals he's actually working for a man named Valentine, who is meant to be dead. Valentine kidnaps Jace, saying he was going to take Jace to his father, making Clary fear for him since Jace's father is told to be dead. Clary goes after Hodge, but is knocked unconscious in the process. When Clary wakes up, she finds out her mother's best friend, Luke, is a werewolf and took her away for the sake of her safety. Clary then finds out that Valentine is actually her biological father (her mother having told her that her father was dead when she was little), and Luke and Clary track down Jace and Valentine. Luke and his werewolf pack raid Valentine's lair, but they are ambushed. During the attack, Luke and Clary get inside Valentine's lair. While Luke is distracted, Clary finds Valentine and Jace. Valentine reveals to them that he is actually Jace's father as well, making them siblings, shocking and horrifying both Jace and Clary, who by then realized that they have fallen in love with each other. Luke then returns to fight Valentine, along with Jace's help, but Valentine escapes to the Shadowhunter capital, Idris, where he has now hidden the Mortal Cup, which can used to create Shadowhunters. The Mortal Cup is one of three Mortal Instruments given to the first Shadowhunter by the angel Raziel, and if Valentine has them, he will create a whole army of Shadowhunters. Clary finds her mother, who is in a coma caused by a potion, and takes her to a hospital. In the meantime, Alec has been healed by Magnus Bane and he and Clary decide to start fresh. Afterwards, Clary and Jace meet at the Institute and express their frustration that they cannot be together like they once believed. |
Marked "Personal" | null | null | On the evening of July 13th, 1863, two men from Washington and Boston, respectively, leave their homes after showing signs of agitation and distress throughout the day. That morning, each one had received a mysterious letter marked 'personal', which they both quickly destroyed... |
The Merlin Mystery | null | null | The book starts with an unnamed black cat investigating the run-down former living quarters of the wizard Merlin of Arthurian Legend with the implied intent of trying to find something worth stealing. While there she meets a Northern Spotted Owl who takes her through the house and explains Merlin's life, magical abilities, and what the book describes as 'The Pendragon Alchemy', a philosophy of life that says that giving nets greater rewards, both monetary and emotional, than taking. The book deviates from previous Arthur legends and tells of Merlin protecting an unnamed princess from a cadre of evil sorcerers (and in the process creating a ring of stones in Avebury), and falling in love with Nimue, The Lady of the Lake, here described as being a water sprite princess. During this it is revealed simultaneously that the black cat is Nimue and the owl is Merlin, who resume their love. Nimue retrieves the Merlin's Wand in order to give it to the aforementioned evil sorcerers to free them in the misguided belief that they will begrudgingly help save the magical world. However, in trying to defend Merlin she accidentally uses the wand on him, shattering his soul and destroying both his body and his wand in a large fiery flash. Merlin's last magical act is to rescind Nimue's human form, and she becomes the water of the lake near the cave where Merlin was destroyed. However, Merlin has become the mountain and cave next to the lake, and the two remain, insubstantial but together, until, as Merlin explains, 'The seeker' (here to mean the reader) casts 'the spell' (the solution to the puzzle) and causes the wand (the reward for solving the puzzle) to appear. |
Accident | Danielle Steel | 1,994 | Page Clarke is a 40-year-old-happily married woman who lives with her 44 year old husband Brad Clarke, her 15 year old daughter Allyson and 7 year old son Andrew. One night Brad goes on an unexpected business trip to Cleveland and Allyson reports she is going to have dinner with her friend Chloe and Chloe's father Trygve Thorensen. Instead Allyson goes out with Chloe and two older boys named Jamie Applegate and Phillip Chapman. While crossing the Golden Gate Bridge the teenagers have an accident with supposed senator's wife Laura Hutchinson. Phillip is killed; Jamie survives with only a small cut; Chloe suffers leg damage, a broken pelvis and a shattered hip; and Allyson has severe head trauma. Both girls are rushed to the hospital and both Trygve and Page arrive before the surgeries. Page is unable to reach Brad until after the surgery has begun, and Brad is outraged that she did not consult him beforehand. She tells him that Allyson would have died at six'o'clock if the surgery had not been performed. One hour later, Brad arrives at the hospital and leaves for their house before Page does. Later, Page confronts him as to why he is home early from his "trip" and he confesses that he has been cheating on her. Soon afterwards Brad starts disappearing several times. Eventually Page's mother, Maribelle and sister Alexis arrive in San Francisco and laze about the house while Allison remains in the hospital. One night after dinner, Page rages at her mother, demanding why she pretends that she did not know that her father molested her and her sister when they were children. Soon she forces Brad to move out and sends her mother and sister back to New York. By then she and Trygve had confessed their feelings toward each other. For four months, Allyson remains in a coma and Andrew, who has attempted to run away, is taken to see his sister. Soon Trygve and his children Nick, Bjorn and Chloe go to a lake for the weekend, and Allyson awakens from her coma. When Page goes to join them at the lake, she confesses to Trygve that she is pregnant with his child, and they begin to plan their wedding. fr:Accident (roman) |
Wellen | null | null | Doralice, Countess of Köhne-Jasky, has walked out on her much older husband and run off with Hans Grill, a young artist who had been commissioned by the Count to paint his wife's picture. Now, a year later, Hans and Doralice have come to the Baltic coast to spend a solitary summer's holiday in a fisherman's hut. They are said to have got married in London so their relationship is outwardly considered "correct" although their marriage is generally seen as a misalliance, especially by the society Doralice has left behind. While she herself is rather unsure about her future, Hans Grill is an optimistic free spirit, though not quite a libertine, who is full of plans in which Doralice figures prominently. He dreams of setting himself up as a successful painter in Munich — thus being eventually able to stop living off his wife's money — and of living with her in a small suburban house. Rather than shunning the unlikely couple, the other tourists at the small fishing village feel morally obliged to associate with them, at least perfunctorily. They are the extended Buttlär family: Baron von Buttlär; his wife Bella; their three children Lolo, Nini, und Wedig; and Baron von Buttlär's mother-in-law, the Generalin von Palikow. They are soon to be joined by Hilmar Baron von dem Hamm, Lolo's dashing fiancé, who is an officer in the German army. Also present is the Geheimrat von Knospelius, a high-ranking civil servant. Burdened with a physical handicap, and never having married, Knospelius is used to leading a vicarious life through the people he surrounds himself with, and as soon as they have arrived he introduces himself to both the Buttlärs and the Grills. The presence of a scandalous couple does not go unnoticed by the Buttlär children. Rather, it is one of their games to sneak out of the house at night together with Ernestine, one of the young servants, to catch a glimpse of Doralice through the open window of the Grimms' rented hut. One day, while swimming in the sea, Lolo meets Doralice on a sandbank and is deeply impressed by her cheerful manner, her wit, and her beauty, so much so that she decides to send her a huge bunch of red roses, while instinctively choosing her as her role model. Others who are also impressed by Doralice's beauty include Baron von Buttlär, a known womaniser, who is now jealously guarded by his wife, and Hilmar von dem Hamm, who openly starts courting Doralice despite her husband's and his own fiancée's presence. His endeavours to win Doralice's heart culminate in a boating trip that he undertakes with her while the others stay behind. Doralice feels flattered by the attentions of a member of the very social class that has ostracised her. At the same time, she realizes her indebtedness to, and possibly love for, Hans and stops all further advances on Hilmar's part. Lolo on the other hand, aware of her fiancé's infatuation, but due to an over-protective upbringing unprepared for life's harsh realities, decides to sacrifice herself by committing suicide. At night she secretly leaves the house wearing only her bathing costume under her coat, walks down to the beach and starts swimming out into the ocean, far beyond the sandbank where she met Doralice. She is rescued by local fishermen who drag her half-conscious body into their boat and return her to her family. Although Lolo makes a quick and full recovery, etiquette demands of the Buttlärs that they depart immediately. Those who stay behind into the autumn are Hans and Doralice Grimm and Geheimrat Knospelius — the latter because, unbeknown to everyone, he has handed in his resignation and now has all the time in the world, and the Grimms because they actually have no other place to go. In the course of the summer, Hans has become more and more monosyllabic, and Doralice longs for some serious talk concerning their future together: She realizes that she desperately needs Hans's reassurance of his love for her. Hans, however, keeps postponing that talk to the following day and indulges in his growing fascination with the sea. Not only does he paint it; he now accompanies the fishermen on their nightly routine on a more or less regular basis and then sleeps during most of the day. One night he goes out fishing with Steege, a notorious drunkard whose vice has prevented him from buying a new fishing boat. The old dilapidated one cannot defy the thunderstorm of which they have been warned, and the sea claims two more lives: After long days of waiting, Doralice and Mrs Steege finally accept the fact that their husbands are not coming back. At this point Knospelius makes Doralice the unexpected offer to be his companion for the foreseeable future and to spend the winter with him touring the Greek islands. |
The End of Oil | Paul Roberts | 2,004 | Though The End of Oil is not a chronological history of humanity's use of fossil fuels, Roberts begins by recounting how Thomas Newcomen, in 1712, presented the first large steam engine, and thus helped spark the Industrial Revolution. He then goes on to explain the problems that have since developed, or may develop in the future, from humanity's reliance on oil and its "geological siblings", coal, and natural gas. While there is a chapter on hydrogen as a possible alternative to oil (not as an energy source, but as an energy carrier), the book is not focused on any one solution to the problems it lays out. According to Roberts, oil faces three major dilemmas. Most importantly, all fossil fuels are by their very nature limited in supply; as far as oil is concerned, the resulting dilemma is best known as the question of peak oil. Further, much of the oil consumed by affluent countries such as the United States is extracted in countries that are rather unstable politically, such as some of the members of the OPEC. The oil trade is therefore prone to become intertwined with international relations, although the nature of this interplay is highly controversial, with some citing oil as a reason for conflicts such as the Iraq War and others denying such claims. Finally, since the burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide that was previously locked in the ground, humanity's reliance on oil may contribute to global warming. As to the aims of the book, Roberts states at the end of the prologue: |
Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic | Andy Serkis | 2,003 | Gollum details how a three-week commission for Andy Serkis to provide a voice-over for Gollum grew into a five-year commitment to breathe life and soul into The Lord of the Rings most challenging creation. Andy Serkis tackles various subjects throughout the book, including character conception (Gollum's "cough" is derived from his cat coughing up a hairball) as well as the hard work it took to act out Gollum and replace it with CGI. He also discusses the controversy of whether he should have been eligible for an Academy Award for his work as Gollum. |
Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood | Wayne Grudem | null | Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood presents its essays in five sections: # Vision and Overview (2 essays) # Exegetical and Theological Studies (12 essays) # Studies from Related Disciplines (5 essays) # Applications and Implications (6 essays) # Conclusion and Prospect (1 essay) It also contains two appendices — an essay by Wayne Grudem and the Danvers Statement, and a Prefatory essay by John Piper. |
Vendredi ou les Limbes du Pacifique | Michel Tournier | 1,967 | The young Robinson Crusoe is shipwrecked on a desert island that he names Speranza (Hope). Crusoe tries to civilize and control the nature of the island, but is redeemed by the appearance of 'Araucanian' whom he names as Friday. Because of the deep change that happens in Crusoe during the stay, he finally does not want to return from the island, while Friday does. |
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America | null | null | The author's thesis is that Richard Nixon manipulated the political and social events between 1965 and 1972 in a way that shaped the political divisions of the present day. The author frames the divisions of the 1960s as between the "Franklins" and the "Orthogonians", names taken from two social clubs at Nixon's alma mater of Whittier College; the Franklins were the privileged elite, and the Orthogonians the social strivers. The author casts Nixon as the "King of the Orthogonians", who would play upon the growing resentments of "Orthogonians" nationwide (Nixon's "silent majority") to electoral success. Perlstein also presents a broader overview of The Sixties' cultural and political turmoils, including the 1968 Democratic Convention, but, as the book ends with Nixon's reelection in 1972, only peripherally covering Watergate. |
Cold in the Earth | Ann Granger | 1,992 | The first death is from a drug overdose; the victim is a promising young girl from a respectable local family. However, Markby's investigations, which aim at getting hold of the suppliers, do not lead anywhere. Shortly afterwards, the body of a stranger, possibly a foreigner, is found buried in a shallow grave in a trench at a building site on the outskirts of Bamford. Finally, a local construction foreman employed at that very building site is slain to death on a lonely country road. Mitchell and Markby probe into the dubious roles played by land developers, diehard farmers and juvenile delinquents alike. |
Improbable | null | null | Improbable is the story of a gifted young man named David Caine, who has been troubled by debilitating epileptic seizures to the extent that his medical condition has thrown his life completely off track. He is a compulsive gambler, and heavily in debt to the local mafia. During the course of the novel, Caine undergoes an experimental medical treatment in an attempt to set his life straight. After the procedure, he discovers that he is able to make predictions using his enhanced calculative skills, and change the future based on his discoveries. However, shadowy forces want to use his power for their own ends, and he faces a desperate battle for survival. |
Designing Economic Mechanisms | Leonid Hurwicz | null | Authors of this book, Leonid Hurwicz and Stanley Reiter, helped found the field of mechanism design. This book provides a guide for those who would design mechanisms. A decentralized mechanism is a mathematical structure that models institutions for guiding and coordinating economic activity. Such institutions are usually created by administrators, lawmakers, and officers of private companies to achieve their desired goals. Their purpose is to achieve their desired goal in such a way that economize on the resources needed to operate the institutions, and that provide incentives that induce the required behaviors. In this book, systematic procedures for designing mechanisms that achieve specified performance, and economize on the resources required to operate the mechanism, i.e., informationally efficient mechanisms, are presented. Most of the book deals with the systematic design procedures which are algorithms for designing informationally efficient mechanisms. In the book, informationally efficient dominant strategy implementation is also studied. |
