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Star Wars Imperial Commando: 501st | Karen Traviss | null | The Clone Wars are over, but for those with reason to run from the new galactic Empire, the battle to survive has only just begun.... The Jedi have been decimated in the Great Purge, and the Republic has fallen. Now the former Republic Commandos—the galaxy's finest special forces troops, cloned from Jango Fett—find themselves on opposing sides and in very different armor. Some have deserted and fled to Mandalore with the mercenaries, renegade clone troopers, and rogue Jedi who make up Kal Skirata's ragtag resistance to Imperial occupation. Others—including men from Delta and Omega squads—now serve as Imperial Commandos, a black ops unit within Vader's own 501st Legion, tasked to hunt down fugitive Jedi and clone deserters. For Darman, grieving for his Jedi wife and separated from his son, it's an agonizing test of loyalty. But he is not the only one who will be forced to test the ties of brotherhood. On Mandalore, clone deserters and the planet's own natives, who have no love for the Jedi, will have their most cherished beliefs challenged. In the savage new galactic order, old feuds may have to be set aside to unite against a far bigger threat, and nobody can take old loyalties for granted. The book starts off three weeks after the end of the Clone Wars and the declaration of the new Galactic Empire under the new Emperor Palpatine's rule. Darman and his brother Niner, who has healed from his spinal injury on the night of Order 66, are now under rule of Darth Vader's 501st Legion. The purpose of Vader's organization of clones remaining loyal to the Empire after the Clone Wars is to hunt down and kill any remaining Jedi, especially Masters and maybe Knights, but bring back Padawans for the Emperor's Hand to train as dark side users. Along with this Jedi hunting objective is to hunt down for any Jedi sympathizers and clone stragglers who have left Palpatine's rule, such as the clone members of Clan Skirata. Darman is having an inner struggle with himself as he tries to pull himself together from his wife Etain Tur-Mukan's death. Initially, the squad that Darman and Niner are recruited in incorporate two clones trained by Corellian sargeants, Bry and Ennen, and Bry is killed in the first mission in hunting Jedi. Bry is soon replaced by a Spaati-grown clone, Rede, and after Ennen terminates a thug suspected to be a Jedi, he commits suicide by pointing a blaster in his mouth. Not looking for any replacements on Ennen, the squad decides to be a three-man deal, and Rede is granted respect by Darman and Niner when he single-handedly kills a Jedi named Borik Yelgo aboard a space station somewhere in the Outer Rim. Meanwhile, Darman and Niner are introduced to Roly Melusar, who gains great respect by the clones in the 501st Legion, including Darman and Niner, for his no-nonsense attitude, his deep sympathy for the clones as people and soldiers and his deep hatred of not only Jedi, but all Force-users in general, including members of the Emperor's Hand (it is unknown if he knows if Palpatine is a Sith Lord, but it is most likely that he is aware of Darth Vader's power). Meanwhile, on the planet Mandalore, Kal Skirata sends most of his Null clone sons, Nyreen Vollen and Bardan Jusik, who Skirata just adopted as another son, to extract Darman and Niner from Imperial Center. However, just as Darman and Niner head down to meet with Ordo, Mereel, Prudii, Jaing, Vollen and Jusik, Darman has second thoughts as he thinks over that if one of the 501st Legion's purpose was to hunt down for members to be trained as a member of the Emperor's Hand, then his son Kad would be in danger. And seeing how he has the entire Clan Skirata watching over Kad, Darman decides to stay in the 501st Legion in order to monitor, and maybe even sabotage, certain activities within the Empire that might compromise Kad's safety. Being as one of Darman's closest brothers, Niner decides to stay, too, which brings Jusik, now recently adopted as one of Skirata's sons, Vollen and the Nulls back to Mandalore empty-handed. Nevertheless, Ordo has promised Niner to have comlinks installed both of his and Darman's helmets that allows them to communicate to Clan Skirata over on Mandalore. Jaing even manages to get some dirt on Melusar, and reveals that Meulsar came from a planet that was erased from the Republic star charts because it was ruled over by a Sith cult that killed his father, thus triggering Melusar's hatred of all Force-users. This hatred of all Force-users, including all of the members in the Emperor's Hand who serve as intelligence for the Empire, allows Melusar to have Darman and Niner, as well as Rede, skim around Imperial Intel to handle out anti-Jedi operations without the Emperor's Hand's knowledge. Skirata's plan to reverse the aging in his clone sons' DNA by Dr. Ovolot Qail Uthan is compromised when Uthan's homeplanet of Gibad is attacked by the Empire because of their reluctance to join the Imperials. What's worse is that most, if not all, of Gibad's citizens were exterminated by a toxin created by Uthan herself while the actual structures of the planet remain intact. Uthan decides to put a halt on the reverse-aging process for revenge on the Empire for what they've done to Gibad by developing another virus she plans to unleash to the Imperials on Imperial Center. Working with Mij Gilamar, who she has a budding romance with, Uthan receives the supplies she needs to create the virus from the clones, but first develops an antiviral that would render whoever would receive the antiviral immune to the virus Uthan is creating. Skirata, Gilamar, the clones and Jusik go into Keldabe to spread the antiviral around so that the citizens of Mandalore wouldn't be affected by Uthan's virus that she plans to unleash unto the Empire. During Clan Skirata's visit to Keldabe, they spot Dred Priest. Priest happens to be a hated Mandalorian who is an avid member of the Death Watch, a Mandalorian society that wants Mandalore to return to its old imperial days. Priest was also part of the Cuy'val Dar, and on Kamino, he set up a fight club that clones had been involved in, where they were either brutally wounded or killed. For what Priest did on Kamino, Gilamar and Ordo lead Priest down into an underground chasm where Gilamar kills Priest by stabbing him in a vital artery in the leg. Priest dies from severe blood loss and Gilamar and Ordo toss his corpse into a churning river. Also as part of Skirata's plan to reverse the clones' accelerated aging, Ny Vollen ships in the ancient Kaminoan Jedi Kina Ha, who was engineered by the ancient Kaminoans to cheat death via old age. With Kina Ha is Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy, or Scout for short. Kina Ha's gracious and pleasant persona happens to almost change Skirata's view of Kaminoans, and Scout shows Skirata that the late Etain Tur-Mukan or Bardan Jusik weren't the only "sensible" Jedi he felt good to be around. Unfortunately, Clan Skirata comes to struggle with an inner turmoil over what would happen after Kina Ha's genetic material was used to reverse the clones' acclerated aging. Since the Empire is hunting down for Jedi, keeping Kina Ha and Scout for any longer than is needed would compromise Clan Skirata's safety. One alternative is to simply kill the two Jedi so they wouldn't reveal any information about Clan Skirata's location, willingly or otherwise, or they trade them off with maverick Jedi Master Djinn Altis. The Jedi problem merely gets worse for Skirata when Jusik and Vollen pick up renegade clone trooper Maze, and he has Master Arligan Zey with him, whom Ordo believed to be dead under Maze's hands on the night of Order 66. Zey figures out about Kad's nature, his Force abilities and his parents, and Zey finds out about the Jedi Order's flaws, such as how they are viewed as child stealers. Nevertheless, Skirata, against his better judgement and Vau's logic to simply kill the Jedi, decides to deal with Djinn Altis to trade the three Jedi, as well as wiping out their memories of Clan Skirata's location in case the Empire ever caught them and interrogated them about Skirata and his clanmates. Darman realizes about the Jedi being under the same roof as Kad via Fi, and regrets his decision about not going with the Nulls, Jusik and Vollen back to Mandalore, believing Zey, Kina Ha and Scout a threat to Kad's wellbeing as a free Mandalorian instead of an orthodox Jedi under Yoda's rule. He also figures out about Skirata's deal with Djinn Altis, who is viewed as a threat to the Empire of reestablishing the Jedi Order, and Darman decides that he will hunt down and kill as many Jedi as possible, notably under Altis's rule, for Kad's sake, which would compromise Skirata's deal. |
The Cat of Bubastes | G. A. Henty | null | After his father, the king of the Rebu, is killed in battle with the Egyptian army and the Rebu nation is conquered by the Egyptians, the young prince Amuba is carried away as a captive to Egypt, along with his faithful charioteer, Jethro. In Thebes, Amuba becomes the servant and companion to Chebron, the son of Ameres, high priest of Osiris. The lads become involved in a mystery as they begin to uncover evidence of a murderous conspiracy within the ranks of the priesthood. However, before they are able to prevent it, they are forced to flee for their lives when they accidentally cause the death of the successor to the Cat of Bubastes, one of the most sacred animals in Egypt. With Jethro as their guide and protector, the boys make plans to escape from Egyptian territory and return to Amuba's homeland. |
Beauchamp's Career | George Meredith | 1,875 | Nevil Beauchamp is a young naval officer with high ideals of honour and public service who, having been wounded in the Crimean War, recovers his health in Venice. He there falls in love with a brilliant and high-spirited French girl, Renée de Croisnel, with whom he hopes to elope. Renée marries an elderly French aristocrat instead, and Nevil takes up his naval career again. He falls under the influence of the republican and freethinking Dr. Shrapnel, thereby alienating his wealthy uncle Everard Romfrey, a staunchly Conservative peer. Nevil stands for Parliament as a Radical, but he is defeated. Everard horsewhips Dr. Shrapnel, and refuses when an outraged Nevil demands that he apologise. Renée now returns to claim Nevil, but he has meanwhile fallen in love with a beautiful Tory, Cecilia Halkett. Nevil reconciles Renée with her husband, but Cecilia refuses Nevil's proposal. With his love life in ruins Nevil falls ill and is thought to be at death's door. Uncle Everard repents of his quarrel with Nevil and Dr. Shrapnel, and apologises at last. On Nevil's recovery he marries Dr. Shrapnel's ward Jenny. The marriage is a happy one, in spite of Nevil's not being in love with her, but after a few months Nevil dies in an attempt to save a child from drowning. |
Fat Cat | null | 2,009 | “Cat, 17, is driven to succeed, especially in her science research class where her goal is to beat her long-time nemesis, Matt McKinney, at the science fair. Her idea of using herself as a test subject for an in-depth study of early hominids and their lifestyle leads to some interesting shifts in perspective, not only in how others see her, but in how she sees herself. As her project continues, her weight drops, her confidence increases, and Cat becomes “hot,” garnering male attention and a boyfriend for the first time. But she still can’t stop thinking about Matt. Cat is a believable, flawed character. Her odyssey from fat to hot and the slowly unfolding tale about why she and Matt, best friends since childhood, haven’t spoken since the seventh grade science fair, speaks volumes about her values and her self-esteem. Kirsten Potter’s top-notch narration of Robin Brande’s novel (Knopf, 2009) has a distinctive flair, and she gives each character a unique voice. A conversation with the author and activist/cooking instructor Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, including a discussion about vegetarianism and teens, rounds out the recording. A great selection for both public and school libraries.—Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI, School Library Journal Can an American teen survive 207 days without junk food and modern conveniences? Budding scientist Catherine (Cat) Locke finds out the answer after embarking on her most ambitious experiment yet: living the lifestyle of a primitive Homo erectus. Cat is determined to win a prize at the science fair and outshine her rival and former friend, Matt, “Mr. I’ve-Won-More Science-Fairs-Than-Any-of-You,†but that’s not her only motivation: she hopes that by following the diet of her ancestors, she’ll shed some unwanted pounds. Going without processed food, technology and motorized transportation isn’t easy (“A big fat Snickers and a slice of pizza would have made everything so much betterâ€), but Cat learns much about herself and other members of the human species as she observes changes in her body and attitude, while noting how others react to her metamorphosis (namely, she’s suddenly juggling the attention of several boys). |
The Shanghai Moon | S. J. Rozan | 2,009 | Another PI friend of Lydia's, Joel Pillarsky, hired her to help him find a number of antique gems, including potentially a brooch, the Shanghai Moon, which has become the stuff of legend. When Lydia finds this out, however, there has been a murder, she is fired from the case, and Bill Smith reappears, claiming to have heard of the gem while in the Navy. |
China Marine | Eugene Sledge | 2,002 | Sledge's second book opens in 1945 with the First Marine Division remaining in Okinawa after the 82-day battle to clean up and prepare for their anticipated invasion of "Yokosuka Naval Base at the mouth of Tokyo Bay". None of the Marines expected to survive such an invasion. After the atomic bombings and Japan's precipitous surrender they did not celebrate, but rather were kept busy by a return to the intense manual labor of cleanup. In Sledge's words, "I think we were actually afraid to believe it was true...The memory of so many dead friends was still fresh in our minds." Life in Okinawa suddenly became more bearable as the bewildered and unbelieving Marines grasped the reality of their enormous good luck. So they filled in their free time with entertainment including movies, books and their perennial pastime of "'smokestacking' (fooling)" new replacement troops. Even otherwise dangerous events such as a typhoon (see 1945 Pacific typhoon season) which struck Okinawa were easily weathered. Sledge's battalion was shipped to Beijing (then known as Peiping), China instead of being sent home. Initially this was an exciting experience as Sledge and the others were exposed to the complexities of Chinese culture, enjoying the rich experience as well as the pastimes of garrison duty. "Smokestacking" was expanded to include the Chinese with practices such as gazing at nonexistent objects in the sky until they were surrounded by huge crowds of onlookers all straining to see. Sledge met a number of people who influenced his direction in life, in particular a Flemish priest, Father Marcel von Hemelryjck, and the family of Dr. Y.K. Soong. All was not tourism and fun during the China occupation and conditions worsened through the months. Sledge had a number of tense encounters while on guard duty and was witness to political events such as an incident at Lang Fang; stress rose as strife between Chinese factions grew. As morale continued to deteriorate the Marines were rotated home under the military demobilization point system. Sledge was sent back to Alabama for his discharge in early 1946 to start a prolonged process of adjustment to civilian life. In his words, "My adjustment to civilian life was not easy," and he marveled at such simple amenities as dry socks and the absence of fleas. He had emotional support from his mother, his brother who had been an officer in the European war and his father, who had been an Army physician during World War I. He describes how he retained his wry sense of humor but he remained disturbed at the lack of understanding expressed by civilians. His incident at Auburn University was typical. A young staff member at the registrar's office called on him to list his military training courses then asked him if the Marines had taught him anything important. She could not comprehend the relevance of his training until he explained the twin facts that the United States Marines had trained him specifically to kill enemy soldiers and that most of his own friends and associates had been killed or wounded by the enemy. Sledge's opinion was, "(W)ar to this lady meant John Wayne or the sweet musical South Pacific... I felt like some sort of alien, and I realized that this sort of thing would confront me the rest of my days." Sledge went on to college, married and embarked on a long career as a biologist and teacher. He did find healing of a sort in his parents' love, his marriage and his academic work but he never forgave the soldiers of the Empire of Japan. He denied regret for the men he had shot but regretted the ones he had missed. (This is in contrast to his earlier description of mixed emotions described when he killed a man face to face in the Battle of Peleliu, and to his description of empathy toward birds and animals to the point where he gave up his long term hobby of hunting.) He expressed concern over historical revisionism about the Pacific war and what he termed might have been a "Rape of Nanking" in American cities if the Japanese had not been defeated. This was his opinion as a man who tried to live with the Socratic ideal of self-knowledge: "There is no 'mellowing' for me - that would be to forgive all the atrocities the Japanese committed against millions of Asians and thousands of Americans. To 'mellow' is to forget." |
Run for Your Life | Lionel Davidson | 1,966 | An English boy, Woolcott, and his friend Szolda (whom he calls Soldier) are on the run because Szolda has overheard two men plotting a murder. Filmed as a TV series in 1974 using the US title Soldier and Me starring Gerry Sundquist as Woolcott and Richard Willis as Szolda. 9 30 minute episodes made by Granada Television. |
Further Adventures of Lad | Albert Payson Terhune | 1,922 | ;"The Coming of Lad" A couple, referred to only as the Master and Mistress, purchase a pure-bred rough collie named Lad to be the guard dog of their home, the Place. Though they are surprised when they receive a puppy instead of an adult dog, they decide to keep him and he quickly shows himself to be very intelligent and easily trainable. At first, Lad views all people as friends, including a burglar who robs the house one night. When the man climbs out the window with a bag of loot, Lad thinks he is playing a game and snatches the bag in play. The thief chases Lad, then shoots him to get back the bag. Lad realizes the man is not friendly and turns to attack him, but the thief falls into a ditch, knocking himself unconscious. Afterward, Lad no longer trusts strangers so easily and has become a true watchdog. ;"The Fetish" While in town with the Mistress, Lad saves her from an attack by a sick dog being chased by the police and other citizens, who believe it to be rabid. The dog is shot and the upset Mistress, who knew it was not really rabid, goes home. The next day, the town constable comes by boat to the Place to execute Lad under the notion that he is now rabid. The Master argues that the other dog was not rabid and refuses to allow Lad to be shot, ordering the officer off his property. As the man is leaving, his boat overturns. Unable to swim, he is in danger of drowning until Lad jumps in and brings him back to shore. The grateful officer states that he killed the dog he came to kill and Lad only looks a little like him. ;"No Trespassing!" Two young couples trespass on the Place's lake shore, only to be driven off by the Master and Lad. A week later, Lad is taken to compete in a dog show in Beauville. One of the men from the lake is there to show his boss' champion Lochaber King. He plots to dye Lad's coat red to embarrass the Master for the earlier incident, but accidentally dyes Lochaber King's coat instead, after the two dogs change locations. He is left having to answer for the dog's ruined coat while Lad wins the silver trophy. ;"Hero-Stuff" The Master and Mistress buy a female collie puppy named Lady to be Lad's companion and mate. Lad becomes her protector and slave, as she bullies him from his food and the best places to lie, and endures the flashes of nasty temper that lead her to bite his ears and paws. As she grows older, she becomes a generally well-behaved house dog, but when she is eight months old, she tries to attack a beloved mounted bald eagle belonging to the Master. He whips her and then locks her in a shed for the night as punishment; however, during the night it catches on fire. Lad desperately tries to break down the door to free her, then howls in agony, before jumping through its high window to join Lady inside. The Master, awakened by Lad's howl, arrives in time to free them both, though both have badly burned coats. ;"The Stowaway" When Lady returns from a fifteen-week hospital stay, she abandons Lad to play with their son Wolf, whom she no longer recognizes. The moping Lad takes to hiding in the car to beg for a ride, and accidentally becomes a stowaway when the Master and Mistress go to the Catskills to visit friends. As dogs are not allowed in the residential park where they are staying, they take Lad to a kennel, but he quickly escapes and returns to the park. While waiting for the Master and Mistress to wake up, he follows a strange scent through a neighbor's house, leading to his being blamed for destroying a room in that house. However, it's quickly discovered that the vandal was another neighbor's pet monkey, hidden by its owner who did not like the park's new "no pet" rules. When Lad returns home, Lady effusively greets her returned mate. ;"The Tracker" Cyril, an eleven-year-old with a nasty penchant for making trouble, comes to stay at the Place for three months. While there, he frequently lies, sneakily torments Lad, and plays such horrible pranks on the staff that two quit. After he is caught kicking Lad in plain sight, the Master loses his temper and scolds him. Cyril goes into a rage and runs away in a snowstorm. He gets lost and falls off a high cliff, landing on a small ledge. Lad finds him there, but has to jump down to the ledge to save the boy from a bobcat. Now trapped with the boy, Lad keeps him warm until a rescue party arrives. ;"The Juggernaut" Lad's mate Lady is run over and killed by a speeding driver who deliberately aimed his car at her. Lad and his owners both saw the crime, but were unable to catch up to the driver in time. Lad grieves terribly until they go to a local tennis tournament where he finds Lady's killer. He attacks the man to kill him, but the Master calls him off. The Mistress explains to the shocked crowd what the man had done, then takes a cured Lad home. They later learn that the crowd destroyed the man's expensive car and he was expelled from the club for killing Lady. ;"In Strange Company" The Master and Mistress take Lad on their annual fall camping trip to the mountains for two weeks. During the trip, Lad playfully teases a bear, leading to a fight, which the master ends by scaring off the bear. At the end of the trip, Lad is accidentally left tied to a tree at the camp site. While his owners are returning to find their missing dog, Lad is trapped by a forest fire. When the bear he fought earlier rushes past with singed fur, Lad chews through his rope and follows the other animals of the forest to sit in a nearby lake. When his owners arrive, he runs through the burning fire to join them, blistering his paws on some coals. ;"Old Dog; New Tricks" After 12-year-old Lad is praised for bringing the Mistress a lace parasol that he found on the road, he begins searching the road for more things to find, sometimes stealing them unintentionally from people who were nearby but not watching their items. As he had gotten more sensitive in his older age, his owners always praised him for the gifts, which ranged from a full picnic basket to roadkill. One night, he "finds" a baby, who was kidnapped from a wealthy household by a disgruntled former employee and his kin. The baby had been set in the grass by his two kidnappers while they changed a flat tire. The kidnappers eventually catch up to Lad, who is carrying the child home. He fights off the men when they attack him, eventually chasing them back to their car, and they escape. The baby is returned to his parents and the kidnappers arrested, but Lad is hurt that his present results in no praise, just a lot of activity around the house. ;"The Intruders" A large, cranky sow escapes from its herd and attacks the Mistress after she tries to shoo it out of her garden. Lad charges between them and battles the sow, but with his old age and blunt fangs he struggles with the fight and is badly injured. Bruce and Wolf return from a forest romp in time to aid him, and the younger dogs are able to easily drive her off. While fleeing, the pig runs directly into the path of one of the Place's cars, driven by a car thief who is knocked unconscious. Lad's feelings are hurt by the battle being finished by the other dogs and the Mistress' holding him back from joining them at the end, but he quickly forgives her. ;"The Guard" At 16, the aging Lad befriends Sonya, a seven-year-old girl whose father works at the Place. Her father forces her to assist him with his work, then brutally mistreats her if she is slow. The Master and the Place's superintendent try to quell the behavior, with no success. During a walk with the girl, Lad protects her from her father. The next day, while the Master and Mistress are at a show and the other workers are off on holiday, Sonya's father starts to beat her for accidentally dropping a heavy basket. Lad comes to her rescue and they retreat to the veranda where she pets him while he sleeps. When Sonya goes to the barn, her father is waiting for her and closes the door. Somehow she senses Lad beside her, which gives her the courage to stand up to her father. The man imagines he sees Lad beside her and runs away in fear. Unknown to both, Lad had died in his sleep and the Master and Mistress were crying over his body on the veranda. |
