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Through the Darkness | Harry Turtledove | null | Algarve renews an assault in the south of Unkerlant toward the Mamming Hills, which is Unkerlant's source of cinnabar, leading to the mammoth Battle of Sulingen. Kaunian refugees begin showing up in Zuwayza, which takes them in; other Kaunians get away from a caravan in Valmiera and come to the attention of Skarnu and his friends (who had blown up the caravan to disrupt the Algarvians) or are set loose in a Lagoan raid on a camp in Valmiera. Leofsig is killed by Sidroc, who joins the Plegmund's Brigade. Istvan and his squad accidentally eat goat stew in a raid on a camp in Unkerlant's western forest and are purified by their captain. The Algarvians kill Kaunians in the Land of the Ice People in an attempt to use magic against the Lagoans, but the magic from the killed Kaunians slaughters the Algarvian army instead, and Algarve is forced to withdraw from the continent completely, leaving it to the Lagoans. The wear on the Algarvians is showing as they start to rely more on Sibians, Forthwegians, and the unreliable Yaninans to keep up the fight against Unkerlant. The Battle of Sulingen is won by the Unkerlanters that winter, with Trasone dying in the very last scene in the book. Algarve is on the way to losing the war. The Naantali Project starts, and the Kuusamans take Obuda. |
Rulers of the Darkness | Harry Turtledove | null | Talsu spends a few months in a Jelgavan jail, and coupled with Skarnu's adventures, makes it clear that many Valmierans and Jelgavans support Algarve. Algarvians strike at the Naantali Project, killing Siuntio. Gyongyos loses more islands to Kuusamo and Istvan's unit is moved from Unkerlant to the island of Becsehely. Algarvians try to pinch off Unkerlanters in Durrwangen using everything they have, leading to the Battle of Durrwangen. Most surviving Kaunians in Forthweg now use Vanai's Forthwegian disguise, and Algarvians are unable to catch nearly as many as before. Algarvian progress in the summer against Durrwangen very slow, and Unkerlanters battle them to a standstill, then force them back into Grelz, ultimately overrunning the capital Herborn. Raniero, the puppet king of Grelz, is boiled in a pot by Swemmel. Sibiu liberated by Lagoas and Kuusamo, and Cornelu is poisoned by his wife, who is sentenced to beheading. Garivald finds his village and family annihilated by the fighting. Vanai ends up caught by the Algarvians. |
Jaws of Darkness | Harry Turtledove | null | Habakkuk, a dragon carrier carved out of an iceberg, is introduced, with Leino serving on board her. Vanai has been thrown into Eoforwic's Kaunian Quarter, and later escapes during an Unkerlanter bombing raid, and is found by Ealstan who had disguised himself as an Algarvian. Krasta has sex with Valnu and Lurcanio in the same day and gets pregnant from one of them but is not sure which. Algarve invents "guided eggs". Istvan and his friends are captured on Becsehely by Kuusamans and taken to Obuda. Valmierans finally allowed to fight for Algarve as invasion looms and troop shortages worsen. Kuusamans and Lagoans fool the Algarvians by massing ships and troops on the strait across from Valmiera, and pretending to send a fleet eastward toward Gyongyos, but instead using the latter fleet to invade Jelgava. At this time, Unkerlant launches a massive offensive which sweeps the Algarvians out of northern Unkerlant and back into Forthweg to the Twegen River, while consolidating their hold on Grelz. The Eoforwic Uprising starts when Unkerlanter armies are well into Forthweg. Unkerlant launches major offensive against Zuwayza, forcing it to surrender with severe conditions, although it keeps its independence. Yanina switches over to Unkerlant's side as soon as the fighting crosses its borders. Sidroc's mixed regiment has to do a fighting retreat through Yanina. The Algarvians abandon and withdraw from Valmiera, enabling Skarnu to return home. Algarvians pushed out of most of Jelgava. Istvan's regiment sacrifices itself to vainly attack the Kuusaman occupation on Obuda, although Istvan and Kun escape by inducing diarrhea. Eoforwic Uprising suppressed by Algarvians, although Unkerlanters have not made more than a halfhearted attempt to cross the Twegen. |
Out of the Darkness | Harry Turtledove | null | Spinello is poisoned by Vanai. The southern front is in Yanina, which is in a bad position. The Unkerlanters use Yaninan forces as if they were penal battalions, while Algarvians start killing Yaninans for magical energy in retaliation for Yanina's switch to Unkerlant. In Jelgava, close to the Bratanu Mountains on the border with Algarve, Leino and Xavega are killed by an Algarvian magical trap. Puppet King Beornwulf installed in Forthweg, and Ealstan is drafted. Kuusamans and Lagoans occupy Valmiera. Unkerlanters push into Algarve, first on the southern front then the northern. Algarvians develop the superstick, first using it on Unkerlanters on the southern front. Ealstan in Unkerlanter army is having to reduce his own hometown, Gromheort, in which Algarvians were holed up. Algarvians come out with other desperate magics, some demonic, others new and unreliable, but appear to have given up killing Kaunians for the most part. Pekka destroys Becsehely in first test of divergent blast. Krasta has a baby boy, which she at first names Valnu (later Gainibu), but which turns out to be Lurcanio's; Merkela cuts all her hair off in punishment. Unkerlanters and Kuusamans meet at Torgavi on the Albi in the north of Algarve. Skarnu becomes marquis of Pavilosta. Lurcanio's army surrenders, followed by Gromheort. Ealstan is wounded, discharged from army, and stays in Gromheort with his family. Mezentio's palace falls, Algarve surrenders. Talsu released from prison (again) and expelled with his wife to Kuusamo. Lurcanio, who had been turned over to the Valmierans, is executed by firing squad. Ceorl is killed when he and Garivald escape from a mining camp. Garivald makes his way back to Obilot. |
Queen Ann in Oz | null | null | At home in Oogaboo, a tiny principality in the northwestern corner of Oz, Queen Ann is restless for a new adventure; she decides to search for her lost parents, King Jol Jemkiph Soforth and Queen Dede Soforth. Her attempt to re-muster her army is a total failure; but four enterprising children are eager to join her search party. They are a girl and three boys, Jody Buttons, Jo Musket, Jo Fountainpen, and Jo Dragon (with his pet Moretomore). Ann also writes to the Shaggy Man, inviting him to meet them on their way. After receiving Ann's letter via mailbird, the Shaggy Man investigates the situation, but with limited success. Glinda's Great Book of Records is surprisingly unhelpful on the location of the missing royals. It follows their activities well enough, up to a point — then breaks off with a cryptic "forget it." Princess Ozma tries to find them in the Magic Picture, but it shows only a pink haze with the inscription "no data available." Shaggy meets Ann and her party; they travel to Sand City, ruled by King Lysander and Queen Cassandra. (Puns and word play on "sand" flow freely.) A patch of quicksand speeds them on their way. They encounter the overly eager practitioners of Barberville, and spend an idyllic interval at the Friendly Forest. Finally they reach a wall with a gate in it. The gate bears a strange warning: :::::::FORGETVILLE ::::::Beware the The wall surrounds a fog-shrouded village. When the members of the party enter, they lose their memories. Moretomore is immune from the spell, because he carries with him a fragment of his natal eggshell, which prevents him from ever forgetting anything. The little dragon is desperate to help his companions, but doesn't know what to do. Ozma, however, has been monitoring the Shaggy Man's progress, as she told him she would; and she sends Tik-Tok to help. The mechanical man brings the search party members out of Forgetville. The searchers learn to counter the memory spell with forget-me-nots, and they draw the inhabitants out too — including the lost King and Queen of Oogaboo. They also seek to end the spell on the town. They find and read the journal of Amnesia, the witch who cast the spell. They learn that they can bring the wall down with the "Ancient Traditional Wall Removal Method." Shaggy suspects that this is a reference to the story of Jericho. The searchers and townspeople re-enact the siege of Jericho; they march around the city seven times, Jo Musket plays his trumpet, and the multitude shouts at dawn. The wall falls and the spell is broken. Forgetville returns to being the town of Goldendale, as it was before. Ozma arrives with breakfast; together, the characters piece out the story of how Goldendale lost its memory, a tale that involves Jo Jemkiph, the witch Amnesia, and the Love Magnet (from The Road to Oz). Ozma uses the Magic Belt to bring the former Amnesia, now Amy, from Butterfield, Kansas, where the Shaggy Man knew her and stole the Love Magnet from her (closing a story loop with Baum's original books). In the process, the Shaggy Man's true name is revealed: he's Shagrick Mann (but Ozma agrees to keep this knowledge secret). Ann's reunion with her parents is a happy one. The people of Goldendale choose Jol Jemkiph and Dede Soforth as their rulers. Ann remains in power in Oogaboo. |
Blood and Memory | Fiona McIntosh | 2,004 | After seeing his best friend murdered, his sister imprisoned and the King of Morgravia turn his attention to the woman he loves, Wyl becomes desperate to return Valentyna and prevent her marrying the king. However is ends up being trapped by an enchantment and must track down the Manwitch first. |
I Am Wings | Ralph Fletcher | 1,994 | The book contains thirty-one free verse poems about love arranged into two sections, "Falling In" and "Falling Out". The poetic voice is that of a young male and the poems trace the development of a relationship from the beginning with the first poem "First Look" through its demise with the last poem "Seeds". |
Fortunes for All | null | null | The opening chapters of Fortunes for All set out Vash Young's credentials: the long, happy and rewarding life that he has enjoyed - his 'Fortune' - through taking his own advice and living by the rules he formulated as a young man. Vash then turns to his early life of hardship, poverty, hunger and deprivation and candidly reveals how he squandered early opportunities as a young man through self-doubt and moral weakness. Vash Young then describes the flash of insight the enabled him to re-invent himself. This was the defining point in his life when Vash the failure changed virtually overnight into Vash the success. The bulk of the book explains in detail the methods he used to give himself the mindset needed to find his Fortune. These lessons are amply illustrate by anecdotes taken from his own life and from those of people he encountered. Vash goes out of his way to show that what he did is relevant to anyone at any time or place. The title shows his intent: Fortunes for All is intended to be a handbook for everyone. |
Unveiling a Parallel | null | null | Jones and Merchant differed from some other feminist novelists of their generation (like Corbett and Lane, mentioned above) in that they made their fictional protagonist male instead of female. Their hero travels to the planet Mars in an "aeroplane." (That term had originated in France in 1879; this novel provided one of the earliest uses of the word in English.) The nameless traveller visits two different "Marsian" societies; in both, women possess greater equality with men. In one, Paleveria, women have adopted the negative characteristics of men; in Caskia, the other, gender equality "has made both sexes kind, loving, and generous." Since Jones and Merchant were primarily interested in crafting a satiric commentary of their own society, they made their Mars and Martians strongly similar to Earth and human beings. The technological level is comparable on both planets; the Martians rely on Martian horses for transport. The narrator first lands in the Martian country of Paleveria, which is a republican and capitalist state, with clear class divisions; the people are vegetarians, and dress in loose robes. Their homes (at least among the aristocrats) are classical and palatial, with marble floors and statuary, silk hangings, and frescoes on the walls. Women in Paleveria can vote, hold political office, and run businesses; they propose marriage to men, have sex with male prostitutes, and even participate in wrestling matches. The traveller stays with an astronomer named Severnius, in the city of Thursia; he studies diligently and learns the language. Severnius acts as his guide to Paleverian society — as does the astronomer's beautiful sister Elodia. The narrator soon falls in love with Elodia, but is shocked by her liberated traits and habits. Elodia is a banker by profession; she drinks alcohol and imbibes a Martian drug, has affairs with men, and eventually proves to have had an illegitimate child. Severnius, for his part, asks the narrator about Earth, and the traveller is hard put to provide logical and acceptable explanations for many Earthly customs, mainly involving the distinctions between the sexes. The narrator is appalled by women participating in martial arts — and Elodia condemns this too; but she also condemns men's boxing matches, which the traveller accepts as natural. The narrator is profoundly shocked when he learns of Elodia's illegitimate daughter; he leaves for a visit to Caskia. This northern country has a more co-operative and egalitarian social and economic order than Paleveria has; its people cultivate intellectual, artistic, and spiritual qualities. Caskia approaches the status of a Martian Utopia. In the city of Lunismar, the traveller meets another Martian woman, Ariadne, who is more traditionally feminine by conservative Earthly standards. He considers her "the highest and purest thing under heaven." He also meets a venerated teacher called The Master; the two have a long spiritual conversation. The narrator returns to Earth. Unveiling a Parallel has been reprinted in several modern editions. |
Ordinary Things | Ralph Fletcher | 1,997 | The book is a collection of thirty three poems divided into three sections titled "Walking", "Into the Woods" and "Looping Back". The reader is taken on a walk along a road, through the woods, over a stream and back. |
The Magic Dishpan of Oz | null | null | The protagonists of The Magic Dishpan of Oz are two sisters, seven-year-old Rebecca and three-year-old Shoshanna. Natives of Oregon, the two girls are playing by a stream near their home one day, when they find an unusual frog. The animal seems to want to communicate with them, and Shoshanna thinks she can understand it. The frog (they come to call it "Froggie") also appears to want them to follow it; and when the girls do, Froggie leads them to a semi-submerged object, a gem-studded gold dishpan. The girls take their new treasure home. At one point, Rebecca says, "Oh, I just wish I knew where this dishpan came from!" The magic talisman obligingly transports the girls (and frog) to Oz. Familiar as they are with Oz from books, Rebecca and Shoshanna are unpleasantly surprised by the welcome they receive. Landing in the Winkie Country, they find that the locals are hostile and suspicious, so much so that the girls are locked in a barn overnight, so that they can be turned over to "our illustrious Magician" the next day. With the aid of some friendly talking sheep, girls escape with the dishpan. (And frog. They concluded that Froggie is under an enchantment, since he does not gain the ability to speak when he comes to Oz. At one point, Shoshanna impulsively tries to kiss the frog, but he evades her lips.) The children make their way toward the Emerald City along the yellow brick road. In an abandoned house, the girls find Scraps the Patchwork Girl, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman, disassembled. The three Oz inhabitants are quickly restored to normal. The children learn that Oz has been infiltrated by malignant magicians who have disrupted the normal order. The party (girls and Ozites) sets out for the palace of Glinda, but is quickly waylaid by a Magician and a hundred of his followers. The enchanter calls himself the Magician of Suspicion; he specializes in spreading distrust and ill-feeling. By sowing discord among their guards, the party manage to escape from their captors (with dishpan, and frog). They now turn toward the Gillikin Country to look for Planetty, the Silver Princess. After further adventures and conflicts, the girls and their Ozite friends unite with Planetty and her followers, and together they move toward Glinda's palace in the Quadling Country. Froggie pays court to Planetty with gifts of flowers; the Princess kisses him, and he turns into the Frogman from Lost Princess. The Frogman had been enchanted and sent out of Oz with the dishpan, by the Magician who has taken over the Emerald City. Glinda is not at her palace. The party consult her Great Book of Records to learn how to restore Oz. They discover that the main figures of Oz, Glinda, Princess Ozma, and the Wizard, have been turned into the emeralds and rubies that decorate the dishpan. As is fitting in a fairy tale, it is Shoshanna, the smallest and youngest member of the group, who restores the missing principals, just in time for Glinda to overcome the Magician of Ignorance and return Oz to its former state. |
The Dragon Jousters series | Mercedes Lackey | null | Joust follows the story of a young boy named Vetch. He is an Altan, and a serf: someone lower than a slave who is tied to the land they work on under their master. His Tian master, Khefti the Fat, is quite cruel, and Vetch is the last member of his family on the land, taking all of Khefti's beatings. Vetch's luck changes when Ari, one of the Tian Dragon Jousters, appears one day and takes him to be dragon-boy for Kashet, the dragon Ari raised since hatching (and thus unique in the jousters' ranks). Life in the dragon jousters' compound proves to be much more pleasant that slaving away in the fields, but Vetch's relationship with all the dragon jousters is tolerating at best, (though he likes the dragons,) as he sees them as a symbol of the Tian power that killed his father and put the rest of his family into serfdom. The one exception to this Ari, whom Vetch respects and even grows to liking. Among the myriad of other challenges that happen at the compound, Vetch gets his hands on a dragon egg of his own, which he raises to hatching in secret, calling the female Avatre. The novel culminates with he and Avatre escaping the compound by air, only to be caught by Ari and Kashet. Ari, though, has also grown to liking Vetch, and convinces the other Tian dragon jousters that Vetch died in the chase, then helps Vetch get to a nomadic people, known as the Bedu, who will help him complete his escape to Alta. It is revealed that, in the Atlan tradition, "Vetch" actually has two names, one for use during his childhood and one for adulthood, his "real" name. As the novel closes, he takes on his real name, Kiron, and flies on Avatre toward Alta. Alta begins as Kiron and Avatre transition from the nomad lands into Alta. Not far inside the Altan border, the two of them save a girl from one of the dangerous "water horses" (presumably a hippo). The girl is Aket-ten, daughter of Altan noble Lord Ya-tiren; she has magic abilities, including the ability to speak telepathically to animals. Lord Ya-tiren and the rest of Aket-ten's family take Kiron in temporarily to help him adjust to life in the City of Alta, central hub of Alta, a large city built on seven earthen rings separated by canals. Kiron and Avatre are accepted into the ranks of the Altan dragon jousters, and Kiron gets to start his own wing of jousters who are to raise their dragons from hatching, a new concept for the jousters. His wing of eight other boys includes Aket-ten's brother and one of the heirs to the Altan throne. Kiron's group of friends (his wing, Aket-ten, and others) eventually surmise (correctly) that the powerful Altan Magi are exercising more and more control over the country, to the detriment of its citizens. Aket-ten is one of the first people targeted, due to her magic abilities, and later the heir in Kiron's wing is murdered when he tries to speak up leading to Aket-ten joining the wing. As the first step in an unsure plan to remove the Magi from power, the group decides they must leave Alta and remove the jousters from both armies. After assuring that all the tala in both Tia and Alta will fail to control all dragons not raised from hatching, they fly into their first battle as Altan Jousters. With no tala, all the other dragons on both sides refuse to obey their riders, leaving an air battle between Ari and Kiron's wing. Ari is dislodged from Kashet, and only survives thanks to a trick Kiron had all the dragons in his wing learn based on what he had seen Kashet do while he was still a dragon-boy in Tia. Back on the ground and away from where the armies are fighting, Kiron's wing, along with his friends and members of the Bedu, convince Ari to join them in a new city apart from both Tia and Alta, the desert legend they now call Sanctuary. Sanctuary follows the inhabitants of Sanctuary as they try to make their city as functional as possible, having to deal with battling the harsh elements of the desert, growing the ranks of the New Dragon Jousters, and sustaining the city as refugees from both Alta and Tia constantly trickle in. Much of the first half of the novel follows Kiron as he tries to find his place the societal structure of Sanctuary, and his relationship with Aket-ten (and her family). Eventually, the Jousters of Sanctuary run one rescue mission in to Alta when new refugees tell of worsening situations there, coordinated with the help of members of Aket-ten's extended family who are still there. The failure of a second rescue mission sends the plot toward the climax, where the Jousters of Sanctuary, the Tian army, and the Altan Magi all meet over the city of Alta. Aerie follows the inhabitants of the combined Altan and Tian nation. After moving to the newly found city, renamed Aerie, the Jousters of the new country must find a purpose. At first that purpose is the securing of trade routes through the desert. That changes when out on patrol Kiron found a dead body coming in out of the desert. As the priests of Alta and Tia search for information concerning this mysterious body they uncover the truth about an old enemy, the Heyskin, creators of the Magi. With this information and tools given by the gods the people of Alta and Tia fight and defeat the Heyskin and there blood-born god of the Heyskin. After the battle the land is united under a new name Altian. |