La Belle Bête | Marie-Claire Blais | 1,959 | La Belle Bête starts off as the three main characters return home on a train. Immediately, the characters’ relationships with one another, as well as their physical beauty as a status, are established. As they return home, their daily activities reveal even more of their living situation with one another, as Isabelle-Marie is the Cinderella of the family, working hard and being neglected, while Louise fawns over her beloved beautiful Patrice. Patrice is so incompetent from his constant dependence on his mother, that he can do nothing but accept her attention. Eventually, Louise announces that she needs to travel to pick up farm equipment for their vast land, and leaves Patrice and Isabelle-Marie. Isabelle-Marie continues her distaste for her brother, and as her mother is no longer there to support Patrice, she takes the opportunity to let him starve to release her anger and jealously towards him As she grows to pity his incompetence and dependency on Louise, Isabelle-Marie begins to care for him ever so slightly. When Louise returns, she brings with her Lanz, who becomes the new controlling figure over the family. Patrice rejoices and cleaves to his mother, but she can no longer respond with her attention as she is consumed by her own relationship with Lanz. As Lanz brings Louise further and further from her children, Patrice spirals into deterioration while Isabelle-Marie relishes in her new found freedom. As Isabelle-Marie becomes more upbeat, she learns to care for Patrice, as well as meets her lover Michael, who she convinces to love her by lying about her beauty . From here the story splits into two. On one side of life, Isabelle-Marie begins her life with the blind Michael, while Patrice is continued to be neglected as Lanz demands the attention of Louise. Both children’s’ stories end in despair as Michael eventually regains his vision and comes to terms with the ugliness of Isabelle-Marie and consequently, their newborn child Anne. He abandons both of them and disappears from their lives. As the torn spirit of Isabelle-Marie returns to her unwanted home, she finds that Louise is being controlled by Lanz, and has chosen him over Patrice. Her new found anger towards outer beauty drives her to push Patrice’s face into a pot of boiling water, thus bringing his now beast-like face to her lowly status. Patrice cries to his mother, and she makes the ultimate choice to live her life with Lanz, abandoning Patrice entirely (pg 52). Patrice is sent to an insane asylum by Louise, who becomes fed up with his incompetence, however he escapes shortly afterwards. As their lives quickly become disillusioned, Isabelle-Marie ends up setting fire to the farm. Louise, who has slowly been cracking under the loss of her beautiful child, and the control – and eventual death - of her husband is lost in the fire. Isabelle-Marie commits suicide as she pushes her child off the train tracks that once brought her home, as Patrice drowns himself when he sees his hideous face in the reflection of a lake. |
Swords and Deviltry | Fritz Leiber | 1,970 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords and Deviltry introduce the duo and their relationship ("Induction"), present incidents from their early lives in which they meet their first lady-loves (Fafhrd in "The Snow Women", the Gray Mouser in "The Unholy Grail"), and relate how afterwards in the city of Lankhmar the two met and allied themselves with each other, and lost their first loves through their defiance of the local Thieves' Guild ("Ill Met in Lankhmar"). |
Affiliate | null | null | The story is set in New York in the 1980s, and then moves to Los Angeles. It is told in the first person by a man called Dalmatov, seemingly loosely based on Dovlatov himself: he is an immigrant from Russia, and an unsuccessful writer, working for the American-based Russian-language press. Dalmatov presents a programme in Russian on the radio, and is sent to Los Angeles to report on a conference of Soviet dissidents. When he arrives, he bumps into his first love, Tasya, and the memories of their courtship when they both lived in the Soviet Union come flooding back. |
Cairo | null | null | The story is set in contemporary Cairo, and follows six characters as they are drawn into the intrigue surrounding a stolen hookah, a box containing East and the Under-Nile of legend. |
Jhegaala | Steven Brust | 2,008 | Vlad Taltos, after leaving Adrilankha, decides to visit Noish-pa, currently residing in the Szurke region as Vlad′s regent. While there, Vlad expresses interest in finding out about his mother. Noish-pa remembers that Vlad′s mother left him a runic thank you note containing her full name, Marishka Merss Taltos. Noish-pa reveals that Merss translates as “pulper” and is likely associated with a town called Burz. Vlad decides to head into Fenario in search of his mother′s kin. After arriving in Burz, Vlad takes on the name Merss and discovers he doesn′t fit in among other Easterners and is greeted with suspicion, especially due to his choice in familiar. Good witches have birds, mice, or cats. Vlad stays at an inn he refers to as the “pointed hat”, run by a man named Inchay. There he is approached by Barash Orbahn, liquor importer, who answers some basic questions about Burz and agrees to ask about Vlad′s kin. Vlad decides to begin his own investigation by questioning the local merchants. Upon inquiry into his family, the name Merss is taken as a threat; Vlad is accused of being an erdergbasson, or “Witch who studies things nice people don′t talk about,” and is threatened that all the merchants in town belong to The Merchants′ Guild. This is unusual as guilds typically consist of tradesmen banded together to gain power over merchants. Vlad returns to the inn without receiving much information. The next day Orbahn meets Vlad again and informs him the head of the Guild is a man named Chayoor, and it would be best if Vlad stopped searching for his family at the risk of upsetting the Guild. Digesting this information at the dock, Vlad is approached by Tereza, a prostitute, who after proper bribing tells him to seek out a coachman named Zollie at the inn Cellar Mouse. Vlad meets with Zollie, who informs him the Merss belonged to a group of witches the Count believed was trying to kill him, and that most of the family fled west. The remaining members live outside of town. Vlad decides to visit the family, only to find that they have been murdered and their house burned down with fire that could only have been produced by a witch. He is aided in burying the family by neighbors and a Verra priest named Father Noij. Vlad is filled with uncharacteristic rage and decides he will seek revenge for the murder of his kin. The next day Vlad decides to use the Art to heal the blisters from the previous day; during the spell his mind is read and Loiosh cannot prevent it. Vlad decides to confront the Guild leader Chayoor, who somehow knows Vlad’s true name of Taltos, and informs Vlad that the Guild holds the authority in town. Vlad then seeks an audience with the Count, who politely refuses, but Vlad decides to go anyway under the guise of being an emissary of the empire interested in paper. Upon returning to town, he learns Zollie has been murdered and witches are suspected because her lips have turned red. Vlad realizes this is not the work of a witch, only meant to appear to be. Vlad decides to take a walk at night despite his poor night vision, and is approached by a man named Dahni who claims to work for the Count, who is interested in helping Vlad against their common enemy; who that enemy is, Vlad does not know. Vlad decides to find out about the Coven of witches in Burz by following one of them home and forcefully questioning them; he finds out limited information about the good witch, bad witch phenomenon, and the general location of the Coven headquarters in the woods. Vlad continues his night activities by tracking down Dahni and forcefully questioning him about the Count’s offer, and Vlad agrees to meet with the Count. Vlad moves to the Cellar Mouse inn to make it harder to trace him. The next day, a message arrives from the Count that Vlad should come to his estate, but first Vlad sends Loiosh and Rocza to do surveillance on Orbhan and Tereza, who are acting suspiciously. At the Count’s, Vlad is drugged and tortured for several days about his connection to the king of Fenario and his plans to steal the secret recipe to make paper, and then turned over to the Guild for several more days of torture before, in a moment of lucidity, informing Loiosh to notify Dahni to come and rescue him. The Count regrets Vlad’s treatment and provides sanctuary and medical treatment to the now crippled Vlad. It is revealed that Dahni had been working for a Jhereg assassin who is after Vlad, and after questioning reveals the location of the assassin, who is hunted down and killed. Vlad moves back into the Cellar Mouse where, despite his injuries, he uses Loiosh and Rocza to gather information while he questions those who come to see him: Father Noij, some very distant kin, and Meehayi, his caretaker. Vlad figures out who was behind the attack on his kin and sets in motion a plan to destroy the Guild and Coven by pretending he was killed by witches, causing a mob to hunt down the Coven, while simultaneously having the Count arrest the Guild. The Coven kills Chayoor in the belief that he has been trying to set them up. The feeble Vlad escapes with the help of Father Noij to Fenario. After several years, the now mostly recovered Vlad completes his revenge by returning to Burz, stealing the Count′s paper recipe, and sending it to Her Imperial Majesty Zerika the Fourth. |
The Celebrity | null | null | John Crocker has been the friend of the Celebrity long before he became famous. During a summer retreat at Asquith resort, he runs into the Celebrity who has taken the identity of another man for anonymity. The Celebrity meets Irene Trevor, daughter of an Ohio State Senator, and asks her to marry him. When a more desirable female, Marian Thorn, arrives at Asquith, the Celebrity leaves her without breaking off the marriage. This goes against the moral fiber of the Celebrity's stories. Both women know his true identity as a famous writer and are familiar with his published works. Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke and his wife are wealthy and have made a summer retreat of their own named Mohair. The Celebrity leaves Asquith for Mohair to be with Marian Thorn, who is the niece of the Cookes. The slighted Irene Trevor confides in John Crocker that the Celebrity never broke up with her and this could be used against him in the future. Mr. Cooke throws a party and invites the people from Asquith to join them. John Crocker and Miss Trevor reluctantly go. It appears to John Crocker that Miss Thorn and the Celebrity are romantically involved and he is jealous. Mr. Cooke buys a new yacht, the Maria (named after his wife), and invites all his guests for a trip to Bear Island. At Bear Island a newspaper brought on board the yacht reveals in a story that Charles Wrexell Allan has embezzled $100,000 from the Miles Standish Bicycle Company. This is the same man the Celebrity is impersonating. When the Celebrity asks John Crocker and Miss Trevor to reveal his true identity, they decide to be mischievous and pretend not to know him by any name but Allan. Another yacht enters Bear Island harbor and a man in an obvious disguise, Mr. Dunn, visits the island. The party believes Mr. Dunn is a detective. Mr. Trevor demands the Celebrity be turned over to authorities. The Celebrity is hidden in a cave for the night. The next day Mr. Dunn is gone. Mr. Cooke insists on taking the Celebrity to Canada. A police tug boat catches up to the Maria and the Celebrity is hidden in the ballast area. Captain McMain, Chief of the Far Harbor Police searches the boat but does not find the Celebrity. Mr. Cooke finds a cove to sleep in for the night. In the morning while rowing passengers back to the Maria, the police return. John Crocker, the Celebrity, Miss Thorn and Miss Trevor are left behind on shore. During this time the Celebrity asks Miss Thorn to marry him. She tells Miss Trevor about the proposal. She states that she is still engaged to the Celebrity. It is at this time John Crocker realizes that the girls where in on a plot to humiliate the Celebrity for going against his own doctrine from his stories. After being humiliated he leaves the three and escapes into Canada. The police come back and pick up John, Miss Thorn and Miss Trevor in the police tug that is towing the Maria. During the trip back Captain McCann says he is still looking for the embezzler, Mr. Allen. Miss Thorn reveals to John Crocker that she has secretly admired him ever since they met. They realize they are going to become romantically involved in the future. When they reach shore it is revealed that Mr. Dunn, the suspected detective turns out to be Mr. Allen. The story is wrapped up with the marriage of John Crocker and Irene Thorn. They go to Europe and while at a party, a book the Celebrity wrote is brought up. It is signed by the author. After inspection Crocker realizes the signature is a fraud. He realizes Mr. Allen is posing as the Celebrity and traveling through Europe on a book signing tour. Later during their stay in Paris the Crocker's meet the Celebrity. He has a new girl, has no hard feeling about his summer stay at Asquith and Mohair, has traveled around the World and met Charles Wexell Allen in his travels. He reveals that Mr. Allen thanked him for inadvertently helping him in the embezzlement! |
The Rose Rent | Edith Pargeter | 1,986 | In late spring of 1142 the Benedictine friars of Shrewsbury Abbey are thinking of the June 22 feast day honoring the translation of Saint Winifred from Wales to the altar in the Abbey. The political disruptions of the Anarchy are not touching Shrewsbury. During the King's illness early in the year, Empress Maud moved into Oxford, while her staunchest supporter, Robert of Gloucester went over to Normandy for meetings with her family. King Stephen began to be active again, having taken Wareham, giving heart to his supporters. Sheriff Hugh Beringar heads to his manor in the north, to see to his sheep. The Abbey has a second duty for the last three years on that day, to complete their agreement with the widow Judith Perle. Her husband died and she miscarried twenty days later, over three years before. She gave their home and lands in the Foregate to the Abbey, half her patrimony, in a charter, in exchange for a single white rose from the garden, delivered to her in person. Brother Eluric, who tends the altar funded by the rent the Abbey realizes from the house, has delivered the rose each year. Eight days before he must deliver it the fourth time, he asks Abbot Radulfus to be released from this duty, as he is tormented by his desire for the widow Perle. Abbot Radulfus releases him. In discussion with Cadfael and Anselm, the Abbot decides to have the rose rent delivered by Niall the bronzesmith, who rents the property from the abbey. Judith visits the bronzesmith to ask him to make a new buckle for a girdle; he is touched by her beauty and loneliness. Judith Perle has several suitors but is not interested in marrying again, still grieving the happy years with her husband. She discusses with Sister Magdalen the option of taking the veil and living with the sisters at Godric's Ford. Sister Magdalen convinces her to wait but says that her door is always open if she is in need of a place to rest and think. Niall, a widower, keeps his young daughter with his sister in Pulley, just three miles away. He returns from an overnight visit and finds that the white rose bush has been hacked at its bole. At its base lies Brother Eluric, dead with a knife by his side. While investigating the murder scene with the Abbot and Brother Anselm, Brother Cadfael finds a distinctive footprint and makes a wax impression. Cadfael tells Judith about Brother Eluric's desire for her. Before going to bed that night, Judith tells her servant Branwen that in the morning she will go to the abbey to draw up a new charter to make the gift of the property unconditional. The next day, Judith fails to arrive at the abbey. Sheriff Hugh Beringar, called back to town, Cadfael, and Abbot Radulfus believe that Judith was kidnapped, either to be forced into marriage or to void the charter by her absence on rent day. The search begins. Cadfael finds the once firmly-attached bronze tag from the end of Judith's girdle, suggesting a struggle. It is found under the bridge where a boat had been hauled up for convenient use, possibly stolen by the kidnapper. Cadfael's search of the river with Madog finds a stolen boat discarded downstream on the River Severn. Bertred, one of Judith's foremen, remembers that on the night that Judith announced that she would go to the abbey to remake the charter, one of Vivian Hynde's men visiting at the Perle household left abruptly after Branwen shared that news. Bertred believes he knows where she is being held, having followed Hynde or his man out of the town after the search ended for the day. In the middle of the night, he makes his way to Hynde's disused counting-house, now an outbuilding to store the wool clips. It had been searched that day, but the disused room was not known to the Deputy Sheriff, nor mentioned by the owner. Bertred can hear Judith Perle inside with her gaoler, Vivian Hynde. In a surprising turn of events, Judith is in control of the situation. Vivian is pleading with Judith to marry him, but she scornfully rejects him. Bertred has been holding onto the sill; it gives way and makes a sound, which alerts those within and the watchdog. Bertred runs toward the river to escape. The watchman and his dog pursue. The watchman gives him a glancing blow to the head but Bertred dives into the water, hits rocks on the shelving bank and is knocked senseless. He is not followed by the watchman who believes this interloper is swimming across the river. Back in the counting-house, Judith convinces Vivian to take her to Sister Magdalen, where she will say she has been in retreat during the past days. She promises not to reveal the truth about Vivian. She wants this episode behind her, her good reputation intact. He agrees; soon they slip out to stay in his mother's house until they can start out for Godric's Ford. Someone comes upon Bertred in the shallows, checks to see he is alive, and then kicks him out into the current of the river. Cadfael, working near the river the next morning, finds the dead body of Bertred. After examining Bertred's body, Cadfael sees that Bertred's boots are a match for the wax impression of the boot found near the rose bush when Brother Eluric was killed. They have apparently found the murderer of Brother Eluric. Hugh and Cadfael talk to the watchman and discover that Bertred had been at Vivian Hynde's storehouse the night before, where they find the broken window sill. They ask to search within but find no trace of the pair's presence the night before. Niall goes to Pulley again to visit his daughter. He wants to bring her home to live with him, but will wait until life in Shrewsbury calms down. On his return in the moonless night, he hears sounds and takes cover, believing he hears bandits. He sees a man on a horse with a woman riding pillion and recognizes her as Judith Perle. He follows them for an hour until he hears Judith