Mars in Aries | null | null | As Count Wallmoden, an Austrian World War I veteran and lieutenant of the reserve, readies himself for a four-week military exercise which is scheduled to start on August 15, 1939 he experiences the first of several derealization episodes. Later, during an idle evening spent in talk with his fellow officers, as the discussion touches on the topic of spiritism, his regimental commander half-jokingly promises Wallmoden that whenever they meet he would indicate whether he is still alive or already dead because that might not be immediately apparent to a living person. During a training attack near the village of Würmla Wallmoden has an apparition of naked ghosts swirling around him. He keeps this vision to himself until much later when he reports it to a military physician, who tells him that there is nothing necessarily wrong with him, as hallucinations in the sane are not uncommon as most people believe. While spending an off-duty evening in Vienna Wallmoden socially meets people who, as it eventually turns out, are not quite what they seem and might in fact be members of the Austrian resistance. Among them is a strange aristocratic lady, Baroness Pistohlkors who states that she is German by birth but lived in Sioux Falls as a child before coming to Austria. The two start an affair. Wallmoden promises to meet her again on September 16, the day his tour of military duty is over. Later, returning from another visit to Vienna, Wallmoden finds that his unit has been mobilized for war. Motorized night marches take them through Jedenspeigen (where Walmoden has a lucid dream of two young women bathing in the room he is sleeping in) and across Slovakia (at this time, a Nazi puppet state) to Trstená at the Slovak-Polish border. As the regiment prepares to attack Jabłonka at first morning light he witnesses an eastward migration of thousands of crabs, a phenomenon apparently not perceived or ignored by his comrades – and clearly a symbol for the German war machine. As Wallmoden's regiment approaches Hrubieszów by way of Tarnów on September 16, the invaders face the first serious Polish resistance. A fellow officer who had supposedly visited Baroness Pistohlkors in Vienna admits that he had deceived Wallmoden when he had conveyed her greetings to him earlier; actually his beloved died resisting apprehension by the Gestapo. On a country road he meets his regimental commander who—in keeping with his promise—had stated on all earlier occasions that he was "still in the flesh" but now almost proudly announces that "his status has changed." When the junior officer remarks that such a joke is in bad taste given the considerable number of recent casualties, the colonel angrily orders Wallmoden to stand aside near a group of trees. As Wallmoden complies he sees the corpse of his regimental commander being carried away. Before he can come to terms with the fact that he has talked to a ghost a minute ago, Polish aircraft appear and drop bombs on the grove Wallmoden had been ordered to by his dead commander. As he is hurled through the air by one of the explosions he briefly enters a dreamlike state from which he (apparently at least) awakes to find himself being transported in an ambulance car, although he does not seem to have suffered injuries. In Janówka their car breaks down and Wallmoden strays into a villa where he meets a woman whom he recognizes as his beloved although there is no outward resemblance. After they have made love she identifies herself as the true baroness Pistohlkors who had become a victim of identity theft after her passport had been stolen. As the two make their way back towards Germany the story terminates, without explicit ending, as they pass Niwiska. It is not clear whether the two continue on the factual plane of the story as living beings, or rather have rejoined in the Otherworld. |
The Memory Cathedral | Jack Dann | 1,995 | Dann's major historical novel depicts a version of the Renaissance in which Leonardo da Vinci actually constructs a number of his inventions, such as a flying machine, whose designs are well-known from his surviving sketches. He later employs some of his military inventions during a battle in the Middle East, while in the service of a Syrian general - events which Dann projects into a year of da Vinci's life about which little is known. The novel also presents a detailed imagining of the life and character of the inventor and painter during this period, and includes his encounters with other historical characters residing in Florence including Machiavelli and Botticelli. The title refers to an ancient system of memory recall, or Mnemonics, in which a building, such as a cathedral, is constructed in the mind as a container for imagined objects - which are deliberately connected to particular memories. The building can later be mentally navigated to re-encounter those objects and retrieve the memories with which they are associated. Da Vinci's memory cathedral functions in the narrative as a device through which he reviews his experiences as death approaches. |
Eve's Seed: Biology, the Sexes, and the Course of History | Robert S. McElvaine | 2,001 | The following synopsis of some of the major points in Eve's Seed is based on information contained in the book's official website. *Because men cannot compete with women’s capabilities in the crucial realms of reproduction and nourishing offspring, McElvaine argues, men generally seek to avoid a single standard of human behavior and achievement. They create separate definitions of “manliness” which are based on a false opposition to “womanliness.” A “real man” has been seen in most cultures as “notawoman.” *Although this viewpoint actually begins with woman as the “standard” human and proceeds to define man by its supposed vast differences from that standard, people do not like to see themselves in negative terms, so men have generally sought ways to transform woman into a negative, thus making man positive. *Human life—and the situation of both sexes—was radically changed about 10,000 years ago by the invention of agriculture, which in all likelihood was accomplished by women. *In one of his most striking contentions, McElvaine says that the story of Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Book of Genesis is an allegory for the invention of agriculture by women (Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge) and its long-term consequences (the loss of what seemed in distant retrospect to have been a pre-agricultural paradise in which people lived easily, without work, simply picking fruit from trees, and man having to go forth and till the soil to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow). The “Fall of Man” is a metaphor for an actual fall of men. *McElvaine says that the development of methods for the intentional production of food (animal herding as well as agriculture) substantially devalued what men had traditionally done. Hunting was no longer needed and defense against other species declined in importance as groups of humans settled in growing numbers in farming areas into which predators ventured less frequently than their paths had crossed those of human hunter-gatherers. *The loss of value in their traditional roles left men adrift, seeking new meaningful roles, and increasingly resentful of women. The result was what can accurately be seen as a Neolithic and early Bronze Age backlash or “masculinist movement.” *At this point, McElvaine argues, there arose an almost irresistible metaphor, the very widespread acceptance of which has misshaped human life through all of recorded history. The apparent analogy of a seed being planted in furrowed soil to a male’s “planting” of semen in the vulva of a female led to the conclusion that men provide the seed of new life and women constitute the soil in which that seed grows. This Seed Metaphor, which McElvaine calls "the Conception Misconception," has remained with us throughout history and it continues to mislead us in profound ways down to the present. *The woman-made world of agriculture had, paradoxically, become a man's world to a degree unprecedented in human existence. As McElvaine puts it: "Hell hath no fury like a man devalued." *The belief that men have procreative power led inevitably to the conclusion that the supreme Creative Power must also be male. The toxic fruit that grew from the Seed Metaphor, McElvaine says, was male monotheism. *The combination of the belief that God (or the god who is the ultimate creator) is male with the notion that humans are created in God's image yielded the inescapable conclusion that men are closer than women to godly perfection. Thus the line from the misconceptions about conception emanating from the seed metaphor to the belief, given its classic expressions by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Freud, that women are deformed or “incomplete” men is clear and direct. *Once the Seed Metaphor had sprouted into the idea that God is male and so women are inferior, the original “notawoman” definition of manhood took on new and more menacing implications. Now what had been an essentially horizontal division became a clearly vertical one: traits and values associated with women were not simply classified as improper for men, but as inferior. *The total subordination of women throughout recorded history, McElvaine argues, is but the first part of the devastating legacy of the Neolithic backlash and the Seed Metaphor. Equally important has been the concomitant suppression in men of all values, ideas, and characteristics associated with women and so defined as inferior. The rest, he says, is history—pretty much all of it—and, the gains of women in recent decades notwithstanding, these legacies from mistaken ideas in the Neolithic Age continue to have enormous effects on us today. |
Fallen | Lauren Kate | 2,009 | Suspected in the death of her boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Lucinda is sent to a Savannah, Georgia, reform school where she meets two intriguing boys and learns the truth about the strange shadows that have always haunted her. |
\\"U\\" Is for Undertow | Sue Grafton | 2,009 | In April 1988, Kinsey Millhone is hired by a young man named Michael Sutton to investigate a memory that he claims to have recovered of two people burying a body in the woods in the exclusive Horton Ravine neighborhood in 1967, when he turned six years old. He claims that the burial took place on his birthday, two days after a famous unsolved kidnapping of a four-year-old named Mary Claire in the neighborhood, in which the kidnappers requested $25,000 but never picked up the ransom after police were called. She was never found. Although Michael's memory is hazy, he and Kinsey manage to locate the spot of the burial, but a police dig uncovers only the body of a wolfdog named Ulf. One of the bystanders watching the dig, a banker named Walker McNally, who was a high school classmate of Kinsey, spends the entire weekend drinking and kills a young woman in a DUI on Sunday night. Kinsey learns that Sutton was involved in a past "recovered memory" event that proved false, while greatly disrupting his family. Bothered by this, Kinsey traces the dogtag back to the dog's owner, who told her that the dog had been euthanized around that time. No one has any idea how the remains ended up in Horton Ravine. Upon returning to Horton Ravine to talk to the neighbors, Kinsey learns that Rain, the four-year-old granddaughter/adopted daughter of the couple that formerly owned the lot, had been kidnapped in a similar fashion just before Mary Claire but was returned unharmed after her parents paid a ransom of $15,000 using marked bills, which also never turned up. A parallel story set in the 1960s is initially told from the viewpoint of Deborah Unruh, Rain's grandmother. Greg, the Unruhs' son, returned home with his pregnant girlfriend Shelly after dropping out of college in 1963. Five days after she gave birth to their daughter Rain, they left, leaving the baby behind. Two years later, the Unruhs formally adopted Rain. Two years after that, in 1967, Greg and Shelly (now calling themselves Creed and Destiny) returned to borrow $40,000 against Greg's trust, but the Unruhs refused to make such a loan. Greg and Shelly left unexpectedly not long thereafter. Almost immediately after they left, Rain was kidnapped. Kinsey talks to Deborah, who believes that Shelly was behind Rain's kidnapping because of the $40,000 total ransom. However, Kinsey learns that Greg and Shelly had hurredly fled the area because the Selective Service had been tipped off to draft dodger Greg's location, ruling them out as suspects. Michael's family finds evidence that the date Michael claimed to see the burial was a week earlier, making it prior to Mary Claire's kidnapping, discrediting Michael and leaving Kinsey at a dead end. In another set of flashbacks, the story of the successful writer Jon Corso, Walker's best friend in high school, is told. Walker and Jon became friends with Greg and Shelly during their second visit, and Jon started an intense sexual affair with Shelly. Shelly told Jon her plan to kidnap Rain for ransom, but Jon decided to implement the plan on his own so that he and Walker could afford their own apartment when they started college in the fall. Walker, in fact, was the person that tipped off the draft board about Greg. Jon and Walker buried the ransom money after realizing it was marked, but they moved the money and substituted the dog after being seen, to make their digging look harmless. Still needing money after burying Rain's ransom, they kidnapped Mary Claire, but she died from an allergic reaction to Valium, which they used to keep her sedated during her kidnapping. Back in the present, Michael Sutton sees Walker at an AA meeting (which Walker has attended since his DUI) and follows him, remembering him as one of the two diggers. Michael calls Kinsey to tell her, since no one else believes him any longer. Panicked by his role in two deaths (the "undertow" of the title), Walker calls Jon and says he is going to turn himself in for the kidnapping, despite the lack of evidence. Jon talks him into a small delay and then shoots and kills Michael. Since Walker has an airtight alibi for the time of the killing, Kinsey immediately suspects Jon due to their close friendship in high school. She heads to Jon's house, where she sees him leaving with suitcases, and follows him to a secluded meeting with Walker. Jon's plan to murder Walker and flee the country is foiled by Kinsey, who shoots him after he pulls a gun on her, and both Jon and Walker are arrested. Mary Claire's body and the marked money are both recovered on Jon's family's property. In a side story, Kinsey is invited to a family event (the first return to her family backstory since "Q" Is for Quarry). During the preparation for the event, which Kinsey resists attending, she is given letters from her grandmother that her Aunt Gin, who raised her, had refused. She learns that, far from ignoring her, her grandmother had wanted to adopt her after her parents' deaths and had even hired a private investigator to gain custody of her. In a final irony, she learns that Gin and the private investigator had had an affair, and that little Kinsey had gone on outings with them. In the end, she attends the family event, where her grandmother, who is increasingly senile, mistakes her for her late mother and tells her how happy she would be if Kinsey were to come visit her. |
Bearers of the Black Staff | null | null | As described by Cristina Donati of FantasyMagazine (translated), |
The Two Pearls of Wisdom | Alison Goodman | 2,008 | Eon has been studying the ancient art of Dragon Magic for four years, hoping he'll be selected as apprentice to a dragoneye. Dragoneyes are the human links to the twelve dragons of good fortune, who provide energy to the earth. However, circumstance does not favour Eon; he is a cripple and despised by the trainers and other candidates for the ceremony. They believe his disability embodies bad luck and try to distance themselves, all except a boy named Dillon who is also bullied for his small size. Eon's master, Heuris Brannon, places all his hope and dwindling wealth into his pupil, who is able to see all twelve dragons in minds' sight. This feat is almost unheard of and they pray that the ascending dragon this cycle, who is the keeper of ambition, will be drawn by the enormous power demonstrated. However, Eon has a dark secret unbeknownst to all but himself and his master; he is actually Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl who has been living a lie in order for the chance to become a Dragoneye. It is forbidden for females to practice the Dragon Magic; this is due to common belief that the female eye, so practised in looking at itself, cannot see other things in life with true clarity. If discovered, 'Eon' faces a terrible death. The choosing day comes all too quickly and the corrupted Rat Dragoneye, Lord Ido, has seized dominance over the council. He revokes the current practise of ceremonial performances and instead brings back the combat of old. The bloodthirsty crowds approve, but this just adds to the mounting misfortune Eona has to bear. Not only is she given the unlucky number of death, 4, but she has to face off with the one trainer of the two that bears a grudge against her. Against the odds, the Rat Dragon chooses her friend Dillon, the smallest of the bunch. Here, it appears as though the protagonist has failed and her master's wealth is all lost; however, as the remaining candidates proceed to the arena to bow to the Emperor, the Mirror Dragon, which has been lost for five hundred years, returns. It chooses Eona, who becomes a Lord due to the absence of a current Mirror Dragoneye. Much to the fury of Lord Ido, all the dragons bow to the Mirror Dragon, including his. This is impossible because his is the ascendant dragon, but the message is clear; the Mirror Dragon, the Keeper of Truth, holds power over all other dragons. To discourage those who oppose him, Ido poisons Heuris Brannon, Eona's appointed proxy. Meanwhile, the country grows increasingly restless. A battle is about the break out between the Emperor and one of his brothers, High Lord Sethon, who wishes to make a claim for the throne. Lord Ido has allied himself with Sethon and as the Emperor ages, it is clear that the empire will soon be under civil war. The Emperor and his heir, Prince Kygo, attempt to use the return of the Mirror Dragon as a good omen for their reign. This throws Eona into the midst of their struggle for power. She panics, without knowledge as for who to trust except her close friend Lady Dela (born a man but who is a woman in spirit) and Dela's bodyguard, the islander Ryko. Tension mounts and soon the battle begins. Eona finds herself in trouble; Ido discovers her true gender and her dragon fades and then disappears altogether. When talking to Dillon she realises that she does not have her dragon's name and thus cannot communicate properly. She consults the palace professor/librarian, who cannot find the red folio of the Mirror Dragon. Eona suspects Lord Ido and realises he has masterminded his own plan, killing all other Dragoneyes and apprentices in a bid for more power. In his library she meets an almost insane Dillon who finds both the red folio and another black folio, detailing how it is possible to create a 'String of Pearls', with 2 Dragoneyes harnessing the power of the normal 12. She puts the pieces together and is horrified to find that Ido wishes for the two of them to be the only two left alive. However, Dillon takes off with the black folio as Eona saves Ryko from the pain a dragon-powered hallucination. Prince Kygo flees and his baby brother, the Emperor's only other heir, is killed by Sethon. In desperation the wounded Dela, limping Eona and injured Ryko try to escape but Ido orders his men to find them. Dela continues decoding the red folio, which is written in Women's Script, for Eona's dragon's name. As the warfare escalates and all seems to be lost in this final confrontation, Dela screams out that the dragon's name is her name; Eona. She summons her dragon, the Queen of the Heavens, and they are united at last, with Eona's crippled leg healing in the process. Together the Dragon and the Dragoneye force compassion upon Ido and the trio make their escape to the river. |
Volga Se Ganga | Rahul Sankrityayan | 1,944 | Volga Se Ganga is about the history of Indo–European people who were later known as the Aryans. The 20 stories are woven over a time span of 8000 years and a distance of about 10,000 km. This is a very good attempt at freeing our brains of the clutches of space and time. The first story Nisha is about cavemen living in Siberia about 6000 BC. The society or its precursor at that time was matriarchal and so the story is named after the leader of the family 'Nisha'. Although all the 20 stories are independent and equally enjoyable in their own right, the sequence in which they are arranged nevertheless serves a very important purpose. It is an indispensable aid to anyone who has been baffled by discontinuities in the evolution of societies and their cultures. Here one can find a gradual transformation from a matriarchal society (the first two stories) to a patriarchal one (the rest), a gradual change from freedom to slavery, from acceptance of slavery to its loathing and the likes. If we are to believe Sankrityayan then an apprehension for technological advancement is nothing new. People were wary of the newly better armament which was fast replacing the older stone equipment (Fourth story – Puruhoot (Tajikistan 2500BC.)). The same story tells us how an arms race was started during that period and how southerners amassed great wealth at the expense of the northerners. The sixth story Angira (Taxila 1800 BC) is about a man who wants to save the Aryan race from losing itself to other races by teaching about their culture (precursor to Vedic Rishis). The eighth story (Pravahan (700 BC. Panchal, U.P.). is about the upper class manipulating religion for their own vested interests and conspiring to keep people in dark for at least 2000 years). One can see how easily and frequently the Indians, the mid easterners and the Greeks mingled with each other in the times of Chanakya and Alexander by reading the tenth story Nagdatt about a philosopher classmate of Chanakya who travels to Greece and learns how Athens fell to Macedonia. The eleventh story (Prabha, 50 AD) is about the famous (also the first Indian) dramatist Ashwaghosh, who adopted the Greek art of drama into Indian culture in a very beautiful and authentic way, and his inspiration. Baba Noordeen (1300), the 15th story is about the rise of Sufism. The seventeenth story Rekha Bhagat (1800 is about the barbarous rule of the East India company and the anarchy it brought to India. The last story (Sumer, 1942) is about a man who goes on to fight the Japanese because he wants Soviet Russia to triumph, for this nation (i.e., the Communist Party) is the only hope left for humanity. |
Search For Senna | K. A. Applegate | 1,999 | David Levin, the narrator of the book, is the new kid in his school. He gets in a fight with Christopher Hitchcock after being seen going out with his girlfriend, Senna Wales. Jalil, a fellow student, and Senna's half-sister, April O'Brien, appear in the scene, which marks the point where four of the main characters first get together. The next day, early in the morning all four are mysteriously drawn to Senna, who is sitting next to a lake. Suddenly, without a warning all five of them are sucked into a different world which is called Everworld. |
The Squire of Low Degree | null | null | It was a squyer of lowe degréThat loved the kings doughter of Hungré. After seven years of undeclared love the squire opens his heart to the princess. She replies that she loves him, but that as a mere squire he will have to prove himself by fighting his way to Jerusalem and laying his sword on the Holy Sepulchre. Only this, she believes, will be enough to convince her father that they should marry. Their conversation is overheard by the king's steward, who steals off to the king to report it, and adds the malicious lie that the squire has made an attempt on the princess's virtue. The king has a good opinion of the squire and is reluctant to believe this, but tells the steward to watch the princess's room closely to see whether the squire will visit her. The squire now goes to the king to ask his leave to go abroad adventuring. On being given this permission the squire sets out, but turns aside from his way to visit the princess's chamber and make his farewells. There, finding the steward and a numerous body of men-at-arms lying in wait for him, he asks the princess to let him in. Anone he sayde: "Your dore undo!Undo," he sayde, "nowe, fayre lady!I am beset with many a spy.Lady as whyte as whales bone,There are thyrty agaynst me one." But she, as a virtuous unmarried lady, turns him from her door and tells him to win her in marriage. Now the steward and his men approach the chamber to take the squire prisoner. Though he resists to such good effect that the steward is killed, the squire is finally taken prisoner by the steward's men. These men mutilate the dead steward's face, dress him in the squire's clothes, and leave him at the princess's door hoping she will mistake him for the squire. The princess is taken in by this trick, embalms the body of the dead steward and keeps it in a tomb by her bed. Meanwhile the squire is taken to the king, who imprisons him. Finally, finding that his daughter is inconsolable, the king releases the squire and allows him to go abroad. Anone the squyer passed the se.In Tuskayne and in Lumbardy,There he dyd great chyvalry.In Portyngale nor yet in Spayne,There myght no man stand hym agayne;And where that ever that knyght gan fare,The worshyp with hym away he bare.And thus he travayled seven yereIn many a land bothe farre and nere,Tyll on a day he thought hym thoUnto the sepulture for to go.And there he made his offerynge soone,Right as the kinges doughter bad him don. Having done all this he returns to Hungary. Here the princess, still lamenting her supposedly dead lover, has decided to retire from the world: And, squyer, for the love of thee,Fy on this worldes vanyté!Farewell golde pure and fyne;Farewell velvet and satyne;Farewell castelles and maners also;Farewell huntynge and hawkynge to;Farewell revell, myrthe, and play;Farewell pleasure and garmentes gay;Farewell perle and precyous stone;Farewell my juielles everychone;Farewell mantell and scarlet reed;Farewell crowne unto my heed;Farewell hawkes, and farewell hounde;Farewell markes and many a pounde;Farewell huntynge at the hare;Farewell harte and hynde for evermare.Nowe wyll I take the mantell and the rynge,And become an ancresse in my lyvynge.And yet I am a mayden for thee. Her father now belatedly tells her that she has been mourning the steward, and that the squire has returned from Jerusalem. He gives the lovers his blessing, and they marry. |
