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The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat | null | null | The safe of a theatre is stolen. The main suspect is the Pantomime cat. Or would it be his friend Zoe? The five find-outers along with the dog are on the track. PC Pippin, who is in charge of Mr Goon's duty helps the Find-Outers solve the case. |
The Mystery of the Missing Man | null | null | The thirteenth book in the series introduces Mr Tolling, an old school friend of Fatty's father who comes to spend a week with the Trottevilles so he can attend the coleopterists' conference at a fair in Peterswood. Coleopterists are of course beetle-lovers, and not (as the gang joke) owners of collie dogs, growers of cauliflowers, or sufferers from colly-wobbles. Mr Tolling is rather like a beetle himself, a small man with a huge black beard, large glasses and always wearing a dark suit. He's very likeable, even if he is a little boring, always going on about beetles and how fascinating they are. He's extremely eager to get along to the coleopterist meetings, which are being held at Petersood's Town Hall. But Mr Tolling—or Mr Belling as Fatty mistakenly calls him at first—pales into insignificance compared to his daughter Eunice, who has come along to stay with the Trottevilles as well. Fatty is supposed to entertain her during her stay, and she's ready and willing to join in with whatever Fatty and his friends are doing, but she's domineering, and her highly efficient, extremely helpful attitude for some reason rubs Fatty and the others up the wrong way. In short, she's "simply awful." When Fatty mistakenly called her father Mr Belling (because bells toll), she responds by suggesting she call him Frederick Canterville instead. Throughout the book she is smart and witty, but Fatty doesn't want her overbearing company and politely escapes wherever possible. The mystery starts when Fatty dresses up as a tramp in an effort to shake off Eunice. He puts on his disguise and then hides out in his shed—and Eunice peers in through the window and screams at the sight of "an intruder in Fatty's shed!". Mr Goon is nearby and comes to the rescue, demanding that the tramp show himself, so poor Fatty bursts out of the shed and takes off with Buster, who is barking excitedly around his feet. Naturally Mr Goon makes out afterwards that the tramp was strong, very strong, and Buster must have taken large chunks out of the tramp's ankles as he tried to escape. Chief Inspector Jenks (more on his apparent demotion in a moment) visits Goon and tells him to be on the lookout for a dangerous escaped criminal, who has a nasty scar above his lip but is a master of disguise so can hide it pretty well with a beard. There's a moment that made me laugh out loud, when an astonished Mr Goon realizes the tramp might be the man they're after. "I saw this man yesterday!" he said excitedly, and actually poked the Chief in the chest. I don't know why, but the vision of Goon's excited expression and his poking the stern Chief in the chest struck me as hilarious. It wouldn't have been so funny if Blyton hadn't used the word "actually" to get across that people like Goon do NOT poke Chief Inspectors in the chest. Speaking of which...Jenks was promoted two books ago, and was Superintendent throughout The Mystery of Holly Lane and The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage. Now he's back down to Chief Inspector, and I've already checked and confirmed that in the next book, The Mystery of the Strange Bundle, he's back up to Superintendent again. So why this sudden lapse? I can think of only two reasons: either Enid Blyton made a huge gaff and forgot Jenks was a Superintendent, OR she wrote this earlier than we think but it got put aside for a few years. If you go by Jenks' rank alone, this book had to have been written sometime after Invisible Thief (the last book he was a mere Inspector) and before Holly Lane (when he's a Superintendent). Or, as I say, Blyton just messed up. The mystery in this book is: Where is the criminal? Is he in disguise, and if so, who is he? Sadly I guessed who the missing man was disguised as very early on, and the evidence was in Blyton's avoidance in mentioning a certain someone as a possible suspect. The Find-Outers went around the fair looking for someone of medium height with knobbly hands, a scar above their lip, and a love of cats and insects. Curiously they latch on to a brother and sister, the Fangios, who actually look like the criminal, are of the same height and build, have a cat, and run a flea circus. The Fangios, however, clearly have no scars...but without giving the ending away to those who haven't read the book, it seemed pretty obvious to me who the criminal was and the ending was, therefore, a case of the reader grumbling, "Yes, I already knew that!" Okay, so I'm not exactly the right age for the intended audience, but I remember guessing this one when I read it at age seven or eight. The clues in this book are actually pretty good, suitably puzzling, but somehow Blyton failed to conceal the twist. I can now appreciate just how good Burnt Cottage, Disappearing Cat, and Invisible Thief are for delivering that startling resolution at the end. And unlike those earlier stories, in Missing Man Fatty doesn't even get that "final clue" or "innocent comment by Bets" to provide that final flash of inspiration. Here his flash of inspiration comes along right at the opportune time, but for apparently no reason. |
The Mystery of the Vanished Prince | null | null | The book starts off when Larry, Daisy, Fatty, Pip and Bets are having fun with new disguises that Fatty brought back from Morocco. While all the Find-Outers, except for Fatty are dressed up, Ern and his two brothers, Sid and Perce, come to visit the Find-Outers. He is shocked when he sees four foreign-looking people with Fatty. Fatty tells the three brothers that they are visiting and are related to/friends of Prince Bongahwah, a Prince who is staying at the same camp as Sid, Perce and Ern for the summer, and that Bets is Princess Bongawee. The "foreigners" speak broken English and their own whimsical made-up "language" (especially Bets). Mr Goon, the village bobby (otherwise known as 'Clear Orf') happens to see all of them when they go for a walk (Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets still in disguise) and believes the same story Fatty has told to Sid, Pece and Ern about the four 'foreigners'. Later in the Story, Prince Bongahwah is kidnapped and Goon tells Inspector Jenks that he has met relatives of Prince Bongahwah to help with the case, in Particular the prince's sister, 'Princess Bongawee' (Bets in disguise) but finds out he has been fooled by Fatty. Fatty gets into trouble; however, he is still allowed to look into the case. Soon Sid has an unusual discovery - as he is mad (or 'dippy' according to Ern) about babies, he pushes a pram with twins in it and finds the bottom of it false, below it a person with a dark face which Sid is very sure is the Prince. After finding a button in the Prince's sleeping bag, a few interviews and some false trails, the gang find themselves at another dead end. After a few bits of luck, they find a baby show for twins at a fair, hoping to track down the twins in question. They also bump into Mr Goon who is also at the fair for the same reason. Him and the gang look at the all the twins in the show (Mr Goon however making all the babies cry) but couldn't find the right twins. After their disappointment, Fatty manages to bribe one of the fair people to wind up Mr Goon and manage to get him on an animal roundabout where he gets spun round and round, dizzy in front of the watching (and laughing) crowd. On the bicycle ride home Pip sees a shirt hanging to dry on a washing line of one of the parked caravans with buttons identical to the one they found in the Prince's sleeping bag. They piece up that the people living in that caravan would know the whereabouts of the Prince and Fatty (disguised as a peddler called Jack Smith) goes there later to find out that one of the people living in the caravan pretended to be the Prince; in the first place and they switched him and the real prince before camp started so he was impersonating the prince the whole time through summer and sneaked out the night before it was reported that the Prince had been 'kidnapped' while the Prince had been gone the whole time taken hostage by the boys uncle. He also finds out where the real prince is and decides to go off to the place the next day. Fatty soon goes home, bumping into Mr Goon who suspects that Fatty (still in disguise) is a tramp with a stolen bike. He runs off, leaving his bike with Mr Goon who reports it. Fatty gets it back after calling Mr Goon who exaggerates the truth and leaves Goon giving the Princes whereabouts which Goon doesn't believe until he hears a report from the nearby police station confirming that Fatty's information wasn't made up. Hearing this, Mr Goon decides to go rescue the Prince before Fatty and the others do and is reported the next day that he disappeared. Fatty hears the news from Inspector Jenks and decides to go find him along with the gang and Ern (as Perce has to go get rope for the tent and Sid switches from buying toffee to buying nougat). They soon get locked up in a room beyond the marshes and is therefore trapped but sees a room with barred windows at the other side of the building. Fatty uses his 'how to get out of a locked room' trick and slips out to the other room and finds the real Prince inside and drags him back to the room with the other five. The men soon find out that the Prince has supposedly escaped and think that the find-outers helped him so they do a search of the room, finding the prince in a cupboard. Straight after the Prince is found, a squad of police officers surround the building, including Inspector Jenks who arrests the men and rescues the Find-outers, Ern and the Prince who tries and tells his story. When they think that the whole mystery is closed they realise that Goon is still missing and didn't see him in the building. An officer comes up to them and says there has been weird noises coming from a shed not far off the building. Goon comes out of the building mad at the fact that he was locked up and beaten again by the gang. Fatty however sticks up for him and it's a rare moment when Goon thinks that Fatty isn't so bad after all. |
Hush Little Baby | Caroline B. Cooney | 1,999 | Kit is a high school student living with her mother and her stepfather. As she retrieves her sweatshirt from her father's house, she is approached by her disheveled ex-stepmother, Dusty Innes. Kit is stunned when Dusty hands Kit a newborn baby and a diaper bag before driving away, not even bothering to tell Kit his name. To the best of her ability, Kit tries to care for the baby, who she names Sam. After putting Sam down the doorbell rings. She opens the door, only to find a shabby looking man standing before her, looking for Dusty. Kit denies any knowledge of Dusty's baby and claims that she hasn't seen Dusty in a while, since she is no longer her stepmother. Kit shuts the door but suspects that the man is trying to look into the windows. Feeling threatened, she grabs one of her dad's disposable cameras and takes a picture of his license plate. Finding nothing, the man leaves. Kit has decided to bring Sam back to her mother's house when Rowen Mason, Kit's potential boyfriend, arrives in tow with his 9 year old sister, Muffin. Kit then receives a call from a lady called Cynthia, who explains the whole situation. Apparently, Cinda and her husband, Burt, were supposed to adopt Dusty's baby, and that the man who came to Kit's house earlier was, in fact, Dusty's cousin. Kit is reassured by Cinda and promises to deliver Sam to her. Cinda and Burt's house is located in a wooded area, with no neighbors. Burt tries to grab the camera out of Kit's hand when she starts taking pictures. Meanwhile, Muffin has to go to the bathroom really badly. With all the adults so preoccupied with baby Sam, she ventures into the house and is shocked to find the house in a mess, with pizza boxes on the floor and no soap in the bathroom. Muffin accuses Cinda of not knowing how to properly care for a baby. Kit also senses that something isn't right and, taking Sam from Cynthia, she tells them that they should all wait for Dusty to get back before doing anything. Kit, at her father's house, leaves a voice message for her father about Dusty. Dusty and her cousin, Ed, enter the house and agree to spend a night here before sorting things out in the morning. As Kit runs upstairs to grab a flannel blanket, Dusty and her cousin run out with Sam. Rowen and Muffin follow their car. Dusty and her cousin both stop at a house, and Muffin tries to rescue Sam. Ed catches Muffin and instructs Rowen to throw his car keys into the woods. He then takes off with Muffin and Sam. In the meantime, Kit unknowingly opens the door to Burt and Cynthia, who imitated Muffin's high-pitch voice. At home, the answering machine goes off with Kit's father telling her that he called the police. Burt and Cynthia freak out at the mention of the police and Cynthia grabs a kitchen knife. They put Kit in a car, where Cinda tells Kit of her mastermind plan. She, Burt, Dusty, and Ed were part of an ATM scam. They would use fake ATMs to collect the bank card numbers, and then Dusty would redraw money from the bank accounts. Kit is rescued by a policeman, but Cynthia refuses to tell them where Sam is. Rowen, without his car, runs to the nearest truck and tells them everything. Muffin, stuck in the car with Ed, carefully uses Morse code to signal SOS to the other car. In the end, Dusty, Burt, Ed, and Cynthia are all under arrest, and Sam is put under foster care. |
The Mystery of the Strange Messages | null | null | When Mr. Goon, the local policeman, starts receiving anonymous letters, he blames Fatty, the leader of the Five Find-Outers. Although he realises his mistake, it is too late to stop the children investigating. Mr. Goon's nephew Ern plays a vital role in solving the mystery. |
Henry and the Paper Route | Beverly Cleary | 1,957 | The book opens with Henry desiring to do "something important." His older friend Scooter McCarthy rides by on his paper route, and he asks Henry if he knows of any boys who might be interested in delivering papers. Henry eagerly volunteers, but Scooter points out that all paper boys must be 11 years old. Henry is close, but not close enough. Henry decides to visit Mr. Capper, the manager of the local paper routes, and ask him for a job. On the way, he stops at a rummage sale and ends up buying some kittens. These cause him some embarrassment when he visits Mr. Capper, who tells him he's not old enough for a route. In an attempt to impress Mr. Capper and get the job, Henry decides to sell subscriptions to the newspaper. He offers the kittens as free gifts to new subscribers. This idea doesn't work out, and he gives the kittens to the local pet store. Henry ends up buying back one of the kittens - with his father's permission - and names it Nosy. Henry is worried how his dog Ribsy will react, but Ribsy actually takes to Nosy quite well. During the school's paper drive, Scooter asks Henry to take over his route for an afternoon. Henry uses Scooter's newspapers to advertise for the paper drive. Scooter, enraged at Henry's stewardship of his route, makes it into a competition. However, Henry, with his friends' help, wins the Paper Drive for the school. Unfortunately, it's a bit too successful for Henry's taste, and he vows not to advertise the following year. Henry soon turns eleven years old, and later discovers that Scooter has the chicken pox. Scooter once again asks him to take over his route; as a result, he and Henry become friends again. Henry then learns that one of the older boys will be giving up his route soon, and Henry hopes to take it over. In the meantime, he meets a new neighbor named Murph, whom he suspects is a genius. Henry is later dismayed to learn that he doesn't get to take over the older boy's route; it's been given to Murph instead. Eventually, though, Murph gives up the route because he doesn't know to handle Ramona Quimby, who is taking the papers off of each customer's lawn and throwing them onto random lawns. Murphy lets Henry have the route, and at first Henry is worried that he might lose it because of Ramona's antics. He eventually outsmarts Ramona, though, and continues with his new route. |
As You Like It | William Shakespeare | 1,623 | The play is set in a duchy in France, but most of the action takes place in a location called the Forest of Arden, which may be intended for the Ardennes in France, but is sometimes identified with Arden, Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's home town. Frederick has usurped the Duchy and exiled his older brother, Duke Senior. The Duke's daughter Rosalind has been permitted to remain at court because she is the closest friend and cousin of Frederick's only child, Celia. Orlando, a young gentleman of the kingdom who has fallen in love at first sight with Rosalind, is forced to flee his home after being persecuted by his older brother, Oliver. Frederick becomes angry and banishes Rosalind from court. Celia and Rosalind decide to flee together accompanied by the jester Touchstone, with Rosalind disguised as a young man and Celia disguised as a poor lady. Rosalind, now disguised as Ganymede ("Jove's own page"), and Celia, now disguised as Aliena (Latin for "stranger"), arrive in the Arcadian Forest of Arden, where the exiled Duke now lives with some supporters, including "the melancholy Jaques," a malcontent figure, who is introduced to us weeping over the slaughter of a deer. "Ganymede" and "Aliena" do not immediately encounter the Duke and his companions, as they meet up with Corin, an impoverished tenant, and offer to buy his master's rude cottage. Orlando and his servant Adam (a role possibly played by Shakespeare himself, though this story is said to be apocryphal), meanwhile, find the Duke and his men and are soon living with them and posting simplistic love poems for Rosalind on the trees. Rosalind, also in love with Orlando, meets him as Ganymede and pretends to counsel him to cure him of being in love. Ganymede says "he" will take Rosalind's place and "he" and Orlando can act out their relationship. The shepherdess Phebe, with whom Silvius is in love, has fallen in love with Ganymede (actually Rosalind), though "Ganymede" continually shows that "he" is not interested in Phebe. Touchstone, meanwhile, has fallen in love with the dull-witted shepherdess Audrey, and tries to woo her, but eventually is forced to be married first. William, another shepherd, attempts to marry Audrey as well, but is stopped by Touchstone, who threatens to kill him "a hundred and fifty ways". Finally, Silvius, Phebe, Ganymede, and Orlando are brought together in an argument with each other over who will get whom. Ganymede says he will solve the problem, having Orlando promise to marry Rosalind, and Phebe promise to marry Silvius if she cannot marry Ganymede. Orlando sees Oliver in the forest and rescues him from a lioness, causing Oliver to repent for mistreating Orlando. Oliver meets Aliena (Celia's false identity) and falls in love with her, and they agree to marry. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia, Silvius and Phebe, and Touchstone and Audrey all are married in the final scene, after which they discover that Frederick has also repented his faults, deciding to restore his legitimate brother to the dukedom and adopt a religious life. Jaques, ever melancholy, declines their invitation to return to the court preferring to stay in the forest and to adopt a religious life as well. Rosalind speaks an epilogue to the audience, commending the play to both men and women in the audience. |
Nineteen Eighty-Four | George Orwell | 1,949 | The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world's three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluv. Winston Smith is an intellectual, a member of the Outer Party (middle class), who lives in the ruins of London, and who grew up in some long post-World War II England, during the revolution and the civil war after which the Party assumed power. At some point his parents and sister disappeared, and he was placed in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as an Outer Party civil servant. He lives an austere existence in a one-room flat on a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. He keeps a journal of negative thoughts and opinions about the Party and Big Brother, which, if uncovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death. The flat has an alcove, beside the telescreen, where he apparently cannot be seen, and thus believes he has some privacy, while writing in his journal: "Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death." The telescreens (in every public area, and the quarters of the Party's members), have hidden microphones and cameras. These devices, alongside informers, permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone and so identify anyone who might endanger the Party's régime; children, most of all, are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals – especially their parents. At the Minitrue, Winston is an editor responsible for historical revisionism, concording the past to the Party's ever-changing official version of the past; thus making the government of Oceania seem omniscient. As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as "unpersons"; the original documents are incinerated in a "memory hole." Despite enjoying the intellectual challenges of historical revisionism, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the true past and tries to learn more about it. One day, at the Minitrue, as Winston assists a woman who has fallen down, she surreptitiously hands him a folded paper note; later, at his desk he covertly reads the message: I LOVE YOU. The woman is "Julia," a young dark haired mechanic who repairs the Minitrue novel-writing machines. Before that occasion, Winston had loathed the sight of her, since women tended to be the most fanatical supporters of Ingsoc. He particularly loathed her because of her membership in the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League. Winston fantasizes about her but he would want to kill her at the moment of climax. Additionally, Julia was the type of woman he believed he could not attract: young and puritanical. Nonetheless, his hostility towards her vanishes upon reading the message. As it turns out, Julia is a thoughtcriminal too, and hates the Party as much as he does. Cautiously, Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, at a clearing in the woods, then at the belfry of a ruined church, and afterwards in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian neighbourhood of London. There, they think themselves safe and unobserved, because the rented bedroom has no apparent telescreen, but, unknown to Winston and Julia, the Thought Police were aware of their love affair. Later, when the Inner Party member O'Brien approaches him, Winston believes he is an agent of the Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organisation meant to destroy The Party. The approach opens a secret communication between them; and, on pretext of giving him a copy of the latest edition of the Dictionary of Newspeak, O'Brien gives Winston The Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, the infamous and publicly reviled leader of the Brotherhood. The Book explains the concept of perpetual war, the true meanings of the slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and how the régime of The Party can be overthrown by means of the political awareness of the Proles. The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their bedroom and deliver them to the Ministry of Love for interrogation. Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself as an officer of the Thought Police. O'Brien also reveals himself to be a Thought Police leader, and admits to luring Winston and Julia into a false flag operation used by the Thought Police to root out suspected thoughtcriminals. After a prolonged regimen of systematic beatings and psychologically draining interrogation, O'Brien, now Smith's inquisitor, tortures Winston with electroshock, showing him how, through controlled manipulation of perception (e.g.: seeing whatever number of fingers held up that the Party demands one should see, whatever the "apparent" reality, i.e. 2+2=5), Winston can "cure" himself of his "insanity" — his manifest hatred for the Party. In long, complex conversations, he explains the Inner Party's motivation: complete and absolute power, mocking Winston's assumption that it was somehow altruistic and "for the greater good." Asked if the Brotherhood exists, O'Brien replies that this is something Winston will never know; it will remain an unsolvable quandary in his mind. During a torture session, his imprisonment in the Ministry of Love is explained: "There are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance," i.e. of the Party's assertion of reality. In the first stage of political re-education, Winston Smith admits to and confesses to crimes he did and did not commit, implicating anyone and everyone, including Julia. In the second stage, O'Brien makes Winston understand that he is rotting away; by this time he is little more than skin and bones. Winston counters that: "I have not betrayed Julia"; O'Brien agrees, Winston had not betrayed Julia because he "had not stopped loving her; his feelings toward her had remained the same." One night, in his cell, Winston awakens, screaming: "Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!" O'Brien rushes in to the cell and sends him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, where resides each prisoner's worst fear, which is forced upon him or her. In Room 101 is Acceptance, the final stage of the political re-education of Winston Smith, whose primal fear of rats is invoked when a wire cage holding hungry rats is fitted onto his face. As the rats are about to reach Winston’s face, he shouts: "Do it to Julia!" thus betraying her, and relinquishing his love for her. At torture’s end, upon accepting the doctrine of The Party, Winston now loves Big Brother and is reintegrated into Oceania society. Shortly after being restored to orthodox thought, Winston encounters Julia in a park. It turns out that Julia has endured a similar ordeal to Winston, and has also been restored to her former state as a mindlessly loyal "comrade." Each admits betraying the other: "I betrayed you," she said baldly. "I betrayed you," he said. She gave him another quick look of dislike. "Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something – something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, 'Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself." "All you care about is yourself," he echoed. "And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer." "No," he said, "you don't feel the same." Throughout, a song recurs in Winston's mind: Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me— The lyrics are an adaptation of ‘Go no more a-rushing’, a popular English campfire song from the 1920s, that was a popular success for Glenn Miller in 1939. An alcoholic Smith sits by himself in the Chestnut Tree Cafe, still troubled by false memories that he realizes are indeed false. He tries to put them out of his mind when suddenly a news bulletin announces Oceania's decisive victory over Eurasia for control of Africa. A raucous celebration begins outside, and Smith imagines himself a part of it. As he looks up in admiration at a portrait of Big Brother, Smith realizes that "the final, indispensable, healing change" within his own mind had only been completed at just that moment. He engages in a "blissful dream" in which he offers a full, public confession of his crimes and is executed. He feels that all is well now that he has at last achieved a victory over himself, ending his previous "stubborn, self-willed exile" from the love of Big Brother — a love Smith now happily returns. |
Under Two Flags | null | null | The novel is about The Hon. Bertie Cecil (nicknamed Beauty of the Brigades). At the beginning of the novel, Bertie has strong homoerotic ties to his best friend and servant. He exiles himself to Algeria where he joins the Chasseurs d'Afrique, a regiment comprising soldiers from various countries, rather like the French Foreign Legion. Bertie's "inconvenient" admirers are erased, with the result that Bertie is converted to a person whose identity is socially acceptable.Schaffer, Talia. "Under Two Flags". The Literary Encyclopedia. 24 January 2002. accessed 1 July 2009. |
WWE Encyclopedia | null | 2,008 | The WWE Encyclopedia contains profiles for past and present WWE personalities, as well as event and title histories. While providing information primarily about the personalities career in WWE, information is also present about their careers in other companies. People who portrayed separate characters are often given separate profiles for each character. Even people who left the company on bad terms were given favorable profiles, including Alundra Blayze and The Ultimate Warrior. |
The Coming Insurrection | null | 2,008 | The book is divided into two parts. The first attempts a complete diagnosis of the totality of modern capitalist civilization, moving through what the Invisible Committee identify as the "seven circles" of alienation: "self, social relations, work, the economy, urbanity, the environment, and to close civilization". The latter part of the book begins to offer a prescription for revolutionary struggle based on the formation of communes, or affinity group-style units, in an underground network that will build its forces outside of mainstream politics, and attack in moments of crisis – political, social, environmental – to push towards anti-capitalist revolution. The insurrection envisioned by the Invisible Committee will revolve around "the local appropriation of power by the people, of the physical blocking of the economy and of the annihilation of police forces". The book points to the late 2000s financial crisis, and environmental degradation as symptoms of capitalism's decline. Also discussed are the Argentine economic crisis (1999-2002) and the piquetero movement which emerged from it, the 2005 riots and 2006 student protests in France, the 2006 Oaxaca protests and the grassroots relief work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as examples of breakdown in the modern social order which can give rise to partial insurrectionary situations. |