tell the man to let her go the rest of the way alone. After the man leaves, Niall approaches closer when he hears her scream as someone is attacking her with a knife. He struggles with her attacker and knocks the knife away, getting a gash on his left arm. The attacker flees. Niall and Judith continue to the Benedictine nuns at Godric's Ford. Judith tells Sister Magdalen their story and she agrees to go along with Judith's deception about being with the Sisters for three days, well understanding the importance of reputation. Sister Magdalen accompanies them back to the Abbey then on to town, staying close to Judith until all is well with her. After her reunion at her home in town, Judith tells her tale of being attacked to Hugh. She tells him the truth about her abduction, adding that after being released by Vivian she wants the matter to end and will not bear witness against him. Vivian was with her when they heard Bertred fall and be chased by the night watchman, so he could not have killed Bertred. Hugh acquiesces, telling her that Vivian Hynde is already taken; Hugh will release him eventually. Cadfael asks Sister Magdalen to obtain two well worn left shoes for him from Judith's household. She sends them via a trusted messenger, Edwy Bellecote the son of the carpenter. He brings them to the waiting Cadfael, who examines the shoe that belonged to Bertred. It does not match the mold of the print from Brother Eluric's murder. The other shoe does match. Thinking there might be more trouble with the rose bush, Cadfael walks out to find the bush ablaze; the fire pulls many local men out to assure it does not spread. The bush was covered with oil then had a burning torch dropped on it, from over the wall. The bush is destroyed. Early the next morning, the day of St Winifred's translation, Hugh visits Judith Perle's home to ask her cousin Miles when he gave his boots to Bertred. Miles' mother reveals that he did it on the day Brother Eluric was found dead. Miles had killed Brother Eluric and then given his boots to Bertred. Miles confesses all, trying to mitigate his guilt, and he is taken away by Hugh's men to await his trial. Judith is hurt by this betrayal. Cadfael and Hugh explain what they know. Miles, hoping that Judith would enter the convent and leave her shop and property to him, had the idea to destroy the rose bush, causing the house to revert to her estate. But Eluric discovered and stopped him in the first attack on the rose tree, so Miles stabbed him, leaving that boot print. Later, he followed Bertred to the Hynde property and killed him. The next night he followed Judith en route to Godric's Ford, where he tried to kill her, stopped by the unexpected Niall. Miles is the only person with a motive to kill Judith, as he would inherit her business and property. Cadfael and Judith reflect sadly that Miles never intended to do so much evil, but his first step, motivated by ambition and greed, led him down a path he did not escape. Her house emptied, first by Hugh, Cadfael and Sister Magdalen leaving, then the funeral for Bertred. She has two childless widows to support now. She told her aunt what she must know about her lost son. Judith has the full responsibility of the clothier business in her hands again, and will remake the charter with the Abbey, making a full gift of that house. In mid afternoon of Saint Winifred's day, Niall and his young daughter Rosalba arrive at Judith's house with a white rose. He had picked the bloom yesterday, before the fire. He delivers the rose rent to her, thus securing the charter. He begins to leave, but Judith asks him to stay, rediscovering her reasons to live. |
Paper Towns | John Green | 2,008 | Paper Towns takes place in Orlando, Florida. The novel begins in a subdivision called Jefferson Park. The protagonist and narrator, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, and his neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman, both nine years old, go to the park and discover the corpse of Robert Joyner, a divorced man who has committed suicide. The novel flashes forward to Quentin and Margo as high schoolers who have grown apart. One night Margo shows up at Quentin’s bedroom window wearing all black and black face paint. She convinces him to sneak out and help her get revenge on people she feels have hurt her. The first characters they visit are Margo’s ex boyfriend Jase and the girl with whom he was cheating on Margo, Becca. Margo has Quentin call Becca’s father and inform him that Becca is having sex with Jase in the basement of their home. Then Quentin and Margo break into their home, graffiti a blue ‘M’ on their wall, and leave a fish for Becca. The second person they visit is a character mentioned only once throughout the story. They leave her a bouquet of flowers, as she is the character who informed Margo that her boyfriend was cheating on her. After that they go to Jase’s house, break in and leave him a fish and a blue ‘M’. They then visit a character named Lacey, who becomes a more prominent character in the last half of the book. Margo felt that Lacey had never been a good friend to her, and that she had ridiculed her too often and made backhand comments that were truly meant as insults. They leave a fish for her in her car and graffiti a blue ‘M’ on the roof of her car. At 3:15 in the morning, they enter the SunTrust bank building and they relax on one of the higher floors for a short while. This is the first time Margo calls their town a "paper town", describing it as “fake” and “not even hard enough to be made of plastic”. Once they leave the SunTrust building, Margo asks Q who he would like to get revenge on, and he chooses the high school bully Chuck Parson. Margo and Q sneak into his house, remove one of Chuck’s eyebrows with hair removal cream, and slather Vaseline on all of the door handles in his house. After getting revenge on Chuck they break into SeaWorld, but leave disappointed because none of the animals are in their showcases. Margo and Q return to their homes close to the time they are supposed to be getting up in the morning to go to school. The next day at school all Q thinks about is how things have changed. He wonders if Margo will start hanging out with him and his friends and sitting with them at lunch, but Margo doesn’t show up to school that day. After Margo has been missing for three days her parents file a report. Margo had run away five times in the past so her parents were more frustrated than worried. After learning that Margo has run away, Q notices a poster of Woody Guthrie taped to the back of her shades. The poster leads him to a song called Walt Whitman's Niece, which, in turn, leads him to a book of poems, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The poem has highlighted sections that Q believes to be clues left by Margo to lead him to where she is. Q continues to search for clues and finds an address scrawled on a small piece of paper. Hoping it will lead them to where she is hiding, Q and his friends Radar and Ben skip school the following day and go to the place on the piece of paper. They find an old abandoned mini-mall which contains evidence that Margo was recently there. Eventually the clues lead Q to believe that Margo may be hiding out in one of the many abandoned subdivision projects around Orlando; what Q’s mother likes to call "pseudodivisions". He drives to all of the pseudodivisions where he feels she may be hiding, but has no luck locating her. While getting ready for graduation, Q makes a connection which leads him to discover that Margo has been hiding in a fictional town in New York called Agloe. Q, Radar, Ben, and Lacey all opt to skip graduation to drive to New York to search for her. They make the drive from Orlando, Florida to Agloe, New York in just shy of twenty-four hours. They find Margo living in an old dilapidated barn. But instead of being grateful for them finding her, she reacts negatively. Angry that Margo is not grateful for all their efforts to find her, Radar, Ben, and Lacey leave and spend the night at a hotel. Q stays behind and talks things over with Margo. She decides to stay in New York. Q wants to stay with her, but returns home with his friends in the end. |
War of the Wizards | Ian Page | 1,986 | In this, the final installment of the World of Lone Wolf, Grey Star and Tanith have just completed a harrowing quest in the Shadow realm of the Daziarn. Upon retrieving the Moonstone, the two return to Magnamund to find the forces of good and evil poised on the brink of final conflict. Shasarak has enlisted the aid of the dreaded demon lord Agarash the Damned in order to eradicate the resistance movement once and for all. Battling their way through hordes of demons and undead minion, Grey Star and Tanith must struggle to rejoin the Freedom Guild, defeat the forces of the Wytch-King, and fulfill his destiny and promise to the Shianti. |
King of the Pygmies | null | 2,005 | Penn is an average American high school boy living in the small town of Havre de Grace, Maryland. He has a crush on the new girl at school, Daisy. He looks out for his older brother, Matt, who has had brain damage from birth. Penn is on his way to a successful life. All of this changes when he starts hearing voices. He learns of the worries that his brother does not voice out loud, the depression that his neighbor is fighting, and the quiet struggles that his parents face each day. After Penn shares the details of being able to hear people's thoughts, his mother forces him to see a psychiatrist as she suspects that he suffers from schizophrenia. He desperately tries to show his father that he is not insane and takes him to see his Uncle Hewitt, who had convinced Penn that he too could read people's minds. Unfortunately, his uncle could not correctly guess the thoughts of Penn's father, and both Penn and Hewitt are left looking as if they are not mentally stable. Penn is let down by his uncle again after he promised that a man would come and see him and explain the Pygmy disease, which causes the ability to hear the thoughts of other people. The man does not show up, leaving Penn unsure whether his Uncle can truly hear the thoughts of other people, and even creates doubts concerning Penn's mental state and whether he is magic or mentally unstable. |
The Great Kapok Tree | Lynne Cherry | null | The Great Kapok Tree is set in the Amazon rainforest. A young man begins to chop down a kapok tree, following the orders of a "larger man". After he has hit the tree a few times with his axe, he sits down to rest and falls asleep. While he sleeps, several rainforest animals and a Ya̧nomamö child whisper into his ear and beg him to spare the tree, explaining its importance in the fragile ecosystem. When the man awakes, he leaves his axe at the foot of the tree and walks away. |
The Great Dinosaur Robbery | David Forrest | null | The book is set in New York City in the 1970s, and follows attempts by a group of British nannies who discover that a microdot containing Chinese military secrets that they believe to be vital to the survival of the British Empire has been hidden in a skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. They cannot find the message, so contrive to steal the entire skeleton and mail it to the Queen. The Chinese agents who hope to retrieve the message, and the Americans searching for the missing dinosaur, play important roles. |
The Ox-Bow Incident | Walter Van Tilburg Clark | 1,940 | The Ox-Bow Incident takes place in 1885, and the story is told in the first-person perspective by Art Croft. It begins with two riders, Art Croft and Gil Carter, riding into the town of Bridger's Wells. They go into Canby's Saloon and find the atmosphere is tense, partly due to recent incidents of cattle rustling. Gil has a propensity for fighting. During a poker game, Gil's unusually good luck causes a fight between Gil, a local rancher named Farnley, and Art. While Art takes Gil outside to clear his head, a young man named Greene comes into town bringing news that a local named Kinkaid has been murdered and a large number of cattle have been stolen from Drew, the largest cattle rancher in Bridger's Wells. The townspeople begin to form a lynch mob. Two local men, Osgood and Davies, attempt to deter them. Art is sent with a boy named Joyce, clerk in Mr. Davis's store, to bring Judge Tyler. When Tyler questions Greene, it turns out that Greene had not even seen Kinkaid. Tyler is almost able to defuse the situation, until the arrival of cold-hearted former Confederate soldier Tetley, his son Gerald, and Amigo, one of Tetley's hired hands. Amigo explains that he almost ran into the rustlers, but was able to avoid being seen. As the mob of 28 men sets out, Judge Tyler warns Tetley that the men must be brought back alive to stand trial. But Tetley wants to make his son manly by murdering one of the men, as he believes his son to be too "feminine" in his eyes. On their journey, the riders encounter a stagecoach. They try to stop it, but the stagecoach guard assumes that it is a stickup and shoots, accidentally wounding Art in the left shoulder. In the coach are Rose Mapen, Gil's old girlfriend, who was run out of town earlier, and her new husband, Swanson. After tending to Art's wounded shoulder, the mob finds three men sleeping on the ground around a campfire, and cattle bearing Drew's brand. Tetley interrogates the men: a young, well-spoken man named Donald Martin; an old, raving man named Alva Hardwick; and a Mexican named Juan Martinez who claims to be unable to understand English. Martin says that he purchased the cattle from Drew, but that he received no bill of sale as the transaction occurred out on the range. Drew was to send the bill of sale to Martin at a later date. No one believes Martin, and the mob decides that the three men are to hang. It is clear to Martin and Davies that they had already made up their minds, no matter what was said. The hanging is postponed until dawn. Martin, as his last wish, writes a private letter to his wife. Martin asks Davies to deliver it. Davies is vehemently opposed to the lynching and is the only one in the crowd that Martin trusts. Davies reads the letter, and, hoping to save Martin's life, tries to have the others read the letter. When Martin learns of this, he becomes angry at Davies for the breach of his privacy and revealing his most intimate last thoughts intended only for his wife. Taking advantage of the distraction caused by the argument between Martin and Davies, the Mexican, Juan Martinez, tries to escape. He is shot in the leg. The riders then discover that Juan is able to speak "American." During his escape he used a pistol engraved with Kinkaid's name. This confirms the decision to lynch the three men. With Davies still trying to avert the lynching, a vote is taken on whether the men should be hanged or taken back to face justice in the town. Of the group, only five are opposed to the hanging, Tetley's son Gerald among them. When sunrise approaches, the condemned men are placed upon their horses with nooses around their necks. Tetley orders three people to tend to the horses, one of them his son Gerald. When the command is given, Gerald Tetley balks and the horse simply walks out from under Martin, leaving him to slowly strangle. Farnley shoots Martin as he hangs. In anger, Tetley pistol whips his son to the ground. After the lynching, the riders head back toward town, where they meet Sheriff Risley, Judge Tyler, Drew, and, much to their surprise, Lawrence Kinkaid, who it turns out is very much alive. Drew confirms that he'd sold the cattle to Martin, who was not a rustler. The infuriated judge declares he will have the entire mob--most of the men of the town--up on charges for murder. However, after silently staring down each member of the lynch mob one at a time, Sheriff Risley declares that he will pretend he saw nobody and knows nothing. "It'll have to be this way," he says to the protesting judge. Sheriff Risley then takes ten men with him to form a posse, who will go after the real rustlers. Once back in town, Tetley returns to his house and locks out his son. His son, horrified by his own participation in the lynching, his own weakness in being unable to stand up to his father, and shamed, goes into the barn and hangs himself. When Tetley hears of his son's death, Tetley takes his own life as well, by falling on his cavalry sword. Later, Davies confesses to Art that he feels he is responsible for the deaths of three innocent men. Because of the shame and guilt that plague him, Davies feels he is unable to face Martin’s widow, so he asks Drew to deliver the letter to her, as well as a ring Martin bade Davies to deliver. The novel ends with Gil saying "I'll be glad to get out of here." Art says "Yeh." |