There Goes the Neighborhood | William Julius Wilson | 2,006 | In this chapter, the authors talk about their choice in choosing the four neighborhoods. They chose neighborhoods that were of working and lower middle class in order to represent the ordinary Americans and explained that these neighborhoods were populated by different ethnic groups. One thing that they all had in common was the growing Latino population. Moreover, the investigation was carried on because they wanted to fully understand what produced or prevented the “tipping point” (a rapid ethnic turnover). The research depended on an ethnographic approach which consisted of a team of 9 graduate student research assistants at the University of Chicago. The study was done over a period of 3 years, from January 1993 to September 1995. The book mentions Albert O. Hirschman's theory of exit, voice and loyalty. It also provides statistics about the population by race and Hispanic origin from 1980-2000. This chapter talks about the change in racial history in Chicago and the cause of white flight early on (civil rights). The other chapters will focus on the resident’s perception of other races. (Written with the collaboration of Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas) Beltway was the destination for those whites who chose the exit method because their cities were experiencing ethnic turnover. The reason they moved to Beltway was because they wanted bigger houses for their families. Beltway was the furthest from downtown Chicago and the most isolated out of the other 3 cities. Chapter two focuses around the community of Beltway which is the farthest and most isolated from Chicago out of the four communities investigated in this book. Beltway residents felt that they were driven out of the main city by minorities and this neighborhood is one that portrays the right values and makeup. Beltway was predominantly white (95%) in 1980 but recently the Latino and African-American populations have begun to swell. This has led to racial riots and confrontation around the neighborhood. As a big picture the community of beltway seems to be incredibly racist but in actuality there is an internal conflict between the residents. The Beltway Civic League (BCL) is a committee made up of mostly older white residents who are trying to “preserve the ways of the past.” This group believes that minorities are ruining the fabric of the town and will drive all the whites away. On the other side is the Garland Parents Alliance (GPA) which is a group of younger people whose focus is not the minorities’ presence but the overall quality of education and services offered to all residents regardless of color. Through strong social organization the BCL has kept the neighborhood of Beltway from experiencing “white-flight” but a gradual exit of white residents is slowly occurring. (Written with the collaboration of Chenoa Flippen and Jolyon Wurr) The chapter begins about how the neighborhood of Dover was a very tight knit community. It was mainly people from Eastern Europe that had immigrated over that populated the community. The people spoke about how the children used to run around and play and the parents never had to worry about them because if they did anything wrong the parents would know before they even returned home because another parent would discipline them. The neighborhood began to change when large numbers of Hispanics moved in and started to overpopulate the community. The neighborhood began to experience higher crime rates and the school system began to go downhill with over populated classrooms. The school system decided to start busing students out to other neighborhoods that had the extra space. These were not very nice neighborhoods and were predominantly African American. The parents began to get extremely upset and held many PTA meetings to discuss how they could fix this situation. They asked for more schools to be built within the community but it was not within the budget. So they then asked that the local magnet school take students from Dover before taking students from other neighborhoods. An issue that became very significant to the original Dover community members was the issue of language. The current Dover residents had learned English when they immigrated over and thought that the new Hispanic residents should be doing the same. The new residents were in no hurry to learn the language and this caused great tension within the community. With the increasing crime rate and the population of the community drastically changing the community was experiencing major changes. The community groups that were there to hold events such as monthly meetings at local restaurants to discuss how to better the community was losing members and would eventually have to end the tradition. The original members of Dover were slowly moving or aging and the only people moving in were Hispanics. With the decline of the community traditions such as the award to who has the nicest yard and who is the most involved has led to great dislike from original Dover members. The residents did not like the disrespect they were getting from the new group of people moving in. Loud music and parties were becoming a common occurrence. Also graffiti and trash were being seen all over the city that once held great pride in how clean and safe it was. From the community dislike of the new neighbor’s people began to slowly move away and leave the neighborhood to continue to go downhill. (Written with the collaboration of Erin Augis, Jennifer L. Johnson, and Jennifer Pashup) In this chapter, it talks about how the city has drastically changed with the rise of Latinos. Mexicans began arriving in significant numbers in the 1970s. Archer Park now has shops specializing in Mexican Products and array of street vendors. Language proves as a barrier because Spanish is essentially their first language. The white residents who chose the exit method, felt bitter and lost because of the rise in Hispanic residents. Those who chose the loyalty method feel that the community is unsafe and (102). Mexicans come to Archer Park to make money with intentions of going back to Mexico but they end up making a living and not leaving causing a rise in the number of immigrants. As a result, the neighborhood is filled with litter and graffiti and there is a lack of community organizational life and leadership. The result showed that neighbors do not care about knowing each other. Just as in Dover, Mexicans expressed resentment towards black because they associated darker skin with poverty. Busing and competition for public recreational space were also issues that created conflicts between these two ethnic groups. Archer Park remains a strong Mexican Enclave and exclave due to the rapid and continuous number of immigrants. (Written with the collaboration of Reuben A. Buford May and Mary Pattillo) In this chapter, the authors talk about Groveland’s ethnic history. It used to be predominantly a white neighborhood but years later, whites became the minority in this city. This chapter talks about how blacks used to get beaten up and tortured by whites. Even so, Groveland’s violence rate was not as high as the other neighborhoods. After World War II, whites started to move out of Groveland and since it is located around 6 miles from the original Black Belt, blacks did not move in until 1960. The residents have demonstrated enthusiasm to keep the neighborhood clean and free from violence and so far they have proved to have done a great job. In this chapter, the authors talk about block clubs and social organizations that helped the community keep the status of the neighborhood; graffiti free and good sanitation. he statistics showed that in 1980, 59% of the population in Groveland was employed and that by 2000 the percentage had increased to 65.Groveland is different from the other cities previously mentioned because the number of citizens had decreased instead of increased. It also showed black identity and how they inspired and kept this concept going through schools. Groveland did not show any racial tensions, the residents were welcoming and accepting. The reason why Groveland did not experience racism was because it did not experience an “influx of other ethnic groups” (page 143) and blacks were therefore the only ones in control. Groveland was particular because the children were raised as "white people bring up kids" and the younger generation tried keeping racial boundary by rebelling against their parents. The blacks had a certain degree of resentment against the whites of the neighborhood. and it shows in the different comments gathered throughout the research. Moreover, within the group of friends, crossing boundaries was especially common with those who had jobs because language was an issue. One good example of racial boundaries is when one of the kids “crosses boundaries by using standard English at the office and black English at the park”.“The community’s unemployment rate rose from 4 to 12 percent from 1970 to 1990, and the proportion of families with incomes below the poverty line grew 5 to 12 percent.”> This showed that the http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/in-migration in migration of lower income families made Groveland more diverse but it also resulted in a higher rate of unemployment. However, Groveland is a good example of loyalty because most of the residents stayed together through thick and thin and worked on making the neighborhood a better place to be by including whites and white attitudes even though tensions among them were present. They portrayed voice rather than exit with the help of block clubs. Although people often refer to the America as a Melting pot, the data found in surveying the four different cities of Chicago suggest that neighborhoods in urban America have a very good chance of being segregated racially and culturally. In some groups, there is voluntary division even after contact is established and for other groups, the separation is forced. There is added friction between blacks and Latinos because the two groups often compete for the same resources. Problems in the communities extend beyond race into issues of Social class as well. For example, residents in Beltway felt that their white neighborhoods were becoming minority enclaves. However, Beltway has still practiced the loyalty method in contrast with the city of Dover who largely chose the exit option. For Archer Park, issues of loyalty don’t remain much of an issue because they expressed the least concern over ethnic change and distinguished themselves as a “stepping stone” community. Nonetheless, Groveland appeared the most loyal than any of the neighborhoods, in which only a few families chose the exit method. Consequently, the stronger the social organization of the neighborhood, the more likely it is that individuals will choose the voice option. On the other hand, neighbors who feel that the resources are insufficient with the ethnic change are more likely to choose the exit option and are more apt to reach the “tipping point” (rapid ethnic turnover) quicker. This book illuminates how the three methods; exit, voice, and loyalty can either make or break a community. Also, studies show that when people believe they need one another to overcome a situation, they are more likely to overcome their prejudices and join together. This book essentially comes to the conclusion that in order for integrated neighborhoods to become united, they need to start working towards coalition building. |
The Soldier's Return | Melvyn Bragg | 2,000 | Sam Richardson returns to the small Cumbrian town of Wigton after fighting in Burma during the Second World War. The war has given Sam’s wife Ellen a newfound confidence and Sam is a stranger to his son Joe. Sam is plagued by memories of the war and wants a new life, for himself, his wife and his son. The book won the WH Smith Literary Award in 2000, and was followed by three sequels. |
Last Battle of the Icemark | Stuart Hill | 2,008 | Two years have passed since The Icemark managed to defeat the Polypontian Empire in Blade of Fire. This has caused the Polypontians to break up and many civil wars have started to take their place. With the defeat of the Polypontians at the end of the second book, there is now another enemy of the Icemark. That settles on Erinor of Artemision and her dinosaur cavalry of Tri-horns, creatures described to look like warrior Triceratops, and Oskan's father Cronus, his Ice Demons and his granddaughter, Medea. Erinor's dinosaur cavalry move in on what remains of the Polypontian Empire, fully intending to move on to the Icemark afterward and to murder anyone that has a bloodline containing that of the northern Hypolitan. Responding to a plea for help from the Empire, a reluctant Thirrin leads her army into the heart of what was once enemy territory in order to prevent them from invading Icemark as well. Thirrin's strong prejudice against the Polypontians is transformed upon meeting their emperor, who is only a young boy, not yet in his teens, and she realizes that everything she hated about their Empire came from the Bellorum clan. However, by invading the Empire to confront Erinor, the Icemark is left open for an invasion from the Darkness (Cronus and his ice demons). While Icemark and their allies are gone, oblivious to the attack, the Vampire Queen defends Icemark in hopes of being given a soul, as her husband was for loving her. When the other vampires hear the undead may have souls, they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the Icemark, and therefore able to delay Medea and Cronus. Pious, an imp that has learned the power of friendship and love, is able to give Oskan and Thirrin the warning of the attack after they have defeated Erinor and her armies. Oskan, entrusted with the (until that point) secret knowledge that says that Dark Adepts cannot kill the ones they love without dying, defeats Cronus and Medea, though at the cost of his own life. |
Scarpetta | Patricia Cornwell | 2,008 | Dr. Kay Scarpetta is called in to examine a Bellevue Hospital patient in New York City. The patient, Oscar Bane, tells Scarpetta that he has been framed for a murder he did not commit by somebody who is stalking him. |
Clara Vaughan | R. D. Blackmore | null | - ~Plot outline description |
Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams | Catherynne M. Valente | 2,005 | After her village is destroyed, Ayako lives alone in the mountains. Weaving through Ayako's life are her dreams; she explores the mythologies of goddesses from around the world and receives lessons from the river, mountain, and animals, who speak to her while the people from the village below dare only to leave offerings for her. =Allusions= Ayako's dreams touch upon a variety of literary, mythological, and religious subjects, ranging from the Greek Sphinx to Isis' recreation of Osiris' body. |
The English Assassin | Daniel Silva | null | Art restorer, Gabriel Allon, who also works part-time for 'The Office', a semi-official Israeli intelligence agency, accepts an assignment from an anonymous Zurich banker. Arriving at his villa, he finds the man’s murdered body. He flees the crime scene, but is arrested as he tries to leave the country. He is interrogated by Gerhardt Peterson, of Switzerland’s internal security department, who accuse him of the murder of the deceased banker, Augustus Rolfe. But news of Gabriel’s imprisonment has reached Israel, and Ari Shamron, Director of 'The Office', secures Gabriel’s release. He reveals that Rolfe had expressed the desire to personally meet an agent from The Office to give them important information. Gabriel travels to Portugal to meet Anna Rolfe, the estranged daughter of Augustus. She is a world-renowned violinist who lives in seclusion as she recovers from a major accident. She confesses that, unbeknownst to Swiss police, her father’s assassin also stole his private art collection. Although Anna staunchly defends the provenance of those valuable paintings, Gabriel suspects that they were underhandedly acquired during World War II. Anna further adds that the Rolfe family’s home and art collection were guarded by an elaborate security system designed by art dealer Werner Müller. Gabriel determines to meet Müller. It is revealed that Peterson takes orders from the 'Council of Rütli', a secretive elite group of Swiss businessmen and bankers determined to protect the reputation of Switzerland and its (often stolen) riches. Otto Gessler, the highly secretive leader of the Council (whom Peterson has never seen), instructs Peterson to cut all links to the case—and to begin by killing Rolfe’s art agent Werner Müller. Peterson contacts Don Orsati, a Corsican leader of organized crime, who assigns his best agent, the mysterious Englishman Christopher Keller, to fill Peterson’s order. Keller began his career in the SAS, and actually visited Israel, where he studied combat and intelligence techniques from members of the Office, including Allon. He was posted as ‘missing believed killed’ after a mission in Iraq, but in fact survived and became a freelance assassin, reaping a comfortable lifestyle. He lives in a Corsican village, becoming something of an adopted kinsman to the Orsati family and its self-proclaimed role as the arbitrators of justice. Keller is instructed to bomb Müller’s art store. Gabriel, who is visiting the store flees moments before the bomb detonates. He suffers substantial damage to his hands but escapes the crime scene unnoticed. Müller’s death confirms that the missing art collection is the key to understanding Rolfe’s murder. Gabriel returns to England to plumb art dealer Julian Isherwood’s extensive knowledge of the pillage of Jewish-owned art during the Second World War. Isherwood has first-hand knowledge of this topic since his father was an art dealer in Paris whose art works were also stolen. He warns that Swiss law protects its collectors who purportedly bought the art “in good faith” and have owned it for five years. Isherwood refers Gabriel to the exiled Swiss Emil Jacobi, a historian, writer, and 'whistle blower' who contests the morality of Switzerland’s acquisition and ownership of “looted” art. Jacobi confirms Isherwood's story and further accuses Rolfe of performing various services to the Nazi regime. He even conjectures that Rolfe allowed Jews to deposit their money in his bank and then turned over their information to the Gestapo. Jacobi relates that it was not uncommon for Nazi leaders to reward such informants with valuable property, including art. This seals Gabriel’s resolve to research the provenance of Rolfe’s art collection. Anna admits that the provenance documents are in her father’s desk. Gabriel returns to Zurich and discovers photographs of Rolfe with Nazi leaders Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring, and Adolf Hitler. Along with the pictures are bank account numbers and German names. He manages to escape with the documents and escapes with Anna. The latter now learns the truth about her father’s suspicious activities—as well as her mother’s suicide years earlier. They return to Zurich, and manage to locate the bank that holds the security boxes. With the account number, they access two boxes. One contains a letter from Rolfe, anticipating his murder and explaining his guilt and his wish to return each painting to its rightful owner. The second box contains sixteen additional paintings, which they return to London. It emerges that one painting belonged to Julian Isherwood’s father. Anna is determined to accept a ‘come-back’ engagement to play in Venice. Gabriel and a specialist team guard her in case of an assassination attempt. The Englishman manages to evade the guards, but then deliberately does not carry out his assignment. Gabriel’s team kidnaps Gerhardt Peterson, and Gabriel brutally questions him about the activities of the Council. It emerges that Peterson had coordinated both Gabriel and Anna’s planned murders, but Keller decided that he was killing for the wrong team. Gessler spearheaded the plan to murder Rolfe and steal his incriminating artwork. Gabriel determines to ask Gessler to exchange the confiscated art in return for its monetary value, but Peterson expresses scepticism that a wealthy man could be bribed with more money. The two journey to Gessler’s luxurious and highly secure property, where Peterson turns on and imprisons Gabriel. After sustained beatings, Gessler takes him on a tour of his own private art collection—a vast museum housing hundreds of great paintings. The collection is ironic in that Gessler is blind; his satisfaction does not come from admiring the artwork but rather from possessing it. Gessler tells Gabriel to give up his quest, for Swiss law will never expose its own citizens. As the Council contemplates Gabriel’s murder, Peterson cites his conscience and family’s honour as his motivation for helping him to escape. Several months later, Gabriel, still recovering from injuries sustained during his escape, has returned to his work at his home in Cornwall. Anna Rolfe has returned to her career as a violinist. Shamron decides that Gabriel should spend the next year as Anna’s security detail. Keller returns to Corsica to explain why he failed to assassinate Gabriel and Anna. He calls upon the Orsati family’s long-standing tradition of honour killing and states that justice demands the life of Otto Gessler, not Gabriel or Anna. Orsati worries that Keller will not enjoy Gabriel’s lucky escape, but Keller insists that he is now a better agent than Gabriel. Indeed, Keller does breach Gessler’s security, fatally stabs him, and departs unscathed. Peterson is also found dead as a result of an ‘accident’ |
Arqtiq | null | null | The plot of Arqtiq involves a woman who invents an aircraft, a sort of hybrid of airplane and balloon. She decides to fly it to the North Pole, accompanied by her husband, father, and friends. After crossing the continent to New York, they travel northwards and reach the Pole. At first they perceive only a flat plain surrounded with icebergs; but the narrator detects a crystal city beneath the ice. The aeronauts land and meet the inhabitants, called the Arq. The Arq maintain a culture of gender equality and high technology. Communication is facilitated by the Arqs' telepathy; the narrator soon develops the same psychic ability. Despite their isolation, the Arq are devout Christians. Adolph's Arqtiq has been characterized as "An eccentric novel combining elements of science fiction and religious fundamentalism," and an "exuberantly incoherent" book that also touches upon the work of John Symmes, a lunar meteorite, and "lunar people who are tiny and nasty." |