Dragon Keeper | Robin Hobb | null | At the beginning of each chapter, there are letters between pigeon keepers in different cities, including Trehaug, Cassarick, and Bingtown. They may involve some information about what is currently happening in the storyline, without any important information added. The book opens as a group of sea serpents are nearly finished their long journey upriver to encase themselves so that they might hatch into dragons. It is late in the year and the serpents are older than is normal to make the journey. The last known dragon, Tintaglia, is overseeing this journey in the hopes that dragons will be reintroduced to the world; the Rain Wilds Council has agreed to help in exchange for her helping the Rain Wilds people in their war against Chalced. Sisarqua, a queen (female) struggles to finish her casing, and is assisted by Tintaglia. The captain of the Tarman, Leftrin, comes across a piece of wizardwood, an encased dragon that has been washed away by the river. At first he thinks to sell it for an immense profit, but then decides to use it for his ship to protect it against the acidic river. Thymara, an 11-year-old girl with claws and scaling, consistent with Rain Wilds defects from birth, goes with her father to watch the hatching of the dragons. She is shocked to find that the new hatchlings are weak and malformed. She communicates with one when her father is almost killed and eaten. Sisarqua has turned into a dragon, naming herself Sintara, and is distraught to realize that her proportions are all wrong and she is not what she should be, and will likely never fly. Alise Kincarrion is a plain, freckled young woman, past the prime age for marriage and suspecting spinsterhood. Most of her time is consumed by her passion for dragons and her studies thereof. She is unsure of the attention she is getting from a handsome local Trader, Hest Finbok. When finally confronting him, he admits that he is not in love with her, but is wishing for a marriage of convenience for both of them. If she can provide him with an heir, he will fund her fancies, including her research of dragons, including a trip to study the hatchling dragons since he had caused her to miss a trip she had already planned to watch them hatch. Agreeing, Alise begins to hope for a real marriage to her handsome suitor, but is desperately disappointed on her wedding night. She learns that the marriage was suggested by her childhood friend, Sedric. She ultimately decides that if she sold herself, she would demand a high price, and begins to use Hest's money freely to pursue her studies of dragons and Elderlings. With some time having passed on the Tarman, the work with the wizardwood is finished. Captain Leftrin wants to give a lifetime contract to all of the workers to protect the secret of their illegal use of the forbidden substance. The only remaining man to sign is Swarge, who admits that he is betrothed and does not want to be separated from his new wife-to-be. Leftrin agrees to give a contract to Swarge's wife so that they may be together and Swarge signs the contract. Some time later, Captain Leftrin is blackmailed by a Chalcedean man, Sinad Arich, for passage to Trehaug. Leftrin hopes that he will never hear from the man again. Meanwhile, Alise has given up on all efforts to make Hest attracted, or even interested in her, as they have all been met with failure or worse. Hest is displeased with Alise's inability to produce an heir and comes for another one of his unpleasant attempts to impregnate her. When she is unwilling, he takes her forcefully. After the shame of this event, she accuses him of being unfaithful to her, in the hopes of ending their marriage contract, and provides proof in certain things she has noted, such as his luxurious perfumes and a second house that he rents. Hest is furious and demands that Sedric, his secretary and constant companion, confirm his fidelity. Sedric confirms, though it is later revealed to be a lie, as Sedric is, in fact, Hest's lover. Four years have passed since the hatching and Sintara is sad and tormented by the dragon memories that she is filled with. The dragons are weak and unable to feed themselves, relying on hunters to provide them with a limited amount of food. As the more feeble dragons die off, the stronger ones consume them to claim their ancestral memories. Tintaglia has gone missing, not having been seen in ages. It is rumored that she has found a mate and no one, including the young dragons, believes that she will return. The dragons begin to yearn to find their way to the lost Elderling city of Kelsingra, or die trying. Mercor, who lacks in size what he makes up in wisdom, makes a plan to convince the Rain Wilds Council that it is their idea to transport the dragons toward the lost city using their ancestral memories as a guide. Alise confronts Hest about the promise he made on their marriage contract that she would be allowed to go on a trip to study the newly hatched dragons. Hest is furious but when she threatens to spread the fact that he has put very little effort into conceiving a child on her, thus damaging his reputation, he agrees. in his anger, he sends Sedric with her, furious that Sedric took her side in the argument. Alise and Sedric travel to Trehaug on the liveship Paragon, a ship made of wizardwood that has gained sentience due to the wizardwood from which it was made. She learns about the truth of the malformed young dragons and how they are not like the dragons of old, and she begs Paragon to tell her of his dragon memories to make up for the disappointment. The liveship refuses, claiming that he has accepted his fate and that he does not want to recall those memories of what he could have been. Though she has questioning resolve, Alise decides to visit the dragons regardless, and arranges to go from Trehaug to Cassarick to arrange to speak with the dragons. She and Sedric, much to his chagrin, are taken aboard the Tarman and Captain Leftrin is immediately infatuated with Alise. She is surprised by his attention but finds him charming and enjoys his company. He is summoned to the Rain Wilds Council to be a part of the voyage, carrying supplies and providing a safe place for the keepers. Alise agrees to join the expedition as a dragon expert in the place of the Eldering, Malta, who is with child and unable to go herself. Alise is simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the idea. Captain Leftrin soon finds a message from Sinad Arich, terrified to realized that his blackmailer is not completely out of his life. The Trader tells him to keep an eye out for someone that he should recognize, and Leftrin hopes that it is not a hunter hired to help feed the dragons that he is acquainted with. As the dragons' plan succeeds, Thymara is offered a job as a dragon keeper, to select a dragon and tend to it and hunt for it on the journey towards Kelsingra. Her father, who loved her enough to save her from being abandoned as a child (as per the norm for disfigured infants), refuses to let her go. Thymara, with high hopes for adventure and a life of her own, convinces him to let her go. Her friend, Tats, a Tattooed slave who had moved to the Rain Wilds when they were freed, also joins the expedition. Thymara notes that he is the only one not bearing Rain Wilds taint, and that he was discouraged from going, leading her to believe that the trip will be dangerous and that the council is intending to risk the lives of only those who are unworthy of life in the Rain Wilds, others bearing extensive taint like herself. She signs the contract and says farewell to her father, giving him the first part of her payment in the hopes that he will use it if her family has any financial troubles. When they go to meet the dragons, she selects Sintara as the dragon she wants to look after, though their introduction does not seem to go as smoothly as everyone elses'. It is hinted that Thymara is possibly immune to the dragon's glamour. Though Thymara is initially thrilled by the new companionship in the group of keepers, Greft tries to assert himself as leader, leading her to distrust him and his strange advances. Tensions continue to build as Thymara kills an elk and Greft claims part of it for himself and two others. As the first few days pass, Sedric's attempts to convince Alise to give up her journey and go back fall on deaf ears. She continues to find herself more and more infatuated with Leftrin, despite his differences from the posh traders she has grown up around. She tries to speak to Sintara, who basks in her compliments and enjoys making Thymara fight to get her attention away from Alise. Alise finds it hard to get any real information from her. Two of the weaker dragons don't have keepers. Thymara, Tats, and a young girl named Sylve, try tending to the wounds on the weak silver dragon's tail. Sedric comes to help with the hopes of getting some valuable dragon items, keeping some pieces of festering flesh. He thinks back on how Hest slowly took over his life. He befriends Thymara so that she will translate for him when Alise speaks to the dragons, as he cannot understand them when they speak. Later on he sneaks out at night to take some scales from a copper dragon, near death, and gets some blood from it as well, which he tastes. When the keepers realize that the dragon will not last much longer, there is an argument as to what should be done with it, where Greft thinks that they can use the dragon. Mercor arrives to tell them that dragons belong only to dragons and he will watch over the copper with Sylve until it dies. It is uncertain at this point if they realize that Sedric had stolen body parts from it. Sedric goes on to tell Alise that they must leave because he fears that the obvious attraction between her and Captain Leftrin will make her unfaithful. The book closes with the last letter between the pigeon keepers, revealing Alise's father's concern about her agreement to travel up the Rain Wilds River with the expedition. |
The Halo Effect | null | 2,007 | The book is critical of a genre of business books including In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, What Really Works and Built to Last. It finds similar faults with a swathe of business journalism. # The Halo Effect of the book's title refers to the cognitive bias in which the perception of one quality is contaminated by a more readily available quality (for example good-looking people being rated as more intelligent). In the context of business, observers think they are making judgements of a company's customer-focus, quality of leadership or other virtues, but their judgement is contaminated by indicators of company performance such as share price or profitability. Correlations of, for example, customer-focus with business success then become meaningless, because success was the basis for the measure of customer focus. # The Delusion of Correlation and Causality: mistakenly thinking that correlation is causation. # The Delusion of Single Explanations: arguments that factor X improves performance by 40% and factor Y improves by another 40%, so both at once will result in an 80% improvement. The fallacy is that X and Y might be very strongly correlated. E.g. X might improve performance by causing Y. # The Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots: looking only at successful companies and finding their common features, without comparing them against unsuccessful companies. # The Delusion of Rigorous Research: Some authors boast of the amount of data that they have collected, as though that in itself made the conclusions of the research valid. # The Delusion of Lasting Success: the "secrets of success" books imply that lasting success is achievable, if only managers will follow their recommended approach. Rosenzweig argues that truly lasting success (outperforming the market for more than a generation) never happens in business. # The Delusion of Absolute Performance: market performance is down to what competitors do as well as what the company itself does. A company can do everything right and yet still fall behind. # The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick: getting cause the wrong way round. E.g. successful companies have a Corporate Social Responsibility policy. Should we infer that CSR contributes to success, or that profitable companies have money to spend on CSR? # The Delusion of Organisational Physics: the idea that business performance is non-chaotically determined by discoverable factors, so that there are rules for success out there if only we can find them. |
March to the Sea | John Ringo | 2,002 | After the events in Marshad (at the end of the previous book) Roger and his marines manage to cross the Hadur region with little incident and begin ascending the mountains dividing the continent seeking a way through them. They awaken one morning to discover that the temperature has dropped to a pleasant 23 degrees and that the air is no longer humid. While the humans revel in the pleasant weather (for them) and brake out the coffee, the Mardukans are found to be nearly comatose. After they warm up, Pahner convenes a council of war to determine how to proceed. Cord, being honor-bound to Roger, must continue and can survive with the use of dinshon exercises (which he can teach to his partially trained nephews). D'Len Pah and his tribe of mahouts, however, are not so trained and cannot continue. This poses a problem for the marines since the flar-ta pack beasts are owned by the mahouts. After some negotiations the marines decide to buy all but one of the beasts from D'Len Pah and his clansmen, who part ways with the marines and return to the lowlands with one Cord's nephews. Shortly afterward, the marines spot a large city in a mountain valley, but are attacked by a herd of wild flar-ka before getting there. While they manage to kill the herd, casualties are high and Pahner decides, upon reaching the city (called Ran Tai) that it's time for a respite. Having bought the pack-beasts from the D'Len Pah, the marines are seriously strapped for cash and Roger offers to take a squad of marines and look for some relatively low-risk but high-paying job. While Pahner is appalled at the idea of turning his troops into mercenaries, he reluctantly agrees that they have little choice if they hope to reach the coastline with enough money to charter or build a ship. Roger soon finds a high-paying job: a local mine-owner has had his mining operation taken over by "barbarian" squatters from the lowlands and offers a month of output in gold to whoever manages to evict them. At night, Julian leads a team up the mountain behind the mine (an area too cold for the Mardukans to survive in) and scales down the mountain face, straight into to camp around the mine and manages to subdue the few guards with zero casualties for either side. Roger then awakens the leader of the squatters, Rastar Comas T'Norton, at gun point, telling him to pack up and leave, a "request" Rastar reluctantly agrees to. However, when asked where the gold from the mine is (being the payoff the marines were supposed to receive), Rastar laughs and tells them they found no gold either. After a search of the mines yields nothing, Roger and his squad return disheartened to Pahner, who orders them to get a drink at the local taverns. Kosutic realizes the Captain is up to something and follows him to the mine, where they find the previous foreman of the mine pumping out a flooded shaft where he had hidden the gold, prior to the squatters' arrival. Though he tries to buy off Pahner and Kosutic, Pahner refuses to let leave with the gold and Kosutic is forced to shoot him dead when he pulls out a pistol. As they pack up their gold, Pahner wonders how to tell Roger that his mission wasn't a failure after all and Kosutic advises him not to tell Roger just yet (as part of his learning experience). The time Ran Tai, turns out to be profitable in other ways as well. Doc Dobrescu discovers that a local fruit called targhas (dubbed an Apsimon) contains a Vitamin C analogue that could be converted by the marines' and Roger's nanites. Pahner, realizing that the original survey of the planet was woefully incomplete, orders to Dobrescu to test every food they encounter for their other trace dietary needs. Pahner also discovers the Bisti root, a spicey plant that is chewed by the locals, which replaces the chewing gum he's run out of. The down time also allows several romances to flourish (strictly against regulations), most significantly between Julian and Kosutic and between Roger and Nimashet. Unfortunately, Roger, being very drunk after the raid on the mine, mangles an attempt to tell Nimashet that he doesn't "fool around", insulting her in the process and souring the atmosphere between them. The humans eventually depart Ran Tai at the head of a large caravan headed to Diaspra and are soon attacked by the Boman tribesmen. While the Mardukan guards caravan fall apart in the attack, the marines manage to hold their own with a wall of shields and swords, but not manage to break the attack. Help however, comes from an unexpected source, when the troops they kicked out of Ran Tai charge to their rescue. After the attackers are routed and killed, Rastar approaches Captain Pahner with an offer: his troops will join the caravan as guards in exchange for payment in gold and food for the troops and civilians. After some haggling an agreement is reached and the Vasin join the humans in defending the caravan against additional attacks by the outriders of the Boman invasion. The Vasin turn out to be well-organized troops who are used to fighting in groups on civan backs and they integrate well with the humans. They eventually manage to arrive at Diaspra, fighting their way to the city gates and being greeted quite well by the locals, who are entirely too happy to see them. At Diaspra, Rastar finds several thousand Vasin cavalrymen who are pitifully happy to see him and their families and who immediately transfer their loyalty to him, giving him a seat on the ruling council. However, that is all the good news to be had as Gratar, the Priest-King of Diaspra, tells them that the Wespar tribe of the Boman has encircled the city, preventing any to approach to the barley-rice fields. Even worse (from the marines' perspective), the main Boman horde is between them and the sea, making the journey there all but impossible. At the council meeting, emotions run high between the Vasin commanders and the Diaspran members of the council, over past grievances and the current situation, forcing Pahner to intervene and tells them that they must decide whether or not they wish to survive. When Gratar expresses their desire to survive, Pahner says that to achieve this, they will have to make many uncomfortable decisions and forget the niceties of normal business. To that end, he instructs the council to set guards on the city's privately owned granaries, dole out food at fixed quantities and prices, begin training local forces and conscripts in the new techniques of the humans and force an engagement with the Wespar at a time and place of their choosing. The council members are skeptical of the humans' promises that their techniques can win this war but eventually agree and General Bogess, Diaspra's military commander, requests that the Laborers of God be drafted as soldiers. Many on the council, including Gratar, are not happy with this request since it would mean no one will be available to maintain Diaspra's flood defenses just as the seasonal Hompag Rains are about to begin. Roger, in turn, points out that in such evil times, Diaspra will have to choose between greater and lesser evils and that although maintaining the "Works of God" is important, the damage to them can be repaired, but only if the city survives. Gratar relents and releases the Laborers of God to Bogess. The marines immediately begin training the new recruits, first in how to be soldiers and finally in pike and shield combat techniques. At the same time, the Vasin cavalry train with the Diaspran regulars while the Marines ride roughshod on the Diaspran artisans and businesses to produce the materials and weapons they need for the battle to come. However, the marines find their efforts to fight the Boman threatened by certain political factions who are trying to get back to "business as usual" by placating the Boman. Grath Chain, representing these groups, petitions the priest-king to offer the Boman some of the wealth of Diaspra so that they might leave to city alone. Roger, who is caught unprepared by this challenge at the petition ceremony, manages to answer nonetheless by stating that "once you pay the Danegeld, you will never be rid of the Dane". If Diaspra chooses to buy off the Boman, they might just decide to stay, demanding more and more gold until none is left, at which point they'll finish the city off anyway. Fearing that internal political problems could endanger the whole war effort, the marines decide to bug the city's council members. What they discover points to a long existing conspiracy, whose members all answer to "the creator" and who are very security conscious and secretive, all of which hampers the marines ability to discover their agenda. As the day of battle draws nearer, Roger is summoned to Gratar, who is seriously conflicted over which course of action to take regarding the Boman. Looking over that torrential Hompag Rains and the immense power of nature, Gratar is unsure which enemy to placate: the God of the Torrent or the Boman. Roger repeats what he stated at the audience about buying off the Boman and further points out that even if they were left alone by the Boman, they would lack the funds to pay for the repairs to the Works of God. He then tells Gratar of the ancient city of Angkor Wat, who was also ruled by priests, who had failed to lead the city against barbarian invaders. Roger tells him that those priests had failed to accept the reality that their world had change and that they needed to change with it and in doing so, failed in their responsibility as rulers of their people. A heavy-hearted Gratar tells Roger that he will announce his decision at the traditional "Drying Ceremony" at the end of the Hompag Rains. The marines, who continue their surveillance efforts, discover a message at a dead drop which states that the cabal will attempt to approach the marines and gain their support. Shortly before the ceremony however, Roger is approached by Rus From who offers to arrange a meeting with "the creator". Roger agrees, after notifying the two marines with him who in turn, notify Pahner, who orders the meeting be monitored. As the marines set up the equipment Roger and his guards are led underground where they are told to remove their helmets and pass through a waterfall so as to defeat any listening devices (though From is unaware of the Toots and their transmission capability). Roger and his guards comply and pass under the waterfall, finding themselves in a cavern on the other side. There they find several hooded Mardukans who From identifies as the "dark mirror" of the council. The hooded figures and From explain that they desire a change in the direction Diaspra's going because they fear Gratar is leading them into ruin. With his single-minded focus of the Works of God, less and less young Diasprans are inclined to become artisans. In addition, the group already feared that other city-state were eying them greedily and would have attacked had the Boman not moved in first. From also feels frustrated as a "creator" of things, since all he can build are pumps, pumps and more pumps. As such, the group wants the humans to turn the "New Model Army" into the city after the battle and take the temple. The marines, who have monitored the conversation, manage to identify every hooded figure who speaks and find that most of the council and several prominent merchant are members of the cabal (O'Casey commenting that it is "Quorum of the Senate of Rome"). Roger tips his hand and tells the cabal that he knows who they are, that it's not their objective to fix every problem in their society and that they need to win the battle at hand and not start off a civil war. He further points out that they need to get to the drying ceremony quickly or else their absence will not go unnoticed. As the rains subside and the Drying Ceremony begins, the marines suit up and prepare to use all their operational suits (despite the fact that it would mean using up their last spare parts for them) and listen to Gratar's speech in rapt anticipation. However, their worries are for naught: Gratar opts to fight the Boman. It is then that the recon teams report that the Boman are on the move. The New Model Army and the Wespar tribe meet each other outside the city and the Boman begin posturing to dishearten the city defenders. Though the Diasprans manage to hold their calm, Roger loses his composure and, ignoring Pahner's furious calls to him, marches Patty across the No Mans Land between the two forces and meets the Wespar chieftain, Spear Mot, one-on-one. Despite the risk, Roger quickly manages to defeat and kill the chieftain, which disheartens the Boman, but raises the moral of the Diasprans who begin chanting Roger's name. Some minutes later, the Boman manage to regain their balance and march towards the Diaspran line. Despite their numerical disadvantage, the Diasprans hold the line for hours while many of the Boman die upon their pikes. The stalemate continues until the marines' recon team uses their advanced weaponry to hit the Boman from the rear. As the Boman in the rear turn to face this new threat, the preassure upon the Diaspran line eases, and Pahner orders a general advance. Yet the Boman front ranks still manages to hold, and Pahner orders Julian's armored squad to hit the Boman flank. The Boman line finally breaks and Vasin cavalry - along with Roger riding on Patty - pursue the Boman mercilessly, leaving very few survivors. After the battle, Pahner is summoned before Gratar, who tells him that Grath Chain (who is present as well) has informed him of the plot against him and that the humans knew about it. Pahner admits this and that the marines would have supported the coup had he Gratar opted to appease the Boman. Gratar is both saddened and angered by this and says he will have the heads of the conspirators, yet Pahner points out that most of the council, including the now-victorious war leaders, were in on it. He further points out that most of the conspirators (not including Grath) were motivated, not by hatred of Gratar or the God, but by their opposition to the redundant Works of God and the stagnation of the city. He then advises Gratar on how to deal with all the changes and challenges he now faces in the wake of this battle and the conspiracy. The Laborers of God who desire to return to their old jobs should be allowed to return while those who have developed a taste for warfare should be allowed to remain in the army. The New Model Army should be sent off to K'Vaern's Cove as a relief force, to convince Diaspra's neighbor that they intend to be helpful neighbors in these troubled times and to remove it from the equation as Gratar grapples with the internal problems he faces. Pahner also suggests that he send Bogess and From along with them, not as a reward, but as exile from Diaspra, thus removing the two most prominent wartime leaders without whom the rest of the conspirators on the council will lose all legitimacy and attack each other as they are given the task of dealing with the displaced Laborers of God. But it is Pahner's advice about reducing the Works of God entailed in losing so many of the Laborers of God that most disturbs Gratar as he fears the Wrath. Yet Pahner points out that much of the canals and dikes are redundant. Finally, Pahner advises him to use Grath as agent to destabilize any city-state that might threaten Diaspra and that for his service in exposing the conspiracy he should be given "30 pieces of silver". The Marines depart Diaspra with the relief force and the Vasin cavalry and head to the Nashtor Hills, where they quietly seize control of the mines (as a precaution), purchise all the wrought iron the miners have there with From guaranteeing payment by Gratar (a parting shot on From's part), and notify the foreman that some of the troops wil stay behind to protect them. From there they travel to the K'Vaern's Cove, where they are greeted at the outer gates by the enormous Bistem Kar and his deputy Tor Flain, who are astounded to see Rastar and the Vasin alive, happy for all the iron brought by the column and very curious about the humans. On their way into the city proper, Kar reveals that the situation in the city is not as sanguine as Rastar had initially believed: the war with the Boman caught them by surprise like everybody (so they hadn't stocked up), that they too had been sabotaged by the Tyrant of Sindi and that they have been burdened with caring for all the refugees from the fallen city-states in the region. Kar also inquires into the humans' involvement in this war and Roger tells him their intention to cross the ocean to get a continent on the other side to get back home. When he hears this Kar tells that none who attempted to cross the ocean have returned while a single shipwreck with a lone, crazed survivor arrived from the other side, claiming that his ship was ripped apart by some sea monster. The humans and the Diasprans are brought before the K'Vaernian Ruling Council to give an account of the Battle of Diaspra and to present their intentions. General Bogess' account of the battle is met initially with stunned silence and then derision and disbelief. From then addresses the council and the citizens in the gallery, chastising them for being so close-minded, when their city was known for its acceptance of new ideas and concepts and offering the council assistance of their troops as training cadre and the iron for weapon-manufacturing. Finally, Roger speaks for the humans, stating that they need to get back home within a limited time frame, by crossing the ocean. He offers the K'Vaernians advancements in seafaring technology (piquing the interest of local shipping mogul Wes Til), their institutional knowledge in tactics and designs for new weapons for the war against the Boman. The council is still somewhat skeptical of all this, telling Roger that such a voyage would be both risky and costly. In a meeting afterwards, Portena returns with the bad news: the K'Vaernians' ships are unsuitable for deep-water travel which means they'd have to design new ships from scratch which will take time. Kostas then delivers his bad news: they only have enough dietary supplements for another four and a half months at most, even with the Apsimon fruits, leaving them with no margin for error. The meeting is interrupted by the arrival of many messengers from various powerful or influential Mardukans in the city with various dinner invitations for the Prince. Rastar informs them that securing the necessary political support will depend more on the success of these dinner parties than on anything else. While O'Casey tries to decide which dinner invitation are the most important and who to send to them, Roger dumps the job of getting the necessary clothes for all the marines attending on Costas with barely a day's notice. In retaliation, Kostas asks to join O'Casey to dinner she plans to attend, which leaves Roger with Nimashet as his escort. Roger, despite the discomfort of being around a very well-dressed Nimashet and the Mardukans' questions about human sexuality and his relationship with her, manages to conduct himself well at the dinner with Wes Til and Tor Flain. O'Casey and Kostas also have a successful dinner engagement with Fullea Li'it and Sam Tre, who press for the humans' support for the retaking of D'Sley and are eager to here O'Casey's opinions on how to secure the necessary capital to rebuild and reorganize a new government. After all the dinners are concluded, the marines and their Mardukan allies meet to decide on how to proceed. Everyone agrees that they need to help K'Vaern's Cove fight the Boman to secure the necessary political capital and physical materials to build the ships they need. It also becomes clear that being on condition red for several months now is wearing down the troops. Despite this, everyone is in favor for fighting the Boman for different reasons and Pahner decides to lend their assistance to the K'Varenians in exchange for building the ships they need as quickly as possible. After the meeting is concluded, Pahner asks to speak to Roger in private for a 'professional development' counseling session. He points out to Roger that while he has all the traits of a good leader (caring for the troops, not undercutting his NCOs and leading from the front), both to the marines and the Mardukans, he personally cannot put himself out on a limb since everybody will be trying to protect him as he does so. He also points out that his pursuit of barbarians gains little and risks too much and that he needs to let others do it. Roger understands this and reluctantly agrees. Wes Til and Turl Kam meet to discuss the humans' terms and agree to them, bringing the rest of the council around and the city is thrown into frantic preparations for war. O'Casey begins her propaganda campaign by sending Mardukans into the local taverns to spread around silver and tales of loot from the Battle of Diaspra (to encourage the K'Vaernians to sign on) and generally causing fights (mostly by accident). Rus From teams up with Dell Mir to design and produce the necessary weapons and equipment the marines have sketched out while Julian, Krindi, Erkum and their squads keep an eye on the manufacturers to ensure decent quality (and threatening some of them when necessary). Kar teams up with Bogess to introduce the New Model Army's combat techniques (fighting with some conservative officers along the way) while some of the marines are sent off on reconnaissance missions against the Boman and others are sent to start training the K'Vaernians on the new weapons as they come out and oversee their production. Portena completes his "technology demonstrator" ship and awes the local shipwrights with its performance and begins construction of the actual ships needed for their voyage and recruits locals for the voyages. As the troops prepare to ship out, Turl Kam voices his innermost concerns to Pahner about the upcoming campaign and Pahner does his best to allay those concerns. Finally, when all is ready, the troops, with the assistance of Fullea Li'it and her organized sealift, embark on boats towards D'Sley and set up camp there and begin transferring the timber and ore still left in the city back to K'Vaern's Cove. The command staff assembles for the last time before moving out to discuss the latest intel regarding the Boman, the next stages of the operation and the role Roger's reserve force will play. Finally, Pahner orders them all to get as much sleep as possible since "there won't be much from here on out". The operation begins with a group of several hundred Vasin arriving at the gates of Sindi, who begin to taunt the Boman to come out after them. While the Boman Supreme Leader, Kny Camsan, smells a trap and wishes to ignore them, his most trusted ally, Mnb Trag, points out that if he fails to deal with them himself, the other Boman warriors will believe him to be weak and likely kill him before replacing him. Nor can Trag go out himself since without him, Camsan is unlikely to survive. Camsan relents and takes out a force of over 32,000 warriors to chase the Vasin. As he predicted, the several hundred Vasin they chase join up with 4,000 other Vasin who are all equipped with the new pistols and some of the new rifles, all of which fire far better and reliably in a Mardukan downpour. The front rank of the Boman quickly disintegrates under the Vasin's fire, with the survivors either fleeing or getting cut down by lances. The Vasin then turn tail and retreat through a narrow jungle track and are pursued by the Boman. The track, however, has been lined with crude claymores and directional mines that are detonated once the Boman are inside. Over six hundred die in a single instant and the Boman charge falters. The shock of the explosions causes the warriors to question Camsan's decision to pursue the Vasin, but Camsan kills the one chieftain who truly challenges his authority then chastises the other Boman for their timidity in the face of mere cleverness and after they had "whined" for months that they should go after the K'Vaernians. Camsan then orders messengers to summon all the other Boman clans and orders a general chase after the Vasin. The allied forces then move in on Sindi, assembling outside the city's walls and setting up wagons loaded with 12,000 crude rockets, which are then fired into the city. The confused defenders, who've never seen such weapons and therefore continued to stand in the open, are decimated by exploding fragmentation warheads and blast weapons, including Mnb Trag. Then Julian's armored squad moves in and starts blasting their way into the city with plasma fire, opening it to the rest of the army. Kar, who is stunned by the power of the marine's weapons, asks Pahner why hasn't ordered their use to clear out the city, since they're likely take losses clearing out the city. Pahner comes clean about their ultimate objective and their need to preserve as much of their limited supply of ammunition for a battle against their enemies, who are equipped with similar weapons (a concept that terrifies Bogess). From's engineering teams then start repairing the D'Sley-Sindi road in order to better transport the truly enormous amounts of loot that the Boman had horded in Sindi (including desperately needed food). The Vasin continue to evade the Boman chasing them by continually splitting off into smaller groups in the jungle, which makes Camsan even more suspicious. Roger briefs his forces near a stream, who are awaiting orders to move out. However, tragedy strikes when Matsugae, who is filling up Roger's camel bag in the stream, fails to pay attention to the water and is subsequently attacked by a damncroc. Roger's troops manage to kill the creature but not in time to save Matsugae's life. As Roger prepares to conduct a short ceremony over Costas' body, Pahner comms in and orders his troops to move further down South. Roger scraps the ceremony reluctantly and orders Costas' body cremated. Roger's forces return to the Sindi-D'Sley road to assist in securing the laborers working there, but Roger himself isn't paying attention to anything because of Matsugae's death and simply turns over command to one of his subordinates. Upon hearing about this, Pahner decides to violate every regulation in the book to get Roger to function properly and sends Nimashet to speak to him. While Roger initially doesn't want to speak to anyone, he eventually opens up to Nimashet. He admits that his initial rejection of her was due to his awareness of his position in the succession and his determination not to bring into the world a bastard just like him, so he never "fooled around" (and hasn't had sex in over 10 years) and that only Costas had guessed why he acted this way and that he feels responsible for his death and the death of all the other marines he fell along the way. He also confesses his love for Nimashet. Nimashet, who knows she loves Roger as well, tells him that they are willing to die for him, now more than ever because they all knew the risks when they signed on. She also makes him promise to have sex with her when they aren't in the middle of a battle for their lives, but Roger instead promises to marry her when they get home. With Roger tracking again, Pahner orders him and his units to stay put and secure the rear while the Vasin continue to draw out the Boman in pursuit as they head back for Sindi. The city and its surrounding areas are made ready for the final stage of the operation. The Boman eventually manage to cut off the Vasin's escape route and Pahner sends out skirmishers to retrieve them. Down to the South, Roger's battalion finds itself under attack by waves of Boman. Krindi Fain finds himself promoted to an officer when his company commander displays a serious lack of leadership. He then goes on to lead one of the teams of skirmishers sent into the jungles. The Vasin manage to retreat towards Sindi, with Kar's troops forming square around them and holding off the Boman's advances. Roger and his troops, despite being outnumbered, manage to defeat wave after wave of Boman. They too eventually retreat to Sindi, and the stage is finally set for the last phase of the operation. As the Boman assemble in sight of Sindi, they are astounded to find the Sindi under the control of their enemies. Kny Camsan opts to decides to assemble all of the Boman's troops and besiege the city, but his decision is challenged by Tar Tin, who believe that the only way to defeat the enemy (and retrieve their women and children) is to storm the city through the gaps left in the walls. Camsan fears this approach after witnessing the effectiveness of the weapons that were used by the Vasin, the losses they've already suffered and the thought of what could've made those holes in the walls to begin with. Tin, however, is not willing to try any more of Camsan's "better ways", challenges him for the leadership position and kills him. He then orders an immediate charge to overwhelm the city and its defenders. The Boman enter the city amid heavy rifle fire that slows their approach. The defenders then begin a well-prepared retreat south towards the Great Bridge of the city until finally most of the Allied forces are on the southern bank in the houses surrounding a large plaza specifically broadened so as to lure as many Boman into it. As Tin orders his troops across the bridge, another series of claymore mines is detonated while 400 riflemen and 300 cavalrymen open fire leaving no boman alive or unwounded on the bridge. Then another explosion rocks the bridge and for a moment Tin believes that they have managed to destroy the bridge, but as the smoke clears he sees that the bridge stands firm and orders his troops across again. The explosion however, allows the Allies rearguard to disengage from the enemy for enough time to retreat behind the gates of the bastion set up when the plaza was enlarged. Once the Boman fill the plaza, Eva orders the artillery to open fire and the riflemen and cavalrymen all open fire as well. Within minutes thousands of his warriors die under the onslaught and the Boman attempt to retreat across the bridge. Unfortunately for them, Julian's armored squad, which managed to evade them while staying on the other side of the bridge, opens fire into the retreating forces. The tidal wave of flechettes, cannon beads and plasma bolts finally breaks the back of the Boman's morale. Tar Tin, realizing the gross mistake he committed and the massive defeat suffered because it, commits suicide by throwing himself and his ax of office into the Tam River. The Allies return victoriously to K'Vaern's Cove and the humans prepare for their transoceanic journey. However, the marines pick up on some radio chatter that might indicate that someone has gone in to investigate their abandoned shuttles. O'Casey and Cord manage to translate the log found aboard the shipwreck, which only confirms what Kar had told them about the ship being torn asunder by some sea monster. As the K'Vaernians celebrate the victory and the human's impending departure, Roger sits on the docks watching the sunset and scatters some of Costas' ash into the sea, before being called back by Nimashet. |
March to the Stars | John Ringo | 2,004 | The story opens in the restored city of Voitan, where a human search & rescue team (really an assassination squad) is examining the remains of the marines who were interred there after the battle against the Kranolta. Temu Jin, a Commo-Tech serving as translator for the team, repeatedly questions the local leaders as to the marines' purpose and fate, who in turn repeatedly state that all the marines died during the battle or shortly afterwards. While Dara, the team's leader is content with their story, Jin remains privately suspicious because of several glaring clues that Dara, in his stupidity, has failed to notice. Between the physical evidence (pointing to people with marine nano-packs), the reticence of the king of Q'Nkok (who allowed only limited questioning and always while under supervision), the inconsistencies in T'Leen Targ's story (that the Kranolta took all the marines' weapons and gear), the Mardukans' atypical body-language of nods, open-mouthed smiles and handshakes (all indicating acculturation to humans) and the fact that the bodies were all stripped of clothing, jewelry and even tattoos (making their identification impossible without a DNA database), Jin becomes convinced that the locals are covering for the marines who are headed almost certainly, to the spaceport. As he's about the finish his scans, Jin notices a bronze earring with the word "BARBARIANS" on it. Deftly snatching it without Dara's noticing, he then passes it on to T'Leen in a handshake, and tells him that he might want to melt it down "so nobody else finds it". Upon the Western Ocean from K'Vaern's Cove, a flotilla of 7 ships carries Prince Roger, his marine body guards and around 300 Diaspran riflemen and Vashin cavalrymen who have sworn their allegiance to him and the Empire of Man. The long voyage across the ocean towards the far sub-continent has given the troops time to wind down after the intense battle against the Boman, train upon their new gun-powder rifles and for Roger to mourn the loss of his valet and friend, Costas. However, the idyllic journey is violently disrupted by the sudden arrival of a giant sea creature which proceeds to bite off half a ship before being gunned down by a well-placed shot of Roger's, an extremely lucky shot from Sgt. Erkum Pol, several harpoon shots and many depth charges. The fish turns out to be a giant coll fish and its attack ends up costing them a whole ship, half its passengers and three marines and the troops gleefully feed most of it to the civan and Dogzard. To avoid similar attacks, Krindi Fain recommends mounting a cannon at the rear to fire at any other sea creatures that might show up and Pahner orders that all their radios be shut off to avoid detection as they are nearing the space port. He also orders the troops to begin practicing on entry tactics in preparation for their assault on the port, which they and Roger do together. Shortly afterwards, the flotilla spots a series of volcanic islands, and then, the sails of one ship being pursued by 6 other pirate ships. Roger and Pahner decide to risk contacting the ship under pursuit, despite their ignorance of what is going on, and Roger is sent across (against Pahner's better judgment) with Cord, Despreaux, Kosutic and Poertena. They make contact with the captain of Rain Daughter, Tob Kerr, who is initially taken aback by Roger's use of the "High Krath" language, used by the Fire Priests whom all fear but who permits them to come aboard. After managing to get a hold on the language, they are told that Rain Daughter was part of a Guard convoy from the mainland (called Krath) headed to the Island of Strem, but who were jumped by Lemmaran raiders. Roger also tells Kerr their cover story of travelling across the ocean to the Krath to establish trade relations. Kerr advises them to head for Strem but Roger states they are headed for the mainland of Krath and contemptuously snorts at the possible risk the Lemmaran ships might pose to their flotilla. Returning to their ship, Roger and the command staff discuss the problem and, despite all the unknown variables, decide to engage the 6 pirate ships. Pahner admits that he does not have any experience in a sea battle and turns effective cammand of the engagement over to Roger (though still keeping an eye on him), who orders 5 of their remaining 6 ships (the heaviest and least maneuverable is left behind to guard Rain Daughter) to engage the pirates by crossing between the pirates 6 ships. The pirate commander, Cred Cies, while confident of his numerical advantage is still suspicious about the ships that are so conveniently coming right at him. A sudden deluge conceals all of the ships from each other and when it clears the K'Vaernian ships, though scattered, are upwind of the pirates' formation and closing fast. Despite this, Cies is still confident that they can close in on them and rake their decks with swivel guns. This turns out to be a mistake as the K'Vaernian artillery mounted on the sides of the ships and are capable of far heavier broadsides then Cies guesses. The pirates manage to score a few shots on a single K'Vaernian ship, causing it to lose its foremast and then the K'Vaernians open fire. The massive roll of gunfire decimates the pirates while sharpshooters take out many of the Lemmaran gun grews on deck and the marines off-world weapons add to the carnage. The end result of the engagement is that one Lemmaran ship is sunk (thanks to a plasma cannon shot), three others get boarded and most of another single ship's crew dead and completely dismasted. Only Cred Cies' vessel manages to retain enough rigging to escape the initial engagement and Roger's ship closes with it so as to board it. Despite his immense losses, Cies still refuses to surrender and the Ima Hooker eventually closes upon it and launches a boarding action. Krindi Fain's company leads the assault on the Lemmaran vessel and quickly manages to overwhelm them. However, Cord notices that the Lemmar are attempting to kill their helpless prisoners who are chained to the deck and leaps across to save them. Roger, astounded that his asi would abandon him at a time like this leaps onto the Lemmaran ship after him followed by Dogzard. Between the three of them, the surviving prisoners are protected from the Lemmar trying to kill them. Pahner, however, is furious that Roger broke his promise not to put himself out on a limb and boards the Lemmaran ship to castigate him while Denat does the same for Cord. Roger, after shouting down everybody yelling at him first demands that Cord explain why he jumped over in the first place. Cord explains that just as his life was saved by Roger, he is obligated to help others in need and that Roger should not have followed him at all to the pirate ship. Roger suddenly finds himself put upon by the irony of the situation while Pahner and the other commanders are hard pressed to laugh. Roger then proceeds to the cut the chains binding the prisoners when the first prisoner, a female who had killed 2 guards during the battle while being chained to the deck, tries to kick him when he pulls out his monomachete. She is stopped by Pahner and once Roger conveys his intentions to her in a hash of the local languages, she relents and allows him to free her and the other two surviving captives. It soon becomes apparent to Roger, that the female prisoner, who has been trained as a warrior, is also in charge of the other captives, two things that come as a surprise to him since they had rarely encountered any Mardukan societies where women enjoyed any status or had been warriors. She soon approaches Roger and Cord, to speak of "the Way of Honor, of the Way of the Warrior" and declares that she is now bonded to Cord as a benan for saving her life (much like Cord is bonded to Roger). Her statement leaves Cord seriously discomfited and perplexed (since only his people recognize such bonds). Back aboard the Ima Hooker, O'Casey explains that there's a great deal in common between Pedi's people, the "Shin" and Cord's people, the X'Intai, as can be seen in many linguistic similarities between their two languages. She surmises that both peoples originated from the Krath sub-continent but that the X'Intai had somehow managed to travel eastward towards the large continent. O'Casey then states that it would be highly beneficial to recapture the other ships of the convoy and return them to the Krath, so as to get started on the right foot with the locals. Julian then proceeds to brief the command staff about Pedi's people and the local political conditions that might affect the marine's journey to the spaceport. O'Casey then elaborates upon the political conditions among the main polity, the Krath, and points out that is a highly regimented theocracy that is slavery based. Julian then points out that the reason the Shin and the Krath do not get along is that the Krath see the Shin a source for more slaves. Roger points out that since Cord is obligated to follow and protect Roger and Pedi is now obligated to follow and protect Cord, they need to find some way to conceal her Shin identity. They decide, that Pedi will be dressed as a Shadem female, who are always heavily clothed (with their faces covered as well) - a decision Pedi finds repulsive. The rest of the Mardukan troops will also have to be found clothes, since the cultures of the sub-continent have strong body modesty taboos, a concept Cord finds equally repulsive. They then decide on a battle plan to take the other prize ships. They flotilla then goes after each of the captured ships in turn, sending over a boat with Rastar, Roger (despite Pahner's extreme displeasure) and 2 others who under the pretense of wishing to trade goods, manage to surprise each crew and retake the ship. They then proceed to Kirsti, the main port of the sub-continent. As they approach the enormous city of Kirsti, Roger and Pahner are both uneasy since they both realize they and their troops are seriously outnumbered by the locals who might be in contact with the spaceport. The latter concern is confirmed when they are met by a delegation from the local government, led unofficially by Sor Teb who has encountered humans before, and who is greatly interested in the purpose of these new and unusual humans. The marines and their Mardukan troops are granted permission to enter Kirsti, though the locals impose many restrictions upon them and isolating them to a limited area of the docks. While the ships' captains begin seeking out local trade partners and resupplying their ships, the humans await the local leadership's decision on whether or not they can leave the city and continue their trek to the spaceport. Julian, Portena and Denat go around about town, teaching the locals Canasta (it being a card game Portena inflicts on those he does not like), looking for supplies to purchase and gathering intel on local conditions. They report their findings along with O'Casey at a staff meeting held later and the situation is not good. Sor Teb, who was previously believed to be a minor functionary, turns out to be one of three members of the satrapy's military high council and the one most likely to succeed the dying high priest, and it becomes clear that they will not be permitted to leave Kirsti without his say-so. Pahner decides to try to recruit Teb and his slave raiding forces for the humans' objectives but should that not work out within a week, to prepare for a forceful exit. He orders Julian to prepare a battle plan on the local forces in and outside of the city and, upon hearing Portena's report on the high price of food in the markets, to find local storage facilities that could be raided for supplies. Roger is surprised by this and Pahner admits that the locals' passive hostility is making him nervous. Kosutic mentions her own concerns about something else: the Krath religion. The locals have been remarkably secretive about it and she wonders what exactly they are trying to hide. While Pahner feels they still have a week or two to sort things out, O'Casey mentions the possibility that the Krath might get word to the port sooner than that with teams of runners. Her concern turn out to be well founded (though she is not aware of it yet) since the Krath have sent word to the space port about the Human's presence. However, Temu Jin, after returning from the aborted "rescue mission", arranges things at the port so that he will receive any communiques from the Krath satraps to the Imperial Governor first and switches out the message about Roger's presence with a bogus message. As the days go by for Roger and his company in Kirsti, Cord and Pedi finally manage to go shopping for weapons and other items Pedi requires. Cord discovers that those other are clothes and cosmetics which make Pedi look entirely too attractive. After a training session with Pedi, Cord senses certain "parts" of him surging and he fears the coming of his biannual "season". Denat also grows increasingly ill-tempered (for the same reason), causing Portena and Julian to be concerned about his strange behavior. Things begin to change when the local volcano erupts and the entire city suddenly shuts down as the priesthood sees the eruption as a bad omen. The humans suddenly receive a message from the High Priest indicating that he's willing to meet with Roger. Along with O'Casey, Pahner orders that Roger be accompanied by Kostutic, Despreaux, a fire team from her squad (who are all to be armed with bead rifles) plus a squad of Mardukan infantry and cavalry. He decides that they be ready to leave at a moment's notice and schedules an inspection to coincide with the time of the audience. Roger meets the High Priest who is accompanied by Sor Teb and many guards at the High Temple of Kirsti, located near the city walls. He presents himself as Seran Chang, Baron of Washinghome (one of his minor titles) to the aged High Priest and asks about their petition to travel to the space port. The High Priest however wishes to speak about a far more important "needs of the God" and states that the humans have "avoided Service to the Fire Lord" for too long. Roger infers that the Krath are requiring a "Servant of God" from among the humans and begins to consult with the others. While Roger and the other humans are willing to leave a volunteer behind (provided that they be treated properly) Pedi is emphatically against it but her explanation as to why is lost upon them. They conclude that there must be a problem with their translation of Krath language and request a recess to discuss the matter with their colleagues but Sor Teb politely refuses, stating that the Servant must be gathered now. His response causes the entire human company to tense and Roger decides to dump the translation of Krath from his "toot", loads Cord's language as a baseline and orders Pedi to speak in Shin. It soon becomes clear that a "Servent of God" is really a sacrifice to the God who will then be eaten by the body of the Fire God's worshippers. Sor Teb confirms this, and when Roger asks to decline this invitation, Teb points out that he has more guards than he does and that they can either choose to hand over a single human sacrifice or that all of them will be sacrificed as he intends to make sure all Krath know that it was he who finally brought the humans to the God. It is then that Roger and company open fire on the guards and Pedi immediately tosses off her robes and goes for the High Priest whom she decapitates. Unfortunately, Sor Teb manages to escape the carnage. Roger and Kosutic risk a com signal to Pahner and notify him quickly about what transpired with Roger ordering him to make for the gates (which is where they are headed to as well). After killing the few Krath guards who attempt to storm the camp at the docks and ordering the ships to head back to K'Vaern's Cove, Pahner orders the troops to head for the gates. Outside of the spaceport, Temu Jin meets with a Shin chieftain with whom he's been in contact and tells him about the humans who arrived at Kirsti. While the chieftain is somewhat reluctant to assist him any further because of mounting preassure from his tribe's warriors, he is intrigued when Jin mentions that some of the humans are marines and agrees to help. Back in Kirsti, Roger and his guards manage to shake off any pursuit by the Krath guards and end up in the nave of the temple where they witness the horrific site of "Servents" being dragged to an alter and then killed and butchered by richly-clad priests while the upper-class of Kirsti chant in the background. The guard in the nave notice and begin to advance and Roger orders a single volley and then cold steel. After dispatching the guards, the priests and a handful a brave worshippers, Roger allows for 3 minutes of looting and then orders the troops to move out. In the streets, Pahner and the troops manage to reach the city gates but find that they were closed ahead of time. Roger and his guards continue to fight their way towards the gates, incurring serious casualties in process, including Cord who is seriously wounded when he interposes himself between Roger and a spear that had been thrown at him. They eventually manage to make it to the gatehouse and take out its armaments, allowing the Vasin and Portena to storm the gatehouse. Portena places a satchel charge blowing the doors for the gatehouse allowing the Vasin in, find the gate room, raise the gate and jam the controls. Roger and company then exit the city and manage to disengage from the Krath guards pressing upon them by dumping the oil in the gatehouse into the passage and then throwing a couple of white phosphorus grenades that sets the Krath guards aflame and much of the temple district on fire. The humans and their allies then head for the hills. In Kirsti, Sor Teb finds himself in the proverbial doghouse when his colleagues on the military high council, Werd Ras and Lorak Tral, chastise him for his idiocy in endangering the High Priest, doing so with too few guards and then abandoning him to be killed by a Shin. Teb is informed that a quorum of the full council has granted plenipotentiary authority to Lorak to bring the humans to ground and, if necessary, the Shin as well, should they decide to aid them. Sor is skeptical about Lorak's forces being able to contend with the Shin (as they haven't had much luck in the past) but Lorak is confident because he intends to guard his line of supply, something that wasn't done in previous punitive expeditions. Werd supports Lorak's plan, particularly in light of the evidence that nothing short of a prepared assault will be enough to contend with the humans. Sor is then told that with the exception of a few Scourge personnel who will serve as guides for the army, he and his forces are confined to their barracks. Meanwhile, Roger and Pahner, after discussing the matter with Pedi, decide to take the Shesul Pass towards Pedi's hometown of Mudh Hemh, rather than the easier path through the Valley of the Krath, which would entail dealing with two fortifications. They also receive Dobrescu's report of the casualties: most of the injured have either expired or else will survive, with Cord by far, the most heavily wounded and who is still not out of the woods. The convoy first arrives at the town of Srem, where Rastar subtly threatens the mayor into resupplying them and providing them with some intel on the Shesul Pass. They then head into the pass, where the climb becomes impossible with all the carts they're carrying, and they are forced to double up the turom on every cart and abandon half their supplies midway. Scouting parties of Vasin manage to reach the curtail wall that Pedi told them about and discover a very large fortress. They set up a hidden camp in front of the fortress and await the rest of convoy and report the difficulty of taking such a fortress, but Roger has a plan. He sends Julian, Gronningen and Macek to approach the fortress from the adjacent mountain ledge. They are surprised when they encounter no resistance upon the walls and proceed cautiously into the fortress. They are even more surprised when they find all the Krath guardsmen huddled around a fire in the semi-hibernation torpidity that extreme cold induces in their species. After tying up the sleeping guards, they open the gates for the rest of their party and Pahner decrees two days to recuperate, as the company is on its last legs. However, Julian finds an imperial Zuiko tri-cam in the Krath commander's office, indicating that the fortress has had contact with the port and then Gronningen finds a human locked up in one of the cells in the fortress. The human, Harvard Mansul, turns out to be a member of the Imperial Astrographic Society and he astonished to see Roger and his marines alive at all and tells Roger and the marines about his circumstances. He had come to Marduk to write a story about the locals but his arrival at the spaceport was not viewed kindly by the governor who took him for an imperial spy and started to worry about getting killed in some "accident". It was then that he was contacted by someone in the port who offered to smuggle him out and into a small enclave of humans under the protection of a Shin warlord called Pedi Gastan, which the marines immediately identify as Pedi's father (making them wonder why Pedi had never seen humans before). Mansul also tells them that he was smuggled out through gaps in the security perimeter, a point that the marines find very interesting. It is then that Portena arrives and tells them that he needs Doc Dobrescu because something is very wrong Denat who seems to be going crazy. When Dobrescu arrives, Denat eventually gets him to open up and he explains that he is "in season", a point that is then relayed to a bemused Pahner and Roger. When Pahner wonders about the rest of the Mardukan troops Dobrescu explains that being from different regions, those Mardukans will have different "seasons". But Roger then realizes that Cord is also from Denat's region, which Dobrescu believes is the reason for the strange readings he's been getting from him. Unbeknownst to them, Pedi recognizes the signs of the Season in Cord while tending to his wounds and decides to alleviate the strain on his body by mating with him. The marines depart the fort and head for Pedi's home at Mudh Hemm, where they see the Krath present in strength and the Shin gathering for battle. They are brought before the Gastan, Pedi's crafty father, who is none too pleased to hear his daughter as a benan or see the humans after the events in Kirsti. Though initially hostile towards them because of the loss of his only son Thertik along with 400 of his warriors and telling his daughter that she has fallen into the company of ragged mercenaries and thieves, he quickly changes his tone when Roger abandons his pretense and tells him who he truly is and relies to him what the Krath had demanded of him in Kirsti. He takes the head of the dead High Priest of Kirsti from his daughter, climbs to the walls of the citadel and mounts it on a pike, telling the Krath arrayed outside the fort his "answer" to their demand of the humans by spitting on the High Priest's head. He then tells Roger and Pahner that his daughter's allies are now his but that he expects them to help him out of "this mess". The Gastan reveals to Roger and Company that he has been in contact with an undercover IBI agent at the port and tells them what they already guessed, that the governor has "sold his soul" to the Saints who are frequenty in the system. The governor has allied himself with the Krath and has already assisted the Son of the Fire near the spaceport. Since it is only a matter of time before the he will assist the Krath in destroying the Shin, the Gaston has chosen to assist Temu Jin by helping Roger, in the slim hope of defeating the Governor. Roger states that once the Governor's are brought to the Empire's attention, they would have to intervene to stop him. He also pledges upon the honor of his house to end the Krath depredations. But the Gastan then drops a "bombshell" on Roger and his Marines: there was a coup attempt against his mother. While his mother survived the attempt, his brother John and John's children did not while his sister Alexandra was killed when her ship was destroyed in an ambush. The Gastan also reveals that the Empress has laid the blame for the attempt against the throne on none other than her youngest son, Roger. Roger and the marine command group meet privately to discuss these dire developments. With so many of the Empress' loyalists in the fleet and IBI dead (along with the entire Empress' Own, save the few who are with Roger) and replaced with individuals whose loyalty is far more questionable coupled with the fact that the Empress has been seen in public accompanied by Prince Jackson Adoula and Roger's father the Earl of New Madrid, it seems obvious that all is not well in the empire. Julian concludes that the "coup attempt" actually succeeded and that the Empress is now under the control of Prince Jackson, and that Roger's father and General Gianetto, the new High Commander for Fleet Forces (and a long acquaintance of Pahner's) are in on it. But it is also clear that the conspirators' control over the empire is not complete, as at least one sensitive position in Home Fleet has been filled by a person whose loyalty to the Empress is unquestionable. What's more, there's no way the conspirators can continue to control the Empress indefinitely without being discovered and Roger and Pahner conclude that the conspirators have a legitimate heir gestating in a uterine replicator. Once the child is born and confirmed to be of the Empress' own genetics, she'll be killed and Jackson will we named regent for the child, placing him in de facto control of the empire. As the coup occurred 2 months before, they only have 7 more months to attempt a rescue of the Empress and only after dealing with their own immediate problems. As Roger and his troops contemplate various ways to defeat the Krath (with Mansul avidly recording every meeting) and Cord recovers from his wounds, Julian and O'Casey go over the intelligence provided by Temu Jin. It soon becomes clear that the defenses of the spaceport have been severely compromised and Julian is unsure whether the governor is a "complete and total idiot... or else subtly brilliant". But when he mentions that his name is Ymyr Brown, the Earl of Mountmarch, O'Casey can barely contain her laughter as she explains the depth of his incompetence and how he probably ended up on Marduk. Taking the port is deemed to be a "cakewalk" but what the marines can do afterwards is far more problematic, as it seems obvious that the conspirators have managed to convince the public that what they're saying is true while anyone claiming that the Empress is being controlled is obviously a crank who believes in conspiracy theories. Roger's troops launch a number of spoiler raids in an attempt to break the Krath's will to fight but are unsuccessful due the Krath army's sheer size. Roger's commanders and the Gastan lean towards a prolonged battle of attrition to break the Krath's will to fight but Roger says they need a decisive battle. As he contemplates the Shin Valley's geology, he's struck with a moment of inspiration on how to defeat the Krath outright and humiliate them in the process. In a command conference held that night in the Gastan's primary bathhouse, Roger explains that the Valley of the Shin had once been blocked at one end, creating a lake at the valley's end. Roger proposes to use heavy explosives from the spaceport (to be acquired by Temu Jin) to blow off a large chunk of the adjacent mountain and dam up the valley, recreating the lake that used to be right where the Krath army is camped out. The rising waters will force them out into the open and surrender or remain up to their groins in cold water. The Shin chieftains agree to the plan. After the conference ends, Roger and his people, along with the Gastan, remain in the bathhouse to discuss their concerns over the war. The Gastan fears that with so many warriors killed, the Shin population will decline severely (for the same reasons the Kranolta were on the decline). Krindi suggests co-opting the Krath to move to the Shin Valley to solve this problem and to require them to renounce Mardukan sacrifice. Kosutic is perplexed over this, since Mansul noted that the sacrifices had to be a recent change in the theology and the humans reason out that it is the result of deliberate cultural contamination by the Saint presence. Roger and Despreaux are eventually left alone in the hot tub and have a discussion about their relationship. Despreaux, having seen too much intense combat on Marduk, feels that she can't continue with Roger. There's a big fight looming on the horizon to save the Empress and Despreaux has seen too much death already. Even if their successful, Roger will become emperor now that he is his mother's only remaining child, and Despreaux doesn't want to be Empress, or worse, relegated to a royal concubine because of dynastic calculations. Roger tries to plead with her stay with him but she only agrees to stay on until they reach Earth and rescue his mother and that they'll discuss the matter then. Temu Jin comes through on the high yield explosives the marines ask for, along with some additional ammunition and spare parts for their off-world weaponry. Despreaux, along with Julian and his team, set up the charges and return to Mudh Hemh. The Krath however, do not remain idle at seeing the humans up to something on the mountainside and launch another large scale attack on Nopet Nujam. They begin a full-court press just as the charges are detonated and, as predicted, the river begins to rise rapidly, flooding the Krath encampment. However, just as the Krath begin to get off the walls of Nopet Nujam, a second attack by Krath and Shadem raiders, led by Sor Teb, attacks Mudh Hemh. Roger, in full battle armor and armed with a bead cannon, goes out to "remonstrate" with Teb and point out the foolishness of the attack. Teb, aware of Roger's true identity, is unfazed by Roger's threats, as his position in Kirsti has become untenable. He simply intended to kill as many Shin in Mudh Hemh as he can and escape to the Shadem. He then surprises Roger with a "one-shot" (an off-world, anti-armor weapon, designed to kill the person inside it by a ricocheting scab) which he throws at Roger. The Scourge raiding party then storms the battlements and Teb himself fights against an enraged Pedi. Teb succeeds in injuring Pedi's shoulder who then drops to one knee and impales Teb on two of her swords while Dogzard finishes him off by ripping his throat out. Fearing for Pedi's life, Cord professes his feelings for Pedi and begs her to hold on for him until Dobrescu can arrive while Pedi admits that she is pregnant with his children and feels the same way about him. Roger is found to be alive, having managed to twist just enough so that the one-shot failed to lock onto his armor properly, with only a few broken ribs and bruises to show for it. Pahner personally brings him up to speed both about the Krath surrender and the situation between Cord and Pedi (much to Roger's gleeful delight). With Temu Jin's information and assistance on the inside, Roger, his marines, his Mardukan retainers and 2,000 Shin warriors manage to storm and take control of the spaceport with few casualties and Pahner personally (and with immense satisfaction) locates Governor Mountmarch (who's found with a naked 10-year-old boy in his quarters) and places him under arrest for treason and pedophilia. Roger and his marines then begin preparations for seizing a ship. All the marines trade in all their chameleon suits for newer (and less torn up) suits and replace all of their weapon from the port armory (Portena forcing them all to first clean out all their old weapons). Julian and Kosutic begin fitting out the Basik's Own with their own chameleon suits and weapons (even though it is agreed that they and Roger will only be used to back up the marines and only if there's no other choice) while O'Casey takes, Mansul, Denat, Cord, Pedi and a squad of marines and Mardukans on a shuttle trip to back trace their trek across the planet, visiting every place they'd been to assess the impact the marines visit had on the population and to cover up any evidence they may have left behind. Denat is left in Marshad while Cord is taken back to his village where he introduces his soon-to-be wife to his family. They then reach their long abandoned shuttles and, having refueled them, fly back to the port, picking up Denat along the way with T'Leen Sena who has accepted his marriage proposal. In the meantime, Temu Jin assists the marines in gaining access to Mountmarch's private files where they discover a wealth of evidence against him, indicating his treason began long before his exile to Marduk. The Mardukans practice with their new weapons and are given brief course in shipboard combat as they await the arrival of a ship they can safely commandeer. Once such a ship arrives, Pahner orders all weapons-training to cease to avoid detection and to get their "war faces" on. As they await the ships entry into orbit Roger arranges a huge banquet for the troops, complete with various "awards" being handed to every member of his party (such as a silver pitchfork for Kosutic, a set of 4 bronzed bead-pistols for Raster and "little pocking wrench" for Portena) and gives Pahner the Order of the Bronze Shield while Pahner in turn gives Rogar the Combat Infantryman's Badge for having "walked into the fire again and again, and come out not unscathed, but at least, thank God, alive". As the dinner winds down, Despreaux propositions Roger again but he turns her down because she still won't marry him. As the Emerald Dawn enters into orbit, Temu Jin asks to conduct a customs inspection as a cover for the shuttle carrying the marines but the ship captain is suspicious since this is the first time such an inspection is conducted (despite Temu Jin's assurances that it is because of an upcoming inspection on them). He sends Commander Amanda Beach and two highly dangerous crewmen to greet Temu Jin at the airlock. As Temu Jin meets with Beach and her goons he drops to the ground as the Marines blast through the airlock behind him, but it becomes clear that the battle plan is a bust almost immediately as Beach and one of her guards manage to escape the marines initial attack with the ship's crew resisting far more forcefully than the crew of any tramp freighter. The marines begin to sustain fatalities as the crew counterattacks with plasma rifles while Jin's hacking of the ship's computers reveals, to everyone's horror, that they are aboard a Saint special ops insertion ship and are up against a full company of highly dangerous commandos, commanded by the infamous Colonel Fiorello Giovannuci, a real Saint fanatic. Pahner is forced to call in Roger and the Mardukans to get his marines out, while the Saint-John twins disable the ship's anti-ship defenses (at the cost of John's life). Roger (having identified himself to the ship in his demand that they surrender), Mansul, the navy pilots and the Mardukans arrive and begin spreading throughout the ship, causing serious damage to it in the process (the Mardukans, not being accustomed to ship-board combat, use far more firepower than necessary). The reinforcements turn the tide in the marines favor and Giovannuci decides to activate the ship's self-destruct rather than surrender and demands over the internal comm that they withdraw immediately. Realizing that he's serious and that they have no way to deactivate the self-destruct without the cooperation of at least one of the ship's command staff, Pahner immediately orders a withdrawal. Portena then reports that he's has Amanda Beach, the ship's executive officer, who does have the override codes for the self-destruct but who demands asylum from Roger who can grant it upon the Imperial family's honor. With his identity reveal and too few marines remaining, Roger agrees and manages to reach the bridge and breach its defenses. There he and Pahner find Giovannuci, the senior NCO and several other bridge personnel who refuse to surrender and deactivate the self-destruct. Roger orders Beach be brought there and tells Giovannuci that they have his exec who is willing to cooperate. Giovannuci and the senior NCO then pull out from the back of their uniforms one-shots and hurl them at Roger who manages to kill the senior NCO and stop the one-shot he throws from activating but fails to stop the one Giovannuci uses. Pahner however, manages to shove him aside and place himself between Roger and the second one-shot, which manages to lock on and activate properly on Pahner's armor, critically wounding him. Roger furiously orders Giovanucci and everybody else removed from the bridge then goes to one knee next to the dying Pahner, swearing that he'll get the mission done and save his mother and bidding his chief body guard and father figure farewell as Pahner finally dies. The story concludes with Roger explaining the Beach their predicament as he is now a wanted traitor, a situation she has no choice but to accept. He also asks Nimashet to stay with them at least until they rescue his mother. She agrees, but she still refuses to marry him. |
The Nose From Jupiter | Richard Scrimger | null | Thirteen-year-old Alan Dingwall wakes up from a light coma after drowning in a creek. Although he is not suffering from amnesia, Alan cannot seem to remember what exactly happened the day that he drowned. The reader is then taken back into time as Alan tries to recall his memories. Alan is mowing the lawn, despite the fact that he hates doing it. He laments the fact that he does not have the courage to stand up to the bullies of class 7L, the Cougars. When mowing the lawn, something flies up Alan's nose, which causes him to freak out. When Alan finally calms down, he discovers that an alien, whose name is Norbert, is living in his nose. As the book progresses, Alan and Norbert develop a friendship. Norbert's arrival does change things for Alan though. Norbert talks to Alan's crush, Miranda, and even livens up an entire science class. However, Norbert also draws some unwanted attention from the bullies during a soccer game between the Cougars and the Commodores. In the middle of a constellation presentation, Alan accidentally runs into the Cougars in the boys' washroom. Feeling humiliated after being mocked at the soccer game, the Cougars and Alan get into a fight. We are then taken to the day of Alan's accident. He suspects that he is being followed by one of the bullies, most likely Prudence. At this point in the story, Alan's memory gets foggy and unclear, and we are take back into the present. Alan is back at the hospital in Toronto. He is visited by two people: Miranda and, surprisingly, Prudence. Prudence tells Alan what happened the other day - how he tripped over a collie dog and how Prudence had a change of heart after rescuing him out of the water. She apologizes to Alan for the way that she treated him, and promises that the rest of the Cougars will stop bullying, with the exception of Mary and Gary. Following the aftermath of the accident, Alan is treated like a hero when he returns to school. As Mary and Gary try to intimidate Alan, Norbert flies out of his spaceship, scaring them both. The next time that Alan switches on the TV, he flips to a channel that is showing a country music special. k.d. lang is performing and is clearly bothered by an insect. The microphone screeches loudly, and even though she tries to continue, she is distracted. As the song ends, k.d. lang blows her nose in a handkerchief... |
Ransom My Heart | Meg Cabot | 2,009 | When the feisty but beautiful maiden Finnula Crais kidnaps a knight on his way home, she has no idea that she has trapped new Earl of Stephensgate. But Hugo Fitzstephen is quite happy to be kidnapped, especially by such a spirited beauty. Before long Finnula realize she is out of her depth, since Hugo not only wants his freedom but also the possession of her body, soul and heart. Finnula isn't afraid of anything, well except maybe falling in love. |
Land of Marvels | Barry Unsworth | 2,009 | John Somerville, an archaeologist digging in Mesopotamia, is racing against time hoping he'll make an important discovery before the German built Baghdad Railway comes and claims the mound he is digging on. Hardly anyone realizes it, but World War I is looming against the backdrop. Almost by chance, Somerville stumbles on an important discovery from the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the urgency of his work increases. Meanwhile, an American geologist, in the pay of the British, the German bank Deutsche Bank, as well as an American oil company, disguised as an archaeologist, arrives at the dig hoping to find an oil field nearby. An English major who's not quite what he seems, a Swiss journalist who's neither Swiss, nor a journalist, and an Arab fixer who has dreams of acquiring a hundred gold coins for the hand of the love of his life add to the mix at the dig and lead to an ending that has been described as dramatic and richly symbolic, if rather abrupt |
Warbreaker | Brandon Sanderson | null | Warbreaker tells the story of two princesses, Vivenna and Siri. Vivenna was contracted through treaty to marry the God-King of rival nation Hallendren. Instead Siri is sent to meet the treaty. Vivenna then follows to Hallendren in hopes of saving Siri from her fate. Both sisters become involved in intrigues relating to an imminent war between their home nation of Idris and Hallendren. The book uses a system of magic, "BioChromatic Breath", which allows mages to bring life to objects as well as provide benefits directly to the mages, such as perfect pitch, perfect color recognition, perfect life recognition, and agelessness. Use of BioChromancy drains the colors from surrounding objects and the less colorful an object is, the more difficult it is to apply BioChromancy to it. The system has been praised as a unique and original magical system. |
Homeboyz | Alan Lawrence Sitomer | 2,007 | The events of Homeboyz takes place four to five years after the events in Hip Hop High School. The book's main character is 17-year-old Dixon Theodore Anderson, nicknamed Teddy. He is a smart teenager who is both a hacker and a bodybuilder. Teddy's entire neighborhood is overrun by gangsters and his sister, Tina Anderson, is killed in a crossfire. While the Anderson family mourns her death, Teddy goes to his car to seek vengeance. He is unsuccessful in getting revenge and is arrested. He then spends time in a California juvenile prison waiting for a judge to hear his case. During this time, Teddy is treated as if he was a gangster. He is set free, but is put under house arrest and is enrolled in a probation program. Teddy is forced to spend five days each week mentoring a kid named Micah. Teddy has difficulty tutoring Micah because he is wants to be a gangster. But through Micah, teddy is taught how to love someone and see how people can change. Also this book talks about when Teddy meets the person that killed his sister,and he wasn't from 0-1-0. He was a member of another rival gang. Teddy fought hard and he won but the guy was sent to jail and died there. |
The Tempest | William Shakespeare | 1,623 | The magician Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, and his daughter, Miranda, have been stranded for twelve years on an island after Prospero's jealous brother Antonio (helped by Alonso, the King of Naples) deposed him and set him adrift with the then-3-year-old Miranda. Gonzalo, the King's counsellor, had secretly supplied their boat with plenty of food, water, clothes and the most-prized books from Prospero's library. Possessing magic powers due to his great learning, Prospero is reluctantly served by a spirit, Ariel, whom Prospero had rescued from a tree in which he had been trapped by the witch Sycorax. Prospero maintains Ariel's loyalty by repeatedly promising to release the "airy spirit" from servitude. Sycorax had been banished to the island, and had died before Prospero's arrival. Her son, Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion and their own language. Following Caliban's attempted rape of Miranda, he had been compelled by Prospero to serve as the magician's slave. In slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with contempt and disgust. The play opens as Prospero, having divined that his brother, Antonio, is on a ship passing close by the island, has raised a tempest which causes the ship to run aground. Also on the ship are Antonio's friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonso's brother and son (Sebastian and Ferdinand), and Alonso's advisor, Gonzalo. All these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonso's daughter Claribel with the King of Tunis. Prospero contrives to separate the shipwreck survivors into several groups by his spells, and so Alonso and Ferdinand are separated, each believing the other to be dead. Three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunkards, whom he believes to have come from the moon. They attempt to raise a rebellion against Prospero, which ultimately fails. In another, Prospero works to establish a romantic relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda; the two fall immediately in love, but Prospero worries that "too light winning [may] make the prize light", and compels Ferdinand to become his servant, pretending that he regards him as a spy. In the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. They are thwarted by Ariel, at Prospero's command. Ariel appears to the "three men of sin" (Alonso, Antonio and Sebastian) as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero manipulates the course of his enemies' path through the island, drawing them closer and closer to him. In the conclusion, all the main characters are brought together before Prospero, who forgives Alonso. He also forgives Antonio and Sebastian, but warns them against further betrayal. Ariel is charged to prepare the proper sailing weather to guide Alonso and his entourage (including Prospero and Miranda) back to the Royal fleet and then to Naples, where Ferdinand and Miranda will be married. After discharging this task, Ariel will finally be free. Prospero pardons Caliban, who is sent to prepare Prospero's cell, to which Alonso and his party are invited for a final night before their departure. Prospero indicates that he intends to entertain them with the story of his life on the island. Prospero has resolved to break and bury his magic staff, and "drown" his book of magic, and in his epilogue, shorn of his magic powers, he invites the audience to set him free from the island with their applause. |
Groundswell | null | 2,008 | The groundswell is characterized by several tactics that guide companies into using social technologies strategically and effectively. Businesses should listen to their customers to understand what the market is looking for in their products. In order to do this, a company needs to find out if their customers are using social technologies and how they are using them. Instead of advertising to customers, marketing departments should find creative ways to connect with users about their experience with a product and their feelings about the brand. One common method is participation in social networks. Enthusiastic customers are part of the groundswell, and companies can recognize and appreciate these customers by creating online communities and social platforms where they can connect with the brand and provide reviews. Businesses can harness the support of their own employees by creating internal social applications for them to connect with the brand, also known as enterprise social software. |
Rogue | Danielle Steel | 2,008 | Maxine Williams is a well-known and leading child psychiatrist, specializing in trauma and suicide, with three amazing children Daphne, Jack and Sam and a rich and glamorous ex-husband. Blake Williams, one of the richest men in the world has a glamorous life of globe travelling and dating beautiful women whilst Maxine stays in Manhattan looking after their children and pursuing the career she loves.Though divorced, both are extremely affectionate to each other. Blake soon meets the beautiful Arabella and falls deeply in love.Meanwhile Max also starts dating a doctor, Charles West.But Charles is a bit uncomfortable with the children and even starts showing his irritation by suggesting that the kids should be sent to a boarding school.The eldest one, Daphne starts becoming possessive of both her parents and behaves rudely to both Arabella and Charles. When a tragedy strikes in Morocco, Blake and Max join hands to help the victims and orphaned children. Blake transforms into a responsible man, much to Max's surprise.Blake throws Arabella out after she deceives him. Max and Charles plan to wed soon but Max finds herself happy only in Blake's company while Charles constantly hurts Blake by behaving rudely whenever he was around. After a series of hilarious events, Max and Blake marry again, much to the delight of their kids. |
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America | Robert Charles Wilson | null | In 2172 the United States of America has become a neo-Victorian oligarchy, with the introduction of feudal indenture, a rigid class-hierarchy, property-based representation in the federal United States Senate, presidential hereditary succession, establishment of the "Dominion of Jesus Christ" (premised on fundamentalist Christianity and organizationally based at Colorado Springs) and the abolition of the Supreme Court. With the evacuation of Washington DC due to an unspecified cataclysm, Manhattan, New York has become the national capital. The United States has also annexed most of Canada and comprises sixty states, but is fighting German-controlled Mitteleuropa ("the Dutch") in the contested territory of Labrador. Climate change and peak oil have caused technological reversion, exacerbated by the Dominion's repressive social policies. Deklan Comstock, the hereditary President, has already arranged the death of his brother Bryce. The latter's widow, Emily, sends her son Julian to the remote rural western boreal district of Athabaska, where the egalitarian and free-thinking young man befriends Adam Hazzard, a fledgling writer. The two travel east by railroad, but are press-ganged into the "Army of the Laurentians", and are sent to the campaigns in Labrador. Julian becomes a war hero and foils his uncle's machinations. During the celebrations in Manhattan that follow, his actual identity is disclosed. A coup d'etat deposes his uncle and Julian is appointed President. He proceeds to upset the status quo through liberalising censorship policy, rehabilitating the image of Charles Darwin (the authorities have suppressed the ideas of Darwinian evolution in this world) and reimposing separation of church and state as public policy. He also emerges as gay, falling for Magnus, a Unitarian-style minister. Unfortunately, the Dominion and the armed forces mutiny. Julian and Magnus catch "the Pox" and die alongside one another, but Adam and Calyxa, his equally free-thinking and feminist wife, escape to Mediterranean France, where Adam writes his friend's posthumous biography twenty years later, in 2192. Julian Comstock's life parallels that of Julian the Apostate, with the new America being modeled on Rome. The President is modeled on the Roman Emperor, with the military having significant power in the choice of President (as in the Roman Empire). |
The Accounting | Bruce Marshall | 1,958 | The scene of this novel is Paris, where the branch of a well-known London bank is being audited. A normally routine affair, this year's audit is different -- the auditors have reason to believe that there may be fraud or embezzlement at play. How do the auditors know this? A few indiscreet words overheard at a Paris nightclub. Our attention is turned to each player, some major and many minor, the bank officials and overseers of the audit of course, but mostly to the underpaid, unhappy junior and senior auditors, each a prisoner of his own private conflicts and aspirations, and each seeing the discovery and proving of the fraud as his chance for promotion. The novel makes the seemingly boring task of auditing understandable and delves into the hearts of those who make business their life's work. |
Honor Thyself | Danielle Steel | 2,008 | World famous actress Carole Barber has come to Paris to work on her new novel and to find herself. But on a cool November evening, her taxi speeds into a tunnel just past the Louvre, and into the fiery grasp of a terrible terrorist explosion causing her to be left unconscious and unidentified in a Paris emergency room for weeks. Carole’s friends and family begin to make inquiries into her disappearance only to find that Carole is far from home and fighting for her life. Carole' family and friends swarm to the hospital and pray for her recovery to find she has amnesia and doesn't remember her own family. Gradually, Carole slowly regains her memory, new friends and love along the way to begin to truly Honor herself in this tale of survival and hope. |
A Good Woman | Danielle Steel | 2,008 | Annabelle Worthington was born into a life of privilege in the glamorous New York society set living on Fifth Avenue and in Newport, Rhode Island. But in April 1912, everything changed when the Titanic sank, taking away her family and glamorous life forever. Annabelle then pours herself into volunteer work, nursing the poor, igniting a passion for medicine that would shape the course of her life. More grief is around the corner with her first love and marriage. Betrayed by a scandal undeserved, Annabelle flees New York for war-ravaged France, to lose herself in a world of helping others in the First World War field hospital run by women. After the war, Annabelle become a Paris doctor and becomes a mother living happily until a coincidental meeting reminds her of her former life to which she returns stronger and braver than before, a new woman to fight against the overwhelming odds thrown against her in life. |
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table | Roger Lancelyn Green | 1,953 | After Uther Pendragon’s death, Merlin the druid forms a stone, and in it, a sword. On this sword, it is written that anyone who can pull it out of the stone will become the new king of England. After many years, the young Arthur, (secretly the son of Pendragon), pulls this magical sword out of the stone, and becomes king. Together with Merlin, he constructs a round table, where only the best knights of England may sit. More and more knights come to join the brotherhood of the Round Table, and each has his own adventures. After many years, The holy knight Sir Galahad, the son of Sir Lancelot, comes to the court of Arthur. With his coming, all knights ride throughout Europe for the search of the Holy Grail of Jesus Christ. Only four knights see the Grail: Sir Lancelot, Sir Percival, Sir Bors de Gaunnes and Sir Galahad. After the Grail is found, the last battle of the Round Table is close-at-hand. In this battle, many knights die and with them, King Arthur, his nephew Sir Gawain, and also, Mordred, the wicked son of King Arthur and his half-sister Morgana le Fay. King Arthur is buried at Avalon, the secret island of the druids and damsels. |
One Day at a Time | Danielle Steel | 2,009 | Coco Barrington, the wayward member of a family of Hollywood celebrities, agrees to dog-sit in her successful sister's house. There, she meets Leslie Baxter, a British actor hiding from a vindictive ex with his six year-old girl. Following that encounter, Coco finds love but also reconciliation with the rest of her family, healing old wounds One Day at a Time. |
The Penny | null | null | The main character in the story is Jenny, a 14 year-old girl. The book is religion based, and is about how Jenny comes to know Jesus through her best friend Aurelia. At the time the book is based, 1950, many people would have frowned upon Jenny, a white girl, becoming friends with a black skinned girl. |
The Atlantia Talisman | null | null | Deep in the forest behind Full Moon City, an evil man named the Baron is trying to steal a magical object from the city of Atlantia called the Atlantia Talisman. Elsewhere, two boys named David Rush and Speedy Rush are trying to find it to save the world. They get help from the mermaid-like Mer sisters (Shilly, Damu, and Kijin), the faun named Dimvir, and the good ghoul named Finny, and they face monsters like werewolves and vampires and zombies. |
Zeitoun | Dave Eggers | 2,009 | Abdulrahman Zeitoun is a Muslim who grew up in Syria. After a few years of apprenticeship in the Syrian port city of Jableh, Zeitoun spent twenty years working at sea as a muscleman, engineer and fisherman. During this time he traveled the world and eventually settled in the United States in 1988. There he met his wife, Kathy — a native of Baton Rouge who had converted to Islam — with whom he founded their business, Zeitoun Painting Contractors, LLC. In late August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached the city, Kathy and their four children left New Orleans for Baton Rouge. Zeitoun stayed behind to watch over their home, ongoing job sites and rental properties. Once the storm made landfall, their neighborhood (although miles from the nearest levees) was flooded up to the second floor of most houses. Zeitoun began to explore the city in a secondhand canoe, distributing what supplies he had, ferrying neighbors to higher ground, checking on his tenants, and caring for abandoned dogs. On September 14, Zeitoun and three companions were arrested at one of Zeitoun's rental houses by a mixed group of National Guardsmen, local police and police from out-of-state. Although the men were not immediately charged with any crimes, they were detained in a makeshift jail in a Greyhound bus station for three days time before being transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in nearby St. Gabriel, Louisiana. Zeitoun was held at Hunt for 20 more days without having stood trial. During that time he was refused medical attention and the use of a phone to alert his family of his predicament. People often say hurricanes are one of the most destructive forces on the planet. They destroy poverty and devastate lives. However, there is another powerful and destructive force that can be equally frightening—intolerance. “Zeitoun”, written by Dave Eggers, tells the story of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American business owner who chose to ride out Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in order to watch over his home and business. What happened to Zeitoun in prison is a shameful experience that occurred when two destructive forces, Katrina and racism, collided with catastrophic results. The book says that when Zeitoun asked the guards to call Kathy, he was rejected. And when Kathy knew Zeitoun was in prison and the guards didn’t allow her to visit him. This worried Zeitoun’s brother “A Syrian in an American prison in 2005—this was not be trifled with. Abdulrahman had to be seen. He had to be freed immediately. The justice system should have allowed Zeitoun his phone call from the start, but he wrongly was never given one. Post 9/11 was an unfair time for people from the middle east. They were discriminated against and suspected for almost anything anywhere. The justice system would treat them unfairly like Zeitoun. Kathy was outraged she couldn't be told the location of the jail, but once she got the press involved they told her right away. However, they didn't allow her or anyone else testifying in the defense of Zeitoun in the court hearing. Innocent people can be thrown in jail. Moreover, the book also says that when Zeitoun was released, he and Kathy pursued information on the reasoning behind his arrest and the jail he stayed at. The government worried that "terrorists might target evacuation routes, creating 'mass panic' and 'loss of public confidence in the government'" That is to say, after 9/11, it seemed like the government, or at least George Bush's top priority, was terrorism. There are terrorists out there, but that doesn't mean government should put all of their resources toward finding them. |
Pool of Radiance | Jim Ward | null | Dragon described the novel's plot: "Five companions find themselves in the unenviable position of defending the soon-to-be ghost town against a rival possessing incredible power." Three companions, Shal Bal of Cormyr, Tarl Desanea, a cleric of Tyr, and Ren o' the Blade are brought together in Phlan by circumstance and encounter various threats as they work to purge the city of civilized Phlan, the restored part of the destroyed city of Old Phlan, culminating in a faceoff with the Lord of the Ruins, Tyranthraxus. |
A Step From Heaven | An Na | null | At age four, Young Ju moves with her parents from Korea to Southern California. While expecting an easy, blissful life in America, Young Ju sees the stress that the cultural adjustment puts on her family. She struggles with the language barrier at her new school, and her parents' relationship becomes inceasingly strained due to financial issues. Young Ju's brother, Joon, is born, and is given more freedom and choices due to his gender. Their father has a Jekyll and Hyde personality; sometimes a playful, loving parent, and all too often a violent alcoholic, eventually getting arrested for DUI and losing his drivers licence. As Young Ju matures and begins to enjoy friends and school, her parents fight constantly and Joon withdraws. When her father's brutality reaches a new peak (he nearly beats his wife to death), Young Ju steps in and calls the police to arrest him. When he is released from jail, he leaves the family without a word. Some time later, Young Ju is preparing to leave for college, and knows her mother and brother are finally starting a better life. |
Secrets of the Clans | Erin Hunter | 2,007 | There is no actual plot to the book, as it is a field guide, but it has several mini-stories within it as well as a tour around both the forest and lake camps of the Clans, guided by one of the warrior cats, and the ceremonies for different positions, as well as general guides. The beginning of the book tells the story of how the Clans came to be in the first place. This section describes that before the Clans it was every cat for themselves. Then the members of the dead come and visit the living cats, telling them to unite or die. Four cats named Thunder, Wind, River, and Shadow volunteered to be leaders of a single Clan, but they were so different that they became four different Clans. The tale forgets to mention a cat named Sky, but this was probably because Firestar's Quest hadn't been released yet. The section of the Cats in the Clans begins with the leader of the Clan at the time of publication saying something about their Clan, followed by a short fact file, a map and guided tour of both territories, a short story narrated by one of the cats, and the significant leaders and medicine cats of the Clan. In the case of StarClan, there is a brief guide as to what a cat must be to get into StarClan and the story of Snowfur, Bluestar's sister. For the groups that cannot be classified as Clans (SkyClan not included), there is little more than a fact file featuring Clan character, habitat, their version of leader and deputy, and notable history, as well as a short story about it. There is also a quick guide to all of the loners, rogues, and kittypets featured in the Warriors series. This group of sections features a quick guide to both the habitats (forest and lake) of the Warrior cats, as well as Fourtrees, Highstones, the Moonpool, the Island, sun-drown-place, and a story of how the Moonstone was discovered. This section features what happens in the ceremony to initiate a new cat of a certain position, using a specific cat as an example, including how they felt about becoming that position. It also features all of Firestar's nine lives and a guide to all of the medicine cat herbs. In this section, we learn that the Warriors have a small mythology featuring three Clans with wild cats: LionClan, TigerClan, and LeopardClan (actually cheetahs). There is the story of how LeopardClan won the river, how the snakes of Sunningrocks came to the forest, and how TigerClan got their stripes. There are general guides as well, such as a guide to the prophecies in the Warriors series and other, non-prey animals that inhabit their homes. |
Code of the Clans | Erin Hunter | 2,009 | In the introduction, it summarizes how the Clans (including SkyClan) was formed. It then cuts to Leafpool introducing the warrior code to us (as we are rogues visiting Leafpool to learn more of the code.) Each Code starts with Leafpool giving a hint about the story and how the code was formed. Sometimes there is an extra story after it. Code One tells the story of Cloudberry of RiverClan and Ryewhisker of WindClan. Cloudberry is expecting Ryewhisker's kits and Ryewhisker believes the kits will end the territorial dispute between the two clans. But instead, in a battle, Ryewhisker was killed when he was trying to defend Cloudberry from his Clanmates. This led the Clans to form the first code and start a gathering place. Code Two begins at the gathering when Brindlestar, leader of ShadowClan, complains to ThunderClan. ThunderClan accuses ShadowClan of stealing prey and a fight starts to break out. The fight was interrupted when a branch falls between the two Clans and no cats were hurt. It was a sign from StarClan that no Clan cat may cross the border and forms the next code. (In a mini-story, One-eye, known as White-eye and Dappletail wish to catch a fish to know why RiverClan like the prey so much.) Code Three tells the story of Splashheart of RiverClan and another battle with ThunderClan over the Sunningrocks. Splashheart is guided by a StarClan cat and RiverClan wins over the Sunningrocks and celebrate by feeding the elders and kits, and hints that Splashheart will become leader of RiverClan one day. (In a mini-story, Longtail and Darkstripe are going out hunting for the elders, but Darkstripe eats the fresh-kill intended for Poppydawn and Longtail could do nothing. Since they could not make it on time, Poppydawn dies from greencough and Longtail regrets deeply.) Code Four starts at ShadowClan territory when Driftkit and Fallowkit play with fresh-kill and were scolded by their leader, deputy and mother. An owl soon swoops in the camp and takes the fresh-kill away and Lilystar says its a sign from StarClan. Code Five begins with a worried WindClan queen named Daisytail, who worries that her son is too young to be in a battle against ShadowClan. She and a queen from ShadowClan stop the battle and tell their leaders that their apprentices should still be kits until they are at least six moons old. (In a mini-story, during the reign of Brokenstar and battle to drive out WindClan, Flintfang watches as his apprentice [who is three moons old] dies.) Code Six starts with the RiverClan's medicine cat, Meadowpelt, as he overhears some of the new warriors are going to jump the gorge on the full-moon. Meadowpelt goes to StarClan for answers and finds out the warriors must stand vigil during the next to think about being a warrior and the warriors save the nursery from a fox and learn the true importance of being a warrior. (Squirrelflight tells us what do at a vigil in a mini-story.) Code Seven tells the tale of Acorntail, as he is chosen deputy for WindClan. But he keeps messing up and tells Featherstar that she must choose a different deputy. Featherstar notices that Acorntail didn't learn how to lead and gain loyalty which is taught through an apprentice and Acorntail decides he must have an apprentice. Code Eight starts when Beechstar, leader of SkyClan, gives his leadership to his son Mothpelt. Mothpelt wishes to avenge his father's death and leads an attack to RiverClan. The river was over flown and Robinwing and Maplewhisker, the deputy, has to save the warriors from drowning. Mothpelt gives up his position to Maplewhisker and forms a new code. (In a mini-story, Tallstar talks to Bluestar about his last choice in making Onewhisker as deputy.) Code Nine begins when the Shadowclan deputy dies from greencough soon after their leader died. In order to decide a new leader, Jumpfoot and Mossfire fight to the death for the position. Redscar, the Clan's medicine cat, turns to StarClan for the answer. They tell him they must chose a new leader and the leader must chose a new deputy immediately. Redscar chooses Flowerstem because she watched her sister, Mossfire, die right in front of her and Flowerstem's only thoughts were to help the clan. Code Ten starts at a gathering and all four Clans were attacked by ShadowClan, led by Ripplestar. As Ripplestar attacks Finchstar, leader of ThunderClan, StarClan sends clouds over the moon and kills Ripplestar with a bolt of lightning - giving a sign to all Clans. Code Eleven begins when a SkyClan warrior named Poppycloud and her apprentice accidentally overstep the ThunderClan border and were caught. The leader of ThunderClan goes to the SkyClan leader and tells him what is going on. Poppycloud explains that they could not smell the border because it was not freshly made, which brings up the decision to remark their borders daily. (In a mini-story, Whitestorm teaches Firepaw, Graypaw, Ravenpaw, Sandpaw, and Dustpaw about border tactics.) Code Twelve begins when the RiverClan medicine cat, Graywing, and a couple of warriors see WindClan kits fall into the gorge. Graywing says that it is only WindClan's loss and there is nothing they can do. But the StarClan kits come to Graywing and tell her the importance of kits in a Clan and Graywing and the warriors get the kits' bodies out of the gorge. (In a mini-story, Tigerkit (Tigerstar as a kit) is saved by a couple of warriors from ShadowClan from a fox.) Code Thirteen starts at the gathering, where Darkstar, leader of SkyClan, gives a huge piece of territory to ThunderClan. Raincloud out loud tells him that he is wrong to do that, and Darkstar makes a new code so a leader won't be out staged by their warriors like that. (In a mini-story, Cloudstar talks about a broken promise.) Code Fourteen starts with the ShadowClan medicine cat, Mossheart, seeing her Clanmates die in a battle skirmish. She and the other Clan medicine cats go to Moonstone together and are both told that this unnecessary death must stop. It also initiates a place where all medicine cats are defined from clan skirmishes and a place where they all share tongues with StarClan. Code Fifteen starts with Lionpaw stalking Pinestar to the twoleg border. Pinestar tells Lionpaw that what he saw is absolutely secret and must not tell other cats. Soon Lionpaw finds out that Pinestar wishes to live with twolegs and Lionpaw pushes him to tell the Clan this. Pinestar thanks him and tells him that his future name will be Lionheart. (In a mini-story, Sandstorm tells about her thoughts on Fireheart.) In the end, Leafpool tells what was not included in the warrior code and says goodbye. The cover shows (from left to right) Blackstar, Firestar, Tallstar, and Leopardstar. Below them, they are surrounded by a group of cats, so the picture presumably depicts a Gathering. |
The Rise of Scourge | Dan Jolley | 2,008 | The book begins with close ups of Tiny, and his brother and sister, Socks and Ruby. Tiny, being the smallest of the litter, is often made fun of and teased. After several complaints from Tiny's siblings that they don't like to play with him, as well as the kit's first journey outside, Quince leaps onto a couch and reminisces over her litter's father. Quoted, "Strange that none of them have your ginger fur...". This is an important clue that Tiny is, in fact, Firestar's half-brother. Later on, when Quince takes her kits outside, Tiny notices a hole in the fence and wanders out. After looking around and playing, Tiny runs back to his family, where he then tells them he went into the forest. However, he greatly exaggerates things and is yet again ignored. Coming back inside, several Twoleg kits looking to adopt kittens come into the house, and before adopting Ruby and Socks, Ruby frightens Tiny by telling him that unwanted kits get thrown into the river. Believing his sister's lie, Tiny flees the house. Venturing into the forest, Tiny encounters a ThunderClan patrol composed of Tigerpaw, Bluefur, and Thistleclaw. Tigerpaw, as ordered by Thistleclaw, barrels into Tiny and nearly kills him, but he is stopped by Bluefur, who yowls at them to stop, and the patrol heads back into the forest. Tiny, consumed by fear and the need for revenge, flees to Twolegplace. Upon arriving, Tiny survives by accepting a share of chicken from an elderly she-cat. Wandering aimlessly, Tiny attempts to take off his collar, but end up impaling an old dog's tooth in it. Hungry, he finds a group of cats eating, and asks if he could join them. Being questioned about the tooth in his collar, he lies and says that he took it from a dog's mouth that he killed; the cats do not appear fully convinced, but allow him to feed. The next morning, however, his lie comes back to bite him, when he is visited by Bone and Brick who ask him if he will drive out a dog that is guarding a dumpster and cutting the cats off from access to food. Terrified of the dog, but realizing he will be exposed as a liar and driven off if he refuses to fight, he reluctantly enters the dog's premises. The dog seemingly prepares to attack, before it goes whimpering off, spooked by Tiny's enlarged shadow; Tiny is clever enough to manipulate the situation to make it appear he fought and drove off the dog. The onlooking cats are incredibly impressed. Before this point, no one has asked for his name; rather than telling them his name is Tiny, on the spot he comes up with a name that was once used in a sentence by Quince — Scourge. The other alley cats treat him with great deference and fear, and begin to seek his advice; he gradually becomes the de facto leader. Scourge realizes that he enjoys the power he holds, and perhaps more importantly, enjoys the fact that these cats fear him. Soon, a gang of rogue cats from the forest arrives and bullies the local cats (from the images, these cats appear to be Brokenstar and his followers, driven out from ShadowClan; as one of the cats is a tabby with a crooked tail — just like Brokenstar). Scourge's followers ask him to protect them. Scourge cannot trick or bluff these cats as he did the dog, and they openly mock his small size and threaten him, challenging his authority in front of his followers. Unwilling to back down in front of his followers and lose the power, respect and fear he has worked so hard to earn, Scourge reaches a turning point, violently killing one of the rogues in cold blood; this rallies his alley cat followers behind him, and the rogues flee. By now he has been completely consumed by hatred and a desire for revenge; in an internal monologue, he comments to himself that the chill in his blood grows, yet he welcomes it. After killing the rogue, Scourge begins tightening his hold over the alley cats, becoming more and more of a dictator. Later he is visited by his siblings, who say they were abandoned by their Twolegs; as dependent housecats, they never learned to take care of themselves. Scourge allows them to eat his food, and then banishes his own brother and sister from his territory. The book draws to a conclusion as Tigerstar, guided by Boulder, comes to Scourge and asks for his alliance (as seen in the Prologue to The Darkest Hour). Tigerstar clearly does not remember nearly killing Scourge as a kitten; Scourge sees an opportunity, and decides to play along with Tigerstar's offer for the moment, while waiting for the opportunity to take his revenge. Fast forward the amount of time before he leads BloodClan into the forest, Tigerstar and Scourge face off, and the book ends with Scourge standing triumphant after killing Tigerstar. |
Escape from the Forest | Erin Hunter | 2,008 | The book opens to Sasha refusing Tigerstar's offer to join ShadowClan. Shocked, Tigerstar tells her that the two of them would be feared, to which she replies that she would rather be loved. Their conversation turns into an argument, and Sasha insists that Tigerstar's plans go against the Warrior Code. When she sticks with her decision to not join ShadowClan, Tigerstar tells her that she will now always be nothing, and walks off into the forest. Back at her den, Sasha thinks about her heartbreak, and dreams of Ken coming, finding her, and taking her home. She makes her way out of the forest, realizing that she has no place there anymore. She bumps into Pine, and tells him that she is leaving. He acts very disappointed, but wishes her luck. Sasha returns to where she used to live with Ken and Jean, and is chased away by the Twolegs that is now living there. She explores all over Twolegplace, looking for Ken in stores and on the street. In a secondhand clothing store, Sasha catches Ken's scent and finds one of his coats. She begins to realize that something is very wrong with Ken. As she roams Twolegplace, Sasha meets up with two BloodClan warriors, and narrowly escapes. Wandering and wandering, she makes her way onto a tour boat, where she curls up and goes to sleep. When Sasha wakes up, the floor is shaking. She runs outside to jump off, only to find that the boat is surrounded by water. She is spotted by the tourists, who believe her to be a ship cat, and the captain shuts her in a cupboard. Let off the boat, she notices that the captain looks lonely and sad. When she sneaks back onto the boat, she begins to attract many customers to the boat service as "Brownie the Famous Ship's Cat." One night, she even prevents two saboteurs from burning the boat. Because she brings happiness to the captain, she keeps staying longer, even though she wants to go. One day when the boat is out, Sasha finds a bag with a very young cat inside it in the water. The captain takes him home and names him Patch, paying more attention to him than to Sasha. The spring thaw arrives, and the captain ties up the boat prepares to go elsewhere. Sasha decides not to go with the captain and Patch because she now knows that she is going to have kits, and wants them born in the forest. Patch is sad, but he understands. Snow starts to fall as Sasha walks away, symbolizing the start of leaf-bare. The cover features Tigerstar. |
Return to the Clans | Erin Hunter | 2,009 | Sasha has gone back to the forest to raise her three kits, Hawk, Moth, and Tadpole. While hunting for her kits, she gets caught by a ShadowClan patrol. Afraid that they will take her kits, she lies and says they died from the cold. Afterwards, she lets her kits play outside, but when they go back in, she tells them about Ken. Later, she lets them outside again, but this time, Russetfur walks in on them. Russetfur guesses that Tigerstar is their father. But instead of forcing her to give them up to ShadowClan, she instead helps Sasha by giving her some fresh-kill, and warns her to leave as soon as possible. She also tells Sasha that Tigerstar is dead, killed by the BloodClan leader a few moons back. Later on, Sasha goes out hunting and the kits go out to find Ken because they want to make their mother happy. They go into Twolegplace and are confronted by BloodClan cats, whom they run from. Meanwhile, Sasha has come back to find her kits gone. She immediately goes out to look for them when she is joined by Shnuky, one of her old kittypet friends. The kits go into an abandoned-looking Twoleg nest (house). They go through a basement window, and the last kit pushes down what was holding up the window by accident, trapping them. Sasha, still trying to find the three, gets confronted by the same BloodClan warriors as before, but is able to trick them into fear by telling them she is a clan warrior out looking for revenge of Tigerstar's death, and the BloodClan cats end up pointing out the direction they saw the kits go. In the basement, a pipe blows and water leaks rapidly from it. Sasha rescues Hawk and Moth, but Tadpole drowns. That night, a devastated Sasha dreams of Tigerstar and asks if Tadpole is with him. Tigerstar says no, but confides that he is safe. Sasha later meets with Pine, a loner she had previously met, and he takes her and the kits to a barn where another she-cat lives. After Pine leaves, Sasha is attacked by the queen while Hawk and Moth are attacked by the she-cat's kits, but Sasha beats her. She leaves with the kits and decides to take them to RiverClan. In the outskirts of RiverClan territory, Sasha tells the kits who their father is and says that it is their secret. Eventually, they run into a RiverClan patrol. Sasha tells them that she and her kits wish to become warriors. At first, the patrol does not agree, but after a while, they allow them to join because their nursery is almost empty. When they get back to camp, the kits get their apprentice names, but Sasha refuses to take a warrior name. Not long into their apprenticeships, Hawkpaw and Mothpaw see other kits from the nursery pretending to be Tigerstar and kill everybody. They ask Sasha why they acted like that about him. Sasha tells them the truth about him and makes them promise again that that was their little secret. Later, Hawkpaw and Mothpaw discover the remnants of the Bonehill, a hill of bones that BloodClan created. Leopardstar then lectures them on how horrible Tigerstar was and how much pain they suffered because of him. In the end, Sasha decides Clan life is not for her, and she also realizes that her kits are far safer and happier here than with her, so she leaves, but her kits stay. The cover features Tigerstar and Sasha and their three kittens (Hawk, Moth, and Tadpole) at the bottom. |
Widdershins | Charles de Lint | null | Odawa enlists a gang of bogans (a type of fairy) to hunt down Grey, a cousin who accidentally blinded him many years earlier. Odawa has already killed Grey's wife and several of Grey's friends. But when the bogans murder Anwatan, the daughter of a cousin chief, it threatens the cold peace between fairies and cousins. Because Grey rescues an innocent bystander named Lizzie from the bogans, they assume--incorrectly--that she's romantically involved with him, and they begin stalking her, which leads her to talk to Jilly. The bogans attempt to kidnap Lizzie and Jilly, but through a series of accidents, the two end up in Jilly's croí baile or "heart home," a piece of the otherworld made up of people and places she unknowingly created out of her own memories. Mattie Finn, a physical manifestation of a character from a storybook Jilly read as a kid, hates Jilly because Jilly projected her child abuse experiences upon Mattie. This version of Mattie carries all the memories of Jilly's abuse as though they happened to her. Mattie summons up a version of Jilly's abusive brother Del and a priest who also molested her. The priest banishes Timony, a magical little man accompanying them, from the croí baile before he gets a chance to explain to Jilly that she can take control of the place as long as she believes she can. Del transforms Jilly and Lizzie into little girls, then picks Jilly up and takes her to a nearby house. With her martial arts skills, Lizzie beats up the priest. While traveling through the otherworld, Geordie loses his way and runs into Timony. Geordie realizes he needs Joe's help, so Timony asks him to focus his mind on Joe. Instead, Geordie begins thinking of Jilly, which causes him to be drawn into her croí baile. Del immediately kills him. He continues to exist as a ghost unseen by the others, and he and Jilly finally realize their love for each other. Joe finds the croí baile, and the pitbull accompanying him manages to enter. Immune to Del's powers, the dog kills Del, giving them all the opportunity to leave. They eventually rejoin Timony, who brings Geordie back to life. Jilly decides to return to the croí baile and confront Del again, realizing it is the only way she can put the wounds from her past behind her. She returns to the house where the dead Del is still lying, but he comes alive and transforms her, once again, into a child. In a moment of anger she manages to turn herself back into a full-grown woman and hit Del. He immediately changes her again into a little girl. But she realizes that in the moment when she hit him, she was focused, without uncertainty. With her newfound power, Jilly draws her sister Raylene into the croí baile. While surprised to be there, Raylene acts on instinct and beats up Del. Jilly changes herself into her adult form, then she explains to Raylene what is happening. The two sit down and discuss the different ways they have handled their experiences, and Jilly sends Raylene back home. Confronting Del again, Jilly declares that anytime he thinks a dirty thought, he will shrink to half his size. Predictably, he immediately shrinks until he disappears. Leaving the house, she is met by many friendly characters from her childhood, who inform her that she's become the Conjurer (the one with power over the croí baile) now that Del has been defeated. She coaxes Mattie to read a piece she has written on her abuse experiences and how she recast them on Mattie. She then makes Mattie the Conjurer, a risky move, but Mattie is no longer angry at her. After Jilly leaves the croí baile, the crow girls are able to repair her body at last. She and Geordie decide to get married, and she asks Raylene to be the maid of honor. An army of buffalo spirits is planning an attack on fairies, as vengeance for Anwatan's death. Grey seeks the help of Lucius Portsmouth, supposedly the Raven who created the world. Confronted by Odawa outside Lucius's place, Grey persuades him to postpone their feud to deal with the buffalo problem. As soon as Grey knocks on the door, however, a guard apprehends Odawa because it turns out that Grey's murdered wife was Lucius's goddaughter. Lucius agrees to talk to Minisino, the cousin instigating the rampage. The increasingly remorseful bogan Rabedy summons Anwatan's spirit, telling her that he was part of the gang that killed her, that he wants her help in talking Minisino out of the coming rampage, and that he intends to give himself up. She agrees to help, but doesn't believe he should sacrifice himself. Minisino does not listen to the pleas of Lucius, Anwatan, or any of the others. Only Christiana has an effect, by informing the buffalo warriors that they will have no power outside the spirit world because most of them are ghosts. Angered, Minisino kills Joe, and Lucius kills Minisino. Anwatan meets Joe in the afterlife and agrees to bring him back on the condition that he protect Rabedy from harm. On trial, Odawa faces either death or banishment. Grey proposes that he simply be freed on the condition that he will spend the rest of his days atoning for his crimes--and if he doesn't, he'll be hunted down. He accepts the offer. |
STORM: The Infinity Code | null | 2,007 | The story starts in a laboratory at Imperial College, London. Professor Vassily Baraban had developed an unknown, new type of weapon. He could barely settle down when two criminal/assassins, Sergei and Vladimir, ambush him. They demand for the professor to come with them. When Baraban refuses, they shoot him with electric bullets, rendering him unconscious, and take him away. In West London, 98 hours after the kidnapping, Will Knight--a 14-year-old boy and inventor of several cutting-edge gadgets--wakes up early to test his new invention. He arrives at a school, in which he successfully tests the ascension-speeding gadget. He then gives it the name "Rapid ascent". Gaia--a 14-year-old girl, witnesses Will testing his invention, and tells her friend, 14-year-old millionare Andrew. Will is then recruited for STORM. Meanwhile, Vassily Baraban sends an email to his son through the Faraday Cage he is trapped in. |
By Heresies Distressed | David Weber | 2,009 | Following the events of By Schism Rent Asunder, Emperor Cayleb of Charis sails off with his fleet to begin his campaign against the League of Corisande, under the leadership of the ruthless, though popular, Prince Hektor Daykyn. At the same time, the Charisian naval units that arrived at Ferayd, after demolishing a significant portion of it as retribution for the Ferayd Massacre, manage to seize the Inquisition's records in the city which turn out to contain the orders their agents received from the "Group of Four" and their prideful reports about zealous execution of those orders. Admiral Rock Point, the commander of the Charisian task force, orders the execution of Father Styvyn Graivyr, the Inquisition's senior priest in Ferayd, along with 15 other priests directly involved with the massacre and has the evidence made public. While the Chief Inquisitor, Zhaspahr Clyntahn, is furious with Charis' actions in Ferayd and demands that Holy War be declared immediately, Chancellor Zahmsyn Trynair is furious at Clyntahn for lying about the orders he issued to his agents in Ferayd. Fearing both the resistance of the secular rulers for holy war, as well as the opposition they face within the Temple, Trynair forces him to accept the punishment of penance that an internal board of inquiry (whose findings are a foregone conclusion) will hand down due to this scandal. Emperor Cayleb first visits Chisholm, to meet his mother-in-law and his new subjects for the first time and to prepare his fleet for the voyage to Corisande. He then sets sails for Zebediah, a duchy that was conquered by Corisande, but whose duke has been in contact with Prince Nahrmahn (now Cayleb's vassal) and who has voiced a willingness to ally with Cayleb against Corinsande. Cayleb then sets sail to Corisande, where he lands troops in one of the bigger port cities of the island, and attempts to use his troops superior artillery and rifles to overwhelm the much-larger Corisandian army. While the Charisians weapons do force the Corisandians to retreat, they manage to bog down Cayleb's forces in a mountain pass which is the only way to the capital city of Manchyr. With Merlin's assistance (and the help of his advanced technology), Cayleb provides his elite rifleman with the positions of the Corisandian's lookout points along the coast which are supposed to alert the Corisandian army in case the Charisians attempt to outflank them. The Charisian scout-snipers manage to find all of the important lookout points and deal with the lookouts, allowing the Charisians to land troops behind the Corisandian army and trap them in the same mountain pass, leaving very few troops between Cayleb and Manchyr. However, Merlin, who is so focused on the protecting Cayleb and using his SNARCs for gathering intelligence for the campaign, fails to notice two things in time: that Prince Hektor is sending his daughter and younger son accompanied by Earl Coris aboard a ship bound for their relatives in Delferahk; and that there is a conspiracy to assassinate Empress Sharleyan while she is at a spiritual retreat in a monastery, a conspiracy involving Sharleyan's uncle and the Temple Loyalists in Charis. While he and Cayleb fail to come up with a way to notify the navy in time to do anything about Hektor's children (without blowing his cover), he manages to arrive barely in time to save Sharleyan's life. However, he is forced to reveal his true nature to her and her last surviving guardsman and promises to visit her again and to bring Cayleb along for a lengthier explanation. Once Sharleyan returns to the capital, Merlin flies to Charis with Cayleb aboard a recon skimmer and together they tell Sharleyan the truth, which she and her guardsman manages to accept. He also gives her and Cayleb a communicator so that they can stay in touch with each other and the rest of the "inner circle" who know the truth. Meanwhile, Hektor accepts that his position is hopeless and is prepared to treat with Cayleb for terms. But before he manages to meet with Cayleb, he and his eldest son and heir are assassinated by agents of the church, who do not want Hektor working willingly with Cayleb and who wish to strap Cayleb with the blame (which is indeed what happens). Cayleb, despite his victory over Corisande, imposes fairly generous terms on the vanquished princedom, and accepts the naming of Hektor's younger son as prince with a regency council made up of Hektor's most prominent military commanders and nobles (though he is unlikely to be able to claim his throne, being far away under the power of the church). In Zion, however, things are not peaceful, as the Group of Four realize that they've just wasted money building galleys which have become obsolete and order the construction of galleons. In addition, Trynair and Clyntahn and preparing public opinion and the vicarite for Holy War, with a fiery speech from the grand vicar (who is little more than a puppet of Trynair's). This in turn causes a great deal of consternation with a group of reformers within the Temple itself, who have been trying for years to combat the corruption that has infected the church. "The Circle" however is impotent to stop the impending disaster and is also betrayed to the Grand Inquisitor by one of its more fearful members. Upon hearing about these reformers who would dare challenge his power, Clyntahn decides to bide his time, waiting for the most opportune moment to move against them, while they in turn rush to save as many of their members and their families as quietly as possible. The story ends with the Group of Four deciding to leave Hektor's son alone for now since he is of little use to them at the moment. |
Claim to Fame | Margaret Haddix | null | It was a talent that came out of nowhere. One day, Lindsay Scott was on the top of the world, the child star of a hit TV show. The next day her fame had turned into torture. Every time anyone said anything about her, anywhere in the world, she heard it: praise, criticism, back-stabbing… Lindsay had what looked like a nervous breakdown and vanished from the public eye. Now she’s sixteen, and a tabloid newspaper claims that her own father is holding her hostage. The truth is much stranger, but that tabloid article sets off a chain of events that forces Lindsay to finally confront who she really is. |
The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha | Lloyd Alexander | 1,978 | Kasha spends his days playing pranks on the people of Zara-Petra and doing as little work as possible. After participating in a magic show, he finds himself transported to the strange world of Abadan. Upon his arrival to the royal city of Shirazan, he is proclaimed king. At first, Kasha enjoys being royalty, but soon discovers that there is more to being king than eating good food and enjoying his lavish surroundings. When Kasha attempts to take control of his kingdom's laws and policies, he meets with strong opposition from his Grand Vizier, Shugdad Mirza. Soon Kasha is forced to flee for his life and escapes the palace with the help of a slave girl and a public versifier. |
Kit's Wilderness | David Almond | 1,999 | Thirteen-year-old Kit and his family have moved back to Stoneygate to be with his grandfather, who is succumbing to Alzheimer’s Disease, after Kit's Grandmother dies. His grandfather, an ex-miner, tells him about the town's coal-mining days and the hardships and disasters that were part of his youth. Kit meets Allie Keenan, full of energy and life, but also shadowy John Askew and the dangerous 'game' he plays – a game called Death. Through playing the game, Kit comes to see the lost children of the mines and begins to connect his grandfather’s fading memories to his, his friends’ and Stoneygate’s history. The Watsons are known as one of the “Old families” because they have ancestors who worked in the mines before they were closed, such as Kit’s grandfather. Askew surrounds himself with characters that are from families who worked in the mines including Kit. Now that he is a part of Askew’s group, Kit is invited to play the game Death, in which they reenact the death of children in the mines. Once chosen for Death, Kit undergoes a change; snapping at Allie on multiple occasions. Noting this change, his teacher Miss. Bush follows him and uncovers the game. Askew is expelled from school for being the leader, and to escape his father, who is an alcoholic, runs away and lives in an abandoned mine shafts. Angry at Kit for ending the game and getting him expelled, Askew sends Bobby Carr, another character from the “Old families” group, to bring Kit to the cave where they confront each other in the book’s climax. After some initial arguments reveal Askew’s madness, Kit tells Askew a story he “wrote for you[Askew].” The story mirrors Askew’s life from the perspective of an early man named Lak, and while telling it they see ghosts from the story. When the tale concludes, the ghost takes a “part of me[Askew]” and he is no longer mad. Allie finds the two of them in the mine after getting their location from Bobby, and they go back to town. Askew is accepted back into school to take art classes, his father stops drinking, and at the end of the novel, Kit’s grandfather dies. |
The White Darkness | Geraldine McCaughrean | null | Shy teenager Symone ‘Sym’ Wates is taken to Antarctica by her domineering 'uncle', Victor Briggs, who after the death of her real parent has elected himself her surrogate father. An obsessive believer in the hollow earth theories of John Cleves Symmes, Jr., Briggs is convinced that in Antarctica he will find the entrance to the Inner World and its inhabitants. He is ready to sacrifice Sym and others to prove his theory, and increasingly puts her in danger until she finally sees the truth about him. She is then able to escape his plans for her. Briggs dies still pursuing his obsession while Sym returns to her own life with a new freedom. |
On the Jellicoe Road | Melina Marchetta | null | The story is set around the life of Taylor Lily Markham, the 17-year-old leader of the boarding school on the Jellicoe Road (country NSW/ACT). Taylor was abandoned at the 7/11 on the Jellicoe Road by her mother when she was 11, and her only recollection of her father is a brief memory of standing on her father's shoulders, which were revealed to be Jude's shoulders later in the story. The only adult influence in her life is her mentor/guardian Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river, and writes stories about five kids who lived there in the 1980s and who has suddenly vanished into thin air at a time when Taylor really needs her. To top all of Taylor’s problems off, there is a territory war going on between the boarders, the Townies (kids from the Jellicoe Town) and the Cadets (Sydney boys who come for a six-week training exercise every year to Jellicoe). The leader of the cadets this year happens to be the very boy who Taylor ran away with when she was 14 in search of her mother. The one who betrayed her trust and she never wants to see again. Running parallel to Taylor's story is the story that Hannah writes, about the five kids in the 1980s. As Hannah has not yet complied it, the story is shown in pieces throughout the novel. |
O Seminarista | Bernardo Guimarães | 1,872 | The book is set on the city of Itapecerica (then called Vila de Tamanduá), in Minas Gerais. Eugênio and Margarida are two childhood friends who love each other, but following orders of his father, Eugênio is sent to a seminary, in order to become a priest. However, he is not able to forget Margarida, and keeps on dilacerating himself between religiosity and the pleasures of flesh. Despite this he receives his ordination and becomes a priest. Returning to his hometown in order to celebrate his first mass, he discovers that Margarida is very sick and nearly dying. Unable to restrain himself, he and Margarida have amorous relations. Unbeknownst to him, she dies shortly after he leaves. Later on, Eugênio goes on celebrating his first mass — a requiem mass. However, when he discovers that the mass is being made in honor of a deceased Margarida, he has a mental breakdown, and taking off his priest vests, he runs away naked of the church, in a frenzy. |
Hidden Empire | Orson Scott Card | null | The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the countryside. At the close of Empire, political scientist and government adviser Averell Torrent had maneuvered himself into the presidency of the United States. And now that he has complete power at home, he plans to expand American imperial power around the world. Opportunity comes quickly. There’s a deadly new plague in Africa, and it is devastating the countryside and cities. President Torrent declares American solidarity with the victims, but places all of Africa in quarantine until a vaccine is found or the disease burns itself out. And he sends Captain Bartholomew Coleman, Cole to his friends, to run the relief operations and protect the American scientists working on identifying the virus. If Cole and his team can avoid dying of the plague, or being cut down by the weapons of fearful African nations, they might do some good. Or they might be out of the way for good. |
Relentless | Dean Koontz | 2,009 | Cullen "Cubby" Greenwich has just released his sixth novel, One O'Clock Jump which is generally well received in the literary community. However, Shearman Waxx, considered to be a preeminent literary critic, writes a scathing, albeit somewhat inaccurate review of Cubby's latest work. Against the advice of his wife, a children's book author in her own right, Cubby attempts to gather some information about his new nemesis. Cubby learns that he and the critic share a favorite dining locale. Accompanying Cubby to the restaurant is his six year old prodigy son, Milo. A chance encounter in the men's room foretells the ensuing chaos when Shearman Waxx simply utters "Doom." Receiving a fortuitous call from a fellow writer who had previously endured a similar slandering at the hands of Waxx, Cubby is told of the horrific manner in which the writer's family was murdered. The writer encourages Greenwich to abandon his home and flee. Set into motion are a series of violent events, beginning with the destruction of the Greenwich home. All members of the family, rescued pup Lassie included, flee to the presumed safety of a friend's real estate investment project. When their moves are quickly countered by the escalating psychopathy of their pursuer, it becomes evident they need to seek armament and information. The family seeks refuge with Penny Greenwich's apocalypse-fearing family who conveniently have fortified an underground bunker and stocked it with a cache of weapons. Not content being forced into the role of reclusive prey, the family embarks on a journey of discovery to determine who it is they're dealing with and what can be done to stop him. Their journey takes them to the hometown of two former artists in an attempt to digest the brutality with which they and their families were dispatched. Along the way, the family counters the rising tension and ever-present shadow of death with bits of sarcastic humor and Milo, by engrossing himself in his scientific projects. The story continues to follow the Greenwiches through a series of tense and suspenseful events as they search for clues into the past of their tormentor and seek to discover his hidden motives. After an encounter in which a former victim named Henry. Former Sheriff Truman is shot and killed by Waxx's associates, Waxx himself is captured by the family. They take him to his own house, and encounter his mother, Zazu, who reveals herself as the mastermind of an organization that seeks to control society by destroying those who create positive symbols of hope and happiness through their artwork. Zazu orders her grandson to make sure that Waxx is in the car. He stabs Waxx, killing him, and Zazu is enraged. She pulls out her gun which was hidden and kills her grandson, and then shoots Cubby. Cubby falls to the floor and dies. Then, suddenly, salt shakers which Milo had given them both previously activate. Time goes backwards and Cubby is saved, but Zazu dies. The novel ends with the family traveling back to the bunker, seeing it as an oasis of protection from Zazu's organization and the world they intend to create. |
Not That Sort of Girl | Mary Wesley | 1,987 | At the age of 19 Rose is in love with the passionate but penniless Mylo Cooper, but agrees to marriage Ned Peel. She doesn't love Ned, but it's the safe thing to do. Ned has inherited a country house called Slepe from an uncle and the married couple moves in shortly after the wedding. Rose immediately falls in love with the house and its garden, if not with its owner. During the war Ned is away from the house a lot and her real love, Mylo, starts visiting her at Slepe. They go on meeting each other secretly throughout all 48 years of Rose's marriage until her husband dies.Shortly after her husband's death Rose leaves Slepe, her beloved home throughout half a century (now her son's and not so beloved daughter in law's), taking only a few things with her. Temporarily installed in a hotel room Rose starts looking back on her life. Her marriage has been a marriage of convenience; she has never been passionately in love with her husband. However, on their wedding night she promised him that she would never leave him - a promise she could never break. Now, at the age of 67 she is free - and don't know where she is going in life. |
Lowell Park | null | null | Set in 1990, Jenny Brix lives in Iowa City. She is a history buff. She even has a Ronald Reagan picture when he was in his 20's as a lifeguard! When she goes to a meeting, a very old professor has a heart attack. Panicking, she uses CPR on him, thus saving his life. After a few stops to the hospital, he asks her which US president she likes best. She answers Ronald Reagan. So then the professor tells her that she can go back in time and meet him. She is shocked, but the professor keeps telling her it's true. She finally believes him, sort of. The professor takes her to Dixon, Illinois, Reagan's childhood home. There professor tells her she has 80 hours to stay out of the timezone, or her body will be used to the other timezones and can't come back to present day (1990). When she goes into the time machine, it actually is set on 1832, instead of 1932 (where she was going). She then meets Abraham Lincoln (who develops a little crush on her), and Chief Black Hawk during the Black Hawk War. After all of that is straightened out, she goes to 1932 with less than half the time left she started with. Once she gets there she sees a young, handsome Ronald Reagan going past her to save a person from drowning. She then gets some friends, Scooter and Betsy. They say there is a dance at Dixon's run down, old high school. There she dances with Ronald and his brother. While dancing with Ronald, she falls down the steps with him. They then get a crush on each other. Afer going on a few dates, she has to go to her original timezone. Her and Ronald have a sad exchange (Ronald doesn't know about the time traveling) when she has to leave. Jenny then takes Scooter and Betsy to Lowell Park, where she shows them the time machine. She then leaves, leaving the others dumbfounded. Wen she comes back, professor says he is Scooter, and spent the rest of his life finding things about the time machine after she left until he finally made the time machine. In the epilogue, Reagan visits Dixon the final time. He goes back to Lowell Park, where he spent 6 years as a lifeguard at. He then sees a familiar face from the past (Jenny) near a tree. He shrugs it off and goes back visiting. |
The Wise Man's Fear | Patrick Rothfuss | 2,011 | The book begins with the dawn of a new day in Kote's inn. After breakfast, Kvothe continues his story beginning with the admissions for the next university term. On the day of his interview, Ambrose slips him an alchemical potion which removes the ingester's moral inhibitions. As a result, he has to take his interviews later. To pay for his tuition, Kvothe borrows money from the moneylender Devi. Master Elodin allows Kvothe to join his new class on naming and subsequently convinces Master Lorren to allow Kvothe back into the Archives. Denna reveals that Ambrose has a ring that belongs to her. Kvothe plans to please Denna by breaking into Ambrose's room and stealing the ring back. However, Ambrose returns early, forcing Kvothe to leave by rushing out the window before he is able to steal the ring. Kvothe begins to experience odd problems with his body and concludes that he is the target of malfeasance, an attack from another wizard, akin to Voodoo-Practics. Though he first blames Ambrose, his friends convince him that it is more likely to be Devi, who extracted his blood as security against the loan. He confronts Devi, but loses the subsequent sympathetic battle. He then concludes that Ambrose has his blood, attempts to make a defensive device against sympathy called a gram, and succeeds after some difficulties. He also destroys his blood sample by setting fire to Ambrose's rooms with the help of his friends. Kvothe is then arrested for the incident in The Name of the Wind where he inadvertently attacked Ambrose by calling the name of the wind and breaking his arm. Though he is later cleared of all charges, it is suggested to him by Elxa Dal, among others, that he should leave the University for a few months. Count Threpe persuades him to go to Severen, where the powerful Vintish noble Maer Alveron has need of a talented musician. In Severen, the Maer reveals that he needs Kvothe's help to woo the Lady Meluan Lackless. Kvothe finds out that the Maer is being poisoned by his resident arcanist, Caudicus. He learns that she hates the Ruh because her sister ran off with one. Kvothe also finds Denna during one of his excursions to Severen-Low. He uses his feelings for her to write letters, songs and poems he then dedicates to Meluan. The wooing proves successful and Kvothe rises higher in the Maer's favor. The Maer persuades Kvothe to lead a party of four mecenaries, to get rid of bandits who were waylaying the Maer's tax collectors. One of the mercenaries, named Tempi, is an Adem, famous warriors of unequaled skill. Kvothe persuades him to teach him Ketan (a series of combat moves, similar to T'ai chi ch'uan) and the Lethani, the philosophy all Adem follow. The group eventually finds the bandits and, although heavily outnumbered, manages to kill them due to Kvothe´s clever use of sympathy. Their leader, who seems familiar to Kvothe and is indifferent to arrow wounds, escapes. While returning, they encounter Felurian, the mythical Fae women known for seducing men and keeping them until they die. Kvothe chases after her while his companions flee. Kvothe is initially seduced by Felurian, but he regains control of his mind and matches wills with Felurian. He calls her true name (although he believes himself to be calling the name of the wind at the time) and is able to temporarily throw off her magic. He composes half a song about her, and convinces Felurian to release him, so that he will be able to spread the song he has written about her among humans. Felurian agrees to let him go, provided he promises to come back. She weaves him a cloak of shadow, called a shaed, to keep him safe. While staying with Felurian, Kvothe meets the Cthaeh, a malevolent, omniscient oracle whose influence is known by the Fae to bring about disaster. Kvothe eventually leaves Felurian and catches up to the rest of his group. Although to his friends and other humans he has only been gone three days, it is hinted that he was gone much longer. On the road back to Severen, Kvothe and Tempi encounter a group of Adem mercenaries, who become angry with Tempi for teaching Kvothe the Ketan and the Lethani. Kvothe agrees to travel back with him to help defend Tempi's choice to his superior, Shehyn. When Kvothe arrives in Ademre, Shehyn agrees to apprentice Kvothe after testing him and appoints the teacher Vashet to teach Kvothe. Kvothe finally passes two tests, calling the name of the wind to pass one of them, and proves himself a member of the Adem. He earns himself a new name, Maedre (meaning either The Flame, The Thunder, or The Broken Tree), and a two-thousand year old sword called Saicere (meaning 'the broken breath'), although Kvothe renames it Caesura (meaning a pause or break in a song or a line of a poem). He then leaves for Severen. On his way to Severen, he runs into a traveling troupe, claiming to be Edema Ruh, but their odd behaviour makes him suspicious. After finding out that they have kidnapped and raped two girls from a nearby town, Kvothe poisons their food and kills the sick troupers during the night. Kvothe leaves their leader mortally wounded but alive and interrogates him. He discovers that the Ruh impersonators were masquerading as a troupe for cover. Kvothe leads the two traumatized girls back to their town and then resumes his journey to Severen. In Severen, he shares his theory about the Amyr with the Maer, who has come to the same conclusion: that the Amyr still exist, but are in hiding, and to protect themselves are expunging any information about themselves in any records they can find. The Maer and Meluan (who have been married in the meantime) show Kvothe the Lackless heirloom which is shut in a chest. Kvothe then reveals to them his actions after leaving the Adem. Kvothe becomes enraged after Meluan rants about the Ruh, and Kvothe reveals that he is also of the Ruh and consequently insults her by seeming to have intuited that a Ruh trouper had seduced her as well. The Maer becomes angry and asks him to leave Severen. However, for the services Kvothe has rendered, the Maer pardons Kvothe for any wrongdoing in the slaughter of the Edema Ruh impersonators, grants him a writ (not a full writ of patronage) allowing him to perform anywhere in Vintas under the Maer's name, and agrees to pay Kvothe's tuition at the University indefinitely. Kvothe returns to the University, where he learns that he was presumed dead. He makes a deal with the University bursar (treasurer) to drive up his own tuitions in return for half the tuition above ten talents. He also starts earning compensation for sales of his Bloodless device, which is his invention that protects the bearer from fired arrows. As a result, he achieves financial stability. He reduces his work at the Fishery, and uses the time to further his naming studies. Stories about his time with Felurian, the Adem and Trebon have become famous even in Imre and the University. During a trip to Tarbean, he saves Denna from an inability to breathe by calling the name of the wind, similar to what Abenthy did for Kvothe in Book 1. They reconnect to some degree, yet Kvothe's new experiences make him desirous of a more solid romantic connection, causing Denna to withdraw. Only when he presents her with her lost ring does she temper her anger. The two part on uncertain terms as she heads north while Kvothe remains at the University. During the present day, people stop by occasionally to make use of Chronicler's writing abilities. During one of these interludes, Chronicler gets one of the locals to tell a story about Kvothe to try to influence him to share the story of his arrest and subsequent trial, arguing that this is the first and most notorious story ever spread of Kvothe in which he learned Tema in a single day, but Kvothe makes up a story about him back with Bast's help and the Chronicler gives in. During another interlude, when Bast goes off to Shep's wake, two soldiers enter the inn to rob it. Kvothe steps forward to fight them but is badly beaten. When Bast returns, he helps to heal him. In the end, Bast leaves the inn and confronts the two soldiers at their campfire, having staged the entire thing in an attempt to wake Kvothe from his fighting stupor and it having failed spectacularly. |
The Little Red Hen | null | null | In the tale, The Little Red Hen finds a grain of wheat, and asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it. However, no animal will volunteer to help her. At each further stage (harvest, threshing, milling the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread), the hen again asks for help from the other animals, but again she gets no assistance. Finally, the hen has completed her task, and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous non-participants eagerly volunteer. However, she declines their help, stating that no one aided her in the preparation work, and eats it with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else. The moral of this story is that those who show no willingness to contribute to an end product do not deserve to enjoy the end product: "if any man will not work, neither let him eat." |
Wondrous Strange | null | 2,008 | Kelley Winslow is a teenage actress who lives in New York. When the lead actress in their production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream gets injured, Kelley goes from understudy to star in an instant. In her first rehearsal, she forgets a few lines, ending in her going to the Central Park to practice. Meanwhile, Sonny Flannery, a Janus guard protecting the mortal realm, is hunting the Fae that passed through The Gate, the only way through the Otherworld and ours. He sees her as a Firework and is merely curious in what she really is. He starts to follow her and in the end she becomes furious that he won't stop bugging her and she yells at him. During her ranting, however, Sonny is hurtled across the rad by her fist and sees her with light encircling her. He notices it is great power. When she is done she walks off, and another of the Janus guard appear. Sonny asks him if her saw the bright light and he replies uncomfortably "Might have...". Just when she thinks things couldn't get any worse, they do. Having lived all her life hidden in the mortal realm, she is unknown to the fact that she is actually a Faerie princess, stolen from the Faerie realm as an infant. When Sonny discovers her true identity,an interlinking chain of events threaten to destroy both the realms, mortal as well as Faerie. |
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture | Douglas Coupland | 1,991 | Generation X is a framed narrative, like Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales or The Decameron by Boccaccio. The framing story is that of three friends—Dag, Claire, and the narrator, Andy—living together in the Mojave Desert in California. The tales are told by the various characters in the novel, which is arranged into three parts. Each chapter is separately titled rather than numbered, with titles such as "I Am Not A Target Market" and "Adventure Without Risk Is Disneyland". The locations of the novel was set circa 1990 Southern California in the then rapidly-growing and economic booming-turned-into-depressed communities of Palm Springs and the Inland Empire (California) region. Some characters were born and raised in L.A. and suburban Orange County, California. The first part of the novel takes place over the course of a picnic. Andrew, Dag, and Claire tell each other stories—some personal, others imagined—over the course of the day. Through these tales, the reader glimpses the characters' motivations and personalities. The initial group of characters is expanded in this section, which introduces stories from additional characters: Claire's boyfriend Tobias, Claire's friend and Dag's love interest Elvissa, Andy's brother Tyler, and Andy's boss and neighbour and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. MacArthur. Each character represents a cultural type; Elvissa is constantly stuck in the past, Tobias is a "yuppie", Tyler is a "global teen", and the neighbours represent members of an older generation. The frame is muted here, as the narrative draws back to reveal more of the main characters, while allowing for other characters' stories to be heard. In this section, the novel continues to pull back its focus, as Andy and Claire travel away from California. Again, the frame is enlarged to include additional characters. Claire travels to New York, while Andy takes a dreaded trip to visit his family. Through the characters' personal and mental journeys, more tales are told and more of the characters' personal stories are revealed. |
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet | null | 2,009 | The novel is told from the perspective of twelve-year-old T.S. Spivet, a mapmaking enthusiast living on a ranch near Divide, Montana, a small village near Butte, Montana, practically on the continental divide. T.S.'s mother, whom he he consistently refers to as "Dr. Clair," is an entomologist preoccupied - or so it seems - with the search for a possibly nonexistent species of insect, the "tiger monk beetle". His father, an equally emotionally detached rancher with no understanding for the world of scientific investigation, solely judges - or so it seems - T.S. for his nonexistent cowboy abilities. T.S.'s younger brother, Layton, who followed his father's cowboy lifestyle and interests, was killed in a joint brotherly experiment that involved the scientific investigation of gun shooting. His elder sister, Gracie, is in her teenage years, prone to "awful girl pop" and violent mood swings. T.S.'s love for scientific research leads to a friendship with his mother's partner, who unbeknownst to the Spivets has sent several of T.S.'s works into various magazines and societies. One day, T.S. receives a call from a man at the Smithsonian Institution who, believing T.S. to be an adult scientist, informs him that he has won the prestigious Baird Award and is invited to give a talk at the Institution's ceremonies. Without telling his family, T.S. decides to run away from home to attend the event, which he will travel to by freighthopping. Hiding himself in a Winnebago that is being shipped, T.S. settles down for a lengthy journey, imagining the Winnebago to be a conversational companion along the way. The middle section of the novel consists largely of text from one of his mother's notebooks, which he took with him on impulse. In a surprise departure from Dr. Claire's scientific fixations, the notebook is a semi-fictional account of a Spivet ancestor who was herself a great researcher and cartographer. This reveals a side to his mother T.S. had not been aware of, and a mystery begins to form as he rides the rails. |
The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl | Belle de Jour | 2,005 | The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl begins with Belle de Jour introducing herself as a "whore", then further explaining that she does not mean it metaphorically, and that she literally is a "whore". After the prologue the book begins in a diary format, with Belle explaining the clients she meets and her personal complications that become entwined with her job as a call girl. The average diary entries last little longer than a page and are always titled with the date, which is written in French, for example, the first diary entry reads "Samedi, le 1 Novembre", which translates into Saturday, 1 November. Each chapter is broken apart by the month the diary entries were written in, for example "Novembre" (November). |
I Am a Werewolf Cub | null | null | Ulf was bitten in his leg when stealing apples. He read the Book of Werewolves and understands he turns into a werewolf at full moon. His family notices that the previously timid Ulf is now talking back and sneaks out at night. sv:Jag är en varulvsunge |
I Love You, Beth Cooper | Larry Doyle | 2,007 | At his high school graduation, valedictorian Denis Cooverman states to the entire gymnasium that he's had a crush on cheerleader Beth Cooper for six years. During the speech, he singles out several members of the class including the class bully and a pretty but shallow party girl, and tells his movie-quoting best friend Rich to admit that he's gay. Denis' speech upsets everyone except Beth, who thinks it was "sweet", giving Denis the courage to invite her to a party at his house that night. After the speech, it is revealed that Beth in fact has a boyfriend, an off duty army soldier named Kevin who threatens Denis. After his declaration, Denis' mother and father leave him and Rich alone at the house for their party, which no one attends, as they are social outcasts. Beth shows up in her tiny blue car with her friends Cammy and Treece (the group of three is known as "The Trinity") at Denis' house that evening. Things are awkward and become worse when Kevin shows up with his army buddies, and Denis and Rich are assaulted and Denis' house (the kitchen) is trashed. Beth and the Trinity help Denis and Rich get away. Beth is meant to be a dream girl, but has glaring imperfections that shatter Denis' fantasy. Throughout the novel the real Beth shows that she is nowhere near the perfect girl that Denis has imagined. They then travel out to Old Tobacco Road where Denis and Beth drink and converse about their roles in high school and why exactly Denis fell for Beth; he admits it was because she was pretty and he always sat behind her. Cammy, Treece, and Rich try to tip over a cow but fail miserably. The girls then proceed to tell a scary story to get the boys entranced then floor it. They eventually crash into Denis' parents car where his parents were having sex. The group then heads to Valli Wooly's (the shallow rich party girl) party. Denis, feeling uninvited does not accompany the Trinity into the party but decides to enter in anyway later. After some mishaps involving getting macked on by a fat girl, meeting the ugly girl he once made out with, he is again confronted by Kevin. Kevin and his gang then proceed to beat Denis up in front of the entire party in the most humiliating fashion, pounding him to the beat of the song playing. Beth then crashes Kevin's Humvee into the house itself and the group escapes. The group heads back to the high school where Beth, Cammy, and Treece show off their cheer leading act. After the act, the girls head to the showers and Rich and Denis follow. Rich immediately proceeds to enter in the showers with the girls but as Denis is taking off his pants, he sees Beth get out the shower. Rich and Denis fight off Kevin for a bit by using their wet towels to thrash them with; this they learned to do after a brutal beating Rich had in freshman year. The group escapes in Beth's original car which Kevin used to drive down to the high school from the party. After escaping, Beth reveals to Denis that she only came to his party because it would be "funny", leaving Denis disappointed. Denis gets a nose bleed and Treece gives him tampons to stick up his nostrils to stop the bleeding. Next, Beth tells Denis his shirt smells and forces him to take it off. Beth takes his shirt and holds it out the window to "air it off"; the shirt then flies out the window. They stop the car and Denis, in his underwear, goes to find his shirt, which he finds in a puddle of mud being eaten by a pair of raccoons. Denis gives up his attempt at retrieval and returns to the car in only his "lucky" (meaning holey) underwear. Beth lends him a poncho. The gang arrives at Treece's father's cabin where they all share a drink. Beth goes out with Denis for a smoke and to watch the moon. They talk about their futures and the fact that Beth is resigned to the fact that her life after this is not going to get much better but that Denis has so many opportunities available to him. Back at the cabin Cammy and Treece imply that Rich is gay. He continues to deny he is. So they decide to test him. Cammy grabs a condom and they have sex, where it's revealed that he isn't gay but the two girls might be as the sex is mostly Cammy and Treece having sex with Rich just being a bystander. They all share what they plan to do once the summer's over realizing they are going to be in the same dorm with similar majors. Beth and Denis talk about their plans after summer, and they make out. Beth breaks off before they go too far and Kevin and his gang show up again. After beating up Denis a bit more they are confronted by Rich who has a rifle belonging to Treece's father. However before they can be driven off the rifle falls apart revealing that it was not functioning. Kevin then forces Denis to row a boat out to the middle of the lake. Denis hits Kevin with an oar knocking him out of the boat and unconscious. Denis, fearing for his college admittance, jumps over and rescues Kevin revealing that he is a champion swimmer. He pulls Kevin to shore and prepares to administer CPR. Kevin however, recovers and subdues him yet again. Before anything more happens, the police arrive. Fighting stereotypes of dumb teenagers Rich, Treece and Cammy had called the police. The police bring the whole group in. Kevin's father forgoes charging Beth with stealing his car if they don't charge Kevin with attempting to kill Denis. They are taken home. Beth is dropped off at an empty house. Beth and Denis share a moment where Denis promises to marry Beth if she isn't fat at their 10 year reunion. On the way home, Rich reveals that he thinks he might be gay. When they get home Denis's parents are there and inform him that he will have to be punished. After his mom goes in, Denis tells his dad it was worth it. His father tells him not to mention that to his mother. In the conclusion, Denis grew seven inches in the summer and gained 40 pounds. Rich tried being gay and didn't much like being homosexual either and is waiting for the next thing. Treece and Cammy decided they were just good friends and they shouldn't drink so much around each other. Beth and Denis see each other a week before he intends to go off to school. |
The Mist in the Mirror: A Ghost Story | Susan Hill | 1,992 | Sir James Monmouth has travelled all his life. After the death of his parents he was raised by his guardian. Later he began to travel and in the story he arrives in England. He sees a young, pale ghostlike boy upon his arrival at the Cross Keys Inn. Strangely, he happens to see this ghost more often in the following months that he is in England. His goal is to gain as much information as possible about the great traveller Conrad Vane. |
What Katy Did Next | null | null | The book opens by reintroducing the Carr family and the widow Mrs. Ashe. Mrs. Ashe has her nephew, Walter, over for a visit and it is discovered that he has scarlet fever. Anxious that her only daughter Amy should not contract the disease, Amy is sent to live with the Carrs where she builds up a particular rapport with the eldest daughter Katy. Following Walter's recovery, Mrs. Ashe decides that she should have a vacation to Europe and asks that Katy be her travel companion. Initially reluctant due to familial obligations, Katy is persuaded by her father to go and is given $300 for the trip. Before she begins her travels, Katy stops in Boston to visit her old friend Rose Red Browne from Hillsover. It is discovered that she has since gotten married to a man named Deniston and had a child by him. Whilst both ladies are affectionate for the baby, they disagree over the natural world which the self confessed "Bostonian" Rose regards with disdain while Katy is enamored by all things natural. A reunion of the Hillsover girls is organised in Rose's house with Mary Silver, Esther Dearbon, Ellen Gray, and Alice Gibbons in attendance. The girls reminisce about their time at Hillsover and it is discovered that what has happened to previous characters; Miss Jane is still teaching, Lilly Page is in Europe while Bella is teaching in India. After they meet up, Katy departs on a steamer to England with the Ashes and following a journey where all three experience bouts of seasickness, they eventually come within view of the Irish Coast and start their trip in Europe. Katy's experience in England (Chapter 3 Story Book England) involve her being perplexed by English culture, such as when she discovers a "fine day" in England is any day it's not raining and the English muffins Dickens commended in his books are really tasteless. She also does some sight-seeing. |
Winter Hawk | Craig Thomas | null | The events of Winter Hawk transpire over a few days in which the Soviet Union will launch into orbit the first in a series of laser battle stations, the existence of which they have kept a closely guarded secret. The launch is meant to coincide with the signing of a new and apparently groundbreaking treaty dramatically reducing nuclear weapons to be kept by both sides, but excluding space based weapons such as the one the Soviets will be launching, mostly because none are known to exist. The Americans know of the weapon because a Soviet technician named Philip Kedrov has been supplying them information, operating under the code-name “Cactus Plant”. The Soviet space weapon places the Americans in a painful dilemma: they can neither sign a treaty that will dramatically cede the balance of power to the Soviet Union, nor can they back out of the treaty lacking proof of the Soviet weapon. The only alternative is a deep cover extraction mission of Kedrov and his evidence from the Soviet’s space launch complex, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The mission, involving two stolen Soviet Mil Mi-24 helicopters to be flown by CIA pilots — one of whom is CIA pilot Mitchell Gant — is codenamed “Winter Hawk”. The story, which then shifts to Baikonur, reveals competing agendas within the Soviet camp. The Soviet civilian leadership has allowed development of the laser weapon, whose launch is codenamed “Linchpin”, to placate a military antagonized by military spending cuts. Unbeknownst to Soviet leaders, the Soviet military has its own plans for the weapon, including a live fire test, codenamed “Lightning”, against the American Space Shuttle Atlantis. The novel suggests “Lightning” as a prelude to an army-backed coup to seize control over the Soviet Union, even as the laser weapon will make the Soviet Union the world’s leading super power. KGB Colonel Dmitri Priabin, introduced as a minor character in Firefox, elevated to a more central role in Firefox Down and now the ranking KGB officer in Baikonur, nurses a painful grudge against Mitchell Gant due to the tragic events of Firefox Down. Like the reader, Priabin quickly learns of the existence of “Lightning” but not the details. The military has kept its plans secret by arranging fatal “accidents” for any civilians they suspect have learned of “Lightning”. He has also learned of Kedrov's treachery, and keeps him under surveillance. Priabin investigates the murders as a pretext to learn details of “Lightning” itself, which he correctly concludes is an illegal military mission. He also surveils Kedrov, suspecting that the Americans will try extracting him before the launch of the laser weapon, although he has no way of knowing that the mission will be flown by Mitchell Gant. Gant’s mission proves ill-fated from the start. The C-5 cargo plane carrying the helicopters and their crew to their staging point, suffers a fuel-system malfunction requiring the jettisoning of the helicopters on a remote beach — nearly destroying both of them. The helicopters are made flight-ready and the mission commences, only for one of the helicopters to be shot down over Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Gant narrowly avoids destruction over Afghanistan only to be captured once he reaches Baikonur and tries to extract Kedrov, falling into the hands of KGB officers who had been surveilling the turncoat engineer. Barely keeping himself from killing Gant, Priabin instead takes him into custody, then continues his investigation into “Lightning”. Priabin soon learns the truth, but he is unable to warn Moscow because an Army-imposed, pre-launch security lockdown has cut Baikonur off from the rest of the world. Realizing that the army will soon eliminate him as it has other obstacles, Priabin is forced to save Gant in order for the American to fly them both out of Baikonur along with evidence of “Lightning”. Using the KGB’s Mil Mi-2 helicopter, the two of them manage to get evidence of the laser weapon, but not before their helicopter is severely damaged by fire from a group of the army’s Mil Mi-24 helicopters. Gant barely escapes the Army patrols before he crash lands outside of Baikonur. With evidence of the weapon, Gant escapes on foot. Priabin, weighing his hatred for Gant against the implications for "Lightning", chooses to be captured by the army. Gant steals an Antonov An-2 biplane used for crop dusting at a nearby collective farm. He narrowly escapes army helicopters sent to capture him, but not before the Soviets have successfully launched their shuttle carrying the laser weapon. General Rodin, the army’s ranking officer, decides against immediately killing Priabin. It was Rodin’s son who revealed to Priabin the details of “Lightning” before being killed by subordinate officers acting against the general’s orders. Led to believe that the KGB drove his son to suicide, but suspecting his other officers nonetheless, Rodin keeps Priabin in his own custody, even as he orders a massive hunt for Gant. Emotionally unhinged by his son’s death, and his wife’s suicide immediately following it, Rodin is unable to keep Priabin from escaping before the laser weapon has been successfully placed in orbit. With the help of Kedrov, Priabin finds the covert tracking station the army will use to control the laser satellite, and sabotages its orbital uplink. With his plane shot down by Soviet fighters near the Turkish border, Gant is forced to make the journey on foot while being chased by Soviet troops. Having sent his special code over the air before bailing out, Gant’s presence is now known to the Americans as well, who send their own helicopters across the border to save him. The novel closes with the signing of the new arms reduction treaty, which the Soviets have graciously amended to include space-based weapons. |
The Declaration | Gemma Malley | 2,008 | In the year 2040 scientists created a drug (called Longevity) to prevent the aging process and stop dying. However, because people are still being born yet no one is dying, the Earth quickly becomes too crowded. Therefore, in the year 2080, anyone who wants to take Longevity is forced to sign The Declaration, agreeing that if they take Longevity, they will not have any children. Of course, there are people who resist, and refuse not to bear children. The children of those individuals are offensively referred to as "Surplus". In some countries, the Surpluses are killed the moment they are born, but in countries such as Britain, they are taken from their parents at birth to live in "Surplus Halls" where they are taught that their existence is a crime against Nature, and that they ought to work hard if they want to redeem for their parents' sins and become a "Valuable Asset", in which case they would be able to work for "The Legals" and be partially free. Surplus Anna is nearly 15 years old. She lives in Grange Hall (a surplus hall), and is a prefect. She was taken away from her parents at the age of two and now, in year 2140, she has learned to hate them for bringing her to this world. Anna has already worked for a legal lady for a month (Julia Sharpe), as a part of her pending process, by which she ought to become Valuable Asset the moment she comes of age. Mrs Sharpe has given her a small pink diary in which Anna writes every night, but is forced to hide it away in the bathroom, in order not to get in trouble with Mrs Pincent, the House Matron in charge of Grange Hall. Then one day, Peter arrives at Grange Hall, and Anna's world is turned upside down. Peter defies everything she believes in, insists upon calling her Anna Covey, and keeps telling her that he knows her parents, and they love her. Anna is at first annoyed with him, but soon she becomes intrigued by his bold attitude and bravery. When Peter offers for them to run away, to find her parents, Anna is torn between her curiosity and the rules she has been following her whole life. She then accepts Peters invitation to run away from Grange Hall, leading to a lot of trouble. They then have a close call with the Catchers and are helped by a lady named Julia Sharpe. The plot proceeds to Anna reuniting with her parents and later, them killing themselves to make her, and her brother Ben, legal. Meanwhile, Margaret Pincent kills Peter's father, making him legal as well. The two legals arouse a lot of suspicion leading to the next book, The Resistance. |
The Resistance | Gemma Malley | 2,008 | The book starts off with Peter sitting in a room talking to a counselor. This is to see how he is getting on in the outside world as a "Legal". He tells the counselor he has finally agreed to go work for his grandfather who makes Longetivity drugs which lets people live forever. The counselor is thrilled but Peter is only going to work there to help the Underground, an organization which believes that the Longevity drug is evil and is trying to destroy it. |
Atala | François-René de Chateaubriand | 1,801 | The frame story: A young disillusioned Frenchman, René, has joined an Indian tribe and married a woman named Céluta. On a hunting expedition, one moonlit night, René asks Chactas, the old man who adopted him, to relate the story of his life. At the age of seventeen, the Natchez Chactas loses his father during a battle against the Muscogees. He flees to St Augustine, Florida, where he is raised in the household of the Spaniard Lopez. After 2½ years, he sets out for home, but is captured by the Muscogees and Seminoles. The chief Simagan sentences him to be burnt in their village. The women take pity on him during the weeks of travel, and each night bring him gifts. Atala, the half-caste Christian daughter of Simagan, tries in vain to help him escape. On arrival at Apalachucla, his bonds are loosed and he is saved from death by her intervention. They run away and roam the wilderness for 27 days before being caught in a huge storm. While they are sheltering, Atala tells Chactas that her father was Lopez, and he realises that she is the daughter of his erstwhile benefactor. Lightning strikes a tree close by, and they run at random before hearing a church bell. Encountering a dog, they are met by its owner, Père Aubry, and he leads them through the storm to his idyllic mission. Aubry's kindness and force of personality impress Chactas greatly. Atala falls in love with Chactas, but cannot marry him as she has taken a vow of chastity. In despair she takes poison. Aubry assumes that she is merely ill, but in the presence of Chactas she reveals what she has done, and Chactas is filled with anger until the missionary tells them that in fact Christianity permits the renunciation of vows. They tend her, but she dies, and the day after the funeral, Chactas takes Aubry's advice and leaves the mission. In an epilogue it is revealed that Aubry was later killed by Cherokees, and that, according to Chactas's granddaughter, neither René nor the aged Chactas survived a massacre during an uprising. The full account of Chactas's wanderings after Atala's death, in Les Natchez, gives a somewhat different version of their fates. |
Dolores | null | 1,977 | From the cover: It is the intense, tragic story of Dolores Ryan, the beautiful and fashionable young widow of an assassinated American President. After his death, Dolores finds herself too poor to sustain her extravagant tastes and too lonely to be fulfilled as a woman. The novel details her quest for money and for men. |
One Second After | William R. Forstchen | 2,009 | John Matherson is a professor of history at the local Montreat Christian College. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he had moved to Black Mountain with his late wife, a native of the town, when she was dying from cancer. The widowed father of two daughters and a collegiate professor, Matherson is well-respected within the community. At 4:50 p.m. (16:50) Eastern Standard Time, on the first day described in the book's narration, the phone lines in the town suddenly go dead along, with all the electrical appliances. Just a second before, everything worked; but now, just one second after, virtually nothing seems to work. Within hours it becomes clear that this is no ordinary blackout for the residents of Black Mountain, and they come to the realization that the power may remain off for a very long time. Every modern electrical device is disabled, destroyed by what Matherson is beginning to suspect is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States by unknown attackers. The contiguous United States has, in an instant, been thrown back into the 19th century. However, the narration in the book points out that 21st century people are not at all equipped to live under 19th century conditions. Later on, Matherson remarks that the survivors have the technology of the early 16th century. Matherson's immediate concern is his twelve year old daughter, who has Type 1 diabetes. Without a constant supply of insulin, which requires refrigeration, she will die. The story's focus shifts quickly to how the community, as a whole, reacts. Matherson is a respected outsider, his military experience, standing as collegiate professor, and his level-headedness are appreciated by the town's residents. There are hundreds of stranded motorists whose cars and trucks have simply rolled to a halt on the nearby Interstate highway. Those people make their way into town, where some of them are clearly unwanted by the locals. There is an immediate growing concern about food; the leaders of the community soon begin wondering how these several thousand people going to be fed for any appreciable length of time. No refrigerators or freezers are running. No trucks are bringing in fresh supplies every day. Concerns immediately arise about the nursing home in town where Matherson's elderly cancer-stricken father-in-law resides. The elderly and frail need refrigerated medicines, and many require constant nursing care. The EMP has disabled the nursing home's standby generator, which cannot be started. There are no AM/FM radio broadcasts, no television, no Internet, and thus, no communication with anyone outside the town is possible. However, two months later, a working antique telephone is set up to connect Black Mountain with the nearby town of Swannanoa, North Carolina. The family of Matherson's late wife are small-scale car collectors who happen to own a 1959 Ford Edsel, in addition to a Ford Mustang. The two cars are so old that the EMP did not affect them because they have no modern EMP-sensitive electronics, such as transistors. Another local resident owns a vintage airplane that later becomes very useful, as it too is so old that it has no vulnerable electronics. Without modern sanitation and supplies, diseases surge. Minor wounds become seriously infected, and the community has soon exhausted its supply of antibiotics. The social order in Black Mountain begins to break down. It is too late in the year to plant and harvest crops, which is a moot point as few people in the area know how to farm anyway. Suddenly, skills that haven't been needed in several generations have become critically necessary. The town must organize its young and able-bodied to defend itself against a marauding band of cannibals, who eventually attack the community, resulting in a violent and deadly battle. After a while, the extreme shortages of food require difficult choices regarding rationing; who gets how much food, and which people are to be deliberately underfed to the point of starvation. Increasingly, Matherson is forced by circumstances to assume a growing leadership role as the situation continues to deteriorate. Matherson, along with a few others, try their best to maintain a balance between the multiple necessities of rationing scarce resources, maintaining law and order in addition to individual freedom, as well as personal responsibility and moral behavior in the midst of deeply deteriorating physical and social conditions. One year later, the U.S. military arrives to rebuild and aid the town. It is revealed that the EMP that devastated the contiguous United States was generated by three nuclear missiles launched from offshore container ships. One was launched from the Gulf of Mexico and detonated in the upper atmosphere over Utah, Kansas, and Ohio. The container ship was sunk by an explosion immediately after the missile launch; no indication remained of who was directly responsible for the attacks. Another missile was fired from off the Icelandic coast and detonated over Russia. Another nuclear missile was detonated over Japan and South Korea. The U.S. government is said to have believed that an alliance between Iran and North Korea was responsible for the attacks, and that the United States attacked Iran and North Korea with nuclear weapons in retaliation. It was also mentioned that the U.S. withdrew all of its overseas military forces back to the United States to aid in rebuilding and humanitarian work. It is also revealed that the EMP attack brought down Air Force One, killing the U.S. President. One year after the EMP attack, the United States is described as having 30 million survivors, down ninety percent from an original pre-attack population of 300 million. The People's Republic of China is occupying the U.S. west coast with 500,000-strong occupation force, and Mexico has Texas and the American Southwest under military occupation, as a protectorate against China. The book also describes the increasingly intimate relationship Matherson develops with a single and child-less nurse, Makala Turner, who was stranded by the pulse. The book's premise sets the stage for a series of "die-offs". The first takes place within a week (those in hospitals and assisted living). After about 15 days, salmonella-induced typhoid fever and cholera set in from eating tainted food, drinking tainted water, and generally poor sanitation. Americans have lived in an environment of easy hygiene, sterilization, and antibiotics, making them prime targets for third-world diseases. The lack of bathing and poor diet will lead to rampant feminine hygiene infections; deep cuts, rusty nail punctures, and dog bites go untreated with antibiotics, tetanus shots, or rabies treatment as more die from common infections. Critical medical supply and food thieves and others are executed in public as enforcement of martial law. In 30 days, cardiac and other drug-dependent patients die off. In 60 or so days, the pacemaker and Type I diabetics patients begin to die off (although John's young daughter manages to survive until Day 163). The 5% of population having severe psychotic disorders that no longer have medication will re-create bedlam. Jury-rigged wood-burning stoves lead to carbon monoxide deaths and fires that cannot be controlled due to the lack of a fire department. Then, refugees from the cities show up looking for food and shelter and the fight over scarce resources leads to confrontation, home invasion, and more violence-related die-offs. The community becomes an inviting target for escaped prisoners and organized gangs and more violence-related die-off. Ration cards are issued to conserve the little remaining food; regardless, the community slowly starves, with the elderly the first to die off. Next, parents starve themselves to save their children. Throughout this period suicides are common. After a year, approximately 20% of the initial population has "survived". The "average" die-off for the country was 90% leaving 30 million surviving out of original 300 million US population. The food-rich Midwest had the highest survival rate with a 50% die-off. New York City and Florida had a 95% die-off from infighting among their large populations, low levels of cultivated land, high elderly population, a lack of air conditioning, rampant transmission of disease, and natural disasters such as hurricanes. |
Harnessing Peacocks | Mary Wesley | 1,985 | Hebe lost her parents in an air crash when she was a baby and she was brought up by her grandparents. When she, to her surprise, learns that she is pregnant, her grandparents and older siblings arrange an abortion to eliminate the social nuisance. Hebe overhears their plans and flee her grandparents´ home for good. Twelve years later Hebe is living alone in a small town in the West Country and her son, Silas, is attending a posh private school. To make a living Hebe is working as a cook for elderly ladies and supplements the income by sleeping with their sons and sons-in-law. In the meantime forces are threatening her lucrative and well structured life. Silas's father (unknown to Hebe) is looking for her; Silas is on vacation with the sons of one of her clients; the local hatter falls in love with Hebe; Silas hates his school; one of her clients wants to marry her and begins stalking her and Hebe's grandparents get involved in a road accident. |
A Key to the Suite | John D. MacDonald | null | We are introduced to Floyd Hubbard as his flight descends toward an airport in an unnamed, sunny and hot East coast beach city. Hubbard will be attending a convention as a representative of American General Machine (AGM). Fred “Freddy” Frick, local Assistant District Manager, is aware of Hubbard’s true reason for attending the convention. Frick decides to set up Hubbard in the hope that it will soften his report to the corporate office, and protect his job. Frick meets with Cory Barlund, an expensive and selective prostitute, and together they decide the best way to get to Hubbard would be for her to pose as a freelance writer doing a story on local conventions. She will seduce Hubbard, then “make some horribly slutty embarrassing scene in front of all the people he most wants not to know about his sneaky little romance,” and this, Frick hopes, will be enough to send Hubbard back to the corporate headquarters with his tail between his legs. Later, Hubbard circulates at the company hospitality suite and is introduced to Cory. Through many cocktail conversations, we learn that Hubbard is well-read, considerate, and uneasy with his administrative duties within the corporation, preferring to be the metallurgist he had been before. At dinner in the banquet hall, he spots Cory who appears to be fighting off the advances of various men from all sides. Eventually he rescues her, and they leave, exchanging stories about their lives. Hubbard is happily married with children, Cory is divorced, has one child “defective, institutionalized,” has money, and lives alone, “and [tries] to like it.” Before the night is over they kiss and the evening ends abruptly, Cory feigning guilt, Hubbard suffering the real thing. Cory does not want to go through with the plan to blackmail Hubbard, but is convinced by Alma, her madame, that she not only is having the same second-thoughts she usually does, but that she “wouldn’t want to have to send Ernie around to straighten [her] out again.” The threat works, and we see Cory for the first time not in control of her circumstances. She assures Alma she will go through with the plan. Back at the convention, Cory convinces Hubbard she needs to change some film for her camera in his room, and there she seduces him. Afterward, Cory is cruel to Hubbard, about his wife and about his fall from grace. Though Hubbard doesn’t know this, she had thought that he was different than other men and would not succumb to her charms. After they argue, she leaves, assuring him he’ll come back for more. The next day, she taunts Hubbard at a convention party at the pool, and he rebuffs her advances. Later that evening, Hubbard returns to his room and finds Cory there, nude and in his shower. He rebuffs her again, and now Cory softens. She tells Hubbard about Frick’s plan to employ “soft blackmail” to keep his reports positive, and explains what happened in her life to lead her to what she has become today. Hubbard leaves Cory in his room and proceeds to get visibly drunk among the rest of the conventioneers. Cory drifts off to sleep in Hubbard’s bed. Meanwhile, one of the men Cory had rejected earlier, Dave Daniels, has gotten very drunk and extracted Hubbard’s room key from him by force. Hubbard, drunk himself, passes out in a hallway. In Hubbard’s room, Daniels finds Cory, rapes and kills her. After sobering up some, he sets it up to look like she fell in the shower and attempts to make his escape via the balcony. He slips and falls eight stories to his death. Because the hotel is such a large part of the local economy, and because the police are unsympathetic to “one dead flooze” they decide to call both deaths accidental and unconnected. All involved are cleared of any wrongdoing. Later, Hubbard makes his report over the phone to the corporate honchos while Jesse Mulaney sits in the room listening. Mulaney has got to go, he’s “too limited for the job.” Mulaney accuses Hubbard of enjoying his job as hatchet man, and Hubbard suspects he might be right. On his flight home, Hubbard dreams of Cory pulling his heart from his chest, and despite his protestations to the contrary, he knows he has already lost it. |
Le Sang noir | Louis Guilloux | 1,935 | One day in 1917 an aging philosophy tutor, nicknamed Cripure, feels unable to give advice to a student who is departing for the front in World War I. Amidst the horror of the war, he feels increasing disgust at life. He remembers how, years ago, he lost his wife. He is now living alone, supported only by Maia, his lazy housekeeper. His youthful promise as a writer and thinker has long since evaporated, and his body is becoming disturbingly abnormal as his feet become excessively large due to an illness. He hates himself, his colleagues and his students. He takes a class at which the students play up. In the afternoon he consoles himself with drink. As the evening wears on he learns about disasters and local tragedies, deaths, robberies and betrayals which convince him of the irredeemable corruption of humanity. French soldiers are becoming mutinous as the war continues without hope of an end. Cripure becomes involved in an altercation at the railway station as disaffected soldiers riot. He hits a jingoistic "patriot" and is challenged to a duel, which he accepts. Convinced that he will be killed, he writes a will. To his surprise local people rally round to support him, including his housekeeper and old friends. Cripure's challenger is discovered to be a hypocrite and is forced to back off. Saved from death, Cripure is more disturbed by the new evidence of human solidarity than he was by the consolation of despair. Unable to imagine a new life, he shoots himself. |
Fire | null | null | A fundamentalist Christian US President, Paul Green, is unhinged by the accidental death of his wife while she is vacationing in the Soviet Union, and attempts to provoke a nuclear war and thus usher in Armageddon and the Rapture. The expected nuclear holocaust doesn't occur, due to massive malfunctioning in both US and Soviet arsenals, and the US Armed Forces mostly refusing to obey his commands. One bomb goes off in Kansas City. Meanwhile, a genetic engineering research facility has developed a strain of bacteria that can reanimate fossilized tissues from remaining DNA. Due to a bomb explosion at the facility, the bacteria is spread in the area around the facility, animating a dead dog. This occurs while ashes from a fossil trilobite that had been reanimated, then incinerated, by the head researcher, are also loose. He had left the facility with the vial containing the ashes, and died in a fire, with the ashes, having been poured on his body by an angry drug addict (mistaking the vial for drugs), spreading the bacterial infection from a second epicenter. The bacteria turns out to be immune to fire. |
The Heart of a Distant Forest | Philip Lee Williams | null | Retired junior college history professor Andrew Lachlan has returned to his family home on a lake in north central Georgia to spend the last year of his life. Diagnosed with a terminal disease, he has decided to forego life-extending treatments so he can focus on learning what he feels he does not yet know about the world. With strong interests in Native American history and the natural world, he begins a journal that chronicles his last year. He lives alone, his wife have died some time before, and he looks forward to solitude, but a young country boy, Willie Sullivan, comes into his life. Willie’s world is cramped and difficult, and he brings to Andrew a kind of learning he’s never had before. At the same time, Andrew begins to teach Willie about the life beyond Shadow Pond, where Andrew lives. Andrew also reconnects with Callie McKenzie, a woman he loved years earlier and who is now a widow herself. Each begins to see in the other reflections of the life they once led. As Andrew’s life draws toward its inevitable end, he begins to find the edge of a new transcendence and an understanding of how generations learn and pass on the best of what they know and feel. |
Bangkok Haunts | null | null | Detective Sonchai, of the Royal Thai Police, is a former accessory to murder, and a former Buddhist monk. A video is mailed to him anonymously.It is a snuff film of Damrong, a woman he once loved obsessively. It turns out Damrong has masterminded her own death, and the recording of it, with proceeds going to her brother, a Buddhist monk. |
An Eye for an Eye | Anthony Trollope | null | Fred Neville, a lieutenant of cavalry and heir to the earldom of Scroope, woos and then seduces the beautiful Kate O’Hara. Kate lives with her mother in genteel poverty in an isolated cottage near the cliffs of Moher in western Ireland. News of the romantic entanglement quickly reaches Scroope Manor, and Fred is summoned back to Dorsetshire where the earl extracts a firm undertaking that Fred will not marry Kate O’Hara under any circumstances, despite any promises he has made to the girl. Once back in Ireland, Fred is confronted at his barracks by Mrs. O’Hara, demanding to know when he intends to marry her daughter, who is carrying his baby. He is shamed into agreeing to visit Kate, but that evening word arrives that the old Earl has died, and that Fred is now the Earl of Scroope. Fred realizes that marriage to Kate O’Hara is out of the question as her background would make her quite unacceptable in society. He resolves to confront Mrs. O’Hara and her unfortunate daughter. The climax of the novel takes place between the young earl and Mrs. O’Hara on the cliffs above the cottage. Whilst acknowledging the promises he made to Kate, Fred steadfastly refuses to make her Countess of Scroope. A frenzied Mrs. O’Hara attacks the lord, driving him backwards over the cliff edge to his death. Realizing she has killed the man her daughter loves, she instantly falls insane. Fred Neville’s brother, Jack, inherits the earldom and pays for Mrs. O’Hara’s incarceration in an English mental asylum where she endlessly repeats the words “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Is it not the law?” |
The Book from Baden Dark | null | null | Three years have passed since Marcel defeated Mortregis, the great dragon of war, and more than a year since the Battle of Cadell. One a mountainside in Elster, Bea, who has lived among the elves all this time, longs to see her human friends again. When strange creatures disturb the tranquility of the mountain forests her grandfather disappears, she calls for Marcel's help. Together with his cousin, Fergus, they travel into the forbidden underground world of Baden Dark on a rescue mission. But Marcel senses an ancient evil in Baden Dark and becomes determined to free all of Elster from its threat. Forever. The challenge will test his growing power as a sorcerer and even success may come at a terrible price. Bea is not convinced by his ambitions and when Marcel betrays her with his magic, he makes a decision that may keep them apart forever. |
The Asylum Seeker | Arnon Grünberg | 2,003 | Christian Beck, a translator of technical manuals, has concluded that life consists of nothing but self-deception and illusions, and decides to devote his time to unmasking all illusions, false hopes, and high ideals. He denounces all deception in his friends and family and promises his own unmasking as a finale; swearing off all personal desire, he now dedicates his life to the happiness of his girlfriend, "Bird", a former prostitute. The couple lived for a time in Eilat, Israel, where Beck was a regular customer to the brothel and Bird was sleeping with ugly, deformed men. Back in Europe, it becomes clear that she is suffering from a fatal disease, and before she dies agrees to marry an asylum seeker from Algeria so he can attain permanent residence. Beck protests initially but later agrees to the marriage. The asylum seeker also gratifies Bird sexually, and a strange ménage à trois is the result. |
The Blood of Others | Simone de Beauvoir | null | In German-occupied France, Jean Blomart sits by a bed in which his lover Hélène lies dying. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about both characters and their relationship to each other. As a young man filled with guilt about his privileged middle-class life, Jean joins the Communist Party and breaks from his family, determined to make his own way in life. After the death of a friend in a political protest, for which he feels guilty, Jean leaves the Party and concentrates on trade union activities. Hélène is a young designer who works in her family's confectionary shop and is dissatisfied with her conventional romance with her fiancé Paul. She contrives to meet Jean and, though he initially rejects her, they form a relationship after she has had an abortion following a reckless liaison with another man. Caring for her happiness, Jean tells Hélène he loves her even though he believes that he does not. He proposes and she accepts. When France enter the Second World War, Jean, conceding the need for violent conflict to effect change, becomes a soldier. Hélène intervenes against his will to arrange a safe posting for him. Angry with her, Jean breaks their relationship. As the German forces advance towards Paris, Hélène flees and witnesses the suffering of other refugees. Returning to Paris, she briefly takes up with a German who could advance her career, but soon sees what her countrymen are suffering. She also witnesses the roundup of Jews. Securing the safety of her Jewish friend Yvonne leads Hélène back to Jean who has become a leader in a Résistance group. She is moved to join the group. Jean has reconnected with his father with the common goal to liberate France from Germany. His mother however is less impressed by the lives lost to the Resistance. Hélène is shot in a resistance activity and during Jean's night vigil at her side, he examines his love for Hélène and the wider consequences of his actions. As morning dawns, Hélène dies and Jean decides to continue with acts of resistance. |
Bougainville | F. Springer | 1,981 | The narrator, Bo, is a middle-aged diplomat somewhat disenchanted with his life, who finds himself, stationed in Bangladesh in 1973, reconstructing the life of his childhood friend Tommie. After they got reacquainted at a class reunion, Tommie drowned himself in the Bay of Bengal and left Bo with a collection of papers which, beside autobiographical material by Bo, also contains the memoirs of his grandfather, a frustrated idealist who left by boat for the Dutch Indies in the early 1900s, and managed to bed Mata Hari on the way. The novel combines the three plotlines of Bo's account of his friendship with Tommie and his work in Bangladesh, which he perceives as futile; Tommie's account, a success story which ends in suicide; and the reflections of Tommie's grandfather. |
Collision | null | null | Ben Forsberg is an independent contractor who has buried himself in his work after the death of his wife. Everything changes when two government agents turn up on his door to question him for a murder involving a notorious assassin. |
Black Butterfly | Mark Gatiss | null | It is 1953, shortly after the coronation of Elizabeth II. Box is now nearing retirement, and has also been left with an unexpected offspring, Christmas Box. However, he discovers that elderly pillars of the British establishment are meeting unexpected deaths through participation in reckless risk taking and accidents. He tracks the perpetrators to Istanbul, is assisted by Turkish-Geordie double agent Whitley Bey and meets Afro-Japanese gay agent Kingdom Kum, and also that the aforementioned figures were poisoned by a malignant chemical derived from the eponymous insect. From there, he travels to Kingston, Jamaica, where he meets the chief culprit behind his misadventures- the progeny of an old enemy, who is using a "New Scout Movement" to mask his mass poisoning schemes. With that resolved, Box is knighted, and renews the acquaintance of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, whom he once met at a party on Armistice Day 1918. |
Looking for Rachel Wallace | Robert B. Parker | 1,980 | Spenser is hired to protect a lesbian, feminist activist, the eponymous Rachel Wallace. After his protecting gets in the way of her protesting, she fires him. Shortly afterwards, she is kidnapped. Though no longer officially employed to protect her, Spenser feels duty-bound to find her. |
The Princess and the Unicorn | null | null | This novel follows two separate characters: Princess Eleanor of England and a young fairy named Joyce. Joyce lives in Swinley Forest with a community of other fairies who rely on the forest's unicorn for survival. But one day, Joyce follows the unicorn to the edge of the forest and is spotted by Princess Eleanor. The Princess chases her inside and finds the unicorn, only to take home with her to Swinley Castle. Knowing it's her responsibility to retrieve the unicorn, Joyce sets out on a journey to bring the unicorn home. But things get a little more complicated when the Princess takes the unicorn with her to London. Meanwhile, the Princess isn't living the dream life like most little girls would assume. Instead she rarely gets to see her parents, who are too busy with their affairs to tuck her in at night. And her once lovable nanny is brewing a deceptive get-rich-quick scheme behind the Princess's back. |
The Left Hand of Darkness | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1,969 | Genly Ai, a native of the planet Terra (Earth), is an envoy from the Ekumen, an organization of more than eighty worlds, representing 3,000 countries, spanning one hundred light years from border to border, whose purpose is to develop commerce, communications, and, possibly, mystical unity. Ai's mission is to convince the country of Karhide on the distant planet called Gethen to join the Ekumen. His story of that mission consists mainly of his own observations with interpolated chapters of Karhide tales and myths, Ekumen data, sayings from Orgoreyn (Karhide's neighbor), and excerpts from the diary of Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, prime minister of Karhide to mad King Argaven XV. The planet Gethen is called Winter by the Ekumen because it is in the grip of an Ice Age. Ai is constantly challenged by the unrelenting cold, by the Karhide custom of shifgrethor (a nuanced system of dignity-preserving conversational tactics), and by the androgynous nature of all the people who populate Winter. Estraven's androgynous nature further obscures him to Ai. Although all of Winter's androgynes are referred to as "he," the fact is they are neither "he" nor "she" until they enter kemmer, a state of estrus lasting a few days a month, analogous to a menstrual cycle but with an unreasoning urge to mate. Then, depending on the chemistry between partners, one will develop as a male, the other as a female. The same person can be a child-bearing mother to some children and a father to others. Just as Ai struggles to comprehend the sexlessness of the Gethen, the Gethen regard Ai's fixed gender, and his claims of an entire civilization divided into male and female, as anomalous and disturbing; indeed, Ai is considered a "pervert" (a creature always in kemmer). Their androgynous biology, which eliminates male dominance, female dependency or childrearing, and sexual tension, is the underpinning for the culture and politics on Winter, a planet that has no word for war and no experience of it. Yet the two countries of Karhide and Orgoreyn seem to be on the brink of war over disputed territory. Estraven is exiled as a traitor when he is outmaneuvered by a more bellicose faction, and given three days to leave Karhide under pain of death. He flees to Orgoreyn, a Soviet-like bureaucracy where his lack of proper papers condemns him to the life of a factory worker. Finally he is discovered by some Commensals, politicians of high status somewhat like senators, and introduced into the socialist politics of Orgoreyn. Ai also travels to Orgoreyn. Since the King of Karhide has rejected his proposal to join the Ekumen, he thinks perhaps the neighboring country will be interested. Orgoreyn is considerably different from Karhide, a bureaucracy compared to a monarchy; Orgoreyn's Yomesh religion denies the dark yet is an offspring of Karhide's Handdara which espouses both light and dark for "[l]ight is The Left Hand of Darkness "; Orgoreyn's people are supposedly more progressive and yet they live under a corrupt political system with the darkness of secret police and concentration camp prisons and, on the whole, have less humane values than the people of Karhide. Although Estraven tries to warn Ai of the shifting politics, again Ai doesn't understand. He ends up being betrayed by a politician with ties to the secret police and is taken away in a truck with other unfortunates to a prison, cynically called a Voluntary Farm. All are naked, freezing, and hungry. Once imprisoned, Ai has little to look forward to until he is rescued through the daring of Estraven. Unfortunately, the road back to Karhide is over the Gobrin Ice. Ai and Estraven battle the snow and ice, glacier and crevasse, wind and night. Through cooperation, for Ai is physically superior to Estraven while Estraven has superior survival skills, the two become closer. Ai realizes that while Estraven is a forced exile, he himself has chosen to exile himself from his family, friends, and, in fact, several generations by being a space traveler. Ai was born on Earth 127 years ago, but because of timejumping is not quite 30. Ai teaches Estraven telepathy, or mindspeech. Estraven hears Ai's voice as that of his dead brother Arek to whom he swore kemmering. Although incest between siblings is not taboo, they are forbidden to swear allegiance for life. Ai begins to understand Estraven better. When Estraven goes into kemmer, although both avoid a sexual relationship, Ai sees the full womanly side of Estraven and finally understands his friend as a complete person, and, by extension, understands the androgynous people of Gethen. When the two return to Karhide, the exiled Estraven is discovered, and as he skis to the Orgoreyn border, he skis straight into the guards who shoot him, a seeming suicide. This too is a Karhide taboo. Estraven dies in Ai's arms, mindspeaking the name of his dead brother. Ai is successful in convincing the King to join the Ekumen, but when the crew from the spaceship alight, Ai is repulsed by their overt sexuality. In the final chapter he visits Estraven's family who are distraught because Estraven is still considered a traitor. Ai had not cleared his name as he promised, because he didn't want to jeopardize his mission, Gethen's entry into the Ekumen, a mission for which Estraven gave his life. However, Estraven's son Sorve by his now-dead brother shows the same kind of curiosity as his father, the kind which characterizes human progress: he asks Ai to tell him about other worlds and other lives he has seen. |
The Last of the Vostiaks | null | null | The central character is a Siberian native, which has been prisoner in a Gulag who speaks a language that has almost disappeared, one that keeps the last vestige of a vanished sound, the lateral fricative with labiovelar appendix. A Russian studious gets to understand him and wants to show him to a congress on Uralic languages in Helsinki. However, a purist Finnish professor attempts to prevent the innocent Siberian appearance as a living proof of the philological connection between the Finnish language and the American natives. The plot is complicated by a Lapon pimp, country cottages with sauna, vacation boats in the Baltic Sea, and sometimes the narration takes a rowdy tone with reminiscences of Wilt by Tom Sharpe. ca:L'últim dels vostiacs (novel·la) it:L'ultimo dei Vostiachi (eng: The Last of the Vostyachs) |
The Looney: An Irish Fantasy | Spike Milligan | 1,987 | The principal protagonist of the novel is Mick Looney, an Irish construction worker from Kilburn, London, who comes to the conclusion that he is the rightful King of Ireland. The first portion of the novel is set in Kilburn as Looney's fantasy of royal descent takes hold. He purchases a second hand chair to be his royal throne while arranging his return to Ireland. There are a number of subplots featuring various eccentric people he has dealings with, the main one concerning two illegal immigrants from India who become Looney's tenants. The second, larger, portion of the novel is set in and around the fictional Irish village of Drool, where Looney goes to research his royal claim. While doing this he takes a job as a handyman at the local castle, from which a valuable racehorse is stolen. After a number of subplots concerning the eccentric residents of Drool and its castle, Looney recovers the racehorse and receives a large cash reward, much of which he accidentally burns and the remainder of which he spends in pub buying drinks for the villagers. Having reconnected with his Irish roots, but realising that his quest for wealth and status is futile, he returns to Kilburn and sells his "throne". |
Chasing the Bear | Robert B. Parker | 2,009 | Spenser, while relaxing at a park with his love interest, Susan Silverman, reflects on some experiences in his life as a youth, before becoming a detective. The narrative unfolds as a conversation between himself and Silverman. Spenser conveys that he grew up in an all-male household, his mother dying immediately before he was delivered by caesarean section. His household consisted of himself, his father, and his two maternal uncles. They were all uneducated, but eager to learn, worked in construction, and boxed from time to time to earn extra money. His uncles taught him to box from a very young age, three years old. They also read volumes of classic novels to him at night. The main narrative conveys Spenser's adventures with a girl, Jeannie Haden. Jeannie was about Spenser's age, but was just a friend. Her father was an abusive drunk. One day Spenser saw her in her father's car, mouthing the words "Help" over and over again. Spenser, along with his dog, Pearl, follows the car and, eventually, Jeannie's father's boat down a river. He locates her and her father on a small island in the river, next to a lean-to. After a brief encounter with her father, Luke, Spenser is able to rescue Jeannie some time later. They escape downriver on Spenser's rowboat, eventually leading Luke Haden to his death. Spenser's father and uncles tell him he "did good" and needn't report the death, or his role in it. But he does, but the local law enforcement doesn't charge Spenser with any crime. Spenser relates that Jeannie had a crush on him, but he didn't return her amore. But he managed to let her down and remain friends. As a favor to Jeannie, he goes on to protect a student of Mexican descent, Aurelio Lopez. Lopez was targeted by white classmates and beaten up on occasion. After Spenser's protection, he doesn't get bullied any longer. However, his relationship with Lopez alienates him somewhat from his white classmates, many of whom he had known since the first grade. At the end, Spenser is confronted by the entire white gang of about fifteen boys. Before any fighting convenes, Spenser's father and uncles arrive and mediate a fair fight between just Spenser and the leader of the gang, Leo Roemer. Because of his boxing training, Spenser quickly wins the fight. He doesn't have any trouble from the gang following the showdown. The recollection ends with Spenser going off to college in Boston on a football scholarship. After an injury his second year, he loses his scholarship and is unable to afford any further schooling and joins the police force, choosing to stay in Boston rather than returning to his home town. |
A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Break Point and the Challenges Facing an Energy Dependent World | Peter Tertzakian | 2,007 | The book draws attention to the numerical significance of the 2006 global oil production figure: of crude oil per day is equivalent to one thousand barrels per second. He believes the transcendence of this consumption threshold marks the beginning of a historically significant “energy break point” when oil’s dominant position as a primary energy source is no longer tenable. The book examines industrial society's "addiction" to oil in its past, present and future aspects. The history of humankind’s ongoing adoption and abandonment of energy sources – wood, coal, tallow, whale oil, kerosene, etc. – illustrates a “evolutionary energy cycle”. This cycle is evident today in the problems facing the oil industry. At the time of the book’s publication, various factors — ranging from unrest in the Middle East, a “demand shock” from India and China, exceptionally elevated energy commodity prices and climate change anxiety — weakened oil’s leadership amongst all primary energy sources. The author does not commit to the inevitability of any one particular future outcome, but paints various scenarios that could lead to a peaceful and profitable resolution of the break point. |
The Crucible | null | null | Kang In-ho is a teacher forced to leave his family after the suicide of a former student he had been romantically involved with. He settles in Mujin (a fictional city) where he finds employment as a teacher at a school for the hearing impaired. On the first day of his new job, a young boy is struck and killed by a train, the latest of a series of accidents he soon discovers. He hears of a young girl who had recently committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Kang soon suspects things are not as they seem and discovers that the students, (both boys and girls) are being abused by the principal (a powerful and highly respected member of the community), an administrative head and a dormitory superintendent. Kang's efforts to bring the crimes to the attention of the public are met with resistance by corrupt police, doctors and other business leaders. The defense lawyers further attempt to discredit Kang by bringing to light his past misdeeds, including the affair with his former student who committed suicide. Compounding all, the financially strapped parents agree to remain silent about the incident in exchange for money. In the end, the three accused are sentenced to probation and set free to return to the school. Kang, humiliated at having his personal failures publicized and frustrated by the lack of justice decides to leave Mujin and return to his family in Seoul. |
Patsy of Paradise Place | Rosie Harris | 2,002 | When Patsy Callaghan's father discovers that her mother, Maeve, neglects her, he stops goig to sea. John Callagan buys a horse and cart and sets up as a carrier at Liverpool Docks. Patsy loves going out on the carrier with her father and Billy Grant, the boy that helps him. When one day John Callaghan is killed in an accident, and Maeave goes out again drinking binges, Billy, who is deeply in love with Patsy, helps her continue the business. Patsy falls in love with Bruno Alvarez a handsome fairground showman, and believes he is going to marry her and will travel to Spain together. When Patsy brings him to meet Maeve, he stays for the night and the next morning, Patsy finds Bruno and Maeve in bed together. Billy comforts her and tries to calm her down, until they end up making love. But when Maeve finds out that Patsy is pregnant, she throws her out of the house. Patsy hides in the stables and Billy takes care of the baby, Liam, when he is born. While she is hiding in the stables, Billy has an accident and is crippled. Unable to find Bruno, Patsy lives with Billy's family. As Liam gets older, Patsy starts working as a nurse. When Liam develops tuberculosis, Patsy decides to find Bruno and discovers that he and her mother went off together. Eventually, Liam dies and Patsy is once more depressed. Billy comforts her again, and she realises how much she loves him. They decide to open a new business on their own and get married. |
Faithless | Karin Slaughter | 2,005 | Sara and Jeffrey have finally started to click again when a phone call from the woman he was unfaithful with brings their affair back into sharp relief. He and Sara are arguing about this on a walk in the woods when they make a discovery: the corpse of a young woman who was buried alive in a wooden coffin. They assume her death was accidental, but the autopsy reveals that she was pregnant and had been murdered – while she was underground. The search for her identity leads Jeffrey and Lena to an organic soybean farming cooperative out in the sticks owned by a large, tightly knit, religious family, led by the charismatic oldest son. They import their labor force from the people that populate Atlanta's shelters and halfway houses, facilitated through the family church's outreach program. At one time or another the case involves strippers, the one-legged, one-eyed lawyer extraordinaire Buddy Conford, an abused woman Lena both identifies with and wants to save, and a search to find more buried coffins before it's too late. At the novel's conclusion, Sara finally agrees to remarry Jeffrey after at least four proposals, and Ethan pushes Lena so far that she decides it's time to escape. <!-- |
A Faint Cold Fear | Karin Slaughter | 2,003 | While at the Dairy Queen with her pregnant sister Tessa, Sara is called to meet Jeffrey at the scene of an apparent suicide on campus property, a suicide they both later agree seems suspicious though they can't quite put their fingers on why. Tessa asks to go along and Sara, against her better judgment, allows it. As Sara is examining the body, Tessa walks into the woods to relieve herself. Also on hand are Lena, who's quit the force and now works for campus security, and her new boss, steroidal creep Chuck Gaines. Chuck identifies the victim as the son of two campus professors, a development sure the complicate the case exponentially for Jeffrey. When Tessa doesn't come out of the woods, a search finds her stabbed repeatedly and barely alive; she's airlifted to Grady Hospital in Atlanta. While Sara and her parents wait tensely by Tessa's bedside, Jeffrey and Lena work the case while at each other's throats over Lena's decision to quit the force. Another suicide occurs, more suspicious than the last, and as Lena spirals farther out of control with alcohol and drugs, she makes a fateful and perhaps fatal connection with student Ethan Green, who is not what he appears to be. |
Triptych | null | null | Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is on the trail of a serial rapist with a gruesome inclination when he comes into contact with Michael Ormewood, an Atlanta homicide detective with a past who caught the squeal on a case Will is interested in. Ormewood's past involves Angie Polaski, a vice cop who is the only woman Will has ever loved. John Shelley, who at fifteen was tried as an adult for the rape and murder of a neighbor girl and has just gotten out of prison after twenty years. John's trying to keep his nose clean and keep his parole officer happy when he discovers by accident that He's involved with the rapist, and if John doesn't take action fast he will end up back in prison. Will and Michael work to solve the case, mingling with the pimps and hookers of Atlanta's housing projects in the search for clues. Will and Angie resume their strange relationship after a two-year hiatus. Will continues his struggle to keep anyone from finding out about his dyslexia, a definite career-ender, and Will's career is the only thing that keeps the painful demons of his own past at bay. |
On the Reliability of the Old Testament | null | null | The book opens with an introductory chapter surveying the history with which it intends to deal, the continuous narrative in the Hebrew bible from the Genesis creation narrative to the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from Babylonian exile in the early days of the Persian empire in the 5th century BC. The author states his belief that this history was written at the same time as the events it describes in its various sections, and that this can be confirmed by comparing the Old Testament with non-biblical sources, both written and archaeological. The core of the book is eight chapters (chapters 2 to 9) surveying the biblical history and comparing it to the ages which with it deals, from the 3rd millennium (the period to which Kitchen traces the origins of the biblical stories of Noah's flood and other incidents from the opening chapters of Genesis) to the Babylonian exile and the return of the Jews to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. The author presents his conclusions in chapter 10. |
Fractured | null | null | Six months ago, Atlanta homicide detective Faith Mitchell's police captain mother was the focus of an investigation that resulted in her retirement and the firing of six narcotics officers. It was a righteous bust, but the cops want to protect their own, and Faith, along with the entire Atlanta police force, simmers with rage at the man responsible, GBI agent Will Trent. Now Faith and Will are thrown together on a shocking murder/kidnapping case involving some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the city, and neither one of them is happy about the pairing. But Faith gradually discovers that not only is Will not the verminous heel she expected him to be, he is a sleuth par excellence, and Will must deal with a bully from his past who is now a victim and whose irrational hostility threatens the investigation. As the case begins to center on dyslexia, Will waits nervously to see if anyone will notice his own, and he and Faith race frantically from the dormitories of Georgia Tech to the halls of one of Atlanta's exclusive private academies to keep another corpse from surfacing. |
Indelible | null | null | The story goes back and forth in time, from the beginnings of Sara and Jeffrey’s relationship to a hostage situation at the Grant County Police Station. After dating for a few months, Sara and Jeffrey head for the beaches of Florida for a few days. On their way Jeffrey makes a detour to Sylacauga, Alabama, to show her where he grew up and introduce her to his childhood friends, Robert and Possum and their wives. They plan to spend the night in Jeffrey's old bedroom but Sara's first meeting with his mother upsets her so, she dashes out into the street. When Jeffrey finally catches up to her, they hear a scream and gunshots coming from Robert's house. Jeffrey kicks in the door and finds a wounded Robert and his wife with a dead man in their bedroom, and their stories are conflicting and shaky. Sara and Jeffrey assist in the ensuing investigation and when it's finally resolved, Jeffrey finds that some of those closest to him during his past were not who he thought they were, and some of his deepest secrets are revealed to Sara. But that's only half the book—fast forward to the present, where the Heartsdale Police Station is taken over in a murderous bloodbath by heavily armed gunmen, right in the middle of an elementary school field trip, and while Sara is there. A terrifying and tense hostage situation develops. Lena, back on the force now, on her birthday, and suspecting she's become pregnant by abusive boyfriend Ethan Green, is one of the few Grant County cops on the outside, not knowing who's dead and who's alive. What do the gunmen want? Who are they? Is this somehow related to the events in Sylacauga all those years ago? |
Vulcan's Forge | Jack Du Brul | 1,998 | During the Cold War, the Soviet Union launched a secret operation against the United States, detonating a nuclear bomb on the ocean floor and creating a volcano that would take decades to rise to the surface. Now, two hundred miles off Hawaii, an island is forming-an island that holds unimaginable wealthe and power for those who control it. As the fight to claim the island rages from the halls of power to the depths of the ocean, Philip Mercer must wage a battle against both man and nature to bring the world back from the edge of destruction. |
Charon's Landing | Jack Du Brul | 1,999 | In a bold decision, the President of the United States has decided to free America from its dependence on foreign oil by using Alaska's oil deposits and developing alternative energy sources. It is a move that threatens the oil-rich Middle East-and some will not tolerate such a course of action. Years ago, a secret Soviet strategy was created to strike a fatal blow to the U.S. by destroying the Alaskan oil pipeline. Now those plans have been stolen by the brilliant and treacherous former KGB agent Ivan kerikov, who joins forces with a powerful Arab oil minister to unleash Charon's Landing. But they didn't count on Philip Mercer-the one man who possesses the determination and daring to stop them cold. |
The Medusa Stone | Jack Du Brul | null | Ten years ago, the spy satellite Medusa burned upon re-entry-but not before its sensors revealed a secret buried deep in the Earth hidden for thousands of years from the eyes of humanity. A priceless discovery that some would die to find - and kill to possess... With uncanny talent as a geologist and a quick intelligence matched by savvy and courage, Phillip Mercer is fast becoming a legend in powerful circles around the world. And at least two groups in those circles need his help. When one of them snatches and holds his oldest friend, Mercer is forced to act by the kidnappers...whose allegiance is a mystery, but whose viciousness is not. In a harsh and hostile land ravaged by violence, Mercer races to find the one thing that will save his friend. But the location of this ancient treasure is elusive. He is thwarted by brutal competing forces and, suddenly, he learns that there is much more at stake then either his life or the life of an old friend: the fate of thousands of innocent souls depends on him and him alone... |
Rollback | Robert J. Sawyer | null | The novel focuses around Don Halifax and his wife of sixty years, Sarah, an astronomer who translated the first transmission sent from an extraterrestrial source to Earth 38 years prior to the opening of the story. Sarah, now 87, is tasked to decode the second message sent from the unknown alien race - if she can live long enough to do so. A wealthy industrial billionaire, Cody McGavin, offers to put up billions of dollars to perform a "rollback" on not only Sarah, but her husband of 60 years, Don. This process, which reverts a person's body to a much younger state, is successfully performed on Don, but fails to work with Sarah. This leaves Sarah gradually creeping toward death while Don's life begins anew. Much of the story focuses on Don as he discovers the advantages and disadvantages of being young again, with periodic flashbacks to when Sarah translated the first alien message. |
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