The Slave-girl from Jerusalem | Caroline Lawrence | 2,007 | Jonathan's sister, Miriam, is approached by Hepzibah, a girlhood friend from Jerusalem. Hepzibah is in serious trouble. Formerly a slave owned by the wealthy landowner Dives, she claims that she was manumitted (set free), but Dives has just died, and his heir, Nonius Celer, says he has no proof of her freedom and insists on keeping her as part of the estate. Miriam asks Flavia, Jonathan, Nubia, and Lupus, to help prove Hepzibah is free. But they have barely started investigating when the town is upset by a series of murders: first, Papillio, one of the town Decurions, and then Mercutor, a freedman on Dives's (now Celer's) estate. Before long, Celer brings charges against Hepzibah for murder. His theory is that the Decurion would have confirmed that she was never set free; and the freedman must have suspected that Dives didn't die of natural causes – Hepzibah killed him. She had a motive: Dives was a soldier (as was Celer's father) in the legions that sacked Jerusalem during the Great Revolt. Hepzibah is tried in the basilica; the children's old friend Pliny offers to help, but withdraws quickly when Celer retains the legendary orator Quintilian to present his case. The children turn to their other friend, aspiring lawyer Gaius Valerius Flaccus ("Floppy"). During the first day in court, however, things do not go well; Quintilian is polished and smooth, while Flaccus's speech comes off as rehearsed and insincere. The evidence against Hepzibah is strong: witnesses say that Dives wanted to marry her, but she ran away, screaming that she hated him. Hepzibah is forced to admit this is true. Moreover, the two murder victims were killed by someone unfamiliar with a sword, most likely a woman. Even worse, the children's old ally, local magistrate Marcus Artorius Bato, appears as a witness for Celer, and does everything possible to slander Hepzibah and her friends, including the children and every member of their family. Elsewhere, Celer's agents have been digging up dirt against the children to discourage them from helping Hepzibah, and Nubia is forced to go into hiding when it is revealed that her own manumission was not legally completed. Before he died, Papillio managed to whisper a clue to Nubia to "find the other six." At first, Flavia believes that this is a reference to the siege of Masada, of which there were only seven survivors, including Hepzibah. But then she realizes that, under Roman law, a will requires seven witnesses. The two murder victims must have been witnesses to Dives's real will, and they have to find the other five. On the second day, Flaccus rallies and gives a riveting oration, while Lupus and Jonathan search the town for the real will. But in the middle of the trial, Flavia solves the case, and whispers the solution to Flaccus, who is so overjoyed that he kisses her in full view of the gallery. What really happened was: Celer knew he had been cut out of Dives's will, so he killed Dives and forged a will, then tried to eliminate the seven witnesses to the real will. Hepzibah had to be silenced, because Celer suspected that she might be one of the seven, or even that Dives's real will left the estate to her. The proof? Flavia realizes that the wounds on Papillio and Mercutor's bodies show that they were both killed by a left-handed man – which also explains the killer's unfamiliarity with a sword, since left-handed men are not allowed to serve in the Roman army. Flaccus demonstrates, then points out that Celer is left-handed. For the finale, Lupus and Jonathan deliver the copy of Dives's real will, which Flaccus reads aloud to confirm that Celer had a motive: * the estate is left not to Celer, but to one of Dives's Jewish freedmen; * Hepzibah's freedom is confirmed, and she is left a sizable portion of the income (usufruct) from the estate; * a similarly sizable portion is left to the synagogue in Ostia; * in mockery, Dives leaves a pittance to the sycophants and fortune-hunters who have surrounded him all his life, and to his so-called friend, Celer, nothing except a coil of rope, "with which he may hang himself." The will also names the seven witnesses to it, including the murdered men. Trapped, Celer confesses, but angrily says that he had a better claim to the estate than anyone else: Dives built his fortune using a relic looted from the Temple of Jerusalem; Celer's father saved Dives's life, at the cost of his own, when they were both trapped by a fire in the Temple; in exchange, Dives promised to make the elder Celer's family his heirs, but selfishly changed his mind later. Hepzibah is acquitted, and several citizens step forward to bring suit against Celer. It is revealed that Bato received a large sum of money from Celer in exchange for his testimony. Quintilian, impressed by Flaccus's speech (and not at all abashed at having represented a murderer in court) offers Flaccus an apprenticeship with him in Rome. But the novel ends on a tragic note: Miriam dies in childbirth at the age of fifteen, giving birth to her twin sons. |
First Light | Geoffrey Wellum | 2,003 | The book opens with Wellum's interview for the Royal Air Force and his training. It then shifts to his participation in the Battle of Britain and to his participation in Operation Pedestal, flying planes to Malta off an aircraft carrier. It then closes with him being grounded, recovering from sinusitis, and then returning to duty as a test pilot. |
The Unwilling Warlord | Lawrence Watt-Evans | null | ~Plot outline description~ --> The Kingdom of Semma is on the verge of war but the VIII Hereditary Warlord has died. The King sent out a search party to the Hegemony of Ethshar where with the aid of magic they track down the heir to the title, the Unwilling IX Warlord Sterren. The story evolves as Sterren, along with assorted others hired to help in the war, is hauled off from his career as a low stakes gambler to Semma. One of his companions is Vond, a master Warlock who is feeling the Calling and who is seeking to get as far away from Aldagmor as he can because once a Warlock gives in to the Calling they are drawn to Aldagmor and are never seen again. Vond takes a liking to Sterren who was actually apprenticed as a Warlock for three days before being dismissed as unable to perform. Of course it is against the Guild law for any magician to practice in more than one field so Sterren was disqualified to take up any of the other studies. Not long after arriving in Semma, Vond discovers a second source of power for Warlockry and quickly becomes the most powerful magician in the Small Kingdoms. |
Beyond Thirty | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,955 | The novel, set in the year 2137, was heavily influenced by the events of World War I. In the future world depicted in the novel, Europe has descended into barbarism while an isolationist and politically united Western Hemisphere remains sheltered from the destruction. The title Beyond Thirty refers to the 30th meridian west that inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere are forbidden to pass. |
Plague Ship | Jack Du Brul | 2,008 | The crew has just completed a top secret mission against Iran to steal a rocket torpedo that was illegally sold to them by the Russian Federation, when they come across a cruise ship adrift at sea. The passengers and crew were killed by a hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola, and, as Captain Juan Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner's sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate—and as perilous-as any he has ever known and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for human race—plans he may already be too late to stop. |
Isle of Swords | Wayne Thomas Batson | null | The fates of the crew of the William Wallace are dramatically altered when Anne, daughter of the awesome pirate Captain Declan Ross, finds a young man unconscious on a deserted island. The young boy had been nearly whipped to death and, when the kind crew of the William Wallace revives him, he has no memory at all of his past. He soon becomes friends with the crew members, particularly Anne. All they can determine of the boy's past is that, judging from his confident, daring sailing skills, he was once a pirate. They dub him Cat based on both his ability to survive his violent whipping and the instrument that probably did it: the cat o'nine tails. Later, when stopping briefly at a monastery, Captain Ross agrees to the request of the monks dwelling there: to take one of their number, Padre Dominguez, aboard and keep him safe. Their reason is the priceless map tattooed on Dominguez's back, a map leading to the Isle of Swords, where the legendary Treasure of Constantine awaits. The monks know that Bartholomew Thorne is after the great riches and, hence, after Dominguez. On their route to the Isle of Swords, the ship docks temporarily at an island that seems vaguely familiar to Cat. Though both he and Anne were ordered to stay aboard, Anne encourages her friend to come with her and sneak away from the ship for a time. Cat reluctantly agrees to the mutinous act, and they steal ashore to search for clues to his past. They discover an abandoned pirate stronghold that holds signs of a gruesome past, and, to Cat's horror, the place seems slightly familiar. While trying to flee the place he and Anne are captured by a group of British soldiers headed by Commodore Blake. They believe the two young pirates know something about the fort and the whereabouts of its former inhabitant: Bartholomew Thorne. Anne manages to escape and tells Declan of Cat's plight. Ross rallies a group of men to help him and, together with local friend Jacques St. Pierre, they heroically spring Cat from the island's British jail. Taking Jacques with them, the crew of the William Wallace sets off again. After being punished for their mutinous behavior, Cat and Anne sign the ship's articles and become official members of the crew. When Ross later stops at another island to pick up some final supplies, in his absence Thorne attacks the William Wallace. He burns the ship and takes Anne and Padre Dominguez as prisoner. When Ross discovers this he is devastated, but quickly harnesses his emotions into hard resolve to get Anne back. With the help of his remaining crew members, including Cat, he buys a ship to chase after Thorne. In the prison of one of Bartholomew's strongholds, two of Thorne's crewmen make the fatal error of whipping Dominguez without their captain's permission. Now that some of the map is destroyed, Thorne resorts to torturing the monk to make him explain what is broken on the map. When this fails, Bartholomew turns his torture instruments on Anne, and at this Dominguez breaks down and tells everything. Thorne, satisfied, leaves Padre in his cell to bleed to death and takes Anne with him, on to the Isle of Swords. Ross, close behind Thorne, is not close enough to save Dominguez. When he discovers Bartholomew's deserted fort, Padre is almost dead. The monk manages to assure Ross that Anne is still alive, and then Dominguez dies. In a final confrontation in the treasure chamber on the Isle of Swords, Thorne and Ross's crews face off. The battle ends when Thorne, after identifying with shock Cat as his son, gains the upper hand. He ties Cat, Ross, and Anne to pillars in the chamber, which is beginning to become unstable due to the eruption of a nearby volcano. The rest of Ross's crew is forced to join Thorne and he leads them down to his ships, where they begin loading treasure. Due to some secret help from Stede, Cat, Anne, and Ross escape, though the latter is injured. They escape to their ship and a sea battle begins. Ross's crew in the enemy ships sabotage them and then escape to Declan's side. Commodore Blake, too, joins the fray, having been carefully tipped off earlier by Ross of Thorne's whereabouts. Thorne is captured and Ross is invited to meet with the British for a parlay. At the meeting with the Commodore, Ross begins to work out a peaceable offer with Blake about offering a pardon to pirates who stop their ways. Suddenly, however, a vast tidal wave strikes the town, completely submerging the prison where Thorne was held. The Commodore, Declan and his group rush to the jails and find, to their horror, that Bartholomew has disappeared. |
The Boy Next Door | Sinclair Smith | null | The main character in this novel is Melissa Fuller, but "You can call me Mel", as she says. Mel is a gossip columnist for the New York Journal and has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend, Aaron Spender. Her best friend, Nadine Wilcock, a food critic, is getting married to her boyfriend, Tony Salerno, who is a chef at the popular restaurant Fresche. Melissa also has many coworkers, including Dolly Vargas, an outlandish Style Editor who has her eyes on quite a few men. The book starts with Melissa being late to work after finding her neighbour, Mrs. Helen Friedlander, facedown on the carpet of her apartment after a brutal attack. Mel gets her to the hospital but has yet to solve the problem of walking Paco, Mrs. Friedlander's Great Dane. She calls upon Mrs. Friedlander's nephew, Max Friedlander, to come and take care of Paco and the two cats Tweedledum and Mr. Peepers. Max, who is on vacation with the supermodel Vivica, calls upon his millionaire friend John Trent, who is a crime reporter for the New York Chronicle, the Journals top competitor. John impersonates Max and moves into Max's Aunt Helen's apartment. John and Melissa get off to a good start after sharing mutual affections for not only each other, but other things as well. They go on a date but are stopped by Tweedledum's hospitalization. Afterwards, John kisses Mel over Chinese food, and gets mixed reactions from her as she jumps off to her apartment. John is troubled over whether he should sleep with Mel. He asks for advice from his family, including his grandmother, Genevieve Randolph Trent, his rich brother Jason Trent, and his sister-in-law, Stacy Trent. They each feel that he should go for it. He does, in fact, take Mel out for dinner and afterward, they have sex. They express their love for each other. Max's ex-girlfriend, Vivica the supermodel, later spoils their love by telling Mel the big secret. Mel lashes out at John and they split up. Meanwhile, Max replaces John in the apartment and takes over the pet jobs. It is expressed that he is interested in the thought of insulin injection killing his aunt (his aunt would bequeath him $12 million upon her death), which worries Mel and prompts her to forgive John and ask him for his help in saving Max's aunt. They wire John and catch Max with a murder intent. The book ends with John proposing to Mel, and she agreeing to marry him. |
The Sunne in Splendour | Sharon Penman | null | The story begins in 1459 with Richard as a young boy, and ends in 1485 with his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field. Penman rejects the common belief that Richard killed the "Princes in the Tower," the sons of his brother King Edward IV, and attributes their deaths to the overly ambitious Duke of Buckingham. When their father is killed, Richard's older brother Edward leads the House of York to victory and becomes king as Edward IV. Edward dies prematurely at age 40, and Richard becomes the Protector of the Realm for Edward's sons, Edward and Richard. When he learns of his brother's marriage to the boys' mother, Elizabeth Woodville, he calls it illegal because of a secret previous marriage, making Edward's children illegitimate making him the heir to the throne. When Elizabeth's brother, Anthony, Lord Rivers, engages in a plot to crown young Edward without Richard's knowledge, his protectorship is ended. Once crowned, Richard's son, Edward, and his wife, Anne, die. After two years as king, he faces his greatest challenge from an army of French mercenaries led by Tudor, the future King Henry VII. At Bosworth, betrayed by two of his nobles, he is killed a few feet from Henry. |
Under the Yoke | S. M. Stirling | 1,989 | Tanya von Shrakenberg established a plantation in formerly-French Touraine Province. Her slaves include Marya Sokolowska and Chantal Lefarge, formerly a Polish nun and a French Communist respectively. Fred Kustaa, agent for the Alliance secret service (the OSS), attempts to keep a resistance movement alive in Europe. He smuggles weapons to guerillas in Finland, and later attempts to smuggle the German professor Ernst Oerbach, who has vital knowledge on nuclear fusion. Marya Sokolowska is Fred's contact in this second mission. Chantal Lefarge meanwhile is raped by Tanya's husband, and impregnated with twins. Fred attempts to flee but things go wrong leading to the deaths of Fred, Marya, and Ernst. Chantal manages to escape to the USA on a submarine. In New York City, she gives birth to Fred and Marya Lefarge (named after her rescuers). |
The Stone Dogs | S. M. Stirling | 1,990 | During the cold war between the Alliance and the Domination, Frederic and Marya work for the OSS as spies and assassins. During the Draka conquest of India, Marya Lefarge is taken prisoner. She becomes a serf to Yolande Ingolfsson, who after torturing her repeatedly with a neural weapon, forces her to become a "brooder" (i.e. a surrogate mother) for her offspring, Gwendolyn. Yolande also swears vengeance on Fred Lefarge after he kills her lover, Myfanwy Venders, during the Indian Incident. As both superpowers expand into space, they prepare different doomsday weapons. The Alliance's weapon is a computer virus ("comp plague") secretly planted in Draka military computers by spies; the Draka's is a biological virus called the Stone Dogs that causes infected personnel to go insane. Yolande discovers Marya, who has contacted the OSS, planting the comp-plague and allows her to escape with knowledge of the Stone Dogs. This forces her uncle, Archon Eric von Shrakenberg, to use the weapon prematurely. The Draka win the resulting conflict; however, their incomplete victory leads to Eric negotiating an arrangement whereupon the Alliance is allowed to launch its generation ship "The New America" and the remaining Alliance survivors in space are granted limited Draka citizenship. |
