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Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure | Paul A. Offit | 2,008 | Offit describes the origins and development of claims regarding the MMR vaccine and the vaccine preservative thiomersal, as well as subsequent scientific evidence which has disproved a link with autism. The book discusses possible explanations for the persistence of these claims in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary, as well as the proliferation of potentially risky and unproven treatments for autism. The author takes a critical view of several advocates of a vaccine–autism link, including Andrew Wakefield, David Kirby, Mark Geier, and Boyd Haley, raising scientific and, in some cases, ethical and legal concerns. The book also explores divisions within the autism community on the topic of vaccines, as some parents consider the ongoing narrow focus on vaccines a distraction from more scientifically promising avenues of research. In this vein, Offit interviews Kathleen Seidel, a mother of an autistic child who has published investigations critical of those who profit from promoting vaccine–autism claims. Offit also touches on the heated and bitter debate surrounding vaccine claims. He describes receiving death threats, hate mail, and threats against his children as a result of his advocacy for vaccine safety. Offit declined to do a book tour for Autism's False Prophets, citing concerns about his physical safety and comparing the intensity of hatred and threats directed at him to that experienced by abortion providers. Author's royalties from the book are being donated to the Center for Autism Research at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. |
Archform: Beauty | L. E. Modesitt, Jr. | 2,002 | Archform: Beauty is set in 24th century Earth. |
Sum | David Eagleman | 2,009 | As a short story cycle, the book presents forty mutually exclusive stories staged in a wide variety of possible afterlives. The author has stated that none of the stories is meant to be taken as serious theological proposals but, instead, that the message of the book is the importance of exploring new ideas beyond the ones that have been traditionally passed down. The title word "Sum" refers to the Latin for "I am," as in Cogito ergo sum. Like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, Sum does not fall cleanly under the traditional category of a novel. It has been called "philosofiction", an "experimental novel", and "a collection of thought experiments".NPR's Books We Like, by Oscar Villalon, The Afterlife? Not Quite What We Were Expecting Most of the stories are understood to "posit the afterlife as mirroring life on Earth" The New York Times Book Review called Sum a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection [which] belongs to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned". Sum was chosen by Time Magazine for their 2009 Summer Reading list, with the acclaim "Eagleman is a true original. Read Sum and be amazed. Reread Sum and be reamazed.". Sum was selected as Book of the Week by both The Guardian and The Week, and was the featured subject on the cover of two magazines in 2009, The Big Issue and Humanitie. On September 10, 2009, Sum was ranked by Amazon as the #2 bestselling book in the United Kingdom. The book received accolades from non-religious reviewers as well as from the religious community. The recommendations of Stephen Fry, Philip Pullman, Brian Greene, Brian Eno, and others appear on the cover, and Sum was named as one of the Best Spiritual Books of 2009. |
Death of a Cad | Marion Chesney | 1,987 | When Captain Bartlett, one of the house guests at Trommel Castle, dies, the police are quick to call it an accident. Only Hamish Macbeth remains convinced it was murder, and it is Hamish who solves the crime. |
Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death | Marion Chesney | 1,992 | Agatha Raisin retires from her profitable position as a PR agent in London, she moves to the Cotswolds expecting a peaceful country life. She enters a local baking contest with a quiche she bought in London; not only does she not win, but her quiche kills one of the judges. Desperate to prove her innocence, Agatha begins investigating the crime herself. |
The Kings of Clonmel | John Flanagan | 2,008 | While at the annual Rangers' Gathering, Will is informed by Crowley that Halt will not be able to attend as he is investigating things in the west of the country. A mysterious group of people are going around, recruiting people and stealing gold in an unlikely fashion. Meanwhile, Halt is watching the group, who are acting in a small village called Selsey, in Araluen, although not governed by any fief. He manages to stop them burning the boats, which they put as an "omen" to their god of gold, Alseiass. He finds that the plot to build a golden temple is fake, they are stealing the gold, and making the temple out of wood, coated in gold. He manages to capture their leader, and expel the group from the village. Halt is puzzled, as when the leader sees him, he says, "What are you doing here?". Halt is sure he and the man never met before. Back at the rangers Annual Gathering, two Ranger apprentices graduate at a ceremony, where Crowley asks Will to take care of three more apprentices for a while. He does this, and Crowley tells him that he has been moved to Redmont fief to share half of it with Halt. It is where he grew up, and where Alyss, (the girl he has a romantic relationship with) lives. Halt's wife, Pauline also lives there. Will rides to the fief, where he is greeted by a feast made by his childhood friend, Jenny. He greets Pauline, and Crowley, then Halt arrives. Crowley assigns Will, Halt, and Horace (Will's current best friend, and a knight) to investigate Clonmel. Halt tells them he knows the king, and when they ask how, he tells them he is the King's brother. They go around, investigating the Outsiders (the group who are stealing gold). When Halt's brother tells them he made a deal with the Outsiders, he is knocked out by Horace, and Halt takes the king's place (they are twins). The Outsiders' leader, Tennyson, is angry, and challenges Horace to duel his two giant bodyguards. Horace accepts. Will meanwhile, is investigating a camp, and he sees that Tennyson has recruited three Genovesans (foreigners; assassins). He tells Horace and Halt this, and Halt is expecting treachery from Tennyson. The duel proceeds, with Horace barely winning against the chain and ball used by the first giant. Horace is then drugged by the assassins, causing his eyes to waver a lot, and he is unable to see clearly. Will shoots the second giant in the arm, after which he manages to accuse Tennyson. Tennyson escapes, though not before killing Halt's brother. Halt abdicates the throne to his nephew, Sean, a warrior and worthy king. They begin to follow Tennyson's trail to Picta, thus ending the book. |
Conquerors from the Darkness | Robert Silverberg | null | A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities. Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power. |
The Princess | Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson | 1,847 | As with many of Tennyson's works, The Princess has an outer setting to the main narrative, consisting of a Prologue and a Conclusion that take place at a Victorian era summer fete. The characters in the Prologue agree to participate in a storytelling game about a heroic princess in days of old, based on an ancient family chronicle. The main narrative follows, given in seven lengthy "Cantos", with the prince as narrator. In the main narrative, a prince has been betrothed since infancy to a princess, Ida, from a neighbouring land. The princess has grown to become beautiful and accomplished and has founded a university of maidens in a remote retreat. Her father, King Gama, explains that she refuses to have anything to do with the world of men and is influenced by other women, Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche, who have all resolved never to wed a man. The prince and two friends, Cyril and Florian, decide to infiltrate the university to try to win the princess's return. They disguise themselves as women and ride into the university asking to enrol as students. Florian is Lady Psyche's brother and hopes to influence her. The "new students" are taken to see the princess, who tells them that they must "cast and fling the tricks, which make us toys of men", so that they may become equal with men. The men are impressed by the princess and debate the merits of women's equality. They move around the university, listening and learning. Their tutors, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, discover the men's subterfuge, but hide their knowledge for reasons of their own. Blanche and Psyche are intellectual and political rivals at the university, and Blanche vows to force Psyche out. Ida and the prince walk together, and, still posing as a woman student, he tells her news of the prince and his court, and they discuss the marriage contract between Ida and the prince. He tells her how the prince loves her from afar. She speaks of her ideals of equality. The prince touches hands with Ida on the path. At a picnic, Ida invites the prince to sing a song from her [his] homeland. He sings of love, but Ida mocks it and talks of the inequality of love between men and women. She invites another song about the women of her [his] land. Cyril sings a drunken tavern song, and chaos breaks out as the men's identities become obvious to all. In the confusion, Ida falls into the river, and the prince saves her from drowning. The men flee (and Psyche flees with Cyril, leaving her child behind in the castle), but the prince and Florian are recaptured. Letters arrives from the prince's father (the king) and Ida's father (Gama). Gama tells how he started to come to Ida to plead for the prince but was taken hostage by the king. The king tells Ida not to harm the prince and to free him, or the king's army will storm the castle. The prince declares his love for Ida, saying, "except you slay me here according to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you... but half without you; with you, whole; and of those halves you worthiest". Word comes that the king has arrived to storm the castle. Ida gives a stirring speech, saying that she will lead the maidens into battle. Though Ida appears to be forming an interest in the prince, she renounces her marriage contract. The prince and Florian are freed and pushed out of the castle. Psyche is distraught at having betrayed Ida and her cause, and having lost her child. The king wants to make war, but the prince wants to win Ida's love. He says, "wild natures need wise curbs... not war: lest I lose all". Gama and the prince have developed a warm relationship, and Gama supports the prince's cause, but Ida's brothers support their sister at all costs. The prince and his friends offer to fight Ida's brother and to let the battle decide whether Ida must keep her contract. Ida's brother Arac sends word of this proposal to Ida, who rants against the harm done to women, but confident of her brothers' victory, she agrees to abide by the contest. Meanwhile, Ida has been growing to love Psyche's child. In the battle, Ida's brothers defeat and wound the prince and his friends. The prince acknowledges defeat and pleads with Ida to let Psyche reclaim her child, but he falls into a coma. Ida rants against Psyche's betrayal. The king says that he cannot let such a hard woman tend his son. Ida relents and asks the king to let her tend the prince's injuries, and to let the ladies tend to Cyril and Florian. This shows her willingness to bend her own laws. By ministering to the men, the ladies of the university become more fair, and Ida finds peace. Love blossoms between the nurses and the nursed. Ida eventually comes to love the prince. As he regains consciousness at times, they discuss their ideas of love, and she discovers that they agree on the equality of love; not, as she had always feared, women's servitude in love – he has been well-schooled in this by his mother. The prince envisages a future where "The man may be more of woman, she of man". He says "my hopes and thine are one" and asks her to place her trust in him. In the Conclusion, the narrator reflects on how to tell the long story, noting that the events are "Too comic for the solemn things they are, / Too solemn for the comic touches in them." |
Petals of Blood | Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o | 1,977 | The book begins by describing the four main characters - Munira, Karega, Wanja, and Abdulla - just after the revelation that three prominent Kenyans, two businessmen and one educator, have been killed in a fire. The next chapter moves back in the novel's timeline, focusing on Munira's move to Ilmorog, to begin work as a teacher. He is initially met with suspicion and poor classroom attendance, as the villagers think he will give up on the village soon, in much the same way previous teachers have done. However, Munira stays and, with the friendship of Abdullah, another immigrant to Ilmorog who owns a small shop and bar, carves out a life as a teacher. Soon Wanja arrives, the granddaughter of the town's oldest and most revered lady. She is an attractive, experienced barmaid who Munira begins to fall in love with, despite the fact he is already married. She too is escaping the city, and begins to work for Abdullah, quickly reshaping his shop, and expanding its bar. Karega arrives in Ilmorog to seek Munira to question him about their old school Siriana. After a brief relationship with Munira, Wanja once again grows disillusioned and leaves Ilmorog. The year of her departure is not good for the village as the weather is harsh and no rains come, making for a poor harvest. In an attempt to enact changes, the villagers are inspired by Karega to journey to Nairobi in order to talk to their MP. The journey is very arduous and Joseph, a boy that Abdullah had taken in as his brother and who had worked in his shop, becomes ill. When they arrive in Nairobi, the villagers seek help from every quarter. They are turned away by a reverend who thinks they are merely beggars, despite their pleas of help for the sick child. Trying at another house, some of the villagers are rounded up and forced into the building where they are questioned by Kimeria, a ruthless businessman who reveals that he and their MP are in league with one another. He blackmails Wanja, and subsequently rapes her. Upon arriving in Nairobi and speaking to their MP, the villagers realise that nothing will change, as he is little more than a demagogue. However, they do meet a lawyer who wishes to help them and others in the same predicament and through a court case highlights Ilmorog's plight. This draws attention from national press and donations and charities pour into Ilmorog. Finally, the rains comes, and the villagers celebrate with ancient rituals and dances. During this time, Karega starts a correspondence with the lawyer that he met in Nairobi, wishing to educate himself further. To celebrate the rain's coming, Nyakinyua brews a drink from the Thang'eta plant, which all of the villagers drink. Karega tells the story the love between him and Mukami, the older sister of Munira. Mukami's father looked down on Karega because of his brother's involvement with the Mau Mau. Forced to separate, Mariamu and Karega do not see each other again, and Mukami later commits suicide by jumping into a quarry. This is the first time Munira hears the story. Later, an unknown plane crashes in the village; the only victim is Abdulla's donkey. Wanja notices that there are several large groups of people who come to survey the wreckage, and suggests to Abdulla that they begin to sell the Thang'eta drink in Abdulla's bar. The drink attracts notoriety, and many people come to the bar in order to sample it. Out of fury for Karega's connection to his family and jealousy of his relationship with Wanja, Munira schemes to have Karega fired from his teaching post with the school. Karega then leaves Ilmorog. Development arrives in Ilmorog as the government begin to build the Trans-Africa road through the village, which brings an increase in trade. Karega returns to Ilmorog, telling of his slow spiral into alcoholism before finally securing work in a factory. After getting fired from the factory, he returns to Ilmorog. The change in Ilmorog is rapid, and the villages changes into the town of New Ilmorog. The farmers are told that they should fence off their land and mortgage parts of it to ensure that they own a finite area. They are offered loans which are linked to their harvest turnout to pay for this expense. Nyakinyua dies and the banks move to take her land. To prevent this Wanja sells her business and buys Nyakinyua's land. She opens up a successful brothel in the town, and is herself one of the prostitutes. Munira goes to see her to attempt to rekindle their romance, but is met with only a demand for money. He pays, and the couple have sex. Karega goes to see Wanja who both still have strong feelings for each other, but after disagreeing about how to live he leaves. Wanja plans to separate herself finally from the men who have exploited her during her life, wanting to bring them to her brothel with all of her prostitutes sent away so that she could present the downtrodden but noble Abdulla as her chosen partner. Meanwhile, Munira is watching the brothel, and sees Karega arrive, and then leave. In a religious fervour, he pours petrol on the brothel, sets it alight, and retreats to a hill to watch it burn. Wanja escapes but is hospitalized due to smoke inhalation; the other men Wanja had invited died in the fire. Munira is sentenced with arson; later, Karega learns that the corrupt local MP was gunned down in his car whilst waiting for his chauffeur in Nairobi. The title Petals of Blood is derived from a line of Derek Walcott's poem 'The Swamp'. The poem suggests that there is a deadly power within nature that must be respected despite attempts to suggest by humans that they live harmoniously with it. Originally called 'Ballad of a Barmaid', it is unclear why Ngugi changed the title before release. The phrase "petals of blood" appears several times throughout the novel, with varying associations and meanings. Initially, "petals of blood" is first used by a pupil in Munira's class to describe a flower. Munira quickly chastises the boy, saying that 'there is no colour called blood'. Later, the phrase is used to describe flames, as well relating to virginity during one of Munira's sexual fantasies. |
Shakes versus Shav | George Bernard Shaw | null | Shakespeare challenges Shaw as an upstart, quoting lines from his own plays. Shaw claims that Macbeth has been bettered by Scott's novel Rob Roy, and "proves" the point by staging a fight between the ghosts of the two Scots, which Rob Roy wins. Shaw then asserts that Adam Lindsay Gordon has outdone Shakespeare's verse, quoting the lines "The beetle booms adown the glooms/And bumps among the clumps" (in fact a garbled version of lines by James Whitcomb Riley). Shakespeare laughs at this. He tells Shaw that he could never have written Hamlet or King Lear. Shaw replies that Shakespeare could not have written Heartbreak House, and creates a pastiche of his own play with the characters posed in imitation of Millais's painting The North-West Passage. Shakespeare defends the emotional power of his work. Shaw defends the practical value of his. Shaw ends by quoting Shakespeare's own words and bringing into being a small light to symbolise his own reputation. Shakespeare puts out the light and the play ends. |
The Frog Princess | null | 2,002 | Emeralda, aka Emma, is the only princess in Greater Greensward. But she is clumsy with everything, including the magic touch she inherited from the first Green Witch centuries back. One of her most distinct traits is her unique laugh, which sounds like a foghorn. When her mother says she has to marry the stuck-up Prince Jorge from East Aradia, her worst enemy, she runs off to the swamp where she meets Prince Eadric of Upper Montevista. The only problem is that he has been turned into a frog by the witch Mudine. Emma kisses him and tries to reverse the spell, and instead, she turns into a frog herself; something which changes her whole life. Emma and Eadric set off to find the witch that turned him into a frog and ask her to change them back. With what little magic Emma has learned from her Aunt Grassina, the current Green Witch, Emma tries to save Eadric and herself. |
Murder in Amityville | null | 1,979 | The plot tries to explain why Ronald Defeo Jr. killed his family at 112 Ocean Ave. It revolves around Ronald Jr. as he experiences strange events in the house up until he kills his entire family on November 13, 1974. It goes on to explain that he was possessed and that he did not want to kill his family. It introduces controversial events. It is also based on Defeo's explanation of why he says he killed his family. |
The Gown of Glory | Agnes Sligh Turnbull | 1,952 | The story begins in 1881 when the Reverend David Lyall brings his new wife from the city to his rural manse expecting to stay only a year. Twenty-five years and three grown children later, David is still the spiritual leader of the Calvinist congregation. The plot explores the small joys and quiet griefs of a minister's life as well as what happens when a wealthy young man falls in love with the minister's daughter. |
Outliers: The Story of Success | Malcolm Gladwell | 2,008 | ==Style== Outliers has been described as a form of autobiography, as Gladwell mixes in elements from his own life into the book to give it a more personal touch. Lev Grossman, writing in Time magazine, called Outliers a "more personal book than its predecessors", noting, "If you hold it up to the light, at the right angle, you can read it as a coded autobiography: a successful man trying to figure out his own context, how success happened to him and what it means." He also surmised that Gladwell feels guilty about his success and believes that Christopher Langan should have experienced the same success that he had. |
Around The World With Auntie Mame | null | null | Narrator "Patrick" is seventeen, and has left his private prep school. His Auntie Mame takes him with her on an extended tour of Europe, which becomes a round-the-world tour before his enrollment in college. They have adventures in Paris, London, Biarritz, Venice, Austria, Russia, Lebanon, and the high seas, meeting and dealing with British nobles, con men, embarrassing relatives, Nazis, and gunrunners before they arrive home again. Much of the action is a slyly satirical commentary on such things as the practice of "presenting at Court," fashionable political activism, the naivete of some Americans abroad, and the ways in which small communities of expatriates often end up behaving. The main story is encased in a "frame" narrative, in which Patrick, now grown and married, tries to placate his wife with highly edited tales from his travels with his aunt. This takes up where the original novel, Auntie Mame, left off, with Patrick's son Michael going off to India with Mame promising to have him home by Labor Day. Two years have passed, with no word beyond a few random post cards. Each chapter begins with Patrick's reassuring, off-hand comments about his journeys with Mame, and then continues with him narrating what really happened. |
Final Curtain | Ngaio Marsh | 1,947 | Agatha Troy Alleyn is waiting for the return of her husband Roderick Alleyn after a long separation during World War II. (The preceding two books in the series, Colour Scheme and Died in the Wool, concern Alleyn's work during the war.) While waiting, she accepts a commission to paint the celebrated actor Sir Henry Ancred at his home Ancreton Manor. While there, she witnesses the bitter family dynamics between Sir Henry, his children and grandchildren, which are complicated by the presence of his young mistress, Sonia Orrincourt. Soon after the portrait is finished, Sir Henry, who has been in poor health, dies seemingly of natural causes. Troy returns home and is reunited with her husband. Alleyn is soon assigned to investigate the death, and the case is quickly complicated by another murder. |