Girl | Blake Nelson | 1,994 | Andrea Marr begins high school as an ordinary suburban teen. When her friend Cybil meets a mysterious and charismatic musician downtown, both girls begin a journey through the Pacific Northwest indie-rock music scene of the 1990s. |
The Last Wizard | Tony Shillitoe | 1,995 | Essentially a 'coming of age' teenage novel, The Last Wizard follows the efforts of Tam, daughter of the village Head, to establish her own place in the world while unravelling the dark secrets of her village culture. |
Cedric the Forester | Bernard Marshall | 1,921 | Narrated by Sir Dickon Mountjoy, a twelfth-century Norman nobleman, the novel describes his lifelong friendship with Cedric of Pelham Wood, a Saxon yeoman. Cedric the forester saves Sir Dickon's life and is made his squire. The two men become friends and have many adventures. Cedric eventually becomes the best crossbowman in England, and is knighted. Set in the time of King Richard the Lionhearted, Cedric plays a pivotal role in the signing of the Magna Carta. |
The Old Tobacco Shop: A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure | William Bowen | 1,921 | Five-year old Freddie meets the owner of a nearby tobacco shop, Mr. Toby Littleback; his old-maid aunt, Aunt Amanda; and Mr. Punch, a hunchbacked man who sits outside the shop holding cigars. Toby warns young Freddie never to touch the jar shaped like a Chinese man's head because it is filled with magic tobacco. Freddie can't resist, and after smoking the tobacco he finds he and his friends on The Sieve, a leaky ship on the Spanish Main. They are first captured by pirates, then escape with the pirate treasure. Later they meet a Persian rug merchant who gives each of them their heart's desire. In the end Freddie falls ill, and goes into a coma. When he awakens he finds himself at home, recovered from the tobacco-induced dream. |
Queer Person | Ralph Hubbard | 1,930 | When a lost four-year-old deaf-mute wanders into a Pikuni camp he is shunned by them as marked by evil spirits. They give him the name "Queer Person". An old medicine woman takes him in and raises him. She predicts greatness for him and ensures he is worthy of it. During his test of bravery as an adolescent, he rescues the chief's son. He wins the heart of the chief's daughter and eventually becomes a leader of the tribe. |
Calico Bush | Rachel Field | 1,931 | Calico Bush is set on the Maine coast in the pioneer era, and tells the story of Marguerite, a young French orphan who becomes an indentured servant on a farm. |
Jane's Island | Marjorie Allee | 1,931 | Ellen, a 17-year-old college freshman spends the summer in Wood's Hole with 12-year-old Jane, the daughter of a marine biologist. They go on picnics and fishing expeditions while learning a lot about nature. |
Swords of Steel | Elsie Singmaster | 1,933 | In 1859, 12-year-old John Deane lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with his family. He is friends with Nicholas, a black servant, with whom he is training a colt. He is devastated when Nicholas is kidnapped by slave catchers and sent to the South to be sold. He learns that his father is a conductor on the Underground Railroad, and he visits Harper's Ferry where he witnesses John Brown's raid. When the war reaches Pennsylvania, his house is seized by the Confederates, and he is locked in the cellar. However, he is helped by the troop's cook, his old friend Nicholas. Later he joins the Union Army and sees the final events of the war. |
The Singing Tree | Kate Seredy | 1,939 | It is 1914, and two years have passed since the events of The Good Master. Jansci Nagy, now called the "Young Master", is becoming a fine horseman and his father, Kate's Uncle Marton, has given him his own herd. Kate's father has moved from Budapest to the nearby village to teach school, and even wild Kate is growing up and taking on responsibilities on the farm, taking charge of the chickens and helping her Aunt with the sewing and ironing. As wonderful as things are, change is coming. Kate loves the idea of growing up until she learns it means she will have to stop riding her beloved horse. Spoiled Lily is coming to spend the summer with the Nagy's. And trouble is brewing in Hungar]. For almost two hundred years it has had an alliance with Austria, and it's men have served three years in the army under Austrian command. But the old loyalties are becoming strained, and resentments build between Austrian, Magyar and Slav. Coming home from a traditional Hungarian wedding the tired Nagy's hear that Francis Ferdinand has been assassinated. Soon all the men between twenty-two and thirty are ordered to report for duty, and the little town has its first war casualty, young Rabbi Joseph Mandelbaum. As Uncle Marton explains "War is like a stampede, Jansci. A small thing can start it and suddenly the very earth is shaking with fury and people turn into wild things, crushing everything beautiful and sweet, destroying homes, lives, blindly in their mad rush from nowhere to nowhere." Everything changes in Hungary during the war, and on the farm. Kate's father is a prisoner in Russia, Lily's is away fighting, and even Uncle Marton goes off to war, leaving Jansci in charge. Every night the family gathers in the kitchen to read and reread the news from their loved ones. Only a few old men and children are left to help with the farm work, so Jansci requisitions six Russian prisoners of war to help. Fortunately, "Uncle" Moses Mandelbaum speaks Russian, and Jansci leans on him for help, as do all the other villagers left behind. Soon the Russians are at home on the farm, growing fat from Mother's cooking, caring for the sheep, horses, and each other. Then news stops coming from Uncle Marton. As months go by without word, they stay busy with work try to pretend they aren't worried. When a letter comes from Auntie's parents, Jansci, Kate and Lily travel for two days to get them and take them to the farm. A chance stop at a hospital on the way home has the girls visiting the patients, including one amnesiac suffering from shell shock. He turns out to be Uncle Marton, who is sent home to recover. Fifteen-year-old Jansci can relax and enjoy himself now that his father is home again, and they all desperately hope he war will be over before he has to go back. Finally the doctors decide even brave Uncle Martin's mind can only take so much horror, and they tell the family they will not be sending him back to the fighting. News comes to the farm that England and France have blockaded Germany, and German children are starving. The Hungarian government asks people to volunteer to take as many children as they can in, feed them, and care for them until the war ends. The Nagy's take six. The fourth Christmas of the war there are twenty people in house, Hungarian, German and Russian, eating, exchanging presents and telling stories. That spring Uncle Marton tells them the about the singing tree -- an apple tree the men spotted one morning when all around them was barren and dead. It sang because it was alive with birds, all kinds of birds, that had sheltered in it during the night. "Perhaps they... were merely passing time until it would be safe to travel" he told them, but the tree would stay, "she, mother of all, she would remain the same." Finally, in fall of 1918, the war ends and men began returning home. "Uncle" Moses only living son comes home to be a shop keeper like his father, the Russians prisoners and German children go home, Kate's father is coming back to the farm and everyone hopes the world has learned how to live at peace at last. |
Figure Away | Phoebe Atwood Taylor | null | Cape Cod's resident detective Asey Mayo is asked to take a hand with respect to some mysterious disturbances that threaten the success of Billingsgate's "Old Home Week", a local festival mounted to stave off the small town's bankruptcy. The week of homespun celebrations is soon marred by the murder of an antiques dealer and there is no shortage of suspects, both local and "come-from-awayers"; someone has been sabotaging the festival and occasionally taking the place of one of the mannequins on the lawn of the murdered antiques dealer. Asey Mayo finally tracks down the identity of the murderer and learns who's been moving the "figure away". |
Blizzard Pass | David "Zeb" Cook | null | Blizzard Pass is a solo adventure for a thief level 1–3. The thief must cross Blizzard Pass, and then penetrate a cavern system within Blizzard Pass to free the other adventurers from a prison. The module also contains a short adventure for a party of characters level 2–3, dealing with the exploration of the Pass. |
Amityville: The Evil Escapes | null | 1,988 | When the Lutzes fled 112 Ocean Ave they left all their personal belonings behind. To get rid of the extra items a yard sale is held at the house. All the items are at bargain prices and too good to pass up. Little do the buyers know...they are getting more than they bargained for. |
The Cape Cod Mystery | Phoebe Atwood Taylor | null | Dale Sanborn has made a lot of enemies in his career as a muckraking author, philanderer and occasional blackmailer. When he vacations at a cabin in Cape Cod, any of his many visitors—an old girl friend, his fiancee, an outraged husband, a long-lost brother and a few more—the night he died could have killed him, and all of them wanted to. When a respectable Boston matron is involved in the crime, local character Asey Mayo takes a hand and brings the case to a successful, if unexpected, conclusion. |
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison | Lois Lenski | 1,941 | Mary "Molly" Jemison lives with her family on a Pennsylvania farm, until one morning she is taken captive by Indians who raid her home, separate her from her family, and take her and two other captives to the French Fort Duquesne. There she is bought by two Seneca Indian sisters: Shining Star, who is kind and beautiful, and Squirrel Woman, who is stern and cross. They adopt her as their Indian sister to replace their brother who died in Pennsylvania. They call her "Corn Tassel" because her soft yellow hair reminds them of corn in full tassel. There, she learns to be an Indian women, to bear her pain silently, to speak Seneca, to work for food, and learns the place of an Indian woman. She befriends a young hunter, Little Turtle, and wise old Grandfather Shagbark, who are both kind to him and only want her to be happy. At the end of the book she has the choice to go home with an English captain and get all the training she would have had as a white girl or to stay living as an Indian. She chooses to stay with them, earning the name "Little woman of great courage." |
Fog Magic | Julia Sauer | 1,943 | The fantasy story centers on eleven-year-old Greta Addington. One child in every generation of Addingtons is able to experience the special magic of Blue Cove, Nova Scotia. In fair weather, ruined buildings are all Greta sees, but when the fog rolls in she can travel back in time to visit the village and its inhabitants. While there she has a friend to play with, and the people refer to her as coming "from over the mountain". Greta is especially eager to go there on her twelfth birthday, but she has to wait till night for it to become foggy. That night in Blue Cove her friends give her a kitten, and Greta leaves realizing she will never be able to return. The setting is based on the real life town of Little River, Nova Scotia and the former village of White's Cove where Sauer spent many summers. |
Justin Morgan Had a Horse | Marguerite Henry | 1,945 | The schoolmaster, Justin Morgan, takes two colts as payment for an old debt. The younger of the two grows into a sturdy, though small, riding horse which served as the foundation of the Morgan breed of horse. John Smith, formerly of NBC's Laramie, played the part of Mr. Ames. |
Send Him Victorious | null | null | A moderate Conservative government in the United Kingdom is preparing to use force to overthrow the white minority government of Rhodesia. There are widespread extreme right-wing protests in Britain against this policy. Agitators in the Grenadier Guards incite a mutiny, in which the hated Regimental Sergeant Major is killed. An armed gang breaks into Chelsea Barracks to release the agitators, including by mistake Guardsman Steele, who has been wrongly accused of murdering the RSM. Steele plays along with his captors as they prepare to turn a demonstration in Oxford into an ugly riot. He manages to telephone his mother with a garbled description of the conspirators, before he is found with a fractured skull. Veteran journalist Jack Kemble links his mention of a scarred Frenchman with someone seen meeting the mutinous guardsmen. The Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Patrick Harvey, resolve to proceed with the use of force against Rhodesia. Secretary of State for Defence Critten and Tory grandee Lord Thorganby resign in protest. The King, who is on holiday in Italy, feels he should return to support the Government. His aircraft is found to have been sabotaged, but a businessman, Dennis Ralston, offers him his private jet. The jet explodes in mid-flight. In the crisis, the youthful Prince, the heir to the throne, is given what purports to be a statement which the King intended to broadcast to the nation. Behind the scenes, Sir James Courthope, the late King's private secretary, tells Lord Thorganby that the King intended to sack Harvey and invite Thorganby to form a government, which would cancel the action against Rhodesia. When the Prince reads the script, it is well-received, but Harvey refuses to believe that the King wrote it. Thorganby starts to form a government but Alan Selkirk, his Principal Private Secretary, realises that Courthope reported the King's death to the Prince before news of the explosion reached anybody. He writes a letter to Thorganby with this information and his resignation, but he has been overheard by Courthope. Courthope alerts the plotters behind the Guards' mutiny, who murder Selkirk. In Rome, Kemble, who has been sacked for pursuing the story on the Guards against orders, is taking a holiday, though unable to stop chasing stories. He realises that there is a connection between Ralston and the South African apartheid government. Avoiding an attempt by the scarred Frenchman, Poidatz, to kill him, he breaks open Ralston's sealed trunk in the British embassy in Rome. He expects to find blueprints of a missile Ralston is illegally supplying to South Africa; instead, he finds the King, drugged and unconscious. Alan Selkirk's murderers were seen leaving his flat, and are arrested trying to leave the country. Thorganby confronts Critten and Courthope at 10 Downing Street with the documents taken from them, including Selkirk's letter. When the news that the King is alive is telephoned to No. 10, Courthope commits suicide by leaping from a window, and Critten must be restrained. Harvey is reinstated as Prime Minister and launches the operation against Rhodesia in the nick of time. The attempted Coup d'état is determined to have been launched by Ralston, to preserve his business empire, and Critten, who had strong racist views. Courthope, a closet homosexual, was blackmailed into participating. Ralston had kept the King alive should the plot fail and a bargaining chip be required. |
Born Blue | Han Nolan | 2,001 | This story is about the life of Janie, who later renames herself 'Leshaya'. The book starts with Janie recalling a memory at toddler age, where she was drowning because of her mother's neglect to Janie's personal safety. Linda, Janie's mother, is a heroin addict, and because of the neglect that nearly led to Janie drowning, Janie was placed in foster care. Janie lived in a strict foster home for roughly 4 years with her foster brother Harmon, who soon gets adopted by Mr. and Mrs. James, leaving Janie alone until she is kidnapped by Linda, who then trades Janie to her dealer, Mitch, for heroin. Janie lives for years with "Mama Shelly" and "Daddy Mitch" but then, while at a shopping trip she meets her former foster brother Harmon. She then moves in with Mr. and Mrs. James when her former foster parents get arrested for drug possession. Life with Mr. and Mrs. James was hard, because of her bad childhood she never could live with a good "normal" family. Instead Janie goes with a local jazz band and falls in love with the band's 18-year-old songwriter, Jaz. Under the influence of beer and cocaine, Leshaya (Janie) loses her virginity to an unknown man at the party, and gets impregnated. She soon after finds herself living with a woman named Joy Victoria, who fostered Janie during her pregnancy. 9 months later, 13-year-old Leshaya gave birth to a baby girl who she names Etta Harmony James, after one of "The Ladies" that she listened to as a small child. She convinces herself and everyone else that Harmon is Etta's father, due to wanting to have had sex with him (So much so that she had left her panties in his bed before running off with Jaz), and smuggles Etta back to Tuscaloosa, Alabama to give her to Harmon, who is bewildered at how he could be the father. Harmon, in the end, takes Etta so that she could grow up like a normal child. She then lives with Paul, who is also a musician. She lives with Paul on good terms until she breaks a major rule that Paul had set for her, no drugs. And after he (Paul) found a dead man, Jed, in his bed from an overdose. (Jed was who Lashaya was with at the time). She is then forced to move out from Paul's place. She soon ends up at Mama Linda's beach house, who is dying of AIDS. Leshaya, seeing her mother in this state, stays with her for her final days, and while with her, looks at herself, and comes to peace with the past. The book ends when Leshaya travels back to Tuscaloosa to re-unite with Etta, but after seeing Etta living happily in a normal family life, Leshaya instead, leaves Etta with Harmon. Through this decision, Leshaya finds a new sense of personal identity, and sets out to meet her own future. |
Let the Great World Spin | Colum McCann | 2,009 | The plot of the book revolves around two central events. The first, laid out clearly in the book's opening pages, is the sensational real-life feat of the Twin Towers tightrope walk of Philippe Petit 110 stories up, performed in 1974. This lays the groundwork for the author's description of the human ability to find meaning, even in the greatest of tragedies, for which the Twin Towers serve as a sort of an allegory. The second central event, which is only revealed halfway through the book, is the fictional courtroom trial of a New York City prostitute. This serves as a sort of point of balance, bringing the book back down to its more earthly, and therefore more real basic story lines. |
Impact | Douglas Preston | 2,010 | Wyman Ford returns to investigate a mysterious source of gemstones and instead uncovers evidence of an unusual impact crater. Weaving seemingly separate stories of Wyman Ford's engagement by the government to investigate a meteorite's crater in Cambodia, a Mars Mission scientist's investigation into unusual gamma ray activity on that planet, and a waitress's adventurous trek into the Maine offshore islands to locate a meteor strike that others assumed hit the ocean, the author resolves the fast-moving plots steadily throughout the book, focusing the separate paths to a single conclusion that impacts the future of the entire planet. The book was reviewed on All Things Considered in February 2010. |
Ballroom of the Skies | John D. MacDonald | 1,952 | The story involves Earth sometime after World War III, with Brazil, Iran, and India as the prevailing superpowers. The plot reveals the reasons behind humanity's history of perpetual war and strife, which is that leaders of an intergalactic empire are always chosen from among humans but must first be tested by extreme hardship. |
Poor Little Bitch Girl | Jackie Collins | null | Three twenty-something women, one hot rich guy, two mega movie stars, and a devastating murder: Poor Little Bitch Girl has it all. Denver Jones is a hotshot twenty-something attorney working in L.A. Carolyn Henderson is personal assistant to a powerful and very married Senator in Washington with whom she is having an affair. And Annabelle Maestro—daughter of two movie stars—has carved out a career for herself in New York as the madame of choice for discerning famous men. The three of them went to high school together in Beverly Hills—and although Denver and Carolyn have kept in touch, Annabelle is out on her own with her cocaine addicted boyfriend, Frankie. Then there is Bobby Santangelo Stanislopolous, the Kennedyesque son of Lucky Santangelo and deceased Greek shipping billionaire, Dimitri Stanislopolous. Bobby owns Mood, the hottest club in New York. Back in the day he went to high school with Denver, Carolyn and Annabelle. And he connected with all three of them. Frankie is his best friend. When Annabelle’s beautiful movie star mother is found shot to death in the bedroom of her Beverly Hills mansion, the five of them find themselves thrown together . . . and secrets from the past have a way of coming back to haunt everyone. . . . |
Araminta Station | Jack Vance | null | The novel centres on Glawen Clattuc, an intelligent, capable young man and a member of the Conservancy at Araminta Station. Although his status index number is rather high, Glawen hopes for Agency status. Glawen joins Bureau B, the department responsible for enforcing the laws of the Charter and quickly becomes embroiled in a plot to allow the Yips to take over Deucas (to the benefit—it is suspected—of several traitors at Araminta Station). The novel also describes Glawen's romance with the beautiful Sessily Veder and later with Wayness Tamm, daughter of the Conservator (that is, the leader of the Conservancy). Unfortunately, Sessily is kidnapped and brutally murdered and Glawen attempts to bring her murderers to justice. Her abduction may be linked to the above-mentioned plot. Meanwhile, Wayness has discovered a terrible secret which may destroy the Conservancy. She decides to return alone to Earth, where the original Charter is located, to see if her suspicions are justified. As part of his Bureau B activities, Glawen is ordered by Brodwyn Wook to join the Bold Lions (a boisterous drinking club for devil-may-care youths) and travel to Yipton with them on an annual jaunt. Glawen is to use the Bold Lions as cover to spy on the Yips and he is accompanied in this task by Kirdy Wook. Glawen and Kirdy discover that the Yips are secretly preparing flyers (flying vehicles) to further their plans to infiltrate Deucas. However, Kirdy is caught, held prisoner and tortured by the Yips. Only the greatest threats from Brodwyn Wook secure Kirdy's release and recovers in hospital. Although Kirdy recovers physically, his mind is severely affected and he nurtures a hatred for Glawen. Disconsolately, Glawen travels to a small island for a holiday. To his horror, he discovers that "parties" are being held on this island in which rich off-worlders are allowed to have sex with underage Yip girls who are then killed (profits of course going to Titus Pompo). Glawen reports back to Bureau B and an outraged Bodwyn Wook orders the arrest and severe punishment of all concerned. However, Bodwyn is not satisfied and feels that the organisers of these "parties" should be punished also. He sends Glawen on an off-world mission to discover the identity of the organisers and, to Glawen's horror, orders that Kirdy must accompany him. The deranged Kirdy quickly betrays Glawen who is imprisoned by a group of female religious fanatics who attempt to use him as a sex slave. It turns out these "nuns" were clients of the organising group and paid for the "parties" as part of their macabre religious ceremony/reproduction strategy. With the aid of the IPCC Glawen is finally able to escape and returns to Cadwal where he is confronted by Kirdy, who is finally identified as the murderer of Sessily Veder. Kirdy attempts to kill Glawen on a beach but loses the fight and drowns. Returning home, Glawen discovers that his father, Scharde, has been kidnapped. |
Behemoth | Scott Westerfeld | 2,010 | Behemoth continues an alternate history story begun in Leviathan. It is 1914, and the Darwinist countries of Britain, France, and Russia are on the brink of world war with the Clanker countries of Germany and Austria-Hungary. War has been declared, although the Ottoman Empire has not yet entered. The Darwinists use technology based on genetically manipulated animals, while the Clankers use machinery. |