Century | Fred Mustard Stewart | 1,981 | Seven-year-old Princess Syliva Maria Pia Angelica Toscanelli is called to the Mother Superior's office. She is told that her father, Prince Filiberto was killed in battle, making the princess an orphan. Private Augusts Dexter is on his way back from Savannah, Georgia, after delivering confidential papers from General Sherman when he decides to spend the night at a burned plantation house, in order to rest and loot the house. An old slave, offers him his mistress's jewels for fifty dollars. Augusts gives him thirty dollars and his father's gold watch. He plans to sell the jewellery and use them to fund his plans of building a bank in New York. Alice Dexter, the wife of Augustus, is vacationing in the Villa dell'Acqua after having struck up a friendship with Princess Sylvia. She meets Vittorio Spada, a servant child, with whom she takes a great liking to. Franco Spada, the older brother of Vittorio, and the gardener of the villa, bribes the local priest with a gold watch. Franco asks the priest to care for Vittorio, in the case of his death. The next morning, Princess Sylvia goes on her daily horse ride, when she encounters what appears to be an unconscious Franco. When she dismounts and attempts to wake him, Franco immediately holds her at gunpoint in the hopes of kidnapping her so that the royal family will give enough money to send him and Vittorio to America. Princess Sylvia laughs at him, and demands that he help her to mount her horse. Afterwards, she invites him to meet her at the library where she begins to teach him how to read and write. She is later warned by Alice of the suspicions that could possibly arise from her teaching Franco, particularly the suspicions of her husband. Princess Sylvia ignores it, and continues to teach him. Prince Giancarlo returns home after a bomb scare. He meets with a Mafia man to arrange for Franco's removal from his wife's presence. One night Franco is awoken and arrested for the rape and murder of a local girl. He is later arraigned and given a life-sentence. Princess Sylvia makes it her life goal to fight for his release, knowing that Prince Giancarlo, was likely behind the arrest. She writes to Alice explaining her woes and the fear for Vittorio's future. Alice, who is unable to produce children, decides to have Vittorio sent to America to become her son, against the wishes of Augustus. Franco is later transferred to the island of San Stefano to live out the remainder of his life sentence with hard labor. He becomes chained to Fillipo Pieri with whom he immediately bonds to. Vittorio is now known as Victor Dexter, the legally adopted son of Alice and Augustus Dexter. Augustus continues to treat him as a nuisance but slowly shows signs of warmth. He is called into Augustus's office to be pressured into attending the family Christmas party. Victor decides to ask Lucille Elliot, his cousin, but she is already attending with her boyfriend. At the Christmas party, he dances enthusiastically with an unattractive girl, with whom he was tricked into dancing with by his cousin Rodney. Lucille takes notice and asks Victor to dance with her. Shortly after, a drunk Rodney and Lucille's boyfriend gang up on Victor leading to a public fight. Afterwards, Victor leaves and travels to Little Italy. A prostitute approaches him, and he decides to give in to his sexual urges for the first time. The next day Victor returns home to inform Alice and Augustus that he is moving out, and living with an Italian family. He meets Gianni, the family's son, with whom he is asked to teach English to. When Victor returns to work at the bank, Augustus calls him to his office, to question the loan application of an Italian grocer. Victor informs him that he recommended the grocer to apply at their bank. The two argue after Augustus chooses to reject it based on his racist hatred of Italians. After the argument, Augustus approves the loan. A celebration with the local Italians ensues, and Gianni asks Victor to accompany him to a "club". The club turns out to be a gang led by Little Vinnie. Victor rejects the invitation to join and leaves. Alice is becoming weak due to tuberculosis. She celebrates her thirty-sixth birthday with her family. Victor meets up with Lucille and tells her that he loves her, and to marry him. She decides to date him. Upon their first date, he discovers that Howard Cantrell, the genial cashier of the bank is embezzling money. After confronting him, Howard runs and away and drowns himself. Augustus later praises Victor for his discovery, and finally attempts to connect with him. On his way back home, Victor runs into Gianni, Little Vinnie and their friend Marco. The three are drunk and decide to teach him a lesson. An accident ensues in which Marco is killed. Little Vinnie assures Victor before they leave, that Marco's death will not be forgotten. Later, Victor moves back home with Alice and Augustus. He later confesses the accident to Augustus, who accepts it calmly but secretly harbors mixed feelings regarding Victor's true nature. Alice dies ten days later from her illness. In Italy, Franco writes in his diary that Fillipo has died due to a heat stroke coupled with twelve years of back breaking work. He plans to escape the prison and prepares to do so, only to find that the newly widowed Princess Sylvia has managed to have him pardoned by the King, and released. She brings him back to the villa where he cleans and is offered the services of a prostitute. However, Franco rejects her, and confesses his love for the princess, who has secretly harbored feelings for Franco as well. The two becomes lovers, and he decides with her support to create a socialist newspaper, which eventually becomes successful. The eleven years after Alice's death, were happy ones for Victor. He married Lucille and fathered three children with her. Also during that period, he and Augustus shared a greater relationship, before Augustus's death from a cerebral hemorrhage. Three days after Augustus's funeral, the will was read. Victor learned that he had been left a large amount of money. Yet, the controlling shares of the Dexter Bank were left to Lucille. Eventually, Victor came to understand that it was Augustus's way of conveying to Victor, that he didn't completely trust him, after the night he learned that Victor killed a man. With Victor as the new president of the Dexter Bank, he immediately initiates great changes by reaching out to new classes of depositors – primarily the urban poor and immigrants. Little Vinnie learns of this change, and meets up with Victor at the bank to blackmail him into giving him a hundred thousand dollar loan. Victor fears that Little Vinnie will tell the media about Marco's death. He arranges to speak with the uncle of Julia Lombardini, his new secretary, due to his insights on Little Vinnie's criminal activities. Later, Little Vinnie and Gianni are arrested on charges of robbery. The two had been manipulated into committing a crime that Victor and an undercover police officer had planned. Lucille decides to use some of the income from the bank stock to build a mansion for the family. She hires Archie Winstead, an architect, to aid in the design and construction. Victor worries that she will drive the bank into bankruptcy with her spending. Tensions arise when she informs Victor that he can do nothing to stop her plans for the building, nor her plans for moving upwards in the social hierarchy. Eventually, Victor asks Lucille to sell him her stock. She refuses, because she enjoys the new power that she holds over him. On the day that Victor receives news of Little Vinnie's arrest, Lucille asks him to make love to her. He rejects her, making her realize that her once compliant husband is rebelling. During Christmas, Lucille is in London buying furniture for their home. Victor is invited to Julia's home to spend Christmas with her family. After dinner he and Julia walk along the beach, when he confesses that he is falling in love with her. She accepts his kiss before pushing him away and insisting that she be his secretary, rather than his mistress. Back at Julia's home, Victor asks her uncle who owns a local Italian newspaper for help in forcing Lucille to sell her stock. With the newspaper, they ask the Italian community to deposit their money into the Dexter Bank. Lucille returns home ecstatic with the deposits and increases in stock. She buys a new dress, only to discover that the new Italian depositors, are withdrawing their money. Lucille quickly realizes that Victor had planned the sudden deposits to force her to sell. They argue with Victor telling her that she has forced him into doing this for fear that she will sell the stock out of the family in order to climb the social ladder. She cries and asks Victor if he loves her. He admits that he does not know anymore. Afterwards, she tells him that she will sell the stock to him, leaving Victor to realize by doing so it may have cost him his marriage. Meanwhile, in Italy Franco is now a senator and living with Princess Sylvia and their twin sons. He uses his position to pressure the senate into launching a crusade against the Mafia. Sylvia worries for his safety and asks that he hire a bodyguard. Their son Tony, is under the tutelage of Cardinal dell'Acqua, in hopes of becoming a priest. The Cardinal presses Tony to encourage his parents to solidify their marriage by marrying. Despite Franco's continuous attack on the Church, the couple agree. Later, Tony's brother Fausto pressures him into coming along to La Rosina, the local brothel. Although Tony is initially resistant he agrees. He sleep with a woman for the first time. Later, he angrily admits to Fausto that he enjoyed it. The next day he informs his mother that he is going to be a priest. Back in America, Julia is now Victor's mistress despite her desire to be anything but. She argues with him to divorce Lucille. Victor continually insists that the timing is wrong despite his desire to be with her as well. Eventually, Victor and his family are aboard a ship to Italy where they have been invited to attend Franco and Sylvia's wedding. It will be the first time Victor has returned to Italy in thirty years. Yet, he cannot be happy while Julia is upset at him. That night, Victor and Lucille engage in an argument before Victor asks her for a divorce. She refuses and informs him that he is not rich enough for her to divorce him yet. On the third day of traveling, they reach Rome where Victor tearfully reunites with Franco. The two converse that night with Franco telling Victor, that it is apparent he is unhappily married. Franco and Sylvia are later married by Cardinal dell'Acqua where a grand celebration takes place afterwards. When the Dexter family returns home, Julia meets with Victor and tells him that while he has been away, she has been dating a wine importer and accepted his proposal in spite of the fact that she does not love him. Victor tells Julia that he has tried to divorce Lucille, but she will not agree. Julia does not relent and admits that she has grown to despise being his mistress. They depart by saying thank you for the last six years shared together. A week later Victor receives a cable from Sylvia informing him that Franco was run over by a car and killed. He retreats into a room to mourn his losses. In Rome, Fausto angrily tells his mother that his father's death was no accident. He is certain that the Mafia was involved. He promises to avenge his death. A woman named Elaine Fitzsimmons has approached Victor with the idea of writing a book about his life. He considers it, before inviting her to spend the weekend with his family at their weekend house on Sands Point. Before leaving the office, he meets with Morris David, a director, writer and producer of films. Morris asks Victor to aid him in financing his next film. Victor agrees under the condition of seeing Morris's other works. That night, he attends the movies and watches Morris's The Undressed Salad. He decides to finance it. Drew Dexter and his friends steal a speedboat with the intentions of returning it. They are caught and end up in jail for the night. Victor decides to have him work with the Sand Point road crews in order to learn his lesson. In the meantime, Barbara Dexter meets Morris who has come into Sand Points attempting to meet with her father. They find themselves amused by the differences in their personalities as they ride back to her home. Before leaving he tells her to contact him if she finds any good books that could possibly be made into films. Elaine has tea with Lucille who has been hiring her to seduce Victor. Lucille hopes that by entrapping Victor, she will receive a generous divorce settlement. However, Elaine finds herself turned off by Lucille's cold nature. She confides in Victor and the two become lovers. Unbeknownst to the two, Lucille is all too aware of their relationship and sends two photographers to their rooms. When he returns home, she triumphantly announces what she intends to reap from their divorce settlement. Before he leaves, she is startled to hear him say that he feels sorry for what he knows she will become. As he walks out she finds herself wishing he would come back. In Italy, Lieutenant Fausto and his men are captured during the Battle of Caporetto. The German captain who has caught him allows him to escape home where Princess Sylvia has transformed the palazzo into a hospital for wounded soldiers. Fausto returns and takes note of a pretty nurse named Nanda Montecatini. He asks his mother to introduce them. Yet, Fausto is not the only one to notice Nanda. Tony struggles with his role as a priest and his strong desires for Nanda. During Fausot's first date with Nanda, he mistakenly falls prey to the rumor that all Jewish girls are easy. He attempts to force Nanda to sleep with him. She knees him in the groin. He apologizes and the two agree to see each other later. Meanwhile, Tony confesses to Cardinal dell'Acqua his lustful thoughts of Nanda. Cardinal dell'Acqua insists that Tony must purge himself of such thoughts. Later, Fausto is traveling a taxi to rejoin his commanding officer. They are forced to stop due to a crow of people gathered around Benito Mussolini. He steps outside and finds himself entranced by the speaker. Morris David and Barbara Dexter are now married and living in Hollywood, where David has become a successful comedic film producer. They hold a great celebration filled with various Hollywood celebrities for their open house. Also in attendance, is the newly married Lucille, her young husband Archibald Pembroke and Lorna Dexter. During the party, Morris makes an announcement that he intends to create Russia, the most expensive dramatic film of its time, in order to document the suffering of the Russian Jews. While at the party Lorna meets Carl Maria von Gersdorff, a concert pianist. Though engaged, she finds herself attracted to him. While filming Russia, numerous difficulties, accidents and upsets cause the film to be delayed and even more costly. Barbara decides to fund the film so long as Morris changes the genre to comedy, which he ultimately agrees to after realizing that all of the accidents and dramatic effects have essentially created a comedy. Back in New York, Lorna visits Victor to inform him that she is marrying Carl. Although happy for her, Victor feels even lonelier knowing that his last daughter is now leaving him. On the night of the premiere of Russia, Morris and Barbara return home. The film is well received by fans and critics alike. However, as Morris professes his love for Barbara's faith in him, she slaps him. Morris eventually learns that Barbara had discovered that he had been sleeping with Laura Kaye, the female lead in the film. Soon after, Morris manages to charm Barbara into forgiving him. A week after the premiere, Lorna marries Carl. Eight months later they have a baby girl named Gabriella. ===Part VII: Church and State (1927 art VIII: A Christmas Present for Gabriella (1929–1934 art IX: Death of a Dream (1936 art X: Gabriella in Love (1940 art XI: War (1942 art XII: The Eternal City (1943–1944 art XIII: The Queen of Seventh Avenue (1950 art XIV: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor(1959–1960)=== |
Foreigner | Robert J. Sawyer | 1,994 | In the beginning of the novel, Afsan is accidentally run over by a chariot, causing severe crush injuries to his face. As Quintaglios can regenerate large amounts of tissue, Afsan heals, and in the process, his eyes, which were cut out by Yenalb in Far-Seer, also regenerate. However, Afsan does not regain his sight, despite having fully anatomically functional eyes. Believing suggestions that the issue may be psychological, he consults Mokleb, who has recently pioneered the new field of psychoanalysis. While this does not cause him to regain his sight, it does cure the chronic nightmares and insomnia he suffered after setting up the royal culling in Fossil Hunter. With the moon on which the Quintaglios live continuing its inward spiral towards the giant planet known as the "Face of God", the death of their world continues to put a forced acceleration of Quintaglio scientific advancement. Within the discovered Jijaki spacecraft, the Quintaglios accidentally trigger the formation of a tower of kiit – a blue nanotech material. Much to their astonishment, this tower extends all the way to the Lagrangian point above the moon's surface. Novato ventures upwards, making a monumental discovery: she discovers that there is a sort of surveillance camera system overlooking all of the worlds to which the "Watcher" (from Fossil Hunter) had the Jijaki transport life from Sol III (Earth). Staying to watch, she glimpses many life-forms, including red blob-like creatures, Quintaglios, and humans. She also notices that several cameras are returning black screens, unsettling her as to the possible meaning. Proceeding to explore the structure at the top of the tower, she accidentally opens an airlock, nearly killing her. While saved by the emergency systems, she realizes that the Quintaglio aviation advancements up to that point will not be sufficient to evacuate their moon, as there is no air in space on which winged aircraft can fly. Meanwhile, Toroca makes an equally astounding discovery – another sentient species of saurian, inhabiting a small archipelago on the other side of the moon from the continent known as Land. These dinosaurs are markedly different both in physiology and psychology to the Quintaglios; most significantly, they use tools and cook meat, are capable of lying, and have a reduced sexual dimorphism, the last of which causes all Quintaglios except for Toroca – who has no territorial instincts – to immediately enter dagamant. After Captain Keenir kills two of the "Others" in such a frenzy, Toroca attempts to negotiate, not altogether unsuccessfully. However, the Others eventually decide that the Quintaglios are a threat to their survival and decide to exterminate them, sending a huge fleet for Land. In a last-ditch attempt to settle the dispute, Afsan ventures to one of the ships, where he is shot. Overcoming their cultural aversion to tools, the Quintaglios retaliate, using their prototype aircraft as bomber planes, dropping a napalm-like substance on the enemy fleet, destroying it. Afsan does eventually regain his sight, but shortly thereafter dies from his wounds. Toroca, having rescued a child of the Others, raises it as his own. In an epilogue, the Quintaglios have successfully achieved spaceflight, and send a great many starships out to many planets, including at least one – the Dasheter – to Earth, the original homeworld. Other advancements have been made as well; for example, the Dasheter is navigated by an AI named Afsan, built to mimic the mannerisms of the long-dead astronomer. |
