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Secrets in the Fire | Henning Mankell | null | When Sofia's hometown is destroyed by The Bandits, Muazena, the village's wise woman, must find a way to teach Sofia the secrets in the fire. Even with Muazena trying to help, Sofia must overcome multiple adversities such as losing both her sister and her legs to a land mine and all of the strife that comes with growing up. Throughout her recovery Sofia finds that she is not as weak as some would have her believe and that she has a strength of her own. |
The Drought | J. G. Ballard | 1,964 | In contrast to Ballard's earlier novel The Drowned World, The Burning World describes a world in which water is scarce. After an extensive drought, rivers have turned to trickles and the earth to dust, causing the world's populations to head toward the oceans in search of water. The drought is caused by industrial waste flushed into the ocean, which form an oxygen-permeable barrier of saturated long-chain polymers that prevents evaporation and destroys the precipitation cycle. Since the novel was published, plastic islands such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have been discovered, which permeate large areas of the world's oceans; the impact on ocean evaporation and the precipitation cycle has not been studied. |
Rough Draft | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | The story starts with the hero, Kirill, being "erased" from daily life in present-day Moscow. Everybody forgets him (even his parents and dog), another person lives in his apartment, all IDs and files in all offices disappear. After a while he is phoned and invited to an old water tower — but inside is his future home and working place. There it is revealed to him that he is able to open doors, leading to other worlds — although at first all but one are locked. Once opened each door becomes rigidly connected to some world, but which one can't be predicted. All of the worlds have mostly similar environments and seem to be on the planet Earth but the societies and people are different. After a while Kirill meets a special group of functionals, so called because they gained supernatural abilities making them excellent in some profession. They serve other people, but mostly other functionals. They say Kirill has become one of them — a customs officer. He benefits from taxes paid by people who pass through his tower. Also he has superhuman strength and is almost immortal, but only within 10 km of his tower. Kirill enjoys these new worlds, people and abilities. A politician Dima meets him and asks to find a national idea for Russia. He informs Kirill about the world number One, which nobody can access and which seems to be exactly our world living 30 years later. Critical information from this world may enhance the prestige of the country. Kirill also encounters an underground, that is, a few people fighting against the 'corporate laws' of functionals and their working for themselves or the elites of other worlds. But he remains untouched by the rhetoric of the underground, justifying most of this. Ideas of armed opposition are alien if not to say ridiculous for him. But a younger 20-aged girl who Kirril falls in love with is a genuine underground activist... The last door opened leads to the world number One: A lovely Moscow filled with smiling people: there were no Second World War and no horrors of revolution, as this world lags for 30 years and the rulers of it carefully study the mistakes of other worlds. It's just what Dima proposed to Kirill, but applied in reverse. Upon rather bloody returning to our world, Kirill faces troubles with his girl. Hating the system of functionals, she manifests disobedience. But their laws don't forgive this, and the functional Natalie murders her, Kirril being unable to resurrect her... :"An extreme foolishness," said I, "All these loud words and beautiful poses... 'they will not pass', 'yet it moves', 'motherland or death', 'am able to die for my beliefs' — all of this becomes nonsense when real death comes... All of this is for kids. And for adults who handle them..." :Natalie nodded with approval. :"But yet it moves" said I, "Doesn't it? It moves, and they will not pass, and motherland remains motherland even if death becomes death, and nobody is ready to die, but sometimes it's easier to die than to betray..." In Kirill's fighting Natalie, his tower becomes devastated, thus he ceases being a functional and is restored to his former life. The ending of this story we will learn from the second book of the future duology. |
Resurrection Blues | Arthur Miller | null | The story is set in an unnamed Latin American country that is painfully third world. The plot revolves around a captured prisoner who may or may not be the second coming of Christ, though Miller deliberately leaves the divinity of his unseen protagonist ambiguous. He is said to be able to perform miracles such as walk through walls, a major problem for the prison guards, and, because his popularity among the impoverished citizens, the military dictator of the nation has sentenced him to be crucified. This creates many moral dilemmas with the play's cast of characters, which include a wealthy land-owner who is the cousin of the dictator, his depressed daughter—a close friend of the accused—and an American television production team that arrives to broadcast the crucifixion. |
Interstellar Pig | William Sleator | null | When Zena, Manny, and Joe move into the cinder-block cottage next door, Barney is intrigued by their glamorous, exotic lifestyle. His fascination grows when Zena introduces Barney to their favorite pastime: Interstellar Pig, a board game in which the key objective is to finish the game with the Piggy card in hand. Zena quickly briefs him on the rules: each player picks their character from a box of cards depicting different aliens. Every alien race has their own strengths, weaknesses, and IRSC (Interstellar Relative Sapience Code, with lower numbers favorable). When the time runs out, every home planet will be obliterated except the one belonging to the holder of the Piggy. Barney is amazed when the neighbors keep choosing the same character cards: Joe repeatedly picks water-breathing Jrlb; Zena always chooses Zulma, an arachnoid nymph; and Manny always picks Moyna, an octopus-like gas bag. While snooping through Zena's underwear drawer, Barney finds a manuscript written by Captain Lantham—the same Captain who had built the house that Barney and his parents were renting—telling of the event that caused his brother to go crazy. At sea, the Captain rescued a man floating in the ocean, described as having a "leathery, greenish, reptilian hide" due to sunburn and a "swollen contusion", "yellow and filmed with slime" on his forehead. Insisting that the man is the Devil, the Captain's brother strangles him—and in punishment, is keelhauled. Although he survives, his mind is damaged due to the oxygen deprivation, and he spends the rest of his life locked in his room (which later became Barney's bedroom), scratching patterns into the wooden walls and clinging to the strange trinket he had taken from the murdered man's corpse. That night Barney begins to see a pattern in the marks the Captain's brother had sawed in the walls of his bedroom: all the scratches centered on a particular rock on a nearby island. Remembering the trinket "to which [the brother] clung as he was pulled from the water, to which he still clings", Barney decides to go out to the boulder and see if the trinket had been hidden there. He finds a small, silver, round object: There was a face carved in this side, nothing but a rigid, slightly smiling mouth under a single wide-open eye... Crude as it was, the thing seemed alive. And it was the brutal wrongness of it, the mouth smiling with such placid idiocy, noseless, under the solitary gaping eye, that made the face so repellent. The Piggy. Barney realizes that the game is real, the clock is running, and his neighbors—aliens in disguise—will do anything to get the Piggy. Each tries to bribe him with a unique incentive, similar to the Judgement of Paris, but Barney turns them down. Unfortunately by doing so, he's just entered the real game as a player representing the human race. As Barney hurries to select his weapons and equipment before a horde of aliens descend on his cottage, he makes the startling discovery that he shares a psychic link to the Piggy. The Piggy tells him that it created the game so that it could be loved and appreciated, despite its tendency to detonate whole planets (and their surrounding solar systems) from time to time when it hiccups. Barney concludes that the object of the game is backwards, and it is only the possessor of the Piggy that will be blown up. Minutes before his home is destroyed, Barney concocts a plan to pass the Piggy off to another player convincingly enough so that it won't arouse suspicion. He tells the carnivorous lichen where to find the Piggy. However, as they approach it he realizes that the same logical inconsistency exists with the Piggy's version of the story. He decides that the only explanation that makes sense is that the Piggy created both stories in order to learn about new people. He abandons the Piggy and lets the lichen board their spaceship home, drawing off the other alien players. Once they depart, no damage is done to either the lichen or to Earth. |
The Green Futures of Tycho | William Sleator | 1,981 | The main character is Tycho Tithonus, an 11 year-old boy. Each child in his family is named after a famous artist or scientist and their parents expect them to live up to their names. Tycho himself is named after Sleator's younger brother, who in turn, was named after Tycho Brahe, the Danish astronomer. He finds a pocket sized time machine in the family's garden. He immediately uses it to change some things from the past and to visit the future. But as he travels more and more he realizes that he is turning into something horrible and it becomes a race against time to save all of his family and himself. |
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction | Sue Townsend | 2,004 | The story also deals with an issue that has affected Sue Townsend directly; she was registered blind in 2001, as a result of long-term diabetes. Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction was typed by Townsend's husband from dictation. The novel is a bestseller due to the series' dedicated fan base, and has met with critical acclaim. Critics have praised the novel for its combination of sitcom-style humour with an underlying element of tragedy and pathos. Some consider it less comical and darker than the previous installment, Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. Critics claim that Mole's immature and angst-ridden personality has lost its appeal as he approaches middle-age, where it was endearing in a younger man. |
Make Way For Ducklings | Robert McCloskey | null | The story begins as Mr. and Mrs. Mallard fly over various potential locations to start a family. Each time Mr. Mallard selects a location, Mrs. Mallard finds something wrong with it. Tired from their search, the mallards land at the Public Garden Lagoon to spend the night. In the morning, a swan boat passes by the mallards. The mallards mistake the swan boat for a real bird and have a second breakfast of peanuts thrown from the people on the boat. Mrs. Mallard suggests that they build their nest in the Public Garden. However, just as she says this, she is nearly run down by a passing bicyclist. The mallards continue their search, flying over Boston landmarks such as Beacon Hill, the Massachusetts State House, and Louisburg Square. The mallards finally decide on an island in the Charles River. From this island, the mallards visit a policeman named Michael on the shore, who feeds them peanuts every day. Shortly thereafter, the mallards molt, and would not be able to fly again, until their new wings grew again, and Mrs. Mallard hatches eight ducklings named Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack. After the ducklings are born, Mr. Mallard decides to take a trip up the river to see what the rest of it is like. Mr. and Mrs. Mallard agree to meet at the Public Garden in one week. In the meantime, Mrs. Mallard teaches the eight ducklings all they need to know about being ducks, such as swimming, diving, marching along, and to avoid dangers such as bicycles and other wheeled objects. One week later, Mrs. Mallard leads the ducklings ashore and straight to the highway in hopes of crossing to reach the Garden, but she has trouble crossing as the cars will not yield to her. Michael, the policeman who fed peanuts to the Mallards, stops traffic for the family to cross. Michael calls police headquarters and instructs them to send a police car to stop traffic along the route for the ducks. The ducks cross the highway, Embankment Road (the eastern extension of Storrow Drive), then proceed down Mount Vernon Street to Charles Street where they head south to the Garden. The people on the streets admire the family of ducks and compliment them for being a family that is sticking together. When the family must cross Beacon Street to enter the Garden, there are four policeman standing in the intersection stopping traffic to make way for the ducklings. Mr. Mallard is waiting in the Public Garden for the rest of the family. Finally, the family decides to stay in the Garden and lives happily ever after. They end each day searching for peanuts and food, and when night falls, they swim to their little island and go to sleep. |
Toilers of the Sea | Victor Hugo | null | A woman arrives in Guernsey, with her son Gilliat, and buys a house said to be haunted. The boy grows up, the woman dies. Gilliat becomes a good fisherman and sailor. People believe him to be a wizard. In Guernsey also lives a former sailor, Mess Lethierry, the owner of the first steam ship of the island -Durande- and his niece Deruchette. One day, near Christmas, when going to church, she sees Gilliat on the road behind her and writes his name in the snow. He sees this and becomes obsessed with her gesture. In time he falls in love with her and goes to play the bagpipes near her house. Sieur Clubin, the trusted captain of Durande, sets up a plan to sink the ship in the Hanois cilffs and flee with a ship of Spanish smugglers, Tamaulipas. He gets in touch with Rantaine, a swindler who had stolen a large sum of money from Mess Lethierry many years ago. Clubin takes the money from Rantaine at gunpoint. In thick fog, Clubin sails for the Hanois cliffs from where he can easily swim to the shore, meet the smugglers and disappear, leaving the appearance of having drowned. Instead, he loses his way and sails to the Douvres cliffs which are much further from the shore. Left alone on the ship, he is terrified but he sees a cutter and leaps into the water to catch it. In that moment he feels grabbed by the leg and pulled down to the bottom. Everybody in Guernsey finds out about the shipwreck. Mess Lethierry is desperate to get the Durande's engine back. His niece declares she will marry the rescuer of the engine, and Mess Lethierry swears she will marry no other. Gilliat immediately takes up the mission, enduring hunger, thirst and cold trying to free the engine from the wreck. In a battle with an octopus, he finds the skeleton of Clubin and the stolen money on the bottom of the sea. Eventually he succeeds in returning the engine to Lethierry, who is very pleased and ready to honour his promise. Gilliat appears in front of the people as the rescuer but he declines to marry Deruchette because he had seen her accepting a marriage proposal made by Ebenezer Caudry, the young priest recently arrived on the island. He arranges their hurried wedding and helps them to run away on the sailing ship Cashmere. In the end, with all his dreams shattered, he decides to wait for the tide sitting on the Gild Holm'Ur chair (a rock in the sea) and drowns as he watches the Cashmere disappear on the horizon. |
The Man Who Laughs | Victor Hugo | null | The first major character whom the reader is introduced to is a mountebank who dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus (Latin for "bear"). His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for “man”, in a pun over the Hobbesian saying "homo homini lupus"). Ursus lives in a caravan, which he conveys to holiday fairs and markets throughout southern England, where he sells folk remedies. The action moves to an English sea coast, on the night of January 29, 1690. A group of wanderers, their identities left unrevealed to the reader, are urgently loading a ship for departure. A boy, ten years old, is among their company, but they leave him behind and cast off. The desperate boy, barefoot and starving, wanders through a snowstorm and reaches a gibbet, where he finds the corpse of a hanged criminal. The dead man is wearing shoes: utterly worthless to him now, yet precious to this boy. In the meantime, the wanderers' ship sinks after a long struggle with the sea in the English Channel. After walking some more, the boy finds a ragged woman, frozen to death. He is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the woman's garments: He discovers an infant girl, barely alive, clutching the woman's breast. Hugo's narrative describes a single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, suspended from the dead woman's nipple. Although the boy's survival seems unlikely, he now takes possession of the infant in an attempt to keep her alive. The girl's eyes are sightless and clouded, and he understands that she is blind. In the snowstorm, he encounters an isolated caravan, the domicile of Ursus. The action shifts forward 15 years, to England during the reign of Queen Anne. Duchess Josiana, a spoiled and jaded peeress (and illegitimate daughter of King James II), is bored by the dull routine of court. Her fiance, David Dirry-Moir, the illegitimate son of a proscribed baron and to whom she has been engaged since infancy, tells the duchess that the only cure for her boredom is "Gwynplaine", although he does not divulge who or what this Gwynplaine might be. Ursus is now 15 years older. The wolf Homo is still alive too, although the narration admits that his fur is greyer. Gwynplaine is the abandoned boy, now 25 years old and matured to well-figured manhood. In a flashback, during the first encounter between Ursus and Gwynplaine, the boy is clutching the nearly-dead infant, and Ursus is outraged that the boy appears to be laughing. When the boy insists that he is not laughing, Ursus takes another look, and is horrified. The boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, his mouth carved into a perpetual grin. The boy tells Ursus that his name is Gwynplaine; this is the only name he has ever known. The foundling girl, now sixteen years old, has been christened Dea (Latin for "goddess"). Dea is blind but beautiful and utterly virtuous. She is also in love with Gwynplaine, as she is able to witness his kindly nature without seeing his hideous face. When Dea attempts to "see" Gwynplaine by passing her sightless fingers across his face, she assumes that he must always be happy because he is perpetually smiling. They fall in love. Ursus and his two surrogate children earn a bare living in the fairs and carnivals of southern England. Everywhere they travel, Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. He is now the principal wage-earner of their retinue; in each town they visit, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance; the chief feature of this performance is that the crowds are invariably provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face. At one point, Ursus and Gwynplaine are readying for a performance when Ursus directs Gwynplaine's attention to a man who strides purposefully past their fairgrounds, dressed in ceremonial garments and bearing an elaborate wooden staff. Ursus explains that this man is the Wapentake, a servant of the Crown. ("Wapentake" is an Old English word meaning "weapon-touch".) Whomever the Wapentake touches with his staff has been summoned by the monarch and must go to wherever the Wapentake leads, upon pain of death. Josiana attends one of Gwynplaine's performances, and is sensually aroused by the combination of his virile grace and his facial deformity. Gwynplaine, too, is aroused by Josiana's physical beauty and haughty demeanor. Suddenly, the Wapentake arrives at the caravan and touches Gwynplaine with his staff, compelling the disfigured man to follow him to the court of Queen Anne. Gwynplaine is ushered to a dungeon in London, where a physician named Hardquannone is being tortured to death. Hardquannone recognizes the deformed Gwynplaine, and identifies him as the boy whose abduction and disfigurement Hardquannone arranged twenty-three years earlier. In the year 1682, in the reign of James II, one of the king's enemies was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone and a baron in the House of Lords, who had remained faithful to the English republic and had emigrated to Switzerland. Upon the baron's death, the king arranged the abduction of his two-year-old son and legitimate heir: Fermain, heir to his estates. The King sold Fermain to a band of wanderers called "the Comprachicos". David Dirry-Moir is the illegitimate son of Lord Linnaeus, but now that Fermain is known to be alive, the heritage once promised by the King to David on the condition of his future marriage to Josiana will instead belong to Fermain. The word "Comprachicos" is Hugo's invention, based on the Spanish for "child-buyers". They make their living by mutilating and disfiguring children, who are then forced to beg for alms, or who are exhibited as carnival freaks. On the King's command, the two-year-old Fermain is sold to them and disfigured. It becomes clear that, after renaming Fermain, Gwynplaine, the Comprachicos kept him in their possession until they abandoned him eight years later in 1690, on the night when he found Dea. Their ship was lost in the storm at sea, with all hands, but, in their repentance before death, they wrote out a signed confession and cast this adrift in a sealed flask, which now has belatedly come to the attention of Queen Anne. Dea is saddened by Gwynplaine's protracted absence. Ursus and his band are falsely told that Gwynplaine is now dead. Dea has always been frail, but now she withers away even more. The authorities condemn them to exile for illegally using a wolf in their shows. Gwynplaine accidentally meets Josiana, having been brought into her palace by her confidant, the intriguer Barkilphedro. At first she nearly seduces him, perversely excited by his deformity. However, she then receives a letter containing the Queen's order to marry him (as a replacement for David and the legitimate Lord Clancharie) and therefore violently rejects him as a lover, while accepting him as her (formal) husband. Gwynplaine is now formally instated as Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone. In a grotesque scene, he is dressed in the elaborate robes and ceremonial wig of investiture, and commanded to take his seat in the House of Lords. But, when the deformed Gwynplaine addresses his peers with a fiery speech against the gross inequality of the age, the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish features. After the end of the session, David defends him and challenges a dozen Lords to a duel, but then he also challenges Gwynplaine to a duel for having chastised David's mother for having become the mistress of Charles II after having been the lover of his own father, Lord Linnaeus. Gwynplaine renounces his peerage and returns to the caravan of Ursus, and to the only family he has ever known. At first he cannot find them and nearly commits suicide out of grief. Then he manages to find them and board their ship bound for the continent in the last minute. Dea is delighted that Gwynplaine has returned to her. She reveals her passion to Gwynplaine, and then she abruptly dies. Gwynplaine then walks, as though in a trance to the edge of the ship, speaking to Dea, and with the reflection of a distant light in his eyes, though the sky is starless. He throws himself into the water, and is thus reunited with Dea in death. When Ursus, who has fainted in Dea's last moments, comes to his senses, Gwynplaine has vanished, and Homo is staring mournfully over the ship's rail, howling into the sea from which Gwynplaine will not return. |
Ninety-Three | Victor Hugo | 1,874 | The action mainly takes place in western France, and in Paris, and to a lesser extent at sea off the Channel Islands, where Hugo latterly lived. The year is 1793. In Brittany during the Royalist insurrection of the Chouannerie, a troop of “Blues” (soldiers of the French Republic) encounter Michelle Fléchard, a peasant woman, and her three young children, who are fleeing from the conflict. She explains that her husband and parents have been killed. The troop’s commander, Sergeant Radoub, convinces them to look after the family. Meanwhile, at sea, a group of Royalist “Whites” are planning to land the Marquis de Lantenac, a Breton aristocrat whose leadership could transform the fortunes of the rebellion. Their corvette is spotted by ships of the Republic. Lantenac slips away in a boat with one supporter, and the corvette distracts the Republican ships by provoking a battle it cannot win. The corvette is destroyed, but Lantenac lands safely in Brittany. Lantenac is hunted by the Blues, but is protected by a local beggar, to whom he gave alms in the past. He meets up with his supporters, and they immediately launch an attack on the Blues. Part of the troop with the family is captured. Lantenac orders them all to be shot, including Michelle. He takes the children with him as hostages. The beggar finds the bodies, and discovers that Michelle is still alive. He nurses her back to health. Lantenac’s ruthless methods have turned the revolt into a major threat to the Republic. In Paris, Danton, Robespierre and Marat argue about the threat, while also sniping at each other. They promulgate a decree that all rebels and anyone who helps them will be executed. Cimourdain, a committed revolutionary and former priest, is deputed to carry out their orders in Brittany. He is also told to keep an eye on Gauvain, the commander of the Republican troops there, who is related to Lantenac and thought to be too lenient to rebels. Unknown to the revolutionary leaders, Cimourdain was Gauvain’s childhood tutor, and thinks of him as a son. Lantenac has taken control of Dol-de-Bretagne, in order to secure a landing place for British troops to be sent to support the Royalists. Gauvain launches a surprise attack and uses deception to dislodge and disperse them. Forced to retreat, Lantenac is constantly kept from the coast by Gauvain. With British troops unavailable his supporters melt away. Eventually he and a last few fanatical followers are trapped in his castle. Meanwhile Michelle has recovered and goes in search of her children. She wanders aimlessly, but eventually hears that they are being held hostage in Lantenac’s castle. At the castle Sergeant Radoub, fighting with the besiegers, spots the children. He persuades Gauvain to let him lead an assault. He manages to break through the defences and kill several rebels, but Lantenac and a few survivors escape through a secret passage after setting fire to the building. As the fire takes hold, Michelle arrives, and sees that her children are trapped. Her hysterical cries of despair are heard by Lantenac. Struck with guilt, he returns through the passage to the castle and rescues the children, helped by Radoub. He then gives himself up. Gauvain knows that Cimourdain will guillotine Lantenac after a military trial. He visits him in prison, where Lantenac expresses his uncompromising conservative vision of society ordered by hierarchy, deference and duty. Gauvain insists that humane values transcend tradition. To prove it, he allows Lantenac to escape and then gives himself up to the tribunal that was convened to try him. Gauvain is tried for treason. The tribunal comprises Cimourdain, Radoub and Gauvain’s deputy, Guéchamp. Radoub votes to acquit, but the others vote to condemn Gauvain to be executed. Visited by Cimourdain in prison, Gauvain outlines his own libertarian vision of a future society with minimal government, no taxes, technological progress and sexual equality. The following morning he is executed by guillotine. At the same moment, Cimourdain shoots himself. |
Le Dernier jour d'un condamné | Victor Hugo | 1,829 | A man who has been condemned to death by the guillotine in 19th century France writes down his cogitations, feelings and fears while awaiting his execution. His writing traces his change in psyche vis-a-vis the world outside the prison cell throughout his imprisonment, and describes his life in prison, everything from what his cell looks like to the personality of the prison priest. He does not betray his name or what he has done to the reader, though he vaguely hints that he has killed someone. On the day he is to be executed he sees his three-year-old daughter for the last time, but she no longer recognizes him, and tells him that her father is dead. The novel ends just after he briefly but desperately begs for pardon and curses the people of his time, the people he hears outside, screaming impatiently for the spectacle of his decapitation. |
Along Came a Spider | Athena Alexis | 1,993 | Washington, D.C. homicide investigator and forensic psychologist Alex Cross investigates the brutal murders of two black prostitutes and an infant. Then, at an exclusive private school, math teacher Gary Soneji kidnaps Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg. Cross is pulled off the murder case to investigate the kidnapping instead. Angry because he feels everyone cares more about two rich white children than tree dead black people, he meets Jezzie Flannagan, the head of the children's Secret Service detail. At an old farmhouse, Soneji buries the children alive in specially made coffin. Angered by FBI agent Roger Graham's contemptuous comments about him on TV, Soneji later impersonates a reporter and kills Graham. Meanwhile, Cross, his partner John Sampson and the FBI search Soneji's apartment, discovering his obsession with kidnappings, particularly that of the Lindbergh baby, and his desire to become a world famous criminal. A next few months later, Michael Goldberg's corpse is discovered, and the Dunnes receive a telegram demanding $10 million. Cross, Sampson and the FBI investigate, and Cross begins an affair with Jezzie Flannagan. He is ordered to deliver the money to Walt Disney World in Orlando, wondering how Soneji knows about his involvement. A man takes him on a plane, flying to a small island and taking the money, but never delivering Maggie Rose. At the old farmhouse, police officers find the empty graves where the children were held. Soneji returns to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where it is revealed he has a wife and a daughter. In Washington DC, Soneji, dressed as a public utility employee, murders a teacher from the private school. Cross and Sampson are sent to the scene and, seeing the way he mutilated the body, quickly realize that Soneji is also behind the killings they investigated before and after the kidnapping. In the murdered prostitutes' neighborhood, an elderly woman recalls a man driving going door to door selling heating systems. They soon find out that a man named Gary Murphy works for the company, and put observation on his family home in Wilmington, but Soneji manages to escape. A day later, he walks into a McDonald's and holds several people hostage. Soneji is almost killed, but Cross saves him, as he believes Soneji knows where Maggie is. The criminal promises Cross will regret saving his life. The trial of Gary Soneji/Murphy lasts eleven months. Cross hypnotizes him several times, learning he seems to have a split personality; Gary Murphy, his everyday persona, is a gentle family man, while Gary Soneji is a vicious sociopath. Despite the defense's best effort at an insanity plea, Soneji is imprisoned. Meanwhile, Cross learns that someone was following Soneji and knew about the kidnapping. Cross suspects Mike Devine and Charley Chakely, the Secret Service agents in charge of protecting Maggie Rose and Michael when they were kidnapped. He meets with Soneji, who confirms he may have been followed. He did not make the connection until he recognized the man at his trial: Mike Devine. Cross meets with the FBI, who have believed for some time that Devine and Chakely took the ransom money, hiring and later murdering the pilot from Florida. Cross also learns that no other than Jezzie Flannagan masterminded the kidnapping using her lover, Devine, as a pawn. Around the same time, Soneji escapes from prison and goes to Washington, where he tortures Devine to find out where the ransom money is. After retrieving the money, he kills Devine. Cross takes Flannagan on a Caribbean getaway, and confronts her about her actions. She explains that Devine and Chakely noticed Soneji driving by the Goldberg house, and followed him. The ransom was her idea, and they removed Maggie Rose after Michael died accidentally. Flannagan is arrested based on a recording Sampson made of the conversation, and Maggie Rose is found with a family in South America, where she had been living for the past two years. Shortly after this, Soneji attacks Cross at his Washington home, attempting to kill his grandmother and children. Losing the fight, Soneji is hunted through the capital and eventually cornered on Pennsylvania Avenue, where he takes two children hostage. Soneji is about to shoot Cross, but Sampson shoots Soneji first, wounding him. Some time later, Charley Chakely and Jezzie Flannagan are executed for their crimes, while Soneji is locked up in a mental institution. He writes a last taunting letter to Cross and bribes a guard to leave it on Cross' windshield. Disturbed but unwilling to let the psychopath disrupt his life any further, Cross returns home to spend time with his family. |
Les Enfants Terribles | Jean Cocteau | 1,929 | This story concerns the siblings Paul and Elisabeth who start this story without a father and with a bed-ridden mother, whom Elisabeth looks after. At school Paul is obsessed with the feminine looking Dargelos, while Paul’s school friend Gerard is enthralled by the siblings. However after Paul becomes ill when Dargelos throws a snowball with a stone inside at him, Elisabeth cares for both him and their mother. While nursing Paul they start an incestuous love and begin playing the “game”. The game devised by Paul and Elisabeth often involves the siblings trying to hurt each other's feelings, where the winner is the one that leaves the contest with the last word, a sense of superiority and ideally having caused a display of angry frustration from the other. This game continues after Paul recovers and their mother has died. Elisabeth soon takes up a job as a model, where she meets Agathe, a girl who was orphaned at a young age after her drug-addicted parents committed suicide. Agathe, characterised by her strong resemblance to Dargelos, soon moves in with Paul and Elisabeth. Elisabeth is first to get married to a wealthy young man who dies on his way to a business meeting before the married couple can even enjoy a honeymoon. The result of the marriage is that the siblings inherit a large house which they move into. Paul soon finds himself in love with Agathe. Elisabeth cannot stand to see her brother happy, but there is also an element of it being a game to see how much hurt she can inflict. She manages to bully Gerard, who is in love with her, into marrying Agathe and as a result helps break her brother’s heart. After Agathe and Gerard's marriage, Gerard meets with Dargelos, now a collector of poisons, and sends one of these poisons to Paul, also an enthusiast, as a gift. That poison is taken by Paul to end his life after writing of his love to Agathe. As Paul lies dying he is attended to by Agathe, who finds out about Elisabeth's scheme, and Elisabeth herself. In her final moments, knowing that Paul is dying, Elisabeth senses that this is yet another twist in the game and by dying he has beaten her to the final move. She then shoots herself and by a matter of seconds beats Paul, leaving a frightened Agathe with two dead bodies. |