The Nursing Home Murder | Ngaio Marsh | 1,935 | The British Home Secretary, Sir Derek O'Callaghan MP, has received several death threats from anarchists affiliated with Stalinist Communism - and a pleading letter threatening suicide from Jane Harden, a nurse he had a short affair with some months earlier. Shortly after receiving the letter his old friend and family physician, Sir John Phillips, visits him to ask him about O'Callaghan's relationship with Jane, who is also Phillips's scrub nurse and who he has loved from afar for years. After O'Callaghan brutally informs Phillips that Jane is "easy" and not worth his regard, he and Phillips almost come to blows before Phillips threatens his life in front of a servant. One week later, O'Callaghan is introducing a bill in the House of Commons to deal with anarchism when he doubles over, incapacitated by acute appendicitis. His wife, unaware of the fight or of Phillips's threats, has her husband moved to Phillips's private hospital ("nursing home" in contemporary usage) and begs Phillips to operate immediately. He does so against his own wishes, as assisted by Dr. Roberts, the anaesthetist; Dr. Thoms, the assistant surgeon; Sister Marigold, the matron; Nurse Banks, the circulating nurse; and Jane Harden, the scrub nurse. The operation goes well, but O'Callaghan weakens near the end of the operation and dies one hour later, apparently of peritonitis. The next day, Lady O'Callaghan is going through her late husband's papers and finds both the death threats from anarchists and Jane Harden's letter. Convinced that her husband has been murdered, she calls in Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard. It turns out that O'Callaghan has died of an overdose of hyoscine, a drug used in anaesthesia. Suspicion rests not just on Phillips and Harden but also on Nurse Banks, an outspoken Communist whose constant vicious insults toward O'Callaghan during the operation have led to her dismissal. Alleyn's digging reveals that it would have been possible for any member of the surgical team to have committed the crime. He learns that Harden loved O'Callaghan to the point that even after his death she was unable to return Phillips's feelings; that Banks is a member of an anarchist society almost completely controlled by the authorities (and which has more bark than bite, as Alleyn finds out when he attends a meeting in disguise with his amanuensis, Nigel Bathgate); that O'Callaghan's sister, an unbalanced, shrill, unintelligent hysteric, has been bullying her brother into taking quack medicine produced by an avowed Communist; and that Dr. Roberts the anaesthetist is a firm believer in eugenics to the point that he is unable to prevent himself from expounding on the topic for hours. Frustrated, Alleyn finally arranges for a re-enactment of the operation. During the re-enactment Sister Marigold brushes by Roberts's anaesthetic cart during a weak moment and Roberts erupts in rage, screaming that the nurse could have blown up the entire building had his cart (which carries ether) fallen over. Alleyn has Roberts removed from the room and quickly checks the cart and finds that one of the "bolts" holding the cart together is actually the top of a syringe. Hours later, he and Fox visit Roberts at his home and charge him with murder. Roberts admits to having injected O'Callaghan with hyoscine, but claims that he was justified: O'Callaghan's family had a "hereditary taint" (as shown by his sister), and it was his duty to remove such "tainted" persons from society. At the end, Alleyn points out that Roberts himself is insane and has committed dozens of similar murders, as testified to by the notches on his stethoscope. In the epilogue Alleyn expresses doubt that Phillips and Harden will ever get together, and remarks that such things only happen in the "movie-mind". |
Adventures in Blackmoor | null | null | Adventures in Blackmoor is a scenario set in the land of Blackmoor, 3000 years before other D&D scenarios by TSR. The player characters are transported from their "modern" time to the time of Blackmoor and must rescue King Uther from The Prison Out of Time. The adventure takes place in three parts inside an inn. The first part of the adventure takes place in a dungeon setting. Clues found in the inn lead to the second part of the adventure. The inn shifts between dimensions for the second part of the adventure, which concerns itself with certain changes taking place inside the inn as it shifts. In the third and final part of the adventure, the inn shifts to another dungeon. The final 20 pages of the adventure give a description of Blackmoor, and detail 38 prominent NPCs from the setting. The module includes campaign setting material on Blackmoor and the Thonian Empire. |
The Phoenix Unchained | Mercedes Lackey | 2,007 | Harrier Gillain is the youngest of four brothers and born in a family that has held the Harbor Master position in Armathelieh for centuries. As the youngest, he must follow in his father's footsteps to become the next Harbor Master. He is good friends with Tiercel Rolfort, the eldest of 6 children and born and into minor Nobility. The begins during Festival Sennight in the city and Harrier's naming day falls on the first day. He receives a book called A Compendium of Ancient Myth and Legend, Compiled from the Histories of the City from his frequently travelling uncle, Alfrin. Having no desire to read the book, he hands it to Tiercel to read who is fond of reading and is actually interested in the book. A couple of days later Tiercel begins reading the book and his interests are piqued when he comes across topics he has not heard of before, among them are: High Mages, High Magick, and the Third War against the Light. The only magic he, or anyone he knows has ever heard of was Wild Magic, his curiosity got the better of him. Tiercel goes off to the Great Library to look for a book titled A History of the City in Six Volumes. Working in the city harbor, Harrier stumbles upon a ship that is wrecked, the captain of the vessel claims that it is a kraken that attacked the ship, but krakens were presumably destroyed along with all the Endarkend at the conclusion of the Third War against the Light. Harrier showed Tiercel the ship and its damage and explained to him the story the captain is giving on the damage's origin. Tiercel felt sympathetic to the captain's losses and was determined to see if High Magick can discover the truth of the matter. Having discovered a spell from one of the books in the Great Library called a Knowing Spell, Tiercel decides to attempt to cast it on a piece of the ship so he can know the truth of the captain's tale. Tiercel attempts to cast the spell at home not following the instructions verbatim but nothing happens, he gets tired and falls asleep. During his sleep he starts to dream about a beautiful lady within a lake of fire. She is waiting for something and he knows that if she gets her hands on whatever it is, its going to be trouble. Although the dream's imagery is not scary, the feeling that he gets frightens him greatly—more so because he feels that it is so real. Tiercel then wakes up amidst a fire in his room, the fire is snuffed out by his servants and he reports to his parents that he was trying to read during the night. He realizes that he must have messed up on the spell, having to improvise on a few things. He remembers from his readings that the simplest High Magick spell that can be cast is fire. Unknowingly, Tiercel has become the first High Mage in more than a thousand years. |
Field Notes from a Catastrophe | Elizabeth Kolbert | 2,006 | Kolbert visits Shishmaref and Fairbanks, Alaska, to speak with both the townspeople and scientists about the effect global warming is having in Alaska. In Shishmaref, towns are being forced off of the coastal regions because ice that had once protected these towns from storms and large waves, have melted. In Fairbanks Kolbert met with scientist Vladimir Romanovsky to study how global warming is affecting the permafrost levels in Alaska. Romanovsky’s research shows that as permafrost melts it releases carbon dioxide, which has been trapped in the permafrost for thousands of years and is harmful to the environment. Kolbert also discusses the spectrometer used by Donald Perovich on the expedition, Des Groseilliers. The spectrometer was used to measure the light reflected off of the ice and snow. The discovery that the snow reflected more than the ocean is important because the ocean is being heated by global warming and melting the ice which is making the water levels rise. This section explains the history of researchers exploring human influence on climate change. At the beginning, it states that global warming is not a fad because it has been researched since the mid-19th century. John Tyndall was the first to research global warming; he did this by creating the first Spectrophotometer. This is an instrument used to measure the absorptive properties of gases. Through his research of gases, he discovered what is today called “The Greenhouse Effect.” The Greenhouse effect is the absorption and retention of heat from radiation. After the death of John Tyndall, Svante Arrhenius took over his position as the main researcher of global warming. He was the first to connect industrialization to climate change and even today NASA scientists credit him with insightful predictions: “His understanding of the role of carbon dioxide in heating Earth, even at that early date, led him to predict that if atmospheric carbon dioxide doubled, Earth would become several degrees warmer.” After the death of Arrhenius, most scientists believed that if levels were rising at all, they were rising very slowly. In the mid-1950s, Charles David Keeling found a more precise way to record levels and began recording the data. He brought us the Keeling Curve which shows the steady rise of levels since 1958. Kolbert travels to a research station in Greenland called Swiss Camp that was set up in 1990 and built into the ice floes. Kolbert meets Konrad Steffan, the director of Swiss Camp, who studies the meteorological conditions on the ice sheets at the equilibrium line (the point at which winter snow and summer snow melt are supposed to be exactly in balance). Steffan’s research shows that the glaciers have been melting faster (at a rate of 12 cubic miles per year), creating much more flooding in the area during the warmer months. These glaciers contain vast amounts of fresh water, which, when melted into the salt water of the oceans, begins to change ocean current patterns, thus resulting in some places around the world becoming colder and some becoming warmer. From obtaining ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet, it has been found that the average temperatures have risen twenty degrees within the past ten years thus resulting in the beginning of the disintegration of the entire Greenland ice sheet, which will be impossible to stop. It has also been found that rapid warming has occurred in the past, which then proceeded to fall into ice age conditions. In November 2004, there was a study presented in Reykjavik, Iceland, that explained how the Arctic climate is warming and the U.S. responded by stating they would effectively take action to combat the problem but would not make it an obligation. The scientists studying the situation have seen how humans have become the dominating factor in influencing climate change; in the professional world, global warming is not necessarily thought to be a natural process. This chapter describes Kolbert's interviews with scientists from around the world who have conducted experiments to prove that climate change inevitably affects many organisms' genetic structures and habitats. Kolbert attempts to reveal that global warming is the cause for these events. She interviews three biologists, Chris Thomas, William Bradshaw and Christina Holzapfel, and one paleoecologist, Thomas Web III. Kolbert follows scientific observations based upon the studies of the Comma Butterfly, the mosquito Wyeomyia smithii, the Golden Toad and pollen grains, among many other studies. Kolbert is concerned with the frightening reality that if species are being genetically changed and on the verge of extinction that the availability of our natural resources for future will be in jeopardy. Kolbert visits GISS, a former branch of NASA, which analyzes and produces various geographic models to demonstrate the behavior of the atmosphere, land surfaces, and ice sheets. According to GISS, more and more droughts are being triggered, which we aren’t able to adapt to with our way of living. This problem also arose in ancient civilizations, such as with the Mayans and in the city of Shekhna, when they reached their technological peak. The ancient city of Shekhna in present-day Syria has shown evidence that the culture died from drought. Kolbert cites scientific evidence based on geological models that chart the geographic downfall of other ancient civilizations that have experienced climate change. During ancient times, however, the technology had yet to be developed and they did not have the proper scientific abilities to adapt to extreme changes like massive drought. Kolbert argues that we may be technologically advanced, but as we continue to progress, we are becoming more and more destructive to the environment as well. In chapter six, Kolbert visits the Netherlands where the Dutch have made many provisions to prevent the increasing problem of widespread flooding. Water-ministry official Eelke Turkstra predicts that the Nieuwe Merwede canal will rise several feet above the local dikes around 2100 due to the flooding. The two main problems are caused by warming water that leads to expansion and raises the sea level, another is due to precipitation changes produced by a warming Earth. Turkstra believes that instead of building more dikes, the existing dikes should be dismantled to make room for the rising water. He wants to buy polders (land that has been laboriously reclaimed from the water) from farmers and lower surrounding dikes around them to create more area for the rising water. Then, Kolbert talks to Dura Vermeer who creates amphibious homes which will float on the water if a flood were to occur. Kolbert interviews Robert Socolow, the co-director for the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, about BAU or “business as usual”, which is a future in which current emissions trends continue without being checked. Socolow came up with a plan to help keep carbon emissions down but in order for his plans to work they must start taking effect as soon as possible. Socolow’s plan consisted of a fifteen point system where each point, known as a “stabilization wedge”, would reduce carbon emission by one billion metric tons a year. The wedges consisted of finding alternative fuel sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power, along with developing new technology and upgrading current technology to reduce carbon emission. Socolow argues that the government needs to get involved in order help motivate people to lower carbon emissions. Kolbert also interviews Marty Hoffert, Professor of physics at New York University. Hoffert believes that in order to fight global warming, people have to come up with new ways to generate power without producing carbon. This can be achieved, as he proposes, through satellite solar power (SSP). SSP means collecting solar energy using orbiting satellites which beam the power to ground using microwaves for collection by a rectenna. Energy can be transferred to Earth 24 hours a day without interference from clouds or nightfall. Hoffert also argues that we must change our view on global warming and divert from the BAU or else our civilization will not last. The Kyoto Protocol, active as of February 16, 2005, is a worldwide effort between nations to control greenhouse gas emissions. It began in 1992 and was supported by the U.S. president George H.W. Bush, who attended the U.N. Framework Convention where the U.S. agreed, along with other Annex 1 countries (China, Canada, Japan and nations of Europe included), to “return their emissions to 1990 levels,” or below. Clinton, succeeding president to Bush, also supported the protocol, but emission levels kept rising and not much was accomplished during his term. The Bush administration pulled the U.S. out of Kyoto in 2001 (it was one of only two nations to do so), where George W. Bush, who once promised solutions for controlling CO2 emissions during his campaign, now took a different stand that no longer supported Kyoto because, as he said to the public, the “state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change”, are “incomplete”. Greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly (20% since 1990) and the US accounts for 34% of Annex 1 emissions. Since 2000, the Bush administration began using a “greenhouse gas intensity system”, which measures the ratio of emissions to economic output as a way of measuring emissions as a whole. Kolbert argues that the system is misleading and favors industrial development because while greenhouse gas levels are actually rising, according to this system they are supposedly falling. According to Kolbert, the improper feed of information to the public is also supplement by books and web groups funded by huge corporations such as Exxon Mobil and General Motors, who are giving out information contradicting proven and alarming scientific evidence about global warming. Articles produced are falsely stating, among many things, that weather can’t be predicted ahead of time, global warming isn’t real and hasn’t been proven, or that a warming climate is something to celebrate. Kolbert writes about Burlington, Vermont’s largest city. Years ago, the citizens decided to stand up to global warming by using less power instead of buying more. The mayor of Burlington, Peter Clavelle, who has been mayor since 1989, came up with a program that encourages contractors to engage not in demolition but in “deconstruction”. This helps the city save energy by reducing waste and cutting down the need for new materials. Burlington’s electric department (BED) has a wind turbine that provided enough power for thirty homes and gets half of its energy from renewable sources, such as its 50 megawatt power plant that runs off of wood chips. The BED also leases compact fluorescent light bulbs for twenty cents a month because a family who uses these bulbs can cut their electricity bill by 10 percent. The city of Burlington estimates that their energy saving projects over the course of this lifetime will prevent the release of 175,000 tons of carbon. Burlington residents also eat locally and have turned old waste sites into an assortment of community gardens and cooperatives, the waste from these gardens is taken to a composting factory, and turned back into soil, making this process a “closed loop”. Clavelle’s plan has begun to pick up across America beginning with Greg Nickles, the mayor of Seattle, who created a set of principles called the “US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement”. This agreement has been signed by over a hundred and seventy mayors, representing about thirty – six million people. This agreement is trying to prove how much can be done at the local level and Clavelle hopes that more cities will adopt this plan. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California later issued an executive order to drastically reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions. Kolbert wraps up the book's main ideas by introducing a few new ideas and themes about climate change that had not been previously mentioned. The chapter starts out saying that modern humans are one of the primary influences on our environment and that we are entering an era aptly named the “Anthropocene” — the age of Homo sapiens. Kolbert also discusses the impacts and discovery of chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs. Most of what she discusses about CFCs in this chapter is based around the discovery of their negative impact on our ozone layer and the fact that this discovery only came about by accident. Kolbert also writes that we as a species can either come together to survive, or protect our self-interests as Earth’s climate continues to spiral out of our control. As Kolbert points out at the end of the chapter, if nothing changes in the way society looks at climate change, the world will tear itself apart. There is proof of this today, as entire countries evacuate due to severe weather changes, or others fight to control major resources such as food, water, and shelter. As people living in developed countries, we often take these basic needs for granted and do not realize how precious they really are. |
The Sword of the Lady | S. M. Stirling | null | Rudi Mackenzie and Edain Aylward Mackenzie head out through post-Change Illinois on a mission given to them by the Bossman of Iowa to recover Ingolf Vogeler's wagons that he abandoned there. They break up an ambush by Knifers and save three Southside Freedom Fighters (Southsiders), descendants of survivors from Chicago, including their leader Jake. Rudi adopts the tribe and they help him bring Ingolf's wagons back to Iowa. Along the way, Rudi and Edain teach them how to make bows and arrows, then train them as military archers. Southsiders listen to them sing and add the songs to their culture. Soon the Southsiders consider themselves part of Clan Mackenzie. Meanwhile, Mary and Ritva Havel are trying to find a way to break Ingolf out of the Bossman's prison. Then Captain Denson of the Iowa State Police has a conversation with Ingolf and offers to release him from prison if he lures the CUT troops from Des Moines. When Ingolf agrees, Denson takes him out while his men kill the other prisoners who witnessed the conversation. When Rudi reaches the Mississippi, Denson meets them on the east side of the river. He brings Ingolf with him. They cross the river and meet the Bossman and the rest of Rudi's party in Dubuque. Meanwhile, the Corvallis Meeting is fighting CUT and Boise invaders. The Prophet's troops are converging on the Meeting lands from several directions. While the Meeting nations can slow the invasion down, they have been unable to drive the invaders back. News that the Portland Protective Association are losing castles due to the strange abilities of the CUT High Seekers causes morale to drop. Back in Iowa, the Major Graber and his CUT forces attempt to kill Rudi and his allies. Though Rudi survives the CUT manage to assassinate the Bossman of Iowa. Thanks to Mathilda Arminger's efforts, however, she manages to encourage the Bossman's wife to take power as Regent, creating a new ally for Rudi and his group. Rudi and his group leave Iowa heading north along the Mississippi River. While en route, Rudi's companions swear loyalty to him as the High King of "Montival", the new name the group has chosen for the Pacific Northwest. Rudi reluctantly accepts. Rudi and his group arrive in the nation of Richland, Ingolf's home. While there Ingolf makes amends with his estranged brother, a local sheriff, who agrees to help Ingolf and his friends reach Nantucket. Heading north around the Great Lakes using skis to move over the snow, the party is attacked once again by CUT forces who are allied with French-speaking savages. Though they succeed in driving off the CUT forces, Jake is killed in the battle. Arriving in Maine, Rudi and his followers are taken in by survivors who have adopted a Viking-like culture. They agree to help Rudi reach Nantucket, but upon arriving at a coastal town, they discover it under siege by Major Graber and Muslim Corsairs. Rudi and his forces succeed in lifting the siege and capture one of the pirate leaders, but Odard Liu is killed during the battle. Rudi convinces the pirate captain to take him and his followers to Nantucket. They are chased there by Major Graber who has commandeered another pirate vessel. As both ships arrive at Nantucket, reality begins to change as alternate versions of Nantucket begin to appear at random. Rudi and his followers fight their way onto Nantucket. There Rudi is transported into the presence of Maiden, Mother, and Crone who have taken the form of Rudi's mother (Juniper Mackenzie) and Marion Alston and Swindapa from the Nantucket series. They explain the reason behind the Change, alluding at the humanity's importance (the Fermi paradox) and that certain forces saw the need for humanity to mature more before it self-destructed due to abuse of technology. They also explain the powers that are aiding CUT as a result of a disagreement between those forces on how best to guide the changed humanity. Rudi is last seen removing the Sword of the Lady from its sheath. Back in Montival, Juniper calls on the help of the gods against the CUT in a ceremony (Cone of power). During the ceremony light emanates from Juniper's hands and she proclaims the coming of the High King. |
Death of an Outsider | Marion Chesney | 1,988 | While Hamish Macbeth is on duty temporarily in Cnothan, William Mainwaring, the most disliked man in town, is murdered. No one wants to solve the crime, including Macbeth's superiors who want to keep the strange manner of Mainwaring's death hushed up. |
Mr. Monk is Miserable | Lee Goldberg | 2,008 | Natalie wants a break so she blackmails Monk in going to Paris, France. While in Paris, Monk surprises Natalie by telling her he wants to check out the sewers because the underground maze of tunnels and pipes is famous for keeping Paris sanitary. While traveling the mazes of the sewers, the two stumble upon the catacombs, which are filled with aging skulls and bones. When Monk spots a skull that is not so old that shows evidence of murder, the pair's vacation plans are once again put aside so Monk can conduct a murder investigation. |
By Night In Chile | Roberto Bolaño | 2,003 | The story is narrated entirely in the first person by the sick and aging Father Urrutia. Taking place over the course of a single evening, and written mostly in a single paragraph, the book is the macabre, feverish monologue of a flawed man and a failed priest. Persistently hallucinatory and defensive, the story ranges from Opus Dei to falconry to private lessons on Marxism for Pinochet and his generals directed at the unspecified reproaches of "the wizened youth." The story begins with the lines "I am dying now, but I still have many things to say", and proceeds to describe, after a brief mention of joining the priesthood, how Father Urrutia entered the Chilean literary world under the wing of a famous, albeit fictitious, tacitly homosexual literary critic by the name of Farewell. At Farewell's estate he encounters the critic's close friend Pablo Neruda and later begins to publish literary criticism and poetry. Not surprisingly, Urrutia's criticism is met with more applaud than his poetry (written under a pen-name) and there is little if any mention of Urrutia attending to matters of the church until two individuals from a shipping company (likely undercover government operatives) send him on a trip through Europe, where he meets priest after priest engaged in falconry, where we see his one act of rebellion, when he releases a caged falcon after the priest that owned him died. The story is also deeply political though not always overtly, and Father Urrutia seems to stand as a kind of pitiable villain for the author himself. Urrutia is chosen to teach Augusto Pinochet and his top generals about Marxism after the coup and death of President Allende. Bolaño was well known for his brazenly radical left-wing politics and was briefly jailed by Pinochet for dissent on returning to Chile in 1973, "To help build the revolution." Indeed, the wizened youth who Urrutia is forever lashing against and defending himself from, seems to be yet another trace of Roberto Bolaño inscribing himself into his stories, while also serving as a younger Urrutia who has not compromised himself as the current narrator himself has, suggesting that Urrutia has understood since his first words to the reader that he is compromised. By the end of the story, Urrutia seems to be making a last apology directed to himself, understanding that the reason by which he has led his life is flawed. Unlike other fantastical deathbed rants such as William Gaddis's Agapē Agape the writing style is remarkably accessible despite itself and the story of his life intact as it is woven into Chile's political history despite progressively more delirious and compromised powers of recollection. Francisco Goldman describes it as "Sublime lunacy, Goya darkness, poignant wizardly writing--the elegantly streaming consciousness of Bolaño's dying literary priest merges one Chilean's personal memories with Chilean literature and history, and ends up confronting us with devastating questions that anyone, anywhere, might, should, be asking of themselves 'right now.'" The novella, a satire, marks the beginning of its author's criticism of artists who retreat into art, using aestheticism as a way of blocking out the harsh realities of existence. According to Ben Richards, writing in The Guardian, "Bolaño uses this to illustrate the supine nature of the Chilean literary establishment under the dictatorship." |
Kairo-kō | Soseki Natsume | 1,905 | Kairo-kō consists of a short introduction and five sections. The first section, "The Dream" recounts a conversation between Guinevere and Lancelot in which she describes her dream of a snake that coils around the pair and binds them together; it ends with Lancelot heading to a tournament. The second section, "The Mirror", relates a scene based on Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott": the Lady can view the world only through a mirror's reflection or else she will die, but when she sees Lancelot she turns to look upon him. Her action kills her, but not before she places a death curse on Lancelot. The section "The Sleeve" relates the famous episode in which Elaine of Astolat convinces Lancelot to wear her sleeve on his shield as a token in a joust. Guinevere finds out about Lancelot's relationship with Elaine in the next section, "The Transgression"; Mordred condemns her for her infidelity against King Arthur with Lancelot. The final section, "The Boat", concerns the death of Elaine; grieving over the loss of Lancelot, she dies and is placed in a boat along with a letter proclaiming her love, and is sent downriver to Camelot. |
The Gladiators from Capua | Caroline Lawrence | 2,004 | The novel follows on from events in The Enemies of Jupiter, at the end of which Jonathan goes missing and is believed to have died in the fire in Rome. Unknown to the other characters, he accidentally started the fire and out of guilt signed up as a child gladiator for the games at the new amphitheatre. He is also tortured by the supposed death of his mother. The short story "Jonathan vs Ira" in Trimalchio's Feast and other mini-mysteries gives an account of his troubled state of mind during training. The Gladiators from Capua opens with a brief scene set some years earlier – a slave in training as a gladiator refuses to kill his beaten opponent, turning his back on a promising career. The themes of combat, bloodshed and mercy are thus established from the start. The story proper starts the month after the fire. Flavia and Nubia are holding a memorial for Jonathan when Lupus arrives full of a rumour he has heard: a boy with dark curly hair who is believed to have started the fire is hiding on Potsherd Mountain in Rome. Jonathan could be alive! Flavia finagles an invitation from her uncle the senator to visit Rome for the Inaugural Games at the new Flavian Amphitheatre. Flavia, Nubia and Lupus travel to Rome with Jonathan's dog Tigris and the doorkeeper Caudex as their bodyguard. They discover that the curly-haired boy has been taken from Potsherd Mountain to the amphitheatre and is to be "thrown to the beasts". At the amphitheatre, they split up to look for Jonathan. Nubia meets an old friend, Mnason the animal trainer. Tigris spots Jonathan among the gladiators, but the others fail to interpret his barking correctly. The next three days are the start of the hundred days of games decreed by Titus to celebrate the new amphitheatre – and to take people's minds off the disastrous events of his reign thus far. For each day a programme of events is given: beginning with acrobats or dancers, then exotic beasts and the fancifully-staged execution of criminals, and in the afternoon the popular gladiatorial contests. The first day, the children are stuck on the top tier with the senator's family watching the displays at a distance, alternately fascinated and horrified at the drama, the ferocity and the bloodshed. On the second day, with the relations safely out of town, they resume their search for Jonathan. Flavia poses as an orphan to get taken on as a "nymph" – only to discover that she is part of a water pageant intended to end in the killing of all the nymphs by hippos and crocodiles. Only Nubia's quick thinking and the intervention of the emperor's brother Domitian saves her. The two girls are invited to join him in the Imperial Box to watch the rest of the show. They recognize Jonathan among the child gladiators, but unfortunately when Titus finds out, he orders Jonathan's arrest, believing him guilty of causing the fire. On the third day, Jonathan's execution is averted by Mnason, Nubia and Caudex who arrange a spectacular escape which wins the crowd's approval. Titus is glad to spare the boy, especially when he learns the truth about the fire, but he insists the children return home to Ostia, out of harm's way. |
Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth | null | null | Author Ben Peek recounts his past relationships, musings, and life events through various alphabetical blog posts, categorised like an encyclopaedia. Whilst many of the posts interconnect to form one event stretched out over time, many are stand alone passages about seemingly random topics. However, a large contingent of the posts are about other authors who have committed plagiarism, fraud, or somehow faked their writing. Since the novel does not have a traditional linear storyline, many of the plots are fragmented and need to be pieced together, or require rereading past entires. Other sub plots of the novel include his former relationship with "R" and the abortion R gets, his past (from the school-age death of his father to recent jobs), the death of "G" in a car accident, and other friends and acquaintances he meets in his life. |
The Blank Page | Carl Kosak | 1,974 | Mario Balzic is the protagonist, an atypical detective for the genre, a Serbo-Italian American cop, middle-aged, unpretentious, a family man who asks questions and uses more sense than force. As the novel opens, it is a record-hot Memorial Day when Miss Cynthia Summer calls Police Chief Mario Balzic to say that she hadn't seen one of her student roomers. Balzic discovers Janet Pisula's body on the floor of her room, a blank sheet of typing paper on her stomach..... It is the third book in the 17-volume Rocksburg series. |
Nazi Literature in the Americas | Roberto Bolaño | 1,996 | Nazi Literature in the Americas presents itself as an encyclopedia of right-wing writers. The book is composed of short biographies of imaginary Pan-American authors. The literary Nazis—fascists and ultra-right sympathizers and zealots, most from South America, a few from North America, portrayed in that book are a gallery of self-deluded mediocrities, snobs, opportunists, narcissists, and criminals. About Nazi Literature in the Americas, Bolaño told an interviewer: :(Its) focus is on the world of the ultra right, but much of the time, in reality, I'm talking about the left.... When I'm talking about Nazi writers in the Americas, in reality I'm talking about the world, sometimes heroic but much more often despicable, of literature in general. Although the writers are invented, they are all carefully situated in real literary worlds: Bolaño's characters rebuff Allen Ginsberg’s advances in Greenwich Village, encounter Octavio Paz in Mexico City, and quarrel with José Lezama Lima in Cuba. Forerunners to this type of fictional writer biographies can be seen in the short stories of Jorge Luis Borges, particularly "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain". |
Distant Star | Roberto Bolaño | 1,996 | The book is narrated from a distance by Arturo B. (probably Belano, Bolaño's frequent stand-in) and tells the story of Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an aviator who exploits the 1973 Chilean coup d'état to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry: a multi-media enterprise involving sky-writing, torture, photography, murder, and verse. The narrator first encounters him in a college poetry workshop, where Ruiz-Tagle only has eyes for the beautiful Garmendia twins, Veronica and Angelica. As the novel progresses it becomes clear that Ruiz-Tagle is far more and far less than a mere poet through progressively darker and ironic twists and turns. The next sighting comes as the narrator stands in prison camp for political undesirables, gazing up at a WWII Messerchmitt skywriting over the Andes. The aviator is none other than Ruiz-Tagle, now serving in the Chilean force under his actual name, Carlos Wieder, and writing nationalist slogans in the sky. The narrator becomes obsessed with Ruiz-Tagle, suspecting that he is behind every evil act in Pinochet’s regime. After his release the narrator struggles to survive and make sense of his situation, but his destiny is eventually reconnected with that of Ruiz-Tagle/Wieder when a Chilean private detective seeks his help in tracking Wieder down by trying to identify the airforce pilot's hand behind various articles printed in neo-fascist publications. |
Last Evenings on Earth | Roberto Bolaño | 1,997 | Set amid the diaspora of Chilean exiles in Latin America and Europe, the fourteen stories in Last Evenings on Earth are peopled by Bolaño's beloved "failed generation" and demonstrate the complexities of and Latin American identity and history. The narrators are usually writers grappling with private (and often unlucky) quests, speaking in the first person as if giving a deposition—like witnesses to a crime. These protagonists tend to take detours and narrate unresolved efforts. They are characters living at the margins. Other stories find themselves narrated in the third person by the author "B.", which is one of many cases of Bolaño writing himself into his own fiction. |
Multiculturalism without Culture | null | 2,007 | In the book, Phillips elaborates on the idea of a multiculturalism without culture. In this model, the conception of culture as unchanging and domineering (A view that Phillips argues is held by many governments and people alike) is disposed in favor of the idea that culture is fluid and that the individual in the culture, not the culture group itself, has rights and is the most important element. A central part of her theory rests on the idea that people in minority cultures have autonomy. Her discussion weighs many different perspectives on multiculturalism provided by an array of modern writers on the subject. She consistently keeps feminist theory as a primary foundation from which she structures her arguments. The book ends with her vouching for the increasing of consultative services for minority groups and increase of dialogue between them and governments. |
The Kingdom of Shadow | Richard A. Knaak | 2,002 | After three years, Quov Tsin has calculated and collected the research left behind by Gregus Mazi to open the pathway to the lost city of Ureh. Tsin hires Kentril Dumon and his group of mercenaries to protect him on his journey in exchange for the lost riches left behind. Zayl attempts to scare away the mercenaries, but fails and becomes a captive to Kentril’s group as Ureh is reborn. While looking for treasure, the group is attacked by the ghosts of Ureh and led to the palace of Juris Khan. The mercenaries learn from Ureh’s leader of the city’s trapped existence and the betrayal of Gregus Mazi. Juris Khan requests the aid of Kentril and his group to help restore the city and complete their original goal. After the first task of Ureh’s restoration is accomplished, the nightmare of Ureh begins as one by one the mercenaries learn of Ureh’s dark secrets. |
The Brides of March | null | 2,007 | The Brides of March is a bride’s eye view of same-sex marriage at a moment’s notice, with a bevy of brides, their coterie of children, donuts, newspaper reporters, screaming protesters, mothers of the brides who never thought they’d see the day, white wedding cake, and a houseful of happy heterosexuals toasting the marriage! But that was only the beginning as these private declarations of love became public fodder, fueling social commentary, letters to the editor, and the fires of political debate, when all The Brides of March wanted was the opportunity to say, “I do,” in this candid, poignant and frequently funny tale of lesbian moms getting to the church on time in Multnomah County. |
The Sign of the Chrysanthemum | Katherine Paterson | 1,973 | Muna has never seen his father, and only knows that he is a samurai with a chrysanthemum tattoo on his shoulder. He meets a likable ronin named Takanobu on a ship which Muna was hiding on. Later on, after Muna and Takanobu have gotten off the ship, they are in the city and go exploring. Muna loses track of where Takanobu goes, and eventually gets lost. At night, Muna still isn't able to find Takanobu and is wandering around when a girl finds him and invites Muna in for supper. Later on Muna learns that the girl's name is Akiko and is the daughter of a sandal-maker. After supper, Muna stays the night. Finally, Muna finds Takanobu asleep next to a fence. As Takanobu takes care of Muna, he finds him a job cleaning stables. But one New Years a fire occurs at the Red Dog where Takanobu met Muna and sent him to do an errand. On the errand, he is told by someone that a man named "Plum Face" is dead, who was a person Muna knew. He is also told that Takanobu is "dead." Muna faints from the noxious fumes of the fire and is badly burnt, unable to wake up. Later on, Muna is found by a man named Fukuji, who is the master swordsmith of the capital. Muna stays with Fukuji, doing house chores and other "women's work". One day when Muna was outside, he saw a man dressed as a monk who seemed to be following exactly what he did. When Muna pulls a trick on the man, he finds out that he is Takanobu. Takanobu is happy to see Muna again, and asks him to do one favor. Takanobu wants Muna to steal a sword from Fukuji and give it to him. He convinces Muna to give him the sword by saying that he is Muna's father. But when Muna brings the sword to Takanobu, he says he wouldn't give it to Takanobu unless he said he was Muna's father. When Takanobu didn't answer, Muna attacked. Muna runs away to the woods, and eventually buries the sword in front of a neglected shrine. At the same time, Fukuji, who woke up, wonders where Muna has gone. Suddenly, a visitor comes to Fukuji and tells him that he is Muna's father. Fukuji realizes that the visitor is Takanobu. When Takanobu who never died claims that he is Muna's father, Muna must choose between fulfilling his "father's" wishes or proving his loyalty to Fukuji. |
Amityville: The Final Chapter | null | 1,985 | It started in Amityville. It followed them 3000 miles. Now for the Lutz family, the forces of 112 Ocean Ave. have followed them around the world. Now it doesn't matter where they go, it will be there and the Lutzes must find a way to escape. |
Black Man with a Horn | null | null | In the story, an author—whose literary career has been in the shadow of H. P. Lovecraft and modeled after Lovecraft Circle member Frank Belknap Long--becomes involved in a mystery after a chance encounter with a missionary while traveling. The missionary, traveling in disguise, is fleeing something he encountered while in Malaysia, and refers to the Chaucha. Later, while visiting a museum, the author comes across a reference to the Chaucha. The narrator realizes that the Chaucha are actually the Tcho-Tcho, which he had previously thought to be fictional construct of Lovecraft. Slowly, the narrator becomes threatened by a being the Tcho-Tcho worship: a black, fishlike humanoid demon—the Shogoran—with an appendage that resembles a horn attached to its face. |
A Heart So White | Javier Marías | 1,992 | With unnerving insistence A Heart So White chronicles the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he considers the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy - its possible convenience, its price, an even its civility - permeates the novel. A Heart So White becomes a sort of anti-detective story of human nature. Intrigue; the sins of the father; the fraudulent and the genuine; marriage and strange repetitions of violence: Marías elegantly sends shafts of inquisitory light into shadows - and reckons the costs of ambivalence. ('My hands are of your colour; but I shame/To wear a heart so white" - Macbeth.) |
Dark Back of Time | Javier Marías | 1,998 | Called by its author a "false novel," Dark Back of Time begins with the tale of the odd effects of publishing All Souls, is witty and sardonic 1989 Oxford novel. All Souls is a book Marías swears to be fiction, but which its "characters"- the real-life dons and professors and bookshop owners who have "recognized themselves'- fiercely maintain to be a roman a clef. With the sleepy world of Oxford set into fretful motion by a world that never "existed," Marías further stirs things up by weaving together autobiography (the brother who died as a child; the loss of his mother), a legendary kingdom, strange ghostly literary figures, maps and photographs, halls of mirrors, a one-eyed pilot, a bullet lost in Mexico, and a curse in Havana. |
The Marvellous Land of Snergs | null | null | The Marvellous Land of Snergs is set on a fictional island somewhere on Earth, but difficult to reach. On the island is a colony of children (rescued from neglect by the redoubtable Miss Watkyns), the crew of the Flying Dutchman, and the Snergs, a race of short, thick-set, helpful people. Unfortunately Golithos, a not-so-friendly giant, and Mother Meldrum, a wicked witch also live there. When Sylvia and Joe run away for a big adventure their lives are in deadly peril when they fall into the clutches of these two evil characters. Gorbo the Snerg and Baldry the court jester come to the rescue. |
The Master Puppeteer | Katherine Paterson | 1,975 | The Master Puppeteer is set in Osaka, Japan, during a period of famine in the 18th century. A young boy named Jiro takes a job at a theater run by the puppeteer Yoshida, who proves to be a demanding employer. However, Jiro discovers there is a connection between the theater and a local thief who has been stealing rice from the municipal authorities and merchants and giving it away to the starving poor. |
Your Face Tomorrow Volume 1: Fever and Spear | Javier Marías | 2,002 | At a dinner at the home of his friend, retired Oxford professor Sir Peter Wheeler, he is introduced to Mr. Tupra. Months later he is working for Tupra, giving his interpretations and analysis of the behavior and motivations of wide ranges of people. A flashback to the morning after the dinner reveals that Wheeler worked for M16 during WWII as a psychic, and Tupra does similar work. In their conversation Wheeler tells Deza that he (Deza) shows evidence of being one of the greatest and most perceptive psychics of their kind. |
Hello, Harvest Moon | Ralph Fletcher | 2,003 | The moon rises and shines through a girl's bedroom window. It then shines on a silent street, corn and wheat fields and autumn trees. A young girl and her cat play a game by its light, a pilot flies a plane using its light. The moon sets in the daylight as the young girl and her cat say goodnight. |
Blackthorn Winter | Kathryn Reiss | 2,006 | Juliana, a fifteen-year old girl, moves with her mother to the artists' colony of Blackthorn, England from the United States while her parents are undergoing a separation. She begins to investigate a murder of one of the artists living at the colony. |
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters | Diana Mitford | 2,007 | Carefree, revelatory and intimate, this selection of unpublished letters between the legendary Mitford sisters dances with wit, passion and heartbreak. The letters not only chronicle the idiosyncrasies of the twentieth century, but chart the stormy relationship between six uniquely gifted women. There's Nancy, the scalding wit and best selling novelist; Pamela, who craved a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed during the Second World War; Unity, whose obsession with Hitler led to her demise, Jessica, the runaway communist; and Deborah, the socialite who became Duchess of Devonshire. |
Abomination | null | null | Martha is a 12 year old girl. She leads a life that is anything but normal. Martha and her parents belong to a strict religious group called the Righteous. The Righteous is a religion that believes in the God that was portrayed in the Old Testament, the God who killed, the God who brought disease. Martha hates this religion. Because of its rules Martha is not allowed any trendy clothes, no television and no computer or fancy gadgets...and no friends. Martha wants to have all of these things but she cannot. Martha instead lives with homemade clothes for school and for home. Her school life is worse than her home life. She is chased home every night by Simon Pritchard (the school bully) and his gang. While they chase her they are all chanting "Raggedy-Ann, Raggedy-Ann we'll scrag you if we can". The only electrical item she owns is a radio, which she only has the odd listen to. Because Martha has none of these privileges, she has no friends. However, Martha's luck changes when a new boy Scott arrives and smiles at her, which in Martha's case is a huge hope that they could be friends. Because of a simple gesture of lending her a ruler, a big friendship is born. But to Martha's disappointment she is chased home by him with Simon and the rest of his gang. Later on though, Scott sees Martha looking in her bag for something. He asked her what she is looking for, she tells him she has forgotten her ruler. Scott lends Martha his ruler but when he gets it back one of Simon's gang tells him that he should burn it but he ignores her. As Scott becomes closer to Martha, his best friend Simon starts to notice, so he starts bullying Scott as well as Martha. Scott's and Martha's relationship grows stronger and Martha eventually has the courage to tell Scott about abomination, her nephew. She also reveals about her father beating her and how he kicked out her older sister Mary for having a child before marriage. However, upon her discovery of her family's moving, Martha rebels against it, and is sent to her room for days. However, she manages to send Scott a message, not to Scott himself, but pinned to a fence outside her house, taking a large risk of being caught by her parents. The note tells Scott not to knock, but instead to wait for Mary until Monday. She waits for days but without reply. At the same time, Scott actually receives a reply, however Mary calls him sick. Scott decides to talk like Martha would, mentioning the way Mary calls Martha "Marfa", like her best friend Annette, and mentions a fountain in Birmingham, where her last postcard was sent from. Scott tries calling, however he knew Martha's father would not listen, so he repeats the same message three times so that her father would memorize it and angrily shouts it in front of Martha, knowing the message is from Scott. Eventually Scott decides to go to see Martha, but is discouraged when he sees Martha in a car; however it was Mary and Annette's car - Mary rescued Abomination after all. In the last chapter it is revealed that the child is now called Jim and that Martha actually buys her own clothes now; it is also stated that when she learns to use the Internet, she will e-mail Scott. Martha and Scott become best friends forever. |
Regenesis | C. J. Cherryh | 2,009 | Ariane Emory is the eighteen-year-old clone of an extraordinary woman who was both a preeminent research scientist and the leader of the Expansionist Party, which has controlled Union since its inception. Her predecessor had some very powerful friends and enemies. However, inasmuch as her genemother had died under suspicious circumstances before she was even born, Emory is unsure who they are. She is not without resources though. A breakthrough experiment in "psychogenesis" has recreated in her the genius of her parent. Everyone knows that she will one day follow in her mother's footsteps and take charge of Reseune, a sovereign Administrative Territory and the premier azi research facility in Union, one of the three spacefaring factions of humanity. In the meantime, she takes measures to protect herself, assembling a trusted staff with the assistance of her azi bodyguards and companions, Florian and Catlin. When she discovers that her new azi security chief has been tampered with, her list of possible enemies grows to include key men inside Reseune itself: Yanni Schwartz, the Director, and Adam Hicks, the head of security. Adding to the discord is the return of a bitter Jordan Warrick from a twenty year exile at an isolated research facility. He had been pressured into confessing to killing the original Emory. The murder of Dr. Sandur Patil, a top scientist recruited by Schwartz to head up the terraforming of a planet, turns out to be but one step in a plot by Emory's unknown enemy that shakes Union to its core. As she struggles to deal with the escalating situation, she also unravels the decades-old mystery of her genemother's death. |
Park's Quest | Katherine Paterson | 1,988 | Park's full name is Parkington Waddell Broughton V. He knows he has ancestors who have distinguished themselves and the name he shares with four generations of them. But his father, a U.S. Marine Corps pilot, died in Vietnam when Park was three, and he has never met his father's family. Though he is nearly twelve, his mother still avoids answering any questions about his father. Finally, to satisfy his curiosity, Park gets on a bus for the short ride from his home to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. There he finds his father's name. There he also resolves to get some of his questions answered. After a painful conversation, his mother puts him on a bus for a two-week vacation in south-western Virginia where his grandfather and uncle maintain the farm on which his father grew up. His grandfather has had a stroke and is now inarticulate, able to communicate in only the most rudimentary ways. His uncle has a Vietnamese wife, and shares his home with a Vietnamese girl about Park's age whose origin and status is not clear to Park until he discovers, after a number of uncomfortable encounters, that she is his half-sister, and that because of his father's infidelity, his mother divorced him before his second, and fatal, term in Vietnam. Park, whose fantasies about his father's past and his own future have been highly romanticized, does some important growing up in the short visit that puts him in touch with a more complex idea of family, grief, forgiveness, and acceptance than he has ever before had to develop. |
The Messenger | null | null | When the laptop of a terrorist mastermind falls into the possession of the Office, Gabriel Allon suspects an imminent attack upon the Pope. He warns his friend Luigi Donati, the Pope’s personal secretary, in time to tighten security and personally investigate likely terrorist suspects among the Vatican’s staff. However, the Pope ignores Gabriel’s suggestion that a large outdoor ceremony be moved into an enclosed—and more secure—structure. That disregard proves fatal when three suicide bombers cause more than 700 deaths among worshipers. Gabriel rescues the Pope just as more terrorists arrive to shoot missiles at the Basilica. As the Vatican later researches the disaster, it discovers that its council for improving relations with the Muslim world was little more than a front for inside terrorism. When the Office places the blame on a powerful terrorist network, terrorists respond by bombing the vehicle of Ari Shamron, the head of the Office and Gabriel’s close friend. As Shamron fights for his life, Gabriel joins a member of the CIA in a secret scheme to infiltrate the vast network of “Zizi,” a terrorism financier linked to both the bombing and the attack on Shamron’s life. They select Sarah Bancroft, an American art curator with a wealthy European upbringing, to penetrate Zizi’s organization. When she and art dealer Julian Isherwood sell Zizi, an art aficionado, an undiscovered Van Gogh, Zizi takes the bait and hires Sarah as his personal art director. He introduces her to his “family” by inviting her on an idyllic cruise in the Caribbean. Gabriel and his team tail Sarah with the hope that she’ll be able to identify Ahmed bin Shafiq, the man who orchestrates the many terrorist activities that Zizi funds. However, Gabriel’s team shows too much interest in Sarah, and they quickly arouse the suspicion of Zizi’s professional security team. On the night that Gabriel plans to assassinate bin Shafiq, Zizi’s party preempts his move and takes Sarah hostage. Sarah is secreted away to Switzerland, where she is heavily drugged with truth serum and forced to reveal the identities of Gabriel’s colleagues. In a desperate race against time, Gabriel’s team locates Sarah, kills her captors, and frees her. She in turn reveals that bin Shafiq, believing her death to be imminent, taunted her by stating that he was on his way to yet another terror operation at the Vatican. This shred of information sends Gabriel rushing back to Rome on the very day that the President of the United States is scheduled for a historic visit with the Pope. The target of the attack—the President—seems obvious, but Gabriel struggles to identify the operative. In an almost imperceptible move, a member of the elite Swiss Guard shoots two bullets at the President. Donati throws himself in front of the President and sustains critical injuries. Donati’s sudden movement alerts Gabriel, who kills the renegade guardsman before more shots are fired. Luigi Donati later recovers from the shooting, Ari Shamron survives the bombing and returns to the Office, Julian Isherwood retires, Sarah Bancroft receives a new life and identity from the CIA, Uzi Navot takes over the directorship of the Office’s special operations, and Gabriel Allon rekindles his romance with Chiara Zolli. Although the elaborate art plot failed, the book ends with two briefly recounted successes: Allon and his team locate and kill both Ahmed bin Shafiq and Zizi. |
The Five Greatest Warriors | Matthew Reilly | null | The story starts with Jack's fall from the Vertex under Table Mountain with the suicidal Marine Switchblade, and his escape with the aid of Switchblade's Maghook, a staple of many of Reilly's works. He quickly reunites with the rest of his team at Little McDonald Island. The dates for the placement of the six pillars sees a three-month window between the second and third placements. Jack and Zoe use the interim period to help Pooh Bear in the rescue of Stretch from the Israeli Mossad. In a Roman ruin located under Israel's most secret facility, they find Stretch subjected to a hellish treatment: kept alive in a tank of formaldehyde by General Muniz, a Mossad spymaster. Stretch was to be the latest addition in Muniz's private collection of "living trophies", a practice pioneered by a former KGB operative. Stretch is subsequently liberated and the party makes their escape. Jack learns of The Five Greatest Warriors from Diane Cassidy, five key members of history who would influence the sacred stones and their whereabouts. They set about locating the third pillar and its matching Vertex. Following a connection to Genghis Khan, the party sets out for Mongolia. They locate the Khan's tomb under a false mound that covered a meteor crater. In the bowels of the fortress, they find a petrified dinosaur egg painted with images of the six temples that house the Verticies. The Japanese Blood Brotherhood attempt to stop Jack and Wolf from finding the next temple by destroying the egg, and Wizard is killed by Wolf in their escape. Realising that Genghis's shield also carries the images carved on the egg, Jack and his team race to the northern tip of Hokkaido. Japan attempts to stop them from entering the temple - which can only be done so in the middle of a tsunami - but Jack and his father form an uneasy truce and agree to place the third pillar together. Negotiating a maze set above a lake of lava, they successfully place the pillar. Several Japanese snipers very nearly kill them, and in the firefight, Jack and his father receive a vision of Jack's death from the pillar: what appears to be a fiery accident involving a falling aircraft. Wolf decides to let Jack go free after Jack saves his life. Unfortunately, all involved are captured by a group of Russians. At the same time, Jack's friends are picked up from their various assignments around the world. Everyone is taken to a dam in far eastern Siberia, where they meet Carnivore, General Muniz's friend and the creator of the "living tombs". Carnivore is the last of the House of Romanov, and the leader of the coalition of royal houses in Europe. Diane Cassidy is also revealed to be one of his agents. After forcing Jack to fight his half-brother to the death, the Carnivore subjects Jack's friends to his hellish prison cells to encourage him to place the fourth and fifth pillars. Without a choice, Jack agrees. The Carnivore makes a similar arrangement with Mao Gongli, Scimitar and Vulture, holding their loved ones hostage and sending them out to find the sixth and final pillar. The fourth and fifth pillars must be placed simultaneously. Jack, Lily and Iolanthe make for Diego Garcia while Pooh Bear, Stretch and the Adamson twins go to Lundy Island. Shortly after they place their pillars, Carnivore and Cassidy abandon their Siberian base and their victims, leaving them to die. Wolf escapes and gives pursuit, heading for Easter Island. Meanwhile, Jack, Lily and Iolanthe return to Israel, where they locate the (occupied) Tomb of Jesus Christ, the bearer of the sixth and final pillar, in a salt mine near Ein Aradhim. After Pooh Bear is forced to kill Scimitar and Vulture, Jack himself makes for Easter Island aboard a heavily damaged Halicarnassus. Meanwhile, the Dark Sun enters the edge of the solar system and planet earth is subjected to extreme weather conditions. Unable to land his plane, Jack crash-lands in the entrance to the Easter Island shrine. Unable to catch either Wolf or the Carnivore in the ten minutes remaining until the final pillar must be placed, Jack uses the remains of the Halicarnassus to cover the ground between himself and Carnivore. Jack kills the former KGB operative with the plane's sole remaining gun, which literally blasts him to nothingness. Lily, the only person Jack trusts - not least of all because she is the only one who can read the Word of Thoth - carries out the final placement. The reward for the sixth pillar is power, the ability to make one's thoughts a reality. Imbued with the power of the pillar, Lily goes on a murderous rampage, killing Cassidy and Mao Gongli in a grotesque fashion before Jack is able to stop her. As the Great Machine activates and the world is saved from the Dark Sun, Jack kicks the pillar into the void beneath the Vertex. Wolf gives chase, but the Halicarnassus causes the balcony overlooking the void to collapse, and he falls to his death as he chases the pillar. We learn that because it was Wolf's blood and not Jack's on the third pillar in Hokkaido, it was a vision of Wolf's death that Jack saw. Jack and Lily leave Easter Island, returning to Siberia in time to free their friends and the Carnivore's victims from the fomaldehyde tanks. The epilogue sees Jack and Zoe married and living in Australia with Lily. The five surviving pillars remain hidden, with Jack reporting that they had been lost or destroyed over the course of their mission. Zoe discerns that the fifth Greatest Warrior - whose identity had gone unknown because of his role to play in the potential apocalypse - was actually Jack, and the story ends. |
The Kill Artist | Daniel Silva | 2,002 | Israel’s Prime Minister reinstates Ari Shamron as its director. Shortly thereafter, Israel’s ambassador is murdered in Paris. The crime has all of the markings of Tariq al-Hourani, a terrorist mastermind. Gabriel spearheaded a team that located and killed the operatives in the “Munich Massacre.” Seventeen years later, Tariq took vengeance upon Gabriel—family member for family member—by planting a bomb under the Allons’ car in Vienna. Gabriel witnessed his family’s horrifying destruction. His son Dani died instantly, while his wife Leah was left with a shattered mind and body. Nine years later, Gabriel has cut ties with the Office, secreted himself in Southern England, and poured himself into his other profession as an art restorer. Ari Shamron shows up on his doorstep. Shamron explains that he wants to assassinate Tariq but lacks support from the departmental directors at the Office. As a result, he urges Gabriel to spearhead a secret assassination operation. He accepts Shamron’s plan and begins surveillance of Yusef, a member of Tariq’s closely knit organization. Gabriel decides that he needs to set Yusef up with a female operative. He handpicks Jacqueline Delacroix (née Sarah Halévy), a French supermodel. Jacqueline has previously assisted three Office operations; in one of these, she worked closely with Gabriel and the two had an affair. Gabriel is careful to keep his interactions with Jacqueline to a mere professional familiarity. Jacqueline discovers that Gabriel still grieves over their affair, for its unmasking made Leah decide to accompany Gabriel on the fateful operation to Vienna. Realizing that her modeling career is declining and unfulfilling, Jacqueline accepts Gabriel’s role for her and seduces Yusef. Although this allows Gabriel to bug Yusef’s apartment, it likewise blows Jacqueline’s cover, for Yusef finds her making imprints of his keys and later sees Gabriel in his building. Gabriel is very concerned with Jacqueline’s safety and therefore tries to pull her from the operation. Shamron, however, insists that her identity as Dominique Bonard is secure and insists that Gabriel continue the plan. Meanwhile, Yusef warns Tariq that Gabriel is searching for him. Tariq designs a plan where Jacqueline must prove her professed love for Yusef by accompanying Tariq on a supposedly diplomatic mission to the United States. Indeed, Tariq recognizes Jacqueline from previous Office operations and suspects that he can use her as bait to lure Gabriel to his death. A conspiratorial relationship between Tariq and Uzi Navot, a major agent for the Office in Europe, also becomes apparent. Navot is one of the few Office operatives who knows about Shamron’s secret plot. Shortly after Jacqueline begins this ‘diplomatic’ trip, she realizes that her identity and security have been compromised. Gabriel believes that he has the upper hand in the arrangement until Tariq consistency eludes him and then disappears. Tariq smuggles Jacqueline through Québec and into New York City, where he intends to make his last stand. The new PM of Israel and Yasser Arafat are in NYC that weekend to celebrate a momentous step towards creating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Too late, Gabriel realizes that Tariq’s target is Arafat and not Israel’s PM; Gabriel hastily alerts Arafat by phone just as the disguised Tariq zones in on the kill. Arafat the diplomat calmly recounts his love for Tariq, a former associate, and urges the assassin to abandon his design. Tariq decides to let Arafat live just as Gabriel and the escaped Jacqueline arrive on the scene. Tariq shoots Gabriel in the chest, but Jacqueline pursues and kills the would-be assassin. Gabriel recovers from his wound in Israel, where Jacqueline has been forced to relocate due to media coverage of the event. One day, Gabriel spots Yusef in a local market and questions him at gunpoint. Yusef admits that he was working for Shamron as a double agent, and that Shamron had concocted the whole plot so Gabriel could finish off Tariq. When an angry Gabriel confronts Shamron, the wizened director is unapologetic and insists that it was both necessary to kill Tariq and just to have the killer be Gabriel. Once his recovery is complete, Gabriel returns to his life in southern England as an art restorer. |
Amityville: The Horror Returns | null | 1,989 | A regular fine and dry day in southern California. George Lutz works on his new home while Kathy's sons Greg and Matt cause trouble inside. Kathy Lutz yells at them but it takes two parents to get them outside. George sits down to eat breakfast. A house fly comes out of nowhere and lands on his food. He goes to kill it but finds himself unable to move or speak. George then realizes the presence has found the Lutzes yet again. A fire monster is then led by the fly towards George Lutz after he manages to break free. Kathy wakes him up and he finds out he was dreaming, but he won't let it go. Kathy starts to cry. Her daughter Amy is about to comfort her mother when she hears a noise in the living room. She goes into the living room. She gets very happy and says "Jodie, you came back!". Still unaware of the presence in the house. George and Kathy go on a business trip to Portland, Oregon leaving the kids at home with the sitter, Nancy. George and Kathy are stalked by the presence to Oregon where they encounter a little girl on a golf course. Things are much worse at home though. George and Kathy while on their way home are attacked by the presence on the plane. When George and Kathy reach the airport the presence does everything it can to prevent them from reaching the house where the kids and the sitter are. When they find the car they race onto the Los Angeles freeway, where their car is wrecked (similar to Father Mancuso's car in The Amityville Horror). The cars on the freeway disappear and George loses control of the car. George and Kathy jump out just before the car runs off a cliff and becomes a piece of twisted metal. An Indian finds them and gives them his truck. George and Kathy take the truck and race towards the house. The Indian man walks over to the Lutzes destroyed car and destroys the evil cloud which took control of the car. The Car then disappears. George and Kathy turn onto their street and rush up to the end of the street to find their house is gone. In its place: A -story Dutch colonial house. Better known as 112 Ocean Ave. (or as it is called in the book The Amityville House.) George and Kathy stunned that their old house is in front of them and their children inside try not to panic. As they get out of the car the house "greets" them. The lights start going on and off in one room at a time and slowly. Then they go off at the same time and even faster. Until every light goes out for a moment. Then very slowly an orange light illuminates the eye windows. The street then turns into Ocean Ave. George tells Kathy that they must go in together and save the children and sitter. Shawna races to the house and sees George and Kathy entering the house. She races faster and slams into an invisible force field. George hears the crash but it sounds far away to him. George realizes the boat house is missing and is replaced by moving shadows. George goes to open the door to the house but finds it is locked. He tries using his key but it does not open. The door then opens. Inside is a demonic figure welcoming them into the house. Shawna, becomes able to escape her wrecked vehicle however she then realizes the house is gone. The Lutz family's regular house is back. She realizes it's artificial though and realizes she can't get to the house. Inside, the house (which is now a living thing) begins to talk to them. Using doors, windows, boilers it speaks to them. The house is in the condition it was in when they left it; Christmas decorations are still up, gifts are lying around. George, who is now filled with anger, decides to fight back. He starts banging the wall hard with his fist. The activity stops for a few moments. George tells Kathy to go find the kids and Nancy. Kathy runs up the stairs looking for the kids. She finds them. The house which has now "upgraded" the items the Lutz family left in the house. Kathy enters Amy's old room. Greg and Matt are sitting on the bed. Kathy tries to communicate with them but they give her no response. Kathy realizes Amy is dancing to music that is coming from nowhere. She then realizes Jodie is dancing with Amy. Every time Amy dances into a cabinet it moves, only she is not strong enough to move it. George downstairs is still fighting the creature. He then demands to know where Nancy is. The creature stops. Then says "Nan-cy?". George realizes the creature is Nancy. The creature then melts. Kathy upstairs is trying to find a way to make Jodie release the children without harming them. The dancing starts getting wilder and violent. Shawna who still has not gotten into the house is outside. Using Indian powers she breaks the invisible wall. Exposing the Amityville house. In the living room the creature reforms. It is now pure white with no face. It grabs the "upgraded" shot gun, which shoots supernatural powers instead of bullets. George then demands the house to tell him where everyone is. It responds by telling him in the basement. He starts moving towards the basement. Then he realizes that's where the red room is. He turns around and unexpectedly attacks the demonic figure. Upstairs Kathy yells at Jodie which makes matters worse. She then yells at Amy to stop dancing. Amy drops to the ground. Greg and Matt then begin clapping. Shawna who is now walking up to the house just dodges rifle fire from inside the house. George is still fighting for the gun in the living room. It then gets worse when the figure gains the upper hand. Shawna bursts in the house to draw the attention to her. Leaving a knocked out George on the floor. Kathy who now has to push the kids to walk gets them to the stairs when she hears a creaking noise. She sees the rocking chair moving. Amy then asks if Jodie could go with them. Kathy denies and the trio works the way down the stairs. In the dining room Shawna is being burnt alive by demonic powers. She manages to use some Indian powers to counter but continues to fail. Kathy realizes what is happening downstairs and goes to get the kids out of the house and come back. |
Eyo | null | 2,009 | In the story an illiterate ten-year-old girl, Eyo, is trafficked to the United Kingdom by her father with promises of work, an education and a fortune. And thus begins her five-year ordeal, first as a domestic servant and then as a child sex slave. Eventually, she is rescued from slavery by a Catholic priest and nun and sent back home to Nigeria with a view to rebuilding her life. However, she finds out that even in freedom, society demands an exacting price from those it should protect. In the first of the four parts of the book titled ‘African Flower’, the story opens with Eyo and her young brother, Lanre, eking out a living by selling iced water in Ajegunle, a sprawling slum in Lagos, Nigeria. Christened Jungle City by its residents, life is harsh and brutal, both day and night. One must have nerves of steel to survive. Eyo finds herself warding off petty thieves and molesters in the streets, and an amorous landlord at home. But it is her father, Wale, who sexually harasses her with the full knowledge of her mother. She’s willing to play her father’s sex toy as long as he does not touch her five-year-old sister Sade. Plagued by financial problems, Wale approaches his old friend, Femi, to take Eyo away from Jungle City. Uncle Femi, a human trafficker and once a resident of Jungle City, has grown wealthy from illicit trade. He agrees to take Eyo to London where she would get an education and thereafter a good job and with it a fortune. She would be sending money and other things home to help her siblings. Perhaps when she’s settled she’d send for her siblings and they too would get an education and a job. Upon arrival in London, she’s taken to a couple who have ‘bought’ her to take care of their children. She’s ‘imprisoned’ in the house where she’s forced to do household work from early in the morning till late in the night. She not only works forcefully, but she’s also assaulted physically at the slightest provocation. Soon, Sam, the man of the house, starts to sexually assault her and, having discovered her skills, which were learned from her experiences with Wale her father, begins to play pimp. It is only when she miscarries that the couple gets rid of her by ‘selling’ her to another pimp, Big Mama. At Big Mama’s, Eyo performs well, thanks to her experience at Jungle City. She becomes Big Mama’s favourite sex provider and income earner. In this second part of the book titled “African Lolita”, Eyo comes face to face with the harsh reality of commercial sex and worst of all sex slavery. Despite the earnings she brings to Big Mama through clients’ fees and other compliments, she does not get anything better than rationed food. She has to satisfy clients whatever and whenever Big Mama desires. Fearing that Eyo might gain her freedom through her clients, Big Madam passes on the ‘sex slave’ to another pimp named Johnny. Johnny is both crude and violent constantly unleashing terror on Eyo whenever she fails to comply with his orders. He also makes pornography using her. Now having given up on the earlier promises, she sinks into helplessness and is no longer sure that she’s human anymore. She refuses to be called Eyo again and adopts the name ‘Jungle Girl’, the title of the third part of the book. While with Johnny, who also doubles up as her boyfriend, Eyo encounters the tireless Father Stephen and Sister Mary who have devoted their lives to rescuing girls like Eyo from the streets. After numerous attempts by the duo to get to Eyo, they only managed when Eyo sought asylum at the Sanctuary. It is here that Eyo rediscovers herself and, with the help of Nike, a human rights lawyer, starts the road to recovery. Nike is also determined to bring the perpetrators of this inhuman practice to book. But to her surprise, the underground network that runs the trade is so deep-rooted that it is difficult to uproot. |
Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées | Honoré de Balzac | 1,842 | The story concerns two young French women, Louise de Chaulieu (1805–1835) and Renée de Maucombe (born 1807), who become close friends during their novitiate at the Carmelite convent of Blois. When they leave the convent, however, their lives follow two very different paths. Louise chooses a life of romance, whereas Renée takes a much more pragmatic approach; but their friendship is preserved through their correspondence, which continues for a dozen years from 1823 through 1835. Louise is expected to sacrifice herself for her two brothers and take the veil, but the young girl refuses to submit to such a fate. Her dying grandmother intercedes on her behalf and bequeaths her her fortune, thereby rescuing her from the enclosed life of a Carmelite nun and leaving her financially independent. Free to assist her brothers financially without having to sacrifice her own ambitions, Louise settles in Paris and throws herself into a life of Italian operas, masqued balls and romantic intrigues. She falls in love with an unbecoming but noble Spaniard, Felipe Hénarez, Baron de Macumer. Banished from Spain, he lives incognito in Paris where he is forced to support himself by teaching Spanish. When he regains his fortune and noble standing, he woos Louise with a romantic fervour that finally wins her over. The pair are married in March 1825. They live a life of carefree happiness, but Louise's jealousy embitters him and leads to his physical break-down. He dies in 1829, leaving a grieving widow of twenty-four. Renée de Maucombe's attitude to love and life are in marked contrast to those of Louise. When she leaves the convent at Blois Renée moves to Provence, where she marries an older man of little wealth or standing whom she can hardly be said to love. She bears Louis de L'Estorade three children, and over the course of the next decade she devotes herself body and soul to the happiness of her family. Gradually she grows to love her husband in her own way, and with her encouragement he makes a career for himself in local politics, which culminates in his becoming a peer of France and a grand officer of the Legion of Honour. During this time Renée is quite scathing in her criticisms of Louise, whom she sees as a selfish and self-indulgent coquette. True happiness for a woman lies in motherhood and devotion to her family. Meanwhile, four years after the death of Felipe, Louise falls in love again. This time the object of her love is a poor poet and playwright Marie Gaston, who is several years younger than she is. As though taking a leaf out of Renée's book, Louise sells her Parisian property, moves to a chalet in Ville d'Avray (a small village near Paris) and lives a life of seclusion with her new husband. But Renée is not fooled by this masquerade. Louise, she warns, is still living a life devoted to selfishness and self-indulgence, while true happiness lies only in self-sacrifice to one's husband and children - Louise remains childless. After a few years of apparent bliss, Louise detects a change in her husband. He becomes solicitous about the financial success of his plays, and a large sum of money goes missing. Suspecting him of having an expensive mistress, Louise makes enquiries and comes to the shocking conclusion that he has another family in Paris – an Englishwoman known by the name Madame Gaston, and two children, who look remarkably like Marie. Louise confides her feelings of despair to Renée and announces her determination to commit suicide rather than to submit to such a fate. Renée's husband makes enquiries and discovers the truth of the situation. Madame Gaston is the widow of Marie's brother. The death of her husband has left her financially destitute and Marie has taken it upon himself to assist her and his two nephews, but he is ashamed to ask his wife for money. Reneé writes to Louise to inform her of the truth and rushes to the chalet, but she is too late. Louise has contracted consumption by lying out in the dew overnight and she dies a few days later. |
The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives | null | 2,008 | Nick Turse explores how the industrial complex of the United States military has pervaded the everyday lives of Americans. Turse investigates the relationship between the Pentagon and the Hollywood entertainment industry, military actions in the civilian sphere, and joint projects between the U.S. military and companies including NASCAR and Marvel Comics. Turse describes how military tacticians and flyers were outfitted with Apple PowerBooks. He illustrates how the military has attempted innovative methods to reach out to and recruit contemporary youth, including making "friends" on MySpace. Turse notes that the research and development budget of the military, and its spending in the private sector, has increased dramatically over the last few years. The book posits that many changes have occurred since President Dwight D. Eisenhower's military-industrial complex, and relates the changes to the present day. |
The City of Love | null | 2,007 | The City of Love begins with the siege of Malacca by the Portuguese in 1510. Fernando Almenara is a Castilian trader captured in the abortive first siege of Malacca. Fernando has a secret: he is fleeing the Inquisition in Florence for his involvement with a Cabalist group there, and the invasion of Florence by the Holy Alliance in 1509 meant death to him and his friends. During the siege he is kidnapped by Daud Suleiman ibn Shams al Basri, a sharp young Arab physician and pirate based in Chittagong. Fernando joins Daud’s ship, the Shaan-e-Dariya, crewed by fugitives and renegades from all over the known world, and comes to their home port. Chandu Sadashiva is the son of a Shaiva priest exiled from Gaur, West Bengal to the wilds of rural Chittagong. His father Bhairavdas is determined to turn him into a powerful Tantric warrior against the foreign polluters of his land, but Chandu has other ideas. He forms a secret attachment with Bajja, a tribal girl eight years older than he is, who becomes his secret role model and ideal. Things fall apart when Bajja asks Chandu’s father to initiate her into the Tantra but he tries to seduce her and she escapes. Bitterly disappointed, she vows to find enlightenment or die by fasting at the cremation ground. Desperately ill from weeks of starvation, she is rescued by the wise woman Dhumavati who undertakes to train her. At first Fernando’s band of pirates does well from their excellent piratical harbour, but then the Portuguese come to Chittagong and change the rules with their cannon and brutal ways. The pirate band breaks up, Fernando runs from agents of the Inquisition and falls in love with Bajja deep in the forest. Bajja is being taught the Sahajiya Buddhist Tantra by Dhumavati, while Fernando has training in the Christian Cabala, and together he and Bajja teach each other about love and the lore. Meanwhile thirteen-year-old Chandu and his father have set out for Gaur to begin Chandu’s formal training, but they are ambushed on the way, Bhairavdas is killed and Chandu wounded in the throat and sold into slavery. Daud, who is travelling with a wandering Sufi, rescues and heals him. Chandu, temporarily speechless, is apprenticed to a blacksmith and takes the name Kalketu, having lost his Brahminical heritage. He becomes an accomplished Sufi qawwal or devotional singer. Bajja is now wandering the countryside, teaching other Tantrics her wisdom in secret places, but she is becoming disillusioned with the way Dhumavati treats their followers. Finally Dhumavati persuades her to take part in a Tantric ritual which involves killing a child, and in disgust she gives up the life of a guru and disappears to seek her own truth. Fernando is crushed, and he returns to Chittagong where he agrees to return to Amsterdam with an old shipmate and join the Family of Love. In the background of Sher Shah Suri’s and Humayun’s invasions of Bengal (1538–1540), Chandu sets off to look for Bajja and finds her herding pigs on top of a desolate mountain in Assam. They speak of all that has befallen them, lie down and make love. The first part of the book is set against the spice trade from Antwerp to Indonesia, the greatest network of goods and ideas the world has ever known, and the struggle for supremacy in Chittagong between Bengal, Tripura and Arakan, and the Portuguese empire. In this cultural cauldron, established Hindu and Buddhist Tantric, Vaishnav and tribal traditions meet the three-centuries-old incursion of Islam and the dawning of contact with the West. |
Amulet | Roberto Bolaño | 1,999 | Amulet embodies in one woman’s voice the melancholy and violent history of Latin America. It begins: “This is going to be a horror story.” The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, known as the “Mother of Mexican Poetry”. Tall, thin, and blonde, she becomes famous as the sole person who resists the army’s 1968 invasion of the university during the now infamous Tlatelolco massacre—she hides in a women's toilet for twelve days. As she tries to outlast the occupiers and grows ever hungrier, Auxilio recalls her life, her lost teeth, her beloved friends and poets, and she soon moves on to strange landscapes: ice-bound mountains, seedy bars in “the dark night of the soul of Mexico City,” a terrifying chasm, and a bathroom where moonlight shines, moving slowly from tile to tile. Auxilio is also featured in The Savage Detectives, where she narrates her stay in the restroom of the besieged university. However, as Francisco Goldman has noted, Amulet "sings an enthralling and haunting ode to youth, life on the margins, poetry and poets, and Mexico City. Much more than a companion piece to The Savage Detectives - it shares some of the same characters - Amulet may be Bolaño's most autobiographical book. Formally and verbally, it also represents some of his most innovative and thrilling writing." |
The Last Holiday Concert | Andrew Clements | 2,004 | Hart Evans was the most popular kid at Collins Elementary School and is on his way to owning that title again at Palmer Intermediate. So when he unintentionally shoots a rubber band at his chorus teacher one afternoon, he expects it to be laughed off. After all, it was an accident. Mr. Meinert, the chorus teacher, is wound so tight that he blows up at Hart and the entire class. In a huff, he announces that he is stepping down, and they are now responsible for planning their entire holiday concert themselves. The whole class is surprised, and elects Hart as the new Chorus director. He declares Music Class as a free period, until Mr. Meinert tells him that they've got a full 35 minutes for their show. Hart then, realizes they need to get down to work. After assembling committees and coming up with lists of songs, Hart finally thinks he has everything running on track. But then his classmates get mad. Why is Hart, their friend, acting like a teacher? It takes a heart-to-heart with Mr. Meinert to learn what it takes to be a friendly and fair, yet strict, chorus director. |
Fair Play | Tove Jansson | 1,989 | The novel portrays the close friendship between two women doing artistic work, Jonna and Mari, who live in separate apartments in the same house. They are in many ways quite different, but maybe because of this they are able to complete each other. It is about give and take, compromises and communication, and how the relationship survives even if it changes when the people do. Many chapters in the book are written such that they can be read stand-alone, and a few have been republished in the short story collection A Winter Book. sv:Rent spel |
The Other Side of Truth | Beverley Naidoo | 2,000 | Although this novel is written in the third person, it presents the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, Sade Solaja. Her father, Folarin Solaja, is a journalist, one of the most critical of the corrupt regime. The book opens with her memory of hearing the two shots which ended her mother's life, a memory which recurs throughout the novel in her thoughts and dreams. Her memories of Nigeria are often set in contrast to her experiences of an alien England, while her mother's remembered words of wisdom give her comfort and strength. The concentration on Sade's point of view makes many events seem obscure and confusing, just as she experiences them. After the shooting, Sade's Uncle Tunde urges her father to send her and her 10-year-old brother Femi to safety in England. They are forced to pack and leave suddenly and secretly. They fly to London posing as the children of a stranger, Mrs Bankole, so they can travel on her passport. When their Uncle Dele fails to collect them at the airport, Mrs Bankole abandons them at Victoria Station. Moneyless and friendless, they wander the streets looking for the art college where their uncle works. They find refuge in a video store, but the owner calls the police, believing them to be vandals. Thus they come to the attention of the authorities. Worried to tell the truth in case it endangers their father, Sade takes refuge in silence and later in half-truths. The children are fostered first by Mrs Graham and later by the Kings, a Jamaican couple whose called Auntie Gracie and Uncle Roy(From Sade's point of view) whose children have grown up and left. They are sent to different schools. Sade is sent to Avon School where she meets a girl from Somalia, called Mariam whose story is similar to Sade's. Marcia, Donna and Kevin (Mrs Graham's son) are bullies and treat Sade very badly at school, putting pressure on her to steal a turquoise lighter from Mariam's uncle's store. Femi goes to Greenslades Primary School. They lose contact...... It later emerges that her worried father has entered England illegally to look for them but has been arrested. There is a chance that he will be deported to face certain death in Nigeria, especially as the Nigerian police claim he is wanted for his wife's murder. Although Iyawo Jenny and Mr Nathan try their hardest to help Sade's father, things are not working out. Sade braves the freezing night to speak to "Mr. Seven O'Clock", the newscaster she has seen on television, to bring her father's story to the attention of the British public. The story ends with her father's release for Christmas, though asylum has yet to be granted. They hope one day they can return safely to Nigeria. Sade misses her grandmother and her former life. To end the book, Beverly Naidoo used Sade's letter to her grandmother which is very touching. |
Helen | null | null | Helen tells the story of a young orphan, Helen Stanley, whose guardian, Dean Stanley, has squandered his fortune and left Helen without means of support. She is forced to take up residence with the local vicar, whose wife is astonished that none of the Stanleys' aristocratic friends have offered a refuge to her. Eventually, however, the Davenant family returns from abroad and invite Helen to their daughter's new home, Clarendon Park. (Cecilia Davenant has just married General Clarendon.) Helen journeys to join her dear friend Cecilia, and the first half of the novel describes Helen's experiences among the most fortunate of Britain's elite under the tutelage of Lady Davenant, who in some ways favors Helen over her own daughter Cecilia. In the second and more dramatic half of the novel, Lady Davenant departs with her husband, who has been named ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg, Russia. Helen is left to the care of General Clarendon and Cecilia. By this time she is engaged to Granville Beauclerc, a young and handsome man who is another of Lady Davenant's favorites. All does not run smoothly for Helen, however. Before her marriage, Cecilia has carried on an amorous correspondence with Colonel d'Aubigny, a worthless roué who has since died. These letters reappear in a packet addressed to Cecilia's husband. Cecilia implores Helen to act as if the letters were addressed to her rather than to Cecilia. Helen, from misguided devotion to her friend and gratitude for Cecilia's kind hospitality, agrees to the deception. This first step leads to more and more serious consequences, until finally Helen's reputation is in tatters. Beauclerc is forced to fight a duel in defense of his fiancée, after which he must flee from England. Cecilia still refuses to recognize the letters as hers, out of fear of losing her own husband if she admits to the correspondence. The General is convinced that Helen is faithless. She refuses to stay where she is not respected and chooses exile in Wales with the General's sister, where she becomes dangerously ill. Even the birth of Cecilia's first child, a son, does not encourage her to confess to her husband, and Helen gives up all hope of exoneration. The dénouement comes when Lady Davenant, also dangerously ill, returns to London at the same time as the General finally discovers his wife's deception and vows to separate from Cecilia for life. Helen's character is redeemed, Beauclerc returns to England when his adversary recovers from his wounds, and the novel ends happily for all the protagonists with Lady Davenant saying that she is "now, and not till now, happy--perfectly happy in Love and Truth!" |
Semper Mars | William H. Keith, Jr. | null | The United States and Russia have set up habitats on Mars, and are researching ruins of an alien civilization near the Face on Mars. The facilities and research are being shared with UN observers. When the UN sends troops up to Mars, the US sends the Marine Mars Expeditionary Force, a 30-man weapons platoon, to protect American civilians and interests on Mars. The United States Marine Corps has been threatened with being disbanded and it hopes that this mission will breathe some life into the organization. Back on Earth, tensions increase between the UN and the US when the US Embassy in Mexico City is stormed by militants backed by the Mexican government and the Marines stationed there are forced to open fire. The US is able to evacuate the personnel there, but not before the diplomatic damage was done. It is the events on Mars, however, which cause war to begin between the United States and the UN. American scientists discover human remains inside one of the alien structures. From evidence discovered at the site it appears that these aliens not only were in contact with humans in the past, but may have even been responsible for the creation of the human race itself. The Americans want to release the information at once but the UN forces think differently, afraid that the world could not handle information of this magnitude. The UN forces take over the Mars station, imprisoning the Marines and the scientists, while contacting their superiors about what was found. At the same time UN forces capture the International Space Station, to control any and all launches to Mars, while the UN leadership increases diplomatic pressure on the American government. This act kicks off hostilities on Earth. The official reason, according to the UN, is to support the independence of the Aztlan nation, among other reasons, but secretly the UN wants to stop the US from monopolizing alien technology and releasing the controversial findings. The United States finds itself under bombardment from cruise missiles launched from Cuba as well as French, German and Manchurian arsenal ships. Simultaneously forces from Mexico and Quebec cross the border to invade. At the same time Russia, one of America's few remaining allies, is attacked all along its southern border by Manchuria. Morale is low and the President is considering surrendering to the UN. Meanwhile US Marines recapture the ISS with the help of Shepard Station, an experimental laser armed space station. The UN orders the reluctant Japanese to attack Shepard Station. Though they succeed in disabling it, the Japanese lose all of their fighters and decide to join the Americans and their allies against the UN. Back on Mars, the Marines are able to escape their imprisonment, but are forced to march across hundreds of miles of Martian desert to reach the UN base. The Marines defeat the UN force at Mars Prime with a surprise attack. They go on to capture Cydonia and defeat the remaining UN troops using smuggled cans of beer as an improvised weapon. The march across Mars soon becomes a famous piece of Marine Corps history. On Earth the fighting is beginning to turn to the United States’ favor. |
Up in the Air | Walter Kirn | 2,001 | Ryan Bingham is a 35-year-old career transition counselor for a Denver-based management consulting company, Integrated Strategic Management (ISM). He flies around the country firing and then counseling recently laid-off people and counseling them for reentering the job market. Bingham is trying to get to one million frequent flyer miles, a number only reached by nine other people in the same mileage club (from the fictional airline "Great West") before his boss returns from vacation, finds his letter of resignation and cancels his company credit card. Bingham is positioning himself to be hired by MythTech, a shadowy company based in Omaha. He is divorced and his disturbed younger sister is about to embark on yet another disastrous relationship. Bingham inhabits a world of Palm Pilots, rental cars, salted almonds, Kevlar luggage and nameless suite hotels where e-mail and voice mail are the communication norm. He takes a lot of pills and spends time with women in Las Vegas. Bingham fears that someone may be furtively cashing in his precious miles, which would be tantamount to stealing his soul. |
Long Lost | Harlan Coben | null | Myron Bolitar receives a phone call from an ex-lover, Terese, who asks him to come to Paris immediately. Upon arriving, Myron is informed by French police that Terese’s ex-husband, Rick, has been murdered and Terese is the prime suspect. Terese is soon cleared of the charges. At the crime scene of the murder, blood was found that matched that of Rick’s daughter. Terese informs Myron that ten years previously, her only daughter with Rick, Miriam, was killed in a car accident that led to Terese and Rick’s divorce. After nearly being kidnapped, Myron catches a glimpse of a teenage blonde girl who resembles Terese and wonders if perhaps Miriam’s death was faked. Myron sees the same girl again and follows her into a house in London. There, he is ambushed by terrorists who kill Rick’s second wife. After murdering the lead terrorist, Myron is taken to a “black site,” a secret interrogation facility maintained by the United States government to torture suspected terrorists. When his innocence is realized, he is released but does not recall anything that happened while incarcerated. Meanwhile, back in the United States, DNA samples taken from Miriam’s grave prove that she is in fact dead. Myron suspects that Terese’s frozen embryos were used illegally to create a second daughter, the elusive blonde girl he has been seeking. Myron and his accomplice Win investigate the charity “Save the Angels,” which promotes adoption over stem-cell research and is run by right-wing conservative Christians. Rick had been investigating the charity shortly before being murdered. Myron and the French detective Berleand track the teenage blonde girl to a home that was pictured on the “Save the Angels” website. There, they are ambushed by a terrorist cell and Berleand is killed. Upon entering the home, Myron discovers a group of blonde, blue-eyed children who have been raised from stolen embyos by terrorists in the hopes of training them for suicide missions. The terrorist cell is wiped out by law enforcement and the brainwashed children are taken into custody. Myron tracks down Terese to Angola, where she has been hiding with her long lost daughter since the ambush in London. It is implied at the end of the book that law enforcement failed to track down all of the terrorists: a blonde, blue-eyed teenage boy with a heavy backpack is seen stepping from a bus and walking into a crowded area of tourists. |
Hold Tight | Harlan Coben | 2,008 | The story is introduced with the characters Marianne, Nash and Pietra. Pietra tricks Marianne by drugging her which leads to Nash brutally beating Marianne to death, his last words to her being: "Tell Cassandra I love her." They remove her clothes then dress her to look like a prostitute and toss her body in a dumpster (skip). The action switches to Tia and Mike Baye who never imagined they'd become spying, overprotective parent. But their sixteen-year-old son, Adam Baye has been unusually distant and aloof lately, and after the recent suicide of his classmate and closed friend, Spencer Hill, who taking vodka and tablets on his school's roof in the night to death, they can't help but worry. They install a spy program on Adam's computer and within days they are jolted by a strange message to their son from a correspondent known only as CeeJay8115: "Just stay quiet and all safe." The detective investigating Marianne's murder, Loren Muse, realizes that Marianne is not a prostitute and that someone has gone to great lengths to try to fool the authorities. However, the face of Marianne has been so badly mutilated it is impossible for anyone to identify her. Susan and Dante Loriman meet with their son's (Lucas) doctor (Mike Baye) only to be told Lucas needs a kidney transplant urgently. Neither parent is a suitable match and with some investigating, Mike finds out that Dante is not the biological father to Lucas. Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for her son, Betsy Hill is struck by one photo in particular that appears to have been taken on the night of Spencer's death and that he wasn't alone. She thinks it's Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range. She confronts him and asks about the photo, but he runs away. The daughter of Marianne and Guy, Yasmin is being bullied at school because her teacher (Joe Lewiston) commented on her facial hair in front of the class. Yasmin shows her only friend Jill Baye (Mike and Tia's daughter) her father's (Guy) gun, which is already loaded and hidden in a drawer in their house. She tells Jill how she dreams of getting revenge on Mr Lewiston. Worried about the safety of their son, Mike tells Adam he must attend a hockey game with Mike's friend Mo. This is a diversion to try to avoid the party referred to in an email Mike and Tia found on their son's computer a few days earlier, the party claims that there will be alcohol and drugs served. Adam is not around when his father comes to pick him up to attend the hockey game, and Mo tells Mike how to use the GPS on Adam's phone to track him. Mike ends up following him into a very bad part of the Bronx. He starts to chase after what looks to be one of Adam's friends, but is then confronted and severely beaten by an unknown group. He winds up in hospital and still hasn't found his son. Reba Cordova is Nash's next victim, and she is likewise beaten to death, for reasons still unknown to the reader. Before killing her he also told her the same thing Nash told Marianne: "Tell Cassandra I love her." We find out Cassandra died a few years ago due to cancer, and was deeply loved by Nash. Cassandra is the sister of Joe Lewiston, and had another brother named Curtis, who was murdered in an assumed robbery. Mike's professional partner, Ilene Goldfarb, confronts Susan to find the real father of Lucas, as he could be a potential kidney donor. Susan tells her that she was raped, and that it was impossible for her to contact him to ask if he could be tested as a potential donor. Later the readers find out that the reason that her rapist cannot be contacted is because Susan had killed her attacker. She then confides that the murder was set up to make officials think the cause of the murder was most likely a robbery, this leads the reader to believe that Curtis Lewiston is the rapist. The events start to come together by the end of the book as the connections of the murders, Adam's disappearance, Spencer's apparent suicide, and the need for a good donor for Susan's son are explained, and the origin of all of the mayhem is revealed. |
Hell's Heroes | Darren Shan | 2,009 | The novel begins with Grubbs and Dervish talking in a cave. The wounded Dervish is awaiting his imminent death, but he and Grubbs take it in their normal humorous stride. Grubbs reflects on how Dervish has always been there for him and begins to recall memories of his time with his uncle. Dervish dies during Grubbs' reflections. Grubbs takes his body into the open air and begins the slow, painful process of digging his uncle's grave. The story then moves on by a month. Grubbs has been fighting wave after wave of demons that are breaking through all over the globe. He has gathered another group of werewolves but is slowly being worn down. He has been having a recurring dream of Lord Loss's kingdom, but one night it changes and he sees Lord Loss and Bec’s souls go into the Earth’s first chessboard. When they reappear it seems that Bec has made a deal with Lord Loss, and this assures Grubbs that Bec has betrayed them. This spurs him, Kernel and Kirilli Kovacs to action (even though Kernel would rather not); in the dream it seems that Bec is going to show Lord Loss the locations of lodestones so that they can create a tunnel between universes. Therefore, they decide to destroy as many lodestones as they can before Bec can get to them, and go to the only lodestone whose location they know, the one at Carcery Vale. When they get there, they walk around Dervish's old mansion for a while, and then reopen the tunnel to the lodestone in the forest. Grubbs smashes the stone against the wall, so that it cannot be used. As they are about to leave Shark (an ex-soldier and Disciple) and Timas Brauss (a slightly weird computer genius) come in. After quite a brief conversation they decide that they should go to face Lord Loss and Bec on their home turf, but Grubbs says that Kernel can leave if he wants. Grubbs is able to open a window to a world that they know is safe, and Kernel starts to rebuild his eyes. Before he finishes, another window opens. Demons pour through and reawaken the demon master in that world, forcing them through the window to Lord Loss's realm. They free Lord loss's prisoners(one of the prisoners being Bo Kooniart, a girl in Slawter). They confront and battle the demon master and Bec, and their former ally reveals that she has indeed decided to work with Lord Loss. When they have stopped fighting Lord Loss reveals thousands of humans in the rooms around them whose souls have been trapped in the original chessboard. As they watch, Bec kills everyone in the board and releases Death who shares its body with Bec. Kernel completes a window and the others follow narrowly escaping the new Deathly-Bec. Kernel realises that now that Death is back on the scene there is no hope for the Earth, so he decides to go back to the 'Ark' to save a small part of the life from this universe. Kirilli has the idea to get the Old Creatures to help protect the Earth, so Grubbs agrees to the plan. When Kernel has opened a window, they decide that only Grubbs and Kernel should go to meet the Raz(the Old Creature that Kernel has met before). Grubbs begins to make the request to Raz, but, having read his mind, Raz states that the Old Creatures will not help. As Grubbs is about to go home, another window opens and Deathly-Bec comes through, explaining that she can go anywhere Kernel has been, and that she knows where the 'Ark' is. She then attacks and kills Raz, but this drains some of Death’s power, and she regains enough control of herself to shout at Kernel and Grubs to get away before Death kills them and can reunite the Kah-Gash. They do as she suggests and return to the others, but Grubbs is now suspicious that Bec is not as evil and demonic as they thought. They resign themselves to the end of the world, but decide that they should try to kill as many demons as they can before the world falls. When they go back to Earth, the world is being besieged by demons, who have managed to open a tunnel. They decide that they might as well try to close the tunnel and forestall the annihilation of Earth. They fight with a new vigor (even Kernel, who did not like the fighting, has decided that there is nothing to lose anymore), make it to the tunnel entrance and destroy the lodestone, causing the demons to be sucked back to their realm. However, this is just the first of many tunnels that are going to open, so the team decide to just go for the tunnels that threaten the world as a whole, and leave the ones that can only cover a few hundred kilometres. After four days Kernel sees the lights going wild, the sign that a tunnel of great power is opening. A team fronted by Grubbs, Kernel, Kirilli, Shark and Timas go to the edge of a cliff where the tunnel is (this is the place that Bec and Drust travel to in the fourth book and where we see the Old Creatures for the first time). Grubbs uses the power coming through the forming tunnel to re-enact Moses and the parts the sea, and then creates steps down to the cave and tunnel. Timas stays on top, and he and Shark inform the others that they have arranged for nuclear devices all over the world to be detonated if the team fail, therefore causing the humans to be killed instantly, instead of waiting for the demons to torture them. On the way down the Kah-Gash informs Grubbs that it never wanted to manipulate them, and is not working for the demons or humans. This means that Grubbs can use the ancient weapon as much as he wants, and it will do whatever he wants. When they go in, they find the tunnel entrance and Lord Loss and Deathly-Bec waiting for them. While the tunnel is opening, a fight breaks out, and Grubbs manages to catch Lord Loss by surprise using his and Kernel's parts of the Kah-Gash, taking him out of action for a while. The pair begins to seal the tunnel again, but then Bec steps in. She diverts Kernel and Grubbs's power into herself, giving the masters in the tunnel the opportunity to burst through. This is when Grubbs realises that Lord Loss, who he has been afraid of since his parents and sister were slaughtered, was only one of the lesser demon masters, and that the ones that are pouring through at the moment are many times stronger than him. In the following fight Kirilli is decapitated then carved into many pieces, and Shark is melted along with most of the other werewolves and soldiers. In a last attempt Kernel and Grubbs grab Bec to try to blow her up in the tunnel to close it, but when they get her to the mouth of the tunnel and direct all their energy into her, nothing happens. Bec begins to control the weapon, and in a last attempt to stop her, Grubbs cuts the flow of energy to her, but then she winks at him. This catches him by surprise, and he quickly makes the decision that she was not trying to fool him, so instead of cutting the power to Bec, he increases it, directing all the power around them into the girl. The Kah-Gash becomes fully active, and starts a similar process as it did in the sixth book, but at much more advanced stage. They begin to rip everything in our universe and the Demonata’s to shreds, Bec then tells them to go to the Crux (the place where both universes expanded from), and reveals that she is following a plan devised by Beranabus. When they arrive at the Crux, they split into sixty four pieces, and slot all of the body of the Kah-Gash back together. The original universe is back in place, with the Demonata in the white zones and the Old Creatures in the black zones. Bec has restored the old universe, but now the Kah-Gash has the three teenagers as a mind. Bec explains that because she is the Kah-Gash’s memory she memorised everything as they destroyed it, so that now the three of them can rebuild the human universe exactly as it was. Grubbs believes that now that they have restored the old universe, everything will happen as it did before, the Kah-Gash will split, and everything will repeat itself if they recreate everything, but Kernel realises what the next part of the plan was. As they now hold the universe together, they hold everything inside together, including the demons. This means that they can easily undo those bonds and destroy the demons. However, Bec persuades them out of destroying every demon, and Kernel shows them a clip of the past where Beranabus tells Grubbs that most of the demons are not worth bothering about. This sways Grubbs into the others’ way of thinking, and the three decide to destroy all the demon masters who have the potential to cross, leaving only one. Having decided to kill Lord Loss personally, they reform their bodies and meet the last master. As they go to kill him, Bec stops them, revealing that she had made a deal with Lord Loss in the chess board: he would protect Bec if she would spare him. After an disagreement, they realise that Bec's other reason for sparing him was to let him be the necessary diabolical figure feared by the recreated beings of the universe. It is revealed that he will now be set to rule the Demonata, making sure that everything happens as it did before. It is also to be noted that Lord Loss admits that the universe(s) would be a better place without the stronger demon masters. The poem that Darren Shan wrote (which inspired this series and is in the front of Lord Loss) is repeated. The trio then leave Lord Loss, choose a black square at random and prepare to restart the human universe with the Big Bang therein, making sure that everything is as it was the first time. However, they decide that everything will not be exactly as it was before; to stop our world falling to the Demonata again, they will have to change history. Choosing a point just before Bec was born, they intervene to prevent the series of events which led to Death developing a consciousness. Grubbs also wishes to make a few more tweaks, such as letting his parents live and giving Dervish a stronger heart. The three decide that they will spend more time discussing how much they should change, and the extent of their alterations is therefore not explicitly stated. They also decide, to appease the Old Creatures, to retain the original universe alongside the new human universe. Since this time the Kah-Gash makes the conscious decision to create the Big-Bang, instead of a result of the demons crossing through the zones of the Old Universe, Grubbs, Kernel and Bec can retain the Old Universe and leave the Old Creatures to live in their zones. As the trigger of the Kah-Gash, Grubbs then has the job of starting the Big Bang. The series ends with Grubbs saying a slightly changed biblical quote: "In the beginning Grubbs created the Heavens and the Earth and everything was dark. Then Grubbs said 'Let there be light.' " And there was light. Grubbs then says:"Coolio!" |
The Amityville Curse | null | null | The plot is entirely fictional and tells that the house at 112 Ocean Ave. was once a rectory and that one of the priests died there and the house became haunted. |
A Bend in the Road | null | 2,001 | Miles Ryan's life seemed to end the day his wife was killed in a hit-and-run accident two years ago. As deputy sheriff of New Bern, North Carolina, he not only grieves for her and worries about their young son Jonah but longs to bring the unknown driver to justice. Then Miles meets Sarah Andrews, Jonah's second grade teacher. A young woman recovering from a difficult divorce, Sarah moved to New Bern hoping to start over. Tentatively, Miles and Sarah reach out to each other... soon they are falling in love.But what neither realizes is that they are also bound together by a shocking secret, one that will force them to reexamine everything they believe in- including their love. |
Blood or Mead | null | null | The novel follows protagonist John Tran and his search for Ve and Vili, the brothers of Odin. The book's premise involves the rise of the Abrahamic deity Yahweh and his intention to bring about the end of days, as foretold in the Book of Revelations. A number of pagan gods, including Lucifer, Atlas, and Odin, form a loose coterie in opposition. Each chapter is book-ended with a brief dialogues in which the pagan gods tell the history of how the Abrahamic religions gained their supremacy on Earth. The novel borrows from the game Nethack. It includes characters loosely based around the Wizard of Yendor and the Oracle of Delphi. Tran, a recently deceased Ásatrú practitioner, has been deemed unfit to enter Valhalla because he did not die in battle. He has been offered a place in the warrior's heaven if he can track down Ve and Vili. Traveling through the alternate dimension in which the brothers reside, he eventually enlists their aid. This leads the novel to its climax, a final battle between the pagan pantheon and the Abrahamic deity. |
Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans | null | null | Still I Rise begins with an introduction by Charles Johnson about black cartoonists and the subjects they dealt with. The book uses two elderly narrators, one male and one female, to take the reader through time. The female narrator has a bit of black nationalism, while the male narrator has a more balanced view of America in terms of race relations. The book beings to depict African American history starting in 1618. Around this time, in an effort to stem the rising cost of European indentured servants, Africans willing to indenture themselves were starting to be imported. These African servants did very well for themselves because they were more skilled than their European counterparts. The success of the African Americans sparked resentment in white indentured servants and free whites, who disliked the idea of a black man ordering around a white man. Due to their success, Africans started to buy out their contracts, which prompted owners to illegally lengthen African contracts to ban the buy-out problem. The action of the owners angered the African American servants, causing many of them to try and resort to the legal system or simply running away. However, neither of these options worked, and those who ran away had their contracts extended indefinitely. Running out of options, the black servants resorted to rebellion in the form of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. However, the rebellion was put down, and by 1677 slavery was official in all the colonies, with brutal overseers being hired to keep the slaves in line. Still I Rise continues through the history of slavery, outlining ways in which the slaves coped (or didn't cope) with their lot, as well as the hard-won successes of free blacks such as Benjamin Banneker, who "built the first striking clock wholly of American-made parts.Rothschild, Aviva. The Comics Get Serious. 2001. 18 November 2008 http://www.rationalmagic.com/Comics/StillIRise.html From the beginning of the cartoon narrative, every major American black political movement, historical event, and organization is covered, as well as the achievements of African American inventors and businesspeople. |
Tunes for a Small Harmonica | Barbara Wersba | 1,977 | J.F. receives a harmonica from friend for her birthday and ends up learning to play it. She becomes quite good and this skill becomes useful after she ends up falling in love with her poetry teacher and then decides to try to raise $1000 to help her teacher to be able to return to England to finish his Master's thesis. |
The Immigrants | Howard Fast | 1,977 | Born on the voyage to America to his Italian father and French-born mother, Daniel Lavette grows up helping his father on a fishing boat. Tragedy strikes early one morning, however, when Dan wakes early to prepare the boat. The great San Francisco earthquake destroys vast swathes of the city including the small apartment where his parents where sleeping. Following a traumatic three days spent ferrying passengers across the bay to Oakland, he is taken in by friends of his father. The two immigrant families of Italian and Jewish origin use the money earned from the ferrying to start a financial empire and a bank, the Bank of Sonoma. Although Dan Lavette becomes quite rich, he does not stop. He wants to become multimillionaire and has many ideas in mind. He is an entrepreneur and seeks to find his place among the rich businessmen on Nob Hill. He asks for a loan from the larger Seldon Bank in San Francisco, but the owner declines it. During that meeting, Dan meets Jean, the exquisitely beautiful daughter of the owner, and both are smitten with each other. Soon after, they are married, against the will of Jean's mother, who is very segregationist and looks down on immigrants and those of poor pedigree. Dan Lavette grows increasingly wealthy, but his happiness is short-lived. After they have two children, Jean ceases to love him and grows cold to his advances. Dan hired a Chinese bookkeeper, Feng Wo, to assist him at the start of his business dealings, but only receives an invitation for dinner at Wo’s house after several years. Because Jean shares her mother’s distaste for other ethnicities, Dan attends alone. At the dinner, Dan enjoys the company of Wo’s daughter, May Ling, laughing and feeling more at ease than he had since his first days with Jean. After visiting her a few times at the library where she works, Dan falls in love with May Ling. They engage in an affair and they have a child together. So that she may have all of his energies to herself, May Ling wants him to divorce Jean. Dan broaches the idea to Jean, but is flatly declined as divorce is not something the Seldon family participates in. Even after she discovers the affair and has trysts of her own, she will not divorce him and holds onto the marriage as a ploy for leverage. The empire Dan started with his friend, Mark Levy, of the his fishing boats and Levy’s goods store, continues to grow. The Levy and Lavette Company (later L&L Shipping) get into the business of shipping bulk cargo and profit from assisting the Allied cause during the shipping explosion needed during World War I. Sensing the end of the war, Dan convinces Mark to sell the cargo ships. Doing so before the cargo market collapses, the company greatly profits and uses the money to start to a classy department store. Adding to this, the pair diversify by adding luxury cruise liners and building a hotel on Waikiki Beach. They also begin one of the first airlines of the west coast. Impressed with the raging stock market of the late 1920s, the duo issue shares to list their company on the exchange and begin playing the market on margin. This fiscal bubble soon bursts in the crash of 1929 that begins the Great Depression. Many banks close, including The Bank of Sonoma, started by his lifelong Italian friend with the proceeds of the earthquake ferry service. Unable to honor his deposits due to the bank run, his friend dies a heart attack. His Jewish compatriot and business partner, Levy, also dies soon after hearing of his daughters death. Following this tragic news, Dan grows sullen. When May Ling gives him an ultimatum to divorce Jean or lose her and his son, Dan cannot act and May Ling moves to Los Angeles. As the heir to and subsequent chairwoman of the Seldon Bank, Jean calls the loans that are keep Levy and Lavette afloat. Although Jean offers him a position as head of the remnant of the company, Dan cannot accept her handout and refuses. Jean grants his request for a divorce and he signs away his share of their communal assets. Bereft of all his money and torn inside by the emotional destruction of his world, Dan wanders the streets as a vagabond in search of work and even spends three months in prison after fighting off some muggers. When a former employee and boat owner gives him a meal and a job, Dan returns to his first love as a fisherman. Having finally grown up, Dan rises from the depths of his humiliation to seek out May Ling. Venturing to Los Angeles, he meets May Ling and they are finally married. At the close of the story, Dan and Jean’s daughter visits and begins rekindling a relationship with her father. |
Flying Solo | Ralph Fletcher | 1,998 | Mr. Fabiano is a sixth-grade teacher that calls in sick on April 28. When his class arrives they discover that their substitute teacher has not shown up. The class decides that they will not report this to administration and decide to run the classroom by themselves. The students follow the instructions left by their teacher and all goes fairly smoothly. Or does it ? |
Spider Boy | Ralph Fletcher | 1,997 | Bobby Ballenger is starting a new school a thousand miles from his old home. He moved from Illinois to New Paltz, New York and his interest in spiders has earned him the nickname of Spider Boy from Illinois given to him by the class bully. His pet tarantula has not eaten since the family moved. Bobby keeps a journal where he records interesting facts about spiders and then uses it to record his frustrations and realizations about his new school. |
La Bourse | Honoré de Balzac | 1,832 | The young painter Hippolyte Schinner falls from a step-ladder while working in his atelier and is knocked unconscious. The noise of his fall alerts two of his neighbours, Adélaïde Leseigneur and her mother Madame de Rouville, who occupy the apartment immediately below. The two women revive the young man and an acquaintance is struck up. Inevitably, the young painter falls in love with Adélaïde and over the following weeks he pays frequent visits to her apartment. There he is always warmly welcomed, but he cannot help noticing the unmistakable signs of poverty – a poverty that the two women are at obvious pains to hide. Hippolyte's suspicions are aroused. The mother and her daughter have different surnames; they are reluctant to reveal anything of their past; and what is Hippolyte to make of the two old friends of the mother, the Comte de Kergarouet and the Chevalier du Halga, who regularly visit her to play cards for money, but who always lose to her as though on purpose? Hippolyte discovers that Madame de Rouville's late husband was a naval captain who died at Batavia from wounds reveived in an engagement with an English vessel. The Comte de Kergarouet, it transpires, is a former comrade of Baron de Rouville. Hippolyte offers to draw a portrait of Monsieur de Rouville, a fading sketch of whom is hanging in the apartment. Two months later, when the finished portrait is hung in Madame de Rouville's apartment, the Comte de Kergarouet offers Hippolyte 500 pistoles to have his own portrait painted in a similar style. Hippolyte, however, suspects that the old man is offering him the price of both portraits while paying for his own, and he declines the offer. Despite his suspicions that the two women make are living in some mysterious and disreputable manner, Hippolyte continues his visits, for he is deeply in love with Adélaïde. One day, as he is leaving the apartment, he realizes that he has left his purse behind; but when he returns and inquires about it, Adélaïde brazenly insists that no such purse has been left in their apartment. The young man suspects he has been robbed by the women and he stops visiting them. Over the following week he pines away. His colleagues seem to confirm his worst suspicions – that Adélaïde is a prostitute and Madame de Rouville her procuress. Even his mother notices that he is out of sorts. But a chance meeting on the stairs outside Adélaïde's apartment is enough to dispel all Hippolyte's suspicions. He decides that he was wrong to ignore the promptings of his heart. That evening he calls on the two women. Madame de Rouville suggests a game of cards. Hippolyte loses, and when he reaches into his pocket for some money, he finds before him a purse which Adélaïde has slipped in front of him without his noticing it: "the poor child had the old one in her hand, and, to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the money to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart with such force that he was near fainting. The new purse, substituted for his own, and which contained his fifteen Louis d'or, was worked with gilt beads. The rings and tassels bore witness to Adélaïde's good taste, and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornamenting this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid by some proof of affection." There and then Hipployte asks for Adélaïde's hand in marriage. Meanwhile Hippolyte's mother, having made inquiries about her son's condition and having learned of the whole affair, informs the Comte de Kergarouet of the malicious rumours surrounding the two women. Outraged, he explains to Madame Schinner that he loses intentionally at cards to Madame de Rouville because the Baronne's pride has left him none but these ingenious means of assisting her and her daughter in their poverty. The Comte de Kergarouet and Madame Schinner go round to Madame de Rouville's, and arrive just in time to pronounce a benediction on the young lovers' engagement. |
Inherent Vice | Thomas Pynchon | 2,009 | The setting is Los Angeles during the winter of 1969 and summer of 1970; the arrest and trial of the Manson Family is featured throughout the novel as a current event. Larry "Doc" Sportello, private investigator and "pothead", receives a visit from his former girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth, now having an affair with the real-estate mogul Mickey Wolfmann. Shasta asks Doc to help foil a plot allegedly hatched by Mickey's wife Sloane and her lover, Riggs Warbling, to have Mickey admitted to a mental health institution. Soon afterwards Tariq Khalil asks Doc to find the whereabouts of Glen Charlock, one of Mickey's bodyguards - Tariq claims that Glen owes him money after their time spent together in prison. Doc visits one of Mickey's developments but is knocked unconscious, and awakes to find himself being questioned by his old LAPD nemesis, Detective Christian "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, who informs Doc that Glen Charlock has been shot dead and that Mickey has vanished. Later, Doc is visited by Hope Harlingen, the widow of a musician named Coy Harlingen, who wants Doc to investigate rumours that Coy is still alive. Doc finds Coy in a nightclub, but upon hearing that Doc is investigating Mickey, Coy tells Doc about the Golden Fang, an old schooner suspected of bringing mysterious goods into port, and upon which both Mickey and Shasta are rumoured to have departed. Doc learns that Coy has been working for the government as an informer and agent provocateur, but is allowed no contact with his family. He also discovers that one Puck Beaverton had switched shifts with Glen Charlock on the day of Glen's death, and that Mickey had been working at the time of his disappearance on a plan to atone for his sins as a ruthless entrepreneur. Doc pays a visit to the HQ of Golden Fang Enterprises where he meets Japonica Fenway, a young tearaway whom Doc had returned to her wealthy parents on a previous occasion. Japonica reveals that she has stayed at a clinic named the Chryskylodon Institute. Doc visits the Institute, where he again encounters Coy Harlingen, and deduces that Mickey has been apprehended by persons unknown. Doc is then told that the attack during which Glen Charlock was shot was carried out by a group of vigilantes who are said to do dirty work for the LAPD. Doc then discovers links between Puck Beaverton and a notorious loan shark named Adrian Prussia. After a visit from Trillium Fortnight, a female companion of Puck's, Doc travels to Las Vegas in search of Puck and Trillium 's "three-way" partner, Einar. In Vegas, Doc places a bet with the manager of the Kismet Lounge, one Fabian Fazzo, that Mickey did not fake his own disappearance. Later, Doc believes that he sees Mickey in the company of federal agents, and subsequently hears of Mickey's scheme for a philanthropic housing project in the desert. Doc visits the site and encounters Riggs Warbling, architect of the housing project, who fears that Mickey has been "reprogrammed" and that the development, already abandoned, will be destroyed. Back in Los Angeles, Doc learns that Puck Beaverton and Bigfoot's former policing partner, Vincent Indelicato, were sworn enemies. Adrian Prussia, who was used by the authorities as an unofficial assassin, effectively immune from the law, and who employed Puck, permitted Puck to murder Vincent. Doc visits Adrian, who claims that he is behind the Golden Fang organisation, while Puck contends that Glen was killed deliberately because he was supplying black-power groups with weapons. Doc is handcuffed and about to be given a lethal drug overdose, but escapes and kills both Puck and Adrian. Bigfoot, who has evidently been using Doc to investigate Vincent's death, picks Doc up, but sets him up with a huge quantity of stolen heroin. Doc performs a switch operation in order to hide the drugs and is later contacted by Crocker Fenway (father of Japonica) who acts as an intermediate for the Golden Fang. Doc arranges a handover, his only condition being that Coy is released from all of his obligations and allowed to return to his family. After the handover has taken place, Doc and his lawyer Sauncho hear that the Golden Fang schooner is leaving port. Along with the Coast Guard, they pursue the vessel, and watch as it is abandoned after encountering an enormous surf wave. Sauncho and Doc then decide to place a claim on the schooner. At the end of the novel, Doc receives a payment from Fabian Fazzo in settlement of his bet about Mickey. He also learns that Coy has been reunited with Hope and their child, Amethyst. |
Fig Pudding | Ralph Fletcher | 1,995 | Cliff is eleven years old and the oldest of six children in his family who live in Ballingsford. As Christmas nears, Cliff's grandmother arrives for a visit. Cliff's baby brother is rushed to the hospital with a severe illness. While he is recovering in the hospital on Christmas Eve, his family finally figure out that the "yidda yadda" he has been asking Santa Claus for is a little ladder like the one used to climb up to the top of a bunk bed. The entire family work together to build Josh a ladder and deliver it on Christmas morning. Later, Cliff's first grade brother Brad, drives his bicycle into an ambulance and dies. The family spends the next Christmas at a resort trying to adjust to the loss of Brad but the trip does not seem to work. Their spirits rise during a New Year's party at Aunt Pat's house. When they arrive at the party Josh accidentally steps into Dad's special fig pudding that they were bringing. Dad removes the shoe, smooths down the pudding and swears the children to secrecy. They all keep a straight face until Uncle Eddie says that the fig pudding is the best ever and asks Dad if he has added some new ingredient. They all laugh when the real story of the shoe is told. |
The Hour of the Star | Clarice Lispector | null | Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free. She doesn't seem to understand how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator - edge of despair to edge of despair - and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction, taking readers close to the true mystery of life. |
The World in Winter | Samuel Youd | 1,962 | The story involves a new ice age hitting Europe, British refugees fleeing to Nigeria, and what a later group find when they return. As the story opens, Andrew Leedon, a London-based television documentary producer, is given a new story to research: an Italian scientist, Fratellini, has proposed an imminent fall in solar radiation for the forthcoming few years which may lead to harsher winters. Leedon meets with David Cartwell, a Home Office civil servant and useful source, to see if he can find out more. Cartwell quickly becomes a close friend of Leedon, but also begins an affair with Leedon's wife, Carol. The winter of that year is, as predicted, long and harsh, but by January is it becoming clear to insiders that the solar downturn is worse than Fratellini had calculated and no upturn is in sight. By March, food stocks are becoming dangerously low, rationing has been imposed and the Government imposes martial law. Those in the know, including Andrew's estranged wife, sell up and move south to the tropics and countries such as Nigeria. Leedon stays behind, as inner London is finally cordoned off from the rest of the UK to protect the seat of power – an area called the London Pale – as the rest of the country is abandoned to starvation and barbarism. Finally Leedon is persuaded both by Carol and by David Cartwell to exit the country while safe passage is still possible. Taking with him Cartwell's wife Madeleine, he moves to Lagos in Nigeria, finding that the tables have now turned – white refugees fleeing from the ice-bound northern countries are living in slums, unemployed or with only menial jobs, and penniless, as African governments have withdrawn recognition of currencies such as Sterling and no longer recognize the British Government, with reason, as it no longer exercises sovereignty over its own land. A ray of hope arrives for Leedon as Abonitu, a young Nigerian whom Leedon had treated with kindness and generosity one evening in London, finds him and in turn helps him and Madeleine out of the slum. Abonitu plans a reconnaissance expedition back to Britain. |
Uncle Daddy | Ralph Fletcher | 2,001 | Rivers's father abandoned his wife and son when the son is three years old, he goes out to get a pizza and does not come back. His mother's uncle moves in and becomes "Uncle Daddy". Rivers is living a fairly typical life for a nine year old boy when his father returns after a six year absence. The return of Rivers's father threatens to tear the family apart until Uncle Daddy suffers a near fatal heart attack. Rivers and his parents come together to support Uncle Daddy. |
Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel | null | null | The graphic novel leaps between the tale of a prince in the 9th century and another prince in the 13th century whose destinies are linked by a prophecy. The graphic novel begins with Guiv, a prince who had attempted to kill his brother Layth, fleeing the city of Marv after escaping death by drowning from Layth's guards. The story then jumps to a young woman, Shirin, who flees the city of Marv in the 13th century in an attempt to escape her father. She soon meets up with Ferdos, a young man who is connected to Guiv through a prophecy. What follows are two separate adventures which lead both princes to their destinies. fr:Prince of Persia (bande dessinée) pt:Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel |
Came Back to Show You I Could Fly | Robin Klein | 1,991 | The novel begins with shy and lonely 11-year-old Seymour Kerley, staying at an acquaintance of his mother's for the summer holidays. Seymour's parents have broken up and arguing over custody of him. When Seymour was staying with his father, an alcoholic, the latter had drunkenly threatened to take Seymour away interstate. Although Seymour himself thought this was a shallow threat, as his father had little money and was often jobless, his mother took him away to stay at Victoria Road with Thelma. Thelma is a woman who Seymour's mother had formed a "casual and tenuous acquaintance". Thelma is meticulous and tart. At her house Seymour is bored and unhappy. During the day, while Thelma is at work, Seymour is not allowed to open the door, or leave the house, because of his mother's fear that his father might come and take him away. However, after a few days, Seymour climbs over the back gate and walks to the nearby shops. Seymour goes in a few shops then to the park. At the park a group of children tease him. Not knowing how to defend himself, Seymour runs away. The children chase him. Seymour gets lost, and can't find his back gate. He goes through a gate which he guesses is his, but it is not. Instead he meets a young girl: Angie. Angie is in her late teens, and Seymour describes her a beautiful angel. Seymour and Angie become friends, and Angie takes him on outings to the horse races, shops and a restaurant. Seymour has faint suspicions about Angie, but refuses to believe them. One day, Seymour finds Angie in her flat acting "peculiar" and looking sick. Seymour goes back to Thelma's house and calls Angie's sister, Lynne, whom he met previously. Lynne comes over and calls her father, who drives up to Angie's flat and takes Angie away. Several days later, Seymour decides to go to Angie's flat and clean it for when she comes home. However, Seymour finds that it has already been cleaned and almost everything is packed away. Lynne finds Seymour in the flat and tells Seymour Angie won't be coming back, and reveals that Angie has been taking drugs for nearly five years. Lynne describes how Angie has promised, many times, to her parents that she will go to rehab, and that Angie's boyfriend James, is in jail. Angie is going to Rankin House temporarily, a rehabilitation center nearby, then Lakeview, another center. While Angie is at Rankin House, Seymour decides to go see her to give her back her doll that that was left at the flat. Seymour gets to Rankin House and finds Angie, who desperately pretends she has been sick with Pleurisy and is going to be back soon. Angie and Seymour begin to fight, but Seymour, weary of her lies, gives her back her doll and leaves. The rest of the novel is a letter from Angie. In the letter Angie apologizes to Seymour and says that she is at Lakeview, pregnant and going to have her baby soon, and when she gets out she and the baby will live with her parents for a while. In the postscript there is a letter from Seymour in reply to Angie. He describes in the letter that he likes Carrucan, the place where he and his mother have moved to, and that his father came to visit him and got a job as a truck driver. Seymour says he has made a friend called Martin and is learning to swim, and that when Angie gets out of Lakeview and goes to live with her parents he suggests they go out to places with her baby. |
Song of Kali | Dan Simmons | null | Robert Luzcak is sent by the magazine he works for to Calcutta to locate recently written poetry alleged to have been written by a poet, M. Das, who has been thought dead for the last eight years. He travels there with his Indian wife and their infant child. On arriving, he is met by Krishna, a local intellectual who claims to have been asked to assist them by a mutual friend. The next day he meets with the local writers guild who were the source of the few bits of poetry that made their way to America. When he asks to meet Das, he is told that it is out of the question. Robert considers leaving Calcutta at this point, his duty done, but feels that something is missing and that he doesn't have enough material for an interesting article at this point. The night before he and his family are to leave, Krishna returns and takes Robert to a man who can provide him with information relevant to his story. The man tells how he and a friend had tried to join a religious secret society dedicated to Kali, a Hindu goddess associated with death and destruction. One of the prerequisites was for each initiate to bring a corpse to a secret temple, there to be laid at the feet of a statue of Kali. This man's corpse, bloated and decayed after being dredged from the river is chosen by Kali and vivified by her, becoming animated. The corpse is that of the poet, Das. Armed with this tale, Robert again insists on the writers guild allowing him to see Das. This time they agree. He is brought to the poet, who seems to be in the advanced stages of leprosy. Das seems to corroborate the story of his return from death, but Robert again refuses to believe it. Robert is given an extensive collection of Das's poetry, which is very different from his earlier work, describing dark, mystical, grotesque, and apocalyptic happenings. He is asked by Das to bring him books of poetry. Becoming concerned at the eerie, and sometimes frightening, events that he has experienced, Robert attempts to send his wife and child home, but they are unable to get a flight. Concealing a gun (given to him previously by Krishna) in one of the books he has bought for Das, he returns to the poet. He leaves the books and goes, but, as he exits the house, hears two gunshots. Das is dead. Robert is captured by guards and knocked unconscious. He awakens being taken somewhere in the back of a truck, but manages to escape, with Krishna's help. He returns to the hotel, to find that their child has been kidnapped. After a couple of days of dead-end leads, a couple is caught trying to smuggle jewels hidden within the child's body. With their child dead, Robert and his wife return to America. Robert decides to destroy the poetry, and, gradually, their relationship returns to normal. Whispers can still be heard, though, of the Song of Kali, the condition of humanity dominated by hatred and violence, perfectly embodied by the squalor and chaos of Calcutta. |
An Indecent Obsession | null | null | To the battle-broken soldiers in her care, nurse Honour Langtry is a precious, adored reminder of the world before the war. Then Michael Wilson arrives under a cloud of mystery and shame to change everything. A damaged and decorated hero, a man of secrets and silent pain, soon he alone possesses Honour's selfless heart–inciting tense and volatile passions that can only lead to jealousy, violence, and death. |
The Missing Piece | Shel Silverstein | 1,976 | The story centers on a circular animal-like creature that is missing a wedge-shaped piece of itself. It doesn’t like this, and sets out to find its missing piece, singing: Oh, I'm lookin' for my missin' piece I'm lookin' for my missin' piece Hi-dee-ho, here I go lookin' for my missin' piece It starts out on a grand adventure searching for the perfect piece to complete itself, while singing and enjoying the scenery. But after the circle finally finds the exact-sized wedge that fits it, it begins to realize that it can no longer do the things it used to enjoy doing, like singing or rolling slowly enough to enjoy the company of a worm or butterfly. It decides that it was happier when searching for the missing piece than actually having it. So it gently puts the piece down, and continues searching happily. |
Ming Lo Moves the Mountain | null | null | A mountain towers over Ming Lo and his wife. Ming Lo's wife tells Ming Lo that he must move the mountain. When the Mings get further advice, they do a dance to move the mountain. After a few hours, the mountain moves. |
Candyfloss | null | null | Flora "Floss" Barnes' mother and father split up when she was little and she wishes they'd get back together because she doesn't like her stepfather, Steve, and her little half brother Tiger. The book opens on Floss's birthday, when her mum and stepfather take her to TGI Friday's, and tell her that they are going to Australia for six months because of Steve's job. Floss wants to go with them, but she doesn't want to leave her father, cheerful and fun Charlie, who runs his own cafe which is quickly going out of business. Floss convinces her mother that she can live with her dad, while they are in Australia. Floss has a tough time getting used to life without her mother since her dad is not used to taking care of Floss seven days a week and she is not used to his home seven days a week, either. Floss's school uniforms get dirtier as her father is not used to washing and ironing them, but her teacher, Mrs. Horsefield, helps her out, as Floss is one of her personal favorite students. The father and daughter learn to cope and meet Rose, a very caring woman who works at a fair. After she leaves (traveling with the fair), they keep an eye out for her fair. Meanwhile, a regular customer at the cafe (Billy the Chip) puts money on a horse that Floss selects and he wins money on the horse! After losing the cafe and the flat, Billy the Chip mentions he is going to Australia to visit his son for one month and needs Floss and her father to live in his house while Charlie works in Billy's chip van. However, one day, a group of "yobbos"(as charlie calls them) fight roses son saul and when he attempts to stop the fistfight, the van catches on fire with Floss is stuck inside. Charlie fights his way through the fire and rescues her, while in the process burning his hands. Floss also has a best friend, Rhianon who isn't acting much of a friend, making fun of her and her father and starting cruel rumors about her. Floss finds a new friend, Susan, who is interested in all her favorite things. When the fair comes back in town, Rose and Charlie consider dating, and Floss finds out both are interested in each other and get along great while Rose lets Floss help her in the candyfloss stall. Later, Susan goes to stay in her house in France and says farewell to Floss at the beginning of summer. The book closes with Floss dying her hair pink (like Candy Floss). |
Compass in the Blood | null | 2,001 | It tells the story of Dee Armstrong, a freshman journalism student at the University of Pittsburgh, who is inspired to investigate one of the city's most notorious crimes. In 1902 Kate Soffel, the wife of the warden of the Allegheny County Jail, conducted an adulterous affair with a prisoner, Ed Biddle, and helped him and his brother Jack in a daring jailbreak. |
Moscow Rules | Daniel Silva | 2,008 | New terror calls Gabriel Allon away from his wife Chiara and blissful honeymoon in Italy. Boris Ostrovsky, editor of the independent Moskovsky Gazeta, claims to have exclusive information about imminent terror threats to the West and Israel but only dares entrust his knowledge with the now-famous Gabriel Allon. However, Ostrovsky’s sudden assassination cuts short his message and leaves intelligence officers within the Israeli-based Office to guess at the scope of the purported threat against their country. Ostrovsky’s death, accompanied by the recent murders of two other journalists from the Gazeta, seems to indicate that his message was both urgent and true. Gabriel’s drive to uncover this terror threat leads him to Russia, where he must play by a new set of rules that challenge even his abilities as Israel’s top intelligence fieldworker. His encounter with Olga Sukhova, also of the Gazeta, confirms his suspicions that a Russian arms dealer has begun trafficking with well-known terror groups. Olga reveals her source to be Elena Kharkov, the wife of alleged arms dealer Ivan Kharkov—an oligarch with strong ties to both the old and new Kremlin governments. Gabriel saves himself and Olga from an assassination attempt but, in so doing, arouses the suspicion of the FSB, Russia’s security department. Only the quick and heavy-handed negotiations of the Office secure Gabriel’s life and freedom. Gabriel, however, cannot be dissuaded from continuing his investigation. Upon learning of Elena Kharkov’s fondness for Mary Cassatt’s paintings, Gabriel enlists the help of art specialist and fieldworker Sarah Bancroft in arranging a meeting with Elena. He then forges a Cassatt painting and has Sarah represent it as a tender reflection of her childhood to Elena. After close inspection, Elena concludes that the painting is both a fraud and a pretence for meeting Sarah. The unexpected presence of Ivan prevents Elena from sharing her knowledge, and Gabriel’s team must then follow the Russian aristocrat to France. When Sarah surprises Elena at a chic San Tropez restaurant, Elena realizes that she must seize this opportunity to assuage her conscience and potentially save thousands of lives. She entrusts herself to Gabriel’s team, informs them of Ivan’s underhanded dealings, offers to turn over his business records, and asks for help in ‘defecting’ from both her husband and her country’s corruption. She then travels to Russia with Gabriel’s entourage and gathers the sensitive financial information required to prove her husband’s complicity to the arms trafficking. The task runs afoul, however, when Ivan’s chief of personal security, Arkady Medvedev interrupts the operation and takes Elena, and later Gabriel, hostage. At a vast countryside warehouse filled with weapons, Arkady proudly demonstrates the breadth and shamelessness of Ivan’s trafficking. Yet, he is frustrated in his ability to get either Elena or Gabriel to reveal the whereabouts of Ivan and Elena’s twin children. Arkady passes Gabriel on to Grigori Bulganov, an FSB intelligence director, with instructions for Gabriel’s murder. Gabriel is surprised to discover that Grigori was his interrogator in his previous detention with the FSB, and his astonishment grows as Grigori reveals his duplicity as both an agent for and, secretly, against Ivan Kharkov and the corruption that he represents. Grigori arms and then returns a supposedly conciliatory Gabriel to Arkady. When Arkady lets down his guard, Grigori and Gabriel kill him and his guards and then free Elena. The three quickly return to Moscow to once again retrieve Ivan’s financial documents and to rescue Olga; they then proceed to the Ukraine, freedom, and new lives. Because of the efforts of these four people, governments worldwide avert imminent terror attacks and freeze Ivan Kharkov’s business ventures. The U.S. government secrets away Elena and her children, while the UK shelters Olga Sukhova and Grigori Bulganov; the latter two collaborate upon and publish an exhaustive account of Ivan’s dealings. Their work overtly implicates the collusion of Russia’s government, which denies ties to Ivan while openly harboring him. Gabriel portends to his colleague Ari Shamron that Ivan’s days are numbered. However, a serious eye injury (a battle scar from his most recent trip to Russia) prevents Gabriel from pursuing Ivan any further. Indeed, Gabriel fears that his profession as an art restorer is impossible. Yet, time and skilled medical attention allow Gabriel the promise of full recovery—and continued work both as an artist and as a secret agent. |
Skim | null | null | Skim is a "not-slim" student at an all-girls catholic school. She is known as a goth, and practices Wicca. When popular girl Katie Matthews gets dumped by her athlete boyfriend, who days later kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. With the school counselors breathing down her neck and the popular clique (including Katie's best friend Julie Peters) forming a new club in its wake, Skim finds herself in the crosshairs, deepening her "depression". And if things cannot get more complicated, Skim starts to fall for an equally quirky teacher. |
The Keep | Jennifer Egan | null | Danny is an aging hipster in New York City who has fallen on hard times. He doesn't have a real career and he has a habit of burning bridges with old friends. His cousin Howard presents him with an opportunity to come to eastern Europe and help convert an old castle into an alternative resort. Danny has a troubled relationship with Howard. Many years before, when they were children, he cruelly left Howard stranded deep in a cave for days, traumatizing him badly, and ruining much of his childhood. But Danny is desperate for money so he decides to work for Howard, and travels to the castle, severing his relationships with his New York world. He plunges himself into the strange environment of the castle and puts himself at the mercy of the cousin he betrayed many years before. It soon becomes clear that this castle is a deeply strange place with a dark history that isn't entirely finished. It has secret passages, bizarre inhabitants, and seems to operate by different rules from the outside world. Danny, cut off from his familiar New York world, is unsure whether the castle is haunted or his own perceptions are becoming increasingly distorted. He thinks that his cousin may be out to get him and the castle may be a giant trap. When Danny attempts to escape from the castle he encounters a series of mysterious roadblocks. No matter what he does, fate seems to be directing Danny back to the castle, and towards a final confrontation with his cousin Howard. Together, they end up trapped deep within the bowels of the castle, where they are forced to re-enact the traumas of childhood. Together they must figure out a way to escape and survive. |
Long Shadows | Erin Hunter | 2,008 | When Sol persuades almost all of ShadowClan to give up belief in StarClan, Tawnypelt takes her kits Flamepaw, Tigerpaw, and Dawnpaw to ThunderClan, hoping to find refuge there until Blackstar and ShadowClan see the light and return to believing in StarClan. In hope of helping ShadowClan, Raggedstar and Runningnose beg Jaypaw to help. Jaypaw, along with Tigerpaw, Flamepaw, Dawnpaw, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze, creates a fake sign from StarClan to show Blackstar StarClan is real. Blackstar is still not convinced until the fake sign turns real when Raggedstar and Runningnose come to tell Blackstar to get rid of Sol and to still believe in StarClan. Blackstar is convinced and tells his Clan. Soon Tawnypelt takes her kits back to ShadowClan, but greencough breaks out and Millie and Briarkit (one of Millie's and Graystripe's kits) are the first victims. Soon, the ThunderClan leader, Firestar, catches the sickness as well. The disease continues to spread through the Clan and Firestar comes up with the idea to temporarily shelter the sick cats in the abandoned Twoleg nest, then later loses his sixth life. The Clan is short of catmint: in the battle with WindClan, cats trampled and killed the supply. Jaypaw has a dream telling where there is a fresh supply: in WindClan territory. However, in one dream, he somehow goes back to the time of Fallen Leaves' tribe as a young sharpclaw (warrior) called Jay's Wing. The Tribe is being threatened by Twoleg expansion and votes to move to the mountains. Jaypaw suddenly realizes that this Tribe becomes the Tribe of Rushing Water and they originated from the Clan's current lake home. When he returns to the Clans, he asks Lionblaze to fetch the catmint. Lionblaze refuses because of dreams where he kills Heatherpaw in the tunnels, but as the greencough gets worse, he finally goes. Lionblaze gets the catmint and gives it to Jaypaw, but not without a tension-filled encounter with Heatherpaw, now called Heathertail. Soon the Clan is healed and Jaypaw finally receives his full medicine cat name, Jayfeather. Then, during a storm, the camp catches fire. Jayfeather, Lionblaze, Hollyleaf, and Squirrelflight are trapped. Squirrelflight makes it through the flames and drags a stick through in an attempt to save her kits, but needs some help. Ashfur leaps in and drags it all the way through. Just as Lionblaze leaps on, though, Ashfur blocks the way. Squirrelflight begs him to let them through, but Ashfur tells her and the other three that he never forgave her after she left him for Brambleclaw. He also reveals that he was the one who helped Hawkfrost set the trap for Firestar to show her the pain of losing a loved one as he had lost her. He said that he will now kill her kits in another attempt to hurt her. Squirrelflight then reveals a crucial secret: that he cannot hurt her that way because they are not her kits. She explains how she kept the secret from Brambleclaw and the whole of ThunderClan. Ashfur lets them live, but he threatens to tell her secret, and she is shocked that Ashfur would betray her like this. Knowing this, Jayfeather, Hollyleaf and Lionblaze realize they are not the Three since they are not the kin of Firestar. The fire burns out and all the cats help get the camp set up again. Three days before the Gathering, Ashfur asks Firestar if he can go. Hollyleaf Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Squirrelflight are worried that he is going to publicly announce their secret. Between then and the day of the Gathering, the three warn Ashfur that he will regret it if he reveals the secret. Although he is frightened, he refuses to listen to them. Right before the Gathering, the patrol of warriors going notices that both Ashfur and Squirrelflight are missing. Squirrelflight later shows up, wet and muddy, and explains that she was looking for herbs for Leafpool by the border near ShadowClan and fell into the stream. On the way to the Gathering, they see Ashfur's body lying in the WindClan stream as if he had drowned. They take him back to camp and set him for vigil. Leafpool notices a slit in his neck, suggesting he was murdered. After the Gathering, Firestar announces that Ashfur's death was unknown and suspects a cat from ThunderClan may have killed him, and the three see Squirrelflight looking scared and holding her breath. The three vow to keep the recent events involving them, Squirrelflight, and Ashfur a secret. |
Tommy Trouble and the Magic Marble | Ralph Fletcher | 2,000 | Tommy who loves collecting needs ten dollars to buy a magic marble from another boy. He tries to pick flowers from his mother's prize rose garden to sell to a neighbor and he tries to trade his little brothers snake. Tommy finally decides that the magic marble is not worth the trouble. |
Joker | null | null | Jonny Frost, a low-level thug, is sent to Arkham Asylum to pick up the Joker. Joker immediately takes a liking to Frost, using him as a chauffeur. Frost drives the Joker to the lair of Killer Croc. The three go to the "Grin and Bare It" strip bar, which was formerly owned by the Joker. With the help of Harley Quinn, the Joker kills the new owner and asks the shocked audience if they are willing to help him take his city back. Next morning, the Joker robs a bank and coaxes the Penguin (mockingly referred to as "Abner") to invest the stolen money. The Joker embarks on a killing spree, murdering many thugs who stole his money, turf, and bizarre sense of reputation. Informed by the Penguin that Harvey Dent, a crime boss with a split personality, is evading a talk with him, the Joker trashes a phone, kills a goon, and then sets the "Grin and Bare It" on fire. Meanwhile, Frost is kidnapped by Dent, who warns Frost the Joker will kill him. Subsequently, Frost is late to the Joker's meeting with the Riddler, a disabled weapons dealer. They exchange a briefcase, and the Joker leaves. Once on the road, the Joker's crew is shot at by off-duty cops hired by Dent, and Frost saves the Joker's life in the scuffle. Joker embarks on a turf war against Dent, prompting him to meet with Joker. At the meeting, Joker brings the briefcase he got from the Riddler. Joker says he has learned Dent has two wives, and threatens to use the contents of the briefcase as leverage against him. The meeting becomes hostile, and Joker murders all of Dent's men. After helping Frost get his ex-wife back from Dent, Joker rapes her. He says this makes them even, since Frost "cheated" on the Joker by not revealing his own meeting with Dent. Later, Harvey paints a bat on a spotlight, and pleads with Batman to stop Joker. When Joker and Frost return to the apartment building they reside in, they find the window shattered and flee to Croc's lair. However, Batman has already subdued Croc and his gang. In a final attempt to escape, Joker and Frost flee to a nearby bridge. They find Batman in wait, and Joker, being provoked by Batman's tauntings, shoots Frost in the chin. Joker and Batman fight as Frost climbs over the edge of the bridge and falls. |
Marshfield Dreams | Ralph Fletcher | 2,005 | Each short chapter tells of an incident growing up in a large family on Acorn Street in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Ralph was the oldest of nine children. Some of the stories told were Ralph being informed of his mother's pregnancy by a nosy classmate, his mother's game called "snuck up the rug" where the whole family got down and pulled dirt from the carpets. Other stories include his father bringing home a pet chicken for each child and his great-grandmother who buried the kids' old teeth in the garden. |
Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word | Michael North | 2,005 | The study is divided into three major sections. An introduction gives a brief history of the emergence of mechanically recorded media in the middle to late nineteenth century, advances in these technologies in the early twentieth century, and their formal and historical significance for modern writing of the same period. Focusing on photography, which North shows functions as a kind of "modern writing" itself, the author suggests that "perhaps the common beginning of modernism in literature and the arts is to be found in the recording technologies that brought the whole relationship of word, sound, and image into doubt." Three chapters on little magazines examine in more detail debates on the artistic status of both photography and early silent film, the representational status of the new media in general, and what North terms the "crisis of sound" beginning in 1927 with the introduction of sound technologies into the silent cinema. Four chapters on individual American authors with a conclusion apply certain concepts within these debates on the new media to particular works of literature both familiar and relatively obscure in order to, as North states, "pose a significant test for the ideas proposed" in his book. In Chapter One, North examines debates in Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work regarding the early artistic status of photography, the influential role of Stieglitz himself in these debates, and a series of critical connections and inconsistencies represented by the magazine toward the new medium of photography through articles contributed by Roland Rood, Sadakichi Hartmann, and Stieglitz himself, among others. One of the more hotly contested questions debated between the contributors to Camera Work was whether photography was even art or documentary, and whether the photographic image itself should be considered realistic or representational. Reprinting photographs published in the magazine, North discusses Pablo Picasso's photography and its impact on the production of his paintings, most specifically in the case of The Reservoir (1909), and Marcel Duchamp's "readymades," which were considered by the artist to be a form of photography, or "snapshot." Finally, North concludes that Stieglitz and his magazine Camera Work only suggested some of the more fundamental questions regarding the new media and its impact on literature, while other magazines would carry out the full implications of those questions in the coming years. Chapter Two focuses on the avant-garde literary magazine transition, its founding editor Eugene Jolas, and early silent cinema in order to show the relationship between international modernism and the movies. 1927, when this magazine began publication, was also the year that sound was introduced into film technology, which North regards as a crisis for the avant-garde. Hostile to sound from the beginning, in fact, many argued with Antonin Artaud that it violated the artistic unity and autonomy of cinema as a purely visual medium. This "crisis of sound," and the anxiety of contamination it represents, played an important role in the aesthetic project of transition, and so North examines the experimental poetry of Jolas published in the magazine, particularly in terms of its "celebrated Revolution of the Word," along with the "reading machines" of Bob Brown in order to locate points where literature and poetry themselves were attempting to achieve a kind of visuality akin to cinema and photography, suggesting that boundaries between "word, sound, and image," and between the old and new media, were not nearly as definitive as some might have wanted to believe. In Chapter Three, North considers Close Up, the European film magazine published in Switzerland "with the more-or-less constant assistance of H.D." from 1927 to 1933. Noting the "considerable convergence of the literary world and the no longer quite so new medium of the movies" by 1927, North furthers his examination of international modernism's struggle with sound by pursuing the introduction of sound technology into silent cinema as a revealing moment in the history of globalization. Hollywood's attempts to cope with "the foreign problem," or the fact that 9/10ths of the world's population in 1927 did not speak English, often by shooting films in five different languages, are contrasted with utopian strategies advanced by the avant-garde that attempted to bring about an international film culture of the future based on global multilingualism or even Esperanto. In Chapter Two, North argued that sound came just as critics were raising silent film to the status of art, and here he shows how these two instances of perceived contamination, sound as intruder into the autonomous visuality of film and sound as divisive force in the international medium of the eye, often inflected or contradicted one another in the pages of the magazine. North concludes by stating: "Close Up registers an awareness in modernism of the strangeness opened up within ordinary experience by the new media, which, instead of establishing a new universal language, had exposed the inherent unfamiliarity of languages long in use." The third and final section of Camera Works extends North's general theoretical framework while applying it directly to several texts by select modernist American writers, examining ways in which F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, John Dos Passos's U.S.A. trilogy, W.E.B. Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk, James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and the novels, essays, and unpublished journalism of Ernest Hemingway negotiated visual elements stylistically and as subject of their narratives and, according to North, how these negotiations register a response to writing's confrontation with the new media, their technologies of mechanical recording and reproduction, and, finally, modernism's own crisis of representation. From Fitzgerald, spectatorship, and the movies to Johnson, lynchings, and the visual production of race, North argues that writers and artists responded to the new media with "mistrust," apprehension, and even a kind of "covert hatred," while simultaneously being inspired and challenged by them. |
Royal Exile | Fiona McIntosh | 2,008 | Royal Exile begins with the capture of Barronel at the hands of Loethar, a barbarian warlord from the Likurian Steppes, who has his sights set on the illusive realm of Penraven. Fearful, now that its neighbours have been captured, King Brennus of Penraven sees to the birth of his daughter, to whom he declares deceased. Legate Regor De Vis, and his twin sons Corbel and Gavriel are called to bare witness to Brennus’ cunning plan. Choosing Corbel to whisk away his ‘deceased’ daughter, the task of protecting Brennus’ only ‘true’ son Leonel is given to Gavriel, who accepts with hesitance. With Loethar descending upon Penraven, both Regor De Vis and King Brennus are slain. Freath, Queen Iselda’s aide, betrays the Valisar family, and in turn is granted ownership of his Queen. Loethar takes a liking to Piven, the Valisar’s adopted son, likening him to an animal. Corbel meets with the mysterious Sergius, before he descends into the wonders of magic. His twin brother Gavriel finds solitude within the secret passageways within Penraven with the young heir at his side. Queen Iselda is forced to watch Loethar eat her husband’s remains, before she is later killed. Meanwhile, Loethar has been gathering the Vested, people marked with special abilities. Freath uses his newly gained position to claim two Vested, of which he chooses Clovis and Kirin. Loethar becomes engaged to Valya, much to his mother’s distaste, though he is quick to remind Dara Negev, that it was Valya’s brain which allowed him to capture Penraven. It is later revealed that Freath is working with Genrie, a household servant and unrequited love of Gavriel, in an attempt of stopping Loethar, and finding the mysterious Aegis, who is said to be bonded with the Valisar heir who is granted the power of coercion. Gavriel and Leo escape Penraven and find themselves in the aide of Lily and her father, who is suffering from leprosy. Later, Lily joins the pair as they search to seek out Kilt Faris, a highwayman and renegade, who had been given aide by Brennus in order of taking Leo under his wing if Penraven would ever fall. Gavriel is later separated from Leo and finds himself in the care of Elka, though it is clear that he has no memories of who he really is, stating his name to be that of his father’s, “Regor.” Genrie is later killed to prove that Freath is loyal to Loethar, and thus protecting her lover. Leo arrives at the Stone of Truth to pledge his vow to Cyrena, and learns the truth of his sister. Leo is granted the power he needs to stop Loethar for good. |
Cover Up | John Feinstein | 2,007 | Stevie Thomas is a fourteen-year-old sports fanatic who has saved a player from blackmailing at the Final Four. He has also proved that a kidnapping was actually a hoax. After that, he and his partner, Susan Carol were hired by USTV to do a show. Three months later, he was fired because he “didn’t have enough sizzle”. This left Susan Carol furious. He flies to Indianapolis to work as a journalist for the Super Bowl. When he lands at the airport, he meets Sean McManus who hires him to work for CBS during the week. On Tuesday, he goes to the Hoosier Dome, which is a massive building. His story features the Ravens' equipment guy, Darin Kerns. Kerns used to play with the Dreams’ star quarterback Eddie Brennan in high school. Stevie also gets some one-on-one time with Brennan for the story of them playing together. While he is sleeping in his hotel room, he gets a call from Susan Carol saying that she wants to talk to him right now. She says that she was at a party and a doctor who worked with the Dreams came up to her and started talking to her. He was drunk and was trying to impress her. He tells her that five offensive linemen tested positive for HGH, or human growth hormone, and that it was being covered up so the players don’t get suspended. They decide that they have to try to write the story and alert the public about it. Stevie goes back to the Hoosier Dome the next morning. CBS decides to film his story and have Darin Kerns and Eddie Brennan talk about their experience together. After the interview, Stevie talks to Eddie about the drug tests but doesn’t get much information other than Eddie freaking out that he knew. After that, Bobby Kelleher, his mentor in journalism, sets him up with an interview with Steve Bisciotti, the Ravens owner. That night, there is a huge NFL party that everyone is going to attend. When he goes there he sees Bobby Kelleher arguing with Don Meeker, the Dreams owner. Later, Susan Carol pretends to admire him and gets his cell phone number. The next morning, they get a full conversation with Eddie, who tells them about the drug tests. He also tells them that Meeker is the one covering up the test results so the players don’t get suspended. Susan Carol calls Dr. Snow, the drunk doctor, and says she wants to talk. He said to go to a YMCA where they can talk. There, they try to blackmail him to get test results. He says that he will give them test results at a mall only if there are no adults around. Both Stevie and Susan Carol are suspicious of a trap. They go to the mall and Dr. Snow leads them past the empty theater where Don Meeker’s bodyguards grab them and hold them hostage. As Snow is about to leave, Darin Kerns and two security men rush in and save them. It turns out that Stevie had put his cell phone on speaker and on the other line was Eddie. He heard them and called Kerns. Eddie introduces Stevie and Susan Carol to Bob Arciero, an orthopedic surgeon for the Dreams. Arciero, unlike Dr. Snow, is honest and is not part of the cover up. He gets them the drug test documents. With the documents at hand, Stevie and Susan Carol write the story. They talk to the newspaper lawyers, who say they need comments from the Commissioner Goodell and Don Meeker. Godell and comments on launching an investigation and punishing anyone involved. Meeker, after hearing two paragraphs of the story, goes on a profane tirade. They send the quotes and the story and go out to eat. However, they don’t come back in time and are surrounded by cameras as soon as they step in the hotel. Don calls them the next day to tell them that he was pegged as the source and that he’s not starting. Meeker is about to go on CBS and USTV to lie and try to convince people he did nothing wrong. In the process, he slanders Susan Carol on USTV. After Meeker’s interview on USTV, he had to do another one on CBS. There, Jim Nantz doesn't let Meeker get away with his story. This angers Meeker, who decides to pick on Susan Carol again after the interview. The game starts, and the backup quarterback, instead of Brennan, is playing for the Dreams. Pretty soon the Dreams fall into a hole. Eddie starts the second half and steers his team to a comeback. While the game is going on, Tal Vincent lets it slip that Mike Shupe was the one who was feeding Meeker information. Jamie Whitsitt, who is a singer and was Stevie's replacement on USTV, leads them into the studio and gives them a tape. He had left it on record while Don Meeker and Mike Shupe were having their conversation. It has Meeker clearly saying that he bribed the doctors to keep quiet. After this, Eddie and the Dreams win the Super Bowl on a miracle play. Stevie proves that Don Meeker was covering up and that the owners could vote to force Meeker to sell the team. |
Into the Darkness | Harry Turtledove | null | War breaks out in Derlavai a generation or two after the Six Years war. Most of the countries that declare war on Algarve do so only half-heartedly, allowing the Algarvians to use that reluctancy to their advantage. The Algarvians split Forthweg with Unkerlant and then overrun Valmiera, Jelgava, and Sibiu, while Unkerlant wrests away part of Zuwayza. Lagoas joins the war when Sibiu is taken. The book ends when the Algarvians "get the drop on" the Unkerlanters in Forthweg (who were plotting to attack them first). Kuusamo, meanwhile, tries to seize Obuda from Gyongyos but fails. Yanina succeeds in gaining control of the Land of the Ice People. |
Darkness Descending | Harry Turtledove | null | Algarve starts killing Kaunians as their advance toward Cottbus starts to stall, which both causes Kuusamo to enter the war and Unkerlant to start killing its own peasants for magical power, and the Algarvians are halted by mud, winter, Unkerlanter behemoths with snowshoes, and logistics. Tealdo is killed in Thalfang, just outside of Cottbus, and Unkerlant pushes back into the northwest corner of Grelz. Kaunians are herded into ghettos in Forthweg's cities and larger towns. Pekka's first "divergent" series is interrupted by the Algarvian magical blitz on Yliharma. Gyongyos attacks Unkerlant in the west and pushes through the mountains through which the border passes. Lagoas invades the Land of the Ice People. |
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