The Scrambled States of America Talent Show | Laurie Keller | 2,008 | New York comes up with the idea of having all the states participate in a talent show. The states eagerly agree and prepare for their acts. However, Georgia has stage fright and is worried how her performance will go. |
Arizona | Augustus Thomas | null | Arizona tells the story of the affection between a young cavalryman and a rancher's daughter. The cavalryman is accused of theft, forced to resign, and then accused of murder. Sub-plots include indiscretions of the young wife of an older cavalry officer, a cavalry officer who will not support his illegitimate child, and the love between a vaquero and the daughter of a German cavalry sergeant. The play is set just before the Spanish-American War and at Aravaipa Ranch, in the Aravaipa Valley near Fort Grant, Arizona. ;Act I Evening, the interior of the adobe courtyard of Canby's ranch house. ;Act II Midnight, drawing-room of Colonel Bonham's quarters at Fort Grant. ;Act III Two months later, dining room at Aravaipa Ranch. ;Act IV Twenty minutes later, the interior of the adobe courtyard of Canby's ranch house. |
Sports, Sin and Subversion | Evan X Hyde | 2,008 | Hyde takes as his point of departure his childhood in the downtown area of Belize City, discussing in effect the history of Belizean sports and sports personalities as he saw it from the late 1950's through to the present day. Hyde makes many references to famous sportspeople in Belize, as well as famous internationals who interacted with Belize and Belizeans: Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Muhammad Ali, as well as popular sports teams: San Francisco Giants, New York Yankees, Philadelphia 76ers and Chicago Cubs. |
Gears of War: Aspho Fields | Karen Traviss | 2,008 | Gears of War: Ashpo Fields follows two storylines, constantly jumping between different time periods both before and after the events of Gears of War. One begins one week after the events of the first game, and the other flashes back to decades earlier, chronicling Marcus Fenix's childhood up to his involvement in Operation Leveler three years before E-Day. Flashing back to 26 years before the events of the first game, a 10-year-old Marcus Fenix arrives at Olafson Intermediate School. His quiet demeanor and rich background attract the attention of school bullies, but Carlos Santiago is quick to rise to his defense. Marcus quickly becomes fast friends with Carlos and his brother Dom, and spends most of his time with the Santiago family, becoming an 'honorary Santiago.' The Santiago family is in sharp contrast to Marcus's own, with the Fenix parents putting their work before their family as compared to the closeness of the Santiagos. During this time, Marcus's mother disappears, further dividing Marcus and his father. Four years before Emergence Day, Marcus decides to enlist in the COG army, following Carlos's path despite Adam Fenix's intentions for Marcus to join the COG as an officer after finishing his education. Dom, at 16, is expecting a child with girlfriend and future wife Maria. He also enlists, becoming a special forces commando. A year later, the COG begin planning Operation Leveler, a covert assault on an enemy research facility developing the Hammer of Dawn at Aspho Fields. Dom's squad is selected to infiltrate the base, while the COG army surround and protect the base from any attempt at attack. Although the battle is a pivotal event of the Pendulum Wars the war is also notable as important Gears perish during this time, such as Anya Stroud's mother, Major Helena Stroud, as well as Dom's brother, Carlos. Planning continues for the invasion of Aspho Point, with both then-Major Hoffman and Adam Fenix taking part in the plans for the operation. It is revealed that the area near the research facility has been reinforced albeit in the wrong position, but the COG continue with the covert operation. The commando squad led by Hoffman that includes Dom infiltrates the base and begins capturing personnel and data. At the same time, the COG land ashore north of Aspho Fields and establish themselves along Aspho Point to divert the Pellegrian forces from the COG forces' objectives. The covert mission's secrecy is compromised when a lone security guard in the research facility manages to evade capture and alert the nearby reinforcements. While the commandos struggle to complete their task, the main army comes under attack. During the present course of the novel, the story picks up one week after the Lightmass Bombing from the finale of the first game. During this time, Marcus and the rest of Delta Squad unexpectedly find Bernadette Mataki, a Gear that had been Marcus' superior during Operation Leveler. Her reappearance causes Dom to question Carlos' death again, asking Bernie for her version of the events resulting in the death of his brother, as Marcus has given him little information. However, she is equally reluctant. At the same time, a Locust attack is discovered to be aiming for the city of Jacinto's food supply at North Gate. A contingency plan is organized for the COG to transport the necessary equipment from North Gate to a secure location. |
Cross Country | James Patterson | 2,008 | An African warlord known as the Tiger, aided by his crew of angry young men, horrifically murders author Eleanor 'Ellie' Cox and her entire family. Alex Cross and girlfriend Bree Stone go investigate, when Alex recalls Ellie had been his one time girlfriend, whom he had loved at one point. He is instantly terrified by this so much he gets no sleep, does no work for the case, and stays up late at night, sitting in his bed. He then figures out the Tiger's next murder, and arrives on time to stop the Tiger and his gang of kids, where most of the villains escape including the Tiger and most of his gang. After gaining access from the CIA he plans on going to Nigeria, where he hopes to find and stop the Tiger, using the knowledge based on the Tiger's whereabouts. After convincing a bitter Nanna and nervous Bree, he goes on a plaine trip to Nigeria, where he is annoyed by their customs. He is then kidnapped by 'cops' and put in jail, where his nose is broken, he is horribly injured, and starves as well as having to deal with no water. After nearly three days or more, he is bailed out by American Ian Flaherty who gives Cross advice to flee while he still can. He is then called by Bree who says there has been another murder by the Tiger. Instead of listening to Flaherty, Cross instead goes to Sudan, where he meets veteran, Moses, who feeds him and gives him water. Later that night, Cross, when alone by himself, is ambushed by the Tiger's gang, however, he escapes with Moses' help and buys a truck which he later gives to Moses. Father Bomata, a priest whom he met during the plaine ride to Nigeria, informs him his cousin, Addane Tansi, may be able to help Alex, who meets Addane, a reporter who had, unbeknowst to Alex, befriended Ellie, whom had gone to Nigeria some time before her death. Addane introduces Alex to her family and shares a kiss with him, which he refuses to think of because of Bree; Flaherty later reveals that the Tiger's real name is Abidemi Swonade. Alex and Addane go to a hobo camp where they are attacked by Janjaweed, ruthless men who rape, injure, and kill women and children. After barely escaping due to the 'Peacekeepers' who only do it so they gain no bad publicity, especially by Addane. After returning to Nigeria, Cross and Addane discover that Addane's family have been murdered. When trying to get closer, Cross and Addane are taken to jail by cops. Alex witnesses Addane get murdered by Tiger, after being raped, is released afterwards. Heading back to Washington, he is annoyed by all that has happened. After the course of events, many more murders have occurred. Heading home, he learns that Alex's family have been kidnapped by the Tiger, who then gives Alex coordinates to the hideout. Alex, Bree, and allie, John Sampson, go and defeat the Tiger's gang, while Alex follows Swonade (Tiger) whom nearly overpowers him, bit Alex kills the Tiger. Ian Flaherty is revealed to be working with Swonade and is arrested. Shortly afterward, his family are found; Alex instantly thinks the CIA might have worked with the Tiger. Alex calls upon Merrill Synder and Steven Millard, from the CIA, and arrests them, after discovering they and Flaherty were associated with Tiger. The book ends as Alex gets an alarming phone call from Kyle Craig, who has escaped from prison and wants revenge on Alex Cross, after the events in the previous book - and escaping from prison. |
The Stranger Beside Me | Ann Rule | 2,001 | The first few chapters following the brief introduction about Bundy's birth and family describe Rule's friendship with Bundy, her first impressions of him, and her reluctance to consider the evidence that he might be responsible for the crimes of which he was accused. The events of the Chi Omega murders at Florida State University in January 1978 are written in third person, but not omnisciently, as the perpetrator is not identified as being Bundy, thus keeping the documentation of these events in-sync with the knowledge available to officers at the time. It is not until Bundy's capture and trials in Florida that Rule fully accepts that Bundy is a serial killer. She finds the idea shocking to the point that she "[runs] to the ladies room and throws up" An afterword, following Rule's lament for Bundy and his victims, describes the Kimberly Leach trial. The 1989 update outlines Bundy's execution, and the 2000 update touches on many things, including various women claiming to have encountered Bundy in the 70's, Robert Keppel's retirement from detective work and his employment at the University of Washington, and Bundy's possible involvement in the unsolved disappearance of Ann Marie Burr, a girl who disappeared in 1961 when Bundy was 14. A 2008 update of the book includes more stories from women who have contacted Rule with stories of their "near-miss" contacts with a man they believe was Ted Bundy, and also a 'Ted Bundy FAQ' section where Rule tries to answer the questions most frequently asked by readers, including the fact that he was not responsible for the 1973 murder of Kathy Merry Devine, for which he was long suspected. DNA testing linked that killing to an ex-con named William Cosden, who was subsequently tried and convicted of her murder. |
Alhaji | null | null | The novel's central character is a sixteen year old boy, not named until the last page of the book. The boy does not like school, as he doesn't care for his teacher, Quasi. The boy's favorite companion is a horse, Alhaji. A businessman named Alhaji Kebba contacts the boy and wishes to buy and/or borrow the horse Alhaji. While the protagonist is reluctant to sell or loan him, the businessman is persistent and uses various methods to try to persuade him, including the use of a prostitute. Later, two agents introduce themselves to the boy. One is Quasi, who has been posing as a teacher. Another is Nicholls. The men have been tracking Alhaji Kebba's illegal activities. Quasi and Nicholls have a plan to catch Alhaji Kebba, and they recruit the protagonist to help them. |
Eva | Peter Dickinson | 1,988 | The novel opens as Eva wakes up in a hospital bed, paralyzed. Her mother assures her she will be fine, that the doctors will gradually reduce the paralysis. Eva guesses that her face has been badly scarred, but when she looks in a mirror, she sees the face of a chimpanzee. An experimental procedure has been used to transplant Eva's "neuron memory" into Kelly, a young chimp from her father's research facility. Eva learns to adapt to her new body, using a keyboard to simulate her voice. She has dreams of a forest she has never seen - that Kelly has never seen either - and imagines it comes from the chimpanzee unconscious. She realizes that she must accept the chimpanzee part of herself, which is easier for her as she has grown up with her father's chimps. The cost of the procedure has been met by a media company in return for broadcast rights. Eva is a big hit with the public and her family has to cope with massive media interest. The power of the 'shaper' companies is immense in a world where many people spend all day at home. 'Shaper' technology is a cross between television and virtual reality. Eva spends most of her time with humans, even going to school, but also spends time in the Reserve, where she learns to adapt to the chimpanzee social group. Her human understanding helps her to manipulate some of the situations and she becomes accepted by the others. One particularly intelligent chimp, Sniff, is intrigued by her. With the introduction of enthusiastic animal rights advocate Grog Kennedy the novel takes another turn. He convinces Eva that for the sake of the species the chimpanzees must return to the wild. Not only do they belong there, but Grog believes the human race is running out of steam and will before long no longer bother to care for animals in captivity. At this stage there are only small pockets of wilderness left, and most species have died out. Grog and Eva devise an ingenious plan to get the chimps to the island of St. Hilaire near Madagascar where Eva and Sniff lead the others in an escape. Her human knowledge is necessary to help the chimps learn the skills necessary to survive, which means that she must cut herself off from other humans. The novel ends twenty-four years later when Eva is near death, the human race is in decline and Eva imagines a future in which the descendants of her band of chimpanzees become the new dominant race. |
The Silkie | A. E. van Vogt | null | The novel has four sections, each consisting of a story previously published as part of a series. A young woman, eking out an existence with her father on a boat moored somewhere in Haiti, learns of a medical man with a possible secret of eternal youth. Suspecting a swindle, but keen to get close to any source of money, she joins the various elderly expatriates in a trek to Echo Island, where the supposed genius, Dr. Sawyer, is living. Instead she is confronted with a young man who emerges from swimming underwater, transforming from a fish-like form to human as he does so. He identifies himself as the product of Sawyer's work, and tell her that he and Sawyer need women to bear his children. The story concludes with him saying, "I'm a Silkie. The first Silkie." Nat Cemp, a Silkie travelling through space under his own power, is hailed by a ship full of Variants. These are the result of further experimentation on the Silkie genome. Each has Silkie abilities to some degree. This particular ship consists mostly of aquatic Variants. Cemp is conducted into the ship, shifting from his hard, bony, space-travelling form into his aquatic shape as he does so. Cemp meets a powerful boy aged about 10 who claims to be his son. Since Silkies have to return to water to breed every 9.5 years, and are not allowed to meet their children afterwards, the boy's claim is credible. He tells Cemp that he wishes to return to Earth to learn how to tame his unusual powers. Cemp agrees to this, even though it means he himself will not be allowed to return to Earth as he needs to, in order to complete another breeding cycle. However, after Cemp contacts Earth and then leaves the ship, the boy reveals himself to be a malevolent shape-shifting alien. Cemp returns to Earth clandestinely in order to see his wife Joanne, but finds that the alien has taken on her form and is waiting in his house. The alien, known as the Kibmadine, displays Silkie-like control over energy during the fight which occurs after Cemp discovers the deception. The alien flees. With the aid of the main computer at Silkie Authority, Cemp analyzes his own sense-impressions of the Kibmadine. The result is a picture of race which enters into an erotic-cannibalistic relationship with its victims, taking on their shapes and then consuming them. Armed with this, Cemp meets the Kibmadine and uses Logic of Levels to send it into an amplified memory of the previous victims. Taking on the shape of the former race, the alien then consumes itself. Silkies all across Earth are confronted by apparent doubles of themselves, who then flee as space-travelling Silkies. Cemp traces them to an asteroid making a close approach to the Sun, inside which is a mysterious power which both controls these new Silkies and also gives them abilities that Cemp and the Earth Silkies cannot match. On the asteroid is a complete population of Silkies, both male and female, who can take on any shape, unlike Earth Silkies. This discovery threatens the relationship between Silkies and humans, especially between Silkies and their wives. Apparently the story of Dr. Sawyer was a fraud, intended to allow Silkies to live on Earth after the asteroid first approached the Sun. On subsequent returns the space Silkies had to deal with the discovery of the Special People and the creation of Variants. The latest return is part of a long-term plan. However, just as the Earth authorities come to an agreement with the space Silkies and the unknown power behind them, a new force encloses the Earth and drags it from orbit. Cemp manages to escape, only to find the Earth now reduced in size and mounted as a trophy inside the asteroid. The being in the asteroid, known as the Glis, seems to come from an ancient time when the laws of nature were different. The Glis openly threatens to destroy all Silkies if Cemp moves against it, as the asteroid moves many light-years from the Sun. Cemp, however, finds the Logic of Levels key to the Glis's true nature and trips a feedback which forces it out of its state of retarded development, into the next phase. The Glis becomes a huge pink star, liberating thousands of planets from its collection to orbit around it. Many are dead, having been in storage for too long, but on the liberated Earth mere seconds have passed and all are well. Now humanity and the space Silkies must learn to co-exist on an Earth which is part of a huge new Solar System. While exploring the new planets, one of the Earth Silkies is killed by an unknown force. Cemp tries to investigate, but meets hostility from the other space Silkies. It is possible the victim recognized the nature of the attacker before dying, out of some ancient racial memory. Cemp eventually confronts a powerful alien called a Nijian, which seems to be able to manipulate time and space itself. Using one of the Glis's weapons, he survives the encounter, but Nijians begin kidnapping Silkies and Special People from Earth. Alarmingly, this means they learn the Logic of Levels, one of the few weapons which might work against them. Cemp learns that each Nijian lives alone on a planet, ruling its people like a god. Like the Glis, the Nijians seem to come from an ancient time, when time and space were plastic and could be ruled by Will. Pushing his shape-shifting abilities, Cemp is able to take on the form of the Nijians. Using Logic of Levels, he starts a sequence of reactions in them which infects each one and passes to another Nijian along the communications links they maintain. The self-destruction caused by this collapses reality itself, until Cemp's awareness is the only thing left in existence. Cemp realizes that, while in the form of a Nijian, he can imagine any kind of Universe and bring it into being. He decides to imagine one without the Nijians, the Glis or the Kibmadine. He restores the Earth to its place in orbit around the Sun, also decides to make all humans into Silkies, abolishing the divisions threatening to tear the Earth apart. He then enters this universe and re-joins his people, and especially his wife. |