The Alienist | Caleb Carr | 1,994 | Narrated from the first-person perspective of John Moore, a crime reporter for The New York Times, the novel begins on January 8, 1919, the day that Theodore Roosevelt is buried. Moore has dinner with Laszlo Kreizler, the famous alienist. Kreizler is surrounded by those he has rescued, including his black servant, Cyrus Montrose, his housekeeper, Mary Palmer, and a boy named Stevie "Stevepipe" Taggert. Together, they reminisce about their times with Roosevelt, but they focus on one moment: the spring of 1896 and their efforts to catch a serial killer on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The novel is narrated in retrospect, with Moore commenting on the events and how they impacted later history. At 2 am on March 3, 1896, Moore is awakened by one of Kreizler's servants banging incessantly on his door. Stevie, a young boy whom Kreizler had saved from being institutionalized and who is dedicated to Kreizler, brings Moore to the scene of a crime that Kreizler wants Moore to see. Roosevelt, the police commissioner, is already at the scene. When Moore sees the nature of the brutal murder, he is appalled. The victim, Georgio "Gloria" Santorelli, is a 13-year-old boy who prostituted himself by dressing up as a girl; the boy's wrists are tied behind his back and he is kneeling, with his face pressed on the steel walkway where he was found. Though makeup paint and powder on his face are still intact, his eyes are gouged out, his right hand is chopped off, his genitals are cut off and stuffed between his jaws, he has huge gashes across his entire body, his throat has been slashed, and his buttocks are "shorn off." The policeman at the scene, Detective Sergeant Connor, makes it clear that murders of such victims are usually ignored. At Roosevelt's request, Moore, Kreizler, and he meet the following morning in Roosevelt's office to discuss the case. Kreizler has examined the body and disagrees with the official coroner's report. He connects the Santorelli killing to that of a second case he knows of in which two children, Benjamin and Sofia Zweig, were killed and also had their eyes gouged out. Roosevelt announces that he knows of two more murders that match the pattern. Roosevelt decides to investigate, but because Kreizler has such a dubious reputation as an alienist and because the investigation will become politically difficult, he establishes a base of operations for them outside the police precinct. Politically, Roosevelt cannot afford to be associated with the investigation and is not involved with the day-to-day operations. Kreizler asks for some young detectives, who are open to new methods, and receives the help of Sara Howard, the first woman to be hired by the police department, and Marcus and Lucius Isaacson, two Jewish brothers who were hired when Roosevelt began removing corrupt police officers from the force. The Isaacsons bring sophisticated methods such as the Bertillon system and fingerprinting to the investigation, although these were not popular in New York City police departments at the time nor accepted in courts of law. The group begins to investigate the victims, hoping to understand the mind of the murderer by understanding his victims. They interview Georgio Santorelli's mother and discover, for example, that there was discord in his family. Georgio's parents had learned of him being manipulated into performing sex for older boys in school, and the father's response was to try to beat it out of the boy. Georgio eventually left home, and lived on the streets as a male-for-male prostitute. They also read the emerging science of psychology, such as the works of William James. Another body is discovered and the evidence suggests that the victim knew his attacker. They also deduce that the killer's agility on roofs suggests that he is familiar with mountain or rock climbing. Kreizler, Roosevelt, Moore, and Howard must deal with various interest groups during their investigation who wish to maintain society's status quo, including a corrupt police force which takes bribes from owners of the brothels whose prostitutes include poor immigrants; the Catholic Church, which is wary of the potential power of an organized immigrant population; the Episcopal Church; and J.P. Morgan. |
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name | Audre Lorde | 1,982 | Audre Lorde grows up in Harlem, a child of Black West Indian parents. Legally blind as a child, she learns to read before going to school, thus stoking up wrath in the Nuns/teachers at her Catholic school. The family's landlord hangs himself for having to rent his flat to Black people; later they take a trip to Washington D.C., where they are refused ice-cream because of segregation laws. After getting her first period at age 15, she makes friends with a small number of non-Black girls, called "The Branded" at Hunter College High School. She is even elected literary editor of the school's arts magazine - she has started writing poetry. After graduation, she leaves home and shares a flat with friends of Jean's (one of The Branded). At the same time, she also goes out with Peter, a white boy who jilts her on New Year's Eve - she is pregnant and decides on an abortion. After some unhappy times at Hunter College, she moves to Stamford, Connecticut, to find work in a factory, where the working conditions prove atrocious. Following her father's death, she returns to NYC and starts a relationship with Bea, whose heart she ends up breaking when she decides to move to Mexico to get away from McCarthyism. There, she goes to university and works as a secretary in a hospital. In Cuernavaca, she meets a lot of independent women, mostly lesbians; she has a relationship with one of them, Eudora, and works in a library. Back in NYC, Audre explores the lesbian bar scene, moves in with lover Muriel, then another lesbian, Lynn, moves in with them and ends up leaving without warning and with their savings. Finally, Audre begins a relationship with a mother named Afrekete, who decides to leave to tend to her child. The book ends on a homage to Audre's mother. |
Giovanni's Room | James Baldwin | 1,956 | David, in the South of France, is about to board a train back to Paris. His girlfriend Hella, to whom he had proposed before she went to Spain, has returned to the United States. As for Giovanni, he is about to be guillotined. David remembers his first experience with a boy, Joey, who lived in Brooklyn. The two bonded and eventually had a sexual encounter during a sleepover. The two boys began kissing and making love. The next day, David left, and a little later he took to bullying Joey in order to feel like a real man. David now lives with his father, who is prone to drinking, and his aunt, Ellen. The latter upbraids the father for not being a good example to his son. David's father says that all he wants is for David to become a real man. Later, David begins drinking, too, and drinks and drives once, ending up in an accident. Back home, the two men talk, and David convinces his father to let him skip college and get a job instead. He then decides to move to France to find himself. After a year in Paris, penniless, he calls Jacques, an older homosexual acquaintance, to meet him for supper so he can ask for money. (In a prolepsis, Jacques and David meet again and discuss Giovanni's fall.) The two men go to Guillaume's gay bar. They meet Giovanni, the new bartender, at whom Jacques tries to make a pass, until he gets talking with Guillaume. Meanwhile, David and Giovanni become friends. Later, they all go to a restaurant in Les Halles. Jacques enjoins David not to be ashamed to feel love; they eat oysters and drink white wine. Giovanni recounts how he met Guillaume in a cinema, how the two men had dinner together because Giovanni wanted a free meal. He also explains that Guillaume is prone to making trouble. Later, the two men go back to Giovanni's room and they have sex. David moves into Giovanni's small room. They broach the subject of Hella, about whom Giovanni is not worried, but who reveals the Italian's misogynistic prejudices about women and the need for men to dominate them. David then briefly describes Giovanni's room, which is always in the dark because there are no curtains and they need their own privacy. He goes on to read a letter from his father, asking him to go back to America, but he does not want to do that. The young man walks into a sailor; David believes he thinks David is a gay man, though it is unclear whether this is true or the sailor is just staring back at David. A subsequent letter from Hella announces that she is returning in a few days, and David realizes he has to part with Giovanni soon. Setting off to prove to himself that he is not gay, David searches for a woman with whom he can have sex. He meets a slight acquaintance, Sue, in a bar and they go back to her place and have sex; he does not want to see her again and has only just used her to feel better about himself. When he returns to the room, David finds a hysterical Giovanni, who has been fired from Guillaume's bar. Hella eventually comes back and David leaves Giovanni's room with no notice for three days. He sends a letter to his father asking for money for their marriage. The couple then walks into Jacques and Giovanni in a bookshop, which makes Hella uncomfortable because she does not like Jacques's mannerisms. After walking Hella back to her hotel room, David goes to Giovanni's room to talk; the Italian man is distressed. David thinks that they cannot have a life together and feels that he would be sacrificing his manhood if he stays with Giovanni. He leaves, but runs into Giovanni several times and is upset by the "fairy" mannerisms which he is developing and his new relationship with Jacques, who is an older and richer man. Sometime later, David walks into Yves and finds out Giovanni is no longer with Jacques and that he might be able to get a job at Guillaume's bar again. The news of Guillaume's murder suddenly comes out, and Giovanni is castigated in all newspapers. David fancies that Giovanni went back into the bar to ask for a job, going so far as to sacrifice his dignity and agree to sleep with Guillaume. He imagines that after Giovanni has compromised himself, Guillaume makes excuses for why he cannot rehire him as a bar-tender; in reality they both know that Giovanni is no longer of interest to Guillame's bar's clientele since so much of his life has been played out in public. Giovanni responds by killing Guillame in rage. Giovanni attempts to hide, but he is discovered by the police and sentenced to death for murder. On the day of Giovanni's execution, David is in his house in the South of France. The caretaker comes round for the inventory, as he is moving out the next day. She encourages him to get married, have children, and pray. Hella and David then move to the South of France, where they discuss gender roles and Hella expresses her desire to live under a man as a woman. David, wracked with guilt over Giovanni's impending execution, leaves her and goes to Nice for a few days, where he spends his time with a sailor. Hella finds him and discovers his homosexuality, which she says she suspected all along. She bitterly decides to go back to America. The book ends with David's mental pictures of Giovanni's execution and his own guilt. |
Coquette | Hannah Webster Foster | 1,797 | The story is about Eliza Wharton, the daughter of a clergyman. At the beginning of the novel she has just been released from an unwanted marriage by the death of her betrothed, the Rev. Haly, also a clergyman, whom Eliza nursed during his final days in her own home. After this experience, she decides she wants friendship and independence. After a short period of time living with friends, she is courted by two men. One, Boyer, is a respected but rather boring clergyman, whom all of her friends and her mother recommend she accept in marriage. The other, Sanford, is an aristocratic libertine, who has no intention to marry but determines not to let another man have Eliza. Because of her indecision and her apparent preference for the libertine Sanford, Boyer eventually gives up on her, deciding that she will not make a suitable wife. Sanford also disappears from her life and marries another woman, Nancy, for her fortune. Eliza eventually decides that she really loved Boyer and wants him back. Unfortunately for Eliza, Boyer has already decided to marry Maria Selby, a relation of Boyer's friend. Sanford later reappears married, but is able to seduce the depressed Eliza. They have a hidden affair for some time until, overcome by guilt and unwilling to face her family and friends, Eliza arranges to escape from her home. Like the real-life Elizabeth Whitman, she dies due to childbirth complications and is buried by strangers. Mrs. Wharton (Eliza's mother) and all of Eliza's friends are deeply saddened by her death. Sanford, too, is devastated by her death. In a letter to his friend, Charles Deighton, he expresses his regret at his wretched behavior. |
The Rocking-Horse Winner | D. H. Lawrence | null | The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne'er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn't earn as much as she'd like. The family's lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety, and Paul even claims he can hear the house "whispering" There must be more money. Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He's been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky". As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there", into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner's name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul's bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I'm absolutely sure – oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.” |
Ten Men | Alexandra Gray | 2,005 | The protagonist is born in the mid-1960s. After her father's premature death when she is seven, she and her sister are brought up in England by their mother, who is a French Catholic. Conditioned to believe that pre-marital sex is a sin, at 18 the heroine is forced into an early marriage with a teacher, who works literally day and night at a remote boarding school for boys. Stripped of her privacy and her youthful ways, she clings to her husband, hoping he will take a job elsewhere. When he does not she deserts him and embarks on a series of affairs with wealthy men who are not interested in a long-term relationship with her: a lawyer, a capitalist ("the Billionaire"), a Lord. Similar to Caroline Meeber in Dreiser's Sister Carrie, the protagonist is not prepared to earn a living through honest work dependent on her qualifications. Accordingly, she always has to rely financially on the men in her life. In particular, it is the billionaire who, as a kind of parting present, volunteers to pay for her very expensive university education at some exclusive New York college as well as for her Upper East Side apartment. After her graduation the protagonist eventually moves back to London. An affair with a sexually inexperienced man ("the Virgin") leads to her first pregnancy ever and a subsequent miscarriage. Having trained as an actress, she gets a few jobs in TV commercials. When she meets her ex-husband again it is only to find out that he is going to get married again. At the end of the novel, aged about 38 and still indecisive, she meets a single father who might become her future partner. |
Man of Two Worlds | Brian Herbert | 1,986 | On the distant planet Dreenor lives the most powerful species in the Galaxy. All of the Universe is the creation of the Dreens, who possess the power of "idmaging", turning their thoughts into reality. They can create whole worlds, of which the wild, ungovernable planet Earth is one. But suddenly Earth is a threat, its people on the verge of discovering interstellar travel, and with it, of gaining access to Dreenor itself - a paradox within a paradox, not to be permitted. While the elder Dreens plan Earth's destruction, a youngster, Ryll, embarks on an unauthorized jaunt across space. Forced for survival to merge bodies with an “Earther” whose mind is as strong as his own, he has to battle for control. And the future of all earthly life lies in the hand of a composite being, half wily, aggressive human, half naive adolescent alien, confused and far from home. |
Tower of Glass | Robert Silverberg | 1,970 | The plot involves a 24th century entrepreneur-tycoon-scientist, Simeon Krug, who has created a race of androids to serve humanity. Krug, probably Earth's wealthiest man, directs the construction of an immense tower of glass in the Canadian tundra. The edifice is not a monument, however, but a way to communicate with a distant planetary nebula, NGC 7293, from which an intelligent (though indecipherable) message has been received. Krug is also building a starship to send there, which is to be crewed by androids in hibernation. The tower construction is directed by Krug's most faithful android, Alpha Thor Watchman. Thor and other leading androids have invented a secret religion for androids, based on the vision that their creator, Krug, intends to eventually make them equal to humans. Krug is unaware of the religion. Thor's dream is to convince him through indirect means, including the manipulation of his weak-willed son and heir, Manuel, through a sexual relationship with a female android, Alpha Lilith Meson. Thor eventually falls in love with her, as does Manuel. After Thor and Lilith have manipulated Manuel into telling his father about the android religion, Krug insists that the minds of he and Thor be connected in the "shunt room" which allows one mind to probe another's (a form of technologically enabled telepathy). Thor discovers via the link that Krug regards androids as mere things, and has no intention of treating them as equal to womb-born humans. Realizing that Krug will never give freedom to androids, Thor despairs, loses his faith and announces Krug's true nature to androids worldwide. With the collapse of their religion, androids across all of Earth rebel. Many walk off their jobs, others take control of key Earth installations, and some even kill humans in their long-suppressed rage. Thor then causes the fall of the nearly-complete, 1,200-meter-tall tower. An engraged Krug attacks Thor; the latter, unable to fight his creator, is pushed into an unprogrammed teleporter and annihilated. Krug, his empire destroyed and humanity in grave danger, flees in his starship, alone, towards the star system from which the alien message was sent. |
Callahan's Lady | Spider Robinson | 1,989 | The storyline focuses on Maureen, an underage streetwalker who is stabbed by her pimp in a dark alley one night. Fortunately for Maureen, Lady Sally is nearby: she had been walking her werebeagle. After defeating the pimp in hand to hand combat, Sally brings Maureen home. Her brothel has a fully functioning medical facility, where Maureen is treated and healed. She falls in love with the place for its ambiance and safety but is rejected as an employee for many reasons. Most importantly, she is underage but she also has severe self-loathing issues. Lady Sally enjoys the fact that Maureen comes to accept and befriend the werebeagle and a talking German Shepherd but this is not enough let the main character stay. Maureen's old pimp tracks down the brothel and puts many of the visitors in danger. Maureen uses her wits to help defeat the man; this convinces Sally to let her stay in a non-sexual context. The plot skips to Maureen becoming eighteen, she is allowed to take on sexual duties. The rest of the plot focuses on three different subsequent incidents. There is 'Colt', a client with an unusual addiction that nobody seems to notice, one that presents various threats. Later, Maureen and her close friend Phillip swiftly realize that they are doing many things they do not wish to do over the course of their work-day. The concept of 'being forced into it' is something that Lady Callahan and her staff oppose in many, varied ways. Maureen and Phillip find that they are keeping quiet about this, even though they wish to tell everyone possible. The last incident focuses on Maureen's old friend, the Professor, who needs fifty thousand quick or he will die horribly. A very specific, very counterfeit fifty thousand. Like other books in the Callahan series, puns are a focus, sometimes seriously. |
Cyrano de Bergerac | Edmond Rostand | null | Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong-willed man of many talents. In addition to being a remarkable duelist, he is a gifted, joyful poet and is also shown to be a musician. However, he has an extremely large nose, which is the reason for his own self-doubt. This doubt prevents him from expressing his love for his distant cousin, the beautiful and intellectual heiress Roxane, as he believes that his ugliness denies him the "dream of being loved by even an ugly woman." The play opens in Paris, 1640, in the theatre of the Hôtel Burgundy. Members of the audience slowly arrive, representing a cross-section of Parisian society from pickpockets to nobility. Christian de Neuvillette, a handsome new cadet, arrives with Lignière, a drunkard who he hopes will identify the young woman with whom he has fallen in love. Lignière recognizes her as Roxane, and tells Christian about her and the Count De Guiche’s scheme to marry her off to the compliant Viscount Valvert. Meanwhile, Ragueneau and Le Bret are expecting Cyrano de Bergerac, who has banished the actor Montfleury from the stage for a month. After Lignière leaves, Christian intercepts a pickpocket and, in return for his freedom, the pickpocket tells Christian of a plot against Lignière. Christian departs to try to warn him. The play “Clorise” begins with Montfleury’s entrance, and Cyrano disrupts the play, chases him off stage, and compensates the manager for the loss of admission fees. The crowd is going to disperse when Cyrano lashes out at a pesky busybody, then is confronted by Valvert and duels with him while composing a ballade, wounding him as he ends the refrain (as promised: he ends each refrain with "When I end the refrain, 'Thrust Home'.") When the crowd has cleared the theater, Cyrano and Le Bret remain behind, and Cyrano confesses his love for Roxane. Roxane’s duenna then arrives, and asks where Roxane may meet Cyrano privately. Lignière is then brought to Cyrano, having learned that one hundred hired thugs are waiting to ambush him on his way home. Cyrano, now emboldened, vows to take on the entire mob single-handed, and he leads a procession of officers, actors and musicians to the Porte de Nesle. The next morning, at Ragueneau’s bake shop, Ragueneau supervises various apprentice cooks in their preparations. Cyrano arrives, anxious about his meeting with Roxane. He is followed by a musketeer, a paramour of Ragueneau’s domineering wife Lise, then the regular gathering of impoverished poets who take advantage of Ragueneau’s hospitality. Cyrano composes a letter to Roxane expressing his deep and unconditional love for her, warns Lise about her indiscretion with the musketeer, and when Roxane arrives he signals Ragueneau to leave them alone. Roxane and Cyrano talk privately as she bandages his hand (injured from the fracas at the Port de Nesle); she thanks him for defeating Valvert at the theater, and talks about a man whom she has fallen in love with. Cyrano thinks that she is talking about him at first, and is ecstatic, but Roxane describes her crush as "handsome," and tells him that she is in love with Christian. Roxane fears for Christian’s safety in the predominantly Gascon company of Cadets, so she asks Cyrano to befriend and protect him. This he agrees to do. After she leaves, Cyrano’s captain arrives with the cadets to congratulate him on his victory from the night before. They are followed by a huge crowd, including De Guiche and his entourage, but Cyrano soon drives them away. Le Bret takes him aside and chastises him for his behavior, but Cyrano responds haughtily. The Cadets press him to tell the story of the fight, teasing the newcomer Christian. When Cyrano recounts the tale, Christian displays his own form of courage by interjecting several times with references to Cyrano’s nose. Cyrano is angry, but remembering his promise to Roxanne, he holds in his temper. Eventually Cyrano explodes, the shop is evacuated, and Cyrano reveals his identity as Roxane's cousin. Christian confesses his love for Roxane but his inability to woo because of his lack of intellect and wit. When Cyrano tells Christian that Roxane expects a letter from him, Christian is despondent, having no eloquence in such matters. Cyrano then offers his services, including his own unsigned letter to Roxane. The Cadets and others return to find the two men embracing, and are flabbergasted. The musketeer from before, thinking it was safe to do so, teases Cyrano about his nose and receives a slap in the face while the Cadets rejoice. Outside Roxane's house Ragueneau is conversing with Roxane's duenna. When Cyrano arrives, Roxane comes down and they talk about Christian: Roxane says that Christian’s letters have been breathtaking—he is more intellectual than even Cyrano, she declares. She also says that she loves Christian. When De Guiche arrives, Cyrano hides inside Roxane's house. De Guiche tells Roxane that he has come to say farewell. He has been made a colonel of an army regiment that is leaving that night to fight in the war with Spain. He mentions that the regiment includes Cyrano’s guards, and he grimly predicts that he and Cyrano will have a reckoning. Afraid for Christian’s safety if he should go to the front, Roxane quickly suggests that the best way for De Guiche to seek revenge on Cyrano would be for him to leave Cyrano and his cadets behind while the rest of the regiment goes on to military glory. After much flirtation from Roxane, De Guiche believes he should stay close by, concealed in a local monastery. When Roxane implies that she would feel more for De Guiche if he went to war, he agrees to march on steadfastly, leaving Cyrano and his cadets behind. He leaves, and Roxane makes the duenna promise she will not tell Cyrano that Roxane has robbed him of a chance to go to war. Roxane expects Christian to come visit her, and she tells the duenna to make him wait if he does. Cyrano presses Roxane to disclose that instead of questioning Christian on any particular subject, she plans to make Christian improvise about love. Although he tells Christian the details of her plot, when Roxane and her duenna leave, he calls for Christian who has been waiting nearby. Cyrano tries to prepare Christian for his meeting with Roxane, urging him to remember lines Cyrano has written. Christian however refuses saying he wants to speak to Roxane in his own words. Cyrano bows to this saying, “Speak for yourself, sir.” During their meeting Christian makes a fool of himself trying to speak seductively to Roxane. Roxane storms into her house, confused and angry. Thinking quickly, Cyrano makes Christian stand in front of Roxane’s balcony and speak to her while Cyrano stands under the balcony whispering to Christian what to say. Eventually, Cyrano shoves Christian aside and, under cover of darkness, pretends to be Christian, wooing Roxane himself. In the process, he wins a kiss for Christian. Roxane and Christian are secretly married by a Capuchin while Cyrano waits outside to prevent De Guiche from disrupting the impromptu wedding. Their happiness is short-lived: De Guiche, angry to have lost Roxane, declares that he is sending the Cadets of Gascoyne to the front lines of the war with Spain. De Guiche triumphantly tells Cyrano that the wedding night will have to wait. Under his breath, Cyrano remarks that the news fails to upset him. Roxane, afraid for Christian, urges Cyrano to promise to keep him safe, to keep him out of dangerous situations, to keep him dry and warm, and to keep him faithful. Cyrano says that he will do what he can but that he cannot promise anything. Roxane begs Cyrano to promise to make Christian write to her every day. Brightening, Cyrano announces confidently that he can promise that. The siege of Arras. The Gascon Cadets are among many French forces now cut off by the Spanish, and they are starving. Cyrano, meanwhile, has been writing in Christian’s name twice a day, smuggling letters across the enemy lines. De Guiche, whom the Cadets despise, arrives and chastises them; Cyrano responds with his usual bravura, and De Guiche then signals a spy to tell the Spanish to attack on the Cadets, informing them that they must hold the line while relief comes in. Then a coach arrives, and Roxane emerges from it. She tells how she was able to flirt her way through the Spanish lines. Cyrano tells Christian about the letters, and provides him a farewell letter to give to Roxane if he dies. After De Guiche departs, Roxane provides plenty of food and drink with the assistance of the coach’s driver, Ragueneau. She also tells Christian that, because of the letters, she has grown to love him for his soul alone, and would still love him even if he were ugly. Christian tells this to Cyrano, and then persuades Cyrano to tell Roxane the truth about the letters, saying he has to be loved for "the fool that he is" to be truly loved at all. Cyrano disbelieves what Christian claims Roxane has said, until she tells him so as well. But, before Cyrano can tell her the truth, Christian is brought back to the camp, having been fatally shot. Cyrano realizes that, in order to preserve Roxane's image of an eloquent Christian, he cannot tell her the truth. The battle ensues, a distraught Roxane collapses and is carried off by De Guiche and Ragueneau, and Cyrano rallies the Cadets to hold back the Spanish until relief arrives. Fifteen years later, at a convent outside Paris. Roxane now resides here, eternally mourning her beloved Christian. She is visited by De Guiche, Le Bret and Ragueneau, and she expects Cyrano to come by as he always has with news of the outside world. On this day, however, he has been mortally wounded by someone who dropped a huge log on his head from a tall building. While he arrives to deliver his “gazette” to Roxane, it will be his last. Knowing this, he asks Roxane if he can read "Christian's" farewell letter. She gives it to him, and he reads it aloud as it grows dark. Listening to his voice, she realizes that it is Cyrano who was the author of all the letters, but Cyrano denies this to his death. Ragueneau and Le Bret return, telling Roxane of Cyrano’s injury. While Cyrano grows delirious, his friends weep and Roxane tells him that she loves him. He combats various foes, half imaginary and half symbolic, conceding that he has lost all but one important thing – his panache – as he dies in Roxane's arms. |
Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! | Kenzaburō Ōe | null | Ōe wishes to write a set of definitions to prepare handicapped children like his son for the real world. He struggles with definitions for concepts such as "death," only to learn that his son Eeyore has just as much to teach him about life. Ōe relates his interpretations of events with Eeyore in light of Blake's poetry, and discusses the influence of and similarities between Blake's work on his own. |
Beggars Ride | Nancy Kress | 1,996 | In the prologue, Jennifer Sharifi evicts her granddaughter from the Sanctuary Orbital; the Supers are later revealed (through use of inter-chapter epistolary e-mails) to have moved to Selene Base on the moon. These e-mails, sent by poor Livers, donkey enclaves and even top researchers, always regard the Change syringes, which the Supers have stopped supplying; neither syringes nor replies are ever sent. The novel then cuts to Jackson Aranow, M.D., resident of the Manhattan East Enclave. As a doctor in the age of the Change syringe, he is reduced to Changing newborns, dealing with occasional trauma, and death certificates, which he administers now to Harold Winthrop Wayland. He then returns home, where the reader is first introduced to his sister Theresa and ex-wife Cazie Saunders. The two could not be more different. "Tessie" is a pale, fragile girl, unChanged, who suffers from a neurological condition that causes her to feel endangered in the presence of new and unaccustomed stimuli, but refuses to take neuropharmaceuticals; she is writing a book on Leisha Camden, a long-dead Sleepless. Cazie is an explosive, endlessly vital, take-charge woman who comes and goes as she pleases. Her companions underline the vacility of donkey life, while Cazie underlines that, of 90 million eligible voters in the recent presidential election, only 8% bothered. America is ceasing to exist as a political unit. She also reveals that there has been a break-in at a Y-cone plant in Jackson's family business, TenTech (which she owns a third of, due to the divorce), and insists that they investigate on the morrow. The break-in is actually being orchestrated by a prodigious young data-dipper, Lizzie Francy, now seventeen and very much pregnant, and accompanied by her friend Victoria Turner (Diana, it is revealed later, has legally changed her name). As far as Lizzie is concerned, she owns the world: she's one of the best dippers alive, she has been helping provide for her tribe since Vicki gave her her first computer terminal, she got herself pregnant by some boy because she wanted a baby, and she is about to do the impossible: break into a Y-shielded donkey factory, steal some of their wares, and escape to tell the tale. Though the factory itself has gone haywire (the robots within were improperly programmed and have been destroying products instead of creating them), everything goes according to plan... Except for the escaping part. Restless and locked in, she and Vicki prowl the premises, attempting to find a way out. Jackson and Cazie arrive to confront their worst nightmare: not the insane factory, but rather the fact that a Liver—an unwashed, stupid, uneducated member of the lower classes—was smart enough to dip their factory. On the strength of Vicki's character (and possibly other things; she reminds him alarmingly of Cazie), Jackson refuses to arrest them, and furthermore accompanies Lizzie and Vicki back to the tribe when Lizzie goes into month-early premature labor (the baby is a presentation). He gains points with the tribe by injecting the baby with a Change syringe, which the tribe only had one of. (Jackson personally has three more, plus a stockpile in his home.) After dealing with a break-in from Livers in search of Change syringes for their children, Theresa, in endless search for meaning to her life, visits a bizarre Liver enclave where trios of people inject themselves with a red syringe that forces them to stay in close physical proximity to each other—on pain of death. (The triads also take on a new composite name; one pre-bonded group, Josh Mike and Patty, are later introduced as "Jomp.") The Livers have a holo recording from Miranda Sharifi explaining that this syringe is her next gift to them, building on the Change; this is Theresa's excuse to escape when she decides she doesn't want to be involved. Her next visit is to a convent, which she is ready to submit herself to until the Mother Superior informs her that they use neuropharms to induce religious euphoria in their sisters. Afterwards she dumps Jackson's last sixteen syringes out of her aircar and watches as the people below fight over them. Jennifer Sharifi visits legendary Russian scientist Serge Mikhailovich Strukov, whom she instructs to create a genemod virus that will hardwire agoraphobia, xenophobia and novelty anxiety into the brains of anyone it hits. Researchers have been looking for years for neuropharms that can evade the Cell Cleaner, which destroys any foreign substance in the body, including beneificial analgesics and recreational drugs. What Strukov has found is a virus that changes brain conditions, so that, while the delivering virus is foreign, the conditions it leaves behind are treated as native by the Cell Cleaner. He also reveals that Sanctuary, not Miranda Sharifi, distributed the red bonding syringes and accompanying holo as a means to control Sleepers. Jackson is contacted by Lizzie with a daring plan. Harold Wayland, Jackson's patient from the first chapter, was an elected official, specifically District Supervisor. Lizzie wants to convince one of the members of her tribe, Shockey Toor, to run for that office. There are a lot more Livers in Willoughby County, Pennsylvania than donkeys, and if all the Livers register, between 11:30 and 11:50 PM on December 31 as an ambush on the donkeys, they can landslide their candidate into office. This is why Lizzie needs Jackson: comlink transmissions can be dipped, so his aircar will help spread the propaganda instead. (Lizzie's son, Dirk, is doing just fine—and, if Lizzie's plan works, will be doing a lot better.) At 00:01 hours on January 1, 2121, 4,082 donkeys and 4,450 Livers have registered to vote. Six days before the election, Jackson drops by Lizzie's tribe to see the American political system at work: Livers accepting bribes, donkey newsgrid reporters all over the place, the candidate enjoying the perks of fame on his back under a slumming donkey girl. He realizes that, though the Livers are paying lip-service to the donkey figurehead candidate, Donald Thomas Serrano, they fully intend to vote for Shockey. He is also approached by a young Liver holding a dying baby, who is too far along for Jackson to help—especially since he, a donkey doctor, is out of Change syringes. Vicki tells him that, with Change syringes now in short supply, the world will need more doctors soon. "I'm the biggest advocate of adjusting to [what Miranda Sharifi gave the world]. So far, we haven't done that." She also reveals that Jackson's attraction to her is reciprocated. On April 1, election day, Jackson takes Vicki and Lizzie (sans Dirk) to a nearby camp for some last-minute propaganda; they then vote from Jackson's aircar, and then watch the newsgrids of the Livers lining up to vote. The Livers, who up until this point have been courting fame, are all nervous around the donkey reporters; and the tally of votes shows Serrano's name skyrocketing. Back at the camp, everyone is timid, including Annie Francy and Dirk; they are all, Jackson realizes, acting like Theresa. Somehow, someone has found a way to create a neuropharm that causes fast-acting, non-reversible changes in brain chemistry, in this case inducing fear of novelty. Who could come up with such an innovation, besides Miranda Sharifi?