title
stringlengths 1
220
| author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | pub_year
int64 398
2.01k
⌀ | summary
stringlengths 11
58k
|
|---|---|---|---|
Alexandria | Lindsey Davis | 2,009 | The story is set in AD 77, in Alexandria, Egypt, which was at that time part of the Roman Empire. Falco and his family travel to Egypt to see two of the seven wonders of the world, the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Great Pyramid of Giza, but are caught up in investigation into a mysterious death, and soon several deaths. The plot revolves around the Library of Alexandria, with reference to library management practice, corruption, illegal autopsies, a man-eating crocodile, and the legendary catoblepas. For the duration of their trip, Falco and his family have chosen to stay with his mother's brother, Fulvius, and his live-in partner Cassius who host a dinner party to which Falco's family and the Chief Librarian of the Serapaeion, Theon, are invited. When Theon is found dead later in mysterious circumstances, locked in his own private Chamber at the Serapaeion, Falco, Fulvius and the others fall under suspicion by the authorities, and it is up to Falco to clear everyone's names, eventually unravelling a web of corruption, deceit and even murder at the Library of Alexandria. |
Trading Faces | null | 2,008 | Identical twins, Payton and Emma Mills, are complete opposites. Payton is cool, fashionable, popular, caring, and optimistic, but not very book smart. where Emma is extremely intelligent, goes up in many competitions, but has nearly no friends (besides Payton), social or fashion smarts. Everyone, except those close to them, cannot tell them apart. Both twins are also embarrassed by each other, Payton because Emma is walking around always in hideous clothes, and Emma because Payton is always walking around with no intelligence. Payton and Emma have been going to an all girl private school up to sixth grade. They are finally going to a unisex public school, and both twins are very excited, but for different reasons. Payton is excited to make new friends, see cute boys, and to be cool. Emma wants to learn more, go in more competitions, and interact with people as intelligent as she is. On the first day of school, both twins realize that they have no classes together. At first they are upset, but then realize it won't be so bad. They will finally have their own identities. Prior to the story, over the summer, Payton spent all of summer at camp working for a wealthy girl, Ashlynn, for her cool clothes. She believes they will help her fit in better. She wears them every day for the first few days of school. In homeroom, Payton meets the most popular girl in school, Sydney Fish. They immediately strike up friendship, though Payton is worried that Sydney won't like her because she isn't cool enough. At lunch, though, Sydney invites Payton to sit with her and her friends, Cashmere, Quinn, and Priya. Emma, on the other hand, is not in the front row, center seat, as usual. That spot is taken by another extremely intelligent girl Jazmine James. Emma hopes she and Jazmine will become friends, so she can finally have an intellectual conversation with someone. Jazmine, however, turns out to be very snobby and mean. Jazmine also has two also very intelligent sidekicks, Hector and Tess. After the first day of school, their parents take them out to eat at a Chinese restaurant, as a family tradition. They each receive presents from their parents, an iPhone from their mother, and two matching bracelets with the first letter of their first name on them. Payton is doing wonderful with her social life, and loves school. Emma, on the other hand, isn't getting a good reputation with her teachers, unlike usual, where teachers love her. One day, Payton makes a fatal mistake, which ends up with Sydney being mad at her, after Payton yelled at Sydney and spilled her lunch all over the most popular guy in school, Ox. Emma tells Payton to switch places, so they do. While switching places, Emma, as Payton, redeems herself so Sydney won't be mad at Payton anymore. After switching places, the twins realize that they kind of like being each other, Emma liking being popular and having friends for one, and Payton liking being treated like a genius. So they decide to stay like the other twin for a little more. After school one day, Emma, still as Payton, goes to the mall with Sydney and her crew. Emma picks out some amazing outfits for her and Sydney's crew friends, showing her true inner fashionista. Emma bonds with Quinn, and really likes her, as she's definitely the nicest one in Sydney's group. Emma meets Ox at the mall, whom Sydney has a giant crush on, and bonds with him. They discover they really like each other, but are awkward around each other, too. Ox even invites Emma to sit at the pep rally with him, in the special seats reserved for football players. Payton, disguised as Emma, joins the crew for VOGS (Videocast Of Gecko Students), a live videocast which will air during the pep rally. Payton volunteers for Emma to be a reporter during VOGS. When Payton tells Emma this, she expects her to be thrilled, but to her dismay, Emma is furious, due to her phobia of being on camera, because she is afraid that she'll look stupid. Emma can't, however, back out anymore, because then Jazmine James will think she's a wimp. On the day of the pep rally, Emma makes a schedule for when the twins should switch. When the twins switch, they accidentally forget to switch their bracelets. While coming out of the janitor's closet, the twins' secret meeting place, Payton bumps into Jazmine, and accidentally drops the schedule, unbeknowest to her. At the pep rally, Sydney sits with Ox, but to her dismay, Ox asks her to leave for Emma. On the videocast, Jazmine points out to everyone the schedule that they dropped, revealing to everyone that they switched. Payton and Emma then have a huge fight, then after, realizing that Emma still had her mic on, and that the whole school heard their quarrel. They are punished severely. However, they learned their lesson. At the end of the book, Quinn, who both Payton and Emma both really like, despite being in Sydney's group, exchanges phone numbers with Emma, who she really likes. Tess then also exchanges phone numbers with Payton, who both twins agree is kind of nice, though Emma doesn't completely trust her, because she was one of Jazmine's sidekicks. Payton and Emma then begin to swear that they will never switch again, but decide not to, because "you never say never ." |
To the Wedding | null | null | The story begins as a narrative within a narrative from the point of view of a blind tamata peddler, who first encounters Ninon's father when he wants to buy a tamata for his daughter, Ninon, who is suffering 'everywhere'. The novel abruptly shifts its perspective to Ninon's story. Ninon, a young woman in her 20s, meets a man working at a restaurant who catches her fancy. Although reluctant at first, she allows herself to be seduced and they end up making love the same day. They part, and she visits the restaurant again the following day only to hear from the chef that the man was an escaped convict and had been arrested by the police. The narrative is splintered to include the journey of Ninon's father and mother to her wedding. Ninon travels around Europe and, on a visit to a museum, encounters Gino. They become devoted lovers, and in one memorable occasion break open a shack with their love-making. During the course of their relationship, Ninon notices sores on her lips and decides to see a doctor when they do not heal. To her shock, the doctor tells her that she has AIDS. She realizes that the man at the restaurant was the one who gave the disease to her and feels bitter and angry. She breaks off communication with Gino who is frantic to speak with her. Eventually, she explains to Gino that she has AIDS, expecting rebuke and disgust, but to her surprise, Gino proposes marriage. The lovers manage to create meaning in their lives in the face of approaching death. |
Palamedes | null | null | Palamedes is set in the days before Arthur's reign, and describes the adventures of the fathers of characters including Arthur, Palamedes, Erec, and Tristan. While the work is named for the Saracen knight Palamedes, and some manuscripts identify him explicitly as one of the central figures, Meliadus (Tristan's father) and his great friend Guiron le Courtois are by far the most important characters, and give their names to the two sections of the romance. The work uses the Tristan material as its source, and greatly expands it. The narrative is rambling and convoluted; Arthurian scholar Norris J. Lacy described it as consisting largely of "[a] series of abductions, battles, and seemingly random adventures". Many tales are told along the way, including the story of Meliadus' kidnapping of the Queen of Scotland and his subsequent battle with her husband in which Guiron must rescue him. Guiron's section steps farther away from the Tristan material and the exploits of the Knights of the Round Table, focusing instead on the adventures of the House of Brun, of which Guiron is the most prominent member. The work's lack of coherence did not affect its popularity, and it went on to influence, directly and indirectly, works in French, Italian, Spanish, and even Greek. |
Visitors from London | Kitty Barne | 1,940 | The setting is the Sussex countryside during the summer holidays of 1939. The four Farrar children are spending the holidays with their eccentric Aunt Myra. War seems far away, but is soon to impinge on their lives. Seventeen young Cockney evacuees who have never been out of London are coming to stay at Steadings, a nearby farmhouse which has been standing empty. The Farrars help with the preparations, finding staff and generally organizing everything. Then the evacuees arrive, and the Farrars find themselves out of their depth. |
One Corpse Too Many | Edith Pargeter | 1,979 | In the summer of 1138, King Stephen is besieging rebels loyal to Empress Matilda in Shrewsbury Castle. Brother Cadfael welcomes the assistance of a young man called Godric, who has been brought to the Abbey by his "aunt". Cadfael soon recognises that "Godric" is actually a girl. She admits that she is actually Godith Adeney, daughter of Fulke Adeney, one of the rebel ringleaders inside the castle. Cadfael agrees to keep her secret, thus beginning 10 adventurous days in August. Aline Siward and Hugh Beringar enter King Stephen's camp to pledge their loyalty. Aline Siward is welcomed even though her elder brother, Giles, has declared for the Empress. Hugh Beringar is treated with more reserve, as he was formerly an associate of the rebel ringleaders and betrothed as a child to Godith. To prove his loyalty, he is instructed to find Godith and deliver her to the King. Two young men fall for Aline on first sight at the King's camp, Beringar and the man designated to be deputy sheriff once the castle falls, Adam Courcelle. The castle falls the next morning, but the ringleaders FitzAlan, made sheriff by King Stephen's appointment, and Adeney escape. Infuriated, King Stephen orders the ninety-four survivors of the turncoat garrison executed that very afternoon. Abbot Heribert of Shrewsbury Abbey asks that the men be given Christian burial. King Stephen assents, and Heribert delegates the task to Cadfael for the next morning. Counting the bodies, Cadfael realises that there are not ninety-four bodies, but ninety-five - one corpse too many. The extra corpse is unidentified. Aline is horrified to find the body of her brother Giles among the other ninety-four. Aline notes that a dagger has been stolen from Giles's body. Courcelle gave Aline her brother's cloak, found in the castle. She in turn gives her brother's clothing to Cadfael to distribute as alms. Godith identifies the murdered man as Nicholas Faintree, a young squire of the rebel leader FitzAlan. At her suggestion, Cadfael visits her old nurse, Petronella Flesher, and her husband Edric, the town butcher, to reassure them of Godith's safety. They reveal that FitzAlan ordered squires Faintree and Torold Blund to slip out of the castle and take his treasury from its hiding place in Frankwell to safety in Wales, then Normandy. They warn Cadfael that Beringar asked after Godith the day before the castle fell. Cadfael suspects that Beringar likely learned of the plan to move the treasury by eavesdropping. The murdered man Nicholas Faintree is buried in the Abbey church, a great honor. While aiding in the Abbey's corn harvest, Godric encounters a wounded man. She and Cadfael return to help him that evening and the next day, learning his story and his name. Torold Blund relates how he and Faintree tried to escape with FitzAlan's treasure. Faintree's horse was lamed by a caltrop, planted on a forested track by someone who knew their route in advance. Faintree waited at a forest hut near Frankwell while Blund found a fresh horse. When Blund returned he found Faintree dead, and was himself attacked by a stranger. Blund fought off his attacker and fled. He hid the treasure under the bridge near the castle, letting the horses go free. He was then pursued by the King's men and forced to jump into the river Severn. Cadfael went to the barn in Frankwell, the hut where the murder and the fight took place, and met the farmer who supplied the fresh horse to Blund, confirming every aspect of the story. In the hut, he found a jewel meant as decoration to a dagger, a yellow topaz, in the dirt floor. Cadfael sends Godric with food and medicine to Torold, who is much recovered. As they talk, Blund wrestles in jest with Godric, thus discovering that she is a girl named Godith. Cadfael returns to the mill, talks with the two young people. Cadfael agrees to help Torold and Godith escape to Wales with the treasure. He and Torold hear footsteps, so cut short their conversation. Cadfael and Godric walk to the Abbey, encountering Hugh Beringar. Godric is sent off to the herbarium. Knowing that the King is about to commandeer horses for his army, Beringar asks Cadfael if there is a place where he can conceal his two most valuable mounts. They take the horses to a grange belonging to the Abbey, south of Shrewsbury. The next day, Cadfael knows that Hugh Beringar has a spirit like his own as to the cause of justice and a clever mind for pursuing it. He spends the day testing his theory that Hugh is following him, dispatching Godric to other tasks. That night, Cadfael locates the treasure hidden in the river. He has a bundle matching it in appearance, which he carries to the grange, aware that Beringar is watching him. To Cadfael's alarm the next morning, Sheriff Prestcote began the raid of the Abbey before he woke. King Stephen needs supplies from Shrewsbury and is searching for Godith. Godith awoke early, made her own plan for action, ensuring her own safety and that of the treasure. Before the mid morning service, Aline Siward tells Cadfael that Godric is safe in her quarters. Though she is formally on Stephen's side, Aline has no interest in helping his men catch a young girl. Torold has been forced to flee from the mill as the King's men seize supplies. He fears that Beringar saw him, then decides he has been too fearful in a day of hiding on the run. He mentions this while reporting his day to Cadfael in the herbarium. That night, Cadfael, Torold and Godith walk to the grange with the treasure, so the pair can depart for Wales on Beringar's horses. Cadfael has them hide the treasure in a tree that will be on the road to Wales, then swing back to approach the grange from the usual path. At the grange, Beringar and his men stop them, taking control of the situation. Beringar's intentions are honourable; he has planned all along to aid Godith in her escape to safety, as his duty to her from past connections. He will, however, secure the treasure for the King. Godith and Torold depart for Wales on Beringar's horses, silently aware of Cadfael's success. Cadfael and Beringar speculate that the two will be married before they reach Godith's father. Cadfael and Beringar carry the saddlebags from the grange back to the abbey. On reaching Cadfael's workshop, Beringar is stunned to find them filled with stones Cadfael exchanged for the treasure. Beringar is mystified that the saddlebags also contain Faintree's old clothes and the jewel from the dagger. Cadfael is thus satisfied Beringar had no part in Faintree's murder. Beringar laughs that Cadfael won the game, keeping the treasure with Godith. Beringar recalls that Aline described a dagger decorated with jewel, a family heirloom that was lost when Giles was hanged. They wonder, who has the rest of the dagger? Cadfael and Beringar cooperate to determine the truth, both seeking proof for each supposition. Beringar is aided by Aline, who confirms the topaz. Cadfael is aided by the beggar who received the cloak once belonging to Giles. The night before the castle fell, Giles Siward slipped into the siege camp, seen by the beggar. Giles betrayed Fitz Alan's plan to the officer of the watch, Courcelle, in exchange for his life. Courcelle, rather than reporting the matter to the King, arranged for Giles to be hanged not saved. Then Courcelle laid a trap for Faintree and Blund, hoping to take the treasure for himself. Courcelle stole the dagger from Giles's corpse. He had it when he fought with Blund in the barn, where the jewel broke off and was pushed into the dirt floor. They still do not have the dagger or know its whereabouts, but Cadfael is certain that Courcelle is the guilty man, officer of the watch that night. Hugh Beringar is eager that Aline never learns the full extent of her brother's foul deed the night before he was hanged; Cadfael agrees. The only way to assure that is to silence the murderer, the only other person who knows of this perfidy. The last chance to present their evidence against Courcelle is during King Stephen's farewell banquet that evening. Cadfael attends the feast as servant to the Abbot. Leaving the banquet room to bring food to the beggar, he sees a kitchen boy eating his own meal with Giles' missing dagger, fished out of the Severn. Wholly trusting Cadfael's view, Beringar publicly accuses Courcelle of the murder of Faintree and the theft of the dagger, staking his own life in the charge. He tossed the yellow topaz on the table. Re-entering the room, Cadfael gives the dagger to the King, who then fits the two together, completing the proof. Courcelle denies all. The King is eager for justice for this crime, but impatient to move on as planned. He says, no time for a proper trial. He and Courcelle accept Beringar's suggestion that the matter be settled by trial by combat. Beringar and Courcelle fight with swords and then daggers outside the town the next day, watched by a large crowd. Aline arrives after the combat began, now knowing she loves Hugh Beringar. The two men are evenly matched; the contest lasts for hours. In close fighting, Courcelle falls on his own dagger blade and dies. With Beringar vindicated by fate, King Stephen appoints him Deputy Sheriff of Shropshire in Courcelle's place. He and Aline are betrothed. Cadfael, who by now is also his firm friend, gives him Giles's dagger, which has been restored by craftsmen at the Abbey. Cadfael concludes by resolving to pray both for Nicholas Faintree, "a clean young man of mind and life", and for Adam Courcelle, "dead in his guilt", because "every untimely death, every man cut down in his vigour and strength without time for repentance and reparation, is one corpse too many." |
The Folklore of Discworld | null | 2,008 | The book is divided into 16 sections *The Cosmos: Gods, Demons and Things - Discusses the known gods on the Discworld and their relationships with the gods of Earth. *Dwarfs - Explores the customs of the dwarfs and the similarities between dwarf culture and mining cultures on Earth; also certain Earthly religious cultures. *Elves - Considers the elven race and what is known about them both on Earth and the Disc. *The Nac Mac Feegle - Discusses the Feegle and their 'Pictsies' equivalents on Earth. *Trolls - Documents the customs and thoughts of the silicon based lifeform and our beliefs regarding them on Earth. *Other Significant Races - Covers a variety of other races including Vampires and Igors and their equivalents on Earth. *Beasties - Dragons, chimeras, the sphinx, etc, including the Luggage. *The Witches of Lancre - Explores similarities and contrasts between the Lancre witches and the Wise Women and witches of Britain and Ireland. *The Land of Lancre - The landscape legends, customs and beliefs in lancre set alongside their counterparts on earth (mainly British). *The Witches of the Chalk - Compares material in the Tiffany trilogy with beliefs and customs of Earth. *The Chalk - Explores the similar customs and way of life between Tiffany's home and the sheep-rearing areas of Southern England in past generations. *Heroes! - Deals with the parallels of Mazda/Prometheus, Carrot as the Lost Heir, and Cohen in relation to Alexander the Great, Tamurlaine, the aged Ulysses, and heroic defiance. *Lore, Legends and Truth - Concentrates on 'folklore' as recalled by inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork; includes sections on rat-charming, sinking islands, and wizardry. *More Customs, Nautical Lore and Military Matters - More urban traditions, also ghost ships and female soldiers. *Kids Stuff... You know, about 'Orrid Murder and Blood - Children's lore (e.g. Frighteners, and the Tooth Fairy); comparison of the Hogfather with father Christmas/Santa Claus. *Death - Well, death, obviously. |
Homunculus | James Blaylock | 1,986 | A dirigible with a dead pilot has been passing over Victorian London in a decaying orbit for some years, arousing the interest of the Royal Society, as well as scientist-explorer Langdon St. Ives and the evangelist/counterfeiter Shiloh. Shiloh is convinced that the dirigible carries his father, a tiny space alien, but withholds this knowledge from vivisectionist Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, who he is paying to reanimate Shiloh's dead mother. Narbondo and the evil millionaire Kelso Drake have their own interest in the alien; Drake possesses its spacecraft, which he uses for perverse purposes in one of his chain of stop-and-go brothels. St. Ives and his friends of the Trismegistus Club are more concerned with the inheritance of Jack Owlesby, a fine young fellow affianced to Dorothy, the beautiful daughter of toymaker/inventor William Keeble, who builds jolly boxes for space aliens, oxygenators, and gigantic emeralds. Jack's late father bequeathed him just such a gem, but also left behind dark knowledge developed in association with the evil Narbondo. St. Ives and the heroic tobacconist Theophilus Goodall suspect that Narbondo and his assistant, the pimply Willis Pule, are using this knowledge to raise the dead, possibly for nefarious purposes. When poor Bill Kraken steals what everyone assumes to be Owlesby's emerald in a fit of alien-induced delirium tremens, the ambitions of Shiloh, Narbondo, Drake, and Pule collide with the heroism of St Ives and Goodall and the scientific greed of Parsons of the Royal Academy as Hampstead Heath turns into a carnival of flying skulls, crumbling ghouls, crashing spaceships, and the sparking perversity of the dreadful Marseilles Pinkle. |
An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter | César Aira | 2,000 | An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter simultaneously navigates the territories of history, philosophy, and fantasy to offer less a biography of German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858) than a surreal account of his journeys through Latin America. At the prompting of explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, Rugendas travels to Argentina, Chile, and Mexico to paint their landscapes with a sense of what Humboldt calls "physiognomic totality," an understanding of each work as a portrait of the environment as a whole. In Argentina, Rugendas' adventure into the pampas almost costs him his life when he is struck by lightning while riding his horse and then dragged through the pampas as his horse flees. This leaves him horribly disfigured. As Rugendas struggles to recover physically he now sees the landscape with an altered vision. Aira's themes include the persistence of the artist and the sustaining power of his will to continue painting. |
The Worry Website | Jacqueline Wilson | null | There is also one story called Lisa's Worry by a twelve year old girl called Lauren Roberts. It is illustrated by Nick Sharratt. There are seven stories about the children in a class taught by Mr Speed at Mapleton Juniors. The last story however, is about a girl called Natasha who talks through a machine, she doesn't actually go to Mapleton Juniors, she goes to a special school for disabled children. The Worry Website, a replacement of boring old Circle Time (according to Holly) is a website that is created by Mr Speed and you can only access it by Mr Speed's classroom computer. The synopsis of each character is shown below. |
Ghosts | César Aira | 1,990 | Ghosts takes place in an unfinished luxury apartment complex in Buenos Aires that is shared by a family of squatters and a cadre of ghosts that haunt its floors. While most of the construction workers and family members react to the ghosts with detachment, the family's teenage daughter becomes fixated on the specters. As the story weaves away and back again towards the date set for the opening of the apartment complex, the daughter's obsession with the ghosts becomes more complex and nefarious, and ultimately threatens her life. |
How I Became a Nun | César Aira | 1,993 | How I Became A Nun chronicles a year in the fantastic internal and external life of an introverted six-year-old called César, who sees herself as a girl but is referred to by the rest of the world as a boy. In the beginning of the novel, her family moves to a bigger town Rosario, where her father takes her for a promised Ice-cream. The child is horrified at the taste of the Strawberry ice-cream, which disappoints the father. He insists that she finish her ice-cream and stop being difficult. After tasting the ice-cream himself, he realizes it is contaminated and in an altercation ends up killing the ice-cream vendor. The child gets cyanide poisoning and spend his/her time in the hospital, often suffering from delusions. Once out of the hospital, she learns that her father has been sent to eight years of prison. She joins school, three months late into the class and finds herself disconnected from a class which has learned to read. Thus she gets drawn into her own world of make-believe and imagination. Her only friends are her mother and a boy named Arturo Carrera. In the end, she is kidnapped by the wife of the ice-cream vendor who was killed by her father. The wife, in an act of vengeance, throws Cesar into a drum of Strawberry ice-cream, which seems to have become the girl's biggest horror. The story as told by young César captures a child's sense of wonder and naivete, and blurs the categories of what is imagined and what is real. |
Island | Jane Rogers | 1,999 | Nikki Black, a disturbed and hate-filled young woman intent on punishing the mother who abandoned her at birth goes to the island with only one aim in mind: revenge. Her plans are confounded by the discovery that she has a brother, Calum: a brother strangely possessed by their mother; a brother with a terrifyingly violent streak; a brother whose dangerous love and strange way of seeing the world transform Nikki's life. The characters Calum and Phyllis are loosely based upon Caliban and Prospero. |
The Secret Magdalene | Ki Longfellow | 2,005 | The story begins in the voice of the Jewess Mariamne as a child living a privileged life in her widowed father Josephus’ home in Jerusalem. Also living with them is her father’s ward, Salome, an Egyptian, the daughter of a deceased fellow merchant. Both girls are overseen by a body servant named Tata. Mariamne has only just recovered from a life-threatening illness during which it seems she might have experienced altered states of consciousness. When she revives, she is gifted (or cursed) with unexpected voiced divination. Raised like sisters and indulged by a fond father with books and lessons usually only accorded boys, Mariamne and Salome possess a thirst for knowledge, both secular and magical, that is forbidden to females. Through their devoted personal slave, they also learn worldly experience far beyond anything Josephus, a member of the elite Jewish Sanhedrin, would approve of them knowing. When Mariamne unwittingly exposes her gift of prophesy in front of her father and his houseguest, a merchant named Ananias, Josephus immediately sends Mariamne to her room, but Ananias is intrigued. That moment of exposure changes not only the life of Mariamne, but the lives of all involved. Within months, Josephus, misunderstanding an exchange he sees between Salome and his houseguest, banishes Salome and the houseguest from his home, and then, only hours later, Tata and Mariamne. His daughter is to go into her uncle’s strict Jewish household, where there are no books. Unable to bear the loss of Salome and then of her books, Mariamne takes her life into her own hands, as well as that of her slave Tata. She follows Salome into true banishment. Mariamne is only eleven years old, Salome is twelve. With Mariamne's choice, her quest begins. For both protection and ease of travel, Mariamne and Salome are disguised as boys, not unusual for the times, especially for girls who sought learning. Dressed as males, they are given male names. Salome is Simon. Mariamne is John. As John and Simon, they are taken by Ananias and his friends to the “Wilderness,” a hidden settlement on the northwest edge of the Dead Sea. Here they meet a man who will become Mariamne's mentor, the young philosopher Seth of Damascus, also a seeker of divine knowledge. They also meet John the Baptist, hiding with other zealots in the wilds of the Judean deserts. In the "Wilderness," they see a world they could not have imagined in the home of a rich Jew of the Law: the complex struggle for Jewish freedom from Rome, and the even more complex struggle for the Temple where Roman-backed priests practice rites of animal sacrifice that enrage zealots. They also see there is no one brand of zealotry, but many, and none agree with the others, though all await a Messiah to lead them. Salome comes quickly to believe John the Baptist is that Messiah in the form of an actual King of the Jews. Mariamne does not agree. Thus begins the rift between Mariamne and Salome, one that only grows wider when Mariamne meets John's cousin, a Galilean called Yeshua. In time it seems wise to send the young prophets away from the hotbed that is Roman-occupied Israel. With Seth, they travel to Alexandria, Egypt where Mariamne and Salome live in the Great Library, becoming learned in mathematics, philosophy, poetry, and, under the tutelage of Philo of Alexandria, the Egyptian mysteries, specifically the ancient Passion of the man-god Osiris. After seven years, Mariamne reluctantly returns to the Wilderness, but Salome is eager to go back in order to see John of the River again. Having lived as males, they remain males. Through John of the River, Mariamne (now called John the Less) meets his cousin, Yeshua of Galilee and his twin brother, Jude the Sicarii. Immediately sensing they are somehow important to each other, John the Less shares with Yeshua the knowledge she learned during her studies in Egypt. Deeply confused and disturbed by the violent actions of all those around him, and their expectations of a “King” prophesied to save them, Yeshua retreats deeper in the true wilderness of the Dead Sea region to undergo his own revelation, returning to share it with his increasingly beloved friend, John the Less. Mariamne, who had undergone her own experience of gnosis years earlier as a child close to death, would keep such knowledge to herself, but Yeshua is filled with a messianic fervor to have all others know what he “knows” and what his beloved companion knows - that all are divine, and no one needs "saving" if only they would awaken from the sleep of illusion. Aware of where such enthusiasm might lead (it has led John of the River to a terrible death at the hands of Herod Antipas and Salome/Simon to an even more terrible survival), still Mariamne (now John the Beloved Disciple) follows Yeshua as he teaches and heals, spreading his message of love and forgiveness to his followers, whose numbers continue to grow as his reputation as Messiah grows. Eventually, Yeshua’s resolute conviction leads him to the cross, and Mariamne to a cave in what is now the south of France, but was then called the Gallia Narbonensis by its Roman conquerors, where, dying, she tells her story to Seth of Damascus, her lifelong friend, who writes it all down for her. |
River Boy | Tim Bowler | 1,997 | Fifteen-year-old Jess, a dedicated swimmer, dotes on her grandfather, a fiercely independent and cantankerous artist. When he falls ill, he insists on returning to the isolated valley where he lived as a child to finish his last painting, a haunting landscape called 'River Boy'. Jess is desperately trying to cope with the knowledge that her grandfather is dying, and she does her best to help him finish the painting that is so important to him. While exploring the valley, Jess feels a strange presence and sees a mysterious boy in the river, now there, now gone. When she eventually meets the boy, he gives her some surprising advice that leads to the painting being finished against everyone's expectations. In return, he challenges her to join him in swimming down the river from the source to the sea, over forty miles. Jess refuses, saying she must stay with her grandfather, and watches him dive from the waterfall into the river. Soon after, hearing about her grandfather as a boy, she has a sudden revelation, and she swims after the boy to the mouth of the river, where he is waiting for her before finally disappearing. Jess then learns that her grandfather has died peacefully, leaving her his painting of the 'River Boy', which she now realizes is both a landscape and a portrait of the boy she met – a self-portrait. |
Karmabhoomi | Munshi Premchand | null | Amarkant is an intelligent and idealistic, though weak, young man who has grown up hating his father's business and adherence to the formalities of Hindu religion. He is married to Sukhada who is beautiful and intelligent, but dominates him through her logical and down-to-earth approach to life. Denied love at home and stifled by his wife, Amarkant is attracted to their watchman's granddaughter, the modest and courteous Sakina. When his father refuses to accept Sakina, Amarkant leaves home to wander from village to village. Finally settling in a village of Untouchables, he teaches children and help villagers in their fight for relief against land tax. Initially unable to comprehend her husband's sympathy for the poor, Sukhada is ultimately drawn into the movement when she sees the police firing on a non-violent demonstration for acceptance of the Untouchables inside temples. She instantaneously gains recognition and acceptance as a leader of city's poor and downtrodden. Impelled by the desire to gain similar recognition, Amarkant deviates from the path of non-violence in favour of direct confrontation that leads to many casualties among the farmers. He finally realizes that the Gandhian path was the better one, and returns to its fold. |
L’adolescent de sal | null | null | A young man from Mallorca analyzes the crisis of bourgeois consciousness through the sparse writing of prose and poems that express repression, the desire for freedom, and the discovery of love and pleasure. The boy struggles with his inner contradictions to eliminate old prejudices and transform society. Both the work and the act of writing are presented as acts of rebellion against the establishment — Catholicism, police oppression, society based on the traditional family, and the traditional road to riches. The young man discovers gradually the culture that he had been denied him due to a punitive religious education. A narrator presents the work as one in which the teenager expresses his point of view, emotions, fears and insights. The idea is that the reader advances through the text in a dialectical way to come to his or her own conclusions. Cheska, the protagonist’s girlfriend who studies theater, will be on the receiving end of the adolescent’s literary efforts. |
Pyramid of Shadows | Mike Mearls | null | Pyramid of Shadows presents an adventure wherein players find their way to a multi-levelled extradimensional pyramid built by the gods as a prison for the power-mad Tiefling wizard Karavakos. Karavakos' power - and personality - has been fractured into multiple parts in order to keep him bound within the prison. In a plot to obtain his freedom, Karavakos tricks players into hunting down and killing several splinter versions of himself within the pyramid, in order that Karavakos might regain the power they hold and break free of the prison. However with the aid of the undying head of Karavakos' one time Eladrin lover Vyrellis, the players gain the opportunity to breach Karavakos' sanctum and defeat the wizard, which dissolves the pyramid and frees the players. |
Separation of Power | Vince Flynn | 2,001 | The novel is set shortly after the events of The Third Option. CIA Director Thomas Stansfield has succumbed to his terminal cancer, leaving many in Washington confused as to why his dying wish was to have the Director of the Counter Terrorism Center Dr. Irene Kennedy to succeed him. Henry "Hank" Clark, the corrupt and ambitious Republican U.S. senator from the previous book, who treats everyone like pieces on a Chess board, still has his eyes on the Presidency. Fortunately for Clark almost all people, including Rapp, are not aware of his true self. President Xavier Hayes and Kennedy summon Mitch Rapp and ask him to assemble a team to infiltrate Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons production facility. |
The Hacker and the Ants | Rudy Rucker | null | Jerzy Rugby is trying to create truly intelligent robots. While his actual life crumbles, Rugby toils in his virtual office, testing the robots online. Then, something goes wrong and zillions of computer virus ants invade the net. Rugby is the man wanted for the crime. He's been set up to take a fall for a giant cyberconspiracy and he needs to figure out who — or what — is sabotaging the system in order to clear his name. Plunging deep into the virtual worlds of Antland of Fnoor to find some answers, Rugby confronts both electronic and all-too-real perils, facing death itself in a battle for his freedom. |
King of the Trollhaunt Warrens | Logan Bonner | 2,008 | Set in and around the fictional coastal town of Moonstair, King of the Trollhaunt Warrens sees players combatting the menace of Skalmad, a self-declared king of the trolls who is able to repeatedly return from death through use of a magical cauldron. Players journey to Skalmad's warren in the Trollhaunt, return to Moonstair to repel an attack by Skalmad's troll army, and finally travel to the faerie realm of the Feywild to destroy the cauldron. |
House to House | David Bellavia | null | House to House is an autobiography about the actions of Staff Sergeant David Bellavia during the second Battle of Fallujah. The book was released in 2007 and goes in-depth to describe the horrible conditions of battle and the feelings that he experiences when fighting for his life in hand-to-hand combat. Throughout much of the book Staff Sergeant Bellavia is torn between his family, and the armed forces. SSG Bellavia also speaks of how the Top Brass seemed to have been detached from the reality of the battle on the ground. |
Der Blindensturz | Gert Hofmann | 1,985 | The action of the story is concerned with the six blind men who are hired to be painted by an unnamed painter (whom the reader will come to realize is Bruegel) and their confused journey to the painter's house. After becoming lost, nearly drowned, and attacked by a dog, the men finally arrive at the painter's house where they are fed and warmed (and nearly burned by the fire). The blind men are then led to a bridge and are told to walk across it in a line, holding on to each other and screaming and eventually falling into the stream, repeatedly, while the painter paints them from inside his open window. |
The Great Wheel | Robert Lawson | 1,957 | The story's protagonist is Irish-born Conn Kilroy, who leaves Ireland for the United States in the 1890s at the urging of his Uncle Michael. Before he leaves, his aunt predicts that he will ride the biggest wheel in the world. He travels to the United States by steamship. While on board, he meets an attractive German girl named Trudy, who is traveling to Wisconsin. Upon his arrival, he begins working for his uncle in New York City, but he is soon hired to work for the company commissioned to create the huge Ferris wheel for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. He works hard with his newfound friend Martin Brennan to build it. After the giant wheel is installed at the exposition, Conn fulfills his aunt's prophecy by riding on it. His uncle would like him to help build a bridge, but Conn refuses and stays. He takes a job as a guard at the fair, hoping that someday Trudy will visit the fair. She does visit, and the two reunite, eventually marrying and moving to Wisconsin. |
Fabulous Histories | null | null | Fabulous Histories tells the story of two families -- one robin and one human -- who learn to live together congenially. Most importantly, the children and the baby robins learn to adopt virtue and to shun vice. For Trimmer, practicing kindness to animals as a child would hopefully lead one to "universal benevolence" as an adult. According to Samuel Pickering, Jr., a scholar of eighteenth-century children's literature, “in its depiction of eighteenth-century attitudes toward animals, Mrs. Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories was the most representative children’s book of the period." |
No One Thinks Of Greenland | John Griesemer | 2,003 | The book is set after the Korean War. The novel follows the misadventures of the character Rudy Spruance who has been mistaken for another soldier and inadvertently assigned to Greenland. |
In Your Dreams | null | null | Paul Carpenter is the protagonist of the book. The book is summarized in the next book in the series Earth, Air, Fire, and Custard where Paul tells his uncle about what happened to him. So Paul told him all about it: how he'd got a job as a junior clerk with a firm called J. W. Wells & Co in the City, without knowing what it was they actually did; how it'd come as rather a shock to him when he found out that they were one of the top six firms of family and commercial magicians in the UK, specialising in the entertainment and media, mining and mineral resources, construction, dispute resolution, applied sorcery and pest-control sectors; how he'd almost immediately tried to resign, and how he'd found out a little while later that the reason why they wouldn't let him was that his parents had financed their early retirement to Florida by selling him to the partners of JWW, who wanted him because the knack of doing magic ran in his family to such an extent that it was inevitable that he'd have it too; how he'd briefly found true love with Sophie, the other junior clerk, shortly before she was abducted by Contessa Judy di Castel Bianco, the firm's entertainments and PR partner and hereditary Queen of the Fey, who permanently erased Sophie's feelings for Paul from her mind; how he'd learned scrying for mineral deposits from Mr Tanner, who was half-goblin on his mother's side, and heroism and dragonslaying from Ricky Wurmtoter, the pest-control partner, and a bit of applied sorcery from the younger Mr Wells (before the elder Mr Wells turned him into a photocopier); and how he'd just started learning spatio-temporal displacement theory with Theodorus Van Spee, former professor of classical witchcraft at the University of Leiden and inventor of the portable folding parking-space; oh, and how he'd died, twice (only the second time was an accident) and been put on deposit for a while in the firm's account at the Bank of the Dead. |
Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones | Brandon Sanderson | null | Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones is the second novel in the Alcatraz series. Sanderson continues the series as Alcatraz goes to the Library of Alexandria and tries to rescue his Dad and Grandpa from the soul stealing library curators. Once he arrives he is immediately separated from the rest of the group consisting of Bastille and her mother Draulin, Alcatraz's uncle Kazan, and Alcatraz's cousin Australia. Alcatraz is travelling through the library alone and he is often pestered by the curators who ask him to take a book at the cost of his soul. The curators speak long forgotten languages which he can understand because of his Translator's Lenses. At one point Alcatraz finds Bastille caught in a net, and he breaks the ropes that bind her. After Bastille and Alcatraz continue to venture Kazan finds them by utilizing his talent of getting lost. He finds them because they are both abstractly lost. Soon after the three travel the library with Kazan's talent they activate another trip wire which encloses them in a hardened goo. Alcatraz escapes by biting through it, and his friends follow in his suit. Along the way he finds the tomb of Alcatraz the first who was the first wielder of the breaking talent. His tomb does not age because he broke time. At the tomb he also finds a note which informs him that his talent is more of a curse than a blessing. After activating yet a third trip wire Bastille and Alcatraz fall into a pit. After a lengthy (and awkward) discussion about responsibility, they escape using Windstormer's Lenses and proceed to fight the Scrivener's Bones—a sect of Dark Oculators. They defeat him by tricking him into checking out a book, then the curators take his soul. Later, they find Grandpa Smedry crying over a note. It is revealed that indeed, Attica Smedry (Alcatraz's father) has sold his soul for all the knowledge in the world. But, in claiming a note written before he was turned into a curator, Alcatraz learns of a way to turn him back. |
The White Tiger | null | 1,987 | Lu Hong, a policeman in Beijing finds himself in trouble after the death in strange circumstances of his mentor, Sun Sheng. Sheng was a friend of Hong's parents, and originally met them during the Long March with Mao Zedong from 1935 to 1948. Hong suspects that something is hidden behind his mentor's sudden death. He begins to look for the true story of what happened forty years ago, when his parents, Sheng and the Three Tigers were in the city of Yan'an with Mao Zedong. However, the silence of people who know, and subsequent deaths, impede his investigation. |
Hell's Horizon | Darren Shan | null | The story begins with Al Jeery, an African American soldier, going on a fishing trip with his best friend Bill Casey. He soon returned to the city and went to work as a soldier serving under the Troops, the personal guards of an extremely powerful man known as 'the Cardinal'. As soon as he returned, he was summoned by the latter, who asked him to investigate a weird murder case that occurred in the Skylight Hotel. Al became motivated to be involved as soon as he learnt that his girlfriend, Nicola Hornyak, was the victim of the murder and was brutally treated. As Al proceed with his investigations, he uncovered the truth behind his past as he slowly drifted into the world of madness. |
O Presidente Negro | Monteiro Lobato | null | Most of the action of the book takes place in the United States in 2228. In this world, racial intermingling is prohibited so that blacks and whites remain genetically pure. During the 2228 presidential election, the white male incumbent president, Kerlog, runs against a white feminist named Evelyn Astor. The black leader James Roy Wilde (Jim Roy) postpones his support for either candidate until one hour before the election, when he declares that he is a candidate. He wins in the 30-minute electronic voting, becoming the United States' 88th and first black president. However, the American whites plot to sterilize all blacks. Roy is found dead in his office, and then Kerlog wins in a re-election. |
Paint It Black: A Novel | Janet Fitch | 2,006 | From the inside cover: Josie Tyrell, art model, teen runaway, and denizen of LA's rock scene, finds a chance at real love with art student Michael Faraday. A Harvard dropout and son of a renowned pianist, Michael introduces Josie to a world of sophistication she had never dreamed existed and to his spiritual quest for the beauty that shines through everyday experience. But when she receives a call from the Los Angeles County coroner, asking her to identify her lover's dead body, her bright dreams all turn to black. "What happens to a dream when the dreamer is gone?" This is the question Josie asks as she searches for the key to understanding Michael's death. And as she struggles to hold on to the true world he shared with her, she is both repelled by and attracted to Michael's pianist mother, Meredith, who holds Josie responsible for her son's torment. Joined by their grief, the two women are soon drawn into a twisted relationship that reflects equal parts distrust and blind need. Passionate, wounded, and fiercely alive, Josie Tyrell walks the brink of her own destruction as she fights to discover what is left of the brilliant vision of the future she and Michael once nurtured together. When the luxurious prose and fever-pitch intensity that are her hallmarks, Janet Fitch has written a spellbinding new novel about love, betrayal, and the possibility of transcendence. |
Do Hard Things: A Teenage Rebellion Against Low Expectations | null | 2,008 | In Do Hard Things, the Harris brothers attempt to "explode the myth of adolescence," and show that prior to the 20th century, a person was an adult or a child. The book challenges teenagers to go beyond their comfort zone, and, in essence, "do hard things." The foreword was contributed by Chuck Norris. |
Fifth Planet | null | 1,963 | Another star is due to pass close to the sun, close enough for conventional spacecraft to reach it. The first planets observed are four gas-giants, but then an inner 'Fifth Planet' is found. It shows signs of life, and rival Russian and US expeditions are launched to visit it. (The world balance as it existed in 1963 is assumed to be still in place.) |
Ossian's Ride | null | 1,959 | In the 1970 of this story, Eire has become an authoritarian police state, made somewhat acceptable to the population by the vast wealth flowing from a secret and forbidden science zone occupying a large area of the South-West. Here is based the mysterious 'Industrial Corporation of Éire' which has produced a range of new technologies. Its enigmatic founders are not Irish: they settled there and resist all attempts to find out who they are. A young British scientist agrees to be sent as a spy to find out just what is going on. Although labelled as Science Fiction by the publisher, the bulk of the novel owes more to the thriller style of the John Buchan tradition, as the Cambridge hero battles across wild Irish landscapes fighting a series of murderous thugs and secret policemen. The science fiction denouement is confined almost to the last chapter and foreshadows the theme of Hoyle's later A for Andromeda, though in a far more cursory manner. Also of note is the way the young hero seems to come to accept the notion of an authoritarian society ruled by a few self-appointed "supermen". The link with the legendary Irish hero Ossian is peripheral to the plot and is explained near the end. |
The War Between the Tates | Alison Lurie | 1,974 | The novel takes place in 1969. Erica and Brian Tate are a seemingly happy and successful academic couple. At least, Brian Tate is successful: he is the holder of the endowed Sayles Chair of Political Science at Corinth University in upstate New York. As he reaches his mid-40s, he begins to undergo a mid-life crisis. He is an admirer and scholar of the work of George Kennan, the diplomat who devised President Harry Truman's policy of containment of the Soviet Union at the start of the Cold War. Brian is depressed, however, because Kennan's reputation and influence are in abeyance, and he also realizes that his own ambition of writing a world-altering book will probably never be realized, and that in consequence, he will probably never be called to serve in Washington, D.C. His wife Erica, 40, is also not quite content with her lot. She has a degree from Radcliffe and has published some children’s books but has basically given up any ambition she may have had for a life of full-time motherhood and giving and attending faculty dinners. Now, as their children approach adolescence, Brian and Erica realize they can't stand their own offspring — their music, their rudeness, and their selfishness. Meanwhile, Brian Tate has been pursued and has gotten involved with a young grad student, Wendy, who to his gratification, admires him greatly. When Erica finds out, Brian breaks off with Wendy, but he soon resumes the affair and impregnates her. The despairing Wendy now considers suicide; an abortion (New York State legalized abortion in 1970, but it had become easier to get one immediately prior to this); or whether to raise the baby, the carrier of precious Tate genes, which, she feels, should be nurtured for the sake of humanity. She has the abortion, but then gets pregnant again and Brian is terrified he will have to marry her, but fortunately she goes off to live in a commune in California with a younger boyfriend. Erica’s situation is paralleled by that of her friend Danielle Zimmern—recently divorced from her husband Leonard, Danielle has become involved with Women’s Liberation. Erica embarks on an unsatisfying affair with an old friend—Zed, whom she once considered too homely to take seriously. He had pursued her when they were undergraduates at Harvard and now he runs a counter-cultural bookstore in the town. Zed invites her to participate in an LSD trip. Brian, meanwhile, ends up helping a group of young women—he is attracted in particular to one, the beautiful young student Jenny—who want to protest the sexist attitudes of Professor Dibble, a highly conservative colleague in Brian's Department. Brian ends up futilely attempting to support both sides in this battle, to his own discomfiture. We learn that in the war between men and women, as in other wars, when the two sides are extremely polarized, there can be no middle ground. |
The Lost World | Michael Crichton | 1,995 | Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm — who is revealed to have actually survived the events of the previous novel — teams up with wealthy paleontologist Richard Levine after learning about Site B, the secret "production facility" where the park's dinosaurs were hatched and grown; the site is located on Isla Sorna, an island adjacent to Isla Nublar. When Levine disappears, Malcolm fears that he might have discovered Site B's exact location and went there without his knowledge. Doc Thorne and Eddie Carr, who provided Levine with equipment, and R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis, two schoolchildren who assisted Levine, deduce the island's location. The adults organize a rescue operation and utilize an advanced fleet of field vehicles. Stowed away with them as they leave are Arby and Kelly, who plan to rescue Levine as well. At the same time, geneticist Lewis Dodgson and his underlings, Howard King and George Baselton, head to Isla Sorna in the hopes of stealing dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of the now bankrupt InGen. Sarah Harding, a wildlife observer who had a previous relationship with Malcolm, accompanies them. However, Dodgson throws her off their boat and leaves her for dead. Once the team comes across the nest of a Tyranosaurus Rex, Dodgson forces King and Baselton to proceed with the mission. When trying to steal some eggs, King steps on a baby T-Rex's leg and breaks it. Baselton is too scared to enter the nest, causing Dodgson to grab one himself. In the process, the black box he has brought along is separated from its power supply and stops emitting the sound designed to keep the parent T-Rexes at bay. The T-Rexes eat Baselton and destroy Dodgson's SUV. Dodgson survives while King is eventually killed by Velociraptors. Coming across the baby T-Rex, Eddie brings it back to the base camp, where Malcolm and Sarah fix its broken leg. The absence of the infant is noted by its parents, who track their offspring to the camp by smell. Malcolm and Sarah are rescued by Thorne, but Malcolm's leg is injured, and he ends up spending most of the remainder of the story immobile and high on morphine. Meanwhile, the other team members are attacked by Velociraptors. Eddie is killed, but Arby manages to lock himself in a nearby cage. He is quickly abducted by the raptors, who bring him to their lair. Thorne and Levine rescue Arby, and the survivors take shelter in an abandoned InGen gas station. There, they encounter two Carnotaurus, but manage to scare them away with flashlights. Once daylight comes, Sarah attempts to retrieve the team's Ford Explorer. After evading a group of aggressive Pachycephalosaurus, she encounters and dispatches Dodgson. Dodgson is then taken by one of Tyrannosaurs to their nesting site, where his leg is broken and he is left for the babies to eat. After Sarah fails to reach the helicopter in time, Kelly locates an abandoned building with a functional boat inside. After making a quick getaway from a group of Velociraptors, the survivors are able to reach the boat and escape the island. While on the boat, Malcolm and Harding tell Levine, who was bitten by one of the animals, that some of the carnivores, including the Velociraptors and the Procompsognathus, are infected with prions due to InGen's decision to feed them contaminated sheep, and any animal bitten by them will be infected also. This means that all the dinosaurs on the island are fated to die due to the uncontrolled spread of the prions. Levine panics about the possibility of being infected with prions, but Malcolm states it shouldn't be harmful to humans. With that said, Thorne finally declares that is time for all of them to go home. As with the first book, the main conflicts the characters must face is fending off attacks from Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Procompsognathus. Throughout this second novel, Malcolm and Levine talk about various evolutionary and extinction theories, as well as the nature of modern science and the homogenizing and destructive nature of humanity. A particularly strong theme is the ethological and sociobiological concept of learned social behavior in animals (for example, Crichton's velociraptors, deprived of being reared among natural raptors with developed social pack behavior, instead show a tendency towards violent, antisocial behavior even amongst themselves). The book also discusses the role of prions in brain diseases, which has been at the root of concerns over Mad Cow Disease. |
Code to Zero | Ken Follett | 2,001 | In America, 1958 a man wakes up in a men's room with no recollection of his past. His clothing, associates and surroundings suggest to him that he is an alcoholic derelict, however his behaviour, morals and instinct lead him to investigate and research his past. He establishes (by the simple method of going into a library and pulling books off shelves until he finds one that he understands,) that he is in fact Dr Lucas - a rocket scientist, and well known in his field. He further establishes that he is directly responsible for the design of a rocket due to be launched by America in an attempt to match the Soviet Sputnik, and bolster America's entry into what would become the Space Race. Several people from his past both help and hinder his progress, and the implication is made that he himself was a Soviet spy, and had his memory erased instead of being killed - although this theory is made suspect when his best friend reveals that he was once a soviet spy and subsequently turned (but not entirely forgiven) by Lucas. The actual spies (and saboteur) are revealed to be both his wife and another close friend, who plan on using the rocket's self-destruct mechanism to destroy the rocket as it is launched, either removing America from the Space Race, or putting their progress back so far that the Soviets will be hard to catch. The plot is foiled with seconds to spare, and his wife apparently commits suicide rather than being caught by driving her car into the sea. The second saboteur is shot and killed in a gun battle prior to Lucas' wife's suicide. |
The Black Robe | Wilkie Collins | 1,881 | As the story begins, Romayne and his friend, Major Hynd, are in Bologne to visit Romayne's aunt, who is dying. While there, he attends a card game, where he has an argument with an opponent, who challenges him to a duel. Romayne accidentally kills his opponent, and the screams of the man's brother after the death come to haunt Romayne for the rest of his life. Romayne returns to his Yorkshire home, called Vange Abbey. Even in his own home, the Frenchman's younger brother's awful cries follow him. He finally leaves for London, to visit his old friend Lord Loring, who is the patriarch of a well-heeled Catholic family. While there, he meets Stella Eyrecourt, who falls in love with him. A Catholic priest named Father Benwell, who serves as a spiritual leader for the Lorings, determines that he will convert Romayne to the church, employing the services of young priest, Arthur Penrose, to this end. This is all done in an attempt to bring Romayne's family home, Vange, back to the church, who owned it before Romayne's family. Romayne, who is still haunted by the duel, sends Major Hynd to enquire about the family of the man he killed in hopes of assisting them monetarily. Additionally, he confides in Penrose who becomes a true friend to Romayne, despite his presumed ulterior motives. Father Benwell employs various tactics to undermine Romayne's marriage to Stella, finally culminating in a bigamous marriage, after Romayne becomes convinced of his wife's untimely death. Eventually, Romayne is promoted to an ecclesiastical post in Paris. However, knowing that he is dying, Romayne finally decides to see Stella and his son. Father Benwell brings Romayne's lawyer to his deathbed, trting to confirm the validity of the will in an attempt to ensure the church inherits Vange. But as he dies, Romayne acknowledges he loves his wife and child, and has the will destroyed. This causes Vange—and the entire inheritance—to pass to his family, foiling Benwell's plans. |
The Man with a Thousand Names | null | null | The main character is Steven Masters. A spoiled 23-year-old who happens to be the only son of the world's richest man. At a party he (while drunk) states that he wishes to go on a proposed space flight to a distant life bearing planet called Mittend. Mittend is 30 light years from Earth and is the closest life bearing planet. When he is told that he doesn't qualify, he gets indignant and sets upon a campaign to join in the expedition. Using his father's money he is able to get passage. Six weeks later he arrives on the planet. It turns out to be very similar to Earth, with a breathable atmosphere. Upon landing he wanders off from the main group and meets the natives. The natives turn out to be naked and primitive but have a powerful group mind named "Mother". The natives, upon seeing Steven, chase after him and when they catch him and touch him, his mind gets traded into the body of a 38-year-old bar waiter back on earth. The bar waiter's mind gets transferred to Steven's body on the other planet. It turns out that the bar waiter used to work for Steven as a butler. He blamed him for a crime he didn't commit and got him fired. Immediately after the transfer, he goes into psychological shock and the bar is forced to call an ambulance. They sedate him and he has to spend a few days in the hospital. His story (of being mind swapped) gets out and combined with the fact the expedition has gone missing, he becomes a sensation. While in the hospital, Masters Senior (his father) comes to visit him. He leaves stating that the person there is not Steven. Upon leaving the hospital, he gets picked up by the bartender who drives him to work. He works the day. |
Green Lantern: Willworld | null | null | This story tells how a young Hal Jordan mastered his power ring. The story is set on a world formed entirely by the imagination of other Green Lanterns. |
Innocent, Her Fancy and His Fact | Marie Corelli | 1,914 | Raised on the prosperous farm of Hugo Jocelyn, descendant of a French knight, Innocent has always believed herself to be Jocelyn's illegitimate daughter by his fiancee before her death. She is an idealistic woman, inspired by the romanticism of the medieval French literature preserved by her ancestor; indeed, she feels she knows "Sieur Amadis" personally. As an infant, Innocent was dumped at the farm during a violent storm, by a stranger who explained he had to keep going but feared endangering the child. He promised to return, but never did, instead sending money every six months. Jocelyn reveals this in a deathbed confession. After his death, Innocent receives a visit from her birth mother, Lady Blythe. A shallow and pretentious noblewoman, she explains that Innocent was the result of a fling she'd had with artist Pierce Armitage. He was probably the one who left her at the farm. Innocent departs for London, planning to earn her living by writing and "make a name" for herself, since she has none by birthright. She has one book already written; it's wildly successful, and she writes another. In the usual Corellian coincidences, Innocent's landlady had had a serious relationship with Pierce Armitage, and Lord Blythe had been his friend at school. Lady Blythe confesses all, then dies. In Italy, Lord Blythe discovers Armitage alive and tells him of Innocent; Armitage at once prepares to claim his daughter legally. However, Innocent has been lured into a romance with a modern-day Amadis Jocelyn, descendant of her "Sieur Amadis"' brother. She mistakes his flirtations and romantic gestures for real love, but he thinks of it as a mere fling. When he casts her out, Innocent is heartbroken, and returns to her farm to die. |
Modernizing Tradition | null | null | Amidst the massive upheavals that followed World War I, there was a pronounced emphasis in both nations to return to an idealized past of order and stability. The key to such recovery, according to popular thinking, was by reconstructing traditional gender roles, which had been thrown out of balance during the war. Such a nostalgized gender order could not be restored, however, without discursive modifications to account for the significant changes in society since 1914. Instead, a renewed emphasis on traditional gender norms required the provision of a degree of seeming empowerment to women by granting them discursive access to modernity. These connections between women and the modern were carefully constructed in order to ensure that women's involvement with items of modernity, such as technological consumer goods, did not necessarily involve an assertion of female independence or liberation. Women's association with modernity went only so far as such links could reinforce women's traditional roles or highlight their continued subservience to and dependence on masculine guidance, expertise, and authority. Using advertisements and related ideological tools of consumerism, this study examines those modernized constructions of traditional gender roles. In a broader context, the book documents the wide-ranging similarities between French and German conceptions of gender. The transnational nature of this study illustrates that French and German notions of gender and modernity were strikingly congruent, and suggests the possibility of a broader gender ideology common to larger segments of Europe as a whole. These gendered ideals were consistent across not only geographical boundaries, but also chronological and political ones as well. The interwar decades were an era of rapid and stark changes politically, economically, and socially, but gender imagery in popular discourse remained virtually identical over the duration of these years, regardless of political regimes in power or prevailing economic circumstances. One of the important contributions of this study is to note this continuity and consistency of definitions of masculinity and femininity in the interwar era. The ability of traditional gender ideologies to hold firm among disparate elements of the population, people at all points on the political spectrum, and highly differentiated political regimes should form in future scholarly endeavor a vital point for analysis and questioning of cultural attitudes about gender. The fact that gender conceptions remained relatively the same over the course of these two decades—years when virtually every other aspect of society and culture seemed in a constant state of flux—attests to the extraordinarily powerful constancy of these gender constructions in French and German society. |
Jud Süß | null | null | The novel tells the story of a Jewish businessman, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, who, because of his exceptional talent for finance and politics, becomes the top advisor for the Duke of Württemberg. Surrounded by jealous and hateful enemies, Süß helps the Duke create a corrupt state that involves them both in immense wealth and power. In the meantime, Süß discovers he is the illegitimate son of a respected nobleman, but decides to continue living as a Jew, as he is proud of having achieved such a position despite this. In the meantime, the Duke finds out about Süß’s hidden daughter and when trying to rape her accidentally kills her. Süß is devastated. He plans and executes his revenge. After he encourages and then exposes the Duke's plan to overthrow the Parliament, thus infuriating the Duke to death, Süß realizes nothing will bring back his daughter, and apathetically turns himself over. He is found innocent, but under the pressure of the public he is finally sentenced to death by hanging. Despite it being his last chance for reprieve, he never reveals his noble origins nor converts to Christianity, and dies reciting the Shema Yisrael, the most important prayer in Judaism. |
There's a Girl in My Hammerlock | Jerry Spinelli | 1,991 | Maisie Potter tries out for the wrestling team in her junior high to get close to a boy she likes, but she soon finds out that what she really loves is the sport of wrestling. Maisie initially wants to be on the cheerleading squad, but she did not make the cut during tryouts. She in infatuated with a boy at her school, Eric Delong, and will do anything to be near him. Because he tries out for the wrestling team, Maisie decides to try out too. She makes the team but discovers that wrestling is a lot harder than she initially thought. She wins some of her matches but most of her opponents forfeit because they don't think it's right for a girl to wrestle a boy. She has to decide if she should do things that other people want her to do or things that she truly wants to do and is good at. |
Dead Man's Ransom | Edith Pargeter | 1,984 | The story opens on 7 February 1141, a few days after the Battle of Lincoln. Brother Cadfael is a Benedictine monk at Shrewsbury Abbey, of Welsh origins and formerly a widely travelled soldier and seaman. England is in the grip of civil war, as King Stephen and the Empress Maud are contending for the throne. Shrewsbury and the county of Shropshire are loyal to King Stephen and a contingent from the county has gone to fight for him at Lincoln. Hugh Beringar, Deputy Sheriff for the county, returns with the survivors, bringing news of a disastrous defeat. Stephen has been captured, and the future of England is uncertain. Gilbert Prestcote, Sheriff of Shropshire, has also been taken prisoner by Welshmen allied to Empress Maud under Madog ap Maredudd, Lord of Powys in Mid Wales, and Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd, the brother of Owain Gwynedd, ruler of Gwynedd in North Wales. A few days later, Sister Magdalen, a friend of Cadfael who effectively runs the Benedictine convent at Godric's Ford a few miles from Shrewsbury, reports that some of the Welshmen returning from Lincoln tried to raid the convent but were easily driven off, leaving as a prisoner a young man who had fallen into a stream and nearly drowned. He pretends to speak no English, but Brother Cadfael, sent to treat his wounds, quickly sees through the deception. Chagrined, the prisoner identifies himself as Elis ap Cynan, a distant cousin of Owain Gwynedd. Hugh Beringar dispatches Cadfael into Wales to negotiate an exchange of prisoners; Elis for Gilbert Prestcote. Cadfael proceeds to Tregeiriog in Gwynedd close to the border with England, the holding of Owain's retainer Tudur ap Rhys and where Owain's court is temporarily established. He meets Tudur's daughter Cristina, who was betrothed in infancy to Elis, and Eliud, Elis's foster-brother. He overhears Cristina and Eliud arguing bitterly, and concludes that Cristina is jealous of the friendship between Eliud and Elis, which is making Elis neglect Cristina. While Cadfael is away in Wales, Elis has met Gilbert Prestcote's daughter Melicent, and they have fallen in love. Melicent believes that her father will never consent to their marriage. A party under Einon ab Ithel, one of Owain's captains, brings Prestcote from Wales. Eliud accompanies them, as Einon's groom and as the planned hostage to remain in Shrewsbury while Elis returns to Wales. Prestcote is ill and wounded, and is taken to the infirmary at Shrewsbury Abbey. While Einon dines with Abbot Radulfus and Hugh Beringar, Elis tells Eliud of his love for Melicent and his intention to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Eliud protests, but Elis goes to Prestcote's room, only to be ejected from the ward by Brother Edmund, the Infirmarer. As Einon prepares to leave, Eliud asks Cadfael to go with him to recover Einon's cloak, which had been left behind in Prestcote's room. They find that Prestcote is dead, smothered in his sleep. Einon has been in company throughout his visit to the Abbey and thus has an alibi, but Eliud and other Welshmen of his party must remain as suspects, as must Elis. After Einon departs for Wales, Melicent accuses Elis of murdering her father to remove the obstacle to their marriage. As Elis protests his innocence, Cadfael belatedly recalls that an ornate gold pin which had fastened Einon ab Ithel's cloak was missing when Prestcote was found dead. It had presumably been stolen from Prestcote's chamber by the murderer. Elis does not have it, but remains under suspicion, and under Melicent's contempt. He and Eliud are allowed to share a cell in Shrewsbury Castle under their parole of honour not to leave the castle. Melicent later departs for Godric's Ford with Sister Magdalen, with a half-formed intention of joining the convent. Cadfael examines the body of Prestcote carefully and recovers richly-dyed woollen threads and even some gold thread, which came from whatever was used to smother him. Neither Elis's clothing nor any other cloth within the Abbey matches them. Suspicion meanwhile falls on Anion ap Griffri, a half-Welsh lay servant of the Abbey who was in the infirmary with a leg injury at the time of Prestcote's death. It is known that his half-brother had been hanged by Prestcote for his part in a fatal brawl, he was heard by a blind monk in the infirmary (who recognised the tapping of his crutch) to enter Prestcote's chamber and he has fled, presumably into Wales. Reports reach Hugh Beringar of raids by Empress Maud's allies into the northern part of the county, and he has to take most of his armed men to join forces with Owain Gwynedd and deal with them. Elis and Eliud warn him that Welshmen from Powys are likely to seek revenge for their earlier failure and raid Godric's Ford in his absence. Elis in particular is anxious for Melicent's safety. As Elis and Eliud fear, the men of Powys gather for a raid. Cadfael meanwhile wonders whether Einon ab Ithel innocently took with him the rich cloth with which Prestcote was smothered. With Abbot Radulfus's permission, he takes news of the threatened raid to Tregeiriog, where Owain Gwynedd, Einon and Hugh Beringar are expected. There, Cristina asks him for news of Elis and Eliud. He realises that his first impression was mistaken. Cristina and Eliud are in love with each other but Eliud had refused to speak to anyone of his love, out of loyalty to his foster-brother. When Owain arrives later, a local man named Griffri ap Llywarch asks Owain to acknowledge his illegitimate child, Anion ap Griffri, as his heir. He is wearing Einon's gold pin stolen from Prestcote's chamber. Einon arrives at the same time and accuses Griffri of theft. Anion admits taking the pin, and Owain is prepared to convict him of Prestcote's murder also. Cadfael intercedes, and establishes that Anion mistakenly thought the pin was Prestcote's, and took it to give to his father in compensation for his hanged half-brother, under the Welsh tradition of paying a "blood price" for a death. Anion swears that Prestcote was alive, though asleep, when he removed the pin. Cadfael testifies that Anion never possessed the sumptuous cloth which was the murder weapon and that another, fit man was heard to enter Prescote's chamber after Anion left it. Anion is declared a free man. At dawn, before Owain and Einon can properly examine the threads from the cloth used to smother Prestcote, Hugh Beringar arrives in haste, with news that the raiders from Powys are nearing Godric's Ford. He obtains fresh horses and prepares to pursue them. In the bustle, Cadfael catches sight of Einon ab Ithel's ornate saddlecloth and realises it was the murder weapon. Now knowing who the murderer is, he asks Owain Gwynedd whether Prestcote's murder must be atoned for by another death, pleading that atonement by penitence would be preferable. Owain agrees that mere revenge is pointless but is otherwise noncommittal, and Cadfael does not yet reveal the murderer's identity. The news of the raid also reaches Shrewsbury Castle. Elis overhears the messenger and, frantic with worry for Melicent, he breaks his parole, leaves the castle, and makes his way to Godric's Ford on foot. Hugh Beringar's inexperienced lieutenant, Alan Herbard, sets out to intercept the raiders. He takes Eliud with him, under sentence of death if Elis proves false. As the raiders prepare to attack the convent, Elis confronts them, telling them they are shameful to attack innocent holy women. A Welshman looses an arrow at him, but Eliud throws himself in front of Elis and is badly wounded. Elis's intervention has given time for Beringar and Herbard to arrive, and the raiders are routed and flee into Powys. As Cadfael treats Eliud's wound, Eliud confesses to the murder of Prestcote. He confirms what Cadfael already knew; that Eliud, frantic to delay the return of Elis to Wales to wed Cristina, went to Prestcote's chamber to recover Einon ab Ithel's cloak while almost everyone else in the Abbey was at dinner. He was carrying Einon's saddlecloth and on the spur of the moment, he smothered Prestcote with it, as Elis could not be exchanged for a dead man. He left the cloak behind, and later asked Cadfael to accompany him to the room as a charade, to ensure that the death was discovered before Elis could leave the Abbey. Melicent, already convinced by Elis's actions of his innocence, overhears the confession. Hugh Beringar has no option but to try Eliud for Prestcote's murder, and almost certainly hang him, when he is fit to be tried. Elis has also been wounded, and Hugh sends the Welshmen of Einon ab Ithel's party who are still at Shrewsbury to carry him back to Wales. Cadfael, Sister Magdalene, Elis and Melicent conspire to substitute an unconscious Eliud for Elis, thus removing Eliud from Hugh's jurisdiction. Although exasperated, Beringar does not press any charge against Elis and Melicent, who are properly betrothed. Eliud and Cristina are presumably reunited in Wales, where justice lies with Owain Gwynedd. Cadfael observes to Hugh Beringar that even God, when He intends mercy, needs tools to His hand. |
Dead Until Dark | Charlaine Harris | 2,001 | Sookie lives with her grandmother, Adele, and has an older brother, Jason. Early in the book, Sookie falls in love with a vampire, a Civil War veteran named Bill Compton. After first meeting Bill, Sookie saves him from some "drainers", people who steal blood from vampires. Bill returns the favor several days later when the drainers attack Sookie. Several murders occur in Bon Temps, and Bill becomes a suspect because many of the bodies have fang marks. Sookie's brother Jason is romantically linked to two of the victims, prompting the Bon Temps police to arrest him. Wanting to help her brother, Sookie asks Bill to take her to a vampire bar called Fangtasia, which is owned by Eric Northman, a vampire sheriff much older and more powerful than Bill. Eric realizes that Sookie's telepathy can be useful and commands Bill to direct Sookie to use her ability to determine the identity of the one embezzling from Fangtasia. Once Sookie identifies Long Shadow, who is Eric's partner and also a vampire, a confrontation ensues that nearly kills Sookie. Eric saves Sookie's life by staking Long Shadow when he attacks her. Meanwhile in Bon Temps, Adele is murdered within the family kitchen. Bill, concerned with Eric's power over him and Sookie, decides to improve his own position within the vampire hierarchy. He asks Bubba, a dim-witted vampire, who was "the man from Memphis", to protect Sookie while he is gone. Sookie discovers that her boss, Sam, is a shape-shifter when she lets a stray dog sleep on her bed and finds a naked Sam in the morning. While Bill is gone, Sookie discovers that the murderer is her brother's friend Rene Lenier. He almost kills her, but she fights back. Badly injured, Sookie wakes up in the hospital and finds the police by her side, telling her Rene has confessed to the killings. Bill appears later that night and tells Sookie that he has become his area's investigator, working under Eric. |
Risk Assessment | null | null | Coffins fall through the rift. A big alien blob is eating Cardiff one thing at a time. If that wasn't bad enough, it's time for the Torchwood performance review; something so frightening it even scares Captain Jack. |
The Undertaker's Gift | null | null | A murderous energy being, an assassination attempt and staffing problems pale in comparison to the latest threat. Torchwood's being sued. |
The Accidental Time Machine | Joe Haldeman | 2,008 | Matthew Fuller, a research assistant at MIT, accidentally invents a time machine while attempting to construct a calibrator to measure the relationships between gravity and light. Unfortunately, it will only travel forward, to the future, in ever-increasing intervals of 12x. On the fifth jump, which sends him forward a few months, he gets arrested for the perceived murder of a drug dealer who actually had a heart attack when he witnessed Matt disappear in his time machine. He is shortly bailed out by someone who can only be from the future and is left a note urging him to depart in the time machine quickly. He continues forward in time 15 years and upon re-materializing finds that Professor Marsh, his tutor, has taken credit for the time travel invention and subsequently won the Nobel Prize. Finding no place in this new time, Matt jumps once again into the future and finds himself in a 23rd century theocracy. Upon arriving, Matt meets a woman named Martha who is assigned to be his servant in the future MIT. This theocracy is dominated by religious fervour and. Matt is discovered as being uncircumcised (something that is mandatory in this new and strictly Christian-like society - and ironically, Matt who is an assimilated Jew did not undergo it). He must flee with into the future once again, accompanied by the loyal Martha. Matt and Martha arrive several thousand years in the future, just outside of California, in a society where all of humanity is wealthy and satisfied to a point of complete apathy. It is here that they encounter an artificial intelligence that controls Los Angeles, called La. La is curious about her own mortality, and having learned about Matt’s time machine from historical records, wishes to join him on a journey to the end of time (heat death of the universe) to discover if she can die. At this point, Matt and Martha begin to receive subliminal messages from a being referring to itself as Jesus, but appearing as an alien being. He warns them of La’s willingness to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of her goal, and advises them to stall for time to allow Jesus and his group to catch up. Matt and Martha, accompanied by La in a spacecraft, begin to travel further and further into the future, discovering radically altered futures and entirely new species of intelligent life, including androgynous evolutions of humanity and a race of intelligent bears. After a confrontation where they narrowly avoid being killed by La, they eventually they reach a time when they meet the people who have been sending them subliminal messages, and these beings send Matt and Martha back in time, while allowing La to continue jumping forward in time. The beings can specify either the exact time or the exact location to which Matt and Martha will be sent, but not both. Worried about the couple materializing in the middle of the ocean or inside of a mountain, they opt to be specific about location and send them to MIT. When they arrive, they find that it is the late 19th century and the main MIT campus has not yet been built. Having no other option, they live in this society, where Matt studies and teaches physics, aided significantly by his advanced knowledge both of physics and historical events. Matt and Marta have several children, and the end of the book reveals that Professor Marsh (Matt's MIT professor in the mid-21st century) is actually Matt's own grandchild. |
Two Hundred Years Together | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | 2,002 | In it, Solzhenitsyn emphatically denies that Jews were responsible for the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. At the end of chapter nine, Solzhenitsyn denounces "the superstitious faith in the historical potency of conspiracies" that leads some to blame the Russian revolutions on the Jews and to ignore the "Russian failings that determined our sad historical decline." Solzhenitsyn criticizes the "scandalous" weakness and "unpardonable inaction" that prevented the Russian imperial state from adequately protecting the lives and property of its Jewish subjects. But he claims that the pogroms were in almost every case organized from "below" and not by the Russian state authorities. He criticizes the "vexing," "scandalous", and "distressing" restrictions on the civil liberties of Jewish subjects during the final decades of the Russian old regime. On that score, in chapter ten of the work he expresses his admiration for the efforts of Pyotr Stolypin (Prime Minister of Russia from 1906 until 1911) to eliminate all legal disabilities against Jews in Russia. In the spirit of his classic 1974 essay "Repentance and Self-Limitation in the Life of Nations", Solzhenitsyn calls for the Russians and Russian Jews alike to take responsibility for the "renegades" in both communities who supported a totalitarian and terrorist regime after 1917. At the end of chapter 15, he writes that Jews must answer for the "revolutionary cutthroats" in their ranks just as Russians must repent "for the pogroms, for...merciless arsonist peasants, for...crazed revolutionary soldiers." It is not, he adds, a matter of answering "before other peoples, but to oneself, to one's consciousness, and before God." Solzhenitsyn also takes the anti-Communist White movement to task for condoning violence against Jews and thus undermining "what would have been the chief benefit of a White victory" in the Russian Civil War: "a reasonable evolution of the Russian state." |
Dark Fire | Chris D'Lacey | null | Part 1 Arthur, Liz and Lucy are traveling to meet Rupert Steiner, a former colleague of Arthur's, who has been visited by Gadzooks. They discover and translate the message Gadzooks left (from dragon tongue) - Scuffenbury, the name of an ancient barrow which, legend has it, contains the body of a dragon. Meanwhile, at Wayward Crescent, David arrives to ask Zanna for more information about Gwilanna, as he has been charged with seeking her out and destroying the dark fire she possesses - the inverted remains of Gwillan's fire tear. Instead of helping him, Zanna transports herself to Gwilanna, charging David with Alexa's care in her absence. Zanna finds herself on Farlowe Island, where Gwilanna is attempting to use ichor from Gawain's isoscele and the threat of handing the dark fire to the Ix to coerce the Fain into illumining her to a dragon. She also planned to sacrifice David to underline her threat, but she decides to use Zanna in his place. However, rather than summoning the spirit of the dragon Ghislaine, Gwilanna summons a Darkling, which mutates a flock of ravens into semi-Darklings before being destroyed by Grockle, under the supervision of David, who then takes the obsidian which contains the darkfire. David and Zanna return home to discover that their neighbor, Henry Bacon, has suffered a stroke and is in the hospital. David is reunited with Liz and Lucy, and receives a message from the dragon G'Oreal, who dismisses David's suggestion that the dark fire could be transmuted and used to reanimate Gwillan. David then learns about Scuffenbury, and suggests that Lucy travel there with Tam Farrell. He also reads an extra journal, and suggests she post it online in dragontongue, as a message to other daughters of Guinevere. David goes with Liz to visit Henry in hospital, and Henry dies during their visit. After Henry dies, Gwilanna, the sybil attends the funeral and decides to warn David that she will do anything to get her hands on the obsidian and the dark fire. Gwilanna attends the funeral in order to try and deal with David, but he refuses her and she leaves. At the reading of the will, the group meet Henry's sister Agatha, a powerful sibyl. They also discover that Henry has left Liz and Lucy £50,000; David his collection of Arctic memorabilia and Zanna his house. The will also asks that the Arctic memorabilia be left in place, implying that Henry expected David and Zanna to marry. After this, Agatha gifts Zanna with healing knowledge, and suggests that she make her peace with David. Zanna goes into town with Alexa and Gretel to open her shop, but on the way the group are attacked by the semi-Darkling flock and are rescued by Tam, who destroys them with the spirit Kailar. Zanna is injured, but uses her new healing knowledge to mend the wound. Tam talks to David about Rupert Steiner, who has approached him with a story about translations of dragontongue found on the Hella glacier expedition. Lucy informs David that Sophie emailed her, trying to contact him, and David leaves for Africa. Lucy then receives a phone call from an old friend, Melanie Cartwright, who has seen footage of a Pennykettle dragon - presumably Gadzooks - moving on the television, and is concerned over her own 'special' dragon, Glade. David arrives in Africa to find Sophie's wildlife sanctuary in flames, which Grockle extinguishes. Sophie is already dead, and Grace is preparing to cry her Fire Tear. However, the semi-Darkling which began the fire is still present, planning on inverting Grace's tear to create dark fire. Pieter, Sophie's fiancee, tries to kill it, but it kills him instead. David then distracts the Darkling with the dark fire he already possesses, captures it and sends it back to the Ix with a warning to leave the Pennykettle dragons be. Mutu, one of Sophie's colleagues, tells David that he saw a woman dancing in the flames. David then leaves Africa, taking with him Grace's petrified body, and her Fire Tear, caught by Groyne during the struggle. When he returns home, David is greeted by Zanna, asking why Alexa has grown wings. David informs her that Alexa is a new species - an angel, a bridge between dragons and mankind - and when the dragons are revealed, people everywhere will aspire to be like her. He also tells her that the people, as the bears have already done, will travel to Ki:mera, the Fain's home world. In the Dragon's Den, David gathers the dragons in an attempt to transmute the dark fire and return it to Gwillan. Gollygosh will extract the dark fire from the obsidian, Groyne will mix it with Grace's Fire Tear and some icefire to neutralize it, and G'reth will wish for Gwillan and Grace to be reanimated. However, while David explains what will happen, Gollygosh is momentarily corrupted by the dark fire, and releases it early. The Dark Fire then enters Liz and she is knocked out. While Zanna tends to her, David reanimates Grace with Alexa's help. He then sends Lucy with Tam to Scuffenbury - not noticing that, in the Dragon's Den, Gwillan is draining Grace's auma into himself. Part 2 Lucy and Tam travel to Scuffenbury. On the way, Lucy reads the article describing the last meeting of dragons, describing how eleven of the last twelve dragons shed almost all of their fire tears, then went into stasis, while the twelfth, Gawaine, ingested all eleven tears and planned to use them to defeat the Ix. Lucy and Tam arrive at their guesthouse, which is run by Hannah and Clive, and has one other guest, Mrs Gee. They climb Glissington Tor - the dragon's burial site - that evening, and that night Lucy has a nightmare about a cat, which she encountered earlier in the day, bringing her a semi-darkling. In the Crescent, Liz is comatose, but seems unharmed, when Gwillan suddenly wakes up. Melanie Cartwright comes to visit with her mother, Rachel, and dragon, Glade, who can sense moods. Gretel puts the humans to sleep so they don't get in the way, and Glade goes upstairs to try and check on Liz and the baby. She finds that Liz is all right, but the baby's body is in stasis, and its auma has been transferred to Gwillan. The Cartwrights leave, and David contacts G'Oreal, informing him that Grockle is destroying the semi-Darklings. Early next morning, Tam and Lucy climb Scuffenbury Hill to see the unicorn. While they are there, cairn stones - the remains of a monument on Glissington Tor - begin to rise from the earth and rebuild the cairn, revealing more chalk carvings - a unicorn's horn. Mrs Gee, a sibyl, has rebuilt the cairn to try and wake the unicorn and the dragon, but Hannah, who claims to know all the Tor's secrets, warns her that this legend is false, and waking the dragon requires a red-haired girl, touched by the spirit of a dragon. She also explains that the dragon in stasis is Gawaine, who came to Scuffenbury seeking the unicorn Teramelle's healing to help her give birth, and offers to help Mrs Gee claim the dragon in return for one of its scales. Gwendolen, left in the hotel to watch for the mysterious cat, is shocked to discover that not only is the cat real, it can do magic, and communicate. It tells her it is truly a girl called Bella, who was turned into a cat by Mrs Gee. The TV news is showing pictures of dragons being freed all over the world, and Hannah tells Lucy that she can wake the dragon if she touches it and sings - and that there is a tunnel under the cairn which will let Lucy touch the dragon. At Wayward Crescent, Zanna is puzzled by e-mails Lucy is receiving, which David tells her are from other daughters of Guinevere. He also gives her Tam's article, telling her that Gawaine, the dragon in Scuffenbury and the one chosen to fight the Ix, was Gawain's mother, and her plan to destroy the Ix was to draw the Ix to her, then sacrifice herself in the Fire Eternal - a plan which the new Wearle has adopted. Tam and Lucy travel through the tunnels to wake Gawaine, but as the dragon stirs, Hannah betrays them. Tam is trapped underground, and Lucy captured by Mrs Gee, but Bella helps her escape. In the chaos of the dragon's awakening, Mrs Gee, Hannah and Clive are all killed and the hotel collapses. Meanwhile, Melanie and Rachel Cartwright are attacked by the last surviving semi-Darkling, who injures both of them before taking Glade. Glade sends a distress signal to the Pennykettles, which is intercepted by Gwillan. Lucy calls David for help, and he sends Grockle. With his help, Lucy places some of her tears in Glissington cairn, although Bella tries to stop her. The tears reflect moonlight onto the unicorn's horn, bringing it to life, and it frees Gawaine. However, as Zanna discovers through an email Bella sent Lucy, Gawaine was betrayed and one of her children murdered by a sibyl disguised as a red-haired maiden, and when she sees Lucy, she attacks. Grockle fails to defend Lucy, but, as Lucy is Gawaine's kin, the flames do not harm her, and Gawine is distracted for long enough that David can arrive to help. Meanwhile, the last surviving semi-Darkling ingests Lucy's auma from the tears she left at Glissington Cairn. It uses the power in the tears to renew itself, and call the Ix towards it, and a full Darkling is born, with the ability to self-replicate, which it does until there are four Darklings. Realizing the danger, David gives Lucy the narwhal tusk talisman which he thinks is Groyne so that she can be transported home, not realizing that the tusk is in fact Gwillan, who has taken Groyne's abilities, and Lucy has only been moved across the valley. Gawaine and G'lant - the combined force of David and Grockle - begin to fight the Darklings. One invades Gawaine's mind before she destroys it, but G'lant restores her before permanent injury can occur. One then distracts G'lant while the remaining two attack Gawaine. One destroys her wing and poisons her blood, although it is near-fatally injured in the attempt, and falls to the ground near Lucy, who has been joined by Bella. As it attempts to attack the girls, Tam emerges from the ground and destroys it. Agatha Bacon arrives at Wayward Crescent, and Zanna leaves for Scuffenbury after entrusting her with Liz's care. She arrives near Gawaine, who is gravely injured, and begins trying to heal her with Teramelle's help. The unicorn warns her to hurry, as Scuffenbury is the site of a portal to the Fire Eternal, and the portal will soon open. Meanwhile, 'Agatha Bacon' is in fact Gwilanna, who wishes to deliver Liz's child. She refuses to listen when Arthur explains that Gwillan now possesses the child's auma. She uses a spell to trap Arthur in an armoir and, with the use of Gawain's iscoscele, draws the dark fire out of Liz's forehead. The dark fire turns Gawain's isoscele black, then proceeds to kill Gwilanna before traveling to Scuffenbury. Alexa, who was locked outside by Gwilanna,grows full wings and is then taken by G'Oreal of the New Wearle to Scuffenbury. At Scuffenbury, G'lant continues to fight the two remaining Darklings. Gwillan traps one, purifying its auma and turning it into a dragon, which is no longer any threat. At the sight of Gwillan, the Ix lend all their power to the remaining Darkling, and it overpowers G'lant, but Gawaine drags it into the Fire Eternal, sacrificing herself to save G'lant and fulfill the task the Old Wearle entrusted her with - eradicating the Ix. Teramelle, invaded by the dark fire, follows her. In the chaos which the dark fire causes, David, Zanna, Alexa and Gadzooks come together, and Gadzooks begins writing a word. David reassures Zanna that everything will be all right, but things will be different. Then David, Lucy, Tam, Zanna, Bella and the assembled dragons disappear. The book ends with the word Gadzooks was writing: "sometimes". |
Kirinyaga | null | 1,998 | Prologue: One Perfect Morning, With Jackals is set in Kenya. A son argues with his father whether it is possible to adopt European conveniences and customs and still be a true Kikuyu, the dominate native tribe. The father will be the mundumugu (witch doctor) for the new Kikuyu society on a terraformed planetoid named Kirinyaga. On the way to the spaceport, they detour to see a pair of jackals hiding behind a bush in an area that will become a nature preserve. In Kirinyaga, Koriba kills a newborn child because traditional beliefs dictate that it is a demon. He must then convince Maintenance, the people who maintain the environment and regulate the orbit of the planetoid Kirinyaga, not to interfere with their traditions, no matter how much they dislike them. For I Have Touched the Sky -- A girl finds a falcon with a broken wing and asks the mundumugu to heal it. "Once a bird has touched the sky," Koriba explains, "he can never be content to spend his days on the ground." She persists. In the course of doing chores in exchange for help treating the bird, she discovers Koriba’s computer and the knowledge it can share. This creates conflict with the role held by women in the traditional Kikuyu society. In Bwana, Koinnage, the paramount chief, hires a hunter to reduce the hyena population. The hunter’s idea of utopia differs radically from Koriba’s. The mundumugu must demonstrate that, although the Kikuyu are a farming society, they are not powerless against predators. In The Manamouki, a married couple immigrate to Kiringaya. Although they try to assimilate, they bring modern ideas that conflict with traditional Kikuyu culture. Can a utopia evolve? Song of a Dry River -- A grandmother refuses to be cared for in the traditional manner and sets up residence near the mundumugu, who lives apart from the village. The mundumugu threatens a drought unless she follows tradition. In The Lotus and the Spear, three young men have died in unusual circumstances. The mundumugu must find and overcome the cause. In A Little Knowledge, Koriba is training Ndemi as his successor. Eventually he begins to instruct him on the use of the computer. But, as in the Garden of Eden, knowledge is a dangerous thing. When the Old Gods Die -- "It is said that from the moment of birth, even of conception, every living thing has embarked upon an inevitable trajectory that culminates in its death... Yet this knowledge does not lessen the pain of death." For a man intent on maintaining the traditional ways, cultural change may not represent life but the death of the old gods. Epilogue: The Land of Nod -- Koriba returns to Kenya. There, the old ways don’t mesh well with modern city living. When he visits a cloned elephant that is to be killed in a few days' time, Koriba realizes that they are both anachronisms, and that their fates are intertwined. |
Kirakira | null | null | The protagonists of Kirakira, Shikanosuke, Kirari, Sarina and Chie are the members of the at the Christian school Ohbi Gakuen. The club was set to be closed in next March so they try to set up a band they call the to save the club. Their performance at the subsequent school festival succeeds with flying colors. That performance was put on the Internet where one of the live houses in Nagoya offered the band to put on a performance in Nagoya. They honestly want to disband after the performance at the school festival because they had to study for entrance exams or look for jobs, but they were convinced to go on a live tour by Yagihara, the vocalist of Star Generation. Shikanosuke's band d2b begins its live tour across Japan in an old van. |
Chalice | Robin McKinley | 2,008 | The book is written about events in the life of the Chalice, describing her actions and emotions. It begins with the Chalice, and the rest of the Circle, welcoming a new Master. The Chalice must be the first to greet the new Master, and give him a special cup to drink. The reason for a new Master is that the old one, and the former Chalice, died in a fire, which was caused by some of their own actions, a few months earlier. The now-dead Master was concerned only with his own pleasure and power, and neglected his duties to his demesne. Seven years before the story begins, the Master sent his brother away, to join the priests of Fire. The brother had been concerned about the demesne, and opposed the Master's ways. When the older brother died, the Grand Seneschal sent for the younger brother, asking that he become the new Master. The brother is welcomed by the Circle, and the people of the demesne, but has changed, physically and mentally, so that he can hardly interact with the people of the demesne at all. Mirasol, the Chalice, was a peasant, living by herself in a cottage within walking distance of the House of the demesne, but having nothing to do with its inhabitants, until, to everyone's surprise, she was chosen as Chalice. She raises bees, left to her by her dead parents. The bees are special. For a period of time, they produced so much honey that Mirasol couldn't take care of it. They are larger than normal bees, they seem to understand the Chalice, and protect her, and they produce special types of honey. The Chalice has had no training for the job. She has read every manuscript she can find that tells her what a Chalice must do, and how, but there is a lot she doesn't know. She thinks that the rest of the Circle, especially the Grand Seneschal, believes that she was a bad choice. She performs her job as best she can, operating from what she has read, and from her intuition, in deciding what vessel to use, and what to put in it, for each occasion. She mixes honey with the various drinks she offers to people involved in ceremonies of the Circle, or to pour out. This use of honey is new. It has never been used this way before. The Chalice (and most of the people of the demesne) very much want the new Master to succeed—they need a competent Master. He wants to succeed, himself, for the sake of the demesne. That is why he left the training for the priesthood, an unprecedented act, to return. He knows that the demesne needs a competent Master, one from the demesne itself. The Chalice learns of this, and also learns that the Master believes that she should continue as Chalice. Eventually, the Chalice learns that the Grand Seneschal, also, wants her, and the new Master, to succeed. The Overlord does not want this. Since the Master has no heir, he appoints one, who will do his bidding, rather than act for the good of the demesne, if he becomes Master. The Overlord arranges things so that the Master seems to have insulted him, and orders the Master, and the heir, to hold a single combat. The Chalice comes to realize, with the help of the Grand Seneschal, that, should the Master be killed in combat, the heir will not only succeed to the Mastership, but will marry her. She does not want either of these things to happen. During the seven days between the supposed insult and the time of the combat, the Chalice repairs as many of the earthlines of the demesne as possible. (She later learns that the Master has been helping her in this.) On the day of the combat, she returns to the House, to see that the Master will be forced to fight with swords, and has decided that his demesne would be better off if he was killed. But the Chalice's amazing bees have something to say about this. They blanket the combatants, kill the heir, and transform the Master back to near normalcy. Many of the bees die in the process. The Overlord departs in defeat. Some of the Circle resign their positions, because they haven't supported the Master. By the end of the book, it is clear that the Chalice and the Master will marry, and everyone live happily every after. |
Nostalgia | Mircea Cărtărescu | 1,989 | The first section, which is itself the prologue describes the world of a pre-war Bucharest, as narrated by an aging, potentially dying, author while focusing on the improbable and explicitly impossible story of a homeless young man who serves as the stubborn center of progressively more absurd games of Russian Roulette which become progressively more peopled by the wealthy upper-crust of the capital. The second section brings alive a universe of children through a magical realist writing style that focuses upon a prepubescent messiah who has begun to lose his magical powers while working wonders for his young followers. Which has a famous scene that makes the reader feel voyeur into the world of Proust when the main character falls into "unbearable nostalgia" by virtue of a bright pink lighter. The third section is a bizarre exploration of gender boundaries and youthful angst narrated by a crestfallen young man who cross-dresses and goes down the road of suicide at the same time while overwhelmed by the memories of a highschool girlfriend. The final part of the main portion of this book is centered around Nana, a middle aged woman engaged in an affair with a college student, as well as her memories of being 12 years old, when she was visited by a mother and son pair of gigantic skeletons. The last portion of this novel focuses on a man who becomes obsessed with his car horn, the repercussions of which spiral far beyond his control. The last part of the central portion of the book |
Poor Miss Finch | Wilkie Collins | 1,872 | Twenty-one-year-old Lucilla Finch, the independently wealthy daughter of the rector of Dimchurch, Sussex, has been blind since infancy. Shortly after the narrator, Madame Pratolungo, arrives to serve as her paid companion, Lucilla falls in love with Oscar Dubourg, her shy and reclusive neighbour, also wealthy, who devotes himself to craftsmanship in precious metals. After being attacked and knocked unconscious by robbers, Oscar is nursed by Lucilla and falls in love with her, and the couple become engaged. Their plans are jeopardized by Oscar's epilepsy, a result of the blow to his head. The only effective treatment, a silver compound, has the side-effect of turning his skin a permanent, dark blue-grey. Despite her blindness, Lucilla suffers a violent phobia of dark colours, including dark-complexioned people, and family and friends conceal Oscar's condition from her. Meanwhile, Oscar's twin brother, Nugent, returns from America, where he has dissipated his fortune pursuing a career as a painter. Oscar is devoted to his brother, who is as outgoing, confident and charming as Oscar is diffident and awkward. Knowing of Lucilla's blindness, Nugent has arranged for her to be examined by a famous German oculist, Herr Grosse. Herr Grosse and an English oculist each examine Lucilla but disagree on her prognosis. Lucilla elects to be operated on by Herr Grosse, who believes he can cure her. After the operation, but before the bandages are taken off, Madame Pratolungo pressures Oscar into telling Lucilla of his disfigurement, but his nerve fails and, instead, he tells her it is Nugent who has been disfigured. Nugent is secretly infatuated with Lucilla and now manipulates her into believing that he is Oscar. As Lucilla gradually regains her sight, Herr Grosse forbids family and friends from undeceiving her, since the shock might imperil her recovery. Oscar goes abroad, resigning his fiancee to his brother in despair. Madame Pratolungo intervenes decisively with Nugent, appealing to his conscience and threatening him with exposure if he continues with his plan to marry Lucilla under Oscar's name. He promises to go abroad to find his brother and return him home. Nugent soon returns to England and tracks Lucilla to the seaside, where, on Herr Grosse's orders, she is staying with her aunt, away from her immediate family. He pressures her to marry as soon as possible, without her family's knowledge, and works to poison her trust in Madame Pratolungo, who is away in Marseilles attending to her wayward father. Detecting but not understanding the change in her supposed fiance, Lucilla becomes distraught, over-strains her eyes and begins to lose her vision. In the novel's denouement, Madame Pratolungo locates Oscar with the help of a French detective. His experiences have revealed an unexpected strength of character, and she conceives a new respect for him. The two of them race home to England to stop the marriage while there is still time. Held virtually prisoner at a Debourg cousin's house, Lucilla is again totally blind. With the help of a kindly servant, she escapes to meet them, immediately recognizes the true Oscar, and is told the full story by Madame Pratolungo. A penitent Nugent returns to America, where he later dies on a polar expedition. Lucilla and Oscar settle in Dimchurch to raise a family, with Madame Pratolungo as her companion. Perfectly content in her blindness, she refuses Herr Grosse's offers to attempt another operation. |
Galactic Odyssey | Keith Laumer | null | Down on his luck college dropout Billy Danger shelters from a sleet storm in what he thinks is a corn silo, but which turns out to be a spaceship containing a party of upper-class hunters from the planet Zeridajh, from half-way across the Milky Way. They take him on as a gun-bearer, and after landing on a desert world, the two men are both killed, and Billy is left alone with the beautiful Princess Raire. Since only the men knew the password to re-enter the spaceship they are effectively marooned. They signal for help via a radio they find in an abandoned spaceship that has crashed into a nearby ravine. Unfortunately some none-too-friendly aliens answer the call and kidnap the princess, and then, clumsily, try to kill Billy. He survives, and is nursed back to health by a giant tabby cat who survived from the derelict spaceship. A more friendly bunch of aliens arrive and give him a ride to another planet, where he sets out in his quest to find the princess. He has many adventures across the galaxy, including being captured on a spying mission, where he is forced to ransom his friends' lives by giving up his right eye. Eventually he finds the princess, but she has been enslaved. He buys her freedom, and that of another human, but the human slave kidnaps the princess and he is forced into slavery himself. He eventually escapes, revenges himself on his enemies, and flys away with the princess. |
The Last Decathlon | null | 1,980 | Chad Norris becomes the track and field star for the United States and appears at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, U.S.S.R.. Every time Norris gets interviewed by the popular press, he becomes suspicious and tells tall tales. When the opening ceremonies come about, he disappears and blends with the locals. This young athlete turns out to be Dale Richardson; who had his father wrongfully accused of working for an American spy network and serving time at Lubyanka Prison. The athlete/spy and the young Russian peasant try to elude the authorities and eventually arrive at their destination. |
Paula Spencer | Roddy Doyle | 2,006 | The novel is a sequel to Doyle's 1996 book The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, describing the life of alcoholic and battered wife Paula Spencer. The second book picks up her life ten years after the death of her husband. |
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon | David Michaels | null | In the first novelization of the Ghost Recon franchise by Ubisoft/Tom Clancy, the Ghosts infiltrate China's eastern coast to seek and destroy the Spring Tiger Group. The small band of renegade Chinese military leaders is poised to execute Operation Pouncing Dragon, a plot to seize Taiwan and trigger a battle for dominance in the Pacific. Led by Captain Scott Mitchell, the Ghosts wage war from the Southern Philippines, Northwest Waziristan, and Xiamen, China, coping with the impact of unforeseen tragedy, remembering lessons-learned, and treasuring camaraderie. But during Operation War Wrath in Xiamen, China, a decade-old tragedy resurfaces endangering the mission and the team. The Spring Tiger Group is aided by an old nemesis and for Mitchell; this war gets very personal. |
Da Tang You Xia Zhuan | Liang Yusheng | 1,963 | The story is set in the Tianbao era of the Tang Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong. The emperor appoints the incompetent Yang Guozhong as chancellor out of nepotism because Yang's cousin, Yang Yuhuan, is the emperor's favourite concubine. The Tang government gradually sinks into corruption under Yang Guozhong's ineffective leadership and Yang's supporters dominate the political arena. The power hungry barbarian An Lushan wins the emperor's trust through flattery and the emperor promotes him to the rank of jiedushi of Fanyang. An Lushan wields great military power in his hands and secretly builds up his forces in preparation for a rebellion. In the jianghu, the outlaw leaders Dou Lingkan and Wang Botong compete fiercely with each other for the position of chief of the wulin (martial artists' community). Dou Lingkan and his brothers have the support of Duan Guizhang, a renowned swordsman who is also Dou's brother-in-law. On the other hand, Wang Botong cooperates with An Lushan to achieve his goal, while recruiting several pugilists to serve him and sending his children to be tutored by martial arts experts. Duan Guizhang maintains a close friendship with a former bureaucrat called Shi Yiru. Their wives give birth to a boy called Duan Keye and a girl named Shi Ruomei respectively. An Lushan sends his men to bring Duan Guizhang to meet him but Duan was not in then, so Shi Yiru went in place of him. Shi Yiru is held hostage in An Lushan's residence and Duan Guizhang and Dou Lingkan's godson Tie Mole go to rescue him. They fail and Shi Yiru dies while Duan Guizhang is severely wounded. They are saved from An Lushan's men by Nan Jiyun and Huangfu Song. Kongkong'er, one of Wang Botong's lackeys, shows up and steals the baby Duan Keye, in order to force Duan Guizhang not to side with Dou Lingkan. Dou Lingkan is later slain by Wang Botong's daughter Wang Yanyu in a fight and loses his title of chief of the wulin. Tie Mole escapes amidst the chaos with Nan Jiyun's help and vows to avenge his godfather. Duan Guizhang sends Tie Mole to learn martial arts from a reclusive master. Seven years later when Tie Mole has achieved a certain level of prowess in his skills, he returns to civilisation, only to find himself stranded in the chaotic scene of the An Shi Rebellion. Tie Mole has a series of adventures, including undermining An Lushan's rebel forces by capturing Wang Botong's stronghold and exposing the truth behind a 20-year old mystery and clearing Huangfu Song's name. Tie Mole finds himself entangled in a love triangle with Wang Yanyu and another maiden called Han Zhifen. He saves the emperor and flees with the imperial forces after the capital cities Luoyang and Chang'an fell to An Lushan's rebel forces. He is also involved in the historical incident at Mawei courier station, when discontented soldiers killed Yang Guozhong and demanded that Emperor Xuanzong put Yang Yuhuan to death. The Battle of Suiyang is also featured in the novel in the later chapters and many heroes sacrifice themselves in the battle. Tie Mole, Han Zhifen and others continue their heroic legacy by recruiting heroes to help in suppressing the rebellion. |
Shroud | null | null | Axel Vander, famous man of letters and recently widowed, travels to Turin to meet a young woman called Cass Cleave. Cleave is a literary researcher and she has unearthed two secrets about Vander's early years in Antwerp, the first being that in the years prior to World War Two Vander contributed some anti-Semitic articles to a right-wing newspaper, and secondly, that he is not Axel Vander at all. He is Vander's childhood friend and appropriated his name and identity after Vander disappeared and was presumed dead. |
The Quickie | James Patterson | null | NYPD Detective Lauren Stillwell is sitting in her car when she sees her husband Paul walk in to the St. Regis Hotel with a young and attractive blonde on his arm. Lauren and Paul are having marital problems so she assumes that Paul is having an affair. Enraged, Lauren goes to see her police partner Scott and they have sex. Their night is interrupted when Paul shows up and Scott goes out to confront him. From a window, Lauren sees Paul kill Scott and throw his body in his car and drive away. Several hours later, Lauren is called to a scene where a body has been found—Scott's body. Lauren and Scott's affair was a secret so no one suspects her involvement. She is, in fact, assigned as lead investigator. Through her investigation, Lauren discovers evidence of Paul's involvement in their home (gun, bloody clothing, etc.) and, in an attempt to protect Paul, Lauren tries to concoct a way to frame Scott's killing on someone else. Fortunately, Scott worked as an undercover drug cop and one of his cases was against two drug-trafficking brothers, Victor and Mark Ordonez. They quickly emerge as promising suspects, thanks to their extensive criminal histories. Lauren and her team track Victor to a night club where there is a foot pursuit. Lauren and her current partner Mike Ortiz track Victor to a train yard where Ortiz manages to kill Victor, but not before Victor wounds Lauren. During her recovery, Lauren decides to come clean with Paul about their respective affairs when Paul reveals a bombshell: he wasn't having an affair at all. Instead, the young blonde Lauren saw him with was a recruiter for a company looking to hire Paul. The new company pays Paul 3 times his current salary which allows Paul and Lauren to move to Connecticut from New York City. Even though Lauren is mortified that her affair and Scott's death resulted from a gigantic misunderstanding, she keeps it to herself. Over the next few weeks and months, Paul and Lauren's relationship strengthens and Lauren eventually discovers she is pregnant. Even though her plan to mask Paul's involvement in Scott's death seems to be working, Lauren is disgusted with the dishonesty of it and decides to resign from the NYPD. One evening while in Connecticut visiting their new home, Paul is knocked unconscious by Mark Ordonez—Victor's brother—who then kidnaps Lauren. Mark's plan is to fly Lauren in a small plane out over the Atlantic Ocean and then drop her in as retribution for her part in killing Victor. As Mark and Lauren are driving away, Paul intervenes by ramming his car into Mark's car. Mark stops to kick and beat Paul some more, but while walking back to his car, Mark is run over and killed by a passing truck carrying cars. At a retirement party thrown by her colleagues, Lauren learns from a cop friend that the tarp Scott's body was found wrapped in—a tarp belonging to Lauren and Paul—had a viable DNA sample on it. This DNA belongs to Paul and Lauren is scared it might spoil her otherwise perfect coverup. The cop friend says that while the sample has not been identified, it has been matched to a sample from an unsolved robbery in Washington DC 5 years earlier. The cop friend gives the evidence to Lauren since it was her case. Lauren struggles with whether to hide the evidence or pursue it, but ultimately decides to pursue it. In her mind, however, she already knows what the evidence says: Paul was involved in the Washington robbery. One day, Lauren follows Paul from his office in New York City. He goes on a secretive plane trip to Washington DC and Lauren follows him. Once in DC, Lauren sees Paul change his clothing and ditch the glasses he normally wears. She then sees him get picked up by a woman in black Range Rover SUV. Lauren uses her police contacts to find out who owns the SUV and she shows up at the woman's home. While there, she sees Paul and is shocked to discover him chaperoning a little girl (~4 years old) to school. Paul is a father. She confronts Paul there and discovers that he was in Washington 5 years ago for business and met the woman at the bar of the hotel he was staying at. An NCAA ticket conference is going on at the hotel and, after a bit of drinking, the woman convinces Paul that one of the men in the hotel swindled her out of a bunch of money. Inebriated Paul confronts the man and there is a struggle during which Paul is cut. He manages to get the woman's money back, but leaves a blood sample behind. Paul then got the woman pregnant, resulting in the 4 year old girl he was chaperoning around earlier. Since then, Paul has snuck down to Washington DC from New York periodically, concealing the trips in his normal travel schedule for work. Lauren is incensed, which only gets worse when she learns that the SUV-owning woman is pregnant. With Paul's twins. Lauren then arrests Paul. When she puts him in his car, Paul draws a gun from the glove compartment, throw Lauren out of the car, and speed off. In the course of the chase, Lauren sees Paul's car fall into a river. She dives in after him and they proceed to fight underwater. Lauren manages to knock Paul out, but he is still strapped in his car and drowns. The story ends with Lauren and her newborn son Thomas living in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where she runs her own private investigation company. |
A Death in Vienna | null | 2,004 | An Israeli-run Holocaust research office in Vienna is bombed, resulting in the death of the two female staff and serious injury to the Director. Gabriel Allon, a former assassin for 'The Office' and working under a new identity as an art restorer in Venice, is requested by former director Ari Shamron to go to Vienna to investigate. He is approached by Max Klein, a Holocaust survivor who claims to have information about a man named Ludwig Vogel. After following up this information, Allon finds Klein has been murdered. Allon is apprehended by Austrian security police and expelled from the country. At the Yad Vashem, research reveals that Vogel is probably a Nazi war criminal and former SD officer named Erich Radek. Radek was the engineer behind Aktion 1005, a Nazi operation to conceal the atrocities of the Holocaust by exhuming mass graves and burning the bodies so that no trace of them ever existed. Radek visited half a dozen concentration camps as a part of Aktion 1005, and it is suggested that even he is unaware how many bodies were burned. Allon is disturbed by Radek's resemblance to a painting his mother made of one of her tormentors during the Death Marches. The trail to establish Vogel's true identity takes Allon to the Vatican, where he obtains information that the Vatican would rather not be known: that Radek was one of many escaping Nazis helped and sheltered by the Vatican. The trail further takes him to Argentina where Radek is supposedly buried. Finding the grave and headstone of 'Radek', Allon is nearly killed by an assassin who has been following him, a man known only as "the Clockmaker". He is rescued by CIA agents who have also been trailing him and the assassin escapes. In Langley the CIA admit that Radek was one of many Nazis recruited to set up an intelligence network in Germany in order to spy on the Soviet Union, laying a false trail through Italy, Syria and Argentina as misdirection. He is also the trustee of several billion dollars worth of investments, based on looted money and assets, which are now controlled by a Swiss banker. These assets were seeded throughout the Swiss and Austrian Alps by Nazi Party members fleeing the Allied invasion, where they were placed in escrow for a generation before National Socialism could be a viable political stance once more. Radek has since retired and is regarded by the CIA as 'disposable'. The CIA agree to cooperate in his kidnap by the Israelis. The Prime Minister of Israel reluctantly approves the operation. With the enforced assistance of the Swiss banker, who controls the secret bank accounts and investments, Radek is enticed into the hands of a kidnap team in Vienna. Drugged and hidden in a van, he is spirited across the border into the Czech Republic and thence into Poland. He is taken to the memorial on the site of the extermination camp at Treblinka, one of the sites he visited as part of Aktion 1005. Allon reveals that he knows Radek has a son, Peter Metzler, who is on the verge of being elected as Chacellor of Austria. Armed with the money from the Swiss bank, Metzler would be able to reintroduce Nazism to Austria unopposed. Allon uses this knowledge to convince Radek to surrender, or else his connection to Metzler will be revealed and Metzler's political career will be ruined. Radek is taken to Israel and placed in solitary confinment. In return for not being tried and executed, he is to prepare a detailed history of Aktion 1005, which he was heavily involved in. In Vienna, Metzler is duly elected. The knowledge that he is actually Radek's son is kept secret, knownn only to the CIA and The Office while Allon returns to his restoration work in Venice. In Vienna, the Clockmaker receives a parcel bomb and is killed. |
Leaf In A Bitter Wind | Ting-Xing Ye | 2,000 | Ting-Xing Ye was the fourth daughter of a factory owner, and she and her siblings were branded as the children of capitalists and persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. By the age of thirteen, both Ye's parents had died. The Cultural Revolution then tore the remaining family members apart. Along with millions of other Chinese youths, Ye was "sent down" from the city for labor reform on a prison farm, where she was subjected to humiliating psychological torture. Later, Ye was accepted into Beijing University where she studied English before being assigned to the Foreign Ministry as a translator for the delegations of such dignitaries as Queen Elizabeth II, Ronald Reagan and Imelda Marcos. Ye left China for good in 1987, when she defected to Canada. In addition to describing her life in Communist China before and during the Cultural Revolution, Ye also writes about the domestic abuse she suffered during her first marriage. Ye and her first husband had one daughter, as permitted by the Chinese One Child Policy. Later, Ye was forced to abort a second pregnancy as it was not permitted by government policy. Ye describes how her husband repeatedly beat her in front of her daughter, and insisted that a close male friend share their cramped living quarters. Ye became increasingly estranged from her husband and spent significant periods of time apart from him during her postgraduate studies in Beijing. During her studies, Ye fell in love with her Canadian English teacher, William E. Bell, and eventually defected to the West to be with him, gaining permission to leave China under the guise of a fully paid scholarship to a Canadian university. However, to do so, she had to leave her daughter in the custody of her husband. When it became clear that Ye did not intend to return permanently to China, her husband denied her access to her daughter, changing her name and moving to a new, secret address to avoid the possibility of contact with Ye. Ye ends her memoir with her descriptions of how, as a Canadian citizen, she continues to attempt to contact her daughter, hoping one day to take her to Canada. |
Foe | John Maxwell Coetzee | 1,986 | Susan Barton is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter whom she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Lisbon. When she comes ashore, she finds Friday and a Cruso who has grown complacent, content to forget his past and live his life on the island with Friday—tongueless by what Cruso claims to have been the act of former slave owners—in attendance. Arriving near the end of their residence, Barton is only on the island for a year before the trio is rescued, but the homesick Cruso does not survive the voyage to England. In England with Friday, Barton attempts to set her adventures on the island to paper, but she feels her efforts lack popular appeal. She tries to convince novelist Daniel Foe to help with her manuscript, but he does not agree on which of her adventures is interesting. Foe would prefer to write about her time in Bahia looking for her daughter, and when he does write on the story she wishes, fabulates about Cruso's adventures rather than relating her facts. Frustrating Barton's efforts further, Foe, who becomes her lover, is preoccupied with debt and has little time or energy to write about anything. Barton's story takes a twist with the return of someone claiming to be her missing daughter. |
I'm the King of the Castle | Susan Hill | 1,970 | The book is set in a large house called Warings near the village of Derne. It was once a grand countryside mansion, but has since fallen into disrepair and decay. Joseph Hooper has inherited the house, and lives with his son Edmund Hooper. They have a cold, formal relationship which lacks compassion. Joseph announces that a housekeeper will be moving in, who will also bring her son who is of a similar age to Edmund. Mrs. Helena Kingshaw, and her son Charles Kingshaw arrive at Warings. Hooper becomes defensive of his house, and instantly takes a disliking to Kingshaw. He mocks him about his social class and father, and a small fight ensues where Kingshaw punches Hooper. Kingshaw then attempts to escape Warings, but is attacked by a vicious crow. The crow is thought to symbolize Hooper, who is very protective of his territory. Animalistic symbolism is used throughout the novel. Hooper proceeds to taunt and bully Kingshaw, who acts as the weak victim in their relationship. They venture to Hang Wood together, where Hooper's weaknesses become apparent and Kingshaw seems to retrieve some kind of power. However, it is apparent that Kingshaw does not have the capacity to be cruel. This pattern of cruelty continues throughout the book within the isolated setting of Warings. Both parents seem oblivious to their fights, and lack an understanding of their children's antics. They travel to Hang Wood on a few more occasions. It appears that Hooper is vulnerable in this setting, away from his home. The family decide to take a trip to Leydell Castle. Here, Kingshaw further exploits Hoopers fears as they climb the ancient monument. Hooper falls by accident, and badly injures himself. Even though Kingshaw tried to save him Hooper accuses Kingshaw of pushing him and is believed by the adults. Kingshaw is convinced that he has killed Hooper. As Hooper recovers, it appears that Kingshaw gains independence and meets a local boy by the name of Fielding. Fielding appears confident and well-rounded, and takes Kingshaw to his farm where he witnesses the birth of a calf. This is in stark contrast to Warings, which is full of death morbidity. Glass cabinets filled with moths are used to symbolize the decay of the Hooper dynasty. Fielding offers Kingshaw hope away from the manipulative clutches of Hooper. However, once Hooper returns to health, the normal regime of taunting resumes. Hooper's cruelty climaxes, and Kingshaw is devastated when he discovers that Helena and Joseph have agreed to marry, and that Hooper and Kingshaw will attend school together. The novel ends with Kingshaw committing suicide by drowning himself in a river in Hang Wood and Mrs. Kingshaw comforting Hooper who is described as feeling a sense of triumph. |
The Officers' Ward | Marc Dugain | null | Adrien Fournier, a handsome lieutenant in the Engineers, is wounded on a simple reconnaissance mission on the first day of French involvement in the Great War. He is hit by a stray shell, which kills his fellow officers and his horse, and tears a tunnel through the centre of Adrien's face. Devastated and permanently disfigured, he spends the rest of the war in a hospital, in a maxillofacial unit, with a small group of others who have similar injuries -- including a woman, Marguerite, who has been wounded while nursing at the Western Front. Adrien's palate and jaw are gradually reconstructed by pioneering plastic surgeons. The novel follows the experiences of the group in the aftermath of the war and their subsequent lives, right up to World War II and beyond. fr:La Chambre des officiers (roman) |
Savvy | Ingrid Law | 2,008 | For generations, the Beaumont family has harbored a magical secret. They each possess a "savvy"- a supernatural power that strikes when you turn thirteen. Grandpa Bomba moves mountains, her older brothers create hurricanes and spark electricity... and now it's the eve of Mibs big day. As if waiting wasn't hard enough, the family gets scary news two days before Mibs birthday: Poppa has been in a terrible accident. Mibs develops the singular mission to get to the hospital and prove that her new power can save her dad.So she sneaks on to a bible salesman's old bus... only to find the bus is heading the other direction.Suddenly Mibs finds herself on an unforgettable odyssey. |
Green, Green My Valley Now | null | null | Huw Morgan has become a successful businessman in Patagonia, establishing farming and civil contracting enterprises. But with political currents shifting in military-governed Argentina, he and his second wife Sûs decide to return to Wales. Now a rich man, Huw spares no expense to buy, restore and refurbish his wife's ancestral farmhouse in Mid-Wales and make it into a fine manor house. His apparently limitless wealth also allows him to buy property and land to try to restore the fortunes of the small local town. He becomes aware of nationalist feelings amongst the people, but makes no real attempt to understand them. As news of his arrival spreads, he meets his niece Blodwen, his sister Olwen's daughter, a piano student; he sponsors her to study in Germany. He learns that the descendants of his other siblings live in Australia, America, South Africa and New Zealand. Huw is visited by a woman claiming to be the granddaughter of his brother Davy from Melbourne; she brings Kiri, a French girl, with her. She is later revealed to be a fraud, and an IRA terrorist, seeking an isolated country hideout for bomb-making. Kiri is a Breton nationalist and also a bomb-maker. After his wife dies, Huw marries Teleri, also a descendant of Patagonian Welsh. The ceremony at the farm is disrupted by a would-be assassin, seeking revenge for Kiri's imprisonment, but the attack is foiled by his many friends. After the marriage, Huw and Teleri slip quietly away on honeymoon, planning to visit Patagonia. Before doing so, Huw finally visits his native valley, which he previously avoided, and is astonished to discover the coal tips gone and the area landscaped. Even fish have returned to the once-polluted river. |
DARLAH | null | null | The book begins in 2012, after NASA has announced its intent to hold a contest for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. Three winners will be selected from all over the world, with the prize being a coveted spot on an upcoming mission to return to the moon. The stunt is believed to be a way of increasing both funding and public interest, but the real reason is that NASA intends to study a mystical phenomenon that was previously discovered during the original moon landing. This is the reason that NASA stopped sending people to the moon back in the seventies and that this phenomenon has a sinister edge to it. Three teenagers from Norway, Japan, and France are excited at the rare opportunity to see the moon firsthand as well as stay in the formerly secret lunar base DARLAH 2, but that excitement is short lived as they realize that this base might become their tomb. |
Tuvalu | Andrew O'Connor | 2,006 | The novel is set mostly in Tokyo and tells the story of a young Australian teacher of English, and his relationship with two women, Tilly, another Australian English teacher, and Mami, a Japanese hotel heiress. It is told in first-person. |
Deeper | Roderick Gordon | 2,008 | Part 1: Breaking Cover The story opens with Sarah Jerome, Will's biological mother, dismounting from a bus and going on foot to a concealed chamber built into a bridge in a remote rural location. There she collects a letter that states her brother Tam is dead because Will betrayed him to the Styx. Sarah is filled with grief, and struggles to believe that her son is capable of this. Meanwhile, Will and Chester are overjoyed to be reunited once again as the Miners' Train travels down through the Earth on its way to the Deeps. Will's younger brother, Cal, is also with them. The train passes through a series of storm gates and, on the final approach to the Miners' Station, the three boys jump from it. Having escaped detection at the station, they travel further into the Deeps, where they are attacked by carnivorous bats and are forced to take shelter in an old, deserted house. Inside the house they find evidence that Will's stepfather, Dr Burrows, has already been there. Sarah adopts a disguise, allowing her to become a woman who has the authority to interview a deranged Mrs. Burrows, who currently is residing at Humphrey House. However, when her fear that Will actually killed Tam clouds her judgment, Mrs. Burrows quickly realizes the fake, forcing Sarah to flee. Soon, she is acquainted with a much skinnier, much weaker Bartleby, who takes her to a hiding place. There, a few days later, Rebecca and the Styx show up and make her believe for sure that Will killed Tam. Rebecca tells her that she knows where Will is, and that he is forcing Cal to come with him, and, if she didn't act soon, Will might kill him also. Also: Bartleby was Cal's hunter in the Colony, and now he is hers. Finally, they explain that Cal and Bartleby shared a strong bond, and, because of his love for Cal, Bartelby would be able to track him down anywhere... Finally, Dr. Burrows is shown as still alive. He has been accepted by a strange, gentle group of people called Coprolites. Sadly for them, a special detachment of the Styx called Limiters has been killing them. Having been left provisions by the Coprolites before they moved camp to a safer location, Dr. Burrows packs up and leaves, continuing further into the Deeps, keeping his notebook with him at all times. Part 2: The Homecoming Sarah is taken to see her mother, Grandma Macaulay, in her old home. Grandma Macaulay has been persuaded by the Styx that Will was responsible for Tam's demise, and she is full of vengeance and asks Sarah to exact revenge on the boy. Sarah is then escorted to the Styx Garrison where she rests, is given military training, and is also subjected to sermons from The Book of Catastrophes. Concerned that their food supplies are running low, Will and Chester follow Cal down into an opening of the floor of the Great Plain, where Cal enters a cavern filled with unidentified pipe-like organisms. As he stumbles, Cal touches one of these organisms, then collapses. Will and Chester discover that the boy isn't breathing, but they are forced to flee the cavern in order to save their own lives. Topsoil, it is dawn in England, and Rebecca and a squad of Styx are on the rooftop of Admiralty Arch, overlooking Trafalgar Square, with baskets of doves. Attached to the leg of each bird is a small metal ball which, when melted by the sun, will release a small amount of a non-deadly form of the virus that the Styx have been working on. The section ends with Rebecca cheering the doves on to "Fly, fly, fly!". Part 3: Drake and Elliott After his brother's death, Will is beside himself with grief, and Chester becomes increasingly concerned about the strange way he is acting. Shortly thereafter, they witness the execution of a group of Coprolites by a patrol of Styx Limiters. Will's abnormal behavior takes over again, and he asks for a piece of chewing gum. Before he unwraps it, knives are put at both boys' throats. A man speaks, telling them to bury the gum, and then to come with them. With no alternative but to do what they are told, Will and Chester comply with these demands. The two strangers introduce themselves as renegades, namely Drake and Elliott. Drake soon realizes it is important to keep Will alive because he thinks Will may be the cause of the increased Styx presence in the Deeps, and also because he discovers Will is Sarah Jerome's son. For the most part, Elliott maintains a hostile attitude towards the boys, except for Chester. Cal, who Will and Chester feared had perished in a "sugar trap", is resuscitated by Drake. Sarah persuades Joseph to allow her to leave the Styx Garrison so she can revisit the Rookeries, a place where the most deprived Colonists are left to rot, and where she and her brother Tam played as children. However, as she passes through the area, she is recognised and hailed as a hero. As she emerges from the Rookeries, she is met by Rebecca who tells her they are to leave for the Deeps on the Miners' Train. Topsoil, the virus created by the Styx scientists has been spread, and is wreaking havoc on England. The symptoms are some coughing, and swollen eyes, which make reading and looking at objects very hard. A grouchy Mrs. Burrows is visited by a man who has a distinguished voice and likes boiled eggs, hence Mrs. Burrows's nickname for him: "boiled-egg man". Boiled-egg Man tells her everything will be fine, when, in fact, it is steadily getting worse. Soon, a woman named Mrs. L dies, and not long after that, the laboratory that researches the virus is burned, and, when Boiled-egg Man appears on the news, claiming that there was no case of arson and that it was an experiment that blew the lab up, killing five scientists, Mrs. Burrows, who believes the opposite, becomes very angry. Part 4: The Island When they are attacked by Limiters, Will becomes separated from Drake, Elliott, Cal and Chester, and without any food or light, becomes completely lost in the lava tubes for several days. He eventually emerges from the lava tubes, and is reunited with Chester. Meanwhile, Drake and Elliott take Cal with them as they search the Great Plain for Will, and here they come to a place called the Bunker, which it appears was once used to breed Coprolites. One area in the Bunker is now being used to test the Dominion virus, which the Styx intend to use to decimate a large proportion of the Topsoil population. After a Styx ambush, Drake is captured outside the Bunker, while Elliott and Cal manage to escape. The two return to Will and Chester, and then Elliott leads them all to an island in a subterranean sea. Elliott takes Will to scout, and they discover that Drake is being tortured. Elliott decides to kill him to put him out of his misery. When they return to the camp, Elliott captures a "night crab" for a meal, which Will identifies as a relic species of Anomalocaris. Part 5: The Pore Dr. Burrows comes across a temple-like structure, built by a civilization that worships a sun. He discovers a hoard of large dust mites and then comes across a huge, mile-long hole, which he accidentally falls into. Elliott's initial plan is to take the boys to a place called the Wetlands, where they will allegedly be safe. She takes them through a tunnel, but before long, Bartleby appears, and Cal is delighted. Elliott shoots an advancing stranger, which turns out to be Sarah Jerome. Will assures her that he did not kill Tam, then he and the others continue on their way. At her insistence, because she is too badly injured and would only slow them down, Sarah stays behind. They eventually come across the huge hole; the same one Dr. Burrows fell into. It is identified as the Pore, which stretches even deeper into the Earth's surface. Before long, they are ambushed by Rebecca, and she reveals that there is not one but two of her; they are twins, and they have been alternatively living in Will's home, posing as his younger sister. They reveal their plot to kill all Topsoilers with a deadly virus called Dominion, which was extracted from the Eternal City by the Styx Division. The twins order the Limiters to open fire; Cal is killed as a result. Will, Elliott, Chester, and Bartleby are blown into the Pore by the Styx's heavy guns. The Rebecca twins presume that they have fallen to their death, and the Limiters cease fire. Sarah, who is close to death from her gunshot wounds, witnesses this. She draws upon her last remaining strength and, in a headlong rush at the Rebecca twins, takes them over the edge of the Pore with her. Several days later, Drake is shown Topsoil as he observes a Colonist who is, in turn, observing Mrs. Burrows. It is clear that he wants to exact his revenge on the Styx for the deaths of Elliott and the boys. The book ends when he dials a phone and waits for an answer. |
I miss you, I miss you! | null | null | Cilla and Tina are thirteen years old and identical twin sisters. As they hurry to catch the bus to school one day, Cilla is run over by a car and killed. Left behind is Tina, who now has to find her balance in life without her sister. The book follows the sisters during the months leading up to Cilla's death, and Tina's first year without her. |
Living Dead in Dallas | Charlaine Harris | 2,002 | Sookie Stackhouse likes living in Bon Temps, Louisiana, and she likes working as a cocktail waitress at Merlotte's. But she is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature which gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Vampires suck the poison from her veins, saving her life. When one of the vampires asks for a favor, she obliges, and soon Sookie is in Dallas using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She is supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave, and let the humans go unharmed. That is easier said than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly. |
Club Dead | Charlaine Harris | 2,003 | The novel takes place in December. Bill, working on a secretive computer program, informs Sookie he has to travel away in order to complete the program. Days later, a werewolf targeting Sookie comes into her working spot, Merlotte's, but he is eliminated by Bubba, sent on Eric's orders, before he can harm Sookie. As night falls, Eric and his employees tell Sookie that Bill had actually been in Mississippi, where his former lover and maker Lorena had summoned him. They continue to tell Sookie that Bill has since then gone missing, and Eric speaks of his suspicions on Lorena's involvement. He also states that the vampire queen of Louisiana will need to receive Bill's secret project on its due date, if Eric wishes not to compromise his life. Since Eric is unable to interrogate humans or vampires in the territory of Mississippi vampire king Russell Edgington without provoking a war, he invites Sookie to come along to Mississippi and utilize her telepathy to locate Bill. Sookie agrees, but is shocked at Bill's possible betrayal of her. The next day, Sookie is introduced to Alcide Herveaux, a werewolf sent by Eric to help Sookie circulate in the supernatural community of Jackson, Mississippi. Sookie takes a liking to Alcide's physique and personality. In Jackson, Alcide escorts her to a local vampire bar, Josephine's, generally known as Club Dead. In this club, Sookie learns by telepathy that Bill is being held captive and that Russell Edgington is possibly involved. She meets Edgington when he aids her after a confrontation with a were patron angered at Sookie rebuffing his sexual advances. Edgington insists they come in the next night as well. In the same night, Sookie is confronted by Alcide's jealous ex-girlfriend Debbie Pelt, a shapeshifter who, despite being at her own engagement party, is furious with Sookie presenting herself as Alcide's escort. The next day, Sookie and Alcide discover in their closet the dead body of the Club Dead patron who had been making unwanted advances at Sookie. After disposing of the body, that is later revealed to have been an assailant aiming for Sookie killed by Bubba, the duo head out for another night in Club Dead, where Sookie meets her friend Tara Thornton as another vampire's escort. However, she discovers the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire organization prominently featured in Living Dead in Dallas, has come in Club Dead intent on killing vampires. While preventing the Fellowship from staking one of Russell Edgington's employees, she herself is staked, then rescued by Eric and taken to the King of Mississippi's compound and receives medical attention at Edgington's mansion. Sookie shares an intimate moment with Eric, but Bubba informs them Bill is being tortured in one of Edgington's poolhouses. At dawn, Sookie heads out to the poolhouse. She frees Bill and manages to stake Lorena as she attacks, but is locked into the trunk of her own car alongside the sleeping Bill when she returns to Alcide's apartment building. When Bill, deprived of blood and sleep for a week, wakes up, he feeds on Sookie and forces himself onto her sexually. Sookie asks Eric to drive her home, fed up with the whole ordeal. While on their way home, two robbers raid a gas station alongside their route looking for Sookie and Eric and in Sookie's home, several werewolves wait for her and attack her. Eric and Bill eliminate all werewolves, but Sookie angrily breaks up with Bill and rescinds both Bill and Eric's invitation to her house. The novel ends with Sookie realizing Bill's special project is inside her house, and no vampire will be physically able to retrieve it. |
The Boy Who Dared | Susan Campbell Bartoletti | 2,008 | The majority of the story is told through flashbacks, as Helmuth Hübener, charged with treason, waits in a Berlin prison for his execution. Starting with his memories as a young boy, Helmuth recounts his childhood growing up in Nazi Germany with his mother, grandparents, two brothers, his b As a young boy, Helmuth plans to become a soldier and fight for Germany but that changes when he grows up, and Helmuth stands out as a very intelligent young man. He becomes very opinionated about the Nazi government when he sees his Jewish classmate's father mercilessly murdered by the SA. He begins to secretly listen to forbidden enemy radio broadcasts, and enlists the help of two of his closest friends in distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. Helmuth and his brothers fight very hard to keep their family together while they argue with Hugo about Germany's laws, rules, and restrictions on all people of Germany and the rights of the Jewish people in Germany. Later, a fellow apprentice of Helmuth's turns him in to the Gestapo, and he is jailed and is killed on October 27, 1942 in the guillotine. |
Dogzilla | Dav Pilkey | 1,993 | “It’s time for Mousopolis’s First Annual Barbecue Cook-Off. But just when the fun is about to begin, the irresistible aroma of barbecue sauce awakens the most frightening creature known to mousekind: the dreaded Dogzilla. As her horrible doggy breath fills the streets, the residents of Mousopolis must run for their lives. Can they get rid of that big stinky dog before it’s too late?” |
The Secret Scripture | Sebastian Barry | 2,009 | The main character is a one-hundred-year-old woman, Roseanne McNulty, who now resides in the Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. Having been a patient for some fifty years or more, Roseanne decides to write an autobiography. She calls it "Roseanne's testimony of herself" and charts her life and that of her parents, living in Sligo at the turn of the 20th Century. She keeps her story hidden under the loose floorboard in her room, unsure as yet if she wants it to be found. The second narrative is the "commonplace book" of the current chief Psychiatrist of the hospital, Dr Grene. The hospital now faces imminent demolition. He must decide who of his patients are to be transferred, and who must be released into the community. He is particularly concerned about Roseanne, and begins tentatively to attempt to discover her history. It soon becomes apparent that both Roseanne and Dr Grene have differing stories as to her incarceration and her early life, but what is consistent in both narratives is that Roseanne fell victim to the religious and political upheavals in Ireland in the 1920s – 1930s. |
For Love & Money: A Writing Life, 1968-1987 | Jonathan Raban | null | I - II Raban describes his development as a writer from his early youthful love for books to a university career lecturing on Literature to his final decision to become a full-time writer in London, starting out as a professional book reviewer for the London Magazine and the New Statesman. The first part is mainly composed of book reviews he wrote for various literary journals and his subjects include: living in London, the Romantic poet Byron, Thackeray, Henry Mayhew, a well-researched piece on Anthony Trollope (although it is a pity there is so little of the writer's thoughts on his great masterpiece The Way We Live Now), who still remains a highly under-rated Victorian novelist, and three penetrative pieces on Evelyn Waugh, of whom Raban is a great admirer. As he says of Waugh's diaries, there is no clear division from the youthful into the adult Waugh and this element of youthfulness always maintained a strong influence on his writing: 'This disconcerting, sometimes vengeful, sometimes pathetic, childishness gives all Waugh's writing an odd innocence, a kind of brazen incorruptibility. His cult of the noble (which was much more a dream of living in a Burne-Jonesish world of sunlit castles and pure chivalry than is was of toadying after titles), his fiercely traditionalist Catholicism, his horror of the urban proletariat, were too wide-eyed to be either dangerous or mean. His sensibility had the extravagance of a billiant child's: adult moderation never got in the say of clarity. When he admired he worshipped; when he disapproved, he was appalled. The bourgeois virtues of common sense and good manners (the besetting vices of so many modern English novelists) were totally foreign to him - not because he was a snob but because he never forgot what it was like to be a child.' He also includes a review of Anthony Powell, rightly criticizing the first part of his memoirs, Infants of the Spring, as being,"... a book so boring, reticent and formulaic that it would hardly be a creditable effort had it come from the hand of an idle brigadier jotting down his Notess of an Old Soldier or Tales of an Officer's Mess. Mr Powell begins by tracing his family tree back to Old King Cole and Rhys the Hoarse, constructs a complete stud book of Powells and Wells-Dymokes, then embarks, in a style of stultified discretion, on a rambling, much interrupted account of his own life." There is a very affectionate piece about Robert Lowell, the American poet who Raban knew for the last seven years of his life. As he says of Lowell's life,"It's a life lived in full conscience by a man of preternatural quickness and sensitivity and candour. We can all count ourselves lucky that Lowell happened to be around in our messy stretch of history; more than any other writer he got down on paper what it feels like to be normally alive in our particular snakepit." Unfortunately for Lowell he was plagued by bouts of temporary insanity that meant periods of forced incarceration in a mental hospital once a year during an attack of mania. Throughout his life Raban comments that he remained, in the deepest sense, an unknowable man and his poetry was written in order that he could at least attempt to come to terms with himself and his own character. III Just like the young aspiring writer in Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise, named Shelleyblake (a pun on the two Romantic poets) by Jonathan Raban, he too wanted to write plays. He states he first found a birth at Kestrel Films, a company set up by Tony Garnett, Ken Loach and Kenith Trodd. Raban wrote a play for Trodd after he moved over to Granada Television but it turned out to be a total failure dramatically. He went on to write seven plays for radio. of which six were produced by Richard Wortley but, as he states, there was a limited audience for plays of this kind - mostly the blind and "a small coterie of radio listeners who are prepared, in effect, to blind themselves for the duration of the programme. But they are few and far between." He also wrote five more plays for television of which three were broadcast, but again they did not meet with much critical success. His last dramatic effort was a commissioned full-length stage play directed by Eric Thompson at the Bristol Old Vic, but the play closed after a month. In order to get playwriting out of his system, Raban took off to travel in Arabia to research his travelogue, Arabia Through the Looking Glass. IV This part deals with Raban's experiences with writing for 'the little magazines', mainly feature journalism. He was a book reviewer for the Review, edited by Ian Hamilton, and then later for the New Review, which was larger and glossier but which foundered just like its predecessor. He also did some work for the Radio Times, edited by Geoffrey Cannon, who was able to pay his reviewers considerably more than Hamilton out of the BBC coffers, and was also extremely liberal in terms of fitting in with his reviewers' requirements, particularly if they were working on a book. It was the Radio Times that sent Raban on a sailing ship for three days (it was being used as a prop in The Onedin Line), which was to spark off two books and an obsession with sailing. There are also some short articles. 'Christmas in Bournemouth' is an excellent and highly objective account of a group of OAPs spending their Christmas together at the Cliff Court Hotel, unwanted by their children: 'There were 59 of us. There was one real family party from Egham, complete with a trio of rather subdued children. But nearly everybody had come in a couple. There were childless couples in their 40s, and grandparents in their 50s and 60s whose grown-up children had somehow, inexplicably, failed to invite them for Christmas.' With his partner, Linda (who appears briefly in Coasting when she collects Raban from the London Docks), they take part in all the arranged festivities. The people are the first generation after the war who had extra money to spend, shown by the expensive electronic gadgetry they all possess. However, the downside is that they have lost the family closeness that existed in the pre-war years, and their children and grand-children prefer to be unencumbered with any elderly relatives who may embarrass their guests over Christmas. The whole experience at the hotel is a bitter-sweet one and Raban's last memory is of Frances, a lonely spinster hospital worker, waiting forlonly for her bus to 'take her back to her Christchurch maisonette and her job on the geriatric ward.' Living on Capital describes Raban's early childhood, much of which is re-presented in his travelogue, Coasting. Living with Loose Ends is a rather rambling account of family life, but 'Freya Stark on the Euphrates' and 'Fishing' - describing the writer's long love affair with the rod and reel - are two well-crafted articles that have a strong merit in their own right. V The last part - and the one in which Raban really comes into his own - deals with travelling and the writing of the travel book and goes a long way to explaining Jonathan Raban's own wanderlust. As he says about travelling and writing, 'Simple wanderlust is relatively easy to fend off, but when it starts to get tangled up with literary motive it becomes irresistible; and literature and travel are anciently, inevitably tangled. Journeys suggest stories, stories take the form of journeys - odysseys, exoduses, pilgrims' and rakes' progresses. Any travelling writer, leaving home, must find it difficult to rid himself of the idea that he's embarking on some kind of real-life picaresque. Before him lie the education and adventures of a rolling stone. Pilgrim, Gulliver, Tom Jones, Mr Yorick have been here before.' The author also gives some insights into his own method of writing about his travelling in such books as Hunting Mr Heartbreak, Old Glory - his journey in a skiff down the Mississippi - and Passage to Juneau, in which he sails from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska: 'Memory, not the notebook, holds the key. I try to keep a notebook when I'm on the move (largely because writing it makes one feel that one's at work, despite all appearances to the contrary) but hardly ever find anything in the notebook that's worth using later...Memory, though, is always telling stories to itself, filing experience in narrative form. It feeds irrelevancies to the shredder, enlarges on crucial details, makes links and patterns, finds symbols, constructs plots. In memory, the journey takes shape and grows; in the notebook it merely languishes, with the notes themselves like a pile of cigarette butts confronted the morning after a party.' And again, in 'Stevenson: Sailing towards marriage' Raban gives us a description Robert Louis Stevenson's much-admired writing style in The Amateur Emigrant, about the latter taking passage for America and his fiancee in northern California, that could be a mirror image of his own: 'For Stevenson's temperament was instinctively skeptical and empirical. He hoarded detail for its own sake. He was immensely careful and sympathetic observer of other people's lives. When he came to deal with the physical conditions of the ship and the train, and with the characters of the emigrants, he was a scrupulous miniaturist. Every page of The Amateur Emigrant is dotted with the trifles of life - with smells, fragments of dialect speech, clothes, facial expressions. It has the dense and varied texture of a true record.' 'Belloc at Sea' - about Belloc's The Cruise of the Nona - is in part recreated in Coasting, and 'Young's Slow Boats' is interesting from the perspective of one travel writer writing about another. Raban gives his own thoughts on what has drawn so many writers, including himself, to the travel book: 'It is the supreme improvisatory form; one can play it by ear; it will happily accommodate all sorts of conditions of writing. At its occasional best it works like a constellation, with autobiography, essays, stories, reportage mingling together in a single controlled blaze. More often it has the casual freedom of the scrapbook, into which any old thing can be pasted at will; a lifelike form, certainly, with all of life's contingencies, dead ends, and artlessness.' 'Florida' is a remarkable article based on Raban's visit to Florida, attracted by the thrillers of John D. MacDonald, 'With their bodice-ripper covers and titles like Nightmare in Pink, A Deadly Shade of Gold and A Purple Place for Dying. For Raban, MacDonald (whom he meets three years before his death) created an extremely vivid portrait of a 'jungly Eden, spoilt and besmirched by human vanity and greed ... a lovely paradise that was being cut down to make room for shopping malls, condominium blocks, six-lane highways, giant billboards and pagoda-style Kingburger palaces. Taken together, the novels added up to a resounding "No! Thunder!" They protested against this violation of the innocence of America with shocked and angry vigour.' Raban goes onto re-create this visit near the end of his later book, Hunting Mister Heartbreak: A Discovery of America (1991), which describes his meandering journey across the U.S.A. and its eventual conclusion in Seattle, where he now permanently resides. The final article, 'Sea Room', makes a seamless transition from this book to his next one, Coasting (book), recording his circumnavigation of the British Isles. Raban describes his desire to purchase his own boat and take to the sea. He purchases a sextant from a junkshop, made for J.H.C. Minter R.N. and practices the determination of latitude and longitude from his home in St Quintin Avenue, London W.10. He then starts his search for a boat and ends up with the Gosfield Maid, stranded on a mudbank up a Cornish estuary, which is to be his home for the next few years. |
Fathers and Forefathers | Slobodan Selenić | null | The novel is set in Belgrade, just before World War II, and it covers over fifty years of Serbian history. It tells the story of a young Englishwoman, Elizabeth, and Steven, a Serb who meet at University in England and fall in love. They leave England to begin a new life together in Serbia. Through Elizabeth's letters home it is revealed that she is having difficulties adapting to Serbian culture, although Steven's narrative provides a very different take on events. Their son, Mihajlo, is ashamed of his mixed parentage and rebels radically against his English roots. On the eve of the war, the family's loyalties are tested and tragedy ensues. Although the novel is set in a time of many years ago, it deals with what many consider to be a very current theme---that of the clash, or at least the juxtaposition, of two cultures (in this case the culture clash between English culture and Serbian culture), and the subsequent alienation of the individuals involved. It has sold over 100,000 copies in Serbia. |
The Princess and Curdie | George MacDonald | null | It's been two years after the last book. Princess Irene and her father go to Gwyntystorm while Curdie, the princess's friend and a miner boy stayed home with his mother and father. As the years go by, Curdie begins to hunt for pleasure and slowly begins to doubt Irene's story of her great-great grandmother. One day, he shoots down a white pigeon. Curdie then remembers Irene's tale of her grandmother's pigeons and assumes the one he shot down was one of them and becomes aware of his folly. A light is seen at the roof of the castle, and Curdie follows it. There, Curdie meets the Grand Old Princess, who appeared small and withered, as opposed to the descriptions told by Irene. She gently tells Curdie of his wrong thinking and he confesses. As now he believes, the pigeon got well. Curdie was then told to keep his bow and arrows and use them for good instead of bad things. The Grand Princess then told Curdie to meet her again soon, whom he trusts. |
Spindrift | Allen Steele | 2,007 | In 2288 A.D. Jared Ramirez is serving a life sentence on the moon for his role in an attempt to reduce the human population by one-third. A telescopic array that he designed and programmed has received a transmission that is clearly alien. John Shillinglaw, Associate Director of the European Space Agency arranges for him to be a member of the science team aboard the spaceship Galileo which will explore the source of the transmission, an object that has been dubbed "Spindrift". Ted Harker is the efficient, respected first officer of the Galileo. He serves under Ian Lawrence, the arrogant but politically minded and well connected Captain. Ted discovers that the Captain has taken surreptitious measures that may poison a potential first contact with an alien species. After surviving the trip to Spindrift, the captain seems almost too anxious for Ted to lead a group of four to explore Spindrift while the rest of the crew visit what looks like a hyperspace gate that is orbiting nearby. Harker's team makes amazing discoveries, witnesses the destruction of the Galileo, and meets an alien who makes a surprising suggestion for what humans could use for space trade. |
Moving the Mountain | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | null | The novel opens with a brief scene written in the third person: at a remote location in Tibet, a man in local costume, backed by a group of native people, confronts a woman at the head of an exploratory expedition. There is a sudden sense of realization as the man and woman recognize each other as siblings; the man collapses, overcome by shock. The story then switches to a first-person account, written by John Robertson after his meeting with his sister Ellen. Thirty years earlier, at the age of 25, Robertson had been traveling through rural Tibet; wandering away from his party, he had gotten lost and had fallen over a precipice. He was nursed back to health by local villagers, but his memory was deeply impaired. It was only when his sister found him that he regained his recollection. He returns to the United States with her, to face a society that is vastly different from the one he knew in his youth. Around 1920, while Robertson was living obscurely in Tibet, America had adopted a system of economics described as being "beyond Socialism", a strain of nationalism that answered all the questions posed by socialism without actually being socialist, renovating its society and culture; and from there it had continued to develop into a more efficient nation, through "social evolution" and a vague "new religion." Robertson is surprised to learn that his sister is the president of a college — and is astounded to realize that she is a married college president. He meets his brother-in-law and nephew and niece, and is repeatedly challenged in his traditional attitudes. He is not a feminist; on the ship homeward he meets an attractive and vivacious young woman, and thinks of her, "My sister must have been mistaken about her being a civil engineer. She might be a college girl — but nothing worse." Most of the book consists of John Robertson being instructed, by his family members and others, in the new, rational, well-organized social order. Gilman's America of 1940 is a country with no poverty or prostitution, "no labor problem — no color problem — no sex problem — almost no disease — very little accident — practically no fires," a place in which "the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine," where problems of deforestation and soil erosion are being remedied, and in which "no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four...." The central chapters in the book deliver Gilman's program for reforming society. She concentrates on measures of rationality and efficiency that could be instituted in her own time, largely with greater social cooperation — equal education and treatment for girls and boys, day-care centers for working women, and other issues still relevant a century later. Yet Gilman also allows for technological progress: electric power is the motive force in industry and urban society, power generated largely by the tides (a technology that is only being developed in the early twenty-first century in the real world), plus "wind-mills, water mills," and "solar engines." And the sky is full of "airships." People now practice a "new humanitarianism." Vegetarianism is in fashion, hunting is out, and zoos are no more. (Gilman's concept of animal rights, however, provides for the elimination of predators, to save their prey.) Tobacco and alcohol are also out of fashion, because emancipated women condemn those habits. Robertson does not find it easy to accept the new social order; his sister gently mocks him as an example of "An Extinct Species of Mind," as exotic as a "Woolly Mammoth." He even longs for the noisy, dirty, crowded chaos of the cities of his youth, in preference to the clean, quiet, "beautiful" cities of 1940. In his discontent, Robertson travels to his home state of South Carolina to visit his Uncle Jake, an old farmer and a determined reactionary who rejects the radical improvements of the past thirty years. Uncle Jake still practices subsistence farming with his elderly wife and middle-aged spinster daughter Drusilla. Robertson remembers his cousin Drusilla, ten years his junior, as a darling child — and is shocked by the harsh and deprived life she lives. His "thirty years in Tibet," which had weighed heavily upon his thoughts, now seem like "a holiday compared to this thirty years on an upland farm in the Alleghanies of Carolina." He convinces Drusilla to marry him, to salve his own loneliness and to give her a better life — and in doing so Robertson comes to accept the superior modern world he had previously resisted. |
Freefall | Roderick Gordon | 2,009 | Closer, Further (Part 1) The opening chapter describes how Chester Rawls is the first to regain consciousness on a fungal shelf deep down in the Pore where he, Will Burrows, Elliott and Bartleby have crash landed. After Will has located his brother’s dead body and given him a burial of sorts, he and Chester carry the injured Elliott with them as they set about exploring this alien and frightening world. The task of moving through the passages with the burden of Elliott and their equipment is made easier thanks to the reduced gravity at this depth in the Earth. With the help of Bartleby’s tracking ability, they discover that there is someone else down there with them, but are attacked by giant carnivorous creatures called spider-monkeys. They are saved by the intervention of a new character called Martha. She takes them to where she lives, a shack evidently built by the survivors of a galleon which was sucked down the another of the giant holes like the Pore, so she can tend to Elliott and protect the two boys. Meanwhile, the Rebecca twins, who were pushed into the Pore by Sarah Jerome in her last dying act, are aware that Will is alive, and begin to plot against him with two Styx Special Forces soldiers, called Limiters. One of the Rebeccas and a Limiter approach Will's father, Dr Burrows, and attempt to bully him into finding them a way out of the Pore. Dr Burrows seems to have very little comprehension that the Styx are dangerous and capable of great cruelty and murder. Martha's Shack (Part 2) At Martha’s shack, Elliott’s condition deteriorates as she catches a voracious fever, and Martha warns Will and Chester that her son died after the same thing happened when he injured himself on an expedition two years previously. Much to Will’s surprise, the other Rebecca twin turns up alone the shack, and her life is only spared after Will stops Chester and Martha from killing her. The twin claims that she is innocent and has had to go along with her sister’s evil plans. Will appears to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Chester and Martha are highly skeptical. Will is further won over by the Rebecca twin as she gives him two phials, which purportedly contain the Dominion virus and its antidote. Elliott’s condition worsens, and Will and Chester discover that Martha has been less than honest with them, and that there may be a source of modern medicines to help the girl. Although Martha is reluctant for them to risk the long journey, she eventually leads them to a “metal ship” which her son had stumbled across. The Metal Ship (Part 3) When they get there, it turns out that the metal ship is actually a modern Russian nuclear submarine, and they are forced to shelter inside it while Elliott responds to the antibiotics. There is also the added risk that they may be attacked by “Brights”, giant moth like flying creatures. As they finally set off from the submarine, the second Rebecca twin makes her appearance with Dr Burrows and the two Limiters. Will realizes the twin who surrendered to him has been lying all the time, as she orders Bartleby to attack him – the Hunter has been conditioned to follow her orders after being Darklit in the Colony. One of the Limiters is killed by a "Bright", but the Rebeccas still have an edge. Just when it appears as if all is lost, Elliott reveals that she is half Styx, and saves the day by priming one of the explosives from her rucksack. In the subsequent explosion, Will and his father are separated from Chester, Elliott, Martha and Bartleby, while the Rebecca twins and the surviving Limiter seek refuge in the Russian submarine, which is knocked down the giant hole it was in, "Smoking Jean", by the explosion. The Underground Harbor (Part 4) Separated from his friends and not knowing whether they are alive or not, Will is persuaded by his father to travel upwards, and they stumble upon an underground harbour, a deep-level fallout shelter from the Cold War. After Will has helped himself to various weapons from the armoury in the shelter, they manage to get an outboard engine to work, and attach it to a launch. Then they travel up a subterranean river linking the fallout shelter to the surface, and emerge in Norfolk, from where they make their way back to Highfield, and are reunited with Drake. Highfield, Again (Part 5) Mrs Burrows, Will’s stepmother, has gone through a transformation after she manages to beat her TV addiction, and has returned to Highfield where she is kept under close surveillance by the Styx and their agents. At Dr Burrows’ insistence, Drake takes him to meet his wife, so revealing to the Styx that Dr Burrows and Will are back Topsoil. Then there follows a parting of the ways as Mrs Burrows remains on the surface with Drake, who has asked Will to return back into the Earth and make sure that the risk of the Dominion virus has been neutralised. Will is accompanied by his father as they retrace the their route to where the submarine was blasted from the ledge in "Smoking Jean, and he is reunited with Chester, Martha, and a fully recovered Elliott. Departure (Part 6) Drake, with help from a squad of former SAS soldiers, devises a plan to trap one of the leading Styx, the “old Styx”, using Mrs Burrows as bait. But the mission fails and Mrs Burrows is captured and taken to the Colony where she is Darklit. Meanwhile, Dr Burrows, in a literal leap of faith, throws himself into the pore, followed by his son, and eventually by Elliott and Bartleby. Dr Burrows’ assumption that the gravity further down the pore is progressively lower is proved to be correct, and after locating the submarine, they search for any surviving Styx. Dr Burrows, driven by his conviction that there is a world at the centre of the Earth, risks all their lives as he makes sure that they have no option but to continue towards it. They finally make it through to the “Garden of the Second Sun” - a hidden world at the centre of the Earth, complete with its own sun, mountains, oceans, and animals long since extinct on the surface. Assisted by Will, Dr Burrows begins to investigate one of three Mayan-type pyramids they find there, and it seems as though they are finally safe from the Styx until Elliott spots some footprints. She, Will and Bartleby follow the trail and discover that the Rebecca twins and a Limiter have also made it through to the hidden world. After Elliott sets an ambush to deal with the Styx for once and for all, Will disobeys her and sneaks in to retrieve the Dominion phials. He is discovered by one of the Rebecca twins, and in the firefight and explosion which follow, both the Rebecca twins and Limiter perish, while Will makes off with the phials. Far from being angry at his disobedience, Will’s reward is a kiss on the cheek from Elliott. It seems as though Will’s prayers have been answered as he embarks upon his new life in this idyllic world, with Elliott as his companion and working with his father to discover incredible secrets from the past, until one day Dr Burrows spots a WW2 German bomber, a Stuka, in the sky. |
Thirteenth City | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | An astronaut from Earth named Dima (short for Dmitry) crash-lands on the fourth planet of the star LK 43. The indigenous people, whose physical appearance is almost indistinguishable from human, live in the so-called Cities, enclosed and self-sufficient habitats, providing their tenants with all life's necessities. The Cities are ruled by the ruthless and authoritarian Watchers. The official ideology of the Cities promotes absolute equality and replaceability. The official honorific is "Equal". All individual qualities are considered to be atavistic and must be mercilessly eliminated to the point that most redheads are forced to dye their hair. The most dangerous atavisms are crying, hate, love, and friendship. These are eradicated in early childhood. The inhabitants of the Cities live in dormitories, while children live and study in boarding schools and know nothing about their parents. Each person's place of residency is chosen by the Watchers and are often relocated to another City. The Watchers also choose each person's job. Reproductive couples are chosen by the computer. The same computer also chooses a person's menu (exchanging food is forbidden). At the age of 60, all citizens are killed; moreover, the equal lifespan is seen as a great achievement of the planet's society. The total brainwashing that persists from childhood is extremely effective, as most Equals believe the official ideology, while crying, hate, love, and friendship are rare occurrences. Officially, the Watchers are not considered to be privileged, as they are seen as merely another job. Most public issues are resolved by the popular vote, although the fear of the Watchers, ingrained since childhood, leads to mostly unanimous votes (i.e. the Watchers still get their way). Those who are declared as incurable atavics or publicly promote ideologically incorrect views are publicly censured and are subjected to a mind-wipe procedure. At least, that is what the Watchers tell the populace. There are people who do not live in the Cities; they are called Outsiders. The Watchers make the Equals believe that all Outsiders are nothing more than bandits and villains. Even the word "outsider" is considered a profanity by the Equals. While the Outsiders are free from total control, they have their own problems. Long ago, there was a nuclear war on the planet, which turned most of the planetary surface into a scorching desert. Most of the survivors enclosed themselves in the Cities, while the rest chose to stay free. The Outsiders are unable to provide themselves with even the most basic necessities, so they are forced to steal from the City stores. Also, they are incapable of conceiving children and have to raid the Cities to replenish their numbers (teenagers, usually). Once the kidnapped Equals find out the truth about their lives, they usually choose to join the Outsiders, despite the harsh conditions. Unfortunately, the Outsiders usually lose more people during these raids than they kidnap, so their population is constantly decreasing. They are also aware that, should they choose to do so, the Watchers could eliminate all Outsiders. Dima finds out all this after meeting two Outsiders and a kidnapped Equal. He agrees to aid a group of Outsiders in infiltrating a nearby City to free all Equals from the totallitarian Watchers. As Earth technology is much more advanced than local technology, this plan has a chance to succeed. Dima kills three Watchers but is himself captured. He finds out that most Watchers live in the beautiful and idyllic Thirteenth City, which consists of houses in the only forest left on the planet. The existence of Thirteenth City is covered up, so that neither the Equals nor the Outsiders are aware of it. After getting to Thirteenth City, Dima discovers that the way of life in the Cities is the only viable one on the planet. Due to the nuclear war, there are very few habitable areas left. Besides the small forest, which fits only several thousand Watchers and the gully with a few hundred Outsiders, life is only possible in the Cities. Their population is in the millions, so overcrowding is inevitable. To avoid bloody conflicts and overall chaos, the Watchers are forced to combat love (to avoid jealousy), friendship (to avoid unions and political parties), and hate to create uniform goodwill among the Equals. The Equals, like the Outsiders, are suffering from genetic mutations, caused by radiation. That is the reason why all sexual partners must be selected by the computer. The Outsiders, unwilling to subject themselves to rule, simply kill their children in infancy. The set lifespan of 60 is the result of extremely low supplies, even the Watchers are not exempt from this rule. Also, only those with high IQ are chosen to be Watchers, as they can grasp the severity of the situation and make the necessary decisions. On behalf of Earth, Dima promises to help the people of this planet to remove the consequences of nuclear war. This will take years, but once it is done, the people will once again be able to live normal lives. |
The Way of Shadows | Brent Weeks | null | Azoth is an orphan who lives in the Warrens of Cenaria City. He and his two friends, Jarl and Doll Girl, are members of the Black Dragon guild. They make their living stealing money to buy food and pay their guild dues to Rat, the Guild Fist, an enforcer who beats anyone who doesn't pay. One night while Azoth is underneath a local tavern scrounging for coins he overhears a confrontation between Durzo Blint, the best wetboy in the city, and several unknown assailants. After Durzo slaughters the assassins, he catches the escaping Azoth and tells him to not lose a word about that to anyone. One day Rat asks Azoth to be one of his "pretty boys". Azoth's rejection humiliates and angers Rat. Later that day Jarl shows Azoth a secret stash of coins that he has been saving for four years, which he gives Azoth so that he can apprentice to Durzo Blint. Blint is ambushed by the Black Dragon after fulfilling one of his contracts, but makes his way out by incapacitating Ja'laliel, the guild head, and scaring everyone else away. After that he is followed by Azoth as he leaves to make his report at the Sa'kagé headquarters. Although Azoth stays outside, Blint discovers his presence and declines Azoth's bid of being allowed to become Blint's apprentice. Azoth fails in following him when the wetboy leaves. The next day Azoth wakes up to find out that Rat has raped Jarl and made him "one of his girls". Rat wants to punish Azoth for pursuing Durzo but Ja'laliel forbids it. However, Ja'laliel is terminally ill, and Azoth is afraid that Rat will soon be the guild head. Azoth plans his revenge on Rat for Jarl's rape, trying to turn the guild against him, but Rat lets him play the hero. Elsewhere in Cenaria, eleven-year-old Logan Gyre watches his father, Duke Regnus Gyre, as he prepares to travel to a garrison, called Screaming Winds. Logan asks to go with his father, but Duke Gyre refuses and leaves his son as the Lord of House Gyre. Three months pass, during which time Azoth starts to get followers who also hate Rat. One of his followers steals a metal shiv and gives it to Azoth. One night in an alley Azoth encounters Durzo. Azoth insists on apprenticing with him, even going so far as to threaten Durzo's life. Durzo finally makes Azoth an offer; if he kills Rat in one week without any help and brings proof, Durzo will apprentice him. A travelling mage, Solon Tofusin, arrives at the Gyre estate. He is on a mission from the prophet Dorian to help Lord Gyre. When he finds out Duke Gyre has gone to Screaming Winds, he plans to head there immediately, but his plans are disrupted when he finds out that Logan has also been named Lord Gyre. Logan forces him to spar, and Solon humiliates him. He tells him that Logan's soldiers have been losing to him on purpose, which infuriates Logan. He tells his men to treat him as no more than an equal; he is soon going to join his father at Screaming Winds, and if they truly love him, they should be preparing him for the battles there. He apologizes to Solon, who is impressed with Logan and decides to stay with him, at least for now. Rat, meanwhile, has a secret meeting, where it is revealed that he is actually one of the sons of the Godking, who rules Khalidor, a vicious empire to the north, and that Rat was brought to the city in order to prepare it for invasion. A Vurdmeister, a powerful mage assigned to protect him called Neph Dada, shares with him a plan on how to truly destroy Azoth. Four days pass after Durzo gives Azoth his challenge and Rat is still not dead. Worried that Rat will begin to purge his followers, Azoth stays awake all night, but leaves briefly to urinate. While away, Rat and his men kill one of Azoth's followers and kidnap Doll Girl. In the morning, Azoth runs into Durzo, who grabs him and tells him that he will show Azoth the price of his hesitation. Solon is having dinner with the Gyres. They make small talk and not much else, until Solon offends Logan's mother. She tries to send Solon away, despite Logan's efforts, but Logan reminds her he is now Lord Gyre, and sends her away. Solon is even more impressed with Logan, and becomes less certain that Duke Gyre is the one he must serve. In his indecision, he heads out to a tavern. Rat has beaten Doll Girl almost to death, and given her terrible scars on her face. Durzo plans to leave Azoth, but he insists that he will kill Rat within the week, and pleads with Durzo to save Doll Girl. Despite his protests that life is empty and meaningless, Durzo finally concedes. He finds Solon drinking, poisons him, and takes him to Doll Girl. He tells Solon that he can have the antidote if he heals Doll Girl, which he does. Upstairs in a brothel, Durzo is meeting with Momma K. He tells her that Azoth has him worried; he doesn't think that Azoth has it in him to be a killer. At that very moment, however, Azoth is confronting Rat. Rat takes his shiv and tries to rape Azoth, who kills him and cuts off his ear to take to Durzo. He walks in right after Momma K tells Durzo why he needs Azoth. Durzo initially doesn't accept the ear as proof, so Azoth takes him to the river and shows him the body. Durzo offers him one more chance to get out, to apprentice in a clean trade, but Azoth refuses and goes with Durzo. Azoth begins his training with Durzo, which carries on for several years. Eventually, Azoth is sent to Count Rimbold Drake, an old friend of Durzo, who will give him a new name and life. On his way out with his new identity, a poor noble named Kylar Stern, Durzo see Solon Tofusin standing with the mountainous Logan Gyre. Durzo has Kylar run into Logan then start a fight so Durzo can get away. After being beaten senseless by Logan in front of Count Drake's daughter Serah, his crush, Logan insists upon forgiving Kylar. Durzo sends Kylar into Logan's house and they soon become great friends. A few years later, Durzo enters Kylar into a swordsman tournament sponsored by the local Blademasters. The winner will become the king's new bodyguard. Durzo tells Kylar that the Sa'kagé wants to stretch its arm and remind everyone who is in charge. The catch is no Talented, or magical, contestants. Kylar is confronted by a sister of the Chantry who tells him that his conduit for magic is broken while his glore vyrden, his magical store, is huge. There is nothing to be done. Upon facing the opponents, almost all of them should have given him a much harder challenge, he learns that the Sa'kagé has stacked the racks so Kylar could win. Kylar then faces Logan who Kylar beats easily, while wearing a mask so Logan cannot discover his identity. After the tournament Durzo seeks a way for Kylar to be able to use his talent. A kakari would be the perfect thing. With the rumored silver kakari supposedly close, Kylar is supposed to get into the party to get it. Dorian breaks into his herbalist shop and tells Kylar to "ask Momma K" and that "a square vase will give you hope." Momma K had told him that she had someone who may be able to get him in. When he goes to visit this person, it turns out to be Elene, A.K.A. Doll Girl. She denies him an invitation due to her obligation to her family. Kylar leaves and finds his own way into the party. Once there, he starts a fight with Logan as a distraction and then walks off to sneak up the stairs into the chambers to find the kakari. He gets into the room where it is supposed to be. Even after opening the secret area with the square vase, he finds nothing. The kakari isn't there. Soon after, a ruthless wetboy named Hu kills the entire Gyre family except for Logan and his father. Kylar then realizes that Elene must have the kakari. He went down to her room to find her wielding a weapon, but she inadvertently shows him where the silver kakari is hidden with her eyes. Kylar knocks Elene out, and Durzo arrives. The silver kakari ends up being a fake, however Kylar still ends up with a kakari, the black kakari, which he unknowingly steals from Durzo. The heir to the throne is killed that night. Durzo demands they leave. After they leave the death is blamed on a wetboy. While Kylar is in his room at Count Drakes house, Vi, dressed as a maid, attempts to first seduce him, and then kill him. She hesitates, and Count Drake bursts in. After that Royal guards show up and charge Logan with murder of the heir and take him to prison. The King arranges a marriage between Jenine, his daughter, and Logan to secure the line of succession and an heir in case of his own death. Kylar heads to the castle to kill the king. During the ceremony Durzo, who is working for Roth in order to preserve his daughter, poisons everyone in the King's court. During this time Roth and Neph attack the castle. Khalidorans arrive by sea with vurdmeisters but Kylar slows down the process by burning quite a few. Amidst attack, one of the king's advisors beheads him so that the remaining knights will focus on saving the new king, Logan, who is in his bed chambers preparing to consummate his marriage to Jenine. These knights are trapped and Roth shoots each one down through a spy hole while six Khalidoran archers hide behind the door to the chamber. After they all die Roth and Neph come into the room as the couple kills the Khalidorans. Roth apparently kills Jenine, but Neph secretly preserves her for the godking, who is on his way. Neph then orders Logan be castrated and fed to the howlers. Kylar, as the Night Angel, helps release some prisoners and tells them to rebel. After hearing of Logan's location he heads to the bedchamber. He finds the trapped dead people, and the six dead archers. In the bed chamber, there is nothing but blood and a torn up night gown. He is apparently too late. Kylar then battles with Durzo and finally kills him. As Logan is marched toward the hole, one of the guards kills the other and castrates him, leaving the organs as if they were Logan's and tossing the body into the hole. The guard reveals that he was hired by Jarl and tells Logan he can leave. By the time Logan is free from his magical bonds and able to move, it is too late. Several magicians are about to arrive. As a last resort, Logan takes a knife and jumps into the hole. Kylar encounters Roth, but he is surrounded by Vurdmeisters, who end up capturing Kylar. Roth reveals himself as Rat, who had survived the earlier attempt on his life. Solon arrives outside with Curoch and uses the powerful magical sword to slay a large group of vurdmeisters. Kylar breaks free of his captors' hold and kills everyone, including Roth, but is killed himself. Kylar meets the Wolf in death. He is given the choice of life or full death. He chooses Elene and life, then revives to find himself with Uly and Elene. They had dragged him out of the castle and back to Momma K and Jarl. |
The Last of the Immortals | Andrey Livadny | null | The story begins in the year 3870, with Galact-Captain Ivan Tamantsev of the Confederacy of Suns defending an unarmed convoy from a group of pirate ships. Despite managing to destroy four of the attacking ships, Tamantsev loses his wingman and is himself forced to eject, after his fighter sustains heavy damage. His escape pod is towed by the pirates to their homeworld of Ganio, settled by colonists of Middle Eastern descent. Tamantsev is brought before Faizullah of the Javgeth Clan, the man who ordered the raid on the convoy. He explains to the Captain his options: he can either agree to temporary employment by the Clans as a pilot, until he pays off the destruction of the four fighters and their AI modules (the fighters were unmanned), or Faizullah can let him go with the knowledge that Tamantsev will not survive long on the desert world. While Ivan agrees to fly missions for Faizullah (fully aware that the Ganian intends to go back on his word), he demands to personally inspect his fighter. Upon arriving to the hangar, he sees that it is an ancient Phantom-class aerospace fighter from the days of the First Galactic War with the Earth Alliance. While he shudders at the thought of flying this 1500-year old antique, Ivan knows that this is his best shot of escaping the planet. Faizullah's engineers agree to let him inside the fighter, as they have disabled all of the craft's AI functions. However, they underestimate the Confederate pilot training, and Tamantsev is able to restart the systems in service mode and launch the ship manually. Upon entering orbit, Ivan faces another problem, as the Phantom does not have enough fuel to jump to another system, and the old fighter is no match for the Ganio's orbital defenses. Ivan scans the local hypersphere force lines and determines that one of them is unmarked on all star charts (i.e. it does not lead anywhere). Realizing he has nothing to lose, Tamantsev transitions into hypersphere and uses the last of his fuel to maneuver the ship to intersect with the unmarked force line, remembering that 3 million years ago, none of the known races did not possess hyperdrives (it is an invention unique to humans). Instead, they used stationary portals which used the hypersphere force lines as conduits to rapidly send objects between planets. Ivan's theory turns out to be correct, and his fighter enters one such conduit and rapidly travels to another system far from Ganio. Unfortunately, the conduit throws his ship out into normal space into a planet's low orbit. Lacking fuel, Ivan is unable to slow down his descent and is forced to eject, while the Phantom crashes in the nearby woods. Before ejecting, Ivan notices a city protected by a giant wall not too far from the crash site. After getting out of his escape pod, Tamantsev decides to head towards the city, assuming it to be yet another lost colony, settled during the Great Exodus of the 23rd century. Following standard protocols, Ivan does not remove his spacesuit until he can determine that the air is safe to breathe and there are no harmful microorganisms in the planet's biosphere. However, after several days of walking, he runs out of air and is forced to crack the seal. Ivan finds that the air is safe to breathe but shortly succumbs to a strange ailment, which persists for several hours before going away just as suddenly as it appeared. He finds that he is able to sense living creatures without actually hearing or seeing them. His newfound empathic ability allows him to see any living thing's neural structure, which he uses to kill a local predator with a single shot to the brain (the largest neural mass). Some time later, he witnesses an ambush of a woman by a dozen shapeshifting creatures. He rescues her by using his empathic ability to determine the location of the creatures' brains before shooting them. After recovering, the woman reveals that her name is Flora Shodan, and that she is descended from the settlers who arrived aboard the colony ship Hope (they are aware that their ancestors came from Earth). After Ivan notices that Flora is able to literally turn invisible, she reveals that all of the arrivals underwent genetic mutation to varying degrees upon first breathing the planet's air. The mutations have created four distinct subspecies: Shadows, Metamorphs, Emglans, and Chosen. Flora was born a Shadow and is able to turn her body (not her clothes) invisible, has empathic abilities, and is able to heal by touch. Metamorphs are shapeshifters, capable of assuming any shape, including flawlessly imitating another person. Emglans are telepaths and are able to sense a person's general state of mind from miles away. The Chosen have remained mostly human. All of Doom's (name given to the planet by the colonists) inhabitants have one ability in common: they are immortal. The body of any person over 30 stops aging, so some of those who arrived aboard the Hope are still alive. However, the mutations also affects the birth rate. As such, no child has been born in over 200 years (Flora herself is only 302 and is viewed as a girl by many others). Many of the colonists have gone insane as the result of the changes and have fled to the wilderness. The survivors came across a giant wall built millions of years ago and built their City behind it. The human society consists of five castes called satts (named after the captain of the Hope, Satt Valtorn). The Shadow, Metamorph, Emglan, and Chosen Satts are all exclusively made up of their respective subspecies, while the Warrior Satt is made up of former members of the other satts who have chosen the life of danger and wish to protect the City from the wild metamorphs using antiquated equipment, salvaged from the Hope. After relaying all this information, Flora reveals that Ivan himself has become a Shadow. Ivan asks Flora why she was outside the City, and she replies that she was looking for a pair of invisible assailants, who have attacked a Chosen and stolen his car. The description of the attack leads Ivan to believe that he is not the only outsider on this world. He repairs her damaged vehicle, and they head back to the City, where Ivan is greeted with caution. Flora invites Ivan to be a guest at her house until he is given a place of his own (due to machines doing all menial work in the City, everybody's basic needs are satisfied (food, shelter, clothing, etc.), realizing that she was falling for the young stranger from the stars. The next day, Ivan and Flora head to the monthly Satt Council meeting, where Ivan hopes to convince the satts of the danger of the outside galaxy. However, Ivan's inexperience with his mental abilities causes a panic, and he is forced to wait outside. He overhears an argument between Flora and Derek Kelgan, the head of the Chosen Satt, who refuses to listen to her and the "infant" she brought with her and even threatens to kill her if she starts disturbing the peace. Fed up, Ivan assaults Kelgan and forces him to apologize to Flora. Upon returning to Flora's house, they realize that they have fallen in love and spend the night together. The next morning, Ivan decides to leave the City and join the Warrior Satt to both attempt to protect the colony and keep Flora safe from Kelgan's attempts at revenge. Flora refuses to listen to his reasons, only concerned with him leaving her. Upon arriving to the Boundary (the name given to the ancient wall protecting the city), Ivan is accepted into the Warrior Satt. Meanwhile, Flora calms down and realizes that Ivan was only trying to protect her. She remembers that he was trying to find out more about the colony's past and asks her friend Nicolai Lorgen, a Chosen, to retrieve the information from his satt's archives. In the attempt to please Flora, with whom he has long been enamored, Nick copies the data onto a service droid and sends it to Flora's house. However, he is caught by his father Richard Lorgen, who decides to punish his son and tells Kelgan about it. Kelgan sends droids to assassinate Flora and Ivan. Due to some quick thinking, Flora survives the attempt and uses the maintenance shafts running under the City to get to the Boundary, along with her friends Ryben (a Metamorph) and Nive (an Emglan) and the service droid. Ivan is out on nightly patrol of the Boundary when an assassin droid tries to kill him with a sniper rifle. Unlike the locals, Tamantsev trusts technology more than his senses, and that is what saves him. After destroying the droid, he reunited with Flora and asks Lymel, the head of the Warrior Satt to give him a vehicle for traveling outside the city. After examining the wreckage of the Phantom, Ivan confirms his suspicions that his entire escape from Ganio was orchestrated by someone who wants access to Doom. He reads through the data from the service droid and discovers that Satt Valtorn disappeared after departing on an expedition to a set of alien buildings not too far from the colony. They head to a complex of ancient structures on a plateau, nicknamed the Claw by the colonists. On the way there, Ivan experiences a set of visions, which are actually data implanted in his brain during his service in the Confederate special forces and activated by certain visual cues. He puts the pieces together and realizes that Doom is a site of an ancient bio-lab set up by the Harammins 3 million years ago to develop bio-weapons in their fight against the Insects. The planet Paradise, visited by humans earlier, was a test site for one of their experiments to create shapeshifters (see novel Paradise Lost). The research was abandoned following the isolation of the O'Hara cluster, although it did yield an unexpected side effect — the Harramin Holy Grail, immortality. Now, someone wants to learn the secret of immortality at any cost. Earlier, on Ganio, Gour, the last surviving member of the Harammin Immortal Quota, is watching his plan unfold. He had paid Faizullah to capture a Confederate pilot and orchestrated his entire escape, including the jump using a hypersphere conduit. The jump also activated an ancient Harammin portal on Ganio, long buried under the desert sand. Gour tricks Faizullah into digging out the portal and sending a strike force to eliminate the human inhabitants of Doom before sending out his own forces to kill the survivors, including the Ganians. Meanwhile, Ivan is setting up the defenses along the Boundary, expecting an attack, when Faizullah arrives with his troops and three Hoplite-class serv-machines, capable of reducing the giant wall and the City to rubble in a matter of minutes. Tamantsev contacts Faizullah and makes him realize that he has been betrayed. Faizullah, being a man of honor, agrees to join forces with the defenders and fight off Gour's forces. Ivan takes one of the Hoplites, while Faizullah takes another. They use the drain the batteries of the third one to send a message through hypersphere, calling in the Confederate fleet, knowing full well that the fleet will never get to Doom in time. Ivan asks Flora to go to the City and convince Kelgan to shut down the City's power grid, as the machines sent by Gour will interpret the City's power signatures as hostile targets and open fire on civilians. Flora calls Kelgan and explains the situation, but he refuses to listen, believing Flora and the Warrior Satt to be traitors for letting outsiders into the City. He orders Richard Lorgen to send a squad of droids to strike at the defenders from behind. Nive reveals to Flora that he used to be the Hopes chief engineer and knows the City's power grid inside-out. He goes to shut the grid down manually, while Flora and Ryben return to the Boundary to help the defenders. Unfortunately, Nive is too late, and the three attacking Phalanxer-class serv-machines launch high-yield missiles at key power signatures in the City, killing many civilians, including Kelgan himself. The defenders fight serv-machines and assault droids and, never having to face such enemies before, take heavy losses. The Ganians, true to their word, fight and die with them side-by-side. Despite the odds, Ivan and Faizullah manage to take out most of the enemy serv-machines, although they are heavily wounded and their Hoplites destroyed. Conquering their overwhelming fear of death, the defenders charge the assault droids, dying by the dozens but also taking out a large chunk of the enemy forces. Despite the arrival of Kelgan's droids, the defenders manage to win the day. Flora and Ivan are reunited. The wounded Faizullah understands that he has now become a mutant himself, along with two dozen of his men. Knowing that they can never go home (they would risk spreading the mutating agents to the galaxy), Faizullah decides to stay and declares the creation of the Ganio Satt. Gour, who arrives through the portal several hours later is captured by Ryben, who prevents the Harammin from cracking the seal of his helmet and breathing in Doom's air. |
Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans | Charles R. Johnson | 2,009 | The book's plot centers around the fact that many African indentured servants, once in America, proved to be highly skilled - even more so than many of their European counterparts. The book tells the tale of how these servants went on to buy out their indenture contracts, creating a white backlash which resulted in lengthening those contracts. As tensions between Africans and Europeans grew, this ultimately led in 1676 to the Bacon's Rebellion, which caused slavery to become official law in all the colonies. The book then takes the reader from the end of American slavery, through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement to the nomination of President Barack Obama. The central theme that is woven throughout the narrative is the resilience, creativity and fortitude of African Americans through virtually insurmountable obstacles. |
The Winds of Dune | Brian Herbert | 2,009 | The novel opens with the Lady Jessica back on Arrakis following the disappearance of her son Emperor Paul-Muad'Dib, who according to Fremen custom has walked into the desert to die after he is blinded. The story of the friendship between Paul Atreides and Bronso Vernius is also told. |
Headlong | Simon Ings | 1,999 | Headlong is set England in the mid-21st century. There has been a civil war and reconstruction after a period of corporate excess. Advances in nanoelectronics and robotics have led to the hybridization of human and artificial intelligence (AI). These expensive interfaces have only been installed on a few architects to facilitate their direction of nanobots that are constructing beautiful cities on the Moon. However, a few years before the novel begins, the AIs take over the Moon and precipitate an economic collapse on Earth by subtle market manipulations. The novel's posthuman protagonist Christopher Yale and his wife Joanne have enhanced senses and are telepathically linked. When his interfaces are removed following the economic collapse, he struggles with Epistemic Appetite Imbalance (EAI), a disorder precipitated by the loss of his enhanced senses. Christopher and his wife divorce, and she is killed a few months later. |
Yes Man | Danny Wallace | null | Danny Wallace, a freelance radio producer for the BBC in London, takes three simple words uttered by a stranger on a bus—"Say yes more"—as a challenge and says "yes" to everything for a year. He says "yes" to pamphleteers on the street, the credit card offers stuffing his mailbox and solicitations on the Internet. He attends meetings with a group that believes aliens built the pyramids in Egypt, says "yes" to every invitation to go out on the town and furthers his career by saying "yes" in meetings with executives. |
Horizon | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2,009 | With Fawn's prompting, Dag seeks out a teacher. A powerful groundsetter at local New Moon Cutoff Camp could be the answer to his prayers, but conflicts arise between the insular Lakewalker traditions and Dag's determination to be a healer for farmers. Dag, Fawn, Arkady the groundsetter and others embark on a long journey by wagon. They are joined by several other characters, some Lakewalker, some farmer, including Fawn's brother, Whit, and his wife, Berry. On their way up the Trace, a long wagon road, they encounter a malice, an evil being with great power. A Lakewalker kills the malice with a sharing knife. Fawn guesses that this malice was fleeing something even more powerful. That turns out to be a second malice. That malice is killed by Whit, aided by Fawn and Berry, which is unprecedented—no farmer has ever killed a malice without Lakewalker aid before. At the end of the book, Dag and Fawn's vision of closer cooperation and understanding between Lakewalkers and farmers, as partners, is beginning to be achieved. |
March Upcountry | John Ringo | null | Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock is summoned before his mother, the Empress of Man, and his older half-brother Prince John, the heir-apparent, and is ordered to attend a flag-showing ceremony on the planet Leviathan, one of the Empire's more distant and backward member-worlds. Roger protests, but eventually accepts the assignment and stalks out of the room. Roger boards the assault transport Charles DeGlopper with Eleanora O'Casey and Kostas Matsugae where they are greeted by its skipper, Captain Vil Krasnitsky, who welcomes them aboard graciously but is put off by Roger's apathy, requiring O'Casey to repeatedly apologize and excuse Roger's juvenile behavior throughout the voyage. Shortly after the ship enters "Tunnel Space", Sergeant-Major Eva Kosutic goes out to check the status of the troops guarding the prince and discovers a sentry shot dead just outside engineering. She alerts Pahner to the security breach and proceeds to hunt down the suspected saboteur. She discovers that the saboteur has planted shaped charges on the ship's main plasma conduits. Pahner orders Captain Krasnitsky to shut down the conduits but Krasnitsky says that shutting down now could destroy the ship. Kosutic catches up with the saboteur who turns out to be the ship's logistics officer, Ensign Guha, and manages to shoot her in the neck and run for the exit just before the dead man's switch detonates the charges. Roger, who was forced into a spacesuit and then sat on by two marines (for his own safety), is eventually released and briefed on the attack. Ensign Guha had apparently been a toot-zombie and aside from planting explosives, she also planted computer viruses that crippled every major system. Pahner says their only option is to effect repairs and head for the nearest habitable star system which happens to be Marduk. Though the planet is nominally an Imperial world, it has only minimal landing facilities that are insufficient to repair the damage to DeGlopper. Also, the region is notorious for drug smuggling, piracy and "Saint" activity, all of which raises the risk to the DeGlopper and the prince. Upon entry into Marduk's star system, the DeGlopper detects the presence of an unidentified warship already in the system, indicating that Marduk is under hostile control. Being too deep inside the system's tunnel wall the DeGlopper is left no choice but to fight. Additionally, the enemy cruiser is not equipped with a tunnel drive which means it must have been dropped off by a carrier, which is much more heavily armed and which might still be in-system. The senior officers of the DeGlopper therefore plan for the impending attack against the enemy cruiser and Bronze Battalion is tasked with taking the space port on the planet. However, they soon detect a second ship and both are assumed to be Saint cruisers. The DeGlopper, so heavily damaged, has no chance of destroying both ships, and with a member of the royal family aboard, surrender is not an option. The battle plan, therefore, changes: The DeGlopper will engage the cruisers and attempt to destroy both by any means, while the shuttles carrying Prince Roger and his body guards will have to be launched from a much greater distance, then land on the far side of the planet and make their way on foot and then over sea to the space port, capture it and then capture a tunnel-drive starship. O'Casey briefs the company commanders and Roger on what to expect on Marduk though the information she has is very limited. Marduk is an incredibly hot and humid world with unfriendly wildlife and inhabitants. The Mardukans are at a pre-steam level of technology and some of the more advanced cultures have discovered gunpowder and are organized in city-states, small empires or in a state of barbarism. Pahner points out that they can eat the local foods but that they'll still need to carry dietary supplements for materials that simply don't exist in Mardukan biochemistry. He adds that crossing the planet on foot will take months. After loading the shuttles to capacity with all the necessary materials and fuel, the company awaits the battle in the shuttles. DeGlopper engages the first Saint cruiser and wins but, as expected, sustains heavy damage. The shuttles are launched and DeGlopper heads towards the second Saint cruiser. After engaging the second ship, DeGlopper is crippled and the Saint cruiser closes with it in order to board her. Eleonora O'Casey suddenly realizes that she forgot something extremely important on board - her copy of Encyclopedia Galactica. She requests a link to the ship to download the information knowing that the Saint could pick up the transmission. The Saint ship does detect the transmission but not soon enough, as DeGlopper self-destructs, taking the Saint cruiser with it. Aboard the shuttles, O'Casey gloomily reports that she only got a fraction of the data she needed. Kosutic however, isn't worried; the marines come from so many worlds with so many diverse backgrounds that they'll probably find someone there who knows something about primitive technologies such as those used by the Mardukans. As they approach the planet, the sensors pickup the presence of the Saint carrier that probably brought the cruisers into the system. Though undetected, the shuttles are forced to alter course and land even farther from the port than planned, with very little fuel for such a course correction. In the end they settle on what looks like salt-flats and barely manage a "dead stick" landing. After unloading their equipment, Bravo Company sets out in the sweltering heat on their long journey. After six hours on the salt flats, Bravo Company reaches the jungle and Roger notices strop marks on some of the trees indicating the territorial markings of a very large animal. The animal in question is soon spotted by the company - an elephant sized beast with horns and an armor ruff protecting its neck with a closer examination revealing a herbivore. Pahner orders everyone to check fire but Roger does not hear the command and guns it down. Pahner is furious and privately chastises Roger, without giving him a chance to explain his reasons for shooting the beast. Minutes later, a Mardukan native suddenly emerges from the treeline. After O'Casey works out a translation "kernel" she manages to figure out the native's purpose. He is D'Nall Cord, a shaman of the X'Intai people and he asks who killed the flar beast. When told it is Roger he tells him that they are brothers for life. When Roger tries to decline the honor Cord says he isn't all that happy about the situation either but that the laws of people demand it. Pahner is also unhappy about the situation, but thinks it might have some advantages, such as Cord being able to introduce them peacefully to his tribe and his knowledge of the area. As the company follows Cord to his village he urges them to hurry before nightfall as the yaden come out then. When asked what the yaden are, his response actually translates as "vampire". While inclined to dismiss this as superstition, Cord's description of the yaden is too specific for Roger and Pahner's peace of mind. When night comes and the company is forced to make camp in the "Valley of the Vampires", Pahner sets up the tightest perimeter he can. Sadly, this proves inadequate as one of the troops is found dead in the middle of the night with double-puncture marks over his body and drained of all his blood. The following day, another soldier is attacked by an arboreal worm-like creature that literally melts her to death. Cord identifies the creature as a yaden-cuol (christened a killer-pillar) and tells them to start paying more attention to the jungle if they wish to survive. The company finally arrives at Cord's village, where they are greeted by the tribal chief D'net Delkra, Cord's brother. Cord tells his brother of his asi bond with Roger and Delkra, while saddened at this news, orders the binding ceremony conducted and a feast to be held for Roger and his "clan". While in the village, Cord and Delkra consult with Roger, Pahner and O'Casey on a serious problem facing the tribe from the neighboring city-state of Q'Nkok. The city and the X'Intai have a treaty whereby the city dwellers are permitted to cut only certain trees in a specific area of the tribe's territory in return for certain goods like iron spearheads. In recent months the woodcutters have been cutting deeper into the jungle than permitted while the goods being paid in return have been of poor quality. As a result, Cord's nephew and protégé Deltan died when his spearhead shattered while attacked by an animal. To attack the woodcutters would mean war with the city while allowing further violations would condemn the tribe to a slow death by starvation as the jungle is depleted of trees and game. The tribe could launch a surprise attack on Q'Nkok and feast on their food stores, but such an attack would leave them seriously weakened and their rival tribes would destroy them. Pahner asks that they delay attacking Q'Nkok until after the company has gone there so that they can resupply and assess the situation there. Accompanied by Cord and several of his nephews, the company proceeds to Q'Nkok, where the tribesmen are not greeted well by the city dwellers (though a demonstration of the plasma rifle manages to stop the situation from devolving). They are brought before the King Xiya Kan and state their need for supplies in exchange for hi-tech tools while Cord notifies the king of Deltan's death and the continued treaty violations. The company arranges to eavesdrop on the king's council and hear him attack them for their continued misconduct. Believing that the king isn't involved in the plot, the company bugs all the great houses to discover who is. Meanwhile, the company roams the city and Kosutic stops by an arms merchant called T'Leen Targ and purchases a sword for the prince and hears from him the story of the destruction of Voitan and its sister cities by the barbarian Kranolta tribes. She tells this story to the company and points out that they need to cross their territory to get to the seacoast. After listening in on the great houses, the marines discover that three of the great houses are conspiring to topple the king by provoking Cord's tribe into attacking the city, so as to weaken the king's guard. Then a group of Kranolta mercenaries they have employed will be brought into the city to finish off the guard and sack the competing great houses and independent merchants. The king is astounded and infuriated by this, but is skeptical and asks how they discovered this. The marines are forced to tell him about there technological surveillance abilities which deeply impress the king. Pahner and O'Casey offer Bravo Company's services in breaking this conspiracy in return for a portion of the fines and seizures as funding for their mission. Roger however, points out that the plotters didn't invent the woodcutting crisis, but merely capitalized upon it and offers a possible solution: mining coal in the valley on the other side of the X'Intai territory. The king knows of the valley but fears that no one will want to go there because of the yaden. Roger then, very coldly, suggests that he send the plotters there. While the king is impressed by the elegance of the suggestion, Pahner is appalled and privately chastises him, telling him that he can't always go for a "bigger hammer". The marines and the king's guards assault the Great Houses' homes, while Roger, Pahner and several marines, take out the nobles' guards at a state dinner, allowing the king's guards to arrest them. The king then introduces the marines to D'Len Pah, the leader of a tribe of professional caravan drivers who own several pack animals called flar-ta. D'Len is impressed by the humans capabilities and agrees to join them, believing that they have the best chance of reopening the trade routs to Voitan. With their equipment and supplies loaded onto the pack beasts, Roger, Cord, his nephews Denat, Tratan and Cranla and the marines set forth into Kranolta territory. Marduk continues to take its toll on the company and its equipment as they journey towards Voitan. Sergeant Cobedra is mauled to death by a large six-legged creature called an atul (damnbeast). Julian's better-than-average hearing saves him from getting killed by group of yaden (vampire-moths). Bands of Kranolta hunters ambush the company repeatedly, and a malfunction in one of the plasma rifles - a result of poor quality control of its power pack and the damaging effect of Marduk's climate on the safety mechanisms - blows up an entire squad in a small nuclear explosion. After jury-rigging a tester and scanning all the power packs they find many are defective and Pahner orders all but a couple of the packs discarded and that all the plasma rifles be sealed in bags and not used (seriously reducing the company's firepower). They are forced to travel two days through an enormous swamp, face the enormous atul-grak (bigbeast) and cross a river infested in Mardukan crocodiles (damncrocs). The experience causes Roger to start growing up and to get to know his troops better and appreciate the sacrifices they are willing make for him. Meanwhile, the Kranolta assemble all of their tribes and decide to attack the human invaders. Their vanguard strikes the company just short of the ruins of Voitan and the company is forced to abandon several people trying to get to walls of the city. When they get there however, Pahner notices that Roger is missing and nearly explodes when he discovers that he lagged behind trying to help evacuate an injured marine. Roger soon finds himself facing several dozen Kranolta in one-on-one ritual combat and manages to kill every opponent. Pahner in the meantime orders the powered armor to be used to extract Roger, only to find that all but four of the suits aren't operational. When the armored marines do arrive, Roger calls out to the leader demanding safe passage in to the city and orders a demonstration of the plasma cannon. The leader consents but promises to return to finish them off. When Roger arrives in the city, Pahner explodes on him, telling him that he must survive at all costs, even if that means that none of the marines survive, because his family is the only thing holding the empire together these days and that he needs to understand his place in the company. Pahner also tells him that he takes no joy in abandoning his people to die but that he must do this if it means succeeding in the mission to protect him. Roger finally realizes that the fault lays with him and that Pahner is right. Pahner then asks Roger to take command of Third Platoon (filling in for its dead CO) and to familiarize himself with the defenses they are preparing for the expected attack. Come dawn the next day, the Kranolta approach the Citadel that the humans' have dug-in to in numbers far exceeding Pahner's estimate (18,000 instead of 5,000). The battle is fierce and lasts hours, with the Kranolta attempting to scale the walls and break open the gate, regardless of their casualties, while the marines and Roger rain plasma cannon fire, grenades and bead volleys at them. During the battle Roger and Cord are lightly wounded while the marines suffer serious casualties. Despite their incredible losses, the Kranolta are undeterred and continue to assault the Citadel. Suddenly, a new force emerges from the jungle and marines fear they are reinforcements for the Kranolta. However, the new forces raise the banners of fallen Voitan and of T'an K'tass and assault the Kranolta's remaining forces from the rear and pin them between them and the marines, leaving very few survivors. Pahner then negotiates a ceasefire, to allow the Kranolta to bury their dead and the marines to depart Voitan unmolested. The company stays in Voitan for three weeks to allow it to recover. O'Casey busies herself with assisting T'Kal Vlan, the last ruler of T'an K'tass, and T'Leen Targ whom the company met earlier at Q'Nkok, while Dobrescu makes a few discoveries. He tells the Voitanese that the secret of their famous "water steel" (Damascene steel) is a combination of the unique ore composition found in mines there and the techniques they used and predicts that they should be able to produce the best weapons-grade steel they have yet. He also discovers that the Mardukans' genders are reversed; the males are actually ovipositors while the females produce the sperm and carry the fetuses. However, it is merely a technical definition (which explains the problems with the translators) and Pahner decides that the marines should continue to refer to the "females" as males. The Marines also use the time to bury their dead in the city's catacombs (a sign of high honor from the Voitanese), to collect good weapons and train with them. The reduced company departs from Voitan and continues to march until they reach the Hadur region to a city called Marshad. They are soon intercepted by a tinker of some sort who also urges them to go to Marshad and acts as a sort of guide for the area. They arrive at the king's palace just in time to see him behead a hapless peasant and the Company is ordered to dress ranks to deter any idea of attack. Prince Roger addresses the king, presents his credentials and declares that Voitan has been restored. The king states that he has heard of their exploits, that a place has been prepared for them and that a feast shall be held in their honor. Though the locals seem friendly enough, Pahner, Roger, Kosutic, O'Casey and Cord all agree that King Radj is not to be trusted and need to consider the possibility that Radj will attempt to assassinate Roger or some of the marines. At the lavish dinner, the humans eat very little due to the presence of a foul-tasting herb. O'Casey keeps herself busy by conversing with Jedal Vel, the Pasulian envoy. Afterwards, the king asks Roger if his puissant warriors could kill all of his guards in the room. Roger says that they probably could and the king glances at his guard captain who promptly kills the Pasulian envoy sitting next to O'Casey. Roger remains unfazed by this, and with his usual speed pulls out a bead pistol and shoots the guard in question dead and immediately trains the weapon on the king himself. The king however never intended to kill them but to "motivate" to do his bidding which is to conquer Pasule for him. The humans at the dinner are then separated from the rest of their party. As the rest of the company settles in for the duration, Poertena and Cord's nephews continue their card games. However, a Mardukan female in the room hums a song that is actually a message regarding the prince and a way to save him. Poertena realizes that this is an intelligence contact and discreetly transfers the request for a meet to his commanders. Lt. Jasco, Kosutic, Julian, Poertena and Denat meet in the kitchen as requested and are soon startled when a wall behind the lieutenant opens up to reveal the female and Kheder Bijan. Kheder tells the humans that had they failed to follow him to Marshad, King Radj would've have sent his entire army to destroy them since they are his ticket to control of the Hadur region and that He will use them until they are all dead. Kosutic asks what the plan is and Kheder says that there are factions in Marshad in league with Pasule who desire a change in regime in Marshad. All the marines need to do is to turn upon the army of Marshad with their "lightning weapons" on the day of the battle. The female, Sena, is to be their conduit to Kheder. The troops consider the plan and decide to go along with it with some changes that anger Kheder but which he has no choice but to agree to. Denat is then sent out with Sena with a bomb that he is tasked to attach to the bridge the night before the attack. They arrive at her house, where Denat is introduced to her family. He explains his mission to them and they help with the details of the plan. They are then resolved to wait until the attack and share what little food they have with their guest, her father stating that "the House of T'Leen is not so fallen as to be unable to provide hospitality!". Upon hearing his name, Denat mentions that he knows a T'Leen Targ and Sena's father says he is his cousin T'Leen Sul. Happy to impart good news, Denat tells him about Targ and his role in recapturing Voitan and how the city is restored. Sul is overjoyed to hear this and resolves to return to Voitan with his wife. As Pahner, Roger and O'Casey finish their plans and turn in for the night, a casual remark by O'Casey about his father draws Roger's attention. He is surprised to hear that O'Casey is fully briefed on the story and he surprises her in turn, by saying he was never told the reasons for his father's expulsion from Court. O'Casey then tells him the story, how his Grandfather was an ineffectual emperor whose policies had weakened the empire's military and destabilized it politically, how his mother had fallen in love with the Earl of New Madrid and how she discovered his connections to certain treasonous factions and had him repudiated and how she chose not to abort Roger. Roger realizes that his strained relationship with his mother is the result of his similarity, both in appearance and behavior to his hated father and that no one told him this story, because they assumed that he already knew. Worse, they assumed that his behavior was a sign that he was siding with his father and not his mother. Roger is infuriated by his mother's distrust, and orders O'Casey and the marines out of the room, which he then proceeds to demolish with his sword. O'Casey then turns to Pahner to explain what happen and that they need to talk, while the marines fear that Roger has become treasonous. Roger finally emerges from his funk the next day to ask about the status of the company. He points out to Pahner that given their losses in life and ammunition to date, they are likely to run out of both before reaching the coast and suggests taking on Mardukan guards be it by loyalty oaths or cash. Pahner is forced to agree but is uncomfortable with the idea of hiring mercenaries. Meanwhile, Denat slips out of the city unnoticed and heads to the river, where he places the bomb under the bridge. Radj's new guard captain meets with Roger and demands that he draft orders to his troops to follow the guard captain's commands until they are reunited. After the exchange of threats, Roger complies. On the morning of the battle, Roger speaks over the radio to the marines, explaining why he'd been so angry at his mother and the reasons that they found themselves on Marduk, stating that he still loves her both as a mother and as an empress and pledging to get all of them back home to Earth and to discuss the matter with his mother. The marines, encouraged by this, set off to the battle field while Roger, Pahner and the rest of the guards are ordered to join Radj in viewing the battle from the palace balcony. As arranged, the plasma cannon team carries the weapon into range and fires it at the Pasulian guards on the other side, who jump at first sight of the weapon. Once the bridge is clear, the rest of the marines and the Marshadan army cross to the Pasulian side and begin the assault on the city while the plasma cannon is hauled to the top of a hill (followed by a group of soldiers Radj has sent to keep an eye on them). Soon after, the smaller Pasulian army is spotted coming out of the city. Just as the two forces are about to meet, the marines spring their trap. The plasma cannon is turned upon the Marshadan army while the forces guarding the marines manning the cannon are blown apart by directional mines and the bridge explodes, cutting off their line of retreat. Pahner takes the king down while Roger and his bodyguards quickly dispatch with the king's guards and use their bodies to block the door until their reinforcements in the barracks get there. Three days after the battle, Roger meets with Kheder Bijan, who is the new king of Marshad and inquires as to the delay in giving them the supplies and shields that were promised. Kheder refuses to give them what he promised and confidently tells Roger that he and his marines aren't going anywhere and threatens to withhold the antidote to the poison they consumed on their first night there if Roger fails to show him respect. Roger however, tells Kheder that he and the marines aren't from anywhere on his planet and therefore not vulnerable to the same poisons Mardukans are. When Kheder attempts to "renegotiate", Roger shoots him and orders T'Leen Sul to be brought in to replace him. With O'Casey's assistance T'Leen establishes a more rational regime, rearranging Marshad's resources and redistributing the land and dedicating more of it to food production rather than dianda. Soon after, numerous diplomatic delegations from the surrounding city-states arrive at Marshad to meet with the humans both to thank them for removing Radj Hoomas and to promise safe passage through their territory. As Roger conducts the various diplomatic handshakes, Pahner notes to O'Casey in private how much he's grown and thinks to himself that Bravo Company's loyalties are to the no-longer useless Prince. As the marines organize for departure, Kosutic notifies Roger and Pahner that they've pick up a fragment of a radio transmission: someone has spotted the shuttles. Pahner decides that Roger and O'Casey may have been right about telling their friends along the way the truth so as to cover their back trail. Roger then mounts the flar-ta Patty with a recovering Cord at his back and gives to order to continue the march towards the mountains. |
Girl Meets Boy | Ali Smith | 2,007 | A modern-day reinterpretation of the Ovid's myth of Iphis, it concerns two sisters, Anthea and Imogen (Midge) living in Inverness. Imogen works in the marketing department of a large company producing bottled water, Anthea is on work experience in the same department but then falls in love with Robin, a female eco-warrior. It also vividly portrays her sister Imogen and her joyful emergence from low self esteem. The text has one of the most remarkable sex scenes in modern fiction that includes no reference to body parts whatsoever. |
Crocodile Tears | Anthony Horowitz | null | A nuclear technician in India plants a bomb on a pump in a nuclear power station in Jowada but is killed by the blast as hifrh paymasters didn't want to leave any witnesses. (which would later be revealed who). A cloud of nuclear steam slowly travels towards Jowada, and a charity called First Aid quickly reacts to the disaster. Meanwhile Alex Rider is spending New Year's with Sabina Pleasure and her family in Scotland. He goes to a New Year's Eve party hosted by the rich black businessman Desmond McCain, founder of the fictitious charity First Aid. As Alex, Sabina, and her father drive home, a sniper shoots the tire of their car, causing them to lose control and crash into a loch. Alex, Sabina, and her father barely escape from the vehicle. Their escape is helped by an Indian man who is unidentified and unknown to them at the time. Alex is later approached by a journalist named Harry Bulman who wants to publicise Alex's MI6 activities. Alex is forced to cooperate with MI6 on one last mission if they want Bulman to get out of his life. He is tasked with finding more information about a genetically modified foods research facility named Greenfields. He enters the facility while on a school trip and plugs in a USB drive to copy the contents of director Leonard Straik's computer. Straik (who is accompanied by McCain) discovers that the computer has been compromised and orders a massive manhunt to find the person responsible. Alex barely escapes the facility alive. McCain recognizes Alex, however, and contacts Bulman to learn more about him. After Bulman discloses all that he knows, McCain murders him to keep him silent. McCain kidnaps Alex and flies him into Kenya. McCain reveals that he created his charity, First Aid, to steal money from the general public, responding to disasters that he creates himself. Preparing his charity for these engineered disasters, First Aid arrives on the scene first and collects a large sum of money. McCain also explains that he asked Greenfields to engineer a poison called ricin for crops that would kill half the population of Africa. McCain says he will make hundreds of millions of pounds during the first few months of the plague and intends to steal the money before running away and assuming a new identity in South America (Switzerland in the American version). The Wheat would start producing the poison when given the biological trigger of a mold Alex found at Greenfields. McCain takes Alex to a nearby river and makes him hang from a pole above a river infested with hungry crocodiles, as they try to eat him. He is saved by the same Indian from the loch, and escapes into the forest. The Indian reveals his name as Rahim and states that he works for the Indian Secret Service which sent him to kill McCain. While Rahim tries to find a ride out of Africa, Alex makes a journey to the dam that is holding the water from the valley, all the while being pursued by McCain's men. Alex blows up the dam with a bomb, killing everybody except himself. He is rescued by Rahim in a plane. All the crops that were carrying the poison were destroyed in the flood. They touch down at a nearby airport to refuel, but McCain arrives and shoots Rahim, killing him. Alex jumps out of the plane, but injures his ankle in the process. Just when Alex is about to be killed, he rolls a barrel of fuel over to McCain and blows it up with an explosive gel pen Smithers gave him. Alex watches as McCain burns to death in a pillar of flame. A few weeks later Alex is back in London healing from his wounds. Jack comes in and sits with him, reminding him that his fifteenth birthday is coming soon. She also assures him that this was his last mission and that MI6 will leave him alone. Alex briefly smiles and rests for the day. |
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God | Francis Chan | 2,008 | Crazy Love deals with the idea of the average Christian's love of God and learning how to further develop those feelings into a "crazy, relentless, all-powerful love." |
Notes From the Midnight Driver | Jordan Sonnenblick | 2,006 | Alex Gregory is a 16-year-old boy. One night while his mom was on a date because his dad ran off with his third-grade teacher, he decided to get wasted and he took his mom's car to pay his father a visit. The next thing he knows is that he hit a $375 lawn gnome and puked on a police officer. To pay back the $375, plus an extra $125 for his mom's car, Alex has to do 100 hours of community service at a nursing home. He is assigned to an elderly man who has the ability to make a volunteer worker run home in tears. Alex is frustrated by Sol, but the judge will not change her assignment. Alex's best friend Laurie is a beautiful martial arts master. After meeting her, Sol thinks Alex should have sex with her. He constantly teases Alex by calling Laurie his wife several times throughout the book. Sol's comments about Laurie makes Alex realize his feelings for her. One day, Alex decides to play his guitar for Sol and they start to bond; everything is going great between them. Sol even teaches him some valuable lessons, for he was once a successful guitar player. Alex has benefit concerts with Steven and Annette (from Sonnenblick's first book Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie) to give the residents something to look forward to in their boring lives. When Alex attends his school dance, Sol is rushed to the hospital, and Alex goes to see him. Sol ends up dying in the hospital, but not before he gives Alex a vintage guitar of his. Toward the end of the book, it is learned that the judge is Sol's "big shot lawyer daughter." Alex's parents also end up getting back together. The book is rated a good read and should be a New York Times Best Seller. |
Deadly, Unna? | Phillip Gwynne | null | As the novel opens, Blacky is worried about the imminent grand final and the responsibility he carries as the team’s new first ruck. His opponent will be the unstoppable ‘Thumper’. To protect himself, Blacky has devised the ‘Thumper tackle’ which is the ultimate defence of the coward: it looks like he is trying to tackle his opponent but is really an elaborate dodge. During the teams after-party however, the coaches son is given the honour of the Best On Ground award, which he believes should have been bestowed upon Dumby Red, the star player of the team. Soon after the news reports that Dumby and his two brothers have been shot dead while robbing a Public Bar, resulting in the breakdown of Blacky's emotional life. Blacky spends much of that winter dodging responsibility in a similar manner. By the end of the following summer, however, he understands the importance of making a stand and is able to do so. His brothers and sisters join him in his stand and the novel ends with Blacky at peace with himself, happy in his relationship with his siblings, and confident that he will be able to deal with the problems that will come with the morning. |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.