Relic of Empire | W. Michael Gear | 1,992 | Humanity is trapped in a "gravity well", the so-called Forbidden Borders. Two remaining human empires - the Regan Empire and the Divine Sassa - are poised to fight one last war for domination of Free Space. The Lord Commander, Staffa Kar Therma a.k.a. The Star Butcher, is a mercenary who leads an elite group of soldiers (the Companions). He has aligned himself to The Seddi Order, a former quasi-religious group in an effort to stop humanity from making itself extinct. The Regan Emperor has been assassinated, and Internal Security Minister Ily Takka has now taken control of the Regan Empire. She plots darkly, and has ordered little respected, but brilliant Division First (Commander) Sinklar Fist to return to Rega and become the leader of her military. The reader can expect shenanigans. She will attempt to rule all worlds under human control in Free Space ... but at what price? |
Dimension of Miracles | Robert Sheckley | null | Thanks to a computer error, Tom Carmody, an unlucky civil servant, wins the main prize of the Galactic Lottery. Being a human from the Earth, he doesn't even reach the level of the 32nd class creature, therefore he doesn't possess galactic status and shouldn't even be eligible. However, he obtains the Prize before the mistake is found out and is allowed to keep it. That's when his adventure begins, since, not being a space-traveling creature, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth, and so the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home. At the same time, his removal from his home environment has caused, by the 'universal law of predation', a predatory entity to spring in to existence that perpetually pursues and aims to destroy him. So Carmody is forced to be on the run, and with the help of his Prize meets several well-meaning (but usually not very competent) aliens that attempt to find where, when and which Earth he belongs on. He ends up transporting from Earth to Earth: different phases and realities of his planet, which of course, is not in the time or condition he expects it to be. |
The Lost Fleet: Valiant | John G. Hemry | 2,008 | Not sure what to expect after the heavy damage the Syndicate's inflicted on his fleet when they escaped 11 days before, John 'Black Jack' Geary discovers the system is practically undefended with nothing left behind but warships too badly damaged to participate in the fleet chasing him. The Alliance fleet quickly gains control of the system and lays a trap for the pursuing Syndicate Fleet. When the Syndicates arrive 5 hours later, they fall for the lure of unprotected auxiliaries and quickly get decimated by Geary's plan to explode the cores of the abandoned Syndic ships left in the system. When the surviving Syndicate leaders realize their huge pursuit fleet has been destroyed, they order the two remaining Syndic battleships guarding the hypernet jump gate to destroy it. The resulting explosion unleashes a large nova-like explosion that destroys practically everything in the system except for the Alliance fleet which only suffers minor damage. Meanwhile Geary and Victoria Rione end their relationship with Rione feeling that Geary actually is in love with Captain Tanya Desjani. Captain Geary jumps to the Branwyn Star System where he finds no threats to his fleet. Right before jumping to Wendig, he receives a message about a computer worm in the jump engines which would have left his ship and a few others trapped in jump space forever. Geary now realizes that his enemies within the Alliance fleet are getting desperate and are willing to take whatever means necessary to remove him and his supporters. In the Wendig Star System, they discover the Syndicates Leaders have abandoned the system, but left 500 civilians to die on the main planet as their life support fails. Believing no one should die like that, Captain Geary orders the civilians to be rescued. Before the shuttles arrive at the planet, another worm is discovered, this time targeting the weapons systems to have them destroy the civilians. The worm is blocked and the citizens of the Wendig Alpha surrender themselves to the Alliance fleet and heads towards the Cavalos jump point. Ten days later, in the Cavalos Star System, Captain Geary safely delivers the Wendig citizens and faces off against another fleet of Syndicate warships. Emerging victorious, he captures a Syndicate CEO and gets him to admit that there is an alien civilization on the other side of Syndic space. Geary lets the CEO go after making a deal with him about working together to end the war. Later Geary and Desjani admit to each other their feelings for each other but realize that as long as Geary is her commanding officer they can never be together. Desjani also fervently believes that Geary has a mission from the living stars themselves to end the war and he must complete this also before they can be together. |
Two Bad Ants | Chris Van Allsburg | 1,988 | The title characters, while journeying through a human home, decide to exploit a sugar bowl on their own rather than delivering the crystals to the colony's queen. They experience misadventures: they land in a cup of coffee, fall into a sink and are threatened by its garbage disposal unit, are ejected from a toaster, and are nearly electrocuted when they enter an electric outlet. Chastened, they rejoin a line of ants carrying sugar back to the colony. |
3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows | null | 2,009 | 3 Willows follows the characters of Polly, Ama, and Jo as they deal with issues in their personal lives as well as the stress of growing up. Polly is an outcast with dreams of having a more glamorous life and to become a model like the grandmother she never met. However issues with her mother could threaten to overshadow her hopes. Ama is a smart girl originally from Ghana. Though she is not particularly outdoorsy, her scholarship lands her in wilderness camp in Wyoming. Jo has become quite popular during her time away from Ama and Polly, winning the attention of both the popular kids as well as a cute guy named Zach. When his girlfriend comes back to town, Jo attempts to win Zach back only to end up losing her job. With her parents separating, can she find out what's most important in the end? |
Frankenstein | Mary Shelley | null | Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage the crew spots a dog sled mastered by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same over-ambitiousness and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born into a wealthy family in Geneva, he is encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world around him through science. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends. When he is around 4 years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, an orphan whose mother has just died (she is Victor's biological cousin in the first edition, but an adopted child with no blood relation in the 1831 edition). Victor has a possessive infatuation with Elizabeth. He has two younger brothers: Ernest and William. As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories of science that focus on achieving natural wonders. He plans to attend the University of Ingolstadt in Germany. Weeks before his planned departure, his mother dies of scarlet fever. At university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, and develops a secret technique to imbue inanimate bodies with life. The details of the monster's construction are left ambiguous, but Frankenstein finds himself forced to make the creature roughly eight feet tall because of the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body. His creation, which he has hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous, with dull yellow eyes, and a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After bringing his creation to life, Victor is repulsed by his work: he flees the room, and the monster disappears. Victor becomes ill from the experience. He is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval. After a four-month recovery, he determines that he should return home when his brother William is found murdered. Upon arriving in Geneva, he sees the monster near the site of the murder, and becomes certain it is the killer. William's nanny, Justine, is hanged for the murder based on the discovery of William's locket in her pocket. Victor, though certain the monster is responsible, doubts anyone would believe him, and does not intervene. Ravaged by his grief and self-reproach, Victor retreats into the mountains to find peace. The monster approaches him, ignoring his threats and pleading with Victor to hear its tale. Intelligent and articulate, it tells Victor of its encounters with people, and how it had become afraid of them and spent a year living near a cottage, observing the DeLacey family living there and growing fond of them. Through observing the De Lacey family, the monster became educated and self-aware. It also discovered a lost satchel of books and learned to read. Seeing its reflection in a pool, it realized that its physical appearance is hideous compared to the humans it watches. Though it eventually approached the family with hope of becoming their fellow, they were frightened by its appearance and drove it off, and then left the residence permanently. The creature, in a fit of rage, burned the cottage and left. In its travels some time later, the monster saw a young girl tumble into a stream and rescued her from drowning. A man, seeing it with the child in its arms, pursued it and fired a gun, wounding it. Traveling to Geneva, it met a little boy — Victor's brother William - in the woods outside the town of Plainpalais. The monster hoped the boy was too young to fear deformity, but upon its approach, William cried out, threatening the monster with the weight of his family - the Frankensteins. The creature grabbed the boy by the throat to silence him, and strangled him. It is unclear from the text whether this was an accident on the monster's part or a deliberate murder, but in either case, the monster took this as its first act of vengeance against its creator. It removed a locket from the boy's body and placed it in the folds of the dress of a young woman — William's nanny, Justine — who had been sleeping in a barn nearby, assuming she would be accused of the murder. The monster concludes its story with a demand that Frankenstein create for it a female companion like itself. It argues that as a living thing, it has a right to happiness and that Victor, as its creator, has a duty to obey it, with the chilling words, "You are my creator, but I am your master. Obey!" It promises that if Victor grants its request, it and its mate will vanish into the wilderness of South America uninhabited by man, never to reappear. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees and travels to England to do his work. He is accompanied by Clerval, but they separate in Scotland. Through their travels, Victor suspects that the monster is following him. Working on a second being on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of what his work might wreak, particularly as creating a mate for the creature might lead to the breeding of an entire race of monsters that could plague mankind. He destroys the unfinished example after he sees the monster looking through the window. The monster witnesses this and, confronting Victor, vows to be with Victor on his upcoming wedding night. The monster murders Clerval and leaves the corpse on an Irish beach, where Victor lands upon leaving the island. Victor is imprisoned for the murder of Clerval, and becomes seriously ill, suffering another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, and with his health renewed, he returns home with his father. Once home, Victor marries his cousin Elizabeth and prepares for a fight to the death with the monster. Wrongly believing the monster's vowed revenge was for his own life, he asks Elizabeth to retire to her room for the night while he goes looking for the fiend. He searches the house and grounds, but the creature murders the secluded Elizabeth instead. Victor sees the monster at the window pointing at the corpse. Grief-stricken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth, Victor's father dies. Victor vows to pursue the monster until one of them annihilates the other. After months of pursuit, the two end up in the Arctic Circle, near the North Pole. At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story. A few days after the vanishing of the creature, the ship becomes entombed in ice and Walton's crew insists on returning south once they are freed. In spite of a passionate speech from Frankenstein, encouraging the crew to push further north, Walton realizes that he must relent to his men's demands and agrees to head for home. Frankenstein dies shortly thereafter, not before imploring Captain Walton to carry his mission of vengeance to its completion. "The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to take up my unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue." Walton discovers the monster on his ship, mourning over Frankenstein's body. Walton hears the monster's adamant justification for its vengeance as well as expressions of remorse. Frankenstein's death has not brought it peace. Rather, its crimes have increased its misery and alienation; it has found only its own emotional ruin in the destruction of its creator. It vows to exterminate itself on its own funeral pyre so that no others will ever know of its existence. Walton watches as it drifts away on an ice raft that is soon lost in darkness. |
The Orphaned Anything's | null | 2,008 | An “I'm up, what more do you want from me?” sticker hideously controls the back of Ayden Kosacov’s bedroom door. In his mind what started as a joke is slowly becoming his "glorious and underrated mantra". Ayden Kosacov is alive, and that is about all you can say. In the throes of a mundane and jejune life Ayden is slowly coming to the realization that if all his world is a stage then he wouldn’t care if he did or did not miss the final scenes. Through an almost "accidental" suicide attempt and the recovery that soon follows, Ayden learns that there is more to living than just being alive. Finding his way through diverse experiences and people he comes to terms with God, his family, and finally himself. The Orphaned Anything’s style of writing is in the likes of Denis Johnson (Jesus' Son) and Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) and yet designed to give life lessons, encouragement, and hope like books by Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist) and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz). |
Marihuana | Cornell Woolrich | null | King Turner is in a deep funk after his wife, Eleanor, left him. He's fallen in with a pair of reprobates, Bill Evans and Wash Gordon, who are more interested in him as the butt of their jokes than as a friend. One night they drag King and a girl named Vinnie to a "ranch"—a sort of speakeasy where people smoke "grass". After getting high, King hallucinates that Vinnie is his ex-wife and begins chasing her around the room. Bill hands him a knife as a lark and tells him to "pin her down." King does exactly that and then flees the room. He finds a sleeping bouncer and steals the man's gun. Before he can leave the ranch, a couple police officers arrive, but King manages to sneak past them. King evades pursuit and hides out in the phone booth of a candy store. While there, a police officer enters and walks towards the store's proprietor to buy a numbers ticket, but King, paranoid from the marijuana, thinks the officer is there to arrest him, and responds by gunning the man down. King flees the store and heads to the hotel where his ex-wife is living. Eleanor agrees to talk with King in her room. After hearing his story, she tries to calm him down but with little effect. She convinces him to let her order some sandwiches and coffee from room service. On the phone, she tells the clerk that she wants her order fixed "just like the other night," referring to the fact that she'd had sleeping powder added to her coffee to help with insomnia. But before the order can arrive, King grows paranoid that Eleanor has betrayed him to the police. When he thinks room service is taking too long, King shoots Eleanor and flees the room. With nowhere else to go, he heads back to his apartment, where the police are waiting for him. King escapes onto the ledge of the building. Detective Spillane, the officer in charge of catching him, follows him out, but before he can save him, King jumps to his death. The book ends with a final twist—back in her apartment Vinnie is alive and well, telling a friend about the gag she, Bill and Wash had pulled on King. Bill had only handed King a butter knife, and when King stabbed her, Vinnie took a ketchup-soaked piece of bread and squeezed it to simulate blood. Vinnie is completely unaware of subsequent events and thinks the whole situation hilarious, though her friend has doubts. The story ends with Detective Spillane arriving and Vinnie's friend thinking, "He's either a bill collector or a plainclothesman ... or maybe a little of both." |