—and how could Serrano have gotten his hands on it?—or, alternatively, why would Miranda have wasted it on a tiny election like this? (In fact, it was Sanctuary, testing Strukov's virus to see if it actually works.) Jackson takes Vicki, Lizzie and Dirk to his home in Manhattan East, where Theresa is just as terrified of Dirk as Dirk is of her. Jackson calls Thurmond Rogers, a lead researcher at neuropharm corporation Kelvin-Castner, to get an investigation going into the exact effects of the drug. Lizzie takes the opportunity to dip Jackson's house OS, and gets a glimpse of what Theresa watches on the newsgrids: endless photos of unChanged infants. She leaves Theresa a personal message, begging her on behalf of the Livers to get Miranda Sharifi to send more Change syringes. Theresa returns to the triad camp (which has evidently also been infected by Strukov's agoraphobia weapon) to see the Miranda-Sharifi holo; to do so, she must overcome her own inhibitions, which she does by becoming Cazie Saunders. It works remarkably well, though she feels confused about it; she has always denied the use of neuropharms so that she would not lose what it meant to be herself. She takes the holo with her, which she is sure is counterfeit, on a visit to the La Solana compound in New Mexico, where Leisha Camden once lived. There she leaves a message for Miranda Sharifi, as have thousands of supplicants before her, pouring out her heart and soul, her views on self, her views on pain and its necessity as proof of life, her views on the red syringes— And, at the news of these syringes, Miranda Sharifi opens a comlink. The speed of their conversation proves that they are not at Selene, but rather right here at La Solana. She agrees to take action about the red syringes, and also explains why they discontinued the Change syringes: As Theresa departs in her chartered plane, La Solana is destroyed by a thermonuclear weapon. The SuperSleepless are dead... And only Theresa Aranow knows it. Jackson takes Vicky, Dirk and Shockey to Kelvin-Castner to undergo various tests. K-C makes no reply whatsoever as to how to reverse the condition, spending all its time trying to reverse-engineer it to its own profit. As far as they are concerned, they can always count on Miranda Sharifi to fix their problems for them. TenTech is asked for an investment, and Jackson wearily agrees—it'll help him keep control of the project. Meanwhile, Lizzie (for lack of anything else to do) tries to figure out who attacked her tribe. It takes nearly a month of careful dipping before she breaks into the transmission data... And discovers it points straight at Sanctuary. She needs to tell Dr. Aranow, and with no other recourse, decides to walk to his enclave. Theresa, for her part, is sick with radiation poisoning for months, but her first priority is to struggle out with the news that the SuperSleepless are gone. Jackson won't believe it, though Vicki does: "It's the only motive that makes sense for bombing La Solana without taking credit or making demands." Jackson realizes that, without Miranda Sharifi, the world is poised to fall apart, starting with the agoraphobia weapon, unless he does something about it. He moves into Kelvin-Caster's proprietary labs to ensure a counteragent is created, teaching himself to become a medical researcher in the process. Jennifer Sharifi, safe on Sanctuary Orbital, oversees the next part of her plans. Strukov's virus has been tested, a newly-designed delivery drone has been successfully used to penetrate the Y-shields of low-security enclaves, and La Solana has been destroyed to keep the meddling Supers from hampering her again, though at great cost to Jennifer: she hallucinates Miranda's face and form during odd moments. Now it is time for a real test: to infect Brookhaven National Laboratories, one of the most well-protected enclaves in existence. The attack succeeds, and Jennifer's people pour champagne... Only to receive a message from Strukov, who in a fit of species solidarity has decided to cancel all the remaining attacks... And then some. "Do you know La Rouchefoucauld on superiority? 'Le vrai moyen d'être trompé c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres.'" ("The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.") Sanctuary Orbital and all remaining living Sleepless are destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Lizzie has made it into Manhattan East Enclave, but is immediately apprehended by security. Taking advantage of a lull in activities (as everyone scurries to watch the reports of Sanctuary's destruction), she sends another transmission to Theresa, begging her to get her out. Theresa does, once again by "becoming" Cazie. Lizzie then meets with Jackson at K-C, who instructs her (privately) to data-dip their systems, looking for proof that K-C hasn't spent any time working on the counter-agent. Meanwhile, Vicki moves through the Decon, but doesn't arrive until nearly midnight, having been detained by events pertaining to Theresa. Theresa is safely back at home, but curious as to herself. She has her nursing 'bot take two separate brain scans, one of Theresa under normal circumstances and one while she is "being" Cazie. Then, as Cazie, she takes the nursing 'bot to a Liver enclave by pretending to be a beggar. Unfortunately, in her unChanged and weak state, this leaves her prone to infection, and she becomes extremely sick. Vicki is the instrument of her salvation, administering the one Change syringe Jackson kept hidden in the hopes that Theresa would one day accept it. Tess, realizing that no Change can change who she is, accepts the syringe and is healed. Vicki later shows Jackson reproductions of the two brain scans (drawn on her breasts, the only way she could sneak them through decon); the "Cazie" scan shows "intense non-somatic activity," the sort associated with "epileptic seizures, religious visions, imaginative delusions," but controlled and channeled through intense concentration. Lizzie moves through decon herself, once again needing to carry vital information in her head: namely, the proof that K-C has no intention of working on a counter-agent, and that furthermore, their regimen of placating research is tailored specifically to fool Jackson. She has also discovered that the agoraphobia weapon has a 38.7% chance of mutating to the point where it can be transmitted directly through person-to-person contact; even if no more attacks are launched, the weapon can still spread. However, K-C doesn't fall in line until Vicki and Jackson announce, publicly, that there is no more deus ex machina; "The machina broke down," Vicki says, "and the dea is dead." If the humans don't help themselves, no one will. Someone does. In the epilogue, taking place in November 2128, the reader finds Theresa, now the leader of a semi-religious begging order, teaching the biofeedback techniques she developed to the "inhibited," as they are now called, helping them conquer the fear artificially wired into their brains. Jackson is the second part of the Trojan Horse, providing the technical, holographic and medical equipment the Livers will need to train themselves fully into Theresa's techniques. No one has yet found a reverser, but his lover Vicki calls him with new information: at the Chicago School of Medicine, where the original Sleepless were engineered 125 years ago, the frozen gametes of the SuperSleepless have just arrived, delivered by time-activated 'bot. The debate on what to do with them, Vicki assures us, will be fierce... |
Age of Iron | John Maxwell Coetzee | 1,990 | The novel depicts the inward journey of Mrs. Curren, an old classics professor. She lives in the Cape Town of the Apartheid era, where she is slowly dying of cancer. She has been philosophically opposed to the Apartheid regime her entire life, but has never taken an active stance against it. Now, at the end of her life, she finally comes face-to-face with the horrors of the system - she witnesses the burning of a black township and the killing of her servant's son, as well as the shooting by security forces of a young black activist whom she shelters in her house. Against a backdrop of violence by whites and blacks alike, Mrs. Curren remembers her past and her daughter, who left South Africa because of the situation in the country: the book is framed as an extended letter from the mother to her daughter in America. As the story progresses, she constructs a relationship of a different kind with Vercueil, an old homeless man who happens to be sleeping in her driveway, as well as finally becoming truly aware of Florence, her black live-in servant. Coetzee brings together important themes in this book: aging, the confessor as hero, narrative representation, the meaning of freedom, and the position of the white liberal in Apartheid South Africa. * ISBN 0-14-027565-7 ca:L'edat de ferro eu:Age of Iron (Coetzee) fa:عصر آهن (رمان) it:Età di ferro |
The Broker | John Grisham | 2,005 | Joel Backman is "the Broker"- a Washington power broker-lobbyist. But his life falls apart when a deal collapses involving a hacked spy satellite that nobody knows about, and Backman ends up in jail. Six years later, the political wheels in Washington have turned and other power-hungry men are eager for his blood. Bargains are made and an outgoing disgraced president grants him a full pardon at the behest of the CIA and he finds himself spirited out of the prison in the middle of the night, bundled onto a military plane and flown to Italy for a new life. He has a new name and mysterious new "friends" who will teach him to speak the language and to blend in with the people of the city of Bologna. But something isn't quite kosher in this new setup, and he is under constant surveillance. In fact, his own government is setting him up for professional assassins from Russia, China, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. The CIA intends to sit back and wait to see which one gets him first, trying to solve the biggest mystery to hit the US government in decades; seeing who built this seemingly impenetrable and most advanced satellite ever. It turns out to be China. Despite having low satellite technology, they stole the information from the U.S. Backman survives several assassination attempts and manages to establish communication with his son, Neal Backman. He escapes surveillance and returns to his home to contract a new deal with the US government. The CIA is told about the satellite, along with the taking of the program of the satellite itself. |
Sphereland | Dionys Burger | 1,965 | The Circles (who are appointed as priests/leaders of Flatland due to their many sides, or an appearance thereof) do not take A Square's revelation about a third dimension to be accurate, and A Square is ostracized by his community. Then after some time, society becomes more open to the ideas of Spaceland and, overall, to change and advancement. However, when a prominent surveyor finds a Triangle with more than 180 degrees, he is fired from his job and generally considered a crackpot, since such a construction is not possible in Euclidean geometry. He eventually makes friends with the grandson of A Square, A Hexagon, because he is a mathematician and scientist. Together, they come upon a theory to explain the unusual measurements: they actually live on a very large sphere, and the Triangles have more than 180 degrees due to being inscribed on a non-planar surface. With help from the sphere from the first novel, they are able to prove this theory. However, the established scientific community is not able to comprehend the idea proposed by the two, and thus they do not attempt to enlighten Flatland. Furthermore, as the residents of Flatland advance, they begin to travel in space; they see distant worlds like their own, and the surveyor tries to find the distance between their world and these distant worlds, using trigonometry and radar. From his calculations, he and the hexagon determine that the universe is expanding; again they try to reveal this theory to the outside world, but again it is not accepted. Therefore, like his grandfather in the previous novel, the hexagon writes a book that is not to be opened until the theory of the expanding universe is discovered and accepted by others. Then they live an inferior existence without any more contact with the sphere. |
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower | C. S. Forester | 1,950 | This novel is episodic, with named chapters that often focus on a self contained incident. In this story, a gawky and seasick Hornblower comes aboard his first ship, HMS Justinian. He immediately earns the contempt of the other midshipmen by, among other things, outshining them in their required mathematical studies. The young Hornblower is particularly despised by a midshipman named Simpson. Simpson, at age thirty-three, had failed his examination for lieutenant too many times to ever expect promotion and he took out his bitterness and disappointment on his juniors. He is said to be "diabolically clever at making other people's lives a burden to them," and Hornblower, extremely unhappy already, is particularly affected and becomes suicidal. He takes the first opportunity for death presented to him by challenging Simpson, a superior gunman, to a duel. Hornblower finds that the most mathematically sound method for the duel is to take an "even chance" by having the duelists select from two pistols, only one of which has been loaded, and taking fire only a few feet apart. The captain secretly frustrates this by having the officers of the duel load neither weapon and by claiming a misfire when neither one shoots. Following this, Hornblower discovers the trick and angrily attempts to challenge the captain to a duel; the captain chides him that this is both an offence and a bad idea. The captain later has him transferred to the command of Edward Pellew on HMS Indefatigable after war is declared with France. In The Cargo of Rice, aboard the Indefatigable, the newly situated Midshipman Hornblower is put in command of the French ship Marie Galante, carrying a cargo of rice from New Orleans, by order of Captain Pellew after it is taken as a prize. It is Hornblower's first time in command of a ship since joining the Royal Navy. He is instructed to take the captured French ship and her crew to a British port where he is to receive his next orders. Sailing is relatively smooth for Hornblower and his four seamen, until one of the crew (Matthews) informs him that the ship is taking on water from somewhere. Hornblower recalls that the Marie Galante was struck below the hull's waterline by a cannonball from the Indefatigable before her capture. They check for moisture but find none until it is pointed out that the dried rice will absorb all of it. They hastily attempt to patch the hole with a sail, but by then the rice has expanded so much that the ship is breaking apart. A massive attempt to jettison the rice comes too late and Hornblower commands all hands to abandon ship. Hornblower's crew and the French prisoners are left at sea in an open boat. In The Penalty of Failure, Hornblower and his crew are still out at sea, between British and French ports. The captain of the recently sunk Marie Galante pleads with Hornblower to navigate to France and release him and his men, and promises safe passage for Hornblower and his crew. Hornblower promptly rejects the Captain's pleading in spite of their bleak situation and uses his pistols to prevent a mutiny. Not too long afterwards, Hornblower and his crew are caught by a privateer named Pique which was converted from a slave ship. This ship is commanded by Captain Neuville. Hornblower is now a prisoner of war, but the Indefatigable falls in with them and makes chase. As the Pique is the faster sailer, Hornblower devises a plan to slow her down: he sets a fire, which soon spreads to the very flammable paint locker. All hands are diverted to fighting the fire, which soon breaks out on the deck and spreads to the rigging, immediately slowing the vessel. The British ship ultimately overpowers the Pique, extinguishes the fire and Captain Neuville and his crew surrender. Hornblower's fears of reprimand for losing the Maire Galante are quickly extinguished by the offhanded dismissal of Captain Pellew. However, instead of taking credit for the fire, Hornblower claims there was a spontaneous combustion in the paint locker, as way of punishing himself for losing the Marie Galante in the first place. Upon returning to the Indefatigable, Hornblower is involved with a mission planned by Captain Pellew to take the French corvette Papillon. Hornblower is set to command the Indefatigables jolly boat. His job in the raid is to board the Papillon after the other boats do, climb the mast and loose the main topsail so the Papillon can sail out to meet the Indefatigable. Before setting out, Hornblower practises his task on the Indefatigable to try and calm his nerves. While reviewing his men prior to shoving off, a man named Hales mentions to Hornblower that he feels "a bit queer-like." After the boat crews depart, Hales begins having a seizure. Because of the necessity of silence, Hornblower strikes Hales with the tiller of his boat. On boarding the ship Hornblower and his men are frustrated by the absence of a footrope along the yardarm. Hornblower's fear of heights and poor balance cause him to freeze, until he reminds himself that he acted decisively enough when laying out Hales; to withdraw now would be an act of extreme cowardice. Motivated by this act of emotional self-flagellation Hornblower runs unaided along the yardarm and looses the topsail. During the fighting the jolly boat is lost, with Hales still aboard, but the corvette Papillon is taken as a prize of the Indefatigable. Hornblower feels bad about the loss of Hales, without whom Hornblower believes he would never have found the courage to complete his task. Jackson claims that Hales would have never made a decent seaman anyway. Given the success of their mission Hornblower realises the loss of the Jolly Boat will not be held against him, but still regrets the inevitable death of Hales. When Styles, a man in Hornblower's division, appears strangely marked with "boils" all over his face, Hornblower is suspicious. He gains a clue from Finch, another of his men, who claims that "God's in the maintop, but the Devil's in the cable tier, but only in the dog watches". After thinking about what this means, Hornblower investigates and discovers a group of men "rat fighting". Styles, with his hands tied behind his back, has to kill as many rats as possible within a short time, while the others bet on the result. A horrified Hornblower orders them up on deck and threatens to report them. Later, in action against a French ship, Hornblower and Finch are firing a swivel gun from the mizzen-top when the mast is hit and begins to fall. Hornblower convinces Finch to jump to safety by telling him to "get to God". The two men make a desperate jump to safety. Hornblower takes part in attempted invasion by British and French Royalist forces at Quiberon in order to support the failed Revolt in the Vendée. Hornblower is ordered ashore with his seamen acting as gunners, and gains his first experience of land warfare and the horrors of the Revolution, including the guillotine. The expedition ends in failure and Hornblower escapes back to his ship, saddened, but philosophical. Hornblower's ship, the Indefatigable, is in Cádiz when Spain makes peace with France. Since Spain becomes officially neutral, the British ship of war is forced to leave. Spain has completed its turnaround and joined France in an alliance by the time the Indefatigable is escorting a convoy through the Straits of Gibraltar. When the ships are becalmed, two Spanish galleys attack. They are fought off by the British, and Hornblower leads the capture of one of them, which gains him promotion to Acting-Lieutenant. After the Indefatigable comes into port at Gibraltar, Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower reports to the Santa Barbara where he and others are to take their examination for lieutenant. When asked a question by one of the captains conducting the examination, Hornblower freezes up and is about to be failed when an alarm of cannon fire interrupts the examination; fire ships have been sent by the enemy in an attempt to destroy the British ships at Gibraltar. Hornblower and Captain Foster, one of the examining captains, take heroic action and prevent a disaster for the British, and jump in the water. They are rescued by the crew of one the fire ships, themselves escaping in a small boat, but then a British guard boat captures them in return. Since the Spanish crew saved his and Hornblower's life, Foster orders that they be released. The examining board does not reassemble since Foster has a falling out with another examining captain, who had been standing by with a boat but failed to reach them before the Spanish crew, and thus Hornblower will need to wait for a later examining board. The story ends with Foster, impressed by Hornblower's actions, telling Hornblower that since the attack prevented him from failing the examination that Hornblower should "Then be thankful for small mercies. And even more thankful for big ones." Acting-Lieutenant Hornblower accompanies the diplomat Mr. Tapling to buy cattle and grain from the Bey of Oran to resupply the fleet. However an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the city forces Hornblower, Tapling and his boat-crew to take refuge aboard the transport ship Caroline and remain in quarantine for three weeks until they are clear of infection. Hornblower struggles with a tiny crew aboard a worn-out ship, but still manages to take a prize in the shape of an unsuspecting privateer lugger. Hornblower is given command of the French prize Le Reve and ordered to return to England with despatches and, to his astonishment, a passenger – the Duchess of Wharfedale. Unfortunately, in thick fog Hornblower sails his ship directly into the middle of a Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. Anticipating capture Hornblower prepares to throw his despatches overboard, but is persuaded by the Duchess, who also reveals her true identity, to allow her to conceal them under her clothes, as she is sure to be repatriated immediately. This he does, and much later while in a Spanish prison at Ferrol receives a letter from her detailing her successful return to England, and another from the Admiralty confirming his promotion to Lieutenant. Later, while on parole Hornblower rescues some sailors from a Spanish ship wrecked on the cliffs below him. After the rescue he and his assistants, some Spanish fishermen, are forced out to sea by bad weather and found by another British frigate. Despite the temptations of staying on board, Hornblower reminds the Captain that he is released on parole and is returned to Spain under a flag of truce. Several months later, in recognition of his bravery, the Spanish authorities release him. |
Lieutenant Hornblower | C. S. Forester | 1,952 | William Bush, who becomes Hornblower's faithful companion and best friend, is introduced boarding HMS Renown as the Third Lieutenant. Hornblower is the Fifth and junior Lieutenant. It is quickly apparent that Captain James Sawyer suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, constantly suspecting plots to undermine his authority and inflicting irrational and arbitrary punishments upon Hornblower and other officers. A young volunteer named Wellard suffers particularly badly. Four of the Lieutenants meet in secret in the lower decks to discuss what can be done, but are interrupted when Wellard warns them that the Captain is on his way to arrest "mutineers". The officers scatter and attempt to appear as if nothing had happened, and in the confusion, they learn that the Captain has somehow fallen head-first into the hold. When the Captain regains consciousness, he has entirely lost his reason as a result of the fall, and is incapable of resuming command. The First Lieutenant, Buckland, takes charge; but having appeared to be steady enough at the start of the book, he is overwhelmed by the responsibility. Ordered to capture an anchorage from which Spanish privateers are operating, he makes a clumsy frontal attack which is repulsed. Hornblower brilliantly retrieves the situation, when he suggests a surprise attack at night. Bush leads the successful attack, but it is Hornblower who is instrumental in negotiating the unconditional surrender of the remaining Spanish forces. The Spanish base at Samaná is destroyed, a Spanish privateer and some small craft are captured and Buckland's promotion seems assured. Unfortunately for him, the Spanish prisoners take control of the Renown during the night, taking Buckland prisoner asleep in his cot. Hornblower alertly retakes the ship, but in the desperate fighting, Bush is severely wounded and the helpless Sawyer is killed. Upon their return to port, there is an awkward Court of Enquiry. Hornblower repeatedly denies any knowledge of how Captain Sawyer came to fall into the hold. After enquiries end indecisively, Buckland is passed over; instead, Hornblower is promoted to Commander. Unfortunately, the Peace of Amiens (1802) is signed before Hornblower's promotion can be confirmed, and he is demoted once again to a lieutenant. Moreover, the demotion is retroactive, and he is forced to repay the additional money he had received as commander. Reduced to poverty, he ekes out a living by playing whist for money. He resides in a lodging house, where he meets his future first wife Maria (née Mason), the daughter of the landlady. Bush meets him several times, and notes in a newspaper that Midshipman Wellard, who (apart from Hornblower) might be the only witness to Captain Sawyer's fall into the hold, has drowned in an accident. The Peace of Amiens comes to an end in 1803. War has not yet begun, but is imminent, as evinced by a press gang Hornblower and Bush encounter. Hornblower's promotion is confirmed (by a Lord of the Admiralty he impresses with his exceptional cardplaying skills) and he is appointed commander of a sloop of war. |
Hornblower and the Hotspur | C. S. Forester | 1,962 | With the Peace of Amiens under strain and war with France under Napoleon Bonaparte imminent in May 1803, Hornblower is promoted from Lieutenant to Commander and appointed to command the sloop HMS Hotspur. While readying for sea, he hastily marries Maria, the daughter of his landlady, at the Garrison Church, Portsmouth. However, Hornblower marries her not out of love but out of pity, and is forced to exercise his acting ability to make her believe that he genuinely loves her. Hotspur reconnoiters the approaches to the French naval base of Brest, and narrowly avoids capture when war is declared. Once the British fleet blockades Brest, Hornblower's restlessness and perfectionism prompts him to lead attacks and landing parties. In spite of gaining a good reputation, Hornblower makes no financial profit from his activities. When Admiral William Cornwallis tries to put him in a position where he can make easy prize money by capturing a large shipment of Spanish gold, he instead takes on a stronger enemy frigate sent to warn the convoy and keeps it from accomplishing its mission. Eventually, by superior seamanship and skill, he drives it away. Hornblower rationalises that this is poetic justice, after he had earlier connived to facilitate the escape of his steward, who was facing hanging for striking a superior officer (a punishment Hornblower could not abide). It later transpires that the prize ships were claimed by the Admiralty (Droits of Admiralty), as war had not been officially declared against Spain at the time of the capture, so Hornblower would not have profited in any case. Hornblower has a son, also named Horatio, and is recommended for promotion to Post Captain as one of the final acts of a retiring Admiral Cornwallis, a real figure outside of the Hornblower novels. |
Across the River and Into the Trees | Ernest Hemingway | 1,950 | Across the River and Into the Trees begins in the first chapter with the frame story of 50-year-old Colonel Cantwell's duckhunting trip to Trieste set in time-present. In the second chapter, Hemingway moves Cantwell back in time with a stream of consciousness interior monologue, presenting an extended flashback and continues for 38 chapters. In the final six chapters Cantwell is presented again in the frame-story set in the time-present. Cantwell, who is dying of heart disease, spends a Sunday afternoon in a duck blind in Trieste. In the flashback he thinks of his recent weekend in Venice with 18-year-old Renata, moving backward in time to ruminate about his experiences during the war. The novel ends with Cantwell suffering a series of fatal heart attacks as he leaves the duck blind. |
The Pigman | Paul Zindel | 1,968 | The novel begins with an "oath" signed by John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen, two high school sophomores, which pledge that they will report only the facts about their experiences with Mr. Pignati. When John, Lorraine, and two teen troublemakers, Norton Kelly and Dennis Kobin make prank phone calls, Lorraine picks out Mr. Pignati's phone number and pretends to be calling from a charity. Mr. Pignati offers to donate ten dollars, and John and Lorraine travel to his house to collect the funds. From the first meeting, the two teenagers and the old man become close friends. Mr. Pignati finds new vitality, and happily takes on the role of a father-figure for the two teenagers. John and Lorraine's visits become increasingly frequent, and during one such visit, they discover the documents that show that Mr. Pignati's wife, Conchetta, is dead, not just on vacation as he had previously told them. Soon, John and Lorraine visit him every day after school, and he showers them with gifts, food, and most importantly, the love and attention they do not receive in their own joyless homes. They reveal to him that they were never affiliated with any charity, and he reveals what they already know: his wife is dead. Mr. Pignati suffers a heart attack while he and the teens are playing tag with roller skates, and he's sent to the hospital; John and Lorraine agree to take care of his house while he recovers. The true betrayal comes when John invites friends over to Mr. Pignati's house. The situation quickly turns into a drunken, boisterous party. Lorraine's friend rips one of Conchetta Pignati's dresses. Norton ransacks Mr. Pignati's house and destroys Conchetta's collection of porcelain pigs, which Mr. Pignati holds very dear to him. John beats him up in retaliation. Mr. Pignati returns to find his house ransacked, and is incredibly hurt when he finds out John and Lorraine were responsible for the incident. Feeling terrible, the two offer to take him to the zoo to help make up for it. At the zoo, they discover that Bobo the baboon, Mr. Pignati's favorite animal and buddy, has died. Overcome with grief and the heaviness of the recent events, Mr. Pignati suffers a cardiac arrest and dies, leaving John and Lorraine grieving and reflecting on the fragility of life. |
Consider Her Ways | null | null | The story is mostly a first-person narrative. It begins with a woman who has no memory of her past waking up and discovering that she is a mother of some description, in a bloated body that is not her own. After some confusing experiences her memory gradually returns and she recalls that she was part of an experiment using a drug to see if it enabled people to have out-of-body experiences. It seems that the drug has worked far better than anyone could have anticipated: she has been cast into the future. She also realizes that she is in a society consisting entirely of women, organized into a strict system of castes. Her initial contacts have never even heard of men. When it becomes clear to doctors who attend her that something strange has happened, they arrange for her to be taken to meet a historian. It seems that the narrator is in a society somewhat more than a century after her own time. The historian relates that not long after the narrator's own time a Dr Perrigan carried out scientific experiments that unintentionally created a virus that killed all the men in the world, leaving only women. After a very difficult period of famine and breakdown the small number of educated women, found mainly in the medical profession, took control and embarked on an urgent programme of research to enable women to reproduce without males. The women also decided to follow the advice of the Bible: "Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways", and created a caste-based society, in which the narrator has become a member of the Mother caste. Distressed at the prospect of spending her life as a bloated producer of babies, expected to be unable to read, write or reason, the narrator requests that she be administered an identical dose of the same drug in the hope that she might return to her own time. It works, and she then decides to stop Dr Perrigan at all costs. The story has an ambiguous ending, which may suggest that it is the narrator's own actions that will lead to the catastrophe she hopes to prevent. |
Ages in Chaos | Immanuel Velikovsky | null | Velikovsky had put forward his ideas briefly in Theses for the Reconstruction of Ancient History in 1945, where he claimed that the history of the ancient Near East down to the time of Alexander the Great is garbled, but Ages in Chaos was his first full-length work on the subject. His starting point for the first volume of the series was that the Exodus took place not, as orthodoxy has it, at some point during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but at the fall of the Middle Kingdom. In this and later volumes, he made heavy use of the concept of "ghost doubles" or alter-egos: historical figures who were known by different names in two different sources (e.g. Egyptian and Greek) and were considered to be entirely different people living in different centuries, but who he proposed to be actually erroneously dated accounts of the same individuals and events. First he claimed that the Ipuwer Papyrus came from the beginning of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, and that this was an Egyptian account of the Plagues of Egypt. He then identified Tutimaios as the Pharaoh of the Exodus (much earlier than any of the mainstream candidates), the Hyksos with the biblical Amalekites, the Egyptian Pharaoh Hatshepsut with the Biblical Queen of Sheba, the land of Punt with Solomon's kingdom, and Pharaoh Thutmose III with the Biblical King Shishak. He claimed that the Egyptian Amarna letters from the late 18th Dynasty describe events from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, from roughly the time of King Ahab. |
Inkheart | Cornelia Funke | 2,003 | Inkheart follows the adventures of a 12-year-old girl named Meggie Folchart. Her life changes dramatically when she discovers that her father, a bookbinder named Mortimer, or Mo as Meggie always calls him, has an unusual ability which is that when he reads aloud, he can bring characters and items from books into the real world. When Meggie was three years old, Mo read a book called Inkheart aloud to her mother. In an instant, Meggie's mother, Resa, and the family's two pet cats vanished into the Inkworld and three men from the novel (two of whom are murderous villains) entered into the real world. Nine years later, these men have come back into their lives and Mo, Meggie, and Resa's aunt Elinor need to return the villains back to the book's pages. |
Death Is a Lonely Business | Ray Bradbury | 1,985 | According to the biography in the book, this was Ray Bradbury's first novel since the publication of Something Wicked This Way Comes (not counting the young adult novel The Halloween Tree). It evokes both the milieu and style of other mystery writers Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Ross Macdonald, all of whom Bradbury names in the book's dedication, and James Crumley, after whom Bradbury named his detective. Yet the main character is undoubtedly Bradbury himself, portrayed in a period of his life just before his marriage and his success with The Martian Chronicles. Two sequels followed: A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990), and Let's All Kill Constance (2003), advancing the writer's career to 1954 and 1960, respectively. |