Spook Country | William Gibson | 2,007 | The first strand of the novel follows Hollis Henry, a former member of the early 1990s cult band The Curfew and a freelance journalist. She is hired by advertising mogul Hubertus Bigend to write a story for his nascent magazine Node (described as a European Wired) about the use of locative technology in the art world. Helped by curator Odile Richard she investigates Los Angeles artist Alberto Corrales, who recreates virtually the deaths of celebrities such as River Phoenix. Corrales leads her to Bobby Chombo, an expert in geospatial technologies who handles Corrales' technical requirements. Chombo's background is troubleshooting navigation systems for the United States military. He is reclusive and paranoid, refusing to sleep in the same GPS grid square on consecutive nights, and only consents to talk to Hollis due to his admiration for The Curfew. Tito is part of a Chinese Cuban family of freelance "illegal facilitators", as Brown describes them – forgers, smugglers, and associated support personnel based in New York City – and is assigned by his uncles to hand over a series of iPods to a mysterious old man. Tito is adept in a form of systema that encompasses tradecraft, a variant of free running, and the Santería religion. It is alluded that the old man may have connections to American intelligence circles and Tito hopes he can explain the mysterious death of his father. When the old man calls in a favour, his family dispatches Tito on a dangerous new assignment. Tracking Tito's family is a man known as Brown, a brusque and obstinate lead covert operative for a shadowy organization of unclear connection to the U.S. government. Of neoconservative orientation, Brown appears to have a background in law enforcement, but little training in tradecraft. Brown and his team attempt to track the activities of the old man and Tito with the help of Brown's captive Milgrim, whom he has translate the volapuk-encoded Russian used by Tito's family to communicate. Milgrim is addicted to anti-anxiety drugs, and is kept docile and compliant by Brown, who controls his supply of Rize. Brown believes that Tito and the old man are in possession of information that would, if revealed, undermine public confidence in the U.S.'s participation in the Iraq War. In his attempts to capture them and their data, however, Brown is instead fed disinformation through the old man's intricate schemes. The three strands of the novel converge on a shipping container of unspecified cargo that is being transported via a circuitous route to an unknown destination. In Vancouver, the old man's team, with Hollis in tow, irradiate the shipping container, which is revealed to contain millions of U.S. dollars diverted from Iraq reconstruction funds. |
Miracle's Boys | Jacqueline Woodson | null | At twenty-two Ty'ree, the eldest of three brothers, is now caring for his younger siblings. Lafayette, twelve, is still grieving and blames himself for not being able to save his mother, who died from an insulin shock two years earlier; and Charlie, fifteen, has just returned from Rahway Home for Boys where he has been imprisoned for the last three years after being convicted of armed robbery. Ty'ree and Lafayette have built a stable, if quiet, relationship and are comforted by predictable daily routines. Charlie introduces an element of chaos and hostility that neither of his brothers is able to relate to. In response they begin talking to each other in a way they hadn't been able to previously. They fear for Charlie and want to help him overcome his anger and grief. In attempting to help Charlie, they end up working through their grief as well. The story is told almost exclusively through dialogue with little action actually taking place. |
Night Passage | Robert B. Parker | 1,997 | After being fired from his job as an LA homicide detective for being drunk on the job, Jesse Stone is hired as chief of police for the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone, who already has a penchant for drinking, really begins to hit the bottle after he discovers his wife, actress Jenn Stone, having an affair with her agent. They divorce, and after his drinking leads to his termination from the LAPD he decides to get as far away from his now ex-wife as possible. Despite showing up to the interview intoxicated, he is hired for the job in Paradise. He later learns that this is because the corrupt Board of Selectman chair, Hasty Hathaway, is looking for a lush that they can push around. They get more than they bargain for in Stone. The novel begins with Stone’s cross country road trip to Paradise during which the disintegration of his marriage is detailed through flashbacks. Shortly after arriving in Paradise, he meets Jo Jo Genest while responding to a domestic dispute. Genest is a huge body builder, who assists local gangsters in a money laundering operation and also provides muscle for Hathaway. During the confrontation, Stone kicks Genest in the groin. Soon after, Genest proceeds to taunt Stone by vandalizing a police car and murdering the station cat as well as writing the word "slut" on both. Along with being the Board of Selectman chair, Hathaway is also a wealthy bank owner and leader of "The Freedom’s Horsemen", a local militia group. It is Hathaway who orchestrates the payoff and termination of the previous police chief, Tom Carson, after Carson learns of the money laundering operation. Carson then moves out west. Hathaway later becomes concerned that Carson will talk and dispatches corrupt police officer Lou Burke to kill Carson. Hathaway also orders Jo Jo Genest to murder his mistress, Tammy Portugal, after she demands he leave his wife for her. However, Genest can’t help but leave his calling card by writing the word "slut" on Tammy’s corpse to further taunt Jesse. Jesse begins to investigate Tom Carson’s murder, and discovers that Lou Burke had traveled out west at the time of the homicide. He responds by suspending Burke while he continues to investigate. Fearing that Jesse is learning too much, Hathaway orders Genest to kill him, but Genest convinces Hathaway to let him kill Burke instead. Hathaway agrees, and Genest throws Burke off a cliff in an attempt to make it look like suicide. While all these events are taking place, Genest organizes a weapons deal between Hathaway’s militia and gay Boston mob boss Gino Fish. When Fish rips off Hathaway, he responds by blaming Genest and demands that he get his money back. Genest doesn’t like this at all, and responds by sending nude Polaroids of Hathaway’s wife (and town slut), Cissy, to her priest, town selectmen and others. When the priest calls Chief Stone about the photo, Stone confronts Cissy about it. Cissy admits to having an affair with Genest, among others, and confirms that he took the photos. She also reveals that Genest confessed murdering Tammy Portugal to her. Stone then arrests Genest. Later that evening, Cissy tells her husband what she confessed to Chief Stone and Hathaway panics. He organizes the militia and convinces them to storm the police station, kill Chief Stone and free Genest, whom he intends to kill also. During the standoff, Chief Stone refuses to release Genest and the militia retreat when local and state police arrive. Hathaway is then arrested. The novel also details Jesse’s relationship with local DA, Abby Taylor. They begin a sexual relationship, but she becomes frustrated with him and breaks it off by the end of the novel. His relationship with her and his Scotch consumption are basically attempts to forget Jenn. However, Jenn does not make this easy as they talk regularly on the phone. Jenn becomes fearful for Jesse’s life as the events in Paradise unfold and she realizes she still loves him. The novel ends with Jesse coming home to find Jenn in his apartment. |
Iorich | Steven Brust | null | Aliera has been arrested for practicing Elder Sorcery. The Empire was previously aware of her involvement with this ancient magic, so, naturally, confusion arises over the timing of, and true motivation for, her arrest. Aliera seems unwilling to defend herself, and neither Morrolan or Sethra step in to help her situation. Vlad's curiosity (and respect for his friend) lead him to initiate an investigation into the matter and engagement of an advocate to defend Aliera (despite her objections). Along the way Vlad finds out that the entire affair is all to do with a plot between the Orca, Jhereg and Left hand of the Jhereg. |
Brooklyn | Colm Tóibín | 2,009 | Eilis Lacey is a young woman who is unable to find work in 1950s Ireland. Her older sister Rose organizes a meeting with a Catholic priest Father Flood on a visit from New York City, who tells Eilis of the wonderful opportunities awaiting her in New York with excellent employment prospects. Because of this she emigrates to Brooklyn, New York and takes up a job in a department store while undertaking night classes in bookkeeping. Her initial experiences working in a boring job and living in a repressive boardinghouse, run by the strict Mrs Madge Kehoe, make her doubt her initial decision. Letters from Rose, her mother and her brother brought about severe homesickness but soon she begins to settle into a routine. Eilis meets and falls in love with a young Italian plumber called Tony at the local Friday night dances. This leads to her first sexual encounter and some social consequences as they are overheard by Mrs Kehoe. Eilis qualifies easily from her night school course. Her relationship evolves further and Tony proposes marriage and brings Eilis to meet his family. One day while Eilis is working she receives unwelcome news from Father Flood informing her that her sister Rose has died in her sleep from a pre-existing heart condition. She has to return to Ireland to mourn, and she secretly marries Tony before she leaves. In Ireland she falls back into the town society easily. She goes to the beach with Nancy, George and their friend Jim Farrell, who is interested in her. Eilis is forced to spend time with Jim and eventually starts a brief relationship with him. He is a local pub owner, to whom she had been attracted to before emigrating to America. Eilis's mother is desperate for her to settle back in Ireland and marry Jim, as Eilis has not confided in her or her friends about her marriage. Eilis procrastinates about a return to her new life by extending her stay. She saves Tony's letters unopened thinking at times that she no longer loves him. Eventually a local busybody, Miss Kelly, tells Eilis she knows her secret because Madge Kehoe is her cousin and somehow the story is out in New York. This is the turning point for Eilis and she immediately books her return passage, telling her mother the whole truth and posting a farewell note to Jim as she leaves town by taxi for the docks. |
Trouble in Paradise | Robert B. Parker | 1,998 | In Parker's second Jesse Stone novel we find Chief Stone settled into his new life after the events that marked his arrival in Night Passage. Jesse’s ex-wife, Jenn, has also relocated to Massachusetts in nearby Boston. There she finds work, and minor celebrity status, as the weather girl for the Channel 3 news. Although Jesse and Jenn are seeing each other again, Jenn refuses to commit solely to him, and they both continue see other people. Jenn is seeing the lead news anchor, while Jesse juggles relationships with her, local real estate agent Marcy Campbell, and Abby Taylor. Throughout the novel Jesse’s sexual prowess is the subject of office wisecracking, which he doesn’t mind at all. The main plot of the novel concerns ex-con Jimmy Macklin. After being released from prison, Macklin hatches a plot to rob the entire community of Stiles Island. Stiles Island is accessible from Paradise by a bridge, and one boat port. Entrance to the Island is guarded by private security ensuring safety for its wealthy residents and island bank. Macklin puts together a crew with his partner Wilson “Crow” Cromartie, an American Indian. The rest of the crew consists of a demolitions expert, a boatman to pilot their nautical escape, and one other to cut the telephone lines and provide muscle. To fund their criminal enterprise, Macklin and Crow commit several violent crimes. Macklin rips off a local poker game and murders the man running it in the process. Crow murders two Chinese drug dealers and steals a large amount of poor quality cocaine. He then sells the cocaine to other drug dealers. Macklin, and his girlfriend, Faye, using the aliases Mr. and Mrs. Harry Smith, use Marcy Campbell to gain access to the island by posing as prospective home buyers. They also set up a meeting with Chief Stone to inquire about local crime. Macklin uses the meeting as a time to size up Chief Stone. However the meeting ends up working against him as Jesse finds him suspicious and begins to investigate him. He discovers that Harry Smith is really ex-con Jimmy Macklin, and begins staking out his apartment. During the Stakeout he runs the plates of their van and discovers it belongs to Crow. A phone call to a friend and fellow police officer in Arizona where the van is registered confirms that Crow is a dangerous criminal, and Jesse is warned not to confront him alone. The final third of the novel details the Stiles Island heist. Macklin and his crew drive onto the island and storm Marcy Campbell’s office which they intend to use as headquarters during the operation. They then murder the security guards and place one of their own at the bridge which they previously wired with explosives. Macklin and Crow begin going door to door stealing safe deposit box keys for the island bank from island residents and then locking them in their bathrooms. When a police cruiser tries to cross onto the island on patrol, they blow the bridge before it reaches the other side. Chief Stone is immediately notified, and they attempt to take a boat to the island, but before they reach the dock the criminals blow that too. With no way to the island, the Paradise police are forced to wait for the state police to arrive with a helicopter and SWAT team. Not satisfied to wait around, Stone gets a local man to take him as close to the island as he can in his boat, and then swims the rest of the way. Meanwhile, Macklin and crew finish ripping off the bank safe deposit boxes and head to the island’s restaurant with six female hostages, including Marcy. There they wait for high tide when their boat can get closer to the island. While they are waiting Crow murders two of their accomplices to increase their share of the loot. After the tide comes in, they make the hostages wade out to the boat carrying the loot. Crow climbs aboard the boat first, but before Macklin can even get in the water Stone confronts him at gunpoint. Macklin yells for Crow, but Crow and the boatman leave him and the hostages behind with Crow declaring that he doesn’t hide behind women. Macklin draws his weapon and Stone shoots and kills him. Police later find the boat washed up on shore with the boatman murdered and no sign of Crow or the loot. |
Bed of Roses | Nora Roberts | 2,009 | After the events of the first book, Vision in White, where we saw photographer Mackensie Elliot fall in love, it is now up to florist Emmaline "Emma" Grant to find her perfect soulmate. Her career is getting more successful by the minute and her love life seems to be thriving. Men swarm around her, captivated by her bubbly personality and great looks, but finding "Mr. Right Guy" is never easy, especially when the last place she's looking is right under her nose. And that is exactly where architect Jack Cooke is: he has been very close to all the women of Vows for a long time, and he is one of Delaney's best friends. They have both started admitting that their feelings for each other may have developed in something more than just friendship. And when their passion starts to grow, kiss after kiss, they are only left to trust in their history and their hearts. |
The Ebony Idol | null | null | The novel takes place in the fictional town of Minton in New England, which is inhabited entirely by white people, and coloured people are almost unknown among the townfolk. The local pastor, the Reverend Mr. Cary, converts to the cause of abolitionism, and arranges for a fugitive slave named Caesar to take up residence in the town, to act as an "ebony idol" for the respect and sympathy of the people of Minton. Cary's social experiment, however, has disastrous consequences for the town. The presence of Caesar splits Minton between pro- and anti-slavery factions, and Cary himself is questioned regarding his motives for keeping Caesar at all. Practically overnight, Minton changes from a quiet paradise into a violent slum. In time, however, Cary is visited by a slaveholder from the south, and under pressure from the townsfolk, Cary agrees for Caesar to leave Minton to work on the plantations of the south, thus restoring Minton to its original, idyllic condition. |
En Iniya Iyanthira | null | null | The plot opens in the year 2021.India is ruled by a dictator Jeeva. In his rule, population is kept under control, old people are allowed to live only up to particular age and are killed when they cross the limit, each and every one should have names with two letters only alloted by Government, every Citizen of the country must strictly adhere to the rule of Jeeva and admire,adore him, everywhere and anywhere lies Robots, people are identified only with their social security numbers and all the details are fed and controlled by Master Computer at Capital City. On a New Year eve, Nila, a homemaker lady is very delighted for having Government permission letter to have a boy baby from Population Control Board. She intimates the news to her husband Sibi. While Government, allots a home space of Nila's residence for a man Ravi and his pet Jeano. Jeano is a Robotic pet which could speak. As per government rule, home space should not be alloted for more than three people. So Nila's husband leaves to verify about Ravi's allotment but not returns back to home. Nila, to find him, uses his social security number but wonders to get an answer that there is no existence of such a person. She tries to find him but in vain. What happened to Sibi? What is the role of Ravi in Sibi's disappearance? How Nila finds her husband and a shocking truth about Jeeva and his dictatorship with the help of Jeano? The rest of story moves with the answers to these questions. |
Meendum Jeano | null | null | Jeano change body Ravi and Mano have made a holographic Image called Jeeva and ruled the country without public knowledge. but they made a protest against Jeeva with public and took over Jeeva's dictatorship. since Nila is beautiful among all women, they made her as queen of the new kingdom. but Nila is queen for name sake., Ravi and Mano were controlling the entire government. Jeano, the robo pet for Nila helped her to find her husband and revealed her many truths about current situation. with self learning mechanism, it learns many things from various authors in a variety of book collection and kept it in its knowledge base. since its interfering in Ravi and Mano's secret government, they have banned all robopets in the country. but still Jeano found Nila and tried to help her. |
The Whizbanger That Emmental Built | null | null | The Whizbanger That Emmental Built tells the story of Emmental Baker, a bright but shy girl. Emmental's mother has recently died and her father, an infamous writer and recluse Niall Baker, has relocated the family to the imaginary town of Dropsham in the hopes of curing his writer's block. Emme struggles to fit in her new surroundings, persecuted by her teacher Mrs. Hanlin and bullied by class brute Rory Blunt. With her father despondent and detached, Emme finds friendship with her neighbor, bizarre inventor Chaida Manning. As Emme's friendship with inventor Chaida Manning grows, she learns to accept her creativity and individualism, gaining self-confidence. |
My Cleaner | Maggie Gee | 2,005 | The story is told from the viewpoint of Vanessa Henman, an English writer, and Mary Tendo Ugandan graduate of Makerere University. Vanessa's 22-year-old son Justin refuses to get out of bed with depression. Justin asks for Mary who looked after him as a child so Vanessa writes to her. Mary returns to London to help Justin, but this time not as a cleaner... |
The Burning Land | Bernard Cornwell | 2,009 | The year is 892, when the second major campaign of Alfred the Great against the invading Danes began in earnest. The protagonist is Uhtred of Bebbanburg. A Saxon by birth, Uhtred was raised by Danes and finds their ways more congenial than those of his own people. Nevertheless, he has served Alfred loyally (more or less) as soldier, envoy and military governor for more than a decade, and is now the preeminent warlord of Wessex, Alfred's kingdom. Alfred refers to him as "my dux bellorum, my lord of battles." Alfred urges him to swear to serve Alfred’s son and presumed heir, Edward, in the same way. "Scour the enemy from England," Alfred says, "and make my son safe on his God-given throne." Uhtred is unwilling to make that commitment, however. He has long wanted to return to his family's stronghold at Bebbanburg in Northumbria and to deal with his uncle, Aelfric, who stole the family properties and titles from him when his father died. He wants his obligation to Alfred and Wessex to end when Alfred, now seriously ill, passes away. Uhtred is military governor of Lundene (London), sharing power with Bishop Erkenwald, whom he dislikes but respects. At Alfred's behest, Uhtred delivers a message to the Danish Jarl (earl) Haesten, whose fleet threatens Wessex, that Alfred will pay a large ransom for Haesten to leave. Alfred cannot attack Haesten, because another Dane, Jarl Harald Bloodhair, has attacked at Cent (Kent). Haesten and Alfred reach an accord, and Haesten leaves hostages and accepts missionaires. Haesten even undergoes baptism. However, Uhtred knows that the hostages are fake and that if Harald defeats Alfred, Haesten will attack Wessex. While traveling with a small force to meet Alfred (who is now free to lead an army against Harald), Uhtred captures Skade, Harald's woman. Skade is a formidable fighter in her own right, and leads one of Harald's war parties. She and her party are captured while raiding a Mercian village. However, Harald approaches Uhtred leading a line of Saxon captive women, and threatens to kill all of them if Skade is not returned to him. After he butchers one woman in front of her child, Uhtred releases Skade to him. Skade intones an ominous curse against Uhtred as she and Harald make their escape. At a meeting with Alfred and his advisors, Uhtred urges the king to adopt a plan to lure Harald to Farnham by sending a modest force there, and then attack Harald from the rear with most of Alfred's troops when he takes the bait. The plan works brilliantly. Uhtred and his men defeat Harald's forces and again take Skade prisoner. Harald is severely wounded, but escapes to Torneie Island (Thorney Island). There, with a few followers, he is able to use the island’s natural defenses and a palisade he builds to repel later attempts to defeat him. However, he is trapped there. While celebrating the Mercian/Saxon victory at Farnham, Uhtred is devastated by news that his beloved wife, Gisela, has died in childbirth, along with the child she bore. When Uhtred and Skade return to Lundene, Alfred's advisor, Bishop Asser (whose dislike of Uhtred long predates this story) uses the mad brother Godwin to denounce Gisela's name, ranting that Gisela was the devil's whore, and has come back from the dead as Skade. Uhtred flies into a rage and kills Godwin, though he says that he only meant to silence him. Uhtred retreats to his house, where Uhtred’s old friend and mentor, Father Beocca, tells him that Alfred has ordered Uhtred to pay a huge fine and swear an oath to Alfred's son Edward the Aethling. Alfred holds Uhtred's children as hostage to his terms, and places them in the custody of Aethelflaed, Alfred's daughter and wife of Aethelred, the ealdorman of Mercia. Furious, Uhtred reneges on his oath to Alfred and sails, with Skade, to Dunholm in Northumbria, stronghold of his old friend Ragnar, a Danish leader. Uhtred trusts Aethelflaed to protect his children. Eager to use his newfound freedom and encouraged by Skade, Uhtred goes Viking. He sails to Frisia to loot, kill and plunder Skirnir, Skade's husband, and on the journey, he and Skade become lovers. After he defeats and kills Skirnir, however, he is disappointed when Skirnir's treasure horde fails to meet his expectations. When Skade demands half of the horde as her share, Uhtred denies it to her. From that point on Skade becomes hostile to Uhtred. Sailing back to Ragnar's fortress, Uhtred winters there. During that winter, Brida, Uhtred's former lover who is now Ragnar's wife, convinces Ragnar to attack Wessex alongside the other Northumbrian Jarls, Cnut and Sigrid. During the meeting, Haesten arrives and declares that he will attack Mercia. Haesten and Skade become infatuated with each other, and when Haesten leaves, Skade goes with him. Uhtred is caught in a conflict of loyalties, between the Danes with whom he was raised, and his oaths to Alfred and Aethelflaed. He also fears for his children's safety, as they are in Mercia, in Aethelflaed's custody. His indecision is broken when his friend, the Welshman Father Pyrlig arrives. Pyrlig reminds Uhtred that he has given his oath to serve Aethelflaed. (This occurred in Sword Song.) Uhtred is reluctant at first, until Father Pyrlig tells him that 'oaths made in love cannot be broken'. Uhtred goes to serve Aethelflaed. He first has to rescue her from Lord Aldhem. Aethelred, Aethelflaed's husband, wishes to divorce her, to break free of Alfred's influence over Mercia. He directs Aldhem to have sex with Aethelflaed, either by seduction, or failing that, by force. Either act would make her an adulterer, allowing Aethelred to divorce her. Uhtred kills Aldhem, liberates Aethelflaed, and reunites with his children. He and Aethelflaed then go to Aethelred's council, surprising him before the assembled Mercian lords. Warning of Jarl Haesten's advance, Aethelflaed tries to win the Mercian lords to her side. She and Uhtred then wait at Lunden for support. However, because Aethelred holds their purse-strings, none of the lords come, except for Lord Elfwold. During this wait, Uhtred and Aethelflaed become lovers. Uhtred also learns that Alfred had advised Aethelflaed to use Uhtred's oath to her to bring him back. Eventually, Edward Aetheling arrives, along with Alfred's retainer and Uhtred's friend Steapa, and an army of twelve hundred of Alfred's best house troops. They also bear a message that Uhtred is to give his oath to Edward. Uhtred promptly refuses. Thus reinforced, Uhtred marches ahead to Haesten's two forts at Baemfleot (Benfleet), although Haesten is not there. Uhtred encounters and attacks a larger Danish force and is surrounded. He nearly loses the battle and his life, but is saved and the battle won by the timely arrival of Steapa and the rest of Alfred's troops. They proceed to capture the first of the forts. Uhtred makes preparations for the next battle and begins teaching Edward how to lead from the front. Uhtred assaults the fort and scales the ditch, using sails with ropes sown into them to provide sure footing on the slippery ditch. He tries to use ladders to get up the wall, but the first assault fails. His second assault ultimately succeeds after Father Pyrlig throws specially prepared beehives onto the walls. The bees distract the defenders so that Uhtred's force can scale the walls and capture the fort. In the hall Uhtred finds Skade and a horde of gold. Harald Bloodhair, crippled and vengeful over Skade's betrayal with Haesten, suddenly appears, embraces Skade, and kills her at the same time. He then asks Uhtred to kill him. Uhtred does, then meets with Edward who says that he doesn't need Uhtred's oath as long as his sister has it. Uhtred and Aethelflaed then sail away from Baemfleot on the Thames. |
Love, A Rather Bad Idea | null | null | The story is about Samar Pratap, a quirky, ambitious and popular student at IIT Delhi. He and his band of friends – Skimpy, Jiya and Pranav – together live an upbeat life on campus. While Jiya is the college heart-throb, Pranav is the sports head with a righteous outlook to things and Skimpy, son of rich NRI parents, has a charmed existence full of creative plans to woo his dream girl. Their interaction with each other and other members of the IIT campus brings out many interesting, poignant and downright hilarious moments. In due course of time the inevitable institute politics enters their lives as Samar is picked as the frontrunner for the top job on campus. The ensuing dilemmas threaten to break up their friendship and tosses up some difficult choices for Samar and his friends. The book is Anirban Mukherjee’s first novel and is largely based on his experiences during his stay at IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta. |
Le Voyage d'Hiver | Amélie Nothomb | 2,009 | In spite of Zoïle's attempts to get a rip of the annoying presence of the autistic writer Aliénor Malèze in Astrolabe's life, her manager and protector, so that he can his love for this agent, his love failure turns into an air terrorist act by hijacking a Roissy aeroplane with a bottle shard, planning smashing the plane against the Eiffel Tower. The title refers to Franz Schubert's lied Winterreise: in the novel, Zoïle thinks about this song cycle to forget about his fear during the terrorist act. |
Flight into Camden | null | null | This moving story is recounted by Margaret, the daughter of a Yorshire miner, who falls in love with a married teacher and goes to live with him in a room in Camden Town, London. Many critics have observed and almost lawrentian fidelity in the descriptions of their love-making and the intricacies of their emotional responses to one another. But in the end family ties prove too strong for an ambiguous relationship which begins to disclose a chasm of emptiness and bitterness. |
Metal Fatigue | Sean Williams | 1,996 | In the aftermath of a nuclear war, the former USA has become a disaster area. Determined to maintain a functioning modern city, the citizens of Kennedy have walled themselves off from the rest of the country. Forty years after the end of the war, Kennedy is in a critical state, with technologies failing and repairs increasingly inadequate. Kennedy is invited to join the emergent Re-United States of America (RUSA). But some people in Kennedy oppose re-assimilation, and there is a wave of politically motivated crime. As the deadline for reunification approaches, Phil Roads, assigned to investigate the assassinations and data thefts, faces increasing threat not only from the opposing forces, but from his own secret past. |
Death in Paradise | Robert B. Parker | 2,001 | The third Jesse Stone novel finds Chief Stone investigating the death of a teenage girl after her body washes up on shore. While searching for clues at the [crime scene], Suit finds a class ring that ends up belonging to a senior at the high school. Jesse questions him and discovers that he gave his class ring to fifteen year old girl called Eleanor “Billie” Bishop. Chief Stone then questions the school principal, Dr. Lilly Summers, who informs Jesse that Billie was the “town pump.” The case becomes odd when Jesse questions Billie’s parents and they deny that she is even their daughter. He confirms that she is indeed their daughter through her two sisters. They also inform Jesse that Billie ran away because her parents did not approve of her behavior, particularly her promiscuity. Jesse later finds that Billie had been staying at a shelter run by a Sister Mary John. Although he finds that Billie is no longer there, the nun gives Jesse the contact number that Billie left. It turns out to be the number of Gino Fish’s cover business. Later Sister Mary gives Jesse another number that two separate girls had given her. The number turns out to belong to Gino Fish’s associate and probable lover, Alan Garner. Jesse begins following Garner and catches him setting up men with underage prostitutes. Jesse questions Garner about it, and he agrees to talk under Stone’s promise not to make him testify. Garner then admits that he has been pimping underage prostitutes since long before knowing Gino. Jesse interviews Norman Shaw, a wealthy local citizen and famous author, who drinks heavily throughout. He passes out at the table. Later, Jesse questions one of Shaw’s many ex-wives who tells him that she had a private detective follow him while they were married. She had suspected him of infidelities, and the detective confirms this, informing her that he is seeing underage prostitutes almost nightly. Although, she never sees that photos, she uses the information to get a large divorce settlement. Next, Jesse sees her detective who gives him the incriminating photos which depict graphic sexual acts between Shaw and underage girls. Jesse takes the photos to Shaw’s current wife who is disgusted and hands over Shaw’s gun which Jesse easily confirms as the murder weapon. With this evidence in hand, Jesse forces Alan Garner to make a statement and then leaves him to be dealt with by Gino. Stone has Suit stake out the hotel that Shaw meets girls at, and when Shaw arrives Stone and Suit break in and catch Shaw in the act with a fifteen year old girl. During questioning, Shaw admits to killing Billie after she began threatening to turn him in to the police. When Jesse informs Billie’s parents that he has solved the case, that he knows Billie is their daughter, and that it is indeed her body that was found their responses couldn’t be more different. The father seems to be overcome and leaves the room, while Billie’s domineering mother seems not to care at all. |
Going Bovine | Libba Bray | 2,009 | Cameron Smith is a high school slacker from Texas who is on “a slow but uncontrollable skid to nowhere” living a somewhat aimless life. His father is a college physics professor; his mother is a community college English teacher. Cameron’s apparent social exclusion is emphasized when the author introduces his sister, Jenna, who is described as perfect. One of the first scenes in the novel is of Cam having what he thinks is a marijuana-induced hallucination of flames during his English class. This public hallucination gets Cameron sent to multiple drug counselors, all while his hallucinations continue. Cameron’s life starts to spiral out of control when he is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob variant BSE (also known as mad cow disease), probably contracted from his minimum-wage job at the fast food joint Buddha Burger. While Cam is hospitalized, the character Dulcie is introduced as a hallucination-induced vision. She is described to have been sent to give Cam a mission to save the world from the character unknown to Cam as Wizard of Reckoning. Dulcie has pink hair, wears boots, and spray paints her wings; she tells him that he can possibly save his life, but only by first finding Dr. X, a time traveling physicist. Cameron starts thinking about his journey and how he can succeed and get the most out of it. Unconvinced at first by Dulcie’s suggestion, Cameron changes his mind when he is attacked by fire giants and a mysterious Wizard of Reckoning—a masked figure wearing a silver space suit who is intent on killing him. He is given a Disney World wristband by Dulcie that is explained to be able to keep the disease from advancing any further into Cam’s brain. In the journey that follows, the “hallucenogenic mix of elements in the adventure” are all revealed to “have roots in his ‘real’ life” . Cameron sneaks out of the hospital with his roommate and high school classmate, Gonzo, a video game playing dwarf with an overprotective mother on a quest that takes them from Texas to New Orleans and into Florida, all the while pursued by the Wizard of Reckoning and his fire giants. Throughout the next section of the story, “guided by random signs” , Cam and Gonzo take a bus to New Orleans, where Mardi Gras is happening. While they stay in New Orleans, Cam goes to a party with two strangers who are explained to be natives of the city. At this party, Cam meets a garden gnome who is explained to actually be a Norse god named Balder, who was trapped in garden gnome form before the plot of the novel started by the god Loki, the Norse trickster who is not mentioned or explained about any more in the novel. Balder joins the two boys in their road trip. After catching another bus from New Orleans heading towards Disney World, where Dulcie explained that Dr. X could be found, the three characters are stranded in between towns when the bus leaves them behind. After the diner they stop at is attacked by fire giants revealed to be working with the Wizard, they purchase a car and drive the rest of the way to Florida, not risking public transportation because after the diner blew up, they were listed as nationally wanted terrorists. On the way, they pick up three high school senior hitchhikers on their way to the YA! Party House, explained to be the headquarters of a very popular TV show of the same name. Once they get to the Party House, it is explained that the three boys stole Balder in order to sell him on one of the station’s game shows. Cameron and Gonzo, after being on shows of their own which they win using obscure knowledge gleaned from Cam’s “real” life, sneak into the dressing room of the shows host to steal Balder back. Once the three protagonists are reunited, they continue on to the beach for an afternoon on Balder’s urging, humoring his explanation that his Norse ship is waiting for his once he gets to the shore to take him back to Valhalla. While they are at the beach, men explained to be operatives from United Globes Wholesales, a snow globe company, attack them, trapping Dulcie in a snow globe and killing Balder, who was thought up until this point to be invincible. To get Dulcie back, Cam and Gonzo follow the company’s truck to Disney World. Once there, they walk from gift shop to gift shop, looking for where Dulcie’s snow globe could have been dropped off. Eventually, Cam and Gonzo are separated when Cam follows one of the employees into a ride in Tomorrowland. The small door he goes through is revealed to lead to Dr. X’s lab, where the newly revealed character tells Cam that the “snow globe gun” the employees of UGW used on Dulcie is his secret of life, and his “cure” to Cam’s illness.. Cam refuses that fate, and then the Wizard appears, reminding Cameron and the reader that Cam’s “clock is ticking” . The wizard is described as looking exactly like Cameron, and chases him through various doors in a long hallway, where Cam runs through scenes exactly like his life when he was younger. After the Wizard catches up to Cam, the protagonist defeats him by blowing on a trumpet given to him by a jazz musician in New Orleans. Cam then wakes up in the hospital, to the scene of a nurse turning off his various life support machines and his parents and sister crying in the background, revealing that the whole plot was a hallucination induced by the mad cow disease eating away at his brain. |
The Star-Crowned Kings | null | null | The book is about the adventures of accidental protagonist Race Worden, a peasant living on the agricultural world of Mavia. His story is set in humanity's post-apocalyptic future where the human race has been split into two castes/species; Starlings and normal Humans. The Starlings, human mentalists who had developed powerful telekinetic powers that allow humankind to travel & settle the stars. Normal humans are under repressive thumb of the Starling's authority. Only a small portion of human population consisted of these gifted mentalists called Starlings. A considerable amount of technology has been lost, in many cases some worlds are reduced to mix of Steam and elementary electronics. Race Worden is an oddity, where he goes from his simple life to the dangers of developing Starling powers. Because of his ordinary human origins, he has become a renegade. Ignorant of the rules of Starlings, he lives on the run trying unite his family and taken them where they can be free. |
Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland | null | 2,010 | What distinguishes this variation on Lewis Carroll's classic from others is that the story is told entirely in rhyming verse. It begins the same as Carroll's original, with a languid Alice perking up "When first she spies the clock of clocks/Within the rabbit's paw". After following the time-obsessed creature Down the Rabbit-Hole Again, she discovers The Bottle & the Biscuit Box in the "hall of many doors," and after drinking and shrinking and eating and growing (and shrinking again), she is "swept away upon a pool of tears." The first real departure from the original text comes in the 3rd verse, where, after being instructed by the Caterpillar in proper Wonderland speech (The Caterpillar's Lesson on Rhetoric & Rhyme), she is given the chance to impress the imperious insect with her oratory skills in The Mariner's Tale, a dark poem more akin to How Doth the Little Crocodile than the You Are Old, Father William poem she quoted for the Caterpillar in Carroll's original book. The Caterpillar gives his earnest (if somewhat slanted) critique of her recital in the 5th verse (The Subjective Review) before taking flight on mechanical wings (as depicted in the accompanying illustration). The 5th verse finds Alice in familiar company once again with The Cook, the Pig, the Cat & His Duchess, as the Cheshire Cat tells her the tale of the conflict between the Duchess and the Cook, offering more insight than previously available. The most pivotal departure from Carroll's original text comes in the 7th verse, The Tea Party Resumes, where it is first hinted at (by a sleep-talking Dormouse) that the Knave of Hearts may not in fact be responsible for the theft of the Queen's tarts. Through rapid wordplay and cunning juxtaposition, both the Mad Hatter and March Hare attempt to muddy the facts and confuse Alice — though, the astute reader will glean much from the Dormouse's revelation on the matter of the Queen's missing tarts. The 8th verse, offers a brief respite from the main action with A Slight Detour Through the Looking-Glass, which serves not only as a catchall recap of Carroll's follow up book but also as an introduction to the subsequent three verses: Dee & Dum (the 9th verse) and The Battle (the 11th verse) which function as a wraparound for the 10th verse, The Walrus & the Carpenter Head Back (the epic sequel to Carroll's masterpiece The Walrus and the Carpenter), in which the tables are turned on titular characters "who once dined on the shore." The 12th verse, In the Garden of Hearts, returns Alice to Wonderland, "where the trial (of the Knave of Hearts) is about to begin!" In the 13th verse (The Trial Begins) the King of Hearts presides over the court just as he did in Chapters 11 & 12 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with the Queen at his side, and the White Rabbit in the role of the court reporter, reading the now famous single stanza verse the Queen of Hearts (a second stanza has been added that only further accentuates the absurdity of the charge against the accused). The major departure from Carroll's original here is that instead of appearing as jittery witnesses, the Mad Hatter and March Hare are cast as Counsel for the Defense and Prosecutor, respectively. After the charge is read, the Hare addresses the court with an opening statement that more or less vindicates the accused, before turning his accusing eye upon the court itself for failing to serve tea with the evidence (the tarts). The King concurs and calls for a brief recess, during which the bulk of the evidence is consumed by all present. The trial resumes in the 14th verse with The Hatter's Defence, in which the Hatter presents an alternately flattering and damning portrait of the accused. In the 15th verse (The Hare's Rebuttal & the Hatter's Rebuke) the jury is making ready to deliberate when the Hare suddenly chimes in again with a counter argument that is more damning to himself and opposing counsel than it is to the accused, and only after a decisive rebuke from the Hatter does the Hare retract his "erroneous rebuttal", at which point the King allows there is "time for yet one final pleading." In the 16th verse The Knave of Hearts Repents with a haunting poetic plea directed specifically at the Queen of Hearts, who offers her own poetic response in the 17th verse The Queen's Sentence. The 18th Verse, The Royal Flush, pandemonium breaks out, much the same as it did in Carroll's original, with Alice challenging the court, while the Hatter and Hare try to trap the Dormouse who has run amok, and the jury takes flight. As the Queen demands "Off with his whiskers! Off with his head!", a voice calls to Alice from just outside of her dream. Alice wakes suddenly in the 19th and final verse (Waking), with the events of the previous 18 verses recurring to her in reverse order, like memory folding back over itself, until the final line of the final stanza affirms the sentiment that the rhyming poem is both valid and "well worth defending." |
Rice | null | null | The story is based during the flood days in 1930s in China, when people immigrated from the countryside to the urban areas in search of work. This is also a story about Five Dragons, a poor but haughty country boy, chancing his fortune in the city and the humiliation he faces as soon as he reaches the city. He is a typical man hungry for wealth but with an insatiable thirst for pleasure, especially sex. His master has two daughters, "Cloud Weave" and "Cloud Silk". Cloud Weave is very much like Five Dragons, and shares his sexual appetite. She is a mistress to a local mafia. Five Dragons marries her and inherits the property of his master: his rice emporium and his whole business. But men tire easily of their playthings, particularly in this wayward family. Fidelity is an unrecognised term for them. This story also shows how infidelity passes from one generation to another in this family. |
Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery | James Howe | 1,979 | We are first introduced to the Monroes, including the boys, Pete and Toby, as they return home from the movies on a dark and stormy night. Harold, the dog, notices that they return with a small bundle. The bundle turns out to be a rabbit they found at the theater, with a note tied around his neck written in an ancient Carpathian dialect. The rabbit has two tiny fangs and a black pattern on his back that looks like a cape. After some discussion the family decides to adopt him, and since they found him at the movie Dracula they decide to name him Bunnicula. Shortly after adopting Bunnicula, the family notices vegetables mysteriously turning white. Chester, the cat, notices that in each of the vegetables there are two tiny holes. After reading a book on vampires, Chester becomes convinced that Bunnicula is a vampire. He notes that Bunnicula sleeps all day, appears to be able to get out of his cage on his own, and has tiny fangs, which Chester believes he uses to suck vegetables dry. Chester then convinces Harold to help him prove this by catching Bunnicula in the act. He strews himself, and Bunnicula's cage with garlic. This succeeds only in causing Mrs. Monroe to give him a bath. Later, after reading about killing vampires with a stake through the heart, Chester tries to punch a (meat) steak through the sleeping rabbit's heart. Finally, he tries to drown the rabbit by tossing his water dish on him. This behavior results in Chester being locked outside. As the story progresses Harold refuses to cooperate in Chester's antics. With Chester no longer speaking to him, he begins to take a liking to Bunnicula. After a few days he notices that Bunnicula is beginning to look ill. He stays up late one night and discovers that Chester is putting on garlic and blocking Bunnicula from feeding, essentially starving the poor rabbit. Harold decides to act, and that evening before Chester awakes he takes Bunnicula out of his cage and places him in the family's dinner salad. But before the rabbit can feast Chester chases him off, and lands in the salad himself. At this point the family decides to take Chester to the vet to address his strange behavior. They also decide to take Bunnicula to the vet as they notice he seems ill. At the vet Chester is prescribed cat therapy. Bunnicula is put on a vegetable, liquid diet. He takes to this so well, that the family decides to keep him on it permanently, at which point the mysterious white vegetables stop turning up. However, the Monroes attribute the strange white vegetables to a vegetable blight at their supermarket, and change stores. The novel ends with the Monroes remaining blissfully unaware of Bunnicula's strange feeding habits, and the danger Chester believes them to be in. |
The Postcard Killers | James Patterson | 2,010 | A young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman’s father Jacob Kanon, a New York City police investigator travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily. |
The Death of a Pope | null | null | The story begins in London where a Basque ex-priest named Juan Uriarte is on trial, accused of attempting to purchase chemicals and plotting a terrorist attack. The trial is covered by an English reporter named Kate Ramsay. Uriarte's Catholic charitable outreach service is also suspected of being a front for radicals; however, Uriarte manages to avoid prosecution by claiming his intention was to eliminate the camels of a Muslim faction in Sudan. Not convinced, Ramsay becomes determined to undercover the truth and she travels with him to Uganda to see his charity's work first hand. In due course, she becomes attracted to Uriarte and offers to assist him with his plans. This works well for Uriarte, as he recruits her help, resulting in trips to Cairo and Rome. Ramsay is unaware of the actual purpose of these trips, but is sympathetic to Uriarte's convictions and she smuggles an illegal item into Rome, which she believes is a Coptic relic. In the meantime, the story reveals an international conspiracy that is developing and is aimed at the Vatican. With the death of Pope John Paul II and the 2005 Papal conclave that elected Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI as a backdrop, a plot unfolds to destroy "the longest continuous government in the world — the Papacy". It becomes apparent that the real purpose behind Uriarte's actions was to murder the Conservative faction of the Church and open a path for more Liberal-minded clergy to take control of the Church. Uriarte's plot is unknowingly foiled by Ramsay's uncle, a conservative priest from England. |
Mass Effect: Retribution | Drew Karpyshyn | null | Mass Effect: Retribution follows soon after the events of Mass Effect 2 . The Illusive Man, leader of the pro-human paramilitary organization Cerberus, is attempting to learn more about the Reapers, an advanced race of sentient machines that periodically purges the galaxy of all technologically advanced organic civilizations. Having obtained Reaper technology, the Illusive Man decides to implant a human with it to learn more about the Reapers. Paul Grayson, a major character in Mass Effect: Ascension and former Cerberus operative, is kidnapped to become the Illusive Man's test subject. Also, as said on the back cover of the book under the synopsis, David Anderson (one of the protagonists of Mass Effect Revelation and a supporting character in the first Mass Effect game) is again a main character, along with Kahlee Sanders from the 1st and 2nd books. |
Lucky Everyday | null | null | Lucky Boyce the protagonist is a Chartered accountant who moves to New York when her wealthy and charming husband divorces her and squashes her successful entrepreneurial career. Fortunately, old friends welcome her to New York where her life breathes promise and she rediscovers happiness. Determined, and trying to do something that makes a difference, she volunteers to teach yoga to prison inmates. And just when self-esteem and even the possibility of love start to surface, she gets framed for drug-dealing and money laundering. Duplicity and betrayal lead Lucky on the path of spiritual commitment. She is forced to face her fears and she finds her inner strength through the practice of Yoga. |
Vintage Season | null | 1,946 | The story is set in an unnamed American city at about the time of publication. There are several mentions of how beautiful the weather is. Oliver Wilson is renting an old mansion to three vacationers for the month of May. He wants to get rid of them so he can sell the house to someone who has offered him three times its value, provided the buyer can move in during May. His fiancée, Sue, insists that he arrange for them to leave, so that he can sell the house, giving them enough money for their impending marriage. The tenants are a man, Omerie Sancisco, and two women, Klia and Kleph Sancisco. They fascinate Oliver with the perfection of their appearance and manners, their strange connoisseur's attitude to everything, and their secretiveness about their origin and about their insistence on that house at that time. Oliver's half-hearted attempts to evict them founder when he becomes attracted to Kleph. The mystery deepens with remarks she lets slip, with the unspectacular but advanced technology of things she has in her room—including a recorded "symphonia" that engages all the senses with imagery of historical disasters—and with the appearance of the would-be buyers, a couple from the same country, who plant a "subsonic" in the house intended to drive the residents out. Hearing Kleph sing "Come hider, love, to me" from the Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Oliver realizes that she and her friends are time travelers from the future. He traps Kleph into admitting they are visiting the most perfect seasons in history, such as a fall in the late 14th century in Canterbury. At the end of May, more time travelers visit the house. A meteorite lands nearby, destroying buildings and starting fires—the "spectacle" that the time travelers wanted to end their visit with. Oliver's house survives, as the visitors had already known it would. The time travelers leave for the coronation of Charlemagne in 800, except Cenbe, the genius who composed the symphonia Oliver had experienced. In conversation with Oliver, Cenbe admits that the time travelers could prevent the disasters they savor but do not do so because changing history would keep their culture from coming to be. Oliver goes to his room, feeling ill. In a short scene set in the future, the final version of Cenbe's symphonia is performed, including a powerful image of what is apparently Oliver's face in the "emotional crisis" induced by his conversation with Cenbe. Oliver writes down a warning about the time travelers, which he hopes will change history. However, he dies of a new plague, and the house and the unread message are destroyed in a futile effort at quarantine. |
Shattered Peace | Erin Hunter | null | Ravenpaw explains his life and on the farm, saying that he liked it there, as well as the battle with BloodClan and the Twolegs. Then, Ravenpaw and his friend Barley run down a hill and play; such as Ravenpaw doing the hunters' crouch and starts to teach it to Barley, Ravenpaw starting to chew on some grass and instructs Barley to do so also, saying that it's juicy. The next morning, Barley wakes Ravenpaw up and shows him that it is snowing. When Ravenpaw goes onto the roof to take a drink of water, his tongue gets stuck and he doesn't want Barley to see him. He brings back a mouse and Barley says Ravenpaw's talking funny, however Ravenpaw denies it. They then start to cleaning the barn and Barley asks if Ravenpaw misses the clans. Ravenpaw tells him that clan life wasn't for him and that the barn suits him much better. Later, when they are going to sleep, they hear a scratching noise near the door. Ravenpaw and Barley look outside and see a group of cats standing there, whose names they find out to be, are; Willie, Minty, Snapper, Tess and Pounce. They plead to come in and Willie says that his mate is about to have kits. Ravenpaw welcomes them kindly, and feeds them. Soon, the kits are born, and they are named; Snowflake, Icicle, Cloudy and Sniff. Ravenpaw and Barley seem to be very fond of them. They continue to be their "servants" and Barley doesn't seem to enjoy it, but Ravenpaw is used to it, since he used to belong to a Clan. Later, Ravenpaw and Willie are standing on the wood below the roof of the barn when Ravenpaw explains that they can't hunt the chickens in the coop. Willie only nods and says he won't hunt them. One day, Barley catches Snapper teaching the kits death blows, but Barley says nothing to them and tells Ravenpaw when they're on the top of the barn. Ravenpaw only says it is nonsense and they need to protect those precious kits. Then, Barley overhears Willie and Snapper talking about having their own territory but doesn't say a word about it. When the group of cats are ready to leave, Ravenpaw was very sad and is reluctant to let them leave, but Barley was relieved. He then cleans the barn while Ravenpaw is sleeping. Later, Ravenpaw and Barley discuss the cats, Ravenpaw accuses Barley of treating the cats like they were intruders. Barley tells him that since his background was with the Clan, it made a difference. He also questions Ravenpaw's belonging in the barn which shocks and offends Ravenpaw. It also makes him think that maybe he does belong in the clans. When Ravenpaw falls asleep, Barley wakes him up and escapes when the farm catches on fire. They escape but Ravenpaw tells Barley they need to save the dogs. They dig up the metal stick holding the dog's down and run off before the dogs attack them. The two cats decide they need to get out of the fire so they run through the window into th twoleg nest. They think it is some kind of nightmare though they know the twolegs are happy there they never want to go there again. Ravenpaw and Barley sleep outside of the barn. On a hunting expedition the next day, Barley finds a dead rabbit thet neither Ravenpaw nor Barley killed. When they go to the barn, they find Willie, Tess, Pounce and Snapper on the wood below the roof. Ravenpaw greets them warmly. Then, the three cats attack the chickens. Ravenpaw and Barley try to stop them but it was too late and the other cats had escaped. The farmer accuses Ravenpaw and Barley for trying to steal the chickens and kicks them out. They meet Willie and the cats again and find out they were Bloodclan trying to remake the lost "clan". The cats start to fight. Then, under a bush, Minty and her kits are terrified and Minty breaks up the fight and promises that Ravenpaw and Barley have learned their lesson. That night, they sleep in the rain and Ravenpaw apologizes to Barley about not listening to him, and Barley replies saying that it's okay. The next morning, Ravenpaw sees Highstones from the distance and they decide to go there. They go into it and Ravenpaw speaks to StarClan. Bluestar, Whitestorm and Spottedleaf come and welcome him warmly. Ravenpaw is surprised that they remembered him after he left the Clans. They say that they've seen his and Barley's troubles and tells him to go to Firestar and ask for help. Ravenpaw says that he turned his back to the Clans and he doesn't deserve their loyalty anymore. Bluestar's reply is, "Maybe not, but you still have their friendship." Whitestorm, Bluestar, and Spottedleaf each take turns telling him good luck. When Ravenpaw wakes up, he wakes Barley up immediately telling him they need help from ThunderClan. |
Little Bird of Heaven | Joyce Carol Oates | null | Zoe Kruller, a wife and mother who sells her body to provide for her family, is found brutally murdered. The Sparta police target two primary suspects: her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty. By the novel's end, the fated lovers, meeting again as adults, are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning. |
The Native Star | M.K. Hobson | null | The Native Star is set in America in 1876, and follows the adventures of Emily Edwards, town witch of the tiny Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine. Her business is suffering from the rise of mail-order patent magicks, and her only chance at avoiding the penury that is at her doorstep is to use a love spell to bewitch the town’s richest lumberman into marrying her. When the love spell goes terribly wrong, Emily is forced to accept the aid of Dreadnought Stanton—a pompous and scholarly Warlock from New York — to set things right. Together, they travel from the seedy underbelly of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, across the United States by transcontinental railroad and biomechanical flying machine, to the highest halls of American magical power only to find that love spells (and love) are more dangerous than either of them ever could have imagined. |
Good in Bed | Jennifer Weiner | null | Candace (Cannie) Shapiro is a smart, sarcastic, and successful entertainment journalist living in Philadelphia. Although she has a small group of close friends, including her best friend Samantha, overbearing but caring mother, and her rat terrier, Nifkin, she has a day to day struggle with her weight, a recent breakup with her a boyfriend of three years, and the relationship issues left on her when her father left her as a child. One day, she reads a magazine article written by her ex-boyfriend, Bruce, telling his opinions on "loving a larger woman", simply naming the woman as "C.". Outraged and humiliated, Cannie approaches Bruce hoping to get some answers, but only makes things worse when she loses her temper and causes him to say it's over between them for good. However, a few weeks later when Cannie learns that Bruce's father had died, she attends the funeral to give her condolences and maybe make things better between her and Bruce. Things don't go exactly as planned, but Cannie and Bruce end up having sex. Cannie thinks this may be the start of them getting back together, but is hurt when Bruce says they should no longer see each other, as he is seeing someone else. Trying to forget about Bruce, Cannie decides to fix up her life a little bit by attending a weight-loss program, make her job a little more pleasurable, and try and get the screenplay she wrote into the hands of a Hollywood producer. While in New York for an interview with celebrity Maxi Rider, she becomes close friends with Maxi. Cannie decides to give her the screenplay. Later at her weight-loss program, Cannie meets with the program's doctor, Dr. K, to discuss her role in the program. Dr. K, however, breaks the news to her that she is not allowed to participate in the program. Cannie is crushed at first, until Dr. K tells her she is not allowed to participate because she is pregnant. Cannie considers the news and realizes Bruce had gotten her pregnant the day of his father's funeral. She debates abortion and whether she should tell Bruce or not. She ultimately decides to keep the baby and writes a note to Bruce telling him she was pregnant and if he wants a part in his child's life, they should talk. Bruce never responds to the letter and Cannie decides she will become a mother alone. A few months go by and Cannie, knowing she's going to be a mother, is a little happier with her life. She is on good terms with all her friends including Maxi, her mother, even Dr. K (whom she now knows as Peter), who are all supportive of her choice to be a single mother. Things get even better when Maxi tells Cannie she read her screenplay and some producers in Hollywood want to produce it, but she must fly to Hollywood and help with the movie. Cannie agrees and packs her bags for Hollywood. In Hollywood, Cannie is living the dream staying with Maxi in her L.A. house, attending exclusive parties, and even talking to her celebrity crush. She even considers moving from Philadelphia, but decides against the idea. After a few weeks in California, Cannie returns home. After getting off her flight, Cannie walks through the airport and spots Bruce and whom she assumes is Bruce's new girlfriend. She briefly talks to Bruce and is rude to his girlfriend. After walking away, she goes to the bathroom but is followed by Bruce's girlfriend. They get into a bit of an argument and Cannie slips on some water and falls, hitting her pregnant belly on the side of the sink. Cannie wakes up in the hospital confused, until her friends tell her that she's okay, but will never be able to have children again. Her new daughter, Joy, was forced to be born prematurely but would be okay as long as she stayed in the hospital for a few more weeks. Cannie soon falls into a deep depression after the incident and slowly pushes her friends and family away. She starts taking long walks through the city and starts eating very little, causing her to lose weight. During one walk through the city, she becomes lost, but finds herself at Peter's office. Peter, aware of her mental state, takes her to his place, lets her shower, and cooks her a warm meal. Cannie realizes how she's been acting, and Peter tells her how much he cares for her. When Joy is brought home from the hospital, Cannie decides to move into her mother's home but starts becoming more like herself everyday. Peter and Cannie start dating, and Cannie seems at peace with her life again. She moves back into her apartment, and Peter tells her he wants to move in with her. As one last change in her life, Cannie decides to go to the magazine Bruce worked for and introduce herself as "C.", and is immediately offered a job as writing the "Loving a Larger Woman" column. |
Tokyo Fiancée | Amélie Nothomb | 2,007 | An autobiographical novel, Tokyo Fiancée deals with a romance Amélie had with a young Japanese man in Tokyo, she was tutoring him in French language when she was 21 years old. The novel is partially concurrent with Nothomb's earlier novel, Fear and Trembling. |
Of Course I Love You ..! Till I Find Someone Better | null | 2,008 | Of Course I Love You is set in Delhi, 2006–2008, and revolves around nightclubs, colleges, relationships and friendships. Debashish "Deb" Roy is a college student who has dated and bedded many girls. He is happy until he forms a relationship with a female named Avantika. Deb's life becomes great as his relationship with Avantika deepens. But one day, Avantika is forced to listen to her spiritual "Guru" to leave Deb, ultimately dumping him. Deb is kicked out of his college placements and gets a job in a government office where his father used to work. He befriends the office genius Amit, who is inexperienced with girls, and waits for his life to improve and for Avantika to return to him. he even helps Amit to confess his love to Astha And at last Avantika does return and say that she is ready to face whatever comes for them (Deb and avantika) and will take responsibility of Deb. |
Keepers of the House | Lisa St Aubin de Terán | 1,982 | The story concerns Lydia an Englishwoman who has married Diego, the second to last survivor of the Beltrán family. They return to La Bebella, a dilapidated mansion on a neglected estate upon which years of drought and disease have taken their toll. Only Benito, her husband's retainer, remains and when her husband becomes depressed and a virtual recluse, Lydia has to take on the management of the estate with its sparse avocado and sugar cane crops. Benito recounts to her the history of the family and its gradual decline and it is this history and the characters concerned which forms the bulk of the narrative. |
The Adventures of Philip | William Makepeace Thackeray | null | Philip Firmin, son of Dr. Brand Firmin and of Lord Ringwood's wealthy niece, has been left a fortune at the death of his mother. He discovers that his father is being blackmailed by Tufton Hunt, a clergyman who once performed a sham marriage ceremony between Brandon and Caroline Gann (as related in A Shabby Genteel Story). Hunt now claims that the marriage was in fact valid, and urges Caroline to assert her rights and disinherit Philip by proving him illegitimate. Caroline, who is now working as a nurse and in this capacity has brought Philip through a serious illness, refuses to do this. Dr Firmin loses Philip's money and his own through unwise speculation and flees to America, and Philip's fiancée Agnes Twysden renounces him in favour of a wealthier rival. Philip now meets General Baynes, one of the trustees of his lost fortune, and falls in love with the General's daughter Charlotte. He marries her, in the teeth of her mother's opposition, and struggles to support her by becoming a journalist. His troubles are ended when the lost will of his great-uncle, Lord Ringwood, is discovered, and he is found to be the heir to the old man's riches. |
Horns | Joe Hill | 2,010 | The novel consists of fifty chapters, with ten each divided into five larger sections, named as follows: 26-year-old Ignatius "Ig" Perrish wakes up one morning after a drunken night (in the woods containing an old foundry, near where his girlfriend's corpse was discovered) to find that he has sprouted bony, sensitive horns from his temples. Ig is the second son of a renowned musician and the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, Terry Perrish. Within his hometown of Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig had position and security, but the rape and murder of his girlfriend, Merrin Williams, changed all that. Though he was neither charged nor tried (nor had committed the crime), Ig is largely considered guilty in public opinion. As Ig leaves the apartment he shares with his friend with benefits, Glenna Nicholson, he notices that she is strangely honest with him about her desire to binge, her feelings about his unwanted presence, and the fact that she performed oral sex on a mutual high school friend of theirs, Lee Tourneau, the previous night. As Ig goes to a medical clinic to deal with the growth of his horns, he discovers that people have a sudden compulsion to blatantly express their ugliest and most animalistic urges, desires, and opinions to him, and that no one (neither those whom he already knows nor those he meets for the first time) seems surprised to see the horns. Moreover, when he makes skin-to-skin contact with individuals, he immediately learns their identities and some of their darkest secrets. They forget about their conversations with him as soon as they're over, as well as forgetting about the horns. He also realizes that he can make people give in to the ugly urges they have—in fact, the horns pulse in a pleasurable fashion when he does so—but he cannot make them do things they do not already want to do. He experiences these revelations with the doctor he talks to, two previously acquainted police officers, his church's priest and a nun, and others he encounters. Going home, he discovers that his parents and grandmother detest him and believe him to be Merrin's killer; he then meets his brother, Terry, who seems to be the only sympathetic member of the Perrish family. Terry, however, under the influence of the horns' power, confesses that he knows who killed Merrin: Ig's childhood best friend, Lee Tourneau. Ig, in an episode of diabolic passion, releases the brake on his grandmother's wheelchair, and she goes rushing down a slope at a precarious speed. The high school past of Ig and Terry Perrish, Merrin Williams, and Lee Tourneau is explored, with the cherry as a common motif, referring to Merrin's red hair, the loss of virginity, and the characters' involvement with cherry bombs. Ig agrees to a bet: if he rides a shopping cart naked down a perilous trail in the woods by the Knowles River, he will receive a cherry bomb. Although he breaks his nose and briefly loses consciousness when he crashes into the river, Ig survives, believing that Lee Tourneau pulled him out of the water and resuscitated him. Ig and Lee immediately become friends, though Ig is pestered by the uncomfortable feeling of owing Lee a debt. In church, Ig becomes infatuated with a red-headed girl who has been flirtatiously reflecting light off her cross necklace into his eyes. When the necklace breaks and, unnoticed by her, falls down, Ig collects it and decides to impress her by fixing it. But when Lee expresses an interest in her and shows him how to fix the necklace, Ig lets him have it instead. Later, Ig trades his cherry bomb with Lee in order to get back the cross. With this, Ig greets Merrin and the two soon become de facto girlfriend and boyfriend. Lee detonates the cherry bomb and damages his eye, which becomes milky and has impaired vision, though his other eye is unimpaired. Lee is also revealed to be a juvenile delinquent, having stolen and sold various items, perhaps as a way of venting his seemingly groundless hatred of his mother. Ig feels not only that he may be responsible for Lee's accident, but that Merrin should not go to the hospital with him to visit Lee, because Ig thinks it would be tantamount to gloating in Lee's face (having won the girl over Lee). The night of Merrin's murder is partially revealed; specifically, the drunken argument between her and Ig in a restaurant (the last time they see each other). Merrin explains that Ig, who is about to go to England for six months for his job, should openly pursue other women while there, in order to gain some more romantic experience (Merrin being his only romance ever). Ig is infuriated, thinking (correctly) that she wishes to permanently end their relationship and suspecting she may have been cheating on him. He drives away from the restaurant, leaving her in the rain. Later, at the airport, he is about to board the plane when he is suddenly surrounded by police officers. Meanwhile, in the present day, Ig goes to the congressman's office where Lee works and tells Lee he knows that Lee killed Merrin, but for some reason, he is unable to manipulate Lee with the horns. He also cannot attack Lee because of the congressman's security team, which includes Eric Hannity, another high school acquaintance. Ig drives back to the woods and the foundry and notices that snakes have started congregating around him. He listens to voice mails left by his friends and family on his cell phone and realizes that they think he is missing, having apparently not remembered just seeing him while under the mysterious influence of his horns. He drives back to his and Glenna's apartment where he is attacked by Eric, just narrowly escaping. Returning to his parents' home, Ig touches a sleeping Terry's wrist and suddenly sees, from Terry's perspective, the events of the night of Merrin's murder: Terry is riding in Lee's car when they pick up Merrin, but is drunk and high and passes out while the actual murder takes place; later, Lee convinces Terry to keep quiet and five months later, a guilt-ridden Terry unsuccessfully attempts suicide. Although Terry begins to wake up, Ig discovers another power of his—he can perfectly mimic other voices— and convinces Terry that he is their mother, in the dark room, before departing. Ig returns to the foundry where he finds an affinity with fire (and wine) and delivers a speech to the snakes. He asserts that the devil and women have always caused fear in God, with women being the more powerful because they, like God, have the power of creation. He argues that when Merrin decided to break away from him to pursue her own ends, God detested her and refused to come to her aid while she was being raped and murdered, all because He feared a "woman's power to choose who and how to love, to redefine love as she sees fit." God is a failed character too detested by his own creations to appreciate them. Ig concludes that only the devil loves humans for what they are, despite some of their negative characteristics. The following morning at the foundry, Ig is abruptly asssaulted by Lee, and the contact with him enlightens Ig as to just how Lee murdered Merrin. Ig finds that Lee is wearing Merrin's cross and tears it off him, leaving Lee exposed to the horns' influence. Lee viciously beats Ig and tosses him in Ig's AMC Gremlin, douses the car with gasoline, and lights it on fire. Ig is able to release the parking brake, and the car, ablaze, rolls down into the river, in imitation of Ig's journey in the shopping cart years earlier. The fire, though reddening Ig's skin, has somehow completely restored him to physical health, healing the damage from his fight with Lee. There is another flashback with Merrin, regarding the time she and Ig visited a mysterious treehouse in the woods filled with religious paraphernalia. The two have sex and then pray when suddenly someone startles them by banging on the door in the floor of the treehouse. They quickly dress as the pounding continues, but when they open the door, no one is there. They are never able to relocate the tree house and begin to believe they both imagined it, dubbing it the "Treehouse of the Mind." Lee Tourneau's adult life (as a close associate of a Christian conservative congressman) and his sexual pursuit of Merrin is explored. His mother acquired dementia and became weak and confused. Lee uses this as an opportunity to torture her, while pretending to be a loving, caring son whenever anyone visits. Ultimately she dies, and he uses her death as an excuse to become close to Merrin. He consistently finds more meaning than is intended from Merrin's gestures and choice of words, believing her to be sexually interested in him and, knowing that Ig will soon be leaving for Britain, eager to begin an affair with him. In reality she means no such thing. Lee also remembers an experience from his childhood in which he attempted to feed and befriend a stray cat, only to be swatted at, causing him to fall from a fence and hit his head; he is impaled in the head by a spike and receives serious brain damage; he undergoes a hallucination in which he perceives things as God would, and murders the cat. When he returns, his mother perceives nothing wrong, but it appears that from this point in time, his personality is changed and he has psychopathic thoughts. The section concludes with Lee's realization that Merrin never wanted a relationship with him, and his decision to rape and kill her. Ig is fully healed by the flames, but his clothes have burned off. Naked, he finds an old skirt and black overcoat to wear in the woods. He scoops up Merrin's cross and sees Dale Williams, Merrin's father, among a small crowd that has formed near the burnt car. Dale, against his will, gives Ig a ride to the Williams house, and the two discuss their conflicts and the death of Regan Williams, Merrin's older sister, from breast cancer, long before Ig and Merrin ever met. Ig has a strange impulse to go the Williams' attic, seemingly having visions of the Treehouse of the Mind and its similar trap door. In the attic, Ig finds a group of papers written in Morse code and a mammogram that reveals that Merrin too had breast cancer. Ig deciphers the Morse code to read a note written to him by Merrin, who describes her feelings about knowing she will die from breast cancer; she encourages him to find another romantic partner, though she loves him; she says she believes in the gospel of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, quoting from The Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want." It turns out she had decided she didn't want chemo, but she knew if she stayed with Ig, he would find out she had cancer and for love of him, she'd have chemo anyway. So she decided to break up with him and die on her own, to save him pain. Ig reunties with Glenna, whom he convinces to lead a more fulfilling life, and when she accidentally leaves her cell phone, Ig uses it to call Lee and, mimicking Glenna's voice, persuades him to drive to the foundry, where Ig hopes to ambush and kill him. Terry unexpectedly arrives at the foundry, confessing that he has quit his TV job, though Ig begs that he flee. Lee's car arrives, and both Lee and Eric exit the vehicle, armed with guns and aware of Ig's trap, having talked to the real Glenna. Ig and Eric struggle for a time before Lee shoots and kills Eric, hoping that it will look as though Ig and Eric killed each other, without Lee's involvement. Lee then gorily beats Ig with the empty shotgun until Terry reappears, blasting his trumpet into Lee's ear. With this distraction, Ig finally slams his horns into Lee's body. He then telepathically convinces a snake to slide down Lee's throat, finishing him off. As Terry goes to use Glenna's phone to call emergency services, he is bitten by a venomous snake that Ig had placed there to attack Lee. Desperately, the gruesomely injured Ig crawls over to a gasoline canister, hoping that he can light himself on fire quick enough to restore his diabolic flesh and get Terry to a hospital. As he prepares to self-immolate, Ig begins to remember in hazy flashback his activities of the night he was drunk the morning before he awoke to discover the horns: in his inebriated state, he miraculously came across the elusive Treehouse of the Mind and while knocking on the trap door, discovered that he was the one the younger versions of himself and Merrin had heard knocking on the door all along. The night before he grew horns, he climbed into it and set in on fire. The treehouse had rules written on a piece of parchment: "TAKE WHAT YOU WANT WHILE YOU'RE HERE/GET WHAT YOU NEED WHEN YOU LEAVE." He needed to kill the person who murdered Merrin, he felt, and began to feel a tingling near his temples (implying that this desire would later cause him to become devil-like). Back in the present time, Ig is restored to health by the flames and tells Terry that he needs to lie about what has happened here; Eric and Lee are both dead, and Terry needs to believe that Ig died too. Ig then goes to the cherry tree that once held the Treehouse of the Mind to find that a line of fire has reached it from the foundry. The treehouse itself has reappeared beyond the flames and Ig climbs up into the burning tree, enters the treehouse, and finds a wedding party within and Merrin awaiting him. Sometime later, Terry is recuperating from his snakebite, believing (thanks to the influence of Ig's horns) that Eric and Lee killed Ig by burning him in his car, and that the two then tortured Terry with a venomous snake, before they killed one another. Although the detective doubts that this story is true, Terry is the only living witness. Terry goes to the woods to have some peace of mind and is joined by Glenna. When she leaves to begin packing for her move to New York City, Terry believes he can hear the faint sound of a trumpet, and decides it is time for him to leave too. The inner front and back cover of the book has a repeating message written in morse code. It reads, "Pleased to meet you; hope you guess my name," which are lyrics from the Rolling Stones song, "Sympathy for the Devil." It refers to the novel's themes that the devil is more of an anti-hero than a villain. |
Lilies In December | Agustus Montrose | 1,856 | The setting of Lilies In December is the recovering western Irish village of Glen Arnen after the Potato Famine of the 1840s and early 1850s. Two young women, both named Lily have lost much of their family to the potato famine. One, Lily O'Malley has lost her mother and two brothers and is forced to survive in the hands of her abusive, drunkard father James O'Malley. The other, Lily McIntyre lost both parents and lives with her kind aunt Jane McIntyre who works under James O'Malley at the only inn in the village. The two Lilies find comfort in each other's company and become best friends. Throughout the story they meet many sexual encounters with young men from the village. Midway through the book, one such encounter leads to the pregnancy of Lily O'Malley and murder of the future father. In his rage, James also murders Jane McIntyre which results in Lily McIntyre's resentment of the O'Malleys. In her retaliation against them, she burns down their inn and kills several innocent people in the process. This leads to the estrangement of the two Lilies even more so and Lily O'Malley even attempts to stab McIntyre. James O'Malley's crimes are found out and he is sent to the gallows. Now, both in complete misery and all alone, the two Lilies decide to forget the past and reunite as friends in December 1854. Right as they begin to become extremely close, Lily McIntyre dies of hypothermia and Lily O'Malley, with nothing left to live for, commits suicide. |
Keeping It Real | Justina Robson | 2,006 | Agent Lila Black is a cyborg operative for Earth Security, six years after the quantum bomb fractured reality and allowed elves, fairies, demons and other magical creatures access to the Earth. Agent Black is assigned to protect the first Elven rock star, Zal, whose decision to live amongst humans and 'go native' has been met with considerable animosity amongst his own people. Black has to protect Zal from death or capture whilst uncovering secrets that threaten the relationships between the realms. cs:Zachovej klid fr:Bienvenue en Otopia |
Quagmire! | TSR, Inc. | null | In the beginning of this adventure, the player characters set off in search of the city of Quagmire. The characters must travel through a monster-infested swamp to get to the city, which is being slowly swallowed into the sea. Quagmire is a whelk-shaped "spiral city", built by a dead race in the Serpent Peninsula. The module includes a description of the city. |
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter | Seth Grahame-Smith | 2,010 | The epistolary-style book is written as a biography of Abraham Lincoln, based on "secret diaries" kept by the 16th President of the United States and given to the author by a vampire named Henry Sturges. When Lincoln is only eleven years old, he learns from his father, Thomas that vampires are, in fact, real. Thomas explains to his son that a vampire killed Abraham's grandfather (also named Abraham Lincoln) in 1786. Young Abraham is also shocked to learn that his beloved mother, Nancy succumbed not to milk sickness but rather to being given a "fool's dose" of vampire blood, the result of Thomas's failure to repay a debt. Lincoln vows in his diary to kill as many vampires as he can. A year later he lures the vampire responsible for his mother's death to the family farm and manages to kill it with a homemade stake. In 1825, Lincoln gets word of a possible vampire attack along the Ohio River and investigates, but this time he is no match for the vampire and is nearly killed. He is saved at the last moment by the intervention of the vampire Henry Sturges. Henry nurses Lincoln back to health and explains some of the nature of vampirism, emphasizing that some vampires are good and others are evil. Lincoln spends the summer with Henry sharpening his senses. Henry sends Lincoln the names and addresses of evil vampires; Abraham dutifully tracks them down and kills them. As a young adult, Lincoln and a friend travel down the Mississippi River to New Orleans on a flatboat to sell a number of goods. Here Lincoln's life is changed forever after he witnesses a slave auction. Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire - the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his journal his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner - to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires. Lincoln becomes an Abolitionist. Lincoln returns to his home in New Salem and begins his business and political careers by day, continuing to track down the vampires in Henry's letters at night. His life is once again tinged by tragedy when his fiancee Ann Rutledge is attacked and murdered by her ex-fiance John McNamar, now a vampire living in New York City. With Henry's help, Lincoln catches McNamar and kills him, but he decides to give up vampire hunting and instead concentrate on his daytime pursuits. Lincoln marries Mary Todd, begins to raise a family, starts a law firm, and is elected to a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. While in Washington, Lincoln meets his old friend Edgar Allan Poe, who also knows the truth about vampires. Poe tells Lincoln that the vampires are being chased out of their ancestral homes in Europe (in part because of a public outcry over the bloody atrocities of Elizabeth Báthory) and are flocking to America because of the slave trade. Poe warns that if the vampires are left unchecked they will eventually seek to enslave all Americans, white and black. Lincoln leaves Washington in 1849 and declines to seek re-election; Poe is found murdered that same year in Baltimore, the victim of a vampire attack. In 1857, Henry summons Lincoln to New York City. Here Lincoln and fellow vampire slayer William Seward are told that the vampires in the South intend to start a civil war so that they can conquer the north and enslave all humans of America. Lincoln runs for the U.S. Senate and debates Stephen A. Douglas in what became known as the Lincoln–Douglas debates. Although Lincoln loses to Douglas (an ally of the Southern vampires), he gains a great deal of publicity and respect, which allows him to capture the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States and then the office itself. Lincoln's 1860 presidential election triggers the secession of the southern states and the start of the American Civil War. Early battles, such as the First Battle of Bull Run go poorly for the Union troops after they are attacked by Confederate vampires. Lincoln decides that the best way to defeat the vampires is to eliminate their food source and starve them out — to that end, he announces the Emancipation Proclamation and encourages the slaves to fight back against slave owners and vampires alike. This begins to turn the tide of the war. However, the war takes a personal toll on Lincoln. A vampire assassin sneaks onto the White House lawn and kills Lincoln's son, Willy. Henry appears at the White House and offers to turn Willy into a vampire so that he will "live" again, but Lincoln is unwilling to allow it. Enraged, he banishes Henry and all other vampires from the White House and refuses to speak to any of them ever again. The Civil War ends with the South's defeat. Lincoln receives reports that the vampires in the South are fleeing to Asia and South America in the wake of the slave system's collapse. Happy for the first time in many years, he attends a play at Ford's Theater, only to be assassinated by actor John Wilkes Booth. Booth expects the vampires to rally around Lincoln's death, but instead finds himself shunned and hiding in a Virginia barn as Union troops arrive to arrest him. Henry arrives and confronts Booth inside the burning barn; it is implied that Henry is the one who kills Booth. Lincoln's death is mourned by the nation. His body is brought by a funeral train back to Springfield, Illinois, where Henry stands guard. A century later, during Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial, both Lincoln and Henry attend and Lincoln writes about spending the previous night at the White House. Henry has used his powers to turn Lincoln into a vampire, believing that "some men are just too interesting to die". |
The 10,000 Year Explosion | Henry Harpending | 2,009 | The book's main thesis is that human civilisation greatly accelerated increases in the rates of evolution. The authors begin their discussion by quoting the conventional wisdom: :Something must have happened to weaken the selective pressure drastically. We cannot escape the conclusion that man’s evolution towards manness suddenly came to a halt. --Ernst Mayr, 1963. :There’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain --Stephen J. Gould, 2000. This had become the established viewpoint - when modern humans appeared, evolution was essentially over. The received wisdom is based on the doctrine that human minds are the same, everywhere: Bastian's Psychic Unity of Mankind. Unfortunately, the authors continue, this is no more than wishful thinking. Were it true, human bodies would also be the same worldwide, which clearly they are not. Finns cannot be mistaken for Zulus, nor Zulus for Finns. Not only are there strong reasons to believe that significant human evolution is theoretically possible, or even likely; it is completely obvious that it has taken place, assert the authors, since people look different from one another. The first four of the book’s seven chapters serve as a preamble to the final three. First, Cochran and Harpending present evidence for recent, accelerated human evolution after the invention of agriculture. In itself, this argument represents a paradigm shift, albeit one that now has clear data to back it up. tie the advent of agriculture — and the selection pressures resulting from the new diets, new modes of habitation, new animal neighbors, and new modes of living that agriculture made possible — to this accelerating evolution. Wolpoff writes that Cochran and Harpending continue to refute conventional wisdom in their discussion of the Neandertals. For natural selection to have a chance, they argue, there need to be favourable mutations, or favourable combinations of existing alleles such as genes for blue eyes or pale skin. Cochran and Harpending concentrate on the Neolithic farming revolution as the beginning of major population expansions that provided enough mutations to accelerate genetic change. Infectious diseases were another consequence of the early urban populations and soon became a new source of selection pressures. The origins of many recently adapted genes have now been traced to this period, creating effects such as regional differences in skin colour and skeletal gracility. Adaptations may have sacrificed muscle strength for higher intelligence and less aggressive human behaviours. By 5000 years ago, the authors estimate that adaptive alleles were coming into existence at a rate about 100 times faster than during the Pleistocene. This is the ‘‘explosion’’ of the book’s title. Research cited by Cochran and Harpending provides evidence of genetic mixing between modern humans and an ancient Homo lineage such as the Neanderthals. It supports the idea that modern humans could have benefited by acquiring adaptive alleles evolved by our Neanderthal relatives - in this case, microcephalin, an adaptive allele associated with brain development. Microcephalin (MCPH1) regulates brain size, and has evolved under strong positive selection in the human evolutionary lineage. One genetic variant of Microcephalin, which arose about 37,000 years ago, increased its frequency in modern humans too rapidly to be compatible with neutral genetic drift. As anatomically modern humans emerged from Africa and spread across the globe, the "indigenous" Homo populations they encountered had already inhabited their respective regions for long periods of time and might have been better adapted to the local environments than the colonizers. It follows that modern humans, although probably superior in their own way, could have benefited from adaptive alleles gained by interbreeding with the populations they replaced, as appears to be the case for the brain size-determining gene microcephalin. Farming, which, the authors note, produces 10 to 100 times more calories per acre than foraging, carried this trend further. Over the period from 10,000 BC to AD 1, the world population increased about a hundredfold - estimates range from 40 to 170 times. An accelerated rate of evolution is a direct result of the larger human population. More people will have more mutations, thereby increasing opportunity for evolutionary change under natural selection. The spread of rapidly expanding populations eventually outpaced the spread of favourable mutations under selection in those populations, so for the first time in human history favourable mutations could not fully disperse throughout the human species. In addition, of course, selection pressures changed once farming was adopted, favouring distinctive adaptations in different geographic areas. Farming, rather than just reduced sunlight, may have helped trigger pale skin in Europeans. In a 2007 study, almost all Africans and East Asians have one allele of the SLC24A5 gene, whereas 98% of the Europeans studied had the other. These data suggest that a selective sweep occurred as recently as 5,300 to 6,000 years ago, replacing darker skins with light skins at astonishing speed. It implies that Europeans had been dark-skinned for tens of thousands of years. Several decades ago, Stanford's Cavalli-Sforza had argued that European hunter-gatherers, herders and fishers could have survived from the vitamin D content of their diet, alone. Only when farming took hold did Europeans - replacing meat and fish with grain - need to absorb more sunlight to produce the vitamin in their skin. Other writers, including Darwin, Miller, and Dawkins, have proposed that skin colour changes were driven by sexual selection. Cochran and Harpending reject the sexual selection idea when used to imply that race is no more than skin deep ("perhaps little more than a fad"), pointing out that experts can easily determine race from skeletal evidence alone. About halfway through the book, Cochran and Harpending pause to consider two different ways of looking at the information found in gene variants. Researchers commonly see them merely as markers of human migration, ignoring their functions. The authors support such research, but argue for a more complete understanding of the geographic distributions of genes. Where the usual geographical analysis treats the distribution of genes as an effect of history, in the authors' view, the genes themselves are a major cause: Two variants in the same gene do not necessarily have the same effect, and their relative, selective benefits will control the spread of genes through populations in both space and time. From that platform the authors discuss ideas that range from the possible origins of the Arthurian legend in Britain to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Others have attempted this, for example in Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. But, according to Kelleher, Cochran and Harpending go one better than Diamond. Where he was content with environmental determinism, opposing the roles of human biology and population differences, Cochran and Harpending embrace them both. Their discussions of gene flow becomes the core of an argument for biology as central to history, and the backdrop for the book’s two major hypotheses. The first seeks to resolve a longstanding debate in historical linguistics by making a case for the Kurgan hypothesis on the origins of the Indo-European language group. The Kurgan theory holds that Indo-European speakers came from lands between the Black and Caspian seas before spreading their language by conquest. The authors suggest that dairy farming and a complementary adaptation - the ability to digest lactose in adulthood - lie behind their conquests. With a walking food source, the milk-drinking warriors defeated their plant-growing neighbours. Drinking milk, from cows, horses, or camels, is a behavior shared by many of history’s greatest conquering peoples, whether Kurgans, Scythians, Arabs, or Mongols. Without continuing evolution, the ability to digest milk could never have arisen. In fact, it has done so several times, in different ways, in various places, and it has helped shape human history. Kelleher comments that the authors’ argument makes it difficult to imagine the language in which their book would have been written, were it not for the ability to digest milk. The second major argument, which takes up the final chapter, sets out to explain why Ashkenazi Jews have a mean IQ so much higher than that of the population in general. This argument had been published previously in an earlier paper that attracted wide media coverage, generating extensive criticism and praise. This final chapter prior to the book's conclusion has been described as a consistent, thorough, biological history — or perhaps, better, a consistent biological hypothesis of a specific history, and a falsifiable one to boot. |
Zoobreak | Gordon Korman | null | Savannah has lost her pet monkey named Cleopatra. Griffin and his friend Ben are trying to help her get it back, but they have no such luck until they take a field trip to a zoo boat that has made a stop in Long Island. Savannah makes a scene when she sees the zoo's newest attraction, "Eleanor", whom she believes is her monkey, Cleo. Griffin and Ben believe her after they see just how nasty the zoo keeper, Mr. Nastase really is. Griffin and Ben must gather the team of the strength, animal smarts, acting skills, the team leader, height, computer skills, and climbing. They do not realize the zoo is heavily guarded by a seemingly mean security guard named Klaus. Soon, they find out all the animals are pets stolen by Nastase, and Klaus knows nothing about it. So, now they must free all the animals from Nastase's cruel hands and get Cleo back. But the plan fails and they must not only free the entire zoo, but keep the animals hidden until they find a "better" zoo to stash the animals, and also stop Nastase from stealing all the animals from both zoos! |
Emmanuelle | null | 1,967 | Emmanuelle, the 19-year-old wife of a French engineer, is flying out to join her husband in Bangkok. While on the plane, she has anonymous sexual encounters with two men, the first time she has cheated on her husband since they were married. She arrives in Bangkok and becomes part of a hedonistic community of western expats. She makes two new friends - Ariane de Saynes, a 30 year-old French countess, and Marie-Anne, a younger girl. Both friendships have a strong homoerotic flavor. Emmanuelle and Marie-Anne begin a series of sexual games in which they take it in turns to masturbate while the other watches. Meanwhile, Ariane makes a series of attempts to seduce Emmanuelle, culminating in a sexual encounter between the two women on a squash court which verges on rape. Afterwards Ariane tries to persuade Emmanuelle to return home with her. Emmanuelle rejects her advances, but immediately regrets doing so. At a tea party hosted by Marie-Anne's mother, Emmanuelle meets Bee, the sister of a naval attaché at the American Embassy. Emmanuelle is immediately attracted to the slender, red-headed Bee, and when the two women meet later by chance on the streets of Bangkok she takes the opportunity to invite Bee home with her. Emmanuelle seduces her and the two women make love, first in the shower and then in Emmanuelle's bed. Afterwards Emmanuelle professes her love for Bee, who is taken aback, having never been with another woman before. They agree to meet again, but Bee does not come and Emmanuelle realizes she has no way of contacting her. She is heartbroken and is comforted by her husband. Marie-Anne, meanwhile, believes that Emmanuelle needs to be cured of her need to associate sex with love. She offers to introduce Emmanuelle to a friend, Mario, an Italian nobleman, who can do this. The two meet for the first time at an embassy cocktail party and Emmanuelle agrees to join him for dinner the following night. Emmanuelle thinks that Mario will become her lover, but Ariane dismisses this idea, telling Emmanuelle that Mario is gay. The following evening, Emmanuelle and Mario have dinner at Mario's house, joined by an Englishman called Quentin. Over dinner, Mario expounds his philosophy of eroticism, which is that true freedom comes only when eroticism is divorced from love. He offers to take Emmanuelle on a trip that will demonstrate this. The three plunge into the back streets of Bangkok. They visit an opium den and then a temple, where Emmanuelle makes two votive offerings; first by masturbating Mario and then by performing oral sex on a boy. Later, having parted company with Quentin, the two return to Mario's house in a rickshaw pulled by a Thai driver (or sam-lo). During the ride, Emmanuelle demonstrates her new-found freedom by removing her top and then fellating Mario in public. They arrive back at Mario's house and he tells her that he is going to take her 'through' the body of the sam-lo. The three make love, the sam-lo penetrating Emmanuelle while Mario penetrates the sam-lo. As the three reach orgasm together, Emmanuelle screams out "I'm in love! I'm in love!" |
Stone Cold | Robert B. Parker | 2,003 | A couple of middle-aged thrill killers, Brianna and Anthony Lincoln, are independently wealthy from a patent Anthony obtained for an optical scanner he invented while practicing medicine. The couple move to Paradise and begin picking random people and murdering them by simultaneously shooting them in the heart with .22 caliber pistols. They then make love while watching videos of the murders. Kenneth Eisley is the first victim; Jesse does not discover his identity until after some investigation, and finds his dog. The Lincolns then stalk and kill a woman in a supermarket, and Jesse has the license plate numbers collected from all cars present at the scene. Next the Lincolns murder a man behind a church as he walks home from the train station. Two teenage boys stumble on the body while skateboarding and notice a red 1995 Saab. With the help of the state police, Jesse finds all people who have both registered .22s and a red 1995 Saab, and checks if there was a red Saab at the supermarket. This leads Jesse to the Lincolns. Jesse briefly interviews the Lincolns, who seem very interested in the murders. He takes their .22 rifle for testing, but it has never been fired. However, he leaves convinced they are the killers. The murderers then stalk Abby Taylor. Although Abby is considering marrying another man, she still has feelings for Jesse. After spending an evening with Jesse and making love to him, she returns home and is murdered by the Lincolns. They begin stalking and taking photos of Jesse, who learns of this while tailing them one night when they stop at his condo to take photos. Flirting with getting caught, and hoping to prove how smart they are —and how dumb the police are— the Lincolns invite Jesse to lunch. They probe him about the murders, but he reveals little. Later, a note is delivered to the police station telling Jesse to come to Paradise Mall at 7pm to learn about the murders. Believing they intend to murder him, Jesse stations officers at the mall and goes wearing a bullet-proof vest. As he approaches the elevator in the food court he is confronted by the Lincolns as they exit it, and they both shoot him in the chest and re-enter the elevator. Jesse bounds up the escalator, but the elevator descends again. When they exit, they have changed clothes. Officer Anthony D’Angelo thinks he recognizes the woman and stops her; she turns and shoots him in the head, killing him instantly. They escape in a rented Volvo. Feeling guilty for D’Angelo’s murder, which he believes could have been prevented had he involved the state police, Jesse trudges on with the case. He took it personally after Abby’s murder, and wanted to catch the killers without the state police. They obtain a search warrant for the Lincolns' rented penthouse condo and find pictures of the victims on their computer, and the abandoned Saab. Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn wonders how they got to the mall without their car, which leads Jesse to check car rentals and match them with names of people who patented optical scanners. One was rented on the day of the murder to Arlington Larmont: Anthony Lincoln was an alias. Jesse discovers that the car was dropped off in Toronto, and the state police find the couple registered at a Toronto hotel, where they are picked up by local police. Jesse drives up to confront the couple, who play dumb. Jesse responds by kneeing Arlington in the groin. When his wife jumps up to defend her husband, Jesse slaps her, then leaves. |
The Atlantis Revelation | null | null | The events of Novel Two leave the Alignment exposed & removed from the US Government, an ancient Celestial Globe in the hands of the Pentagon, a Terrestrial one in the hands of the Vatican, Conrad still searching for links to Atlantis & Serena the new leader of a Catholic sect with ties to the remaining Alignment leaders in Europe. When Conrad discovers the remains of a German sub containing a powerful Atlantean weapon that uses water as fuel for an explosion, he is headed off by Alignment member & Russian Petrol Tycoon, Roman "Midas" Midasovitch. This lures Conrad into another conflict with the Alignment that draws him deeper into the Alignment than ever before. Meanwhile, Serena Seghetti tries to enter the Alignment's ranks in order to gain their trust & expose their remaining leaders to the world- all she has to do is deliver both globes to the Castle of the Grand Master in time for the Summit Meeting, where the Alignment will convene in secret for the first time in centuries- but Conrad's reappearance screws up her plans, as well as his when he sacrifices his own life to keep her safe & uncover the Alignment's plans for Armagheddon. The Novel leaves off with both Conrad & Serena presumable dead after failing to stop a controlled explosion beneath Jeruselem that was meant to start a holy war, yet it is revealed that both have survived & wish to continue their lives in secret- together, away from the Alignment, the Government & the church that held them captive for so long. |
100 Cupboards | N. D. Wilson | 2,007 | Henry P. York moves to Henry, Kansas to live with his Uncle Frank, Aunt Dotty, and cousins Penelope, Henrietta, and Anastasia after his parents are abducted while bike trekking in South America. On his first night there, Henry sneaks out of his attic bedroom to go to the bathroom. Instead, he discovers that the door is closed and the light is on. He waits and sees a short man emerge from the bathroom and enter Grandfather's bedroom, a room that has been locked since Grandfather died two years previously. Another night, the plaster from Henry's attic wall starts coming off, revealing two master lock dials to a hundred little locked cupboards. When they are home alone, Henry and Henrietta discover a key in one of the cupboards they have managed to open, which unlocks the door into Grandfather's bedroom. There they find a journal which has a map of the cupboards. One morning Henrietta mysteriously disappears, and Henry discovers a journal entry which tells him how the cupboards work. He crawls through a cupboard in Grandfather's room to find Henrietta. After several strange adventures he finds her in the ballroom of a palace in a ruined city, but they are unable to return until the master locks of the cupboards are set back to their location, and they hide in a dark cupboard. They witness a group of people with wolves called "Witch-Dogs" kill a party, but they escape. Meanwhile, Uncle Frank attempts to find the two of them while Aunt Dotty tells Penelope and Anastasia that Frank came through the cupboards long ago, and it was their great-grandfather who invented the cupboards and made them work. But Frank is too late when a Witch and her cat emerge from the Endor cupboard and stab Frank. The witch is Nimiane, and she has been strengthened by Henry's blood. Aunt Dotty, Penelope, and Anastasia run up to see what's going on, and Aunt Dotty falls into a similar state as Frank. Henry and Henrietta emerge from the cupboard and struggle with the witch, but it is Zeke, a boy who was just dropping by to see if Henry was ready to play baseball, who knocks her out with a swing of his baseball bat. The children push her through the cupboard into an unnamed place, and Dotty and Frank are rushed to the hospital where they are healed. Henrietta discovers a creature that looks like a small flying rhino in one of the cupboards. This creature, called a raggant, was the one banging against his cupboard, causing it to break through the plaster at the beginning of the book. Uncle Frank tells Henry that he came from one of the cupboards as a child, and the raggant has been sent by someone to find him. Meanwhile Nimiane has recovered and is plotting in one of the places beyond the cupboards. The book ends when Henry receives another threatening letter from the post office box. |
OtherSpace | null | 2,008 | The story begins with Xander and Jacob hunting gruskers, strange plant-eating creatures. Later, Jacob reveals that he wants to go to Teiresias in hopes of meeting the other escaped Seers. Delaney sells her eyes to buy his passage aboard the Odessa, commanded by Captain Bennet. Jacob becomes acquainted with the crew, but is wary of Folgrin, a businessman with strange eyes who seems suspicious. Aboard the ship, they go into Otherspace, a place encountered by entering a wormhole, and Jacob discovers that he is able to move during Otherspace, while others are rendered immobile. When the ship crashes on Maker's Drift, a dark, neglected planet surrounded in superstition, only Bennet, Folgrin, and Jacob survive. After Jacob meets a strange couple, he and Bennet buy passage aboard a passenger liner to Teiresias, a strange planet where one half of the planet receives sunlight and the other is dark, cold, and barren. At Teiresias, Jacob eventually meets Avery, another Blinder who received vision. Jacob is taken to a base on the dark side of Teiresias where he meets the other Blinders who received sight and escaped. |
Swords Against Death | Fritz Leiber | 1,970 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. The pieces in Swords Against Death follow the duo as they shake the dust of Lankhmar from their feet in the wake of the deaths their of their first loves, only to find their resolution never to return pointless ("The Circle Curse"). There follow a miscellaneous series of adventures from their wanderings, including a quest for treasure in a dwelling with unique defenses ("The Jewels in the Forest"), a return bout with the Thieves' Guild they hold responsible for their ladies' deaths ("Thieves' House"), an ensorcelled journey to a far-away land ("The Bleak Shore"), an encounter with a beast-haunted stranger ("The Howling Tower"), a dangerous visit to the Nehwonian equivalent of Atlantis ("The Sunken Land"), a conflict with a murderous priesthood ("The Seven Black Priests"), a magical plague afflicting Lankhmar ("Claws from the Night"), a final parting with their deceased loves in the Shadowland ("The Price of Pain-Ease"), and an investigation of a mysterious shop that is other than it seems ""Bazaar of the Bizarre"). |
Swords in the Mist | Fritz Leiber | 1,968 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords in the Mist the duo confronts the mystically concentrated hate of the citizens of Lankhmar ("The Cloud of Hate"), go their separate ways during a period of hard times, the Mouser becoming an enforcement thug and Fafhrd an acolyte of a newly introduced religion ("Lean Times in Lankhmar"), recuperate after their reconciliation with a sea voyage ("Their Mistress, the Sea"), invade the boudoir of an absent sea deity ("While the Sea-King's Away"), traverse a passage to another world ("The Wrong Branch"), and there undertake a bizarre quest to the Castle Mist ("Adept's Gambit"). |
Swords Against Wizardry | Fritz Leiber | 1,968 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords Against Wizardry the duo consults a witch in regard to an upcoming adventure ("In the Witch's Tent"), ascends Stardock, the Nehwonian Everest, in search of treasure ("Stardock"), are revealed, as they are gypped of their gains afterwards, not to be the best thieves in Lankhmar, as they so smugly deem themselves ("The Two Best Thieves in Lankhmar"), and take service with two opposing claimants to the sorcerous throne of the ancient city of Quarmall ("The Lords of Quarmall"). |
The Swords of Lankhmar | Fritz Leiber | 1,968 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Swords of Lankhmar the duo is hired by the city of Lankhmar to protect its grain fleets, which have fallen prey to a mysterious threat. A sea serpent ridden by an explorer from another world is encountered, but the true foes prove to be legions of intelligent rats. Returning to Lankhmar, the protagonists find the whole city under siege by the rats. The Mouser, magically shrunken to rat size, spies out their plans, but the rats' victory appears certain until the intervention of the Gods of Lankhmar and the rats' own ancient enemies. |
Swords and Ice Magic | Fritz Leiber | 1,977 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In Swords and Ice Magic the duo face a series of challenges from Death of greater or lesser subtlety ("The Sadness of the Executioner," "Beauty and the Beasts," "Trapped in the Shadowland" and "The Bait"), the pique of deities they formerly worshiped whose names they now rarely even take in vain ("Under the Thumbs of the Gods"), a voyage to the strange equatorial ocean of Nehwon ("Trapped in the Sea of Stars"), and recruitment to succor Nehwon's Iceland, the legendary Rime Isle, menaced by Sea Mingols and a pair of refugee gods ("The Frost Monstreme," "Rime Isle"). |
The Knight and Knave of Swords | Fritz Leiber | 1,988 | The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Knight and Knave of Swords the duo has settled permanently on Rime Isle with their new wives, their bands of followers taking on the role of peaceful traders. The first two stories concentrate on this settling-in process, while the final two deal with various magical curses and afflictions suffered by the protagonists. |
Crystal | Walter Dean Myers | 1,987 | Crystal Brown has always been told that she is beautiful. She lives with her mother, Mrs. Brown, who is also beautiful, and her loving, but strict father. They live in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. Crystal is at first elated when she lands a modeling contract with a fashion agency, because she likes to model and can possibly be famous. As the novel continues, Crystal realizes that the modeling business is not all it is cut out to be. Her friendship with her best friend, Pat, is suffering, her grades are slipping, and on top of all of that, Crystal feels her self-respect is at risk. She especially feels this way when her photographer, Jerry Goodwin, wants her to pose nude. Crystal starts to feel that the modeling business is just all about how she looks and not who she is. Soon, Crystal realizes she wants to quit. Her agent, Loretta, however, insists Crystal star in a movie that will ultimately boost her fame. Crystal refuses and after doing that and the death of a fellow model named Rowena, but later on Rowena try to kill herself. She cut herself and end up lying in the hospital. but then she gave up to live, so she died in the hospital, that makes Crystal quits. The novel ends by a man coming up to Crystal, who is shopping with Pat, giving her his card, and saying, "...Edward Abruzzi, Photographer...I think you could get into modeling...” |
The Windup Girl | Paolo Bacigalupi | 2,009 | Anderson Lake is an economic hitman and the AgriGen Representative in Thailand. He owns a kink-spring factory trying to mass produce a revolutionary new model that will store gigajoules of energy. The factory is a cover for his real mission: discovering the location of the Thai seedbank. He leaves the running of the factory to his Chinese manager, Hock Seng, a refugee from the Malaysian purge of the ethnic Chinese. A businessman in his former life, he is plotting to regain his former glory even as he lives from day to day. He waits patiently for an opportunity to steal the kink-spring designs kept in Anderson's safe, and embezzles copiously. Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated. Among other genetic modifications, Emiko has a genetically altered pore structure, which makes her skin extremely smooth but prone to overheating—a life-threatening problem in the hot climate of Thailand. One of her customers tells her of the secret seedbank and a mysterious man named Gibbons. Anderson gleans this information from her and, in return, tells her about a refuge in the north of Thailand where people of Emiko's kind live together. This becomes fixated in her mind, and from then on she sets her mind on paying off Raleigh and escaping to this refuge. Anderson's factory is destroyed by a rogue megodont (a GM elephant used to run the power train). Also destroyed are algae baths, which are critical to the manufacturing process, and whose spares are costly and must be smuggled into Thailand via dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng to fix up the factory as soon as possible, threatening him with the loss of his job if he doesn't do so. Hock Seng's job is made difficult by the fact that he has failed to bribe the customs officials, as he had embezzled the bribe money. Knowing that his time has come, he makes a money-for-plans deal with the Dung Lord, a gangster. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, an upright and courageous captain of the white shirts (the armed, enforcement wing of the Environment Ministry), intercepts the dirigible containing, among other things, Anderson's much needed spare tanks, and destroys the contraband. This raises the hackles of the white, foreign trading community in Thailand and they pressure Akkarat to make Jaidee back off. To 'persuade' Jaidee, known as the Tiger of Bangkok for his muay thai skills and courage, and an icon among the white shirts, they kidnap his wife. Jaidee submits and makes a public apology. False charges are made against him and he is condemned to monkhood for 9 years. Unknown to Jaidee, his wife has already been murdered. A triumphant Anderson and his main collaborator, Richard Carlyle, negotiate with Akkarat for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. Akkarat refuses, saying there are limits to his greed. Jaidee, determined to track his wife's murderers, escapes from the monastery and infiltrates the Trade Ministry. He is caught, killed, and his mutilated body is deposited in front of the Environment Ministry. As the white shirts revere him as a hero, they declare him a martyr, and rise up against the Trade Ministry. General Pracha appoints Lieutenant Kanya, Jaidee's protégé, as the new Captain and unleashes a reign of terror on Bangkok. Meanwhile, Mai, a child labourer in Anderson's factory, has discovered that her fellow workers are falling to a new plague that had previously made the algae tanks malfunction. She reports this to Hock Seng, who arranges to have the bodies disposed of surreptitiously. As the white shirts take control of Bangkok, he steals all of Anderson's petty cash, takes Mai with him and tries to escape. Meanwhile, through a chance encounter Anderson saved Emiko's life, and becomes infatuated with her. Anderson discovers Hock Seng's flight and goes into hiding with Richard Carlyle. Kanya, who is Akkarat's mole, discovers the new plague and sets about trying to contain it. (We learn that years earlier Kanya had been rescued as a young girl by Akkarat when her own home village was destroyed in the course of containing a genehacked plague.) She reluctantly seeks help from Gibbons, who is revealed to be a renegade AgriGen scientist. Gibbons is a brilliant geneticist and the last hope for the Thai defense against the plagues. He easily identifies the new plague and gives clues to Kanya. Anderson and Carlyle meet with Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, who is the regent to the young Thai Queen and the most powerful person in all of Thailand. Anderson offers to supply a new strain of GM rice and a private army to repel the white shirts in exchange for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. He also introduces the Somdet Chaopraya to Emiko. When the Somdet Chaopraya's acts prove too humiliating, Emiko snaps and kills the Somdet Chaopraya, Raleigh and eight other men. Then she seeks refuge with Anderson. Because she has killed such a powerful man and all of his bodyguards, Akkarat assumes Emiko to be a military windup and accuses General Pracha of assassinating the Somdet Chaopraya. He also proceeds to arrest Anderson and Carlyle as suspects in the assassination conspiracy. Emiko escapes in the nick of time. Kanya traces the origin of one of the plague victims to a village near Bangkok, and from information she gets there is able to identify Anderson's kink-spring factory as a possible source. She sterilizes the village with lye. Hock Seng fails to steal the kink-spring designs, so he decides to capture Emiko for ransom. He takes Mai with him. Kanya is informed of the suspected assassination plot by her handler. Recognizing the harm the incident could cause, she visits the Japanese company that designed Emiko, learns of the true facts, and tries to explain it to Akkarat. But Akkarat has already decided to blame General Pracha for the assassination as a pretext for regime change and mobilizes his reserves to destroy Pracha and the white shirts. The capital is plunged into civil war. Anderson is released and discovers that he may have contracted the new plague. Hock Seng encounters Emiko in Anderson's apartment and holds her at gunpoint. Anderson and Carlyle arrive at the same time. They make a deal: Hock Seng would be patronized by AgriGen and Emiko would remain with Anderson. Eventually, Pracha and most of the top Environment Ministry men are killed. Akkarat, now all-powerful, appoints his spy Kanya as the chief of the Environment Ministry. He also opens up Thailand to the world, and grants AgriGen access to the seedbank. Kanya, who acts subdued at first, reneges and executes the AgriGen team in the seedbank. She then proceeds to move the seedbank to a safer place with the help of the monks. With the hidden arsenal in the seedbank, she orchestrates an uprising and coup d'état. She destroys the levees, flooding Bangkok. Bangkok's people and the capital relocate to the site of Ayutthaya, a previous Thai capital. There is now a new Tiger, a grim, unsmiling woman (Kanya), and it is implied that the Child Queen now reigns without a regent. Hock Seng is let free by Kanya to leave Bangkok with Mai to start a new life, although we never learn if they manage to escape the doomed city. Akkarat becomes a monk to atone for his failure of protecting the capital. The plague slowly kills Anderson as Emiko nurses him through the agony. She is alone in the flooded city when Gibbons arrives with his androgynous (kathoey or "ladyboy") companion. He promises Emiko that he will use her DNA to engineer a new race of fertile New People, thus fulfilling her dream of living with her own kind. |
Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World | Timothy Brook | null | Brook argues that globalization, which is often taken to be a modern (i.e. late-20th/21st-century) phenomenon, actually had its roots in the 17th century; and he states that it was his intention to surprise his readers with this information, that "people and goods and ideas were moving around the world in ways that their ancestors had no idea was possible." The growth in trade and exploration was facilitated in part by advances in navigation and in shipbuilding technology and also, according to the author, was driven along when European nations such as "England, the Netherlands and France started to fight their way into the trade." By studying and analyzing the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, beginning with his landscape View of Delft, and examining the scant documents detailing his life, the author builds up a picture of the world in which Vermeer lived; and from this he finds evidence of socioeconomic phenomena and globalization. In the case of the port in Delft in the Netherlands, for example, he finds evidence of the Dutch East India Company's operations. This is often said to be the world's first multinational corporation, which competing traders were forced to join; it had quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies, and played a powerful and prominent role in trade between the Dutch and Asia, including China. The painting entitled Officer and Laughing Girl, which is shown on the front cover of the book and to which the title alludes, speaks to Brook of the interest people had in the world, which is reflected in the maps of the world frequently seen on walls in paintings, showing a patriotic pride which went along with the emergence of the Netherlands from Spanish occupation, and the painting is also used to examine trade between Europe and North America. The huge felt hat itself, Brook says, is made of beaver under-fur and the origin of that would be via French traders operating in North America. This being before the discovery of the Northwest Passage, the French had been commissioned to find a route to China, and the beaver fur simply helped them "cover their costs." From here, the narrative goes on to talk of other commodities which were available in abundance and traded in the Americas, such as sugar, tobacco, copper, wood in the 18th century, slaves from Africa, and the metallic artefacts and guns which were given in exchange. In the painting Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, there is a large Chinese porcelain bowl in the foreground (standing on a Turkish carpet), and Brook uses this to introduce the subject of trade with China. Chinese porcelain was just becoming more widely available and featured in many paintings. The porcelain grew very popular in households in Vermeer's time as its price came down and it became affordable to less wealthy families. In sharp contrast to the necessary outward-looking gaze of countries in Europe, the stereotypical view of China was that it had "an adequate resource base for most of its needs, an advanced technology and was not having to look outside of itself for things that it needed." However, Brook maintains that the Chinese did venture out of their country to trade during lengthy periods when they were not prohibited from doing so (due to perceived threats to Chinese authority or to Chinese people), and that the Chinese simply wanted to control the terms of their trade. They did not want traders setting up colonies in their sovereign territory. According to Brook, the Chinese not going out exploring the world did put them at a technological and linguistic disadvantage as they had a very limited world view and lacked experience of the increasingly cosmopolitan world outside their borders. This wasn't so much of a problem in Vermeer's time but was to become more of an issue as Europe's imperial empires grew in the 18th century and 19th centuries. In the book, the author uses the metaphor of Indra's net: Writing in The Spectator, Sarah Burton explains that Brook uses this metaphor, and its interconnectedness, "to help understand the multiplicity of causes and effects producing the way we are and the way we were." She adds: "In the same way, the journeys through Brook's picture-portals intersect with each other, at the same time shedding light on each other. |
The Sound of Thunder | Wilbur A. Smith | 1,981 | Sean and his son Dirk finally leave the wilderness and discover that a war is brewing between the English and the Boers. He meets and falls in love with a woman called Ruth and they conceive a daughter during a thunderstorm. Ruth runs away to return to her husband who is a soldier in the Boer War. Later, Sean wins many victories in the war and befriends Saul, Ruth's husband. The commander of the Boers is none other than Sean's old brother-in-law, Jan Paulus Leroux. They fight but decide to leave each other alone. Saul is killed in battle and Sean, although feeling unnecessarily guilty, finds Ruth and marries her. Sean's daughter, named Storm, grows to be pretty and bright but Sean's first-born, Dirk has become evil with jealousy for his father's attention. The book ends with Sean's brother Garrick forgiving him and Dirk running away, promising to ruin the Courtneys. it:La voce del tuono |
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