The Black Swan | null | null | Rosalie, a 50 year old widow, finds her youthful manner diminished by the "organic phenomena of her time of life," or menopause. She lives with her adult, but unmarried, daughter and an adolescent son all of who juxtapose youth and her "superannuated" purpose in life. The family hires a young, American-born man to tutor for her son. Rosalie is strongly attracted to him and is soon infatuated. Her abnegating daughter disapproves more strongly now of her still socializing mother. Then, seemingly miraculously, Rosalie's menopause reverses. Where her vitality, and sexual awareness would be in decline, she is in a heightened state of sexual awareness including the return of menstrual bleeding. Rosalie plans a family trip and declares her intentions and availability to the young man. They plan a liaison in the Rhine castle Schloss Benrath, but it never takes place, however. She is found dead of a hemorrhage caused by a metastatic tumor in her uterus. The surgeons' commentary include a discussion on the possible causes of Rosalie's newfound youth. Cancer was an obvious cause of her tumor, but one doctor supposes that it could have been the yearning for love and her altered or re-awakened erotic personality that stimulated her ovaries thereby causing the cancerous growth. |
Sign of the Cross | Chris Kuzneski | 2,006 | Jonathon Payne and David "D.J." Jones are recruited to find Dr. Charles Boyd, an archeologist who recently found the Catacombs of Orvieto, the safe haven for the popes of the Middle Ages. While Boyd avoids pursuit, a series of victims turn up dead, people who were tortured and crucified like Jesus Christ on his final day. All the incidents are interconnected, but it’s up to Payne and Jones to figure out the common thread and why they were selected to solve the puzzle. |
Clubbing | null | null | Teenage clubber Charlotte Lottie is sentenced to spend summer on her grandparents' rural country club after an incident involving a fake ID. While working and helping in the club, she discovers a body. After getting involved with a local youth, the two discover that Lottie's grandmother was attempting to summon a demon. After thwarting her grandmother and the local ladies' plans, Lottie is sent to Asia to finish her sentence. |
Geisha in Rivalry | null | null | The book Rivalry begins with the return of the story’s protagonist, Komayo, to the Geisha world. Having left the pleasure quarters to live in the countryside, she returns several years later because her husband has died, leaving her to fend for herself. She decides that she would rather relive her days as a geisha than to live as a peasant. Upon her return, she is reunited with a lover from her past, Yoshioka. The two had spent time together before Yoshioka left the country to study abroad. Yoshioka feels a rekindled desire for Komayo and calls for her often to spend much of her time with him attending various events. Soon he suggests that he should become her danna. Although Komayo would be glad to have the financial support, she shies away from his proposal. Komayo and Yoshioka go on a weeklong vacation to hot spring resorts, but Yoshioka has to leave early, unexpectedly. Komayo stays and runs into Segawa, a man whom she desires instantly. After a brief, but unforgettable affair, Komayo returns to Tokyo. At the Kabuki theater Yoshioka overhears a conversation about the love affair between Komayo and Segawa. He seeks his revenge by becoming involved with the geisha Kikuchiyo, a promiscuous geisha from Komayo’s okiya. As the novel progresses Komayo discovers that Yoshioka betrayed her. She’s hurt but pursues her relationship with Segawa with renewed determination. However, Segawa does not reciprocate the same devotion as Komayo. After a performance, Yoshioka’s first mistress, Rikiji, seeks her revenge on Komayo by introducing Segawa to a wealthy former geisha, Kimiryu. This new geisha’s financial situation pleases Segawa’s mother who never approved of Komayo. Hence, the novel concludes with Komayo alone. Both the man that offered to support her and the man she loved have left her for other geisha. The mother of her okiya dies and her husband, Old Gozan, recognizes his inability to continue the house on his own; he passes it on to Komayo. The story ends with Komayo suffering from the loss of both lovers, but also her realization that the geisha okiya means a lot to her. Gozan’s offer to pass on the okiya adds a glimmer of hope for Komayo with a life running the household herself. |
The Memorandum | Václav Havel | null | Josef Gross (Andrew Gross in the Wilson translation), a director of an unnamed organization, receives a memorandum written in Ptydepe, a constructed language, about an audit. He finds out that Ptydepe was created to get rid of similarities between words, such as fox and box, and emotional connexions. He tries to get someone to translate the memorandum for him, and gradually becomes opposed to the use of Ptydepe. Gross finally finds a reluctant secretary named Maria (Alice in the Wilson translation) who explains that, while she can translate the memorandum, she does not yet have a permit to do so. The next day, his deputy Jan Ballas (Max Balas in the Wilson translation) takes over Gross's job. Gross becomes a "staff watcher", someone who spies on the workers of the unnamed organization. Meanwhile, Maria gets fired for translating Gross's memorandum. The last few Ptydepe learners in the organization give up learning. After a while, Ballas gives his job back to Gross. Ptydepe is replaced with another language, Chorukor, one with very extreme similarities between words so as to make learning it easier, but finally it is decided to get back to the mother language. The play ends up with most of the characters going to lunch. |
Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants | null | 1,991 | The year is 1925 AD. Dr. Henry Jones Jr., better known as Indiana Jones, has secured his first teaching job as a professor in London University's archaeology department. It is here that Indy first meets a very attractive twenty-year-old Scottish girl by the name of Deirdre Campbell. She is the brightest student in his class but Indy quickly learns that her knowledge goes far past the contents of his lectures. In her thesis for the class, she quite seriously claims to have uncovered a golden scroll that proves of the true existence of Merlin the sorcerer. Intrigued by the thesis and by Deirdre herself, Indy once again takes up the bullwhip and fedora for an action-packed chase across Britain filled with magic, mystery, murder, a lesson in love and the threat of world domination. |
The Lost Fleet: Dauntless | John G. Hemry | 2,006 | John 'Black Jack' Geary has recently been rescued from a 100-year-old escape pod with a damaged beacon. He was the commanding officer of an early battle in what has become a century-old war between the Syndicate Worlds and the Alliance. His last actions in that battle led to his immortalization as a hero of the Alliance people and fleet, which by the time of the book has become blown out of proportion. Still feeling weak from being frozen for 100 years, Geary arrives at what is supposed to be a decisive battle for the Alliance against the Syndicate. The battle turns out to be a trap and as the leaders of the fleet board a shuttle to negotiate surrender, the Admiral calls on Geary to lead the fleet if anything should happen to him. Geary, assuming that the old laws of war still apply and that nothing ill would happen to his leaders, accepts. Mere hours later after the Admiral is executed, he finds himself in command of 200 ships that have been badly beaten and are cut off from retreat. Having been frozen while the hypernet technology was invented Geary realizes that while the faster hypernet gates are blocked, the Syndicate ships have left the old jump points unguarded. Geary commands his ships to feint then run for those jump points. In the process he loses a ship commanded by his great nephew who stayed behind to buy time for the fleet to jump. After the first jump, Geary has to establish command over people who naturally assume they should be leading the fleet. With the last one hundred years of war having been one of severe attrition, few of the officers and crew surviving under him have any experience with tactics or chain of command. The whole fleet is run as a democracy with captains vying for votes in the decision-making process. Geary abolishes this practice and exerts his authority and in the end creates enemies within his own fleet. Despite all of this he manages to teach a majority of the fleet how to fight in complicated but powerful formations, how to respect authority and how to use the jump point system of travel. Cut off from the hypernet and on the run, Geary still manages to win victories against the Syndicates who are in pursuit. Decisively winning battle after battle Geary gains the trust and adoration of many of his subordinates, and angers his enemies. The story ends with the fleet still on the run, but working ever closer to home while evading and confronting the enemy as needed. |
The Willow Tree | Hubert Selby, Jr. | 1,998 | The protagonist is a fifteen year old African American boy named Bobby who lives in an apartment in South Bronx with his mother and siblings. Despite his young age Bobby has intelligence that is advanced to most of the people around him. Bobby's Hispanic girlfriend Maria often spend time together and have plans for the upcoming summer. Bobby and Maria's lives are shattered when a vicious Hispanic street gang attack Bobby and Maria while the two were walking to school. Bobby and Maria are severely beaten and Maria is sent to the hospital suffering from near-fatal wounds. After Bobby is beaten he gets picked up by an old holocaust survivor named Moishe and an unlikely friendship between Bobby and Moishe begins. Maria, unable to cope with the mutilation of her face caused by the lye, commits suicide. We hear Moishe talking about his tragic story while he was in a concentration camp, while Bobby tells Moishe what has happened to him and Maria. Bobby states that deep in his mind, he still has a desperate need for revenge. |
Half of a Yellow Sun | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 2,007 | The novel takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of four people’s lives ranging from high-ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria, the lives of the main characters drastically changed and were torn apart by the ensuing civil war and decisions in their personal life. The book jumps between events that took place during the early 1960s and the late 1960s, when the war took place. In the early 1960s, the main characters are introduced: Ugwu, a 13-year-old village boy who moves in with Odenigbo, to work as his houseboy. Odenigbo frequently entertains intellectuals to discuss the political turmoil in Nigeria. Life changes for Ugwu when Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna, moves in with them. Ugwu forms a strong bond with both of them, and is very loyal. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, a woman with a dry sense of humour, tired by the pompous company she is forced to keep. Her lover Richard is an Englishman who has come to Nigeria to study the arts. Jumping four years ahead, trouble is brewing between the Hausa and the Igbo people and hundreds of people die in the massacres, including Olanna's beloved auntie and uncle. A new republic,called Biafra, is created by the Igbo. As a result of the conflict, Olanna, Odenigbo, their daughter Baby and Ugwu are forced to flee Nsukka, which is the university town and the major intellectual hub of the new nation. They finally end up in the refugee town of Umuahia, where they suffer as a result of food shortages and the constant air raids and paranoid atmosphere. There are also allusions to a conflict between Olanna and Kainene, Richard and Kainene and Olanna and Odenigbo. When the novel jumps back to the early 1960s, we learn that Odenigbo slept with a village girl, who then had his baby. Olanna is furious at his betrayal, and sleeps with Richard in a moment of weakness. She goes back to Odenigbo and they take in his daughter, whom they call Baby, when her mother refuses her. Back during the war, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby and Ugwu are living with Kainene and Richard where Kainene is running a refugee camp. The situation is hopeless as they have no food or medicine. Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines, but does not return, even after the end of the war a few weeks later. The book ends ambiguously, with the reader not knowing if Kainene lives. |
Date with Darkness | Donald Hamilton | 1,947 | Navy Lieutenant Philip Branch is on leave in New York City when he becomes snared in a glamour girl's schemes. |
The Spring Madness of Mr. Sermon | null | null | At the age of 49, schoolmaster Sebastian Sermon has become vaguely dissatisfied with his life. Distant from his wealthy, ten-years-younger wife, Sybil, and teenage children, he works competently at his ill-paid job at a boys' preparatory school. One spring afternoon, he reacts to a schoolboy prank by repeatedly hitting the perpetrator. The headmaster hears the commotion and breaks things up. The headmaster is willing to hush things up, but Sermon defends himself, throws up his job and goes home. Rebuffed by his wife sexually (though she immediately regrets it), he takes a few belongings, and sets out, he knows not where. He takes a bus to London and then a train to the West Country. He meets up with a junk/antique dealer, Tapper, on the road and helps him out with his trade (for which Sermon proves to have quite a knack), and goes with him to the fictitious upscale Devon seaside resort of Kingsbay. Sermon captivates several women, first a barmaid, and then his Kingsbay landlady, Olga Boxall. When Sermon and Boxall take a bus excursion, and when the bus driver is injured, Sermon must drive the bus back to Kingsbay. That evening, the two have sex—and Boxall, who has long figured out that Sermon is married, leaves the next day on a trip to give the two time to figure out if they are right for each other, while renting her house to Sermon. Sermon saves a little girl from drowning, whose nanny (who is immediately discharged) is a young woman he's met before in his time at Kingsbay and in fact briefly taught at his school. The woman, Rachel Grey, proves to be the daughter of the headmaster of Barrowdene, a (fictitious) highly regarded public school near to Kingsbay. She brings him to the school to meet her father, and Sermon and Headmaster Fred Grey hit it off, while Sermon feels very much at home at the school. Upon his return from the school, Sermon finds a policeman waiting for him—his using a cheque to pay for the rent has alerted Sybil to his location. Sermon tells the policeman that he will mail a letter to his wife, which he does. Sermon's heroics bring him to the attention of the town authorities, who hire him to supervise the various public works by the shore, including the pay toilets, and he gets the Town Clerk to hire Rachel Grey to run the small zoo. Sermon's summer settles into a routine; days supervising foreshore operations with lunch with Rachel Grey, Saturdays at Barrowdene, Sunday running the antique shop. Things are rudely interrupted when Sermon, rescuing a woman from a pay toilet with a jammed lock, finds his wife and daughter staring at him. He has lunch with his wife, and says they need to make a new start in someplace like Kingsbay. Sybil is taken aback by Sermon's new confidence, but is unwilling to move from the London area. She returns home with her daughter. Rachel Grey, who observed part of the tête à tête between the spouses, later behaves sexually provocatively towards Sermon. Sermon, fearing the effect both on his relationship with her, and with Fred Grey, does not take up the invitation. Sermon returns to his routine, now and then teaching a class or two at Barrowdene. The Headmaster offers Sermon a job teaching at Barrowdene, and gives him time to think about it, telling Sermon that his prospects would be much brighter if he could persuade Sybil to join him. Boxall simplifies Sermon's romantic life somewhat by sending a letter indicating that she has become infatuated with another tourist, and later, offering to sell her house. He informs Sybil by phone. She is hostile to the idea, but willing to talk it over if Sermon comes home. In fact, she has a male friend over, Scott-James, who volunteers to go down to Kingsbay and seek evidence towards a divorce. Against her better judgment, Sybil agrees. Scott-James arrives, and takes photographs of Sermon and Rachel in Sermon's Kingsbay house together—for Sermon has had Rachel spend the night (in separate bedrooms) after the two were soaked after a flood at the zoo. When Scott-James introduces himself, and states the purpose of his business, Sermon punches him, and confiscates and burns the film, and, after Scott-James staggers off, Sermon has sex with Rachel. Tired of being ruled by events, Sermon sets out to his home and Sybil. Realizing that he owns the family home, Sermon sells the house to his mother in law, and accepts Boxall's offer to sell her house to him. Sermon confronts his wife and tells her this, and when the enraged Sybil stabs him with nail scissors, he (as suggested by his mother in law) spanks her. This clears the air, and the two reconcile, and consummate their renewed relationship. A short epilogue looks ahead to Sermon's fiftieth birthday. Sermon is immersed in his duties at Barrowdene. Sybil is pregnant with their third child. Fred Gray makes Sermon a housemaster, and Sybil is much more acquiescent to the prospect of moving from Kingsbay to the school grounds than she was about the first move. |
The Steel Mirror | Donald Hamilton | 1,948 | Chemist John Emmett hitches a ride with a beautiful woman who might be a murderer. |
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