Piece by Piece | Ann Powers | 2,005 | The book is told in a conversational style with questions posed by Ann and responded to by Tori. They compiled the material for the book through phone calls, e-mail conversations and in-person interviews. Along with details about Amos' career, music and personal life it also delves into mythology and religion in a fashion often associated with Amos. The lyrics "piece by piece" feature in the song "Datura" on the 1999 album To Venus and Back. |
Birthright: The Book of Man | Mike Resnick | null | Birthright spans a timeline of nearly 17 millennia, beginning at a very early stage of expansion from Earth and ending with the death of the last humans. In between, it chronicles a slow but (despite some set-backs) steady conquest of the entire galaxy - inhabited by thousands of sentient alien races, which are overpowered and oppressed using whatever tool it takes: economic pressure, diplomatic finesse, or simple military power. Not all chapters deal with mankind's treatment of aliens; some also cover the "internal" politics that result in a development of the growing human empire from a democracy to a monarchy. But the biggest theme is undeniably the search for the elusive quality that allows mankind to overcome all opposition and manage the unique feat of conquering the entire galaxy. It is never clearly defined but manifests perhaps most succinctly when it also results in the failure of an attempt to cross the void between galaxies. Then, after there is no more room for conquest, the only way left is down: internal struggles as well as deep-seated resentment of aliens result in a decline of human power that takes nearly as long as the rise, but is described far less extensively. Somehow, despite whatever enabled humans to achieve total power, they were unable to keep it. Displaying a particular brand of irony, one of the chapters reveals the "literary genre of fiction" as another of mankind's peculiarities, not shared by any alien race. |
Westward Ho! | null | null | Set initially in Bideford in North Devon during the reign of Elizabeth I, Westward Ho! follows the adventures of Amyas Leigh, an unruly child who as a young man follows Francis Drake to sea. Amyas loves local beauty Rose Salterne, as does nearly everyone else. Much of the novel involves the kidnap of Rose by a Spaniard. Amyas spends time in the Caribbean seeking gold, and eventually returns to England at the time of the Spanish Armada, finding his true love, the beautiful Indian maiden Ayacanora, in the process; yet fate had blundered and brought misfortune into Amyas's life, for not only had he been blinded by a freak bolt of lightning at sea, but he also loses his brother Frank Leigh and Rose Salterne, who were caught by the Spaniards and burnt at the stake by the Inquisition. |
Because of Winn-Dixie | Kate DiCamillo | null | India Opal Buloni is a 10-year-old girl who has just moved to a trailer park in the small town of Naomi, Florida, with her itinerant preacher father. While in the Winn-Dixie supermarket, she encounters a scruffy dog wreaking havoc. She claims the dog is hers to save it from go ing to the pound and names it Winn-Dixie. Winn-Dixie's first act of inspiration on Opal is for her to challenge her father to name ten things about her mother, who abandoned them years before when she became an alcoholic. Opal also befriends the very wealthy librarian Miss Franny Block, who shares great stories about her past, including a tale about her great-grandfather, whose family members died while he fought for the South in the Civil War. Grief-stricken after his return from battle, he decided he wanted to live the remainder of his life filled with sweetness. Thus, he invented Littmus Lozenge candies that tasted like a combination of rootbeer and strawberry with a secret ingredient mixed in—sorrow. In Because of Winn-Dixie, these candies symbolize that even though life sometimes deals people a bit of sadness, there is always so much to appreciate. She also encounters Gloria Dump, a woman whom children think is a witch. She also meets a man named Otis. Otis is the pet shop manager in the town of Naomi. He is shy and upset because he was in jail for playing his guitar on the street, so now he plays for the pet shop animals and a parrot named Gertrude who is Otis' favorite. |
The Princess and the Goblin | George MacDonald | 1,872 | Eight year old Princess Irene lives a lonely life in a wild, desolate, mountainous kingdom, with only her nursemaid, "Lootie" for company. Due to her sheltered upbringing, her father being absent attending to affairs of state and her mother being dead, Irene has never known about the existence of the goblins, which lurk in the underground mines. These goblins (also known as "gnomes" or "kobolds") are grotesque and hideous beings, who centuries ago were once human, but due to varying reasons, were driven underground and were malformed and distorted by their new lifestyle. This caused them to despise the humans above the ground and vow revenge against them. Irene and Lootie – who knows of the goblins – stay out late one night and are chased by the goblins, who only appear on the surface at night as sunshine repulses them. Lootie and Irene barely escape the goblins after a miner's child, a boy named Curdie Peterson, appears and sings loudly to the goblins, which drives them away. Curdie states that goblins are repelled by singing, and he and Irene begin to become friends. However, Curdie soon discovers, after he ventures into the mines and accidentally enters the realm of the goblins, that the goblins are planning a war against the humans on the surface, where they plot to abduct the Princess and marry her to Prince Harelip, the heir to the throne of the goblin kingdom, therefore forcing the humans to accept the goblins as their rulers. The driving force behind this scheme is the vile Goblin Queen, the stepmother of Harelip, who hides a secret – she has toes, a physical trait that goblins do not have and therefore regard with disgust. WIth the help of Irene's ethereal great-great grandmother, the Princess and Curdie must hatch a plan to defeat the goblins and save the kingdom. |
Queen Zixi of Ix | L. Frank Baum | null | On the night of a full moon, the fairies ruled by Queen Lulea are dancing in the Forest of Burzee. Lurlene calls a halt to it, for "one may grow weary even of merrymaking." To divert themselves, another fairy recommends that they make something they can imbue with fairy magic. After several ideas are considered and rejected, the fairies decide to make a magic cloak that can grant its wearer one wish. The fairy who proposed it, Espa, and Queen Lulea agree that such a cloak will benefit mortals greatly. However, its wish-granting power cannot be used if the cloak is stolen from its previous wearer. After the fairies finish the golden cloak, Ereol arrives from the kingdom of Noland whose king has just died. On the advice of the Man in the Moon, Ereol is dispatched to Noland to give the magic cloak to the first unhappy person she meets. Meanwhile, Noland's five high counselors assemble in the capital city of Nole and refuse to allow the valet Jikki to ring the bell that indicates the king has died until they decide how to choose his successor. Retrieving the book of the law of Noland (to be used only when the king is unavailable, for the king's will is law in Noland), the counselors learn that the forty-seventh person to pass through Nole's eastern gate at sunrise is to be declared king or queen. The next day, the five counselors assemble at the eastern gate and count off the procession entering Nole. Number forty-seven turns out to be Timothy (who everyone calls "Bud"), the orphaned son of a ferryman who, with his sister Meg (nicknamed "Fluff"), is entering town with their stern Aunt Rivette, a laundress for the city of Nole. Along the way from their house to Nole, Ereol meets Fluff and gives her the magic cloak due to her unhappiness at Bud's ill treatment by Rivette. The power of the cloak is first seen when Fluff wishes she could be happy again, and she becomes so. Bud—now King Bud—is welcomed by the high counselors and the people of Nole as their new king. His sister Fluff becomes Princess Fluff, and they take residence in the royal palace. Aunt Rivette is relegated to an upper room of the palace. While Bud and Fluff glory in their new positions of authority and their possessions, Aunt Rivette wants to spread the news of her good fortune to her friends. She asks Fluff if she can wear her cloak, and she becomes so tired walking that she wishes she could fly. Two wings sprout from Aunt Rivette's back, causing her to panic at first, but she soon becomes very adept at using them. On its way back to the Princess, the cloak passes through the hands of the king's counselors and the king's valet, each of whom have their wishes immediately granted. The minstrel Quavo crosses from Noland over a steep mountain range into the land of Ix, whose witch-queen ruler Zixi learns of the magic cloak and seeks to use it to make her reflection in a mirror as beautiful as she has made herself. Zixi is 683 years old, but her magic has allowed her to appear sixteen for a long time; however, the queen's reflection appears as old as she truly is. (This contradicts The Road to Oz in which the Wizard of Oz refers to Queen Zixi as having lived thousands of years—of course, he may simply have been mistaken; or, the Magic Cloak story may simply have taken place many years prior.) Believing that Princess Fluff would not simply give her the cloak to use since Ix and Noland aren't on speaking terms, Queen Zixi disguises herself and opens a school for witchery in Noland. Princess Fluff arrives as one of the pupils in her second-best cloak, but Zixi is discovered to be a would-be thief when she demands the Princess wear the other, magic cloak. Next Zixi leads the royal army of Ix to conquer Noland, but the counselors use their wish-granted abilities to repel the invaders back across the mountains. Zixi disguises herself again and arrives at the royal palace of Noland to be hired as a serving maid to Princess Fluff. When she is alone in the Princess' chamber, Zixi summons imps to make a replica of the magic cloak and replace the Princess' magic cloak with that one. She is not caught in the theft, but when Zixi tries to use the cloak herself, its power fails because she stole it. Believing that its power is gone, Zixi leaves the cloak in the forest. The queen of Ix is sorrowful until she realizes through encounters with an alligator that wants to climb a tree, an owl that wants to swim like a fish, and a girl who wants to be a man, that she has been foolish to be unhappy with her lot. The Roly-Rogues live on a high plateau above Noland and Ix. When one of the ball-shaped people accidentally bounces into Noland and views the city of Nole, they decide to conquer Noland in preference to constantly fighting among themselves. Even with their wish-granted abilities (the general wished himself ten feet tall, the lord high executioner wished for stretching arms, etc.), King Bud's counselors and Nole are soon overwhelmed by the invaders. King Bud, Princess Fluff, Aunt Rivette, and lord high steward Tallydab (who wished for his dog Ruffles to talk) escape and plan to retrieve the magic cloak which they believe is in the palace. Aunt Rivette carries Bud and Fluff to the palace and they battle past the Roly-Rogues, but when Bud puts on the cloak (since he hadn't made his wish yet; he was saving it) and wishes the Roly-Rogues away, nothing happens. Caught aback, Aunt Rivette takes her niece and nephew in flight with her to Ix on the opposite side of the mountain range that the Roly-Rogues came from. Welcomed by Queen Zixi, who confesses that she stole the real magic cloak, Princess Fluff promises that she will let her use it after the Roly-Rogues are defeated. When they arrive where Zixi had left the cloak in the forest, it's gone and the party mounts a search to find it. Along the way, Zixi notes that the alligator, owl, and girl have become satisfied with who each of them are. The cloak was found by Edi, a shepherd who took it to Dame Dingle, a local seamstress. The seamstress reveals that she cut the cloak in half, used one half, and gave the other away. Zixi, Bud, Fluff, Rivette, Tallydab, and Ruffles track down the remaining pieces of the cloak, but one of them cannot be retrieved because the woman who had it sewed it into a necktie for her seaman son, and he won't be back home for a year. Without the complete cloak, Bud can't wish the Roly-Rogues away. Queen Zixi uses the contents of a Silver Vial mixed in with their soup to defeat the Roly-Rogues. They're put to sleep for ten hours in which time Zixi and her army tie the tucked-in creatures up (when they sleep or roll, the Roly-Rogues retract their heads, arms, and feet) and send them all bobbing in the river on the Ix side of the mountain range. King Bud and his allies retake Nole, and the lands of Noland and Ix declare lasting friendship between them. Later that year, the sailor whose necktie had the last piece of the magic cloak returns home and presents a necktie similar in appearance to King Bud, for he'd lost the other one at sea. Enraged, King Bud is about to have the sailor and his mother put in prison when Queen Lulea of the fairies appears to take the cloak away because it has caused so much trouble. She undoes the foolish wishes that the cloak granted, allowing the wiser ones to remain, and graciously allows Bud to use the cloak for one last wish: "that I may become the best king that Noland has ever had!" Lulea will not grant Zixi's wish to see her own beauty, because the fairies do not approve of those who practice witchcraft. Queen Zixi returns to her kingdom, to rule it with kindness and justice—but, with her wish unfilfilled, must always beware of a mirror. |
The Sand Child | Tahar Ben Jelloun | 1,985 | The book is a lyrical account of the life of Mohammed Ahmed, the eighth daughter of Hajji Ahmed Suleyman. Frustrated by his failure to bring a son into the world, Ahmed is determined that his youngest daughter will be raised as a boy, with all the rights and privileges that go along with it. The first part of the book describes the father's efforts to thwart suspicion that this is a boy, especially from his jealous brothers, who look to inherit Ahmed's fortune. Using bribery and deceit, the masquerade succeeds. Mohammed Ahmed is circumcised (blood is drawn from his imaginary penis when Ahmed intentionally cuts his finger over the child during the ceremony), his breasts are bound, and he even marries his cousin Fatima, a sickly epileptic girl, who dies young. Only the father, the mother, and the midwife are ever aware of the hoax that is being perpetrated. The story is told by a wandering storyteller, who reveals his tale, bit by bit, to an enthusiastic, though sometimes skeptical audience. To verify his story, he claims to quote from a journal that Mohammed Ahmed kept, revealing his innermost thoughts about his confused gender identity. Mohammed Ahmed also reveals himself through correspondence with a mysterious friend, who writes him letters challenging his identity. The book changes direction after Fatima's death and the disappearance of the storyteller, forced away by the modernization of the country. The remainder of the journal has been lost, but some of the crowd that once listened to the storyteller continues to meet and share how they see the story ending. Each of them describes Mohammed Ahmed's transition back to womanhood, where she assumes the identity of Zahra. Their stories have different endings, some happy, others tragic, until a blind troubador, a fictionalised version of Jorge Luis Borges, continues the tale leading up to Mohammed Ahmed/Zahra's death. ca:L'infant de sorra |
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West | Cormac McCarthy | 1,985 | Three epigraphs open the book: quotations from French writer Paul Valéry, from German Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, and a 1982 news clipping from the Yuma Sun reporting the claim of members of an Ethiopian archeological excavation that a fossilized skull three hundred millennia old seemed to have been scalped. The novel tells the story of an adolescent runaway from home with a proclivity for violence, known only as "the kid," who was born in Tennessee during the famous Leonids meteor shower of 1833. He first meets an enormous and completely hairless character, Judge Holden, at a religious revival in Nacogdoches, Texas. There, Holden accuses a preacher of raping both an eleven-year-old girl and a goat, inciting those attending the revival to attack and kill the preacher. (The Judge later indicates that he fabricated this story merely for sadistic personal pleasure.) Carrying on his journey alone on his mule through the plains of eastern Texas, the kid spends a night in the shelter of a recluse before arriving in "Bexar" (modern-day San Antonio). After a violent encounter with a bartender which establishes the kid as a formidable fighter, he joins a party of ill-armed U.S. Army irregulars on a filibustering mission led by a Captain White. Shortly after entering Mexico, they are attacked, and many killed, by a band of Comanche warriors. Arrested as a filibuster in Chihuahua, the kid is set free when his cell neighbor, the earless Toadvine, tells the authorities that the two of them would make useful recruits for the state's newly hired scalphunting operation, led by the strategic Glanton. Toadvine and the kid consequently join Glanton's gang. The bulk of the novel is devoted to the detailing of their depraved activities and conversations. The gang encounters a travelling carnival, and, in untranslated Spanish, each of their fortunes is told with Tarot cards. The gang originally contracts with various regional leaders to exterminate Apaches and are given a bounty for each scalp they recover. Before long, however, they murder any in their path, including peaceful agrarian Indians, unprotected Mexican villagers, and even Mexican national guardsmen. Judge Holden, who re-enters the story as a fellow scalphunter, is presented as a profoundly mysterious and awe-inspiring figure; the others seem to regard him as not quite human. He (like the historical Holden of Chamberlain's autobiography) is a child-killer, though almost no one in the gang expresses much distress about this. According to the kid's new companion, an ex-priest named Ben Tobin, the Glanton gang first met the judge while fleeing from the onslaught of a much larger group of Apaches. In the middle of the desert, the gang found Holden sitting on an enormous boulder, where he seemed to be waiting for them all. He took them to an extinct volcano and improvised gunpowder from natural materials, enough to give them the advantage against their Apache pursuers. When the kid remembers seeing Holden in Nacogdoches, Tobin explains that each man in the gang claims to have met the judge at some point before joining Glanton's gang—though he ends his tale by stating that he first met with the judge in the desert with the others. This suggests a potentially disingenuous quality to the refrain "the priest doesn't lie" uttered by several characters throughout the course of the novel, particularly when spoken by the judge. After months of marauding, the gang crosses into U.S. territory, where they set up a systematic and brutal robbery operation at a ferry on the Colorado River near Yuma, Arizona. Local Yuma (Quechan) Indians are approached to help the gang wrest control of the ferry from its original owner, but Glanton's gang betrays the natives, using their presence and previously coordinated attack on the ferry as an excuse to seize the ferry's munitions and slaughter the Yuma. Because of the new operators' brutal ways, a group of U.S. Army soldiers sets up a second ferry at a ford upriver to cross—which the Yuma briefly appropriate until their ferryman Callahan is decapitated and thrown in the river. Eventually, after the gang had amassed a fortune by robbing the settlers using the ferry, the Yumas suddenly attack and kill most of them, including Glanton. The kid, Toadvine, and Tobin are among the survivors who flee into the desert, though the kid takes an arrow in the leg. Heading west together, the kid and Tobin again encounter Judge Holden, who first negotiates, then threatens them for their weaponry and possessions. Holden fires a non-lethal shot to Tobin's neck and Tobin and the kid hide among bones near a desert creek. The judge delivers a speech advising the kid to reveal himself. Tobin and the kid continue their travels independently, passing each other along the way. Although the kid has several opportunities to shoot the judge, as advised by Tobin, he only attempts so once and fails. Both parties end up in San Diego, but the kid gets separated from Tobin when he is caught by local authorities and imprisoned. Holden visits him in jail, stating that he told the jailers "the truth": that the kid alone was responsible for the end of the Glanton gang. The kid declares that the judge was responsible for the gang's evils, but the judge denies it. After reaching through the cell bars to try to grab the kid, Holden leaves the kid alone, stating that he "has errands." After the kid tells the authorities where the Glanton gang's fortune can be found, he is released and seeks a doctor to treat his wound. Under the influence of medicinal ether, he hallucinates that the judge is visiting him, along with a curious man who forges coins. The kid recovers and seeks out Tobin, with no luck. He makes his way to Los Angeles, where he witnesses Toadvine and another surviving member of the Glanton gang, David Brown, being hanged for unspecified crimes. The kid again wanders across the American West, and decades are compressed into a few pages. In 1878 he makes his way to Fort Griffin, Texas, and is now referred to by the author as "the man." The lawless city is a center for processing the remains of the American bison, which have been hunted nearly to extinction. At a saloon the man yet again meets the judge. Holden calls the man "the last of the true," and the pair talk on equal terms. Holden describes the man as a disappointment, stating that he held in his heart "clemency for the heathen." Holden declares prophetically that the man has arrived at the saloon for "the dance"—in other words, the dance of violence, war, and bloodshed that the judge so often praised. The man seems to deny all of these ideas, telling the judge, "You aint nothin" and, noting a trained bear at the saloon that is performing a dance, states, "even a dumb animal can dance." The man hires a prostitute, then afterwards goes to an outhouse under another meteor shower. In the outhouse, he is surprised by the judge, naked, who "gathered him in his arms against his immense and terrible flesh." This is the last mention of the man, though in the next scene, two men come from the saloon and encounter a third man urinating near the outhouse. The third man advises the pair not to go into the outhouse. They ignore his suggestion, open the door, and can only gaze in awed horror at what they see, stating only, "Good God almighty." The last paragraph finds the judge back in the saloon, dancing in the nude and playing fiddle wildly among the drunkards and whores, claiming that he will never die. The end of the narrative is followed by a brief epilogue, featuring an unspecified person auguring a line of holes across the prairie, apparently in the construction of an extended fence. This cordoning off of territories into plots of land suggests the domestication of the "Old West" and the end of the frontier that came shortly after the events of the novel. The worker sparks a fire in each of the holes while an assortment of wanderers lingers in the distance. These travelers are bizarrely described as moving with passionless, clockwork-like motions and "cross[ing] in their progress one by one that track of holes" which seems representative of "a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie." The images of the epilogue seem to serve as a harbinger of the more ordered and settled civilization which will soon replace the war-torn chaos of the West, with its own rituals and codes very unlike those portrayed in the novel's setting. |
All the Pretty Horses | Cormac McCarthy | 1,992 | The novel tells of John Grady Cole, a sixteen year old cowboy who grew up on his grandfather's ranch in San Angelo, Texas. The story begins in 1949, soon after the death of John Grady's grandfather, when Grady learns that the ranch is to be sold. Faced with the prospect of moving into town, Grady instead chooses to leave, persuading his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, to accompany him. Traveling by horseback, the pair travel Southward into Mexico, where they hope to find work as cowboys. Shortly before they cross the Mexican border, they encounter a young man, who says he is named Jimmy Blevins and seems to be aged about thirteen, but claims to be older. Blevins' origins and the authenticity of his name are never quite clarified. Blevins rides a huge bay horse that is far too fine a specimen to be the property of a runaway boy, but Blevins insists it is his. As they travel south, Blevins' horse and pistol are found and taken by a Mexican after his horse runs off while Blevins had been hiding during a thunderstorm. Blevins persuades John Grady and Rawlins to go to the nearest town to find the horse and pistol. They find the horse, and Blevins takes it back. As the three are riding away from the town, they are pursued, and Blevins separates from Rawlins and John Grady. The pursuers follow Blevins, and Rawlins and Grady escape. Rawlins and John Grady travel farther south. In the fertile oasis region of Coahuila state known as the Bolsón de Cuatro Ciénegas, they find employment at a large ranch. There John Grady first encounters the ranch owner's beautiful daughter, Alejandra. As Rawlins pursues work with the ranch hands, John Grady catches the eye of the owner, who brings him into the ranch house and promotes him to a more responsible position. At this time John Grady begins an affair with Alejandra. In the meantime, Blevins works for a short time and then returns to the village where he retrieved his horse, this time to also retrieve the Colt pistol. In the process of getting the pistol, he shoots and kills a man. The Mexican authorities catch Blevins and then find Rawlins and John Grady at the other ranch. At first, the ranch owner protects Rawlins and John Grady; but when he finds out about the affair with his daughter, he turns them over to the authorities. Blevins is executed by a group of rogue police led by a captain and then Rawlins and John Grady are placed in a Mexican prison. The prison mafia first test the two boys: Grady is wounded while defending himself from a cuchillero, whom he manages to kill. Alejandra's aunt is contacted by the prison thugs who manage to negotiate with her his ransom. The condition set by the aunt is that her niece Alejandra undertake never to see John Grady again. The boys are released. Rawlins goes back to the United States and John Grady tries to see Alejandra again. In the end, after a brief encounter, Alejandra decides that she must keep her promise to her family and refuses John Grady's marriage proposal. John Grady, on his way back to the Texas, kidnaps the captain at gunpoint, forces him to recover the stolen horses and guns, and flees across country. He considers killing the captain, but a group of Mexicans find John Grady and the captain and take the captain as a prisoner. John Grady eventually returns to Texas and attempts to find the owner of Blevins' horse. John Grady briefly reunites with Rawlins to return his horse and learns that his own father has died (something he has already intuited). After watching the burial procession of one of his family's lifelong employees (a Mexican woman), John Grady rides through western Texas on his horse with Blevins's horse in tow. |
The Titan | P. Schuyler Miller | 1,914 | Cowperwood moves to Chicago with his new wife Aileen. He decides to take over the street-railway system. He bankrupts several opponents with the help of John J. McKenty and other political allies. Meanwhile, Chicago society finds out about his past in Philadelphia and the couple are no longer invited to dinner parties; after a while, the press turns on him too. Cowperwood is unfaithful many times. Aileen finds out about a certain Rita and beats her up. She gives up on him and has an affair with Polk Lynde, a man of privilege; she eventually loses faith in him. Meanwhile, Cowperwood meets young Berenice Fleming; by the end of the novel, he tells her he loves her and she consents to live with him. However, the ending is bittersweet as Cowperwood has not managed to obtain the fifty-year franchise for his railway schemes that he wanted. |
In Desert and Wilderness | Henryk Sienkiewicz | 1,912 | The story takes place in the 19th century Egypt. A 14-year-old Polish boy Stanisław (Staś) Tarkowski and 8-year-old English girl Nel Rawlison live with their families and grow up in the city of Port Said. Their fathers are engineers who supervise the maintenance of the Suez Canal. One day an anti-British rebellion begins in Sudan, led by a Muslim preacher Mahdi. Staś and Nel are captured as hostages by a group of Arabs who hope that they can exchange the children for Fatima, Mahdi's relative that had been arrested by the British at the beginning of the novel. The children are forced to travel through the Sahara Desert to Khartoum, where they are to be presented to Mahdi. The journey is difficult and exhausting, especially for delicate and vulnerable Nel. Staś, who is a brave and responsible boy, protects his friend from the abductors' cruelty, even though that means that he is beaten and punished. His plans to escape fail and the children gradually lose their hope. When the group arrive to Khartoum, the Arabs are disappointed by the fact that Mahdi - busy with leading the revolt - ingored their "mission" and turned down their offers. They take their anger and frustration on the children. Staś and Nel, exhausted by heat, thirst, hunger and poor treatment, live for some time in the city ruined by war, poverty and diseases. After a while the children and Arabs in another journey further south, to Fashoda. One day the group encounters a lion who attacks them. The Arabs (who don't know how to fire a shotgun) hand in the weapon to Staś and beg him to shoot the beast. Staś kills the lion, and then shots down the Arabs as well. This is dictated by the despair and fury: the boy knows that the men were not going to set the children free. He also hated the Arabs for abusing them - especially Nel. Once free, the children set out in an arduous journey through the African desert and jungle in hope that sooner or later they encounter British explorers or British army. The journey is full of dangers and adventures. The children, accompanied by two black slaves (a boy named Kali and a girl named Mea) whom Staś had freed from the Arabs, encounter a number of wonders and perils. The children stay for a rest on a beautiful hill near a waterfall. They soon find out that a gigantic elephant has been trapped in a gully near the waterfall. Nel, who loves animals, takes pity on the beast and saves it from starvation by throwing fruits and leaves into the gorge. The girl and the elephant (which is extremely intelligent and benign and whom Nel calls "King" because of its size) quickly become friends. Soon Nel is stricken with malaria and is about to die; Staś, mad with grief, decides to go to what he thinks is a Bedouine camp and beg for quinine. When he gets to the camp he find out that it belongs to an old Swiss explorer named Linde. The man had been severely injured by a wild boar and is waiting for death. All his Negro servants had fallen ill to sleeping sickness and die one after another. Although horrified by this gruesome death camp, Staś becomes friend with Linde who generously supplies him with food, weapon, gunpowder and quinine. Thanks to the medicine Nel recovers. Staś, grateful for Linde's help, accompanies the Swiss until the man's death. Then, using Linde's gunpowder, he frees King from the trap and they set out in further journey. Accompanying the children further on their journey is the 12-year-old slave boy of Linde, Nasibu. The group sojourns on top of a small mountain mentioned by Linde before his death where Staś teaches Kali how to shoot. On a certain day, a furious gorilla on the mountain attacks Nasibu but Nasibu is rescued by their now-tamed elephant which attacks and kills the gorilla. Deciding that the mountaintop is no longer safe, the protagonists move onto the village of Wa-Hima. The tribes-people, seeing Staś riding upon an elephant, honor him and Nel as a Good Mzibu (a good spirit/goddess). The group stays in the villages a short time, for Kali is by birth-right the prince of the Wa-Hima tribe and therefore well-known. Staś is further venerated by the villagers when he kills the wobo (a black leopard) that was plaguing the villages. Upon reaching Kali's home village the group learns that his tribe has been invaded by and attacked by their enemies since time immemorial - the Sambur tribe. Due to assistance from Kali's tribe and the guns carried by Staś and Nel, the war is won in the protagonist's favour. Though because of his good nature, Staś and Nel command that the tribes-people of the Sambur tribe not be killed but rather united with the Wa-Hima, and Staś urges the tribes to accept Christianity and live peacefully together. Staś, Nel, Saba, King, Kali, and 100 Sambur and Wa-Hima tribes-people move on to the East, which has not been mapped, in hopes of reaching the Indian Ocean and being found by English explorers who might be searching for them. Kali has accompanied with him also two witch-doctors: M'Kunje and M'Rua, in fear that they not plot against him while he is gone from his home. However, it finishes tragically for the group: both of the witch-doctors steal food and the last of the water but are soon found killed by either a lion or leopard. Many of the tribes-people accompanying Nel and Staś die for lack of water. After the group has gone for at least 3 days without any water in the scorching dry desert, the children are at last saved at the last moment by two familiar officers which had recovered kites inscribed by Staś and Nel earlier in their plight describing their whereabouts and destination. The group are saved and are informed that Mahdi has died of a heart attack. Staś, Nel and Saba are re-united with their fathers and they return to Europe, and Kali and his tribe members return to their settlement on Lake Rudolf. Staś and Nel get married when they grow up and visit their friends in Africa after 10 years. |