The Road to Samarcand | Patrick O'Brian | 1,954 | While structured with plot and subplots, and created with a cast of interesting characters, the novel draws its major appeal from O'Brian's great story-telling ability. The product of this ability can be seen as a series of adventures in exotic locales, the type of material designed to resonate in the imagination of a typical teenaged boy. There are neither female characters nor romance in The Road to Samarcand. The story begins during a voyage on the South China Sea, where almost at once Derrick's ship encounters a typhoon. Surviving this perilous experience, the ship under Captain Sullivan reaches shore and completes the rendezvous with Professor Ayrton. Subsequent adventures are set up by forming and equipping the party for the journey to the road to Samarcand, a route better known today as the Silk Road. Members of the party include his relatives, Cousin Ayrton and Uncle Sullivan; Derrick, himself; Sullivan's intrepid companion, Ross; the ship's Chinese cook, Li Han; and one of Captain Sullivan's seamen, Olaf Svenssen. Horses and Mongolian guides are engaged: during the course of the story Derrick becomes a skilled horseman and learns to speak Mongolian. The party must follow a circuitous route to the road to Samarcand in order both to travel in safety and to satisfy Professor Ayrton's archeological wishes. This circuitous route allows O'Brian to send the band to areas they would otherwise not have traveled and to reveal interesting aspects of the Chinese, Mongolian and Tibetan cultures. Some adventures are harmless, as when Derrick and his Mongolian companion ride out to hunt with a falcon and when the Professor acquires jade treasure; some involve danger. The latter includes imprisonment, escape, brushes with revolutionaries and bandits, and hand-to-hand fighting. The party becomes involved in deadly skirmishes at a time in history when the old skills of warfare are bowing to superior firepower. As this state-of-affairs turns dramatic, Professor Ayrton is forced to pass himself off as a Russian Army officer who specializes in armament. In reality he is anything but an expert and does not know how even to fire a gun when the expedition begins. Other adventures involve dangers crossing a glacier where the party must face both blizzard conditions and inimical monks masquerading as yeti, and the loss and eventual rediscovery of party-members, Ross, Li Han and Olaf. As the final adventure, in what can be described as a deus ex machina, the little group escapes disaster in a functioning helicopter, which has been abandoned near the monastery where the band has been virtually imprisoned. O'Brian skirted anachronism in creating this manner of escape. Although the technology was available in the late 1930's, existing helicopters were limited to scarce prototypes, and actual aircraft were not produced in large numbers until the 1940's. Be that as it may, there is spare gasoline in a can, and the party is flown away by Ross. He is completely inexperienced as a helicopter pilot; however, O'Brian has created him with qualities which stretch the improbable escape to the verge of credibility: mechanical prowess -- Ross is the only party member who succeeds in starting the engine -- bravery, and a history as the captain of a ship. Airborne and finally out of danger, the party sees below on the ground their goal, the road to Samarcand. |
Relatively Speaking | Ralph Fletcher | 1,999 | The youngest boy describes both his family and their life together through verse. Various scenes include how the family prepare corn on the cob, his other brothers accident, the family reunion, his seldom seen cousin and his uncle's funeral. |
Death of a Gentle Lady | Marion Chesney | 2,008 | While the rest of the town is smitten by Mrs. Gentle, Hamish Macbeth distrusts and dislikes her. When she tries to close down his beloved station, he exacts his revenge and saves a beautiful woman from deportation at the same time by proposing to Gentle's maid Ayesha. By the time the wedding day arrives, Hamish is desperate to escape marriage; when Ayesha doesn't appear and Mrs. Gentle is found dead, he escapes one disaster only to be swept into another. |
Kate Remembered | A. Scott Berg | 2,003 | Published within days of her death at 96, this life of Katharine Hepburn is able to take her to her final hours, following her career from her aristocratic, fresh-faced, and slightly audacious youth to her extreme old age. A. Scott Berg knew Hepburn for the last 20 years of her life, and his book is not only the biography of a beloved actress but a tribute to a dear friend—a friend to whom she told the truth about her life, including her great loves and pet hates, with an eye to its eventual publication. |
River Rats | Franklin W. Dixon | null | Frank and Joe Hardy head to the Big Bison River in Montana to experience its beauty and wonder, through the form of water sports. They are greeted by Owen Watson, a friend, and head off into the river, but witness a hitman killing Owen in broad daylight. The brothers then promise themselves to find the murderer, and avoid any obstacles, distractions, and firepower. They must find the culprit, end the environmental struggle, and bring him to justice, if they ever want to solve the case. |
Daughters of Destiny | L. Frank Baum | null | The American Construction Syndicate wants to build a railroad across Baluchistan, as part of their plans for global development. The company appoints a commission, headed by Colonel Piedmont Moore, to obtain the right of way from the Baluchi ruler. Moore chooses his personal friend and physician Dr. Warner as his second in command; and with commendable nepotism he selects his son Allison Moore as the commission's surveyor. Dr. Warner's ebullient daughter Bessie wants to come along, and solicits Moore's daughter Janet to come too; the young women will by chaperoned by Bessie's Aunt Lucy. (Col. Moore is secretly pleased that his daughter Janet will make the trip; she has been melancholy after an unhappy love affair, with a man the Colonel regards as a thief and scoundrel.) The Americans travel to Baluchistan, and promptly get themselves imbroiled in a succession conflict. The reigning Khan of the country is dying, and two cousins vie for the crown. One, Kasam, is masquerading as their guide. What follows is a complex but tightly-woven plot that involves subterfuge and conspiracy, poisonings and attempted assassinations, sword fights and a pursuit in the desert, a scheming femme fatale, disguises and false identities — all the ingredients of melodrama. In the end, Prince Kasam's rival Ahmed (or Hafiz) inherits the throne of Baluchistan — but he yields it to Kasam so he can return to the United States with the heroine, Janet Moore. It is revealed that Ahmed/Hafiz is actually Howard Osborne, the man Janet had previously loved (and secretly married, seven years before). Osborne had nobly but foolishly taken the blame for an embezzlement actually committed by Allison Moore, the Colonel's son and Janet's brother. Once all the secrets are out, the difficulties are resolved; and the requisite happy ending is achieved. And Bessie stays behind to marry Prince Kasam, and become the Khanum of Baluchistan. Notably, Ahmed/Hafiz/Osborne abdicates his throne in part for personal reasons, but also because he thinks it would be bad for the country to be ruled by someone deeply influenced by American culture. It is better, he thinks, for the people of Baluchistan to maintain their traditional way of life than to be thrust into the frenetic modern world — an interesting rejection, on the author's part, of imperialism and the idolatry of progress. |
Out of Control | null | null | Indianapolis is the place to be for the Indianapolis 500, the legendary race to end all races. Nancy Drew is on the scene, saving a fashion designer, and a crowd of supermodels, from their photo set. Nancy, in return, is invited to an exclusive party, only to find the fashionista arrested. Meanwhile, Robbie McDonnell, a local racecar driver, and his entire team is experiencing mishaps and mayhem, and the Hardy Boys investigate, facing all the odds. |
Nightmare in New Orleans | null | null | The Royal Creole, a restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, is opened for business by Shelly and Remy Maspero. Nancy Drew heads up there to congratulate the pair, but ends up trying to figure out the strange mishaps that have arisen there. Meanwhile, the Hardys are there too, trying to uncover the facts behind a million-dollar heist in a riverboat casino, and the facts prove that Remy Maspero is the culprit. With time running out the threesome will have to solve the case. |
The Book of Negroes | Lawrence Hill | 2,007 | Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle — a string of slaves. Eventually, she arrives in South Carolina where she begins a new life as a slave. Due to circumstantial events in her life, Aminata develops certain advantages other slaves do not: she possesses the skills of a midwife and learns how to read and write. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia, only to discover that this new place becomes one that is also oppressive and unyielding. Aminata eventually returns to Sierra Leone, passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America, but eventually finds herself crossing the ocean one more time to England to present the account of her life so that it may abolish the slave trade. |
Cross-Country Crime | Franklin W. Dixon | 1,995 | The Hardy brothers go for a vacation in the town of Evergreen. There, they meet a man suffering from amnesia who is a prime suspect for a bank robbery. |
The Enormous Radio | John Cheever | null | Jim and Irene Westcott live contentedly on the 12th floor in an apartment building with their two children near Sutton Place (their city of residence is not mentioned, but Sutton Place is in New York City). Both Jim and Irene enjoy music very much, regularly attending concerts and spending a lot of time listening to music on their radio. However, the Westcotts kept their interest in music from their friends. When their old radio breaks down, Jim orders a new one, but when it arrives Irene is shocked at the complete and utter ugliness of the device that Jim has bought. The radio is described as a large gumwood cabinet with numerous dials and switches that light up with a green light when it is plugged in. Until the new radio arrived, the Westcotts hardly ever argued and seemed to have a happy marriage. One night, as Irene is sitting in the apartment listening to the radio she starts to hear interference in the form of a rustling noise over the music concert that is being broadcast. She tries to get the music back by flipping all of the switches and dials, but then begins to hear the sounds of people from other apartments in the building. She is so surprised by this that she shuts off the radio. Later that evening when Jim arrived home from work, he tried the radio to get some music. Instead of music, Jim hears elevator noises and doorbells.Believing that the electronics in the building are interfering with the signal he decides to turn off the radio and call the people who sold it to him and demand to have the radio repaired. The radio is examined and the problem apparently fixed, but the next day while Irene is listening to a Chopin prelude she hears a man and woman who seem to be arguing. Realizing that the conversation is coming from people who live in a nearby apartment, she flicks a switch, but next hears a woman's voice reading a children's story, which she recognizes as belonging to her neighbor's children's nanny. She flips the switch again, but each time she does so she becomes privy to the events in another apartment. Irene demands that Jim turn off the radio because she is afraid her neighbors will hear her and Jim, just as they can hear the others in the building. Over the next few days Irene listens in on the lives of her neighbors, and finds herself becoming both intrigued and horrified. Irene had become so obsessed with listening in on her neighbors, that she cut a luncheon short with a friend to go home and listen to the radio to hear what news would be revealed next in the lives of friends and neighbors. Jim noticed how strange Irene had become in her ways and conversations, especially at a dinner party the Wescott's attended. On the way home, Irene speaks of the stars like a little candle throwing its beam as to "shine a good deed in a naughty world." Irene became totally involved in the lives on the radio and became depressed herself. She has gone from a pleasant, rather plain woman, to a woman who doubts who she is and doubts her relationship with her husband Jim. Once more, Jim arranges for the radio to be examined and this time the repairs are successful. The repairs are expensive and a great deal more than Jim can afford. All he wanted was for Irene to get some enjoyment from the radio. Instead the radio brought the Westcotts' peaceful life to an end. Not only was the second repair of the radio more than Jim could afford, but he also found unpaid clothing bills on Irene's dressing table. Thus the beginning of the hidden truths coming to the surface; Jim worrying about money issues and Irene worrying about the radio hearing their argument and the past indiscretions of her life. |
The Fate of a Crown | L. Frank Baum | null | The novel's protagonist is a young American named Robert Harcliffe; a recent college graduate, he works for his family's mercantile business in New Orleans, run by his Uncle Nelson. Nelson Harcliffe receives a letter from an old client in Brazil, Dom Miguel de Pintra, a wealthy man who has retired from business to devote himself to politics — specifically to the republican cause that struggles to replace the Brazilian Empire. Dom Miguel has written to request a secretary; Robert, eager for adventure, agrees to take the job. Robert's attitude is devil-may-care at first, yet he quickly learns that he has entered into a dangerous enterprise. He cleverly evades a murderous spy on the voyage down to Rio de Janeiro; but as soon as he reaches the city he is arrested by the police. In the carriage taking him to the police station, the lieutenant in charge is murdered by his own sergeant, who is a republican sympathizer. The sergeant and other sympathizers guide Harcliffe to the city of Cuyaba in Matto Grosso state, and to Dom Miguel's plantation. There, Harcliffe quickly becomes a devoted admirer of de Pintra and a republican sympathizer himself. (Baum presents this as an American's natural preference, over the archaic, authoritarian, European imperial system.) Just as quickly, Robert learns that the circle around the republican leader is fraught with uncertainty. The man's daughter Izabel is cold and suspect, while his ward Lesba is an ardent republican, and a beauty with whom Harcliffe soon falls in love. Lesba's brother appears to be a republican too — yet he serves as the Emperor's minister of police. Harcliffe wrestles with question of who can be trusted, and who is playing a "double game." The mystery aspects of the story center on the massive steel vault, impregnated with nitro glycerin, that is hidden in a sub-basement of de Pintra's mansion. It holds the treasury and the incriminating records of the republican movement; it opens with an exotic key, a specially-cut emerald in Dom Miguel's ring. The ring is stolen, which leads Harcliffe on a challenging and puzzling chase. As the revolution starts, Dom Miguel, Harcliffe, and other supporters are captured and face a firing squad, only to be rescued (some of them at least) at the last minute, by Lesba and a troop of rebels. When the rebellion succeeds, Harcliffe marries Lesba and becomes the director of commerce in the new regime. The couple raise their children in a cosmopolitan style, wintering in New Orleans and spending the rest of the year in Brazil. ---- Baum's first adult novel was successful enough to justify a follow-up effort: a second Schuyler Staunton book, Daughters of Destiny, was issued in 1906. A third adult novel, The Last Egyptian, followed. The Fate of a Crown was reprinted in a paperback edition in 2008. |
The Game | Laurie R. King | 2,004 | Kimball O'Hara, the "Kim" of the famous Rudyard Kipling novel, has disappeared. Fearing a geopolitical crisis in the making, Mycroft Holmes sends his brother and Mary to India to uncover what happened. En route, they encounter the insufferable Tom Goodheart—a wealthy young American who has embraced Communism—traveling with his mother and sister to visit his maharaja friend, Jumalpandra ("Jimmy"), an impossibly rich and charming ruler of the (fictional) Indian state of Khanpur. With some local intelligence supplied by Geoffrey Nesbit, an English agent taught by Kim, and accompanied by Bindra, a resourceful orphan, the couple travel incognito as native magicians. Ultimately, their journey intersects with the paths of the Goodhearts, Jimmy, and the enigmatic Kim. |
Annabel | L. Frank Baum | null | Will Carden, the novel's protagonist, is fifteen years old at the start of the story. His family has "come down" in the world: though his late father had once owned a steel mill, Will and his mother and siblings now survive by growing vegetables on a two-acre plot of land. Will is popular with the local children, especially with the five Williams siblings who live in the big house in the town of Bingham. Of the five, Mary Louise is the beauty; her twelve-year-old sister Annabel is plain in comparison, with red hair and freckles and a "pug nose." Their father owns the steel mill that succeeded the Carden mill as the town's leading employer; their mother, the snobbish Mrs. Williams, wounds Will by telling her children to avoid the lowly "vegetable boy." Will, however, is a lad of fine character; he is encouraged by the local physician, Dr. Meigs, who joins the Carden family in a mushroom-growing business that relieves their poverty. Will saves Annabel's life when she falls through a frozen pond while ice-skating. Annabel and Will grow close as Annabel blossoms into young womanhood; Meigs encourages her steel-magnate father to acknowledge and encourage the boy. Meigs and Williams also become suspicious of Ezra Jordan, the man who manages Williams's mill and boards with the Cardens. Jordan was crucial in the Carden family's history; the doctor and steel-man realize that all knowledge of the death of Will's father has filtered through Jordan. Upon investigation, they learn that Jordan has cheated both Williams and the Cardens, by appropriating a valuable steel-making process developed by the elder Carden. It turns out that Mr. Carden is alive and well in Britain, where he has made his fortune. Jordan has worked a double fraud: he deceived the Cardens in Bingham into believing that their husband and father had died in a shipwreck — and he also tricked Carden in England into thinking that his family had perished in an epidemic. Jordan maintained his lodging with the family precisely to intercept any possible communications that would reveal his nefarious scheme. Once all of the facts are revealed, the Carden family is united in prosperity once more. Will and Annabel look forward to marriage and the prospect of a happy union. ---- Annabel was included in the sixth and final issue of the annual Oz-story Magazine in 2000, with the illustrations of both Hall and Nuyttens. |
Danger Down Under | Carolyn Keene | null | Mick Devlin, an old "flame" of Nancy Drew's, asks for her support with Nellie Mabo, an Aboriginal local, who is desperate to locate a revered idol, a tjuringa board, and return it back to her clan. The Hardy boys join her in Australia, only to encounter a pair of proprietors keeping an opal mine, a blood-hungry poacher on the verge of creating a new endangered species, a rage fueled clan war over the land, the Australian outback, and a list of suspects. |
The Edwardians | null | null | Sebastian, is the 19-year-old heir to the country estate of Chevron. Being at home from Oxford at the weekends he regularly attends the magnificent parties given by his widowed mother Lucy, where the guests indulge in food, drinks, games and affairs. At one of these parties he meets the adventurer Leonard Anquetil who grew up under humble circumstances but managed to become well-known and socially acknowledged due to his several successful expeditions. During a deep conversation on top of Chevron’s roof Anquetil tries to open Sebastian’s eyes displaying to him the artificiality and hypocrisy of his mother’s aristocratic society and to convince the young heir to leave his social obligations behind in order to accompany Anquetil on an expedition. However, Sebastian is not impressed enough by the predictions made by Anquetil (affairs, marriage, service to the crown, but never being completely content) to turn his back on his safe home. One of the reasons for that is the love affair he had just started with Sylvia Roehampton, a married friend of his mother. After Sylvia’s husband finds out about this relationship she, Lady Roehampton, leaves Sebastian and does not accept his offer to run away and start a new life together, since she does not want a public scandal and sticks to social conventions. Soon after, Sebastian plans to start an affair with Teresa Spedding, a doctor’s wife, but she eventually does not respond to Sebastian’s courtship. Yet coming from a middle class background she is extremely impressed by and interested in aristocratic society. Sebastian, being disappointed and never seeming to be content, attempts to distract himself by having two more affairs with women from different classes. During the coronation ceremony of George V, which he attends, he finally gives in to the expectations and obligations his family history imposes on him and plans to marry a decent young lady and to settle down in a career at the Court. It is just a few moments after that, that he meets Leonard Anquetil again, who informs him that he is going to marry Sebastian’s independent sister Viola, to whom the adventurer regularly wrote letters in the last years, and repeats his offer to join him on an expedition. Stunned by this possibility Sebastian agrees to accompany him. |
Buried Alive | Ralph Fletcher | 1,996 | This book is a collection thirty six free verse poems about teenage love divided into four elements: earth, water, air and fire. |
Juma and the Magic Jinn | null | null | On the seafaring Lamu Island, families traditionally keep a jinn jar at home. The jinn jar is a container that holds a supernatural being in Islam and Arabian mythology called a jinn (in English, a genie). The jinn jar is kept sealed because the owners do not know if their magic jinn is good or evil, which makes people of Lamu Island generally afraid of the jinns. The story opens with a young student named Juma daydreaming in a school instead of doing his mathematics. Since the young Juma concentrates more on his own directions of thought rather than the lessons being taught, the teacher sends Juma home. On the way home, he comes across his mother buying fish at the shore. His mother admonishes his daydreaming in school and suggests that Juma may be better off working with his father to cut mangrove poles. She instruction Juma to go home, but instructs Juma to not touch the jinn jar. At home, Juma disobeys his mother's prior instructions and removes the cork sealing the jinn jar and calls the jinn. Juma is skeptical about his efforts and does not believe in magic. The magic jinn grants some of Juma's wishes and is sent away from his home on what turns out to be misadventures. Eventually, Juma is able to get home again but arrives with new appreciation of his home and family and realization that learning can be exciting and fun. |
The Christopher Killer | Alane Ferguson | null | So when she convinces her dad to give her the job of being his assistant, she is thrilled to finally get some hands-on experience in forensics. But Cammie is in for more than she bargained for when the second case that she attends turns out to be someone she knew; her friend—the latest victim of a serial killer, known as the Christopher Killer. And if dealing with that isn't enough, Cammie soon realizes that if she is not careful, she might wind up as the next victim. |
Portobello | Ruth Rendell | 2,008 | The central character of the novel is Eugene Wren, a wealthy, middle-aged art dealer whose secretive personality jeopardizes both his sanity and his relationship with, and eventual engagement to, Ella Cotswold, an attractive general practitioner ten years his junior. Having in the past overcome various slight addictions to alcohol, nicotine, and food, Wren gets hooked on a special brand of sugar-free sweet, which he wants to conceal from his fiancée. When the couple decide that Ella should sell her flat and she moves in with him, he starts inventing excuses and lies so as to be alone just for the time it takes to suck a sweet and to get rid of the sweet smell on his breath afterwards. Extremely ashamed of his habit, he buys, hoards, and consumes the sweets secretly, and he establishes several caches in his antique-studded home. When Ella happens to find one of them, out of curiosity goes on to search the rest of the house, and finally confronts Wren with her find, he is so ashamed of himself that he sees no other way than to break off their engagement and move into a hotel. |
The Birthday Present | Ruth Rendell | 2,002 | Robert, a city accountant narrates the story, with excerpts from one Jane Atherton's diary. He is married to Iris Tesham. Iris' brother Ivor is an up and coming Tory MP, who is having an affair with Hebe Furnal. Hebe uses Jane Atherton as her alibi for her trysts. Ivor Tesham arranges a mock abduction of Hebe as a birthday present for her, but it goes horribly wrong. |
The Girl Who Played with Fire | Stieg Larsson | 2,006 | The novel is formally divided into a prologue followed by four parts. The prologue of the book opens with a girl captured and restrained inside a dark room by an unidentified male. To cope with being captured, she mentally replays a past episode when she threw a milk carton filled with gasoline onto another man inside a car and tossed an ignited match onto him. Salander, after finishing the job on the Wennerström affair (described in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), disappeared from Sweden and traveled throughout Europe. The novel opens with Salander at the shores of the Caribbean in St. George's, the capital of Grenada. She has become interested in Fermat's Last Theorem and mathematics, an interest that resounds with the opening page of each Part in this novel. From within her room in her hotel she observes on several occasions that her neighbor, Dr. Forbes, an American tourist from Texas, physically abuses his wife next door to her room. She also befriends George Bland, an introverted sixteen year old student living in a small shack, and she begins tutoring him in mathematics. Salander finds Bland's company relaxing and enjoyable because Bland does not ask her personal questions, and the two develop a sexual relationship. Lisbeth Salander uses her connections among the hackers' network to investigate Dr. Forbes and learns that Reverend Robert Forbes was once accused of mishandling of funds in his faith-based foundation. Currently he has no assets, but his wife is the heir of a fortune worth $40 million. Due to concerns for safety, the residents at the hotel begin to enter the hotel cellar as a hurricane hits Grenada. Salander remembers Bland and braves the strong wind and rain to collect him. As the two reach the hotel entrance, Salander sees Dr. Forbes on the beach with his wife and realizes that he is attempting to kill her for her inheritance. Salander attacks Dr. Forbes with the leg of a chair, and abandons him to the elements. Salander, Bland and Mrs. Forbes retreat to the cellar and receive medical care; Dr. Forbes is later confirmed to have died during the night. Lisbeth Salander returns to Stockholm after more than a year away. Immediately before the Wennerström affair became public knowledge, Salander laundered a sum of three billion kronor into a disguised bank account. With this sum she purchases a new up-scale apartment outside of Mosebacke Torg and moves out of her old apartment in Lundagatan. Salander allows her current sex partner, Miriam Wu, to move into her old apartment, for the price of 1 krona and the condition that Wu forward all of Salander's mail. She also re-establishes contact with Dragan Armansky, her former boss at Milton Securities, and former legal guardian Holder Palmgren, who fell victim to a stroke during the events of Dragon Tattoo. Nils Bjurman, Palmgren's replacement, continues to brew a growing hatred for his ward after the events of Dragon Tattoo. His fury has caused him to diminish his practice down to a single client (Salander) and focus his attention on capturing her and destroying the CDs. He scrutinizes Salander's medical records, identifies an incident named "All the Evil" as well as a person from her past as his strongest ally. In the meantime, Mikael Blomkvist, the publisher of Millennium magazine, has lost all contact with Salander for over a year, as she has refused to even open his letters. His only contact with her at all is a physical intervention when, while he is walking past her apartment in the vain hope of running into her, she is cornered by a man from the Svavelsjö outlaw motorcycle club with a beer gut and a ponytail. Blomkvist swings in to help, to Salander's astonishment, and between their efforts she manages to elude her attacker. Millenium are approached by Dag Svensson, a young journalist, and Mia Johanssen, a doctoral candidate. They have together written a meticulously-researched report, ironically titled "From Russia with Love," about sex trafficking in Sweden and the abuse of underage girls by high-ranking figures, which will be her doctoral thesis and which Svensson now wants Millennium to publish as an exposé. While the research is mostly complete, Svensson, Johanssen and the Millenium staff are intrigued by reoccuring mentions of the name "Zala," a shadowy figure who evidently runs most of Sweden's sex-trafficking industry. Salander, hacking Mikael Blomkvist's computer, is taken aback by the mention of Zala and visits Svennson and Johanssen to ask questions. Later that night, Blomkvist, who had been invited to visit the couple, finds them both shot dead in their apartment. Salander's fingerprints are on the murder weapon. Blomkvist notifies Erika Berger, the editor in chief of Millennium and his occasional lover, of the double murder. The next morning, the magazine office holds an emergency meeting to work out the logistics of postponing the publication of Svensson's book and the associated magazine special. The staff decides to backtrack Svensson's research to ensure the accuracy of the material, and to comb through it for possible murder motives, while Blomkvist is tasked with finishing Svensson's mostly-completed book. Prosecutor Richard Ekström assembles an investigation team, led by Inspector Jan Bublanski, who demands that Sonja Modig be included in the team. The team identifies Salander's fingerprints on the murder weapon. Salander's formal record establishes her as a violent, unstable, psychotic woman with a history of prostitution, but Armansky, Blomkvist and Berger all vouch for her intelligence and moral fiber; neither Mikael nor Erika were even aware of her psychiatric history. While investigating her social circle, Modig finds Bjurman shot dead in his apartment by the same revolver that slew Svennson and Johanssen; Salander remains the prime suspect. In the light of this new evidence, Ekström holds a press conference and discloses Salander's name and psychiatric history to the press, describing her as a danger to others and herself. Blomkvist enlists the help of managing editor Malin Eriksson to investigate the murders, during which he realizes that Salander has hacked into his notebook computer. He leaves her notes on his desktop, and her replies point him to "Zala". He confronts Gunnar Björck, a policeman on sick leave and one of the johns identified by Dag and Mia, who agrees to disclose information about Zala if Blomkvist leaves him out of Millenium's exposé. On the other hand, Milton Security becomes involved in the investigation as Armansky decides to send two of his employees, Hedström and Bohman, to aid the formal police investigation. Miriam Wu returns from a Paris trip to find herself taken to the police station and confirms Salander's intelligence and moral character. However, Hedström leaks Wu's identity into the press, and the press publishes extensively about Wu's ownership of a Gay Pride Festival; both she and Salander are sensationalized in the media as members of a "lesbian Satanist gang." The press also publishes about Salander's past from childhood to 11, and from 14 onward. Part 3 closes with Salander wondering why the press's inside source has not chosen to publicize "All the Evil," the events which dominated the gap in her biography, as they would swing public opinion even further against her. Blomkvist is approached by Paolo Roberto, a boxing champion and Salander's former training master. Blomkvist suggests Roberto seek out Miriam Wu for conversation, as she has been avoiding all press, including Mikael himself. In the meantime, on Salander's suggestion Blomkvist focuses onto Zala as the key connection between the three murders and sex trafficking. As the police continue the investigation, Blomkvist's team also notices the three-year gap in Salander's biography. Blomkvist decides to confront Björck and trade his anonymity for information on Zala. Roberto, staking out Salander's former apartment in the hopes of catching Wu, witnesses her kidnapped into a van by a paunchy man with a ponytail (Salander's former attacker) and a blond giant. He follows the van out to a warehouse south of Nykvarn, where he attempts to rescue Wu by boxing with the blond giant. He finds his opponent unusually muscular and totally insensitive to pain, and only through applications of massive blunt trauma can he and Wu stun the giant enough to escape. The blond giant recovers and sets the warehouse on fire to remove all evidence. However, Roberto is able to direct the police to the site, where they find three buried and dismembered bodies there, presumably deposited by the blond giant. Visiting Bjurman's summer cabin, Salander finds a classified Swedish Security Service file written about "All The Evil," and begins to make the connection between Bjurman and Zala. According to the information, Zala's real name is Alexander Zalachenko. By sheer coincidence, two members of Svavelsjö MC, Carl-Magnus Lundin (the paunchy ponytail man) and Sonny Niemenen, have been dispatched to burn the place down, and Salander defeats them, leaving more suspects for Bublanski to find. She returns to her apartment and, having no choice, decides to find Zalachenko and kill him. Salander learns of the blond giant's identity ("Ronald Niedermann") and his connection to a post office box in Göteborg and goes there to find him and Zalachenko. In his apartment, Blomkvist finds Salander's old keys, which he gained during their joint fight with Lundin. He manages to find her new, up-scale apartment as well as Bjurman's DVD. Between Björck and Salander's former guardian, Holder Palmgren, Blomvkist is able to piece together the entire story: Zalachenko is a Russian defector under secret Swedish protection, whose very existence is kept classified by Säpo; Bjurman and Björck only know about him because they happened to be the junior officers on duty the day he marched into a police office and demanded political asylum. Zalachenko, a source of vital information on Russia's intelligence operations, began to traffic in sex slaves on the side, whilst simultaneously settling down with an 18-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins, one named Camilla and the other Lisbeth. He was physically and emotionally abusive to his partner, and while Camilla tended to repress all knowledge of the situation, Lisbeth attempted to defend her mother. One day, after he had beaten her into unconsciousness, Salander deliberately set his car alight with gasoline while he was in it. This is the event Salander refers to as "All the Evil," as the authorities, instead of listening to her pleas on behalf of her mother, imprisoned her and declared her insane. Salander's mother was left with the first of a series of brain aneurysms which consigned her to nursing homes until her death. Salander learned that the government would never listen to her, as acknowledging Zalachenko's crimes would require admitting his existence. Zalachenko was allowed to walk away; however, he suffered serious injuries and had to have his foot amputated. Svenssen and Johanssen were killed by Niedermann on Zalachenko's orders: when Salander visited them, she asked whether Bjurman had ever showed up as one of their johns, and they called him immediately after she left; Bjurman then called Zalachenko in a panic, leading not only to their deaths but his own. Blomkvist does not share all of his findings with Bublanski, in respect for Salander's privacy, but between his testimony, that of Palmgren and Armansky on her character, and the additional accomplices piling up, the police are forced to admit that their original estimation, of Salander as a psychotic murderer, is contradicted by the evidence. Milton Security are ejected from the investigation when it becomes clear that Hedstrom is the inside source who has been leaking sensational details to the press; however, Armansky is satisfied, as his true goal in aiding the investigation—ensuring Salander is not simply condemned as a murderer out of hand—has been achieved. Finally, Blomkvist finds the same Göteborg address that Salander did, and sets off for the farm where Niedermann and Zalachenko await. He has deduced that Salander has entered what Roberto and his boxing friends called "Terminator Mode," where she attacks without restraint to defend her life and those she cares about. Salander gets there first and is captured due to the motion detectors and cameras Zalachenko had installed. He tells Salander that Niedermann is her half-brother. When Salander attempts to escape, Zalachenko shoots her in the hip, shoulder and head, and Niedermann buries her corpse. Salander, still alive, digs herself out and again attempts to kill Zalachenko with an axe, noting that Zalachenko's use of a Browning .22 firearm is the only reason she survived. On his way to Göteborg, Blomkvist sees Niedermann trying to catch a ride with him. He captures Neiderman at gunpoint, tying him against a signpost by the road. The book ends as Blomkvist finds Salander and calls emergency services. |
Attack of the Mutant Underwear | Tom Birdseye | 2,003 | Fifth-grader Cody Carson keeps a journal of his hopes for a fresh start in a town where nobody knows about his humiliating mistakes of the past, but before school even begins so does his embarrassment.As he goes through many things at his new life, he encounters many challenges,crushes,adventures and embarrassing moments.Will he be able to become a "New Me", without shattering into pieces? |
Smurf Versus Smurf | null | 1,973 | From the moment they first appeared in La Flûte à six trous in 1958 it was established that the Smurfs talked in Smurf language, where the term "smurf" was used on an apparently random basis in their speeches: for instance, "It's smurfing a gale today". Now it is revealed that actual differences in the language exist in the otherwise very homogenous community of Smurfs: the Smurfs who live in the northern part of their village use the term "smurf" as a noun; while the Smurfs in the south use it as an adjective or verb. This difference of opinion is raised when Handy Smurf, a Southern Smurf who is the local inventor, asks a Northern Smurf to return his "smurf opener", but he fails to do so on the grounds that it should be called a "bottle smurfer". Instead of agreeing to disagree, they have an increasingly heated argument about which is the correct term to use. Papa Smurf is locked away in his laboratory, trying to complete a difficult chemical experiment, which keeps him out of the argument. Meanwhile other Smurfs start debating the linguistic issue. They part, returning to their own sides of the village, failing to agree on the subject, and as a result there is much tension in the air. One night, during a theatre performance of Little Smurf Riding Hood, the Northern part of the audience keeps interrupting the Southern actors over the use of language, claiming, among other things, that the title should be Little Red Riding Smurf. The arguing and interruptions continue to the point where the play erupts into an all-out fight. Papa Smurf breaks it up, pointing out the silliness of fighting over a matter of words. At first the Smurfs appear to think that he is right, but then start arguing again over whether they should "shake smurfs" or "smurf hands". The next day, Papa Smurf tries to lift the tension by insisting that they play ball together in a friendly manner. At first it appears to work, but then other Smurfs watching the game begin to divide along lingual lines and the arguments begin again. The tension returns, this time apparently to stay, with insults being traded and both sides trying to assert their indifference and superiority over the other. One Smurf eventually paints a demarcation line across the middle of the village to separate the two groups. This means that they have to stick to their own sides of the border. In one case, a Smurf finds his house marked in two by the straight demarcation line and goes almost crazy since he cannot figure out if he is of the North or the South: for instance, he cooks a "boiled smurf" on one side of his house and then consumes a "smurfed egg" on the other. All this time, Papa Smurf has been in his laboratory working on his experiment — the nature of which is never revealed — but when he finally succeeds and calls on the other Smurfs to celebrate, it is already too late: the fuse that was set long ago has exploded with both North and South finally coming to blows in an all-out battle. Papa Smurf's pleas for them to stop are in vain. In a desperate move to restore order, Papa Smurf turns to Gargamel, the evil sorcerer and sworn enemy of the Smurfs. Looking him in the eye, Papa Smurf pronounces a magic spell that immediately causes him and Gargamel to exchange their physical appearances: Gargamel becomes Papa Smurf and Papa Smurf becomes Gargamel. Gargamel's cat Azrael is taken aback when he hears the voice of his master coming from Papa Smurf's body and goes his own way, overwhelmed by confusion. Papa Smurf (as Gargamel) and Gargamel (as Papa Smurf) return to the Smurf village together where the battle is still ongoing. However, upon seeing Gargamel attack, the Smurfs on both sides reunite to fight against their common archenemy. Papa Smurf (as Gargamel) allows himself to be subdued and tied down. He hoped to teach them a lesson in being united ("smurf for all and all for smurf"), but they mock his claim to actually be Papa Smurf and refuse to release him. The real Gargamel, in Papa Smurf's body, breaks into the laboratory and finds the magic spell. He thus restores himself and Papa Smurf into their original bodies, freed from the bonds. Gargamel immediately takes the opportunity to chase and seize the Smurfs throughout the village and further into the woods. But then he and the Smurfs come across Azrael who attacks him, thinking that it's still Papa Smurf in Gargamel's body. All the Smurfs successfully escape from Gargamel's hands, while Gargamel (as usual) fails to find his way back to their village. At first it would seem as if peace has returned but then Papa Smurf overhears another argument about whether it should be a "smurf opener" or a "bottle smurfer". To prevent further clashes, he decrees that all the terms pronounced differently on the north and south sides of the village are now banned from use, so it should henceforth be "an object to unscrew bottles". However, the Smurfs find it very difficult to use this new politically correct language, since very complicated and descriptive forms of expression are now needed and are subject to different interpretations, meaning that the resolution of the linguistic issue is still a long way off. |
One False Note | Gordon Korman | 2,008 | Amy, Dan, and their au pair, Nellie Gomez, found music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the end of The Maze of Bones, leading them to Vienna, Austria, to learn about him and find a related clue. In Vienna, Amy and Dan discover that Mozart had an older sister: Maria Anna "Nannerl" Mozart. They go to a library to view her diary, only to realize Jonah Wizard, a fellow competitor in the search for The 39 Clues, stole it. They steal it from him, but then Nellie translates it and notices that three pages are missing. After finding the music from Mozart on the Internet, Amy and Dan notice that three lines are missing from it. They play the missing lines down in the lobby of the hotel they are staying in and realize that they are actually a whole different song that wasn't even written by Mozart. That song's name is "The Place Where I Was Born", so they go to the place where Mozart was born: Salzburg, Austria. There, they see Alistair Oh (yet another competitor), and follow him into the Salzburg Catacombs. They see the man in black (who is always around when bad things happen) and, shortly afterward, are trapped inside the Catacombs by and explosion that causes a cave-in. However, they find another way out through St. Peter's Archabbey and are chased by monks after finding a sheet of old parchment that supposedly had all 39 clues on it. They are devastated to find that it is just a recipe for Benedictine. Later, Nellie discovers that there is a homing device on the collar of their cat, Saladin. She, Amy, and Dan then find Alistair sleeping on a park bench and decide to plant it on him. Amy finds a secret compartment inside his cane and plants the homing device inside, in exchange taking what he found in the Catacombs, an eighteenth century concert poster starring Mozart in Venice, Italy. In Venice, Amy and Dan follow Jonah Wizard and find a secret passage from a music store called "Disco Volante" to a Janus stronghold. There, they find the missing diary pages and steal them from Jonah while he is examining them. They are chased by Janus agents but hide the pages on a boat called the Royal Saladin and come back to collect them once they lose the Janus. The pages say that Nannerl thought her brother was going crazy because he was buying large quantities of an expensive Japanese steel and getting himself into major debt. A name, Fidelio Racco, which was also found on the paper taken from Alistair Oh, appears in the diary, along with two notes from Grace: "The word that cost her life, minus the music" and "D>HIC". They figure out that "the word that cost her life" was referring to Marie Antoinette's famous quote, "Let them eat cake." Amy recalls from a conversation with Grace that Marie Antoinette used the most common French word for cake, gateau instead of brioche which is what she is usually quoted with. However, they do not know what Grace means by "minus the music" or "D>HIC", so they go to Fidelio Racco's mansion (which is now a museum) and hide until after it closes. They then sneak over to Fidelio Racco's harpsichord but are ambushed by the Kabras, who have been following them since Paris. Ian plays Mozart's music on the harpsichord but is unaware of the booby trapped D key, which Amy realizes is the meaning of D>HIC. She tries to knock Ian off the bench, but she is too late. His finger brushes the booby trapped key, and an explosion sends them both flying into the air. Amy manages to tuck and roll when she hits the ground, but Ian whacks his head on the marble floor and is knocked unconscious. Natalie is also knocked out after Dan stabs her with a dart from her tranquilizer dart gun. Most of the harpsichord is vaporized in the explosion, but the keyboard is still intact, so Amy plays "The Place Where I Was Born". A section of the floor drops down, revealing two Japanese swords and the second clue, tungsten. Amy figures out that gateau minus the music means that she needs to take out all of the letters that are musical notes, which leaves her with T-U, the chemical symbol for tungsten. Back at their hotel in Venice, Amy and Dan tell Nellie about the second clue, and she calls Japan Airlines to book three tickets to Tokyo. The book ends with Alistair Oh finding out who is owner of the tracking device that was placed on Saladin and himself. That person is Grace's lawyer and friend, William McIntyre. |
Mystery Train | null | null | Nancy, Frank and Joe are all on the trail of the Comstock Diamond Case, an unsolved theft case, that has worked its way to the interests of a team of "professionals", with a "missing" reward of $25,000. The first step in solving the crime is to recreate the trail of the culprit, boarding a train from Chicago to San Francisco. But the case turns deadly when a shadowy suspect starts to sabotage the train. It is up to the trio to find suspects, solve the case, and bring the real cold-hearted criminal to justice. They face, a kidnapper, a thief, and a saboteur. |
Have You Been to the Beach Lately? | Ralph Fletcher | 2,001 | Thirty three first person poems that describe various moments during an eleven year old boy's day at the beach. He builds sand walls, he plays in the surf with his friends and teases his little brother. |
A Writing Kind of Day | Ralph Fletcher | 2,005 | A young writer's experiences are described in twenty seven mostly free verse poems. Topics included are roadkill, Venus Flytraps, a grandmothers senility. Others discuss snow angels, little brothers and "Ma". |
Moving Day | Ralph Fletcher | 2,006 | Thirty-four short free verse poems that express the feelings of a twelve-year-old boy moving from Massachusetts to Ohio. Some of the topics include packing, the discovery of long-lost treasures, giving things away, and doing things one last time. |
Just Call Me Stupid | Tom Birdseye | 1,993 | Terrified of failing and believing that he is stupid, a fifth grader who has never learned to read begins to believe in himself with the help of an outgoing new girl next door. |
Keep on the Shadowfell | Bruce R. Cordell | 2,008 | The village of Winterhaven in the Nentir Vale is being menaced by kobold raiders. The players are ambushed by these kobolds on their way to Winterhaven; upon arrival at Winterhaven they are asked to clean out the kobold's nest. The players soon discover the kobolds are a pawn of Kalarel, a priest of Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath. Kalarel is lairing at a local ruined keep which contains a long-sealed rift to the Shadowfell, a plane of shadow and undeath; he plans to open this rift to connect the material world to Orcus' temple in the Shadowfell and thereby unleash an army of undead upon the unsuspecting region. The players journey to the keep and descend through its crypts, resulting in a final climactic confrontation with Kalarel. |
The Other Side of the Rainbow | null | null | Brennan describes the experiences of growing up in an Irish speaking household and early interests in music through to her success recording with Clannad, Bono and finding her faith with help from her husband. |
Monkey Grip | Helen Garner | 1,977 | The novel is set in Melbourne in the mid 1970s. Nora is a single parent with a stable job as a teacher, but she lives in an inner-city shared house, part of a bohemia of students, musicians, and actors ...and junkies. Nora falls in love with Javo, an actor and a junkie. She drifts away from him, he drifts away from her. The harder they pull away from each other, the tighter the monkey grip. |
Hawksmoor | Peter Ackroyd | 1,985 | Set in the early 18th century, architect Nicholas Dyer is progressing work on several churches in London's East End. He is, however, involved in Satanic practices (something inculcated in him as an orphan), a fact which he must keep secret from all his associates, including his supervisor Sir Christopher Wren. This is all the more challenging since he indulges in human sacrifice as part of the construction of the buildings. Dyer's simmering contempt for Wren is brought closest to the surface in discussions they have concerning rationalism versus Dyer's own carefully disguised brand of mysticism. In the 20th century, DCS Nicholas Hawksmoor is called in to investigate a bizarre series of murders by strangulation that have occurred in and around the churches designed by Dyer. The murders are all the more mystifying since the murderer appeared to have left no identifying traces, not even fingerprints on the victims' necks. However the area is stalked by mysterious shadows, and it becomes clear that not only the weight of the investigation, but unseen forces from the past come to bear on Hawksmoor in a powerful, destructive manner. |
Tamsin | Peter S. Beagle | 1,999 | Jenny Gluckstein moves with her mother to a 300-year-old farm in Dorset, England, to live with her new stepfather and stepbrothers, Julian and Tony. Initially lonely, Jenny befriends Tamsin Willoughby, the ghost of the original farm's owner's daughter. |
The Rozabal Line | Ashwin Sanghi | null | India Today, India's most widely read weekly news magazine ranked The Rozabal Line among the top five fiction bestsellers in India According to Tehelka, The Rozabal Line is "a thriller that inquires into the controversial claim that Jesus Christ travelled to India and was buried in Kashmir’s Roza Bal tomb". The Hindu, one of India's National dailies, says that "The book deals in greater depth with the issue of Christ’s union with Mary Magdalene touched upon by The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as well as incorporating postulates of several other books including Jesus Lived in India: Life Before and After the Crucifixion by Holger Kersten and Jesus Died In Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel by Andreas Kaiser". The book also covers ground regarding the fact that Jesus sent St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles to Kerala to preach there The Rozabal Line kicks off with the theory that Yesu (or Jesus) may have fled Judea to study under Buddhist masters in India (the three wise men were Buddhist elders searching for a reincarnation in the manner that Dalai Lamas are searched for). It then goes one step further by building on Holger Kersten’s theory that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he was spirited away to safety by Essene monks. This foundation is used to build the storyline which goes something like this: Jesus returned to his spiritual home, India, and possibly married. Fast-forward to the present day and we find a group of thirteen jihadis who are working under the protective umbrella of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Although never stated directly, there are enough similarities between this group in the present day and Jesus and his 12 apostles two thousand years ago. One keeps wondering whether this group could possibly be the present-day descendant Jesus bloodline. While this group is working towards Armageddon, there is another group that is assisting them and, surprisingly, this is a Opus Dei inspired group called the Crux Decussata Permuta. Apparently, the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, had found it easier to cooperate with one another rather than to fight each other. The logic for this is traced back to the first crusades in which Richard the Lionheart was defeated by Saladin the Great. Add to this cauldron, a Japanese assassin, America’s first woman President and a New York based Spiritual Healer, and you have the final twist in the tale, an unexpected ending that reveals the final answer at Vaishno Devi, one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus. |
Remix | Lawrence Lessig | 2,008 | In Remix Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor and a respected voice in what he deems the "copyright wars", describes the disjuncture between the availability and relative simplicity of remix technologies and copyright law. Lessig insists that copyright law as it stands now is antiquated for digital media since every "time you use a creative work in a digital context, the technology is making a copy" (98). Thus, amateur use and appropriation of digital technology is under unprecedented control that previously extended only to professional use. Lessig insists that knowledge and manipulation of multi-media technologies is the current generation's form of "literacy"- what reading and writing was to the previous. It is the vernacular of today. The children growing up in a world where these technologies permeate their daily life are unable to comprehend why "remixing" is illegal. Lessig insists that amateur appropriation in the digital age cannot be stopped but only 'criminalized'. Thus most corrosive outcome of this tension is that generations of children are growing up doing what they know is "illegal" and that notion has societal implications that extend far beyond copyright wars. The book is now available as a free download under one of the Creative Commons' licenses. |
The Diothas | null | null | The novel begins with a scene in which the first-person narrator undergoes an episode of "mesmerism," or hypnosis, and wakes up in the far future; he has suddenly passed "from the nineteenth to the ninety-sixth century...." In the company of a friend and guide named Utis Estai, the narrator begins to learn the nature of this future world. He is introduced to the massive city of "Nuiore," the future development of New York City; and he travels with his guide to Utis's home in the suburbs. He learns from Utis and others about the structure and institutions of this future society. The book concentrates most of its attention on the social and technological advances of the ninety-sixth century; and some of Macnie's forecasts and predictions are notably prescient. The one most often cited in criticism and commentary is Macnie's prediction that the paved roads of the future will have white lines running down their centers to divide the traffic flow. Macnie also forecasts advances in communication, with a global telephone network, and recorded lectures by college professors, among other developments that have come to pass in the ensuing centuries. Some of Macnie's anticipations are more characteristic of the early twenty-first century, like electric cars, and rooftop gardens on public and private buildings (a feature of the modern "green building" movement). At one point in The Diothas, the narrator meets an elderly astronomer who has developed a "calculating machine" that can draw geometric figures, and can also begin with a geometric curve and then display the formula it represents—tasks done by modern computers and computer graphics. Macnie's future has progressive, egalitarian, and semi-socialist elements. The genders have fairly similar rights (though only males have to perform a type of national service). Some gender roles persist; all men are given some training in law, and all women in medicine. The majority of scientists are male, the majority of artists are female. Yet women inventors have been primarily responsible for the development of varzeo and lizeo ("far-seeing" and "live-seeing")—that is, television and motion pictures. Women do domestic laundry and cooking—but communally. The average work day is three hours long; people devote their abundant leisure time to the arts and sciences and to further education. A form of capitalism exists, though there are limits on inherited wealth. Workers in business enterprises are often shareholders also. Macnie does envision a significant element of Puritanism in his future society, with Prohibition of alcohol and laws against marital infidelity. The author's conservative opinions are partly represented by his future. He condemns the authors Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens as "maudlin sympathizers with crime...." He even includes in his future the old Roman practice in which "the father had unquestioned power of life and death over his children." There are personal aspects to the novel as well: the narrator meets and becomes enamored of a young woman named Reva Diotha. (She and her female relatives are "the Diothas" of the title). Cleverly, Macnie complicates the frame of his narrative: the narrator is, in his own perception, a time-traveller from the nineteenth century—but he is known by the other characters as a friend and relative named Ismar Thiusen who has developed a mental illness, and who has the delusion that he is a time-traveller from the nineteenth century. (The narrator arrives in the 96th century able to speak its altered English language, in which the name of West Point has devolved into "Uespa," St. Louis into "Salu," and Buffalo into "Falo.") Utis treats Thiusen rather like a psychiatric patient; Utis humors his friend's delusion and explains the features of their world, as a kind of therapy meant to restore Thiusen to his proper wits. Once Thiusen and Reva Diotha are matched as a couple, they interpret his situation in terms of reincarnation. In the end, however, Thiusen returns to the nineteenth century, after an accidental plunge over Niagara Falls. There, he is united with Edith Alston, the woman he loves. |
The Soldiers of Halla | D.J. MacHale | null | The Soldiers of Halla begins with the eleven Travelers, meeting in a crumbling wasteland of a city. They are immediately attacked by a helicopter, forcing them to seek refuge in the buildings. Bobby and Loor are trapped in a pit and watch as a colony of people are caught by the helicopters in a nearby building. When the helicopters leave, however, the Travelers gather back together. The first generation of Travelers quickly appear, such as Osa, Loor's mother, and Seegen, Kasha's father, and lead the other Travelers away. Bobby is met by his family again, who tell him that the wastleand was in fact the New York City zoo on Third Earth. His family leads Bobby to another place, that is filled with dark clouds and crumbling, gray earth. They confess that they know all that has transpired in Halla so far, including Bobby's murder of Alexander Naymeer on Second Earth. Moreover, they tell him that Solara is indeed the essence of Halla and thus the ten territories. Each victory and defeat inflicted by the Travelers and Saint Dane is reflected in the overall health of Solara. All of the souls of Halla are transferred to Solara after they pass on in Halla. As the exiles are in Eelong and the klees(cats that are the senitent species of the jungle like territory of Eelong) are going to attack them and the gars(humans that are not quite as intelligent as the klees.)The travelers defeat them and the travelers go back to Solara. Uncle Press then proposes that they should protect the exiles as they are the only positive energy that keeps Solara running. Bobby proposes that Uncle Press's plan would only delay defeat. He thinks they should make a portal and transport the travelers to the Ravinians and defeat them. Bobby gets into a fight with Saint Dane, and as he uses up all of his power, the foe dies. As the Travelers are victorious, all of Halla is saved from a fatal disaster. |
The Room | Hubert Selby, Jr. | 1,971 | The novel centers on a nameless petty criminal locked in a remand cell, and explores his feelings of impotence, hatred and rage, and fantasies of revenge. |
The Snow Queen | Mercedes Lackey | 2,008 | Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is the Fairy Godmother of the land she rules. She is known to have a heart of ice, hence her title of the "Snow Queen." Her duty is to help characters like Kay and Gerda redeem themselves, their sweethearts, gain backbones, and become more sensible and less willing to follow their loves to the end of the earth. The story begins with the traditional Hans Christian Andersen tale, which continues through the first few chapters. When Aleksia is falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes there is an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be. Then a young man disappears, and Aleksia, his sweetheart, and his mother will have to join together to defeat this mysterious evil. |
Walking Trees | Ralph Fletcher | 1,990 | Walking Trees: Teaching Teachers in New York City Schools is the story of Ralph Fletcher's introduction to the New York City school system as a teacher trainer in a writing staff development program. |
After the War | Carol Matas | null | Shortly after the end of World War II, Ruth Mendenberg is released from a death camp in Buchenwald, one of Hitler’s concentration camps,Ruth returns to her hometown in Poland and is quick to learn that both her home and her family are gone. Only being 15 years old, she has lost faith, and lives with the guilt of being the only one surviving from her family. She is received by a young man named Saul from Eretz Israel, who encourages recently liberated Jews travel towards relative freedom in Mandate Palestine along with other Jewish refugees. She is housed along with other recently liberated Jews, which include men and women of all ages. Although Ruth believes there is no hope, but agrees to travel with the refugees. The house is attacked by an angry mob after a child accuses some of the refugees of kidnapping and murdering some of the children in the village. She is forced to hide, until the soldiers quiet the mob, and shortly after is forced to flee, along with 20 children. It is her job to lead them safely through Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, and then to Mandate Palestine. |
Pariksha guru | null | null | The novel tells a story of the extravagance of Hindu bankers and traders. Its theme is not to adopt Western culture. It cautioned young men of well to do families about the ill effects of bad company. It then shows how to live a practical life that preserves traditional values in honour and dignity. The characters in the novel are depicted using modern agricultural elements, and changing their way of speaking. Children are advised to read the newspaper. The author emphases that modernity should be embraced without giving up middle class values. |
Lost in the Barrens | Farley Mowat | 1,956 | The parents of Jamie (the white boy) died in a car crash, thus he was under the care of his trapper uncle, Angus. Angus had supported Jamie's boarding-school fees for a long time, until the fur trade had declined. Angus could no longer support Jamie's school. Thus, Jamie left the boarding school to live with his uncle. Jamie made friends with the Cree Tribe's Chief's son, Awasin. Then the Chief thought a trader was cheating him, so he asked Angus and Jamie to go with him. Then, it was decided that Jamie would stay with Awasin for Angus' canoe could not hold three people and other things. Fortunately Jamie was fine with this and he even said that he would have more fun in the wilderness. Shortly after, Chipeweyans come to the Crees for help. The Chipeweyans were starving because the deer did not come at its usual time in the year. Awasin's mother was suspicious that the Chipeweyans may just be looking for a free handout, and so the boys agreed to go with them back to the Chipeweyan's camp to prove they needed the supplies. Jamie decides he wants to go too, so the two and the Chipeweyans who came (including Denikazi, their leader), canoes back to the Chipeweyan camp. There, Denikazi misunderstood for he thought Jamie and Awasin were going with them on the hunt for the deer. This is how Jamie and Awasin start their journey for the deer hunt out in the barrens. Soon, they go up to the North farther, but they do not find any 'deer' (in the book, deer means barrenland caribou). So, Denikazi orders Jamie and Awasin to stay with two young Chipeweyans at a certain point until they come back. He includes that they should run, and forget about the camp should they encounter Eskimos. In this book, the Chipeweyans and the Crees are deathly afraid of the Eskimos. The Chipeweyan Chief Denikazi described it this way: his people went and hunted as far north as they wanted to for deer, for they had guns and the Eskimos did not. Then, the Eskimos got guns and fought back. (Nowadays Eskimos are called 'Inuit' or 'Thule', but this was not the case when Mowat wrote his novel, or for decades afterward). Anyway, while staying with the two young Chipewyan hunters, Jamie decides he wants to take the chance and explore. He tricks Awasin into it, and later Awasin gives in. They go up to see the 'stone house' that one of the two Chipeweyans had told them about. There, they try to find it but unexpectedly meet a whirlpool and barely survive. Gathering what they can salvage from the water and their broken canoe, they have barely enough to survive. They cannot use the canoe anymore, they are stranded in the barrens. When the two young Chipeweyans found out that Awasin and Jamie were gone they went on searching for them. Their search is abruptly stopped when they catch a glance of an Eskimo kayak. As for Jamie and Awasin, they decide to go the way that Denikazi and the other hunters went, so they can join with them on the journey back. A problem occurs, for one of Denikazi's men sees what he believes is an Eskimo and they all flee quietly back. They unknowingly pass by Jamie and Awasin's camp during the night. Jamie and Awasin are then forced to overcome a series of obstacles including finding shelter and food, to wait until the summer when they can make the trek back to their home camp with the best chance of survival. They engage in a massive caribou hunt, and able to build a log cabin and make a comfortable home for themselves. On their attempted return trip, they both become afflicted by snow blindness and are forced to build an igloo to survive. They are discovered by an Eskimo boy named Peetyuk who offers to help and takes them to his camp, where they learn that the Eskimo do not hate the cree, and are only hostile because they are as afraid of the Cree as the Cree are of them. The boys are able to return home with the help of their new friends, and they make plans to return to their cabin the next summer with Jamie's uncle Angus. |
Riding for My Life | Julie Krone | null | Julie Krone is the world's greatest ever female horse racing jockey. By age 25, Julie was the first woman ever to win a riding title at a major track, the first woman ever to win five races in one day at a New York track, and one of three jockeys ever to win six races on one card.http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=415718571 In 1993, she became the first female winner of a Triple Crown race, riding 14-to-1 long-shot Colonial Affair to victory in the Belmont Stakes—"showing the patience, intelligence and tactical savvy that have made her one of the nation's leading performers," wrote William Nack of Sports Illustrated.http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138678/index.htmhttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEEDB113DF935A35755C0A965958260 The Boys Club follows Julie's struggles in her tomboy childhood in rural Michigan and her early-career drug use, her battles with fellow jockeys and the media and her climb up the jockey success ladder, the horrific 1993 racetrack accident that crushed her leg and chest, and her painful determination to make a comeback - all part of her hard-hitting fight to become a female jockey in the male-dominated world of horse racing.http://www.amazon.com/Riding-My-Life-Julie-Krone/dp/0316504777 Despite a series of debilitating falls and challenges, by the time Julie retired in 1999, she had won 3,545 races and more than $81 million in purse earnings.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/08/07/sports/main222526.shtml |
One Day of Life | Manlio Argueta | 1,980 | Guadalupe "Lupe" Guardado is a middle-aged Salvadoran woman who lives near Chalatenango, El Salvador. During the day she is required to do what she can to support her family, while her husband works for a wealthy landowner. Her husband José has become involved in rebellion against the economic conditions and became a leader in the Christian farmers organization. Fearing persecution for his opposition, José regularly stays "in the hills" after work and sees his family little. The Guardado's son Justino was killed by the "authorities" prior to the events in the novel, and their son-in-law Helio has "disappeared." Guadalupe's granddaughter Adolfina relays the protest at a cathedral, as well as a massacre of students on a bus. At the end of the novel, the authorities bring a beaten man to Guadalupe and Adolfina who had said the name "Adolfina" after being severely beaten. Adolfina does not recognize the man, but Guadalupe recognizes her husband José. On his previous advice, she denies knowing him, and he is taken away. |
Holy Deadlock | A. P. Herbert | 1,934 | The novel's plot is very similar to that of "Not a Crime", expanded and presented with a tragic ending rather than the earlier deus ex machina. The protagonists are a faultless and honest young couple, with the everyman names of John Adam and Mary Eve, who married impetuously, are now amicably separated, and wish to divorce so that they can remarry; neither has committed adultery nor desired to. Because of the lack of legal provision, they are compelled to collude to present a fictional cause for divorce; Mary asks Adam to "act like a gentleman" and provide the pretext, as her fiancé, Martin Seal, cannot be named as a co-respondent without risking his job (he works as an announcer for the BBC). After his first attempt to obtain the necessary evidence, the maid refuses to identify him in court and the case collapses; at the second attempt, his "partner" develops measles and has to be supported in the hotel for several weeks at great expense. A decree nisi is granted but, during the waiting period, Mary spends the night with Seal and is reported by an acquaintance to the King's Proctor, who reports that the divorce should not be granted. She fights the case, but the judge refuses to exercise any discretion in her favour, and declines to grant a divorce. By the end of the book, Mary and Adam are separated but remain legally married. Seal has lost his position after being named in the final court case, but can choose to live with Mary without excessive social stigma. However, John is a broken man, legally unable to marry his lover—and, as she is a school headmistress, socially unable to continue associating with her. On the last page, he departs in the company of a prostitute, announcing that he intends to "behave like a gentleman—at last!" |
The Great Romance | null | null | The book's opening scene portrays the protagonist, John Hope, awakening from a sleep of 193 years. Hope had been a prominent mid-twentieth-century scientist, who had developed new power sources that enabled air travel and, eventually, space exploration. In the year 1950, Hope had taken a "sleeping draught" that put him into a long suspended animation, as part of a planned experiment. When he wakes in the year 2143, he is met by Alfred and Edith Weir, descendants of John Malcolm Weir, the chemist who had prepared the sleeping draft Hope had taken in 1950. Hope is shocked to find that the Weirs and their contemporaries have telepathic abilities. The development of telepathy as a general human talent has led to a vastly improved society. People can no longer conceal malevolent motives and plans, a fact that has inaugurated a new moral order. Those who have been unable or unwilling to adapt to this new social and ethical climate have left civilized society for more primitive lands, where the telepathic power is not dominant. Hope joins with Alfred Weir and another scientist, Charles Moxton, in a plan to fly a specially-equipped craft to the planet Venus. Moxton has developed his paranormal abilities to include telekinesis. The later chapters of the book describe their flight to Venus, and what they find on that planet. The Great Romance makes a special effort to attempt a realistic forecast of what space travel would be like, in terms of the absence of breathable atmosphere and gravity in space, and comparable factors. In these aspects, the book reflects the likely influence of Percy Greg's 1880 novel Across the Zodiac. |
Infinity and the Mind | Rudy Rucker | 1,982 | The book contains popular expositions (accessible to readers with no more than a high school mathematics background) on the mathematical theory of infinity, and a number of related topics. These include Gödel's incompleteness theorems and their relationship to concepts of artificial intelligence and the human mind, as well as the conceivability of some unconventional cosmological models. The material is approached from a variety of viewpoints, some more conventionally mathematical and others being nearly mystical. There is a brief account of the author's personal contact with Kurt Gödel. An appendix contains one of the few popular expositions on set theory research on what are known as "strong axioms of infinity." |
Alamat ng Gubat | Bob Ong | 2,003 | Tong and his friends help find the banana heart in the forest. When Langgam won as the new leader of the forest, he got squashed by an animal. And also, they are being threatened by a gang of evil animals. So Tong, Pagong, Aso and Kuneho fight for the forest and are planning to save Tong's father. But when Tong's friends were eaten by Buwaya, Tong is left behind. Will Tong ever get the banana heart without killing the whole forest? Tong eventually got the banana heart with the help of an annoying but wise monkey. He has also not harmed the forest but saved it and made it a better place to live in. But of course, no one still knows what has happened to Leon and his gang. |
Wildwood Dancing | Juliet Marillier | 2,006 | One winter, Jena's father sets out to the coast to recover from a serious illness that would kill him if he remained home for the winter. In his absence, he leaves his house, his younger daughters, and his half of the merchant business he and his cousin run in the hands of Jena, and her elder sister Tatiana (called 'Tati'). It is when Jena's father's brother Nicolae dies, that things begin to go wrong for Jena and her sisters: Cezar uses his newfound power of being master of his father's estate to take a firm control over the castle in which Jena and her sisters live. Every full moon, the sisters go to the Other Kingdom, where they meet and dance with various magical creatures. Eventually, Cezar becomes so bent on revenge for the death of his older brother Costi (who drowned ten years prior to the book) that he suggests felling the forest around both his and his cousins' estates. In distress, Jena attempts to dissuade him from doing so. She also attempts to prevent Tati from seeing her Sorrow, her sweetheart, who Jena believes to be one of the Night People. In an effort to persuade her sister that it is not meant to be, Jena enlists the help of Bogdana, Nicolae's widow, to organise a party to find suitable husbands at the next Full Moon. Jena and her younger sisters are all upset that they will miss the Full Moon dance, but none so much as Tati; she rapidly loses weight, and her personality fades into almost non-existence. Meanwhile, there was a killing in the village, which had all the markings of an attack of the Night people; reluctantly, Jena tells her sister of what Tadeusz had told her about Dark of the Moon at one of the Full Moon revels. Tati decides to use this portal at Dark of the Moon, where Jena discovers her with Tadeusz's sister, Anastasia. Frightened, the sisters are separated, and Anastasia takes Jena (unwillingly) to see Draguţsa's mirror. In the mirror, Jena learns of Sorrow's true heritage, as well as sees a vision of herself and a young man that she would come to love; the young man in this vision then changes into a horrible monster, turning on Jena's younger sisters. Frightened, Jena flees back to the lakeside, where she meets up with Tati and Sorrow. Sorrow then sends the girls over the frozen lake and back to their own world, where they decide to visit the Dancing Glade the next month to both warn the Queen of Cezar's intentions, and ask if she could help Sorrow, and the girl who was revealed to be his younger sister. After miserably failing to propose to (and being rejected by) Jena, Cezar works out that the entrance to the Other Kingdom is indeed in the bedchamber that Jena and her sisters share. Desperate for help, Jena sets out to the lake where Costi drowned, to seek out Dragutsa. She speaks to the old woman for a little, before she is given a powerful sleeping potion to put both the man and the chaperone to sleep on the night of the full moon. As Jena leaves, she gives Gogu a kiss on the nose; a bright flash throws both her and the frog apart. When she can see again, she finds a young man on the shore of the lake, whom she instantly knows to be Gogu; she also recognises him as the young man in the mirror, who turns into a monster. She realises that, despite knowing what he is, she loves him, and when he gives no answer, she runs away back home. As planned, the sisters drug the man and chaperone in their bedchamber, and seek the help of the faerie Queen. Ileana tells Tati that she has set Sorrow a quest, to be completed within one month; if he succeeds, they will be allowed to wed, and Tati to live in the Other Kingdom. Gogu is also there, and the faerie Queen reveals that he was bound by a spell of silence, giving him his voice back. Gogu then reveals to Jena that he is Costi, which she denies; however, Dragutsa later reveals that this is true. She had placed the boy under and enchantment to turn him into a frog. She then revealed that it was Jena's doubt that allowed Anastasia to manipulate the image in the mirror; Costi was not a monster, and Jena had broken his heart by claiming that he was, instead of trusting him. Costi returns the next day and takes over his father's estate, and Cezar disappears; however, Jena is too nervous and guilty to speak to Costi. Eventually, Tati convinces her to go visit him and, on the day of the Full Moon, she does. She and Costi work out their misunderstanding, and return to Jena's home, where they take Tati to an injured Sorrow to take to the Other Kingdom. Eventually, life returns to normal, though they miss Tati. Jena's father returns home, and Jena and Costi look forward to their impending marriage. |
Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class | Robin D.G. Kelley | 1,994 | Kelley examines the methods of resistance adopted by black working class as well as the spaces where black working class congregated to form an emerging consciousness. Utilizing the theory of historian George Rawick that the only way to detect working-class resistance from the past is to have knowledge of the amount of damage caused to the employer by the employees, Kelley documents the organized and unorganized ways black workers expressed resentment for racist treatment, including slowdowns, theft, leaving work early, quitting, and various acts of sabotage. He also looks in depth at black resistance that took place in public space, namely Birmingham’s streetcars and buses during World War II. In spite of strict controls by mostly white American bus operators, black working-class riders had no other transportation options and offered fierce resistance—not just in publicly celebrated incidents of heroism of individuals such as Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, but in every-day conflicts such as arguments and fights with authorities and other riders. According to Kelley, such incidents not only inspired the individuals involved but also galvanized onlookers to the effect that the governance of public transit became quite difficult, which slowly effected change. Incorporating the theories of Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, Kelley examines the social spaces utilized by black working class to escape the racism and humiliations they suffered at the hands of the authority, such as church and home. These spaces, though sometimes also disrupted by outsiders, allowed the community "dark" and hidden venues to discuss experiences, grievances, and dreams that helped to shape black working-class consciousness. Kelley spends part of the book investigating the embracing of alternative goals and lifestyles as a means of resisting poor and limited choices. Young black men during the World War II era were largely burdened by poor education and training that it made it difficult for them to find, much less maintain, employment. Rather than adopting the stereotype assigned poor, southern migrants, many working-class blacks embraced a new identity symbolized by the zoot suit. According to Kelley, many of the working-class blacks of the era felt that most of the jobs available to them were "slave labor", and they instead elected to become hustlers, pimps and gangsters to protest job discrimination and the lack of viable employment options. New identities afforded new opportunities to individuals such as Malcolm Little to study the psychology of white racism, though the choice of criminal life also brought extreme consequences. In more recent times, this alternate choice is demonstrated through "gangsta rap", which evolved out of the authority-challenging blues of the 19th century. Born from black working class in Los Angeles, the musical genre responds in part to the hard realities of poverty and declining unemployment. Kelley illustrates these facets by referencing the lyrics of Ice Cube, who in "A Bird in the Hand"—a track on 1991's Death Certificate—tells the story of a young man forced to sell crack to survive when the only job he can obtain after graduation is an underpaying one at McDonald's. |
Once in a Lifetime | Moss Hart | null | The satirical comedy focuses on the effect talking pictures have on the entertainment industry. When the New York City vaudevillean team of Jerry Hyland, May Daniels, and George Lewis find themselves in a faltering vaudeville act, they decide to head west and present themselves as elocution experts in the hope someone will hire them to train actors unaccustomed to speaking on screen. On the train they meet gossip columnist Helen Hobart, who introduces them to megalomaniac film mogul Herman Glogauer when they arrive in Hollywood. The trio's misadventures include encounters with Lawrence Vail, a New York City playwright driven to distraction and eventually a sanatorium by studio bureaucracy and a lack of work to keep him busy; silent screen beauties Phyllis Fontaine and Florabel Leigh, whose voices sound like nails on a blackboard; two pages in 18th century dress who periodically arrive carrying placards with announcements about Glogauer's latest doings; a ditzy receptionist who wears an evening gown to work; and aspiring actress (and proverbial dumb blonde) Susan Walker and her chaperoning stage mother. Dimwitted George becomes a director who shoots the wrong script, forgets to turn on the soundstage lights, and audibly cracks nuts during filming, yet his movie is called a masterpiece and he's declared a genius by trend-conscious journalists who believe he's ahead of his time. |
No More Dead Dogs | Gordon Korman | 2,002 | Ever since Wallace Wallace (main character) was young, he has insisted on telling the truth. After scoring the winning touchdown for the Bedford Middle School football team in the championship Wallace Wallace, he becomes a popular guy. What the entire town and most of the football team don't realize is that Wallace is really a benchwarmer, whose winning touchdown was a fluke. His former best friend, football team captain Steve Cavanaugh, knows that the winning move was lucky and has cut ties with Wallace because of it. When Wallace is assigned to write a report on the book Old Shep, My Pal, he won't lie about his feelings. He dislikes the book and writes a negative review, which results in a detention handed down by his English teacher, Mr. Fogelman, until he writes a quality review. His detention is spent with the drama club, which is currently producing a play version of Old Shep, My Pal. Wallace is initially bored, but soon impresses the club members with his charisma and suggestions for improvement. When his detention is complete, he quits the football team to join the drama club. The student body does not take this lightly, as they view him as the hero of the team. Soon after Wallace joins the club, an unknown person vandalizes the play set and rehearsals. One club member, Rachel Turner, believes Wallace is the culprit. Everyone else initially regards him as a hero and refuses to believe her, but when one of Wallace's practice jerseys appears during the final sabotage attempt, they turn against him. Rachel changes her mind to believe that Wallace isn't the vandal. Wallace is eventually banned from the play entirely. Despite his ban, the drama club decides to use Wallace's ideas for the play, including having Shep live at the end. This decision results in disaster when the saboteur blows up the prop Shep during the performance—just as the actors praise his miraculous recovery. Meanwhile, Wallace figures out that the culprit is Rachel's brother Dylan, who wanted revenge because he felt the play had ruined the famous Wallace Wallace. Consequently, Wallace tells his first lie to spare Rachel's feelings. After her initial anger at Wallace, she realizes on her own that Dylan was behind the attacks. Wallace and Rachel recognize their mutual feelings of love, and plan to go on a date together. Furthermore, Cavanaugh and Wallace make up and are friends again. |
Every Day is Mother's Day | Hilary Mantel | 1,985 | It is a black comedy set in the mid 1970s and begins with the widowed spiritualist Evelyn Axon's discovery that her mentally handicapped daughter Muriel is pregnant. Isabel Field is the latest social worker to tackle the Axon's but Evelyn is determined not to let anyone interfere with Muriel, whose condition she blames on her daughter's recent weekly visits to a daycare centre. Isabel Field herself is having an affair with the brother of Evelyn's neighbour and the story of this relationship is interwoven with that of Evelyn and Muriel's and the birth of the baby... The story is continued in Hilary Mantel's next novel Vacant Possession. |
Moon of the Spider | Richard A. Knaak | 2,005 | Driven by nightmares to the ruins of a mysterious tomb, Lord Aldric Jitan hopes to awaken a terrible evil that has slept since the fall of Tristram. Drawn by the growing darkness in the land, the enigmatic Necromancer, Zayl, stumbles upon Jitan's plot -- unaware that one of his own brethren has set these dire events in motion. Now, as the celestial Moon of the Spider rises, the nefarious demon, Astrogha, prepares to unleash his minions upon the world of Sanctuary. |
The Vodi | null | null | Dick Corvey is suffering from advanced tuberculosis in a provincial sanitarium. While confined to bed 24 hours a day, he meditates on various events from his earlier life, his friendship with Tom, his relationships with women, especially his brief engagement with Lois who abandoned him when his virtually hopeless condition had become apparent. A recurring theme is that of the Vodi, a malevolent race of small creatures invented by Tom when at school. The chief concern of the Vodi is to persecute and destroy the unlucky: the good and harmless people who invite the wrath of the Vodi by these very qualities (while the undeserving minority can enjoy good fortune and all life's comforts unhampered). Among others, Dick is tended by Nurse Evelyn Mallaton, whose sympathy and strong sexual attraction eventually give him the energy to rally against the disease and recover. However, while attracted to Dick, Evelyn understands his lack of prospects in the world and becomes engaged to a local businessman. Here emerges the main theme of the book: what Dick perceived as the distinction between the undeserved good and bad luck may in fact be the difference between a strong will and the lack of it. The novel ends with Dick bravely leaving the sanitarium where he has been offered a safe nursing job, to try to establish himself in the world on his own and perhaps get Evelyn back. |
Hunter's Run | Gardner Dozois | 2,007 | On the colony planet of São Paulo, a man named Ramon Espejo kills a man in a fight outside a bar over a woman. It transpires the man was a diplomat, and Espejo decides to lie low in the wilderness in the north of the planet's major continent. Whilst in hiding he accidentally discovers an alien installation. The suspicious aliens capture him and render him unconscious. When Ramon wakes up, he learns that another man had followed him into the alien hideout, but has since escaped, presumably to reveal the existence of the aliens to the rest of the colony. The aliens do not want this and thereby enslave Ramon using highly advanced technology, deciding that since he is human, he can be used to track down and find the other intruder. Ramon at first tries to stall and help his "prey" but his plans are ruined by his captor Maneck, whom he eventually gets to know a little better, during their travels together. Ramon realizes that the aliens are not evil or fundamentally incomprehensible, only culturally different. He then learns a few things about the race and accordingly, begins to question some aspects of his own life. Eventually though, it is revealed to him that the man they are chasing after is actually the "real" Ramon and that he (the man who is kept prisoner by Maneck) is actually an artificial clone made by the aliens. There never was any other man who broke into the installation, it was Ramon who has escaped. Now disheartened, the clone-Ramon manages to escape by tricking his alien keeper and eventually meets up with his original. The original Ramon does not recognize him, since the clone is considerably younger and in better shape. After traveling together for some time, the clone realizes with a start that he does not actually like the person that he is (or was) very much: the original has never met Maneck or gotten to know the aliens and thus has never had time to ponder about some of the questions the clone has started to struggle with. After the real Ramon finally sees that he is traveling with a man who bears uncanny resemblance to him, the clone kills his original in an act of desperation and then, assuming his (former?) identity, takes up a new life as his old self in the capital. The novel ends with him deciding to go back, make peace and reach out to the aliens in an attempt to use their knowledge of the planet's mineral wealth to enrich him. The story ends before we learn their response to this offer. |
Earth Revisited | null | null | The novel delivers the story of Herbert Atheron in a first-person narrative. In 1892 he is a successful businessman, married, the father of a son and daughter. Though not yet 50 years old, he has contracted a fatal illness; at the start of the book, he is dying. He re-evaluates his life, to reach a grim conclusion: he feels that he has wasted his life by concentrating on business and neglecting the personal and familial matters that count most. He especially regrets the loss of his first love, a woman named Theresa, who died young after he abandoned her. On his deathbed, he feels himself "alone in the vast vacuity of space, a naked, shivering soul. A deep darkness of horror engulfed me. I could endure no more." When he regains consciousness, he finds himself in the body of a 27-year-old man named Harold Amesbury. He discovers that it is now a hundred years later; Amesbury has been ill and delirious for three months. His fiancée, Helen Newcome, is overjoyed at his recovery — but stunned when he reveals his identity as Atherton. Helen determines to nurse Herbert/Harold back to mental health. She leads him out into the world, where he confronts the vast changes of the intervening century, and beholds the "bewildering magnificence and beauty" — of Brooklyn in 1992. Helen Newcome brings the protagonist to her inventor father; together, the two Newcomes guide the confused time traveller in the realities of 1992. Society has enjoyed vast improvement in the intervening century: the city of Columbia, formerly New York, is cleaner, better organized, more peaceful, healthier, and generally better than before. Electrification and mechanization have brought widespread prosperity, and the extremes of wealth and poverty have been levelled. Government has assumed more responsibility: all land is owned by the state, and people lease the sites of their palatial houses. Newcome the inventor concentrates on improving food production; he receives a stipend from the state, and his inventions go to benefit society as a whole. Brooks does not dwell on the larger political organization of society, though he indicates the world is dominated by the United States of America and a "United States of Europe." War is a thing of the past. Brooks blends the technical and the spiritual: when Newcome shows the protagonist the new "harmonic telegraph," Atherton/Amesbury speculates about the possibilities of both radio and telepathy. The second half of the book is dominated by spiritual matters. The protagonist has a rough adjustment to his strange situation, and obsesses over his lost Theresa. Helen Newcome grows distressed at her limited ability to help her fiancé, and leaves for a trip abroad. Atherton/Amesbury boards with a widow and her children. The daughter of the house, Irene, was used as an experimental subject in hypnotism by her late physician father; she is a spontaneous medium and clairvoyant. Irene leads the protagonist on an aerial journey to the now-lush Sahara, where he is re-united with Helen. Through psychic visions, the two come to understand that Helen is the lost Theresa reincarnated. They are happily married in the end. |
Suicide Hill | James Ellroy | 1,987 | The novel begins a psychiatrist's assessment recommending that Hopkins be immediately retired from duty with a full pension. Hopkins eludes compulsory retirement with attachment as LAPD liaison officer to an FBI bank robbery investigation. Hopkins then manipulates his way into robbery/homicide investigations. The novel's story line and characters twist and turn. |
Beyond Thirty and The Man-Eater | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,957 | See the articles on the separate works. |
1969: The Year Everything Changed | null | null | Divided into four parts that correspond with the four seasons of the year, the book chronicles the history of 1969 in American society and culture. The author delves into such events as the New York Jets' historic Super Bowl victory, Richard Nixon's inauguration, the birth of punk music and the first Led Zeppelin tour, the publication of The Godfather and release of Easy Rider, the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River fire, the Battle of Hamburger Hill, the People's Park and Stonewall riots, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Chappaquiddick incident, the Woodstock Festival, the Manson Family and Zodiac Killer murders, the Miracle Mets' championship season, the peace movement and the birth of the Weathermen, the Days of Rage, the Occupation of Alcatraz, the murder of Fred Hampton, and the Altamont Free Concert. |
Drift and Mastery | Walter Lippmann | 1,914 | The Themes of Muckraking Lippmann examines the trend of muckraking journalism as emblematic of the underlying social conditions in America. Lippmann argues the increasing scope of government and integration of society led to the proliferation of muckraking. According to Lippmann, corruption had always existed in politics, but social change and the expansion of government made it relevant and scandalous. He argues muckraking is therefore neither "progressive or reactionary", but simply a manifestation of the bewilderment of society at evolving social and economic arrangements. New Incentives Lippmann argues against commercial competition as the best incentive for industry. Opposing systematic anti-trust policies, he believes well-managed trusts can increase cooperation while minimizing waste. Lippmann advocates scientific experimentation to find the most efficient mode of business. Increased power for labor and the consumer he argues will lead to a new system of incentives. Lippmann also notes the development of school of business administration may encourage a scientific ethic to replace businesses' reliance on competition. The Magic of Property Lippmann asserts that old definitions of property are outmoded by the advanced of industrial capitalism, especially stock ownership in corporations. As a solution he proposes government ownership of some industry (steel, oil, coal, etc.) combined with the application of managerial skill. Lippmann further challenges the view that private ownership and especially stock ownership leads to efficiency. Citing the construction of the Panama Canal, he argues government can work efficiently when given the means. Caveat Emptor Lippmann addresses the concerns of consumers as part of the new economic order. He argues that because of lack of information and the misinformation of advertising current patterns of consumption were inefficient. Lippmann sees several ways of correcting this problem. According to Lippmann, centralization and conglomeration of business will create greater accountability to consumers by focusing their attention. Politically, Lippmann argues that voting rights for women, the primary household consumer, will increase the importance of the consumer in the political realm. Lippmann speculates that consumers are, "destined to be stronger than the interests either of labor or of capital." A Key to the Labor Movement Lippmann argues that labor unions form a necessary safeguard against tyrannical capitalism and bring to democracy to industry. As Lippmann states, "Without unions industrial democracy is unthinkable. Without democracy in industry, that is where it counts most, there is no such thing as democracy in America." Lippmann goes on to criticize radical unions such as the IWW, arguing they do not value tangible gains for their members. The Funds of Progress Lippmann addresses the question of how increased social programs can be paid for. He argues there is a social surplus that can be created by increasing efficiency using management and science. Lippmann argues that business when forced to account for the interest of the worker, the consumer and the government will refrain from "reducing wages or raising prices" and will instead focus on industrial efficiency. Science and management, he argues, will allow business to find the "funds of progress" by reducing waste, increasing cooperation and simply being industrially efficient. A Nation of "Villagers" Lippmann begins by examining the hostility to trusts. He argues that much hostility can be attributed not to trusts unethical actions, but to their relative newness. In this vein Lippmann criticizes politicians who appeal to a sense of outrage in trusts and new economic arrangements. He specifically mentions both William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, who he believes falsely idealize the small-scale agrarian past. Lippmann states this view quite succinctly at the end of the chapter writing, Those who cling to the village view of life may deflect the drift, may batter the trusts around a bit, but they will never dominate business, never humanize its machinery, and they will continue to be playthings of industrial change. At the bottom the issue is between those who are willing to enter upon effort for which there is no precedent, and those who aren't. A Big World and Little Men In this chapter Lippmann contrasts the complexity of societal problems with simplistic institutions. He argues just as a city dweller is unaccustomed to dealing with the countryside, our institutions are unable to deal with the "big" modern world. Lippmann therefore asserts institutions should, and in democracies already have, adapt themselves to these changed conditions. More personally, Lippmann claims this "big world" causes individual turmoil as, "Those changes distract him so deeply that the more "advanced" he is, the more he flounders in the bogs of his own soul." Drift Lippmann begins by asserting that Wilson's New Freedom is flawed because it assumed an older form of democracy can be retrieved. This looking backwards for a golden age is fruitless and is essentially childish according to Lippmann. On similar grounds Lippmann goes on to criticize Marxian socialists who he sees as unrealistic in their assumptions. Lippmann ends by defining the challenge of "Drift." He calls Drift a "spiritual problem," which is caused by the combination of social/economic change and the freedom from the old order. The Rock of Ages In this chapter Lippmann criticizes the dogmatic clinging to tradition and further outlines the challenge of modern social and economic arrangements. Lippmann goes on to examine immigration and uses the metaphor of immigration to describe all people are immigrants in the rapidly changing modern world. A Note on the Women's Movement Lippmann cites the women's movement as a perfect example of how the "rock of ages" has given way to a modern dilemma where freedom must be exercised rationally. Women's rights he argues, are necessary simply because society has already moved past demarcated "spheres." He emphasizes the movement towards women's rights and rationality in housework and child rearing will be especially dramatic because women have heretofore been irrational and conservative in their actions. Noticeably, Lippmann is not completely on board with a feminist agenda. He states plainly that female participation in the labor force is a societal ill that will hopefully come to an end. Bogeys Lippmann examines how, especially in an increasingly complex world, fear prevents society from addressing problems rationally. He argues that removing everyday concerns and fears will lead to greater rationality and boldness on the part of citizens. Invoking Freud, he argues that constructed fears unconsciously hold people and society back from achievement. Poverty, Chastity, Obedience Lippmann argues poverty, chastity and obedience are a more primitive and brutal means of controlling a society, compared with self-government. Notably, he argues that, "To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state." Lippmann extends the implications of this argument asserting that those afflicted by poverty are "unfit for self-government." Similarly, Lippmann advocating moving beyond valuing chastity. Instead he argues, "Our interest in sex is no longer to annihilate it, but to educate it, to find civilized opportunities for its expression." Summing up this line of argument, Lippmann asserts old virtues sought to restrain citizens whereas true democratic virtues should provide people with a rich life where they deal with life in all its complexity. Mastery Lippmann begins this chapter by citing the example of a primitive tribe who had traditionally chopped down trees with the ineffective method of straight cuts. When the more effective "western" method of using V-shaped cuts was introduced, Lippmann relates, the tribe insisted on the less effective method for the sake of tradition. Lippmann argues current society clinging to traditional methods and economic approach to are as irrational as tribesmen refusing to make V-shaped cuts. Lippmann goes on to define the scientific and rational application of new methods and approaches as mastery. Notably, he argues science is inextricably linked to democracy, that "The scientific spirit is the discipline of democracy." Modern Communion Lippmann begins examining the individual implications of his societal framework. He argues that science, unlike socialism, provides a means for collective cooperation for the betterment of society. Science, according to Lippmann, allows people worldwide to approach problems within the same framework and come to similar conclusions. Spelling out his pragmatic understanding Lippmann argues science, "distinguishes between fact and fancy, and works always with the implied resolution to make the best out of what is possible." Fact and Fancy In his final chapter, Lippmann fully takes on the impact of science. He notes that science may seem ill-suited to social concerns and generally impersonal. Lippmann differentiates the scientific viewpoint from a complete rejection of tradition. He argues that past, because of its variety of ways of life and societies, can be a source of inspiration. Instead of an "abrupt break with the accumulated wisdom of the past," Lippmann favors taking what is rational and useful from tradition. Lippmann concludes by affirming the power of science to encompass the full range of human experience and materially improve upon it. He argues that science is the means to make "reality bend to our purposes." |
You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again | Julia Phillips | 1,991 | The book begins by briefly introducing the reader to Phillips in 1989, before quickly travelling back to her childhood in 1940s Brooklyn. It then covers her early life and first successes in the film industry: she and Michael earned $100,000 from their debut feature, Steelyard Blues, moved to Malibu, California, and had a daughter, Kate. She also reveals the personal peccadillos and vices of the biggest Hollywood A-listers of the day, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Richard Dreyfuss, Goldie Hawn, and David Geffen. Many of these people were pivotal figures in the emergence of New Hollywood in the 1960s and '70s, but Phillips disparagingly refers to them as "a rogues' gallery of nerds". Later episodes in her life, including freebasing, and her abusive relationship with a violent drug addict which caused her to miss her own mother's funeral, are also discussed candidly. Most significant, from Phillips' own point of view, is her exposé of the "Boys' Club" in the higher echelons of Hollywood, where she claimed it was her gender that led to her ultimate ostracism. Mike Ovitz who headed the Creative Artists Agency were, in her eyes, responsible for a qualitative decline in standards and the increasing banality of movies since the 1970s. |
The Bulwark | Theodore Dreiser | 1,946 | Hannah and Rufus Barnes, both Quakers, move out of Maine to Trenton, New Jersey, where Hannah's widowed sister lives. Their son Solon, the protagonist, meets Benecia Wallin; although she is affluent and he is not, they get married. Solon works in a bank in Philadelphia, where his Quaker values are contrary to financial ethos. He summons a bank examiner from Washington DC to stop the corrupt practices of some chief executives. Eventually, he resigns. Meanwhile, two of his offspring, Etta and Stewart, repudiate their Quaker upbringing. While Orville gets married and Isobel works in a college, Etta moves to Wisconsin and then Greenwich Village under the influence of one of her friends, Volida La Porte. She has an affair with a painter, until he decides to go West to further his career. Moreover, Stewart accidentally kills one of his dates and commits suicide shortly after. Eventually, Benecia dies upon Etta's return; Solon dies of cancer as Etta watches over him. |
Feathers | Jacqueline Woodson | 2,007 | Taking place in the 1970s, in an urban all African American school, this book highlights the hard topics of racism, faith, hope, and disabilities. A white boy comes to the school and is soon dubbed “Jesus Boy”. His entrance as the only white student causes tension and misunderstandings. Some of the students believe that he is Jesus and others simply hope he is. He is very quiet and doesn’t let Trevor, the class bully, hurt him. He just calmly talks to Trevor and never retaliates. Jesus Boy knows sign language which intrigues Frannie since she has known sign language her whole life. Frannie has grown up with a deaf older brother, and is very sensitive to how people treat and perceive him. She is hesitant about being friends with Jesus Boy because she does not understand him and wonders why he would cross over “the bridge” to their side. She is torn because she knows how difficult it can be to be the new kid, but she does not want to stand out. Frannie’s best friend Samantha believes that Jesus Boy truly is Jesus Christ and that he has come in this time of chaos and because of the war. During all that is going on Frannie onstantly thinks of the poem she read in class that said "Hope is the thing with feathers". Jesus Boy is subject to a lot of bullying by Trevor. Trevor picks on Jesus Boy because he is the only one who is lighter skinned than himself. Trevor has a white father who left his mother before Trevor was born. One day Trevor is swinging and decides to try to jump off and land on a fence because he wants to feel like he is flying. He falls short and breaks his arm. When he comes back to school he is even angrier at Jesus Boy and tries to fight him with one arm. Jesus Boy is about to fight him back when Trevor falls in the snow. The class realizes that Jesus Boy is just a boy because Jesus would never fight someone. The class also realizes that Trevor is also just a boy and that they shouldn’t be afraid of him anymore. Jesus Boy and Frannie immediately go and help Trevor up out of the snow. Later Samantha asks Frannie why she helped Trevor, and Frannie doesn’t know. Samantha then admits that she was wrong about Jesus Boy and says she doesn’t know what to believe in anymore. Frannie tries to comfort Samantha and says “Maybe there’s a little bit of Jesus inside of all of us. Maybe Jesus is just that something good or something sad or something... something that makes us do stuff like help Trevor up even when he is cursing us out. Or maybe... maybe Jesus is just that thing you had when the Jesus Boy got here, Samantha. Maybe Jesus is the hope that you were feeling” (p. 109). At the end of the book Frannie reflects on all that has been happening in her life. She thinks of her mother’s baby, her brother, Samantha’s lose of faith, and, especially, Jesus Boy. She remembers the poem she read in class and decides “Each moment, I am thinking, is a thing with feathers” (p. 118). |
Bhuswargo Bhayankar | Satyajit Ray | 1,987 | In this case, Feluda and his team go to Srinagar in Kashmir where they find a spine chilling mystery. |
The Propitious Esculent | John Reader | 2,008 | Reader divides his exploration of the potato into three sections: South America, Europe, The World. The first section describes the environments, The Andes Mountains and the altiplano, in which the potato developed. In the past, at least 3,000 years ago, people living in these environments began to take advantage of a naturally occurring plant. Over time human interaction developed a flowering plant with a nutritionally valuable, and good tasting, tuber that then became an important component of the human diet. Reader spends several pages describing the way in which the Spanish set up colonies and an empire in South America to mine mineral resources and exploit available manpower. He lays out the time line of events and shows that it took several decades for the value of the potato to become obvious to any of the Europeans. Interspersed in this discussion, Reader describes current conditions of potato growing through the Andean region. In the second section of the book, Reader traces the potato’s path across the Atlantic Ocean. The many stops on Atlantic islands gave the plant time to adjust to different environments and day lengths. Reader devotes many pages to the process of determining who had the potato first and where they were growing it and for what scale of consumption. This seems like a Western concern rooted in basic competition. However, tracing this particular time line illustrates commodity chains, economic development, culture change (including scientific theory and method), and biological change. In Europe, the potato was not immediately well received. Reader discusses how it was accused of causing leprosy or other ailments and then how cultural groups’ perception of the potato flipped and it became something entirely healthful. The potato also is at the center of demographic and cultural change and this is most clear in the case of Ireland. Reader’s explanation of what happened during the great Potato Famine of 1845 to 1850 discusses the biosocial and biopolitical processes of the period. The Propitious Esculent proposes that the fate of Ireland was not solely the fault of a fungus but the result of a chain of governmental decisions that were set into motion because of the properties of the potato. In the final portion of the book, Reader outlines the worldwide spread of the potato and how people around the globe have set out to study the potato to protect its genetic health. The potato spread successfully in part due to the lessons learned after Irish Potato Famine in which biologists and farmers created methods to prevent fungus induced blight. The second point, protecting genetic health, is especially important since such a large part of the global population is dependent on the potato for a stable diet. Since there has been such a long period of human intervention in the development of the potato, it has genetic properties that have become rare as well as weaknesses in the genetic code that lead to defects in different parts of the plant. Pooling global knowledge and resources, biologists, ecologists, and anthropologists at CIP (International Potato Center) are securing the varieties of the potato. |
The Informer | Liam O'Flaherty | null | Set in 1920's Dublin the novel centers on Gypo Nolan. Having disclosed the whereabouts of his friend Frankie McPhillip to the police, Gypo finds himself hunted by his revolutionary comrades for this betrayal. Using his muscle, and his empty intellect, he gets caught in his own lies and tries to escape. After the Irish Civil War, Gypo was in dire straights, living off the street and the occasional meal given to him out of pity, he does something terrible. He turns his friend in to the authorities for murder. He doesn't even realize he does it! |
A Jest of God | Margaret Laurence | 1,966 | The novel follows schoolteacher Rachel Cameron through a summer affair and its consequences on her life. Although Rachel is in her 30's, the book serves to document a second adolescence as she comes to recognize herself as the adult to her aging mother. |
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity | null | null | In the first chapter, “Modernity’s Consciousness of Time,” Habermas presents an outline of the “cultural self-understanding of modernity” as it emerged in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and attempts to retrieve the “historical context of Western rationalism” in which modernity or modernization (more narrowly conceived in terms of social and economic transformation) was originally understood as both a process of disenchantment and alienation as well as the “historical objectification of rational structures.” This presentation prepares the ground for the larger argument of the book, namely, that by losing sight of the “cultural impulse of modernity,” and abandoning the project of modernity as a whole, European intellectuals on both ends of the political spectrum have ignored the emancipatory dimension of the European Enlightenment, and thereby have renounced the only means of developing a consistent and immanent critique of modernity itself. Modernity is defined by Habermas as a set of problems related to the issue of time, problems produced by the transformation of European society in accordance with what Hegel called the “principle of subjectivity,” the notion of individual autonomy as the essence of man. This freedom from all forms of external authority, which includes nature as well as tradition, means that the subject “has to create its normativity out of itself;” because it is free, it cannot accept any value or law that it does not recognize as its own. Subjectivity, in other words, is defined by “the right to criticism: the principle of the modern world requires that what anyone is to recognize shall reveal itself to him as something entitled to recognition." Insofar as the subject wills only those laws that recognizes as rational, laws which are “self-proscribed and self-obligated,” the subject wills only itself, or, in Hegel terms, it “wills the Will:” “The Will is Free only when it does not will anything alien, extrinsic, foreign to itself (as long as it does so, it is dependent), but wills itself alone – wills the Will. This is the absolute Will – the volition to be free.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche undertakes a critique of “subject-centered reason,” of modern forms of knowledge and ethics, from a standpoint that only appears to be “genealogical,” that is, situated, historically, outside of modernity and Enlightenment thinking in an archaic, Dionysian era of myth, prior to the formation of modern subjectivity in the renunciation of instinct or “life.” According to Habermas, Nietzsche’s argument that all moral and cognitive claims (along with the rational subject) are the historical products of a power forced inward by its inability to discharge itself is not, in fact, based on a genealogy of modernity, but rather a critique of the modern cognitive and practical subject from the perspective of an equally modern aesthetics (which Nietzsche “transposes,” according to Habermas, “into the archaic”), elevating the “judgment of taste of the art critic into a model for value judgment.” Nietzsche's critique of subject, in other words, is based on a modern aesthetic experience – in particular, the “painful de-differentiation, a de-delimitation of the individual, a merging with amorphous nature within and without” – which presupposes the modern subject itself. What appears, then, in Nietzsche as the historical “other” reason is in fact a version of Kantian aesthetics shorn, of any claim of intersubjective validity. |
Blood Promise | Richelle Mead | 2,009 | In Blood Promise, Rose leaves St. Vladimir's Academy to go after Dimitri, who has become Strigoi. The only clue she has is that he might be somewhere in Siberia. After meeting an Alchemist named Sydney, they travel to Siberia, where she eventually finds Dimitri’s family in the small town of Baia. While in Baia, she meets another "Shadow-Kissed" bonded pair, Oksana and Mark, and a mysterious Moroi man named Abe, who tries to force her to go back to St. Vladimir's. He eventually coerces her into leaving, and Rose agrees after a falling out with Dimitri's sister Viktoria. She then travels to Novosibirsk with other unpromised guardians to stake out Strigoi in the hopes of finding Dimitri. When she does meet him, she is too stunned by his Strigoi appearance to attempt to kill him, and ends up being held hostage by him. He refuses to kill her, and instead, says he will keep her until she decides to turn Strigoi to be with him. All the while, Rose keeps checking up with Lissa back at St. Vladimir's through the bond. Avery, a secret Spirit user, has been using compulsion to control Lissa. During a visit to Lissa's head, Rose gets pushed out by Avery. While held hostage by Dimitri, who has been feeding off her and thus weakening her, Rose eventually manages to escape, grabbing a stake on the way out. Dimitri catches up with her, and they eventually battle on a bridge, where Rose manages to plunge her stake into his chest. Exhausted, Rose ends up at the home of an Alchemist friend of Sydney's, where Oksana, Mark, and Abe are waiting. When she wakes up, she realizes Lissa is in danger with Avery, who wants to kill Lissa and then heal her back so that Lissa would be "shadow-kissed" and bonded to Avery. With help from Oksana, Rose manages to guide Lissa and Adrian through the fight against Avery and her brother, Reed, and Avery's guardian Simon. After saving Lissa, Rose asks Oksana and Mark whether there is a way a Strigoi can be restored to their former selves. Reluctantly, they tell her of a Spirit user they knew named Robert Doru, who claimed to have restored a Strigoi back to life. However, only Victor Dashkov, his half-brother, would have any idea where he currently was. Realizing the situation was hopeless because she already staked Dimitri, Rose goes back to St. Vladimir's Academy. Back at St. Vladimir's, Rose reunites with Lissa and shares what happened to her in Russia. Rose's mother, Janine, is also there, and reveals to Rose that Abe is actually her father. After agreeing to re-enroll in school to graduate, Rose goes back to her normal life at St. Vladmir's. However, she soon receives a package from Russia, enclosed with the stake she used on Dimitri, and a note from him saying he was not really staked properly, and was still alive, waiting for Rose to finish school to find him. Rose realizes that with Dimitri still a Strigoi, she has a chance to restore him to his former life, but only by finding Robert Doru. |
The Nether World | null | 1,889 | The old Michael Snowdon returns from Australia to London after inheriting a substantial sum of money from his deceased son. Despite being able to live a comfortable, if not luxurious life, he spends only on necessities and lives like a poor man, keeping his fortune secret. In London he finds his granddaughter, Jane, a weak child whom he rescues from the tyranny of the Peckovers (mother and daughter), in whose house she is employed as a household drudge. Jane's father, Joseph, is another son of Michael's who disappeared a few years ago in search of work, leaving Jane with the Peckovers. Michael nurtures a plan to bestow his fortune on Jane after his death, but he wants Jane to spend this money on charity and social work rather than on her own needs. He engages Jane in charitable activities and everyday work even before he reveals the secret of his wealth to her, trying to inculcate to her the principles of benevolence. Joseph Snowdon returns suddenly to London. Formerly he argued with his father and is not on amiable terms with him. Joseph is preyed upon by the young Clem Peckover who marries him after she and her mother begin suspecting that Joseph's father is rich. Michael receives Joseph reservedly, without revealing intent of sharing the fortune with him. Joseph, pestered by his disappointed wife, also believes that Michael is rich, and tries to win his father's respect by improving relations with Jane. He also befriends Jane's older friend, Sidney Kirkwood. Sidney, an honest and sympathetic character, apparently intends to marry Jane in the future, unaware of Michael's fortune. Joseph, fearing that if Sidney, Michael's favorite, marries Jane, then Michael will leave most of the fortune to the young couple. Therefore, he develops a plan to make Clara Hewett, Sidney's former love, more fond of Sidney, and catalyze their marriage. Clara Hewett is a young attractive woman who left her poor family with an intention of becoming a famous actress and escaping poverty. Clara's brother Bob, a promising artist, chooses to remain in the same social class: he marries a poor and unfortunate girl Pennyloaf whom he does not love. When Clara was living with her family, she, proud and ambitious, scorned the attention of Sidney. Sidney is a friend of her father John and the two quarrel because of Clara after she left. John believes that the loss of his daughter is Sidney's fault. Later, when John's sickly wife dies, Sidney helps the struggling Hewett family with some of his savings, and John becomes contrite about his earlier misunderstanding of Sidney's nature. In search of fame and fortune Clara joins a traveling theatre and shows talent, but her plans are thwarted by a rival actress who, jealous of Clara's success, disfigures Clara's face with an acid. Clara is admitted to a hospital, and Joseph informs John anonymously of her whereabouts. Clara is taken home, but now that all her hopes for better life are ended, she starts re-evaluating her ungratefulness towards her father and Sidney, and also contemplates suicide. Meanwhile Michael reveals his secret separately to Jane and Sidney and emphasizes his plan for how the fortune should be spent. At first, Sidney seems to like the idea of life's work for charity, but later believes that Micheal's plan is futile and that the money should rather be spent on Jane's education and her enjoyment of life. Disagreeing with Michael's plans, and feeling that his dignity is compromised by Joseph's broaching the question of the old man's money, Sidney reduces his relationship with Jane and instead offers marriage to Clara who accepts it gratefully. Jane, heartbroken and uncertain of her firmness to carry out Michael's plan, becomes disfavored by the old man. After his explanation with Jane, Michael destroys his will, contemplates the matter, but before he can compose a new will he suffers a stroke and dies. In the absence of a will, the scheming Joseph inherits all the money. His wife is making plans to kill him, but Joseph escapes abroad with the money, content to leave Jane only a small pension. The novel has a tragic end for all its characters. Sidney and Clara have an unhappy marriage exacerbated by material wants. Jane rejects her father's pension after discovering his intrigues and declines an offer of marriage from a well-to-do business clerk, thus accepting a life of toil. Bob Hewett largely abandons his wife and children and dies fleeing arrest for forging coins. Clem is accused of trying to poison her mother and is tried in court. Joseph's fortune is squandered in the financial markets of the U.S.A., a misfortune that he cannot survive. 'The Nether World' opens near Clerkenwell Close in central London, and throughout the novel focusses on the Clerkenwell area, then largely working class and a centre of workshop and small factory trades. The novel is remarkable for its very strong sense of place. |
Tamburlaine Must Die | Louise Welsh | 2,004 | This novella is set in a plague-ridden London in 1593. Someone calling himself "Tamburlaine", the name of the hero in one of Marlowe's most famous plays, has written a libelous and heretical pamphlet in a style of writing similar to Marlowe's. Marlowe is called before the Privy Council which accuses him of writing the pamphlet; however, he protests his innocence. Marlowe is sentenced to death for this blasphemous writing and only has three days to figure out who really wrote the pamphlet and track that individual down. Marlowe becomes entangled in a web of intrigue, plots and counterplots before his eventual murder. |
Breaking Dawn | Stephenie Meyer | 2,008 | Breaking Dawn is divided into three separate parts. The first part details Bella's marriage and honeymoon with Edward, which they spend on a private island owned by Carlisle who bought it for Esme, called Isle Esme, off the coast of Brazil. Two weeks into their honeymoon, Bella realizes that she is pregnant with a half-vampire, half-human child and that her condition is progressing at an unnaturally accelerated rate. After contacting Carlisle, who confirms her pregnancy, she and Edward immediately return home to Forks, Washington. The fetus continues to develop with unnatural rapidity, and Edward, concerned for Bella's life and convinced that the fetus is going to kill her, urges her to abort the pregnancy. However, Bella feels a connection with her unborn baby and refuses. The novel's second part is written from the perspective of shape-shifter Jacob Black, and lasts throughout Bella's pregnancy and childbirth. Jacob's Quileute wolf pack, not knowing what danger the unborn child may pose, plan to destroy it and kill Bella. Jacob vehemently protests this decision and leaves, forming his own pack with Seth and Leah Clearwater. The fetus in Bella's body grows swiftly and Bella soon gives birth. The baby breaks many of her bones, including her spine, and she loses massive amounts of blood. In order to save her life, Edward changes her into a vampire by injecting his venom into her heart. Jacob, thinking that Bella is dead, and blaming Bella's daughter Renesmee as the cause, tries to kill Renesmee. Instead, he "imprints"—an involuntary response in which a shape-shifter finds his soul mate—on her. The third section shifts back to Bella's perspective, describing Bella's painful transformation and finding herself changed into a vampire and enjoying her new life and abilities. However, the vampire Irina misidentifies Renesmee as an "immortal child", a child who has been turned into a vampire. Because "immortal children" are uncontrollable, creating them has been outlawed by the Volturi. After Irina presents her allegation to the Volturi, they plan to destroy Renesmee and the Cullens. In an attempt to survive, the Cullens gather other vampire clans from around the world to stand as witnesses and prove to the Volturi that Renesmee is not an immortal child. Upon confronting the gathered Cullen allies and witnesses, the Volturi discover that they have been misinformed and immediately execute Irina for her mistake. However, they remain undecided on whether Renesmee should be viewed as a threat to vampires' secret existence. At that time, Alice and Jasper, who had left prior to the confrontation, return with a Mapuche called Nahuel, a 150-year-old vampire-human crossbreed like Renesmee. Nahuel demonstrates that the crossbreeds pose no threat, and the Volturi leave. Edward, Bella, and Renesmee return to their home in peace. |
The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World | E. L. Konigsburg | null | Amedeo Kaplan and his divorced mother Loretta Bevilacqua have moved from Epiphany, New York to St. Malo, Florida. He is a new boy at school for the first time, and does not yet have friends (September). He is happy to befriend the next-door neighbor Mrs. Zender, an opera singer on the European circuit in the fifties, who retired then retired with a European husband to her childhood mansion in St. Malo. Mrs. Zender is moving to Waldorf Court while she can still afford it and Amedeo volunteers to help liquidate most of her possessions. From his artist father Jake Kaplan, who lives back north, and many visits to the fine arts institutions of New York City, Amedeo is already a novice expert on paintings and drawings, at least. Working with classmate William Wilcox and his single mother, the professional appraiser and estate liquidator Mrs. Zender has engaged, he learns a lot more about the business, about people, and about Mrs. Zender who is in and out of every room they work. Amedeo's godfather Peter Vanderwaal, who directs an art center is preparing to host a traveling exhibition of Degenerate Art, a selection from the 1937 exhibition Entartete Kunst in Munich, the heart of Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Peter's father John has died in Epiphany and his mother Mrs. Vanderwaal has pressed upon him a box that contains his father's life story. Also in the meantime, Amedeo finds on a Zender bookshelf a small drawing signed "Modigliani" —apparently the modern artist Modigliani. From Peter, he learns that Modigliani died young (in 1920); his paintings and drawings were commonly forged in post-war Europe. On the one hand, Amedeo finally recalls that the drawing is familiar because he has seen it many times, within a family photo displayed at the Vanderwaal home. On the other hand, Amedeo and William come to suspect that Mrs. Zender planted the drawing for him to find. Peter never looked closely at John Vanderwaal's box before his mother repossessed it at the exhibition, but Mrs. Vanderwaal follows up a phone conversation with her son by driving her Winnebago to St. Malo and delivering the "life" directly to Amedeo and William. With John Vanderwaal in hand and Mrs. Zender at hand, Amedeo and William pursue the mystery. |
The Wild Girls | Pat Murphy | 2,008 | The novel centers around a twelve-year-old girl by the name of Joan who has just moved from Connecticut to a town in California. She figures her time will be miserable until she meets a girl named Sarah, who prefers to be called "Fox" and who lives with her writer father in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. Joan and Sarah—Newt and Fox—spend all their spare time outside, talking and fooling around, and soon start writing stories together. When they win first place in a student fiction writing contest, they are recruited for a prestigious summer writing class taught by a free spirit named Verla Volante. |
We Murder Stella | Marlen Haushofer | 1,958 | When Luise, Stella's mother, asks her old friend Anna if her family could put up her daughter for the duration of one schoolyear so that she can attend commercial school in the city, they unwillingly agree. Though a natural beauty, Stella is an unrefined country girl who wears neither make-up nor perfume and who dresses in nondescript clothes. Her diffident politeness does not endear her to her hosts and makes it easy for them not to integrate her into the family. Stella does not keep in touch with her mother either, who has gone to Italy on a months-long holiday spree with her lover. Anna has known for many years that her husband is a womanizer but has always felt unable to confront him or do anything about his love affairs. A successful lawyer whose office is in the city centre, and a respectable pillar of society, Richard seemingly takes every chance that offers itself to betray his wife. Careless about leaving traces, he often comes home late at night, allegedly after a long day at the office, when his wife is already in bed pretending to be asleep, and time and again she can smell other women's perfume or detect smears of lipstick on his shirt. Annette, their daughter, who is of primary school age, is the only one in the family who does not sense what is going on whereas 15 year-old Wolfgang, their son, does but understand the importance of not bringing up that taboo topic: if he did, he would be one of the likely targets of his father's revenge. It is Anna herself who triggers the subsequent events when she encourages Stella to wear trendier clothes and generally helps her metamorphose into a young lady. Only now seeing her beauty, Richard starts an affair with the sexually inexperienced young woman and, when she gets pregnant, procures an abortion for her performed by one of his old friends who is a gynaecologist. Mistaking sexual satisfaction for love, Stella keeps pursuing her lover long after she has been dropped by him, a situation complicated by the fact that, at least for the time being, both are living under the same roof. Eventually Stella realizes that Richard has embarked on yet another affair, and throws herself in front of a lorry. Her motives for committing suicide are never openly discussed; rather, the family say they suspect it must have been an accident. |
The Year of the Angry Rabbit | Russell Braddon | 1,964 | From the hardcover jacket: "It looks as though Australia will be overrun by rabbits. Millions of them, immune now to the myxomatosis that decimated them in the nineteen hundred fifties and sixties, are teeming over the land. With an election imminent, Prime Minister Kevin Fitzgerald, known to his cronies as Ella, is forced to act. It is obviously an emergency. The rabbits must be wiped out. Scientists assemble; experiments begin. "The results are shattering. Australia suddenly becomes the most feared nation on earth: America and Russia hurriedly surrender to her their nuclear devices, as do the other powers; Fitzgerald becomes virtual dictator of the rest of the world. "The Commonwealth Government establishes peace on earth except for limited wars which are fought under strict supervision, according to rules laid down in Canberra. Only two nations are allowed to fight at one time, for example. "On the crest of this incredible wave of prosperity a tiny news flash is overlooked. It says: RABBIT AS BIG AS ALSATIAN SHOT BY SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACHER THREE MILES NORTH OF MUDGEE...." |
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