My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla | Ben Johnston | 1,919 | Tesla's personal account is divided into six chapters covering different periods of his life. "The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. . . ." From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering but, to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement. The pressure of occupation and the incessant stream of impressions pouring into our consciousness thru all the gateways of knowledge make modern existence hazardous in many ways. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves. In attacking the problem again I almost regretted that the struggle was soon to end. I had so much energy to spare. When I undertook the task it was not with a resolve such as men often make. With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life and death. I knew that I would perish if I failed. Now I felt that the battle was won. Back in the deep recesses of the brain was the solution, but I could not yet give it outward expression. One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the City Park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's "Faust." The sun was just setting and reminded me of the glorious passage: "Sie rückt und weicht, der Tag ist überlebt, Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben. Oh, dass kein Flügel mich vom Boden hebt Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben! Ein schöner Traum indessen sie entweicht, Ach, zu des Geistes Flügeln wird so leicht Kein körperlicher Flügel sich gesellen!" "She moves and yields, the day of toil now done, there she hurries and explores new fields of life. Ah, that no wing can lift me from the ground to closely follow her and soar! A beautiful dream! Though now the glories fade. Alas, the wings which lift the mind so lightly can find no bodily counterpart!" As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him: "See my motor here; watch me reverse it." I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence. At the close of 1889, however, my services in Pittsburg being no longer essential, I returned to New York and resumed experimental work in a laboratory on Grand Street, where I began immediately the design of high frequency machines. The problems of construction in this unexplored field were novel and quite peculiar and I encountered many difficulties. I rejected the inductor type, fearing that it might not yield perfect sine waves which were so important to resonant action. Had it not been for this I could have saved myself a great deal of labor. Another discouraging feature of the high frequency alternator seemed to be the inconstancy of speed which threatened to impose serious limitations to its use. I had already noted in my demonstrations before the American Institution of Electrical Engineers that several times the tune was lost, necessitating readjustment, and did not yet foresee, what I discovered long afterwards, a means of operating a machine of this kind at a speed constant to such a degree as not to vary more than a small fraction of one revolution between the extremes of load. From many other considerations it appeared desirable to invent a simpler device for the production of electric oscillations. In 1856 Lord Kelvin had exposed the theory of the condenser discharge, but no practical application of that important knowledge was made. I saw the possibilities and undertook the development of induction apparatus on this principle. My progress was so rapid as to enable me to exhibit at my lecture in 1891 a coil giving sparks of five inches. On that occasion I frankly told the engineers of a defect involved in the transformation by the new method, namely, the loss in the spark gap. Subsequent investigation showed that no matter what medium is employed, be it air, hydrogen, mercury vapor, oil or a stream of electrons, the efficiency is the same. It is a law very much like that governing the conversion of mechanical energy. We may drop a weight from a certain height vertically down or carry it to the lower level along any devious path, it is immaterial insofar as the amount of work is concerned. Fortunately however, this drawback is not fatal as by proper proportioning of the resonant circuits an efficiency of 85 per cent is attainable. Since my early announcement of the invention it has come into universal use and wrought a revolution in many departments. But a still greater future awaits it. When in 1900 I obtained powerful discharges of 100 feet and flashed a current around the globe, I was reminded of the first tiny spark I observed in my Grand Street laboratory and was thrilled by sensations akin to those I felt when I discovered the rotating magnetic field. "I have been asked by the ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER to be quite explicit on this subject so that my young friends among the readers of the magazine will clearly understand the construction and operation of my "Magnifying Transmitter" and the purposes for which it is intended. Well, then, in the first place, it is a resonant transformer with a secondary in which the parts, charged to a high potential, are of considerable area and arranged in space along ideal enveloping surfaces of very large radii of curvature, and at proper distances from one another thereby insuring a small electric surface density everywhere so that no leak can occur even if the conductor is bare. It is suitable for any frequency, from a few to many thousands of cycles per second, and can be used in the production of currents of tremendous volume and moderate pressure, or of smaller amperage and immense electromotive force. The maximum electric tension is merely dependent on the curvature of the surfaces on which the charged elements are situated and the area of the latter. "Judging from my past experience, as much as 100,000,000 volts are perfectly practicable. On the other hand currents of many thousands of amperes may be obtained in the antenna. A plant of but very moderate dimensions is required for such performances. Theoretically, a terminal of less than 90 feet in diameter is sufficient to develop an electromotive force of that magnitude while for antenna currents of from 2,000-4,000 amperes at the usual frequencies it need not be larger than 30 feet in diameter. "In a more restricted meaning this wireless transmitter is one in which the Hertz-wave radiation is an entirely negligible quantity as compared with the whole energy, under which condition the damping factor is extremely small and an enormous charge is stored in the elevated capacity. Such a circuit may then be excited with impulses of any kind, even of low frequency and it will yield sinusoidal and continuous oscillations like those of an alternator. "Taken in the narrowest significance of the term, however, it is a resonant transformer which, besides possessing these qualities, is accurately proportioned to fit the globe and its electrical constants and properties, by virtue of which design it becomes highly efficient and effective in the wireless transmission of energy. Distance is then absolutely eliminated, there being no diminution in the intensity of the transmitted impulses. It is even possible to make the actions increase with the distance from the plant according to an exact mathematical law. This invention was one of a number comprised in my "World-System" of wireless transmission which I undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900. As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which I quote: ""The 'World-System' has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment. By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant. These examples are cited merely to give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire. One far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated thru one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical dimensions of the Globe. Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission but the old ones vastly extended. . . ."" "My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made. This is one of the reasons why I feel certain that of all my inventions, the Magnifying Transmitter will prove most important and valuable to future generations. I am prompted to this prediction not so much by thoughts of the commercial and industrial revolution which it will surely bring about, but of the humanitarian consequences of the many achievements it makes possible. Considerations of mere utility weigh little in the balance against the higher benefits of civilization. We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind in giving rise to dissension and anarchy which would ultimately result in the enthronement of the hated regime of force. The greatest good will comes from technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such. By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land. Its introduction for telegraphic, telephonic and similar uses will automatically cut out the statics and all other interferences which at present impose narrow limits to the application of the wireless. . . ." These automata, controlled within the range of vision of the operator, were, however, the first and rather crude steps in the evolution of the Art of Telautomatics as I had conceived it. The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond the limits of vision and at great distance from the center of control, and I have ever since advocated their employment as instruments of warfare in preference to guns. The importance of this now seems to be recognized, if I am to judge from casual announcements thru the press of achievements which are said to be extraordinary but contain no merit of novelty, whatever. In an imperfect manner it is practicable, with the existing wireless plants, to launch an aeroplane, have it follow a certain approximate course, and perform some operation at a distance of many hundreds of miles. A machine of this kind can also be mechanically controlled in several ways and I have no doubt that it may prove of some usefulness in war. But there are, to my best knowledge, no instrumentalities in existence today with which such an object could be accomplished in a precise manner. I have devoted years of study to this matter and have evolved means, making such and greater wonders easily realizable. As stated on a previous occasion, when I was a student at college I conceived a flying machine quite unlike the present ones. The underlying principle was sound but could not be carried into practice for want of a prime-mover of sufficiently great activity. In recent years I have successfully solved this problem and am now planning aerial machines devoid of sustaining planes, ailerons, propellers and other external attachments, which will be capable of immense speeds and are very likely to furnish powerful arguments for peace in the near future. Such a machine, sustained and propelled entirely by reaction, is shown on page 108 and is supposed to be controlled either mechanically or by wireless energy. By installing proper plants it will be practicable to project a missile of this kind into the air and drop it almost on the very spot designated, which may be thousands of miles away. But we are not going to stop at this. Telautomata will be ultimately produced, capable of acting as if possest of their own intelligence, and their advent will create a revolution. As early as 1898 I proposed to representatives of a large manufacturing concern the construction and public exhibition of an automobile carriage which, left to itself, would perform a great variety of operations involving something akin to judgment. But my proposal was deemed chimerical at that time and nothing came from it. At present many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. A city, at any distance whatsoever from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so. If we want to avert an impending calamity and a state of things which may transform this globe into an inferno, we should push the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without an instant's delay and with all the power and resources of the nation. |
Child of God | Cormac McCarthy | 1,974 | Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like yourself perhaps." Ballard's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, Ballard descends literally and figuratively to the level of a cave dweller as he falls deeper into crime and degradation. The novel is structured in three segments, each segment describing the ever-growing isolation of the protagonist from the society. In the first part of the novel, we have a group of unidentified narrators from Sevierville who retrospectively tell us about and frame Lester within that community’s mythology and historical consciousness. The second and third parts of the novel increasingly leave culture and community behind as Lester goes from squatter to cave-dweller to serial killer and necrophile as he becomes increasingly associated with pre-modern and inanimate phenomena. The novel ends with the dehumanized and mutilated Ballard dying in incarceration, while the long-hidden corpses of his victims are unearthed from his subterranean haunt. |
Suttree | Cormac McCarthy | 1,979 | The novel begins with Suttree observing police as they pull a suicide from the river. Suttree is living alone in a houseboat, on the fringes of society on the Tennessee River, earning money by fishing for the occasional catfish. He has left a life of luxury, rejecting his father and family, and abandoning his wife and son. A large cast of characters, largely misfits and grotesques, is introduced, one of which is Gene Harrogate, whom Suttree meets in a work camp. Harrogate was sent to the work camp for having sex with a farmer's watermelons. (Harrogate is referred to as the "moonlight melonmounter.") Suttree attempts to help Harrogate once he is released from the work camp, but this task proves to be in vain as Harrogate sets off on a series of misadventures, including using poisoned meat and a slingshot to kill bats ("flitter-mice" as Harrogate calls them) to earn a bounty on them, and using dynamite to attempt to tunnel underneath the city. Other prominent characters are prostitutes, hermits, and an aged Geechee witch. His relationships with women all come to bad ends. One prostitute-girlfriend terminates the relationship in a moment of madness, smashing up the inside of their new car. The other woman with whom he becomes involved is killed by a landslide on the river bank. Suttree is also married before the book begins with a woman he apparently met during college. He left his wife with a son, who dies early on in the book. Towards the novel's end, Suttree falls ill with typhoid fever and suffers a lengthy hallucination. This occurs after a black friend of Suttree's is killed in a fight with the police and his other friend Harrogate is arrested for robbing a store, so Suttree decides to leave town. In the end, he feels his identity is reaffirmed, and he leaves Knoxville, possibly for good. |
The Crossing | Cormac McCarthy | 1,994 | The first sojourn details a series of hunting expeditions conducted by Billy, his father and to a lesser extent, Boyd. They are attempting to locate and trap a pregnant female wolf which has been preying on cattle in the area of the family homestead. McCarthy explores themes throughout the action such as the mystical passage on page 22 describing his father setting a trap: Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such space. If it be knowable. When Billy finally catches the animal, he harnesses her and, instead of killing her, determines to return it to the mountains of Mexico where he believes her original home is located. He develops a deep affection for and bond with the wolf, risking his life to save her on more than one occasion. Along the way Billy encounters many other travelers and inhabitants of the land who relate in a sophisticated dialogue their deepest philosophies. Take for example a Mormon who converts to Catholicism who describes his vision of reality in this way: Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. The story on the other hand can never be lost from its place in the world for it is that place. And that is what was to be found here. The corrido. The tale. And like all corridos it ultimately told one story only, for there is only one to tell. In the second border crossing, Billy and Boyd have set out to recover horses stolen from his family spread. Boyd is eventually shot through the chest in a squabble. After he is nursed back to health he disappears with a young girl. The third crossing features Billy alone attempting to discover the whereabouts of his brother. He learns that Boyd has been killed in a gunfight and sets out to find his dead brother's remains and return them to New Mexico. After finding Boyd's grave and exhuming the body, Billy is ambushed by a band of men who desecrate Boyd's remains and stab Billy's horse through the chest. Billy, with the help of a gypsy, nurses the horse back to riding condition. The last scene shows Billy alone and desolate, coming across a terribly beat up dog, that approaches him for help. In a marked contrast to his youthful bond with the wolf, he shoos the dog away angrily, meanly. Suddenly, he feels a flood of remorse: he goes after the dog, calling for it to come back—but it has gone. He breaks down in tears—what has been lost will not be found. The title contributes the notion that it is not just crossing a border, but at one point, the crossing of one's soul between dream and consciousness, reality and narrative, youth and maturity, and life and death. |
Cities of the Plain | Cormac McCarthy | 1,998 | The story opens in 1952. John Grady and Billy work together on a cattle ranch south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, not far from the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. The ranch's owners are kind, but face an uncertain future in a dying industry. Recently devastated by drought, cattle ranches around El Paso are struggling, and may be claimed by the Department of Defense to become military areas through eminent domain. Though the cowboys barely make a living, John Grady and Billy love life on the open range, and John Grady - as detailed in "All the Pretty Horses" - is a master at training horses. During a visit to a brothel in Juárez, John Grady falls in love with a young, epileptic prostitute, Magdalena. The couple plans to marry and live in the U.S., and John Grady renovates an abandoned cabin, turning it into a home. But Magdalena's brothel is run by Eduardo, a formidable adversary also in love with the young girl. Billy attempts to dissuade John Grady, but feels obligated to help the couple. Eduardo's sidekick, Tiburcio, murders Magdalena by cutting her throat after she steals away from the brothel to meet John Grady at a Rio Grande river crossing and leave Mexico. After John Grady finds her body in the morgue, he faces Eduardo in a knife fight reminiscent of his prison showdown in All the Pretty Horses. Though John Grady kills Eduardo, he is mortally wounded in the fight. He survives long enough to contact Billy, who hurries to comfort him before his death. After John Grady's death, a short epilogue -- not unlike the conclusion of Blood Meridian -- details the next several decades of Billy's life in a few pages. After drifting across the Southwest for many years working ranches and living in hotels, Billy, homeless, takes shelter beneath a highway underpass. There, he meets a mysterious man who tells him about a convoluted dream. Though the man denies it, Billy suspects that he is Death. However, Billy survives the meeting with the man and finds shelter and a new life with a family who takes him in. |
Parthiban Kanavu | Kalki Krishnamurthy | 2,003 | This novel deals with the attempts of the son of (fictional) Chola king Parthiban, Vikraman, to attain independence from the Pallava ruler, Narasimhavarman. The Cholas remain vassals of the Pallavas. Parthiban conveys his dream of the Chola dynasty regaining its glory - which he believes is lost since they are no longer the independent rulers of their land - to his young son Vikraman. Parthiban refuses to pay the taxes to the Pallavas and this triggers the Pallavas to wage war against the Cholas. In the resulting war Parthiban is killed and in the battlefield an enigmatic monk promises to Parthiban that he will make sure that Vikraman fulfills Parthiban's dream. Vikraman grows up and plans his retaliation against Narasimhavarman. But his uncle, Marappa Bhupathi, betrays him and Vikraman is arrested and banished from India by Narasimhavarman. The narrative moves on to describe how Vikraman comes back longing to meet his mother and the mysterious beauty whom he saw before being deported. To his woe he later discovers that his mother has disappeared and has in fact been kidnapped by the savage Kapalikas - a tribe which believes in human sacrifice. He also comes to know that the beauty he has fallen for, Kundhavi, is none other than the daughter of his sworn enemy, Narasimhavarman. The novel climaxes with the identity of the monk being finally being revealed as pallava king, Narasimhavarman and establishment of the independent Chola kingdom under Vikraman in Uraiyur. Vikraman also marries kundhavi in the final chapter. |
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis | Giorgio Bassani | 1,962 | The novel opens with a brief prologue set in 1957 in which the narrator, an Italian Jew, describes a visit to the Ferrara cemetery where the Finzi-Contini family mausoleum stands, empty in all but two slots: a young child, Guido, who died of illness before the narrator was born; and Alberto, the son of the Finzi-Continis and a friend of the narrator's, who died of lymphogranulomatosis (Hodgkin’s disease) before the mass deportation that sent the remainder of the family to a concentration camp in Germany. At this point, the narrator reveals that none of the Finzi-Continis survived. The first part of the book covers the narrator's childhood experiences, describing the various social circles of the local Jewish population and the mystery around the Finzi-Contini children, Alberto and Micòl, who were schooled separately from the other Jewish children and who only appeared at the main school for the annual exams. The narrator fails his math test in this particular year, the first time he has failed any of the annual exams required for promotion, and he takes off on his bike out of fear of his father's reaction. He ends up outside the walls of the Finzi-Continis' mansion, where he has a conversation with Micòl, the Finzi-Continis' pretty daughter. The narrator is invited by Micòl to enter the garden. He excuses himself out of concern for the safety of his bicycle. She then comes over the wall to show him a safe hiding place, but while hiding his bike he dallies in contemplation of Micòl - and loses his chance to see the garden until years later. The next two parts of the book cover the years when the children are all in or just out of college. The racial laws have restricted their ability to socialize with the Ferrarese Christians, and so the narrator, Alberto, Micòl, and Giampi Malnate (an older Christian friend with socialist views) form an informal tennis club of their own, playing several times a week at the court in the Finzi-Continis' garden. During these visits, the narrator declares, shyly at first but more and more forcefully, his love for Micòl. However, her attitude towards the narrator remains one of friendship so that the relationship slowly peters out. The final section of the book covers the slow fading of the narrator's involvement in the tennis club, his futile attempts to restart the romance with Micòl, and his growing friendship with Malnate whom he suspects at the end of the book of having an affair with Micòl. |
Checkmate | null | null | The innocent girl is 24 year-old Mary Mallory, who has spent the last seven years in isolation caring for her invalid aunt. After the latter's death, Mary, now living in London, realizes that she has to earn her own money unless she wants to live in relative poverty. She answers the ad of a Comtesse Zamoyski, who is looking for a companion with whom to travel to the Côte d'Azur, and, after an interview, she is accepted for the post. As Mary sees it, her new job combines at least two advantages: seeing the world and proving, to herself as well as her friends, that she is an independent woman. Mary's blinkered view lets her ignore all the warning signs that are pointed out to her. Jessie Stevens, her old schoolmate, even suspects that "White Slavery" could be behind that ad, but Mary does not listen and leaves London with her new employer. Through a series of coincidences a number of people are alerted to the dangers that might be in store for Mary. Apart from Jessie Stevens, it is Dick Delabrae, a society columnist for The Sun, and his friend Robert Wingate, who happens to be the nephew of Lady Wentworth, whose pearls the gang wants to steal. They all come to Cannes, where the Comtesse Zamoyski and Mary Mallory are staying in a remote villa, in order to help the young woman and prevent the theft of the pearls. The Comtesse turns out to be rather moody, but at first Mary has no idea that she is associating with criminals. Her first visit to the Casino is a huge success: Not only does she win more than ₤1,500 at baccarat but she also makes the acquaintance of Lady Wentworth, who immediately takes a liking to the charming girl. Later that night, however, back at the villa, she overhears a conversation between the Comtesse, José Santes, allegedly the Comtesse's nephew, and a young Russian called Nadja, allegedly her maid, which makes it unmistakably clear to her that she is staying under the same roof with criminals. However, escape is now no longer possible. Before she can get away from the villa, Mary Mallory is captured, drugged and hypnotized by the fourth member of the gang, a Frenchman posing as a doctor. On his way to the villa to rescue Mary, Robert Wingate, who has fallen in love with Mary, is kidnapped by Santes's men and thrown into catacombs somewhere below the streets of Cannes. Lady Wentworth is lured to the Comtesse's villa with the prospect of seeing Mary again but after her arrival she is tied to a chair and, in a drug-induced frenzy, stabbed to death by José Santes, a "dope fiend". As she is not wearing her pearls, the gang flee without any loot. When Mary Mallory wakes from her stupor some time later it is only to encounter the French police accusing her of murdering Lady Wentworth, whose body she discovers in the same room where she was lying unconscious. But Robert Wingate can escape from the dungeon, and all misunderstandings are cleared up in the end. The members of the gang are arrested near the Italian border, and the two couples — Dick and Jessie on the one hand, Robert and Mary on the other — return to England to get married. |
The Summer Tree | Guy Gavriel Kay | 1,984 | The books opens in our own world, at the University of Toronto, where the five main characters are all fellow students. They attend a lecture by a Professor Lorenzo Marcus, who afterwards reveals to them that he is in reality Loren Silvercloak, a mage from the land of Fionavar. Silvercloak tells the five that he has come to our world to bring back five guests, as part of the celebration of the 50th year of the reign of High King Ailell of Brennin. After some debate, the students -- Kevin Laine, Paul Schafer, Dave Martyniuk, Kimberly Ford, and Jennifer Lowell -- agree to accompany Silvercloak and the dwarf Matt Sören (Loren's "source," the person whose strength he draws on to perform his magic). However, Dave has second thoughts in the midst of Loren's transferral process; he attempts to pull free, breaking his contact with the others, and so although the remaining four arrive safely in Brennin, Dave is nowhere to be seen. Kim, Paul, Jennifer and Kevin discover that Brennin is in the midst of a crippling drought, brought on by the High King's unwillingness to offer himself on the Summer Tree as a sacrifice to Mörnir. The kingdom has been somewhat uneasy since Ailell's eldest son, Aileron, offered to take his father's place; upon Ailell's refusal, he cursed his father and was exiled. Ysanne the Seer recognizes Kim as the successor foretold by her dreams. Kim accompanies Ysanne to her cottage by the lake where Ysanne calls on Eilathen, a water spirit, to awaken Kim's latent Seer powers; Ysanne then passes to Kim the Baelrath, or Warstone, a red stone set in a ring. Ysanne also shows Kim two magical items. The first is Lökdal, a dwarvish dagger with a double gift: he who kills with Lökdal with love in his heart may make a gift of his soul to another; he who kills without love in his heart will die. Ysanne also shows Kim the Circlet of Lisen, set with a shining white gem, and recounts the prophecy concerning it: "Who shall wear this next after Lisen shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars." That night Ysanne takes her own life with Lökdal and makes Kim a gift of her soul. When Kim awakens the next morning, she has not only the power of a seer (which was born in her), but also all of Ysanne's deep knowledge of Fionavar to help her interpret what she sees. Her hair turned completely white, Kim takes Ysanne's place as Seer of Brennin. Kevin and Paul are befriended by Diarmuid, Ailell's second son, a handsome man and elegant swordsman, but apparently frivolous and light-hearted. They accompany Diarmuid and his band on a daring journey to Cathal, the kingdom to the South of Brennin. Diarmuid has a double purpose: to prove the existence of a way across the Saeral River, and to seduce the King of Cathal's daughter, the lovely but fiercely independent Sharra. He achieves both and the band returns triumphant to Brennin. That night, a song that Kevin sings reawakens Paul's ghosts. Long haunted by grief and guilt over the death of his girlfriend in a car accident which he believes was his fault, Paul offers to sacrifice himself by taking Ailell's place on the Summer Tree, seeing this as a way to expiate his guilt. Jennifer and Jaelle overhear a children's game in which Leila, a young girl, calls a boy named Finn to "take the Longest Road." This is the third time this is happened and clearly marks Finn somehow. Jaelle cannot explain what it means but she sees latent power in Leila and invites her to become an acolyte in the temple. The next day, Jennifer meets Brendel of the lios alfar and some of his people and goes riding with them. That night, Jennifer's escort of lios alfar is slaughtered by Galadan and his wolves, and Jennifer is taken. Paul is bound naked to the Tree where he hangs for three days and nights, fully expecting that he will die. On the second night, Galadan appears but is driven away by a grey dog. On the third night Dana, the Mother, relieves Paul's pain by showing him that he was not to blame for Rachel's death and Paul is at last able to weep for Rachel. His tears break the drought. Nursed (grudgingly) back to health by Jaelle, High Priestess of Dana, Paul recovers and is named Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree. By now it is evident to all concerned that significant events are afoot, and when Mount Rangat explodes in a dramatic hand of fire reaching across the sky, there can be no doubt. Rakoth Maugrim, defeated and chained a thousand years ago, has broken free of his prison -- and Jennifer's kidnappers have sent her to him at his fortress of Starkadh. Ailell suffers a heart attack and dies at the sight. Aileron returns and Diarmuid, with great wit, agrees that he should be High King despite having been exiled. In the midst of this dynastic confusion, Sharra of Cathal, furious at her seduction and abandonment, stabs Diarmuid in the shoulder. Amongst these events we begin to get a hint of the true strength of Diarmuid's character. Meanwhile, Dave has arrived safely in Fionavar but far out on the plains. He is taken in by a group of Dalrei, or Riders, led by Ivor, chieftain of the third tribe, and Gereint, their shaman. The Dalrei dub him "Davor" and give him an axe, as the weapon best suited to Dave's build and lack of sword training. Dave bonds with Torc dan Sorcha, something of an outcast, when he and Torc spend a night watching over Ivor's son Tabor during his vision quest to find his totem animal. Unbelievably, the animal Tabor sees is a winged chestnut unicorn; even more incredibly, three nights later Tabor finds and immediately bonds with her, knowing that she has been created as a gift of the goddess and her name is Imraith-Nimphais. When the mountain explodes, Ivor sends a party towards Brennin led by Levon, his oldest son. They are ambushed by svart alfar near Pendaran Wood and only Dave, Levon and Torc survive by fleeing into the wood. The trees of the Wood bear a centuries-long grudge over the death of Lisen, their beautiful forest spirit who bound herself as source to Amairgen, the First Mage, and who killed herself when he died. Flidais rescues them and alerts Ceinwen. Ceinwen takes a fancy to Dave; not only does she transport them safely to the other edge of the wood, she also makes sure that Dave finds Owein's Horn. Levon, well-taught in legends by Gereint, then finds the Cave of the Sleepers, who can be awakened by the Horn. When all are at last gathered in Brennin, the new High King calls a council. They are interrupted by Brock, a dwarf, who names Matt Sören as rightful King of the Dwarves and then divulges that it is the dwarves who helped Rakoth Maugrim free himself in secret. They have also found for him the Cauldron of Khath Meigol which can resurrect the dead. The council resumes but a sudden blinding headache bursts upon Kim, and in a heartbreaking vision she sees Jennifer in Starkadh, being raped and tortured by Maugrim. Using the power of the Baelrath, Kim manages to pull all five of them out of Fionavar and back into their own world. |
Trouble with Lichen | John Wyndham | 1,960 | The plot concerns a young woman biochemist who discovers that a chemical extracted from an unusual strain of lichen (hence the title) can be used to retard the ageing process, enabling people to live to around 200–300 years. Wyndham speculates how society would deal with this prospect. The two central characters are Diana Brackley and Francis Saxover, two biochemists who run parallel investigations into the properties of a specific species of lichen after Diana notices that a trace of the specimen prevents some milk turning sour. She and Francis separately manage to extract from the lichen a new drug, dubbed Antigerone, which slows down the body's ageing process. While Francis uses it only on himself and his immediate family (without their knowledge), Diana founds a cosmetic spa, and builds up a clientele of some of the most powerful women in England, giving them low doses of Antigerone, preserving their beauty and youth. When Saxover finds out about the spas, he erroneously assumes that Diana's motive is profit. Diana's aim, however, is actually female empowerment, intending to gain the support of these influential women, believing that if Antigerone became publicly known, it would be reserved only for the men in power. After a customer suffers an allergic reaction to one of Diana's products, the secret of the drug begins to emerge. Diana tries to cover up the real source of the drug, since the lichen is very rare and difficult to grow, but when it is finally discovered, she fakes her own death, in the hope of inspiring the women of Britain to fight for the rights she tried to secure for them. Francis realises that she may not really be dead, and tracks her down to a remote farm, where she has succeeded in growing a small amount of the lichen. Diana plans to rejoin the world under the guise of being her own sister, and continue the work she left off. |
The Outward Urge | John Wyndham | 1,959 | It is a future history, set from 1994 to 2194. It tells the story, with chapters at 50-year intervals, of the exploration of the solar system, with space stations in Earth orbit, then moon bases, and landings on Mars in 2094, Venus in 2144, and the asteroids. This is told through the Troon family, several members of which play an important part in the exploration of space, since they all feel "the outward urge", the desire to travel further into space. They all "hear the thin gnat-voices cry, star to faint star across the sky", a quote from The Jolly Company by Rupert Brooke. In 1994 "Ticker" Troon is killed foiling a Soviet missile attack on a British space station, and is later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. In 2044 a major nuclear war between the USSR and the West wipes out most of the Northern Hemisphere. Inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere - virtually the only survivors of humanity - call it "The Great Northern War", the far earlier war of the same name seeming very minor in comparison. Only after hundreds of years, with radioactivity going down, do expeditions from the south start carefully exploring and preparing to re-colonise the ravaged northern hemisphere. Brazil is left as the main world power, which then claims that "Space is a province of Brazil". However Australia eventually emerges as a serious rival. Consequently, English and Portuguese become contenders for the position of the major world-wide (eventually, Solar System wide) language. Eventually, space explorers break away from the tutelage of both earthbound powers and establish themselves as a major third power, called simply "Space"; the Troon Family plays a major role in this as in many other events. |
Absolute Beginners | Colin MacInnes | 1,959 | The novel is divided into four sections. Each detail a particular day in the four months that spanned the summer of 1958. In June takes up half of the book and shows the narrator meeting up with various teenaged friends and some adults in various parts of London and discussing his outlook on life and the new concept of being a teenager. He also learns that his ex-girlfriend, Suzette, is to enter a marriage of convenience with her boss, a middle-aged gay fashion designer called Henley. In July has the narrator taking photographs by the Thames, seeing the musical operetta H.M.S. Pinafore with his father, has a violent encounter with Ed the Ted and watches Hoplite's appearance on Call-Me-Cobber's TV show. In August has the narrator and his father take a cruise along the Thames towards Windsor Castle. His father is taken ill on the trip and has to be taken to a doctor. The narrator also finds Suzette at her husband's cottage in Cookham. In September is set on the narrator's nineteenth birthday. He sees this, symbolically, as the beginning of his last year as a teenager. He witnesses several incidents of racial violence, which disgust him. His father also dies, leaving him four envelopes stuffed with money. Suzette has separated from Henley, but still seems uncertain as to whether she should resume her relationship with the narrator. The narrator decides to leave the country and find a place where racism doesn't exist. At the airport, he sees Africans arriving and gives them a warm welcome. |
Q-Squared | Peter David | 1,994 | Trelane, who first appeared in the original Star Trek episode "The Squire of Gothos", is revealed to be a member of the Q Continuum. He taps into the power of the continuum and uses this ability to tamper with time and reality, resulting in the intersection of three different parallel universes which are also referred to as time "tracks." Track A is a universe in which Beverly Crusher's husband Jack never died, and now serves as captain of the Enterprise with Jean-Luc Picard as his first officer; in this universe, Jack's son Wesley died as a boy and Jack and Beverly divorced. Track B is the traditional universe depicted on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Track C is akin to the more militaristic alternate universe shown in the Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", in which the Federation is at war with the Klingons. Q, who had been charged with the task of "mentoring" Trelane (a task each "adult" Q must accept at least once for an "adolescent" Q), enlists the aid of Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D in the three different timelines in order to teach Trelane discipline, and eventually, to stop him from destroying the fabric of the universe by collapsing the alternate universes together. When the tracks begin to merge, the characters from separate universes begin to appear to one another, sometimes with disastrous results. Jack Crusher confronts his ex-wife about the affair she is having with Track-A Picard; during the argument, which Track-B Picard witnesses, she is accidentally killed; additionally, members of Track C attempt to kill Worf, and believe all the members of the crew from the other two universes are really Klingon impostors. Eventually, Q manages to overpower Trelane and the universes are once again separated, though not always perfectly (at the end of the novel, Track-A Data appears to be stuck in Track C). Q also spends part of the novel lost in time and space, trapped by the barrier around the galaxy; this relates to the original series episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before". |
Cloud Atlas | David Mitchell | 2,004 | Cloud Atlas consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. Each tale is revealed to be a story that is read (or observed) by the main character in the next. The first five stories are interrupted at a key moment. After the sixth story, the other five stories are returned to and closed, in reverse chronological order, and each ends with the main character reading or observing the chronologically next work in the chain. Eventually, readers end where they started, with Adam Ewing in the nineteenth century South Pacific. *The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing. The first story begins in the Chatham Islands, a remote Pacific Ocean archipelago. Adam Ewing, a guileless American notary from San Francisco during the California Gold Rush, awaits repairs to his ship. There, he learns about the enslavement of the peaceful Moriori tribe by the warlike Māori. He also befriends a doctor named Henry Goose, and catches the eye of a Moriori slave, Autua, who is being whipped. Later, as the ship sails Adam is diagnosed by Dr Goose as being ill and in need of his treatment. At the same time, he finds Autua, who has joined the ship as a stowaway and asks him to help. Adam, helps Autua get a job on the ship, but is becoming increasingly ill despite Dr Goose's treatment. At this point the story suddenly breaks off in mid-sentence. *Letters from Zedelghem. The next story is set in Zedelghem, near Brugges, Belgium, 1931. It is told in the form of letters from Robert Frobisher, a penniless young English musician, to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, back in Cambridge. Frobisher finds work as an amanuensis to a composer, Vyvyan Ayrs, living in Belgium. There he helps Ayrs with his compositions, while also seducing Ayrs' wife and daughter. At one point, Frobisher briefly mentions reading a printed text of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, and is annoyed that half the text is missing; he is amused that the author seems unaware that Dr Goose is poisoning him. *Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery. The third story is written in the style of a mystery novel, and is set in Buenas Yerbas, California, in 1975. Luisa Rey, a young journalist, investigates reports that a new nuclear power plant is unsafe. At one point, she encounters Rufus Sixsmith, the addressee of the letters in the previous story, in an elevator. Sixsmith, now an elderly scientist, hints that the nuclear power plant on Swannekke Island in unsafe. Shortly after, he is murdered, and Luisa learns that that the businessmen in charge of the plant are conspiring to cover up the dangers and are assassinating potential whistleblowers. From Sixsmith's hotel room, Luisa manages to get hold of a copy of the report on the plant's safety issues; she also picks up an envelope containing some of Frobisher's letters and reads them. But the hired assassin follows her and pushes her car off a bridge, at which point the story breaks off. *The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. The fourth story is comic in tone, and set in Britain in the present day. Timothy Cavendish, a 65-year-old vanity press publisher, flees the brothers of his gangster client. His brother, exasperated by Timothy's endless pleas for financial aid, books him into a remote hotel, which in fact turns out to be a nursing home from which Timothy cannot escape. In the course of his adventures, Timothy briefly mentions that he is reading a manuscript from a prospective author entitled Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery, which he is not impressed by. *An Orison of Sonmi~451. The fifth story is set in Nea So Copros, a dystopian futuristic state that is gradually revealed to be in Korea and to be a totalitarian state that has evolved from corporate culture. It is told in the form of an interview between Sonmi~451 and an 'archivist', who is recording her story. Sonmi~451 is a genetically-engineered fabricant (clone), who is one of many fabricants grown to work at a fast-food restaurant called Papa Song's. Fabricants, it is revealed, are treated as slave labor by 'pureblood' society. Sonmi encounters figures from a rebel underground who draw her out of the cloistered fabricant world, and reveal the realities of the abuse of fabricants in Nea So Copros. At one point, she briefly mentions seeing a group of purebloods watching an old movie entitled The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. *Sloosha's Crossin' an' Ev'rythin' After. The sixth story occupies the central position in the novel, and is the only one not to be interrupted. An old man, Zachry tells a story from his youth. It is gradually revealed that he lives in a primitive post-apocalyptic society on the Big Island of Hawaii. His people, the valley folk, are peaceful farmers, but are often raided by the Kona tribe from the other side of the island. Zachry's people worship a goddess called Sonmi, and know that once there was an event called 'The Fall', in which the civilized peoples of the earth - known as the 'Old Uns' - collapsed, and the surviving humans have been reduced to primitivism. They have short lifespans due to a poisoned environment that causes disease and mutation. Big Island is occasionally visited and studied by a technologically sophisticated people known as the Prescients who arrive in white boats. One Prescient, a woman called Meronym, comes to stay with the villagers, and gradually reveals that she needs a guide to take her to the top of Mauna Kea volcano, a place the villagers are afraid of because of the mysterious temples on its summit. Zachry reluctantly guides her. It is revealed that the 'temples' are in fact the ruins of the Mauna Kea Observatories. Meronym shocks Zachry by telling him that their god Sonmi was in fact a human being, and shows him an 'orison' - an egg-shaped recording device that replays Sonmi telling her story to the archivist. Upon their return, the village is invaded by Kona tribesmen who enslave the villagers. Zachry and Meronym escape, and she takes him to a safer island. The story ends with Zachry's child recalling that his father told many unbelievable tales. The child admits that part of this one may be true because he has inherited Zachry's copy of Sonmi's orison, which he often watches, even though he doesn't speak her language. *An Orison of Sonmi~451. In the second part of the fifth story, Sonmi learns the truth about Nea So Copros: that the fabricants are not released once they have served their time at work, but are killed and recycled into food and more fabricants. At the encouragement of the rebels, she writes an abolitionist Declaration that tells the truth and calls for rebellion. She is then arrested, and finds herself telling her tale to the archivist. She then reveals that she knows everything that happened to her was in fact instigated by the government, to create an artificial hate figure in her that will encourage the oppression of fabricants by purebloods. But she believes her Declaration will be inspirational. Her last wish before being executed is to watch the film she remembers seeing, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. *The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish. In the second part of the fourth story, Timothy Cavendish and a band of plucky inmates escape from the nursing home. He sorts out his problems back in London. At the end of his story, he notes that The First Luisa Rey Mystery turned out to be a good read after all, and he is inspired to write his own story as a screenplay. *Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery. In the second part of the third story, Luisa Rey escapes from the sinking car and by detective work successfully locates the report into the Swanekke power plant, and exposes the corrupt corporate crooks. Along the way, inspired by reading his letters, she orders Robert Frobisher's obscure Cloud Atlas Sextet at a record store, and is perturbed to find that she recognizes it, even though it is a very rare piece. At the end of the story, she receives a letter from Rufus Sixsmith's niece, containing eight more letters from Frobisher. *Letters from Zedelghem. In the second part of the second story, Frobisher continues to pursue his affairs, while developing his own Cloud Atlas Sextet. Along the way, he discovers the second half of The Pacific Diaries of Adam Ewing propping up a table. He ultimately leaves Vyvyan Ayrs' employment and secludes himself to finish the Sextet, before deciding to kill himself as he believes he has completed his best work. Before shooting himself, he writes a last letter to Sixsmith, and includes his Sextet and Ewing's Pacific Diaries. *The Pacific Diaries of Adam Ewing. In the second part of the first story, Ewing visits the island of Raiatea where he observes missionaries preaching to the indigenous peoples, whom they regard as savages. Back on the ship, he falls further ill, realizing at the last minute that Dr Goose is poisoning him to steal his possessions. He is rescued by Autua, and having been saved by a slave, resolves to devote his life to the Abolitionist movement. When his father scoffs that human nature will never change and that Ewing's life will amount to "no more than one drop in a limitless ocean", Ewing responds "Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?" |
Lottie and Lisa | Erich Kästner | null | Two nine-year-old girls—rude Lisa Palfy (orig. Luise Palfy) from Vienna, and respectful shy Lottie Horn (orig. Lotte Körner) from Munich—meet on a summer camp in Bohrlaken on Lake Bohren (orig. 'Seebühl am Bühlsee'). Lisa has curly hair; Lottie wears braids. Apart from that, they look alike. They have never seen each other before, but soon find out that they are identical twins. It turns out that their parents divorced, each keeping one of the girls. The two girls decide it is unfair that neither of them has ever been told that she is a twin, or that her other parent is still living. They decide to trade places at the end of the summer so that Lottie will have a chance to get to know her father and Lisa will get to meet her mother. Lottie curls her hair, Lisa braids hers, and both go off to where they have never been before. The adventure begins. While many adults are surprised at the changes in each of the girls after they return from camp ("Lottie" has suddenly forgotten how to cook, gets in a fight at school, and becomes a terrible student, while "Lisa" has begun to keep a close eye on the housekeeper's bookkeeping, will no longer eat her favorite food, and becomes a model student), no one suspects that the girls are not who they claim to be. When Lottie (pretending to be Lisa) finds out that her father is planning to remarry, she becomes very ill and stops writing to her sister in Munich. Meanwhile, Lottie's mother comes across a picture of the two girls that was taken while they were at summer camp. She quickly realizes what has happened and Lisa tells her the entire story. The discovery turns out to have come just in time. The girls' mother calls her ex-husband in Vienna to tell him what has happened and to find out why Lottie has stopped writing. When she hears that her daughter is ill, she and Lisa immediately travel to Vienna to be with her. The four of them (father, mother, Lisa and Lottie) are still in Vienna for the girls' birthday. The girls tell their parents that they don't need any presents on this birthday or ever again as long as they don't have to be separated again. The parents talk it over, realize that they are still in love and decide to get remarried. |
Spartacus | Lewis Grassic Gibbon | null | The central character is not Spartacus himself, but Kleon, a fictional Greek educated slave and eunuch who joins the revolt. In the first chapter we are told how he was sold into slavery as a child and sexually abused by an owner. Another important character is Elpinice, a female slave who helps Spartacus and his fellow gladiators escape from Capua, and who becomes Spartacus's lover. She gives birth to a son, but while Spartacus is fighting elsewhere she is raped and murdered by soldiers, and the child is also killed. The novel touches on Gibbon's views on human history, with Spartacus seen as a survivor of the Golden Age. However, in spite of various additions and speculations, it does stick fairly closely to the known historical facts about the revolt. Plutarch's life of Crassus is clearly the main source, but it does make use of some other classical sources, including Appian and Sallust. |
Naomi | null | 1,947 | Naomis story is focused around a man's obsession for a modan garu or modern girl. The main character, Jōji, is a well-educated Japanese man who is an electrical engineer in the city, and comes from a wealthy landlord family. Jōji wishes to break away from his traditional Japanese culture, and becomes immersed in the strange new Westernized culture which was beginning to form in Japan. The physical representation of everything Western is embodied in a young girl named Naomi. Jōji sees Naomi for the first time in a café and instantly falls for her exotic "Eurasian" looks, Western-sounding name, and sophisticated mannerisms. Like the story of the prepubescent Murasaki in the classic novel The Tale of Genji, Jōji decides he will raise Naomi, a fifteen-year-old bar hostess, to be his perfect woman: in this case he will forge her into a glamorous Western girl like Mary Pickford, a famous Canadian actress of the silent film era. Jōji moves Naomi into his home and begins his efforts to make her a perfect Western wife. She turns out to be a very willing pupil. He pays for her English education, and though she has little grammar skills in it, she possesses beautiful pronunciation. He funds her Western activities, including her love of the theatre, dancing and magazines. During the early part of the novel Jōji makes no sexual advances on Naomi, preferring instead to groom her according to his desires and observe her from a distance. However, his plan to foster Western ideals such as independence in her backfires dramatically as she gets older. Jōji begins the novel being the dominator. However, as time progresses and his obsession takes hold, Naomi's manipulation puts her in a position of power over him. Slowly Jōji turns power over to Naomi, conceding to everything she desires. He buys a new house for them, and though they are married, Jōji sleeps in a separate bedroom, while Naomi entertains Western visitors in another room. The book ends with Naomi having complete control of Jōji's life, though he claims he is satisfied as long as his obsession with her is satiated. |
Alton Locke | null | null | Alton Locke is the story of a young tailor-boy who has instincts and aspirations beyond the normal expectations of his working-class background. He is intensely patriotic and has ambitions to be a poet. In the course of the narrative, Alton Locke loves and struggles in vain. Physically, he is a weak man, but is able to encompass all the best emotions, along with vain longings, wild hopes, and a righteous indignation at the plight of his contemporaries. He joins the Chartist movement because he can find no better vehicle by which to improve the lot of the working class, experiencing a sense of devastation at its apparent failure. Utterly broken in spirit, Alton Locke sails for America to seek a new life there; however, he barely reaches the shore of the New World before he dies. |
Paladin of Souls | Lois McMaster Bujold | 2,003 | Paladin of Souls is a sequel to The Curse of Chalion and is set some three years after the events of that novel. It follows Ista, mother of the girl who became Royina (Queen) in that book and a minor character in it. Recovering from the extreme guilt and grief that had marked her as mad while the Golden General's curse on her family persisted, she finds herself bored to distraction and restless. To get away from her home town, Valenda, and its ugly memories she sets out on a religious pilgrimage with the dy Gura brothers (also minor characters from the earlier story) for protection; Liss, a feisty and clever courier girl; and dy Cabon, a plump priest of the Bastard (one of the five gods) as her 'spiritual guide'. The Bastard, god of disasters and of things out of season, becomes a larger presence in this novel than was The Lady of Spring in The Curse of Chalion; by its end, Ista herself has become a saint in his service. (The Father of Winter, another of the five gods, also makes a brief appearance.) The pilgrimage party is overrun and captured by a troop of Roknari raiders from the adjacent principality of Jokona, then set free by a patrol from nearby Castle Porifors. Leading the rescuers is Arhys, lord of the castle and a very effective warrior indeed—considering that he scarcely eats or drinks, or sleeps except for brief afternoon naps. Though she comes to be immensely attracted to him, she realizes in horror that he is the son of a man she had helped murder. Another obstacle is Arhys's very young and very beautiful wife, Cattilara. Once in the castle Ista discovers another odd man: Lord Illvin, Arhys's half-brother. He is unconscious except for afternoon wakings that match Arhys' naps. She has seen him before, though, in a baffling dream that at last makes some sense. As this mystery begins to come clear, Castle Porifors is besieged by a new force of Roknari from Jokona that includes its Prince, Sordso, and his mother, Princess Joen. The latter is an elderly, minor daughter of the Golden General and has accumulated a whole troop of demon-ridden magicians, including her son, all of them controlled by one major magician: herself. As Castle Porifors and its defenders crumble under magical siege, Lord Arhys and a picked troop make a night raid that jolts the Jokonans but does not dislodge them. Only when Ista allows herself to walk as a hostage into the Princess' lair is the siege ended. The remaining magicians' demons are sent back to the Bastard's care, and the remaining loose ends of the story are resolved, with Ista's acceptance of the Bastard's offer of skills and a job that give use and meaning to the rest of her life. Lord Illvin comes with the job as a bonus. |
The Princess of Cleves | Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette | 1,678 | Mademoiselle de Chartres is a sheltered heiress, sixteen years old, whose mother has brought her to the court of Henri II (a disguised version of the court of Louis XIV) to seek a husband with good financial and social prospects. When old jealousies against a kinsman spark intrigues against the young ingénue, the best marriage prospects withdraw. The young woman follows her mother's recommendation and accepts the overtures of a middling suitor, the Prince de Clèves. After the wedding, she meets the dashing Duc de Nemours. The two fall in love, yet do nothing to pursue their affections, limiting their contact to an occasional visit in the now-Princess of Clèves's salon. The Duc becomes enmeshed in a scandal at court that leads the Princess to believe he has been unfaithful in his affections. A letter from a spurned mistress to her paramour is discovered in the dressing room at one of the estates--a letter actually written to the Princess' uncle, the Vidame de Chartres, who has also become entangled in a relationship with the Queen. He begs the Duc de Nemours to claim ownership of the letter, which ends up in the Princess' possession. The Duc has to produce documents from the Vidame to convince the Princess that his heart has been true. Eventually, the Prince of Clèves discerns that his wife is in love with another man. She confesses as much. He relentlessly quizzes her--indeed tricks her--until she reveals the man's identity. After he sends a servant to spy on the Duc de Nemours, Monsieur de Clèves believes that his wife has been unfaithful in more than just her emotions. He becomes ill and dies (either of his illness or of a broken heart). On his deathbed, he blames the Duc de Nemours for his suffering and begs the Princess not to marry him. Now free to pursue her passions, the Princess is torn between her duty and her love. The Duc pursues her more openly, but she rejects him, choosing instead to enter a convent for part of each year. After several years, the Duc's love for her does finally fade, and she, still relatively young, passes away in obscurity. |
Adam Bede | George Eliot | 1,859 | According to The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1967), : "the plot is founded on a story told to George Eliot by her aunt Elizabeth Evans, a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris of the novel, of a confession of child-murder, made to her by a girl in prison." The story's plot follows four characters' rural lives in the fictional community of Hayslope—a rural, pastoral and close-knit community in 1799. The novel revolves around a love "rectangle" between beautiful but self-absorbed Hetty Sorrel, Captain Arthur Donnithorne, the young squire who seduces her, Adam Bede, her unacknowledged suitor, and Dinah Morris, Hetty's cousin, a fervent, virtuous and beautiful Methodist lay preacher. (The real village where Adam Bede was set is Ellastone on the Staffordshire / Derbyshire border, a few miles from Uttoxeter and Ashbourne, and near to Alton Towers. Eliot's father lived in the village as a carpenter in a substantial house now known as Adam Bede's Cottage). Adam is a local carpenter much admired for his integrity and intelligence, in love with Hetty. She is attracted to Arthur, the charming local squire's grandson and heir, and falls in love with him. When Adam interrupts a tryst between them, Adam and Arthur fight. Arthur agrees to give up Hetty and leaves Hayslope to return to his militia. After he leaves, Hetty Sorrel agrees to marry Adam but shortly before their marriage, discovers she is pregnant.In desperation, she leaves in search of Arthur. She cannot find him; unwilling to return to the village on account of the shame and ostracism she would have to endure, she delivers her baby with the assistance of a friendly woman she encounters. Later, the child is killed when she abandons it in a field. Not being able to bear the child's cries she tries to come back but she is too late when she finds out that it dies of exposure. Hetty is caught and tried for child murder. She is found guilty and sentenced to hang. Dinah enters the prison and pledges to stay with Hetty until the end. Her compassion brings about Hetty's contrite confession. When Arthur Donnithorne, on leave from the militia for his grandfather's funeral, hears of her impending execution, he races to the court and has the sentence commuted to transportation. Ultimately, Adam and Dinah, who gradually become aware of their mutual love, marry and live peacefully with his family. |
Nuns and Soldiers | Iris Murdoch | 1,980 | Guy Openshaw is 44 years old and on his death bed. Cancer is coming down hard on Guy, and he cannot stand the stream of visitors to his London flat. His wife Gertrude entertains the drop-ins, who were once part of a lively set that came by after work hours for a drink and chat. The visitors all relied on Guy for advice and money, and as he dies the varied people in the novel begin to fray. One of the visitors to the Openshaw flat is the youngish Tim Reede, an artist who cannot sell his work and who is lost without Guy’s support. He has a girlfriend named Daisy who dresses like a punk and talks and drinks like a sailor; they’re a perfect pair of starving misfits. Daisy makes Tim visit Gertrude once Guy has passed and ask her for money, but Gertrude begins questioning Tim about his craft and winds up wanting to support him in other ways, namely giving him run of her home in the French countryside. The Tim-Gertrude affair and subsequent marriage is the heart of the book, and it is a good study of class relations and the younger man-older woman romance. Tim is both a hero and a colossal screw-up, but he is also kind and lets Gertrude’s friends run him down because it doesn’t bother her and he still gets to be with her at the end of the day. Some of Gertrude’s circle are genuinely concerned, but most are either in love with her or what she could do for them with Guy’s inheritance. There is a fair amount of treachery and coincidence in the novel, but the heavy touches are softened by consequences which Murdoch lets play out in natural time. |
Firewing | Kenneth Oppel | 2,002 | Griffin Silverwing is the son of Shade and Marina, a Brightwing bat. Griffin has difficulty relating to the other newborn bats because he is a hybrid of a Silverwing and a Brightwing. Griffin's only real friend is Luna, a popular newborn. However, Griffin views his tendency to worry about everything as a sign of cowardice and fears that his father, Shade, will reject him when he returns from Stonehold with the other male adult bats. Upon discovering a group of human campers in the forest, Griffin decides to steal some of the camp's fire for his colony, hoping that the act will impress his father. Unfortunately, Griffin’s plan goes horribly wrong when Luna is accidentally set on fire and burned. Upon discovering that Luna's injuries may be fatal, a guilt-stricken Griffin flies off into the lower levels of Tree Haven. While hiding in the Tree's lower levels a crack appears, possibly the result of either a natural earthquake or Cama Zotz' influence, and Griffin is drawn into the Underworld. Shade has also felt the earthquake and discovers another crack that leads to the Underworld. Sensing Zotz's presence in the crack, Shade becomes convinced that something is wrong and flies to Tree Haven. Upon reaching Tree Haven, Shade finds that the tree has been devastated by the earthquake and that Marina's wing has been injured. Shade searches for Griffin and eventually discovers that he has been pulled into a crack in the ground. Shade decides to go into the crack and rescue his son. Marina, unable to go with Shade because of her wing injury, begs Shade to bring Griffin back. In the Underworld, Griffin discovers a colony of bats that are unaware that they are dead. The bats are wary of Griffin, because as he is still alive he appears to glow to them. Griffin discovers that the recently deceased Luna has become a member of the colony and has no memory of him. Fortunately for Griffin, a group of Pilgrims (bats who attempt to convince the other inhabitants of the Underworld that they are dead) appear at the colony to try to convince the colonists that they are dead. One of the Pilgrims is Frieda, a former elder of Griffin's colony. Frieda recognizes Griffin as Shade and Marina's son and tells him of a gigantic, incandescent Tree which supposedly sends dead bats that enter it to another, more enjoyable afterlife. Frieda believes that the Tree will send Griffin back home, as he is alive and not dead. Griffin decides to follow Frieda's advice and travel to the Tree, but refuses to leave without bringing Luna with him. Frieda provides Griffin with a sound map (a map created by echolocative images in his mind) to the Tree and then leaves to preach to more dead bats, warning him that it is difficult for many bats to accept their deaths. Griffin manages to get Luna to remember him and convinces her to travel with him to the Tree. Meanwhile, Goth, the antagonist of the previous two books, awakens in the Underworld and discovers that he is dead. Confused by his surroundings, Goth is easily captured by a group of Vampyrum Spectrum, who set him to work hollowing out a tunnel in the Underworld's "sky" with a group of enslaved bats, including a vampyrum met in Silverwing, named Throbb. Goth manages to escape from his captors and cries for Zotz to come to him and explain to him why he is being punished. Zotz does appear and reveals that Goth's failure to free Zotz during the last eclipse has displeased him and that Goth will spend the next few thousand years working to create a tunnel to the world of the living before being condemned to an eternity of torture. Goth manages to bargain with Zotz to spare himself from such a horrible fate. Zotz agrees to give Goth another chance, provided that he proves his loyalty to him. Zotz sends Goth to go kill Griffin and sacrifice his life to Zotz, and Goth also to take Griffin's life as his own. Shade meanwhile, has encountered a group of dead bats who are attempting to reach the Tree. The group later encounter a dead Vampyrum Spectrum named Murk, who is also travelling to the Tree. Despite their misgivings at having the cannibal bat traveling with them, the group allows Murk to travel with them. Shade eventually discovers the colony of dead bats that Griffin had just left, thus allowing him to know that his son is still alive. Goth eventually manages to catch up with Griffin, but discovers that Griffin is much stronger than he because Griffin is still alive. Griffin manages to fight off Goth and then flees with Luna, leaving Goth behind. Zotz taunts Goth for his failure and then tells him that Griffin's strength will decrease during his time in the Underworld, while Goth's strength will only increase. Zotz also tells Goth that Griffin is Shade's son, in order to give Goth extra incentive for killing Griffin. Griffin and Luna eventually enter a cavern, which contains an odd light. This light traps dead bats in the cavern by causing them to see their past lives. Griffin is unaffected by the light, presumably because he has not lost his life. Shade manages to catch up to Griffin but has a difficult time convincing his son that he is real, as Griffin believes that Shade is actually an illusion the light is creating. Shade eventually manages to convince Griffin that he is real; however as Shade begins to remove Luna from the cavern, he is attacked by Goth. Griffin manages to escape from the cavern with Luna. Shade is lost in a black river that flowed through the cavern while Goth's back is broken during the struggle. Griffin and Luna continue on their journey to the Tree with Shade's allies, while Shade manages to escape from the river. Unknown to Shade, Zotz heals Goth's wounds and carries him off to set a trap for Shade. Griffin and Luna discover another colony of dead bats that are aware that they are dead. A member of the colony named Dante explains that they have chosen to spend the rest of eternity contemplating philosophy rather than enter the Tree, of which they are wary as no bat who has entered the Tree has ever returned. Luna meanwhile has regained all of her memories of her old life and realizes that Griffin was responsible for her death. Luna angrily lashes out at Griffin and injures him, which shocks her out of her anger. Griffin forgives Luna for her assault and realizes that it has shown him that he does not want to die in the Underworld. The two then set off for the Tree again. Shade meanwhile is lured into a trap by Zotz and finds himself facing off against imprisoned. Realizing that he is no match for Goth in physical strength, Shade mutilates Goth's ears, effectively blinding Goth's echolocation and preventing him from locating Shade in the pitch black darkness. Zotz intervenes and tells Goth that his plans have now changed. Goth is to kill Griffin, take his life, and then return to the Upper World. He will be joined by Phoenix, the Vampyrum Spectrum bat who had been Goth's jailer during his time as a slave. Phoenix will return to the Upper World by taking Shade's life, whereupon she and Goth will restart the worship of Zotz on the Upperworld. Zotz disguises Goth as Shade in order to fool Griffin, and then dispatches him to kill Griffin. Zotz then tells Shade that he and Nocturna, the god of Shade's people, had once ruled the world equally, with Nocturna ruling over the living and Zotz ruling over the dead. However, many of the dead became unhappy with their lives; therefore Zotz asked Nocturna to allow him to merge their two kingdoms so that the dead could become happy again. Nocturna refused, as she believed that such an act would upset that natural balance of the world. Zotz thus killed Nocturna, whereupon her body transformed into the Tree, which Zotz cannot destroy. The Tree has provided the dead with an escape from Zotz' realm, which infuriates Zotz. During his story, Zotz informs Shade that the entire Underworld is built out of pictures created in the bats' minds by echoes. Shade uses this information to his advantage and uses his echo vision to bore a hole in the cathedral and allow himself to escape. Zotz attempts to stop Shade, but Shade realizes that Zotz cannot harm him as he is still alive and Zotz cannot harm the living. Shade also comes to realize that what he is facing is not the 'real' Zotz, but a construct made out of echoes similar to those that constitute the Underworld. Shade destroys the construct of Zotz and then frees his imprisoned allies, including Murk. Griffin and Luna reach the Tree and are about to enter it when Goth, disguised as Shade, reaches them. Griffin is fooled by the disguise and is killed by Goth, who devours Griffin's life and then enters the Tree just before Shade and his allies reach him. Shade apologizes to Griffin for failing to save him and then tells Griffin to stay where he is while Shade flies up into the sky. Whispering an apology to Marina, Shade then commits suicide by allowing himself to fall to the ground, which kills him and releases his own life force, which he wishes for Griffin to take. Both Griffin and Luna are able to absorb Shade's life force and return to life. Griffin apologizes to his father for all the trouble he has caused; Shade tells him not to blame himself and that he is proud of him. Shade, Griffin, Luna, and their allies all enter the Tree. Despite Griffin's efforts to hold on to his father, the two are separated and Griffin and Luna are returned to the Upper World. Meanwhile, the newly reborn Goth, under the directions of Zotz, discovers the ruins of the temple which was once used to worship Zotz. Goth also discovers a group of Vampyrum Spectrum, whom he begins to indoctrinate with the teachings of his god. Griffin and Luna return to Tree Haven and are met by Marina, who is overjoyed to see that Griffin is alive. Unbeknownst to them, Shade is also present, in an invisible and immaterial form, which allows him to experience the sensations of anything into which he passes. Content with his new existence, which Nocturna is suggested to share, Shade merges himself with Marina and Griffin, thus experiencing their joy at being reunited. |
My Name Is Legion | A. N. Wilson | null | At 16, Peter d'Abo is an elusive boy. He seldom stays at his mother's place, but his grandmother, Lily d'Abo, in whose flat he is supposed to live for the time being, does not see him regularly either. From time to time Peter visits Father Vivyan and on such occasions even serves as an altar boy. When, on the social worker's advice, his mother tells him that Lennox Mark is his natural father, Peter decides to get some money out of him his way. One night while Lennox Mark is not at home he poses as a delivery boy and gains entrance into the Marks' private home. However, he is overwhelmed by Martina Mark and her mother, who is also living there, and persuaded to stay and work for them as a servant. As the two women have his DNA and he does not want to be arrested, he accepts their offer. While he is on the streets of London, Peter d'Abo starts committing crimes. He steals a miniature recording device from the Marks' home; he steals Rachel Pearl's expensive watch when she comes to live at Crickleden; but he also turns violent, cutting off a man's testicles just because he was looking for a homosexual encounter; and pushing Kevin Currey in front of an underground train. Meanwhile Lennox Mark is planning General Bindiga's state visit in London—he has already arranged the details with the Prime Minister and convinced him that Bindiga is an honourable state leader—to coincide with his elevation to Lord Mark of Lower Pool. To suppress opposition to the state visit which might be headed by Father Vivyan, The Daily Legion launches a campaign against the priest, alleging that he has a history as a child molester and releasing a doctored version of a secretly recorded conversation between Peter d'Abo and Father Vivyan as evidence against the clergyman. Vivyan is suspended from the parish, his reputation as a 20th century saint is immediately destroyed, and ardent devotees such as Lily d'Abo, believing everything the papers say, are devastated. When she is approached by The Daily Legion, Lily d'Abo succumbs to the lure of money and signs an exclusive contract for £10,000, realizing only afterwards that in no way will she be able to help her grandson with the money. Unaware of how dangerous Peter d'Abo is, Rachel Pearl goes in search of the boy in an attempt to make him talk and clear Father Vivyan of the allegations. Following a hint from someone in the street, she walks to a nearby cemetery, finds Peter in an old mausoleum but is immediately taken captive by him. Several people have already been alerted to the fact that Peter d'Abo may have a hostage, and the place is surrounded by police. However, Father Vivyan is there first and shoots Peter between the eyes. Vivyan is fatally wounded by a bullet himself and brought to a monastery to die there. At about the same time—it is the day of General Bindiga's state visit—a bomb goes off in a posh London hotel killing Bindiga and injuring two of his women, while another device, planted in the offices of The Daily Legion, is defused before it can explode. Three months later, Lord Mark dies of a massive heart attack. |
Splinter of the Mind's Eye | Alan Dean Foster | 1,978 | Luke and Leia are traveling to Circarpous IV to persuade the Circarpousians to join the Rebel Alliance. A strange energy storm forces them to crash land on the swampy planet Mimban. Luke, after finding Leia, begins looking for a station that would allow them to get off the planet but instead find a town near which agents of the Empire have a secret energy mine. Forced to keep their identities secret, Luke admonishes Leia to follow his lead, and in a nearby bar where they take refuge, claims she is his servant girl. An old woman named Halla approaches them; while revealing little of her own background, she identifies Luke as one who is strong with the Force and shows him a splinter of what she claims to be the Kaiburr crystal, a glowing crystal that magnifies and focuses the Force. Halla strikes a deal with Luke and Leia that if they help her find it, she will help them get off the planet. They leave together. Upon emerging, Leia retorts that Luke ought not to have struck her; the two squabble as some miners emerge from the bar. The miners claim that fighting in public is against Imperial law here, and they all get into a brawl. Imperial stormtroopers intervene and take Luke, Leia and the miners to the local jail. They are questioned by Captain-Supervisor Grammel. The miners are taken away while Grammel continues questioning Luke and Leia. Grammel discovers and confiscates the crystal shard, along with Luke's weapons. Luke and Leia are placed in the maximum security cell with two drunken but friendly Yuzzem--hairy aboriginal creatures resembling squat Sasquatch--called Hin and Kee, while Grammel reports the incident and the crystal shard to Governor Bin Essada, in charge of the group of star systems including Circarpous. Halla, with Luke's help, uses the Force to help rescue Luke, Leia and the two Yuzzem; the two Yuzzem rampage through the jail barracks, while Luke and Leia escape, and the four meet Halla to find the Temple of Pomojema, which Halla believes to be the location of the Kaiburr crystal. They travel through the swampy wilds of Mimban, during which travel they encounter a wandrella, a huge worm-like creature. The wandrella pursues them, forcing them to leave the transport and splitting Luke and Leia apart from Halla, the droids and the Yuzzem. Luke and Leia hide in a deep well, down which the wandrella falls, leaving the two trapped in the well as it destroys their escape path; Halla mentions from the lip of the well that there must be an escape route, and Luke and Leia go in search of it, though their travels involve floating across a lake on lily pads, and fending off creatures of the deep with Luke's light saber. On the other side of the lake, they encounter the secretive residents of the caves, Coway guards/patrols. They kill all but one of the Coway; the survivor escapes and tells his Coway tribe about the visitors. Luke and Leia follow the single Coway to the tribe, where they find Halla's group being held as prisoners. To save his friends, Luke defeats the Coway's champion fighter. The Coway become his friends, but Luke senses Darth Vader. Coway patrols confirm Luke's feeling: Imperials, led by Darth Vader and Captain-Supervisor Grammel, are attacking the underground cave. When the Imperials arrive, they are surprised by the Coway tribe's powerful response and face a debacle. Vader and Grammel retreat with the handful of surviving stormtroopers, though Vader loses patience with Grammel for the defeat and kills him. Luke and company steal an Imperial transport left behind, and begin travelling to the Temple themselves. They beat Vader to the temple and find the Kaiburr crystal. They encounter a monster, and unsuccessfully try to fight it off with blasters. Luke tells Hin and Kee to get some rifles. Luke cuts down one of the pillars holding up the temple, crushing the monsters. Luke's leg is pinned under a fallen boulder. Darth Vader then enters the Temple of Pomojema, announcing that he killed Hin and Kee. Leia takes up Luke's lightsaber and begins fighting Darth Vader, but he toys with her, giving her multiple superficial burns with his own saber. Hin, mortally wounded, shows up and in his dying act, lifts the big rock off of Luke's leg. Luke fights Vader, showing more skill than expected, deflecting some Force-based attacks and eventually slicing off Vader's arm. Despite this, the Sith Lord seems about to win, but then falls into a pit. Luke senses that Vader is still alive. As the story ends, Leia and Luke, healed by the crystal, drive off with Halla into the mists of Mimban. |
The Living Corpse | Leo Tolstoy | 1,911 | The central character of the play, Fedor Protasov, is tormented by the belief that his wife Liza has never really chosen between him and the more conventional Victor Karenin, a rival for her hand. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't have the nerve. Running away from his life, he first falls in with Gypsies, and into a sexual relationship with a Gypsy singer, Masha. However, facing Masha's parents' disapproval, he runs away from this life as well. Again he wants to kill himself, but lacks the nerve; again, his descent continues. Meanwhile, his wife, presuming him dead, has married the other man. When Protasov is discovered, she is charged with bigamy, accused of arranging her husband's disappearance. He shows up in court to testify that she had no way of knowing that he was alive; when the judge rules that his wife must either give up her new husband or be exiled to Siberia, Protasov shoots himself. Hysterically, his wife declares that it is Protasov whom she always loved. |
The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle | 1,969 | A green baby caterpillar hatches from an egg, and from birth he experiences a humongous and perpetual craving for food. He consumes enormous quantities of multiple different types of foods until inadvertently nauseating itself, so he spins a cocoon in which he remains for the following two weeks. Later, the caterpillar emerges as a bright, colorful butterfly with big gorgeous multi-colored wings. |
Queen of the Demonweb Pits | null | null | At the conclusion of Vault of the Drow, the characters find an astral gate leading to the Abyssal realm of Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders, goddess of the drow elves and architect of the sinister plot described in the series involving hill giants, frost giants, fire giants, kuo-toa, drow, and other creatures. Her realm, the 66th layer of the Abyss, is referred to as the Demonweb Pits. The player characters are transported to another plane and cast into the labyrinth known as the Demonweb. In order to return home, the characters must find their way out of the web and then defeat the evil demigoddess Lolth in her lair. The Q1 module was the first to offer a glimpse into the Abyss itself, home to the D&D race of Demons. It features a map of the maze-like Demonweb Pits, a series of interweaving passageways constructed in a maelstrom of lost souls in the abyssal plane. Characters who venture off the path are most likely lost. Many spells work differently or not at all. In the maze, there are a number of portals to other worlds, some where Lolth is sending minions to try and invade, such as a winter world and a world of permanent night. This makes Queen of the Demonweb Pits an unusually open-ended adventure, as each "portal" could potentially lead to a massive area, from which the dungeon master could, if he or she chose, launch an entirely new campaign. As the adventure progresses, the player characters make their way through Lolth's webs, where they are confronted by her minions, slaves, guards, and captives. Here lies a gargantuan mechanical spider, which Lolth can manipulate. The dungeon also introduced Lolth's handmaidens, the demonic Yochlol. |
Terminal | Robin Cook | 1,993 | The novel centers around the investigation of a medical student named Sean into a mysterious cancer called medulloblastoma and the secret behind the hundred percent remission treatment offered by a medical institute called Forbes Cancer Centre. In his investigation, Sean learns that the institute is responsible for the creation of the cancer. The secret behind their offering of 100% remission of the disease is that the creators had also invented an antibody to the disease. The institute procured Social Security numbers and other identifying details of wealthy people and their dependents, and as opportunities arose from those people undergoing surgeries or being on IV therapy, they were infected with the transformed St. Louis encephalitis virus. Because the virus was encephalotropic, it manifested with early neural symptoms in the infected patients, in the form of seizures and convulsions. The infected people, once they were completely cured of the disease, were usually willing to donate large sums to the Forbes. This book heavily deals with the controversial issues of the time. hu:Haláltusa (regény) nl:Terminaal (boek) |
Seize the Day | Saul Bellow | 1,956 | The story centers around a day in the life of Wilhelm Adler (aka Tommy Wilhelm), a failed actor in his forties. Wilhelm is unemployed, impecunious, separated from his wife (who refuses to agree to a divorce), and estranged from his children and his father. He is also stuck with the same immaturity and lack of insight which has brought him to failure. In Seize the Day Wilhelm experiences a day of reckoning as he is forced to examine his life and to finally accept the "burden of self". it:La resa dei conti (Saul Bellow) he:תפוס את היום |
Summer Sisters | Judy Blume | 1,998 | The novel begins with a phone call from Caitlin to Vix. Caitlin calls to tell Vix that she is marrying Vix's ex-boyfriend and first love, Bru. Vix is shocked and becomes sick with the news. Flashback: Now the reader learns of Vix's family and first encounter with Caitlin. Vix's home life consists of her controlling mother, Tawny, an average-joe father, and three younger siblings, Lanie, Lewis, and Vix's favorite: her wheelchair-using brother Nathan. Tawny works for a Countess and is always making Vix feel as though she is not good enough. Then Vix meets Caitlin in her sixth grade class, and Caitlin invites Vix to come to Martha's Vineyard with her for the summer. This is when Vix's whole world is turned upside down. After much debate, Vix convinces Tawny and her father to let her go with Caitlin. Vix flies out East from her New Mexico homestead and meets Caitlin's family: her laid-back father, Lambert "Lamb" Somers, her brother "Sharkey", and Trisha, an ex-girlfriend of Lamb's who is still close with him but has recently been replaced by Abby, a woman who means well but whom Caitlin dislikes. Abby's son, Daniel, and his friend, Gus, also vacation with Caitlin's family. This section of the book focuses on the mishaps and adventures that the kids go through, including Vix and Caitlin and their crushes on two older boys, Joseph "Bru" Brudegher and his cousin, Von. When the summer ends, Caitlin and Vix remain friends and continue to attend school together. They make it a tradition for Vix to spend every summer with Caitlin from then on, hence the "Summer Sisters." Eventually, Vix hooks up with Bru and Caitlin with Von. Then Vix makes out with Von while high. She thinks that Caitlin set up the whole scenario and they get into a huge argument. Just prior to her senior year of high school, Vix's beloved brother Nathan succumbs to his physical disabilities and dies as a result, leaving Vix devastated. Vix's younger sister, Lanie, becomes pregnant and has her first child, and Lewis joins the military. As the girls mature, they encounter their first heterosexual experiences (Caitlin with an Italian ski-instructor, then Von, supposedly) and Vix's in-depth and long-term relationship with Bru, which continues into her college years when she attends Harvard on a scholarship from The Somers Foundation. Caitlin is accepted to Wellesley College but chooses not to attend and travels abroad. Vix goes to Harvard while still remaining in a relationship with Bru. She makes new friends, most notably Maia, her uptight roommate whose worrisome ways begin to grow on Vix, but they become close. However, things turn sour when Vix realizes she doesn't know what she wants in life and she and Bru temporarily break up during her Junior year of college. A few months later, a passionate meeting leads to their renewed faithfulness, but all's well does not end well. Just before graduation, Bru asks Vix to marry him, but she says no after realizing that they do not want the same things in life. Vix misses Bru, but moves on and casually dates other people, whilst Caitlin has numerous hetero and homosexual escapades in Europe. The girls keep in loose contact over the years, each becoming busy with her own life until the fateful day when Caitlin makes that phone call and tells Vix about her upcoming nuptials to Bru. Caitlin invites Vix to the wedding, and she decides to go, only to end up sleeping with Bru the night before. Then, Vix discovers that Bru took not only her virginity but Caitlin's as well. As Bru thinks in the book, "he loves them both... he is glad they have decided for him [who he will be with.]" Caitlin and Bru get married nonetheless, and Caitlin has a daughter, Somers Mayhew Brudegher, whom they call "Maizie". Vix, meanwhile, reconnects with Abby's son Daniel's friend Gus, whom she spent all those summers with years ago at the vineyard. She and Gus slowly fall in love and eventually get married as well. In the final chapters, Vix visits Caitlin again after Caitlin has a breakdown and leaves her family, her marriage to Bru ending in divorce and Bru marrying Star, a local islander. Vix is pregnant with her first child at this time, a baby boy to be named Nate in honor of her late brother. Caitlin and Vix's meeting is relaxed and the two end up pledging to be best friends forever with each one truly grateful for the other's presence in her life. In the end, Vix is enjoying married life and motherhood when she and everyone else learn that Caitlin disappears in an alleged boating accident... she was in a boat by herself and that was the last time anyone ever saw her, as the boat turned up empty with Caitlin unaccounted for. Blume is not clear on the true reasons behind Caitlin's disappearance, as no body is discovered and there is no damage or foul play, leading the reader to choose between the possibilities that Caitlin purposely vanished from her family and friends or perhaps she did indeed drown. The closing thought is Vix's recount of her "summer sister" and the memories they will always share, and wishing that things could have ended differently. |
End Zone | Don DeLillo | 1,972 | Gary spends time playing football, picnicking with a girl named Myna, and contemplating nuclear warfare. Its meditative but ultimately playful nature, spry dialogue, and deep but mostly unconnected themes make End Zone perhaps the most easily accessible of DeLillo's early works. The metaphor of football as warfare is challenged in the line "warfare is warfare." |
Mike Nelson's Death Rat! | null | null | Death Rat! is primarily a satire, with its main subject being the state of Minnesota, where Nelson lives. Among his targets Nelson includes parodies of famous Minnesota residents like Prince and Garrison Keillor, as well as the attitudes and quirks of Minnesotans in general. The protagonist of Mike Nelson's Death Rat! is Pontius Feeb, usually called Ponty, an author of many historical treatises who has just been fired. While working in a fast food restaurant he gets the idea to write a novel of historical fiction based in the small town of Holey, Minnesota. Feeb's novel revolves around the conflict between two citizens of Holey in the early 1900s, as well as a giant rodent from which the novel gets its name. However, when he tries to sell the novel to a publisher, he is told that he doesn't look right to be the author of an action novel. Feeb then enlists the help of local actor Jack Ryback to pretend he wrote the book and attempt to sell it. Jack sells the novel easily, but tells the publisher that it is a non-fiction book, instead of a novel. Jack and Pontius then work with the citizens of Holey to attempt to cover up the book's fictional nature. During their many visits to Holey, Ponty becomes friendly with the town's female mayor. As Feeb's Death Rat grows in popularity, the cover-up becomes harder and harder to maintain, as the rock star "King Leo" adopts the book as the scripture of a new religion, and sets up a revival in Holey. Meanwhile, a rival Minnesotan author is trying desperately to discredit Jack and "his" book. In the end the plot is revealed, And after a flurry of lawsuits and media attention Jack and Pontius go back to doing minimum-wage work in St. Paul. In the end, Ponty decides to go live in Holey with the friends that he made there. |
The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey | Patrick O'Brian | 2,004 | The story begins with Surprise in the Strait of Magellan, caught up in foul weather. Hanson first spots Cape Pilar at the very opening of the Strait, and soon Surprise moors and conducts some trade with the inhospitable locals for meat and vegetables. Having re-provisioned, she and Ringle sail northwards in fine weather until they enter the River Plate and moor close to the island functioning as the main administrative centre. A quarantine officer comes aboard, a Dr Quental, and gives the frigate a clean bill of health. Wantage informs Maturin of a rumpus in the town: a fight between Protestant mariners from a Boston barque clash with the Catholic locals over the right of polygamy. Further signs of local resentment emerge when a large scow dumps the town's filth next to the frigate and the Portuguese sailors shout abuse at the Surprises. Aubrey spots a black Legate and recognises him as his own natural son, Sam. The Most Reverend Doctor Samuel Mputa, the Papal Nuncio to the Republic of Argentina, has recently saved the government from an open rebellion. The South African squadron, under its Commander-in-Chief Admiral Lord Leyton, finally makes its appearance and the crew of Surprise bring their ship up to a high state of perfection. Jack makes his appearance on board HMS Suffolk and sees his rear-admiral's blue flag hoisted on the flagship. He then has an interview with the somewhat cantankerous Admiral, who instructs him to ask Stephen if two of his officers can sail on Surprise (now a private vessel once more) back to England. While the fleet re-provisions, Ringle sails off under the steady and capable Lieutenant Harding, and later returns with Sophie Aubrey, Christine Wood, her brother Edward and the three children (Brigid Maturin and Fanny and Charlotte Aubrey) who will sail on with Jack and Stephen to South Africa. The final chapters end with an Admiral's dinner before which Stephen and Jack meet Captain Miller, Leyton's nephew and Jack's neighbour at Caxley. Miller, who has a reputation as a ladies' man and as an excellent shot — nicknamed Hair-Trigger Miller — has been paying court to Christine Wood. The Admiral asks Aubrey if he can take Miller on board with him to take up a new position in Cape Town. In the last few handwritten pages that follow the end of the typescript, as the South Africa squadron makes its way to St Helena, Mrs Wood asks Stephen to prevent Randolph Miller's unwanted attentions. In doing so, Stephen also calls Miller out for naming him a liar. Miller insists on pistols but Maturin insists on his right, as the aggrieved party, to name the weapons; thus they fight with swords, which puts Miller at a disadvantage. The duel takes place: after three or four thrusts Stephen disarms Miller and demands an apology, which Miller gives him. |
Mrs. Warren's Profession | George Bernard Shaw | null | The story centers on the relationship between Mrs Kitty Warren, a brothel owner, described by the author as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman" and her daughter, Vivie. The play also focuses on Mrs. Warren's handsome young friends Mr. Praed and George Crofts, and the local reverend, Samuel Gardner, who becomes the catalyst of the play by revealing Mrs. Warren's profession. The play focuses on the social hypocrisy and relationships of the characters, who are all middle class other than Sir George Crofts. Vivie Warren is a modern and highly educated lady of the late Victorian period, distinguishing herself at the Acturial Mathematics Tripos at the university. Vivie, Mrs. Warren's (the name was adopted by Mrs. Warren to hide her true identity and to give the impression that she is married) daughter, meets Praed, her mother's friend and through their conversation it is revealed that Mrs. Warren and Vivie do not have a close relationship. Within the same Act Mrs Warren returns to her home after time away bringing with her two friends, Mr. Praed, an architect, and George Crofts, a man close to Mrs. Warren's old profession and sexual relations. Both are bachelors. Vivie is shown to have a romantic relationship with Frank Gardner, whose father, the Reverend Samuel Gardner also joins into the group. His fleeting mention of Mrs. Warren's past and and their reactions to meeting each other make it clear that he was familiar with her when she was a prostitute, even though it is not explicitly said. Mrs. Warren explains her impoverished past and decision to be a prostitute at last to her daughter, but hides the fact that she is still in the business. Vivie, is horrified to discover from Crofts (who is attracted to her despite being old enough to be her father) that her mother's fortune was made managing high-class brothels. The reconciliation of Mrs. Warren and Vivie ends at this point as Vivie flees from these revelations to Honoria Fraser's chambers to become independent of her mother's wealth, which provided for her before. At a last confrontation when Praed and Frank are finally knowledegable of the truth and when there is a last appeal and calculative manipulation by Mrs. Warren, the play ends with Mrs. Warren deciding to leave her daughter. |
Confessions of a Crap Artist | Philip K. Dick | 1,975 | The novel’s protagonist, the “crap artist” of the title, is Jack Isidore, a socially awkward tire regroover obsessed with amateur scientific inquiry since his teens. He catalogs old science magazines, collects worthless objects, and believes disproved theories, such as the notions that the Earth is hollow or that sunlight has weight. Broke, Jack eventually moves in with his sister’s family in a luxurious farm house in suburban California. On the farm, Jack happily does housework and cares for livestock. He also joins a small apocalyptic religious group, which shares his belief in extra-sensory perception, telepathy and UFOs and believes the world will end on April 23, 1959. However, most of his time is dedicated to a meticulous “scientific journal” of life on the farm, including his sister’s marital difficulties. Jack’s sister, Fay Hume, is a difficult and subtly controlling woman who makes miserable everyone close to her, especially her misogynist husband Charley. Fay has an extramarital affair with a young grad student named Nat Anteil while Charley is in a hospital recovering from a heart attack. After Jack reports this to Charley, the latter plots to kill Fay. Charley kills Fay's animals and then commits suicide, realising that Fay has led him to do this. However, his will stipulates that Jack will inherit half the house, and Fay must buy her brother out, although Jack has used his half of the money to replace the slaughtered animals. Nat and his wife Gwen divorce, and Nat decides to stay with Fay. When the end of the world doesn't occur on the predicted date, Jack decides to seek psychiatric assistance. |
Join My Cult | James Curcio | 2,004 | Many have likened Join My Cult!s non-linear or cut-up style to Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, and Robert Anton Wilson. Also like the works of these authors, there have been heated debates about its cultural value or lack thereof. Various plot elements focus on groups of suburban kids experimenting with shamanism and hallucinogens, who quickly discover themselves unhinged from the culture around them. It details events surrounding their harrowing plunge into this abyss, regularly shifting narrator and frame of reference from one member of the group to the other. Curcio utilizes atypical narrative and grammatical structures in the form of neurolinguistic and hypnotic confusion techniques within the text in an effort to stimulate a similar experience over the course of reading. That Curcio was intentionally utilizing these techniques is shown in various interviews such as a Gpod radio interview found on his website. |
The Virginian | Owen Wister | 1,902 | The novel begins with an unnamed narrator's arrival in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, from back East and his encounter with an impressively tall and handsome stranger who proves adept at roping horses, teasing a friend who is off to be married, and facing down a fellow gambler, Trampas, with a pistol and a gently threatening, "When you call me that, smile!" This stranger, known only as the Virginian, turns out to be the narrator's guide to Judge Henry's ranch in Sunk Creek, Wyoming. As the two travel the 283 miles to the ranch, the narrator, later nicknamed the "tenderfoot" and the Virginian begin to come to know one another as the Tenderfoot slowly begins to understand the nature of life in the West, which is very different from what he expected. This meeting is the beginning of what becomes a deep lifelong friendship and the starting point of the narrator's recounting of key episodes in the life of the Virginian. From that point onward, the novel revolves around the Virginian and the life he lives. As well as describing the Virginian's conflict with his enemy, Trampas, and his romance with the pretty schoolteacher, Molly Stark Wood, Wister weaves a tale of action, violence, hate, revenge, love and friendship. In one scene, the Virginian must participate in the hanging of an admitted cattle thief, who had been his close friend. The hanging is represented as a necessary response to the government's corruption and lack of action, but the Virginian feels it to be a horrible duty. He is especially stricken by the bravery with which the thief faces his fate, and the heavy burden that the act places on his heart forms the emotional core of the story. A fatal shootout resolves the ongoing conflict with Trampas, after five years of hate. The Virginian shoots Trampas in a gun battle and leaves to marry his young bride. The Virginian and Molly ride off together to spend a month in the mountains and then journey back East to Maine to meet her family. They were received a bit stiffly by the immediate Wood family, but warmly by Molly's great-aunt. The new couple return to Wyoming and the Virginian is made a partner of Judge Henry's ranch. The book ends noting that the Virginian became an important man in the territory with a happy family. |
Queer | William S. Burroughs | 1,985 | The novel begins with the introduction of "Lee," who recounts his life in Mexico City among an American expatriate college students and bar owners surviving on part-time jobs and GI Bill benefits. The novel is written in the third-person and Burroughs commented in the "Introduction" published in 1985, that it represents him off heroin, whereas in Junkie, his narrator was psychologically "protected" by his addiction. Lee is self-conscious, insecure, and driven to pursue a young man named Allerton, who is based on Adelbert Lewis Marker (1930-1998), a recently discharged American Navy serviceman from Jacksonville, Florida who befriended Burroughs in Mexico City. |
Lunar Park | Bret Easton Ellis | 2,005 | The novel begins with an inflated and parodic but reasonably accurate portrayal of Ellis' early fame. It details incidents of his wild drug use and his publicly humiliating book tours to promote Glamorama. The novel dissolves into fiction as Ellis describes a liaison with an actress named Jayne Dennis, whom he later marries, and with whom he conceives an (initially) illegitimate child. From this point the fictional Ellis' life reflects the real Ellis' only in some descriptions of the past and possibly in his general sentiments. Ellis and Jayne move to fictional Midland, an affluent suburban town outside New York City, which they no longer consider safe due to pervasive terrorist acts in a post-9/11 America. Fictional incidents include suicide bombings in Wal-Marts and a dirty bomb detonated in Florida. Strange incidents start happening on a Halloween night, some involving Sarah's (Ellis' fictional stepdaughter) Terby doll. As the novel progresses, the haunting of Ellis' McMansion and questions over the death of his father become increasingly prominent. With his history of drug use and alcoholism, his wife, children, and housekeeper are understandably skeptical of his claims that the house is haunted. |
War and Remembrance | Herman Wouk | 1,978 | War and Remembrance completes the cycle that began with The Winds of War. The story includes historical occurrences at Midway, Yalta, Guadalcanal, and El Alamein as well as the Allied invasions at Normandy and the Philippines. The action moves back and forth between the characters against the backdrop of World War II: Victor (Pug) Henry takes part in various battles while separating from his wife. Pug's older son Warren, a naval aviator, and younger son, Byron, a submarine officer, also participate in combat. Warren is killed at the battle of Midway. Byron's wife Natalie is trapped in Axis territory with her uncle, celebrated author Aaron Jastrow, and another major strand focuses on their story as Jews caught in Europe. Like most Americans, Natalie and Aaron fail to believe that the civilized German culture with which they are familiar could possibly engage in genocide. As a result of their rash decision to stay when they could escape, they gradually get absorbed into the Jewish population that is first interned, then sent to concentration camps. As Byron attempts to find out what is happening to them, eventually tracking them down amidst the chaos of wartime Europe, the story of the Holocaust is gradually revealed to the American government and people. * Victor Henry — the main protagonist, becomes captain of the heavy cruiser USS Northampton after his prospective command, the battleship USS California, is sunk at Pearl Harbor. He commands the ship until late 1942, when at the Battle of Tassafaronga the cruiser is sunk by Japanese long-range torpedoes. Henry is not faulted for the loss of his ship, but instead of receiving another naval command at once, is sent back to the Soviet Union to observe the effects of Lend-Lease; he observes the Siege of Leningrad and the privation of the Soviet home front. From there, he is used by Harry Hopkins as an observer. In the novel, he assists in the Tehran Conference of 1943, and then serves as a troubleshooter for landing craft production. In this capacity, he travels to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and is forced to work with Colonel Harrison (Hack) Peters, his rival for Rhoda's love. :Henry obtains a promotion to rear admiral in early 1944. During this period, Rhoda obtains a divorce and Henry is able to marry Pamela. He does not do so until after he takes part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf as a battle force division commander under Admiral William Halsey, whose flag is in USS Iowa. The novel goes into this battle in greater detail than does the miniseries, including discussion of the most commonly perceived of Halsey's operational mistakes. :Victor marries Pamela in April 1945. Upon the death of President Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman makes him his naval aide. :Victor is a straightforward, honest man, which gains him the respect of political leaders such as Roosevelt and Hopkins, and the admiration of Hack Peters. :The novel notes that Henry retired from the Navy and lived in Oakton, Virginia (near Washington) after the war. He spent part of his retirement translating Armin von Roon's book, and from his notations and commentary, he can be deduced to still be alive as of 1973. * Rhoda Henry — The war, and their time apart, puts a strain on Victor Henry's marriage to Rhoda. She ends her relationship with Palmer Kirby, only to fall in love with Harrison "Hack" Peters, an army colonel. Both the novel and the miniseries show her drinking problem getting worse. * Warren Henry — Victor's son continues to serve as a naval pilot until his death on the last day of the Battle of Midway. He scored a hit on one of the Japanese carriers in the first day of the battle and his rear gunman damaged one Zero. His death affects the Henrys deeply. Victor's thoughts parallel the lament of King David for his son, Absalom. * Byron Henry — Byron starts the war as an officer on the fictional USS Devilfish. When the captain, Branch Hoban, breaks down under the strain of an attack, the executive officer, Carter "Lady" Aster takes over and leads the attack. Aster becomes commander of the ship, with Byron his executive officer. While on leave in Hawaii, Byron is aware that Janice, his brother's widow, is acting strangely. He does not know that she is having an affair with Aster. :Byron wants to see Natalie; when possible, he wangles duty in the European theater. He serves as a courier to the U.S. mission to Vichy France and tries to get Natalie to leave with him. She refuses on the grounds that while they could cross Poland in a war in 1939, they didn't have Louis. Byron and Natalie agree that Natalie and Louis and Aaron should wait to get a passport from the US consulate in Marseilles while Byron travels direct to Lisbon and book a room. Byron arrives in Portugal just as Operation Torch begins, and the plan has to be scrapped. :Byron returns to the Pacific theater and rejoins Aster on the fictional USS Moray. Aster is severely wounded while on deck during an air attack and to save the ship, orders Byron to submerge without him. (This event did occur to Commander Howard W. Gilmore of the USS Growler (SS-215) on February 7, 1943. Gilmore was awarded the Medal of Honor). Byron is later awarded command of the USS Barracuda. :As a Naval Reservist, Byron feels mixed about his role in the war. He is competent, but doesn't enjoy fighting. However, in one engagement, he is forced to surface and fight a battle against a Japanese destroyer. When told he will win the Navy Cross, he replies, "Killing Japs gave Carter Aster a thrill. It leaves me cold." :Shortly before the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Byron visits his father aboard his flagship. The meeting is strained, because Byron blames Pamela for the breakup of his father's marriage. Later, his sister, Madeline, straightens him out about the causes of the breakup; he and his father become reconciled. :In April 1945, Natalie is found in Weimar, Germany. Byron presses the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, for an assignment in Europe so he might be reunited with his wife. He is assigned to investigate the technical details of captured German U-boats and leaves for Europe to join his wife, now recovering in a hospital, and to find his son, Louis. After a long search throughout Europe, Byron reunites with Louis, who was in an orphanage, only to find Louis is so traumatized he will not talk. However, when he reunites Louis with Natalie, Louis begins to sing with her. This occurs on August 6, 1945, the date of the first use of the atom bomb in warfare. * Janice Henry — The wife of Warren Henry. After the death of Aster she disappears from the miniseries; in the book she is given a few sentences more. Janice ends up with a politician. * Madeline Henry — Victor and Rhoda Henry's daughter; wife of Simon Anderson. * Aaron Jastrow — Aaron Jastrow is an American professor who expatriated to Siena, Italy before the war. Because he, his niece Natalie, and Natalie's son Louis are Jewish, the Italian government will not give them visas while making paper-thin excuses. Still, it appears safe for the three at Jastrow's villa, so they are unwilling to try the illegal and perilous sea voyage to Palestine. Then Jastrow meets a former student, Werner Beck, now in the German diplomatic corps. Beck initially pretends sympathy and friendliness so he can solicit Jastrow in broadcasting Axis propaganda. After he refuses, Beck makes veiled threats, so Jastrow, Natalie and her son escape to Vichy France. But after the Allied landings in Africa in November 1942, Germany occupies Vichy and closes the borders. Natalie, Louis and other trapped Americans are sent by the Vichy government to a purported diplomatic exchange camp in Baden Baden, Germany. As more excuses are made for their detainment, Jastrow is tricked into staying behind, and the three are sent to Theresienstadt. Adolf Eichmann has Jastrow savagely beaten after he refuses to join the Council of Elders. Jastrow acquiesces and takes a major role in the beautification, a Potemkin village to convince the Danish Red Cross that conditions are excellent in the "Paradise Camp." When his usefulness is ended, he is sent to Auschwitz. The Council members thought that as "prominents" they would be spared, but all were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Jastrow's body was cremated with millions of other Jews, but despite the degradation of his body, his soul was rekindled with what it means to be a Jew. He leaves behind a diary, A Jew's Journey, which is quoted throughout the book. * Berel Jastrow — Berel, Aaron's cousin, is captured with the Red Army in 1941 and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner of war. He is transferred to a work kommando led by a Jew named Sammy Mutterperl, who is planning to escape with evidence of the murder of the Jews at Auschwitz. The kommando's task is to cover up the early massacres of Jews, and to insure that Germany benefits from any items of value the victims were carrying during the early, "crude" killings. This involves digging up the corpses, searching them, then burning all traces of the bodies. After the horrors of endless exhuming of the dead, and cremating the half-decayed corpses Sammy goes wild, grabs a weapon and kills five German guards, before the remaining guards kill him. Berel, shortly after, escapes and joins the Czech underground in Prague. He slips into Theresienstadt when he learns that his cousin Aaron and his niece Natalie are there, and later enables Louis Henry to escape. At the end of the book, there is a suggestion that he is killed while coming to retrieve Louis Henry from the Czech farmer he originally hid him with. Berel is the moral center of War and Remembrance. He bears witness to the worst acts of the Nazis, while still managing to maintain his deep Jewish faith and his love for his fellow men. * Natalie Jastrow Henry — along with her son and uncle, travel through various routes across Europe, trying to get home while evading the German government. She refuses a chance to escape with Byron to Lisbon (if caught she and Louis would be sent immediately to a concentration camp), then ends up in Theresienstadt. She becomes a member of the Zionist underground, and only when threatened with the murder of Louis does she agree to take part in a beautification for the benefit of Red Cross inspectors. Another uncle, Berel Jastrow, enables Louis to get out of the ghetto. Natalie is sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in the same transport as her uncle, but survives and is sent to recover in a U.S. military hospital. She and Byron reunite, and Byron then locates Louis and brings him to Natalie as the book ends. Having an American with American sensibilities first try to escape from Nazi-dominated Europe, and then to experience the worst of the Nazi charades and horrors, is a very effective way for Wouk to bring home to a modern audience just what the war against the Nazis was all about, and the terrible plight of those the Nazis hunted down and exterminated. (Natalie's name is a play on characters. In Russian, she would be Natasha [diminutive of Natalia] Yastrova: i.e., Natasha Rostova, the heroine of Tolstoy's War and Peace). * Leslie Slote — At the beginning of the war, Slote is attached to the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland. He receives a photographed copy of the Protocol for the Wannsee Conference from a German opponent of Hitler. Slote devotes himself to trying to prove to the American government what the Nazis are doing to the Jews but his superiors refuse to believe it, both on logistics and the idea any civilization could do something so monstrous. When the State Department proves to be apathetic, he resigns and becomes a member of the OSS Jedburgh paratroopers. He parachutes into France to help the resistance, and is killed in an ambush. * Hugh Cleveland — Popular radio personality. Madeline Henry has become his personal assistant and, more recently, his lover by the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. He disappears from the novel and the miniseries shortly after the Battle of Midway, Madeline finally leaving him when she becomes convinced he will never divorce his wife. He also shows a pro-Soviet bias in the book and the miniseries which he did not in the first book or the first miniseries. * Armin von Roon — The fictional Brigadier General Armin von Roon serves as a member of the German OKW, in direct contact with the Fuehrer, and seeing the gradual deterioration of Hitler as the war goes worse for Germany. Von Roon flies from Berchtesgaden to Normandy to observe the German reaction to the Normandy invasion, but finds that Hitler rejects his observations. Von Roon is wounded in the July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler; he walks with a cane for the remainder of the miniseries. Von Roon's character is sent on various fact-finding missions in the novels, and his memoirs serve as a useful dramatic device to explain facts to the reader. :In April 1945, von Roon is assigned the role of operations officer for the defense of the Zitadelle in the Battle of Berlin. Toward the end of the battle, he is ordered by Hitler to assist and oversee Albert Speer in a demolition effort intended as a scorched earth policy to destroy Berlin, leaving nothing for its conquerors. Both men, however, are unwilling to carry out the order, because of the effect it would have on future Germans. Speer eventually confesses that he disobeyed. Speer is pardoned for his earlier services, while von Roon is forgiven because he has been nothing but loyal. In the end von Roon has the duty to inform Adolf Hitler that the Zitadelle can hold only 24 hours more (in real life, von Roon's commander, General Krebs, did this); and he is a witness to Hitler's farewell, suicide, and cremation. :Von Roon is sentenced to 21 years in prison for war crimes (presumably by the Nuremberg tribunal) and writes Land, Sea, and Air Operations in World War II, which is translated (by Victor Henry) as World Holocaust. Von Roon presents the German viewpoint on events; Henry, as translator, provides a rebuttal when required. * Harrison "Hack" Peters — Peters, a colonel in the Army, meets Rhoda Henry and falls in love with her. His work on the Manhattan Project coincidentally forces him to work with Victor Henry, who is vigorously pursuing the specialized parts needed to build landing craft for the assault on hostile beaches in Africa, Italy and France. Since Victor is aware of Peters' romance with Rhoda, it is a very strained relationship. Peters marries Rhoda in late 1944. * Simon "Sime" Anderson — Anderson, a naval lieutenant, works on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and marries Madeline Henry. * Alistair Talcott "Talky" Tudsbury — Tudsbury is in Singapore when the Pacific war breaks out. He speaks about the possibility of the island falling in a subversive BBC broadcast, then leaves on the last boat. Tudsbury is killed by a landmine in the aftermath of the Battle of El Alamein. A fictional correspondent's report, Sunset at Kidney Ridge, reflects on the decline of the British Empire; it serves roughly as the emotional midpoint of the book. * Pamela Tudsbury — serves as assistant to "Talky" Tudsbury (her father) until his death, then finishes his final report afterwards. She is engaged to two men (RAF pilot Ted Gallard and Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke) during the war, but loves Victor Henry throughout and pursues him. Near the end of the war, they marry. * Phil Rule — a dissolute British journalist, a former flame of Pamela Tudsbury. His main contribution is to provide a sarcastic commentary on the decline of the British Empire. * Air Vice-Marshal Lord Duncan Burne-Wilke — A career RAF officer, he becomes engaged to Pamela Tudsbury in 1942. He dies of pneumonia soon after she breaks off the engagement in 1944. * Commander Jim Grigg — Pug's executive officer on the cruiser Northampton. * Adolf Hitler — As a speaking character, Hitler appears in the miniseries in a more prominent role than the novel. * Erwin Rommel — Again, because of the requirements of television, Rommel plays a more prominent speaking role in the miniseries than in the novel. The story of Rommel's death becomes a dramatic element in the miniseries. * Claus von Stauffenberg — The plot against Hitler, including von Stauffenberg's placing of a bomb, is more prominent in the miniseries than in the book, because of the visual drama. * Adolf Eichmann — Eichmann appears in two sections of the novel and miniseries. In both cases, life for the Jastrows becomes worse. In the first, he orders Dr. Werner Beck, a German diplomat and Aaron Jastrow's former student, to figure out a way to convince the Italian authorities to deport Italian Jews into German control. In the second scene, he and a crony beat and bully Jastrow into accepting a position as a figurehead elder in Theresienstadt. An error in the mini-series is that Eichmann appears in 1944 as a full SS-Colonel (SS-Standartenführer) when, in reality, Eichmann never rose above the rank of SS-Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). * Franklin D. Roosevelt * Harry Hopkins — Hopkins represents the person who carries out Roosevelt's grand policies. * Winston Churchill * Dwight D. Eisenhower — General Eisenhower appears in the miniseries, and briefly towards the end of the novel, when he and Capt. Henry discuss aspects of the Normandy landings. * William Halsey — Admiral Halsey's operational mistakes late in the Pacific war are discussed. * Harry Truman - Becomes President upon the death of Roosevelt. He appoints Pug as his naval aide near the end of the movie. * Ernest Lawrence — Nobel Prize winner involved in nuclear bomb development. * Raymond A. Spruance — Although Admiral Fletcher was in overall command, Spruance, in command of the task force containing Enterprise and Hornet, is generally credited with winning the battle of Midway. Although it isn't covered in the book or the miniseries, Spruance went on to command at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the largest carrier battle in the war. * Eugene Lindsey — Commander of Torpedo Squadron Six (flying off Enterprise); killed at Midway. * C. Wade McCluskey, Jr. — Air Group Six Commander at the Battle of Midway. * Miles Browning — Chief of Staff to Admiral Spruance at the Midway Battle, and also the grandfather of actor Chevy Chase. |
Lair of the White Worm | Bram Stoker | 1,911 | The plot focuses on Adam Salton, originally from Australia, who is contacted by his great-uncle, Richard Salton, in 1860 Derbyshire for the purpose of establishing a relationship between these last two members of the family. His great-uncle wants to make Adam his heir. Adam travels to Richard Salton's house in Mercia, Lesser Hill, and quickly finds himself at the centre of mysterious and inexplicable occurrences. The new heir to the Caswall estate, known as Castra Regis, the Royal Camp, Edgar Caswall, appears to be making some sort of a mesmeric assault on a local girl, Lilla Watford, while a local lady, Arabella March, seems to be running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Caswall. Adam Salton discovers black snakes on the property and buys a mongoose to hunt them down. He then discovers a child who has been bitten on the neck. The child barely survives. He learns that another child was killed earlier while animals were also killed in the region. The mongoose attacks Arabella who shoots it to death. Arabella tears another mongoose apart with her hands. Arabella then murders Oolanga, the African servant, by dragging him down into a pit or hole. Adam witnesses the murder which he cannot prove. Adam then suspects Arabella of the other crimes. Adam and Sir Nathaniel de Salis, who is a friend of Richard Salton's, then plot to stop Arabella by whatever means necessary. They suspect that she wants to murder Mimi Watford, whom Adam later marries. Nathaniel is an Abraham Van Helsing type of character who wants to hunt down Arabella. The White Worm is a large snake-like creature that dwells in the hole or pit in Arabella's house located in Diana's Grove. The White Worm has green glowing eyes and feeds on whatever is thrown to it in the pit. The White Worm ascends from the pit and seeks to attack Adam and Mimi Watford in a forest. Adam plans to pour sand into the pit and to use dynamite to kill the giant White Worm while it is inside the pit. Edgar Caswall is a slightly pathological eccentric who has Mesmer's chest which he keeps at the Castra Regis Tower. Caswall wants to recreate mesmerism, associated with Anton Mesmer, which was a precursor to hypnotism. He has a giant kite in the shape of a hawk to scare away pigeons which have gone berserk and have attacked his fields. In the final scene, Adam Salton, Mimi Watford, and Nathaniel de Salis confront Arabella and Edgar Caswall. A thunderstorm and lightning destroy Diana's Grove by igniting the dynamite. |
The Book and the Brotherhood | Iris Murdoch | null | That is the backstory. When the novel opens, Crimond has resurfaced, book nearly finished. His sudden appearance sets off a chain of events that nearly destroys the lives of everyone in the story. |
Nightmare Alley | William Lindsay Gresham | 1,946 | The novel begins with Stanton Carlisle, the story's protagonist, observing the geek show at a Ten-in-One where has recently begun working. After the show, Stan asks the carnival's talker Clem Hoately where geeks come from. Clem replies that geeks don't come from anywhere - rather, they're "made": a sideshow owner finds an alcoholic bum and offers him a temporary job. Initially, the bum uses a razor blade to slice chickens' necks and fakes drinking the blood. After a few weeks the owner threatens to fire the bum in favor of a "real" geek, and the fear of sobering up terrifies the bum into actually biting the chickens. Thus, a geek is made. Stan performs sleight of hand tricks in the sideshow. He asks the carnival's mentalist Zeena to teach him how to execute a refined "code" act, where the performers memorize verbal cues that correspond to certain audience questions, allowing the mentalist to appear psychic. Stan also begins to pick up Zeena's talent for cold reading. He eventually leaves the carnival with beautiful and naive electric girl Molly Cahill to perform a team code act. The act becomes very successful, but Stan grows bored and transforms himself into Reverend Carlisle, an upstanding Spiritualist preacher offering séance sessions with the help of his medium - Molly, appearing as "Miss Cahill" to obfuscate their relationship. Stan gains a devoted following, but the stress of leading a false life leads him to seek the help of a highly-regarded psychologist named Lilith Ritter, who seduces Stan and soon begins controlling him. Stan pleads constantly for the two to run away together, and Lilith eventually agrees, suggesting the Rev. Carlisle swindle a rich man for the getaway money. They settle on Ezra Grindle, a ruthless auto tycoon with a skeptical interest in the occult. Stan manages to convince Grindle of his powers, and the businessman becomes a devoted spiritualist. Stan keeps Grindle hooked by promising to reunite him with his deceased college sweetheart Dorrie. In private meetings with Grindle, Stan communicates with Dorrie's spirit (played by an increasingly reluctant Molly); Dorrie seems to move closer to corporeality with each session. At the crucial moment of full bodily materialization, Molly panics and destroys the illusion, forcing her and Stan to flee and leading Grindle to vow revenge. Molly, tired of Stan's manipulation and abuse, soon leaves him to return to the carnival. Upon Lilith's suggestion, Stan goes into hiding and takes with him an envelope containing a large sum in cash that Grindle had donated to the church, but Stan shortly discovers that Lilith has stolen the money. When he returns to her office to confront her, she attempts to have him committed to a mental institution. He narrowly escapes and goes on the run, performing as a mentalist at increasingly shoddy venues and barely evading the men Grindle continually sends after him. Eventually he becomes a hobo, staying afloat by giving Tarot readings and selling horoscopes. He descends into alcoholism and depression. His life in utter shambles, Stan finds a carnival owner and asks to join the sideshow as a palm reader. The owner gives Stan some whiskey but refuses his proposal, saying the show is full. But as Stan begins to drunkenly stumble out, the owner changes his tune and invites Stan back in with a job offer: "Of course, it's only temporary - just until we get a real geek." |
Corazón salvaje | Caridad Bravo Adams | null | This novel, originally by Caridad Bravo Adams is set in the Caribbean, specifically in the French colonies. The Mexican adaptation is set in the Atlantic coast of Mexico. The following plot summary is based on the 1993 version by Televisa, and is described using in-universe tone. Francisco Alcazar is a wealthy landowner, who owns sugar cane fields. Francisco is married to Sofia, a severe and uncompassionate woman, with whom he has a son named Andres. Before his marriage to Sofia, Francisco had an affair with a married woman who was physically abused by her husband. The woman became pregnant and died when the child was 3 years old. This love-child is, in fact, Francisco's true firstborn. When this woman became pregnant, her husband refused to recognize the boy as his son. He also did not allow Francisco to recognize the child as his own. Thus, the boy named "Juan", became known as "Juan del Diablo" (Juan of the Devil) because he had no last name. Juan's mother eventually died of the shame and from the physical abuse she had received from her husband. Juan was raised with no love or instruction, in poverty and neglect. In his early teens, Juan's stepfather dies. Francisco, hiding the fact that Juan is his son, decides to invite him to live at his estate with his family, on the pretext of being a playmate for Andrés. Sofia finds out the truth and tries to send Juan away, to which Francisco objects. Finally, Francisco has an accident while riding his horse before he could legally recognize Juan as his son. Francisco leaves a letter with his intentions addressed to his friend and lawyer Noel Mancera. Sofia seizes the letter and hides it. On his deathbed, Francisco sends for his son Andrés, and while not telling the truth, asks him to care for Juan as a brother. After his death, Sofía sends Juan away without saying anything to Andrés. Eventually, Sofia decides to send Andrés to boarding school in France. Juan grows up among the sailors and pirates of the port-city, earning a shocking reputation for dirty business (contraband of liquor), ruthlessness, and harboring unbound loyalty from his men. Juan is also a womanizer, his heart is still untaken. He has learned the identity of his biological father because Noel Mancera has told him. Through the years, Mancera has given Juan some education, and even offered to give him his last name. However, Juan refuses the offer because he feels that a last name is unwarranted in his chosen occupation. Meanwhile, Mónica and Aimée are two beautiful young countesses, daughters of the deceased Count of Altamira, a distant cousin of Sofia de Alcazar. The Altamira family are very respectable in high society, but they now find themselves in bankruptcy. Their only asset is their nobility and beauty, and the long promise of betrothal between Monica and Andrés. Unfortunately for Mónica, Andres has forgotten about their engagement. While visiting Mexico City, Andres meets Mónica's younger sister. Aimee is beautiful, flirty and selfish. She shows interest in Andrés because he has wealth, influence, and power. Andrés falls completely in love with Aimee, a fact he later shares with his mother when she comes to visit him. When Sofia returns home, she informs Catalina de Altamira that Andres has broken the engagement with Monica because he is now intent in marrying Aimee. Catalina is mortified at the thought of Monica's heartbreak. With her family's financial ruin in mind, Catalina reluctantly agrees to an engagement between Aimee and Andres. When Monica discovers that Andres has broken their engagement in order to marry her sister, she is immediately heartbroken. Monica decides to enter a convent to become a nun. Monica denies her feelings for Andres and tells everyone that becoming a nun is her true calling. Meanwhile, Aimee returns to her hometown with her mother. One day, while walking along the beach, she spies Juan taking a bath in his beach house. Aimee had never met Juan and is unaware of his past or his connection to the Alcazar family. She watches him from a distance, but Juan sees her. Over the next few days, Aimee returns several times to spy on Juan. He decides to confront her and catches her while she's hiding. Soon after, Juan and Aimee fall in love and become lovers. Juan goes away on a business trip and Aimee promises to wait for his return and marry him. When Andres arrives in his hometown, Aimee ignores her promise to Juan and agrees to marry Andres. Juan returns from his business trip several weeks later. Juan discovers that Aimee is now married to his half-brother and decides to kidnap her so that she carries out her promise. Andres, who knows nothing about his kinship to Juan and the affair between him and his wife, decides to employ him as the steward of Campo Real, his country estate. Meanwhile, Monica leaves the convent to spend some time in the countryside with her family. Monica quickly discovers the affair between Juan and Aimee. Monica confronts her sister, but Aimee refuses to end her affair with Juan. Since Monica decides to leave the convent, Andres attempts to redeem himself by proposing an engagement between Monica and his friend Alberto de la Serna. Meanwhile, Andres learns that Juan is actually his brother and that he had an unseemly affair with a young lady in his household. Andres immediately assumes that the lady in question is Monica. Because of this misunderstanding, Monica is pressured to get married immediately. Monica agrees to get married in an attempt to protect Andres and her sister from the impending scandal, but she refuses to marry Alberto. Instead, Monica decides to marry Juan because she believes this is the only way to prevent Aimee to continue her affair with him. In an unexpected turn of events, Juan accepts to marry Monica. Aimee is filled with jealousy and rage at the thought of Juan being married to her sister. Aimee spends all her time plotting and scheming to destroy Monica's engagement to Juan. Unfortunately for Aimee, Juan is no longer interested in her. He is now captivated by Monica's beauty and her kind demeanor. At the same time, Monica discovers a whole different side to Juan's personality. Monica learns that despite Juan's rough exterior, he can also be kind, gentle, and noble. Against all odds, Monica and Juan slowly begin to fall in love. Their happiness is short lived when Andres finds out about Juan's affair with Aimee. |
Damnation Alley | Roger Zelazny | 1,969 | Both the short story and the novel open in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, in a hellish world shattered by nuclear war decades before. Several police states have emerged in place of the former United States. Hurricane-force winds above five hundred feet prevent any sort of air travel from one state to the next, and sudden, violent, and unpredictable storms make day-to-day life a mini-hell. Hell Tanner, an imprisoned killer, is offered a full pardon in exchange for taking on a suicide mission—a drive through "Damnation Alley" across a ruined America from Los Angeles to Boston—as one of three vehicles attempting to deliver an urgently needed plague vaccine. |
Curtain | Agatha Christie | 1,975 | The murderer, identified by Poirot simply by the letter X, has been completely unsuspected of involvement in five previous murders, in all of which there was a clear suspect. Four of these suspects have subsequently died (one of them hanged), but in the case of Freda Clay, who gave her aunt an overdose of morphine, there was considered to be too little evidence to prosecute. Hastings agrees that it is highly unlikely to be coincidence if X was connected with all five deaths, but Poirot, now using a wheelchair due to arthritis and attended by his new valet Curtiss, will not give him X's name. He merely makes it clear that X is in the house, which has been turned into a private hotel by the new owners: Colonel and Mrs Luttrell. Hastings makes certain discoveries in the next few days. Elizabeth Cole, another guest at the hotel, reveals to him that she is in fact the sister of Margaret Litchfield, who had confessed to the murder of their father in one of the five cases. Margaret had died in Broadmoor Asylum and Elizabeth feels stigmatised by the case. Later that day Hastings and several other people overhear an argument between Colonel Luttrell and his wife. Shortly afterwards, he wounds her with a rook rifle, apparently mistaking her for a rabbit. Hastings reflects that this is precisely the sort of accident with which X is associated, but Mrs Luttrell rapidly recovers. Hastings is concerned by the attentions paid to his daughter Judith by Major Allerton, whom he discovers is married but estranged from his Catholic wife. While he and Elizabeth are out with Stephen Norton, another guest and a birdwatcher, Norton sees something through his binoculars that seems to upset him. Hastings suspects that it is something to do with Allerton and, when his clumsy attempts to persuade Judith to give Allerton up merely antagonise her, he plans Allerton's murder. He falls asleep while waiting to poison Allerton, and feels differently about things when he awakes the next day. Barbara Franklin, the wife of Judith's employer Dr Franklin and the childhood friend of Sir William Boyd Carrington, dies the following evening. She has been poisoned with physostigmine sulphate, an extract from the Calabar bean that her husband has been researching. After Poirot's testimony at the inquest – that Mrs Franklin had been upset and that she had emerged from Dr Franklin's laboratory with a small bottle – a verdict of suicide is brought in, but Hastings suspects that the death was murder and Poirot confirms this. Norton, still evidently upset about what he has seen through the binoculars, asks Hastings for his advice, which is to confide in Poirot. Poirot arranges a meeting between them and says that Norton must not speak to anyone further of what he has seen. That night, Hastings is awakened by a noise and sees Norton – with his dressing-gown, untidy grey hair and characteristic limp – go into his bedroom. The next morning, however, Norton is found dead in his locked room with a bullet-hole perfectly in the centre of his forehead, the key in his dressing-gown pocket and a pistol (remembered by a housemaid as belonging to him) nearby. Apparently, X has struck again. Poirot takes Hastings over the evidence, pointing out that his belief that he saw Norton that night relies on loose evidence: the dressing-gown, the hair, the limp. Nevertheless, it seems that there is no one in the house who could have impersonated Norton, who was a short man. Hastings despairs that the mystery will ever be solved when Poirot himself dies that night, apparently of natural causes. He nevertheless leaves Hastings three conscious clues: a copy of Othello, a copy of John Ferguson (a 1915 play by St. John Greer Ervine that is now – unluckily for readers of Curtain – largely forgotten) and a note telling Hastings to speak to his permanent valet, Georges. In the weeks that follow the death of Poirot, Hastings is staggered to discover that Judith has all along been in love with Dr Franklin, and is now marrying him and going with him to do research in Africa. Was Judith the murderer? When Hastings speaks to Georges, he discovers that Poirot wore a wig, and also that Poirot's reasons for employing Curtiss were vague. Perhaps the murderer was Curtiss all along? The solution, and one of the greatest of Christie's twist endings, is contained in a written confession that is sent to Hastings from Poirot's lawyers, four months after Poirot's death. In it, Poirot reveals that he wore a false moustache as well as a wig and explains that X was Norton, a man who had perfected the technique of which Iago in Othello (like a character in Ervine's play) is master: applying just such psychological pressure as is needed to provoke someone to commit murder, where normally they would let the other live and dismiss their desires as simply the heat of the moment, without anyone ever truly realising what he is doing. Again and again Norton had demonstrated this ability, first by apparently clumsy remarks that goaded Colonel Luttrell to take a homicidal shot at his wife, and then by his careful manipulation of Hastings to resolve upon the murder of Major Allerton. It was Norton's contrivances that created the impression that Judith loved Allerton when in fact she has been in love with Franklin all along. Hastings's potential murder had, however, been averted by Poirot's presence of mind in forcing drugged hot chocolate upon him on the night that he had intended it to take place, the same action resolving Poirot to take action; he knew that Hastings was not a murderer, but if he had not intervened Hastings would have hanged for a crime while the 'true' murderer would have escaped seemingly innocent. Deprived of his prey twice, Norton turned to Mrs Franklin, who was soon persuaded to attempt the murder of her husband, after which she could be reunited with the wealthy and attractive Boyd Carrington. By an ironic twist of Fate, however, Hastings himself had intervened in this murder; by turning a revolving bookcase table while seeking out a book in order to solve a crossword clue (coincidentally Othello again) he had swapped the cups of coffee so that the one with poison in it was actually drunk by Mrs Franklin herself. Poirot knew all this but could not prove it. He sensed that Norton, who had been deliberately vague about whom he had seen through the binoculars when attempting to imply that he had seen Allerton and Judith, was now intending to reveal that he had seen Franklin and Judith, almost certainly implicating them in the apparent murder of Franklin's wife. The only solution was for Poirot to murder Norton himself. At their meeting, he revealed to Norton what he suspected and said that he intended to 'execute' him. He then gave him hot chocolate. Norton, arrogantly self-assured in the face of both the accusation and the threat, insisted on swapping cups, but both contained the same sleeping pills that had previously been used by Poirot to drug Hastings; guessing that Norton would request the swap, Poirot had drugged both cups, knowing that his time taking the pills would give him a higher tolerance for a dose that would put Norton out. With Norton unconscious, Poirot, whose incapacity had been faked (a trick for which he needed a temporary valet who did not know how healthy he was and would accept his word without question) moved the body back to Norton's room in his wheelchair. Then, he disguised himself as Norton by removing his wig, putting on Norton's dressing-gown and ruffling up his grey hair. Poirot was the only short suspect at the house. With it established that Norton was alive after he left Poirot's room, Poirot shot him – with characteristic but unnecessary symmetry – in the centre of his forehead. He locked the room with a duplicate key that Hastings knew Poirot to possess; both Hastings and the reader would have assumed that the duplicate key was to Poirot's own room, but Poirot had said that he had changed rooms before Norton's arrival, and it was to this previous room that he had the key. Poirot's last actions were to write the confession and await his death, which he accelerated by moving amyl nitrite phials out of his own reach, seeking to avoid the traditional arrogance of the murderer where he might come to believe that he had the right to kill those he deemed it necessary to eliminate. His last wish is implicitly that Hastings will marry Elizabeth Cole: a final instance of the inveterate matchmaking that has characterised his entire career. |
Yumegari | null | null | The story revolves around Tatsumi Hōjyō, a seventeen year old girl and heir to a clan of Yumegari (dream hunters). The dream hunter's mission is to investigate the dreams of others and actively participate in them if necessary. A yumegari is bound by fate to a yumemori, one who watches the dreams of a Yumegari and prevents them from falling into an eternal sleep. When Tatsumi's mother and father, the preceding yumegari and yumemori, die in the execution of their duties, Tatsumi inherits the job. She then sets off for Tokyo to find her yumemori, twenty-eight year old Kyousuke Kaga. Tatsumi takes up residence with Kyousuke so they can get a better understand of each other. Despite the warnings from her clan about Kyousuke, Tatsumi continues to work with him, fulfilling her dangerous and uncertain role as a yumegari. es:Yumegari |
Take Me Out | Richard Greenberg | null | Much of the play is set in the locker room of a professional baseball team, and as such has an all-male cast that explores themes of homophobia, racism, class and masculinity in sports. The play's main character, Darren Lemming, is a popular and successful mixed-race baseball player at the peak of his career when he decides to come out. Several of his teammates react strongly (some supportive and accepting, and some not), and the drama plays out over the course of a baseball season with tragic consequences. |
Enemy Mine | David Gerrold | null | Willis Davidge, a human fighter pilot, is stranded along with Jeriba Shigan, a Drac, on a hostile planet. The Drac are a race of aliens which are reptilian in appearance and reproduce asexually. Davidge and Jeriba Shigan, whom Davidge nicknames "Jerry," initially attempt to kill one another but quickly realize that cooperation will be the key to their survival. |
A Widow for One Year | John Irving | 1,998 | In the opening section of the book, the year is 1958 and Ruth Cole is four years old. Although she is a loved child, her parents do not have a happy marriage. Her two older brothers died four years earlier in a car accident, and she is constantly reminded of their presence from the pictures of their childhood hanging on the walls of the Cole family home. Ruth's father, Ted Cole, writes successful children's books, and hires Eddie O'Hare, a teenager who attends Phillips Exeter Academy, the same school as Ruth's two late brothers, to work as his assistant for the summer. Eddie is unwittingly drawn into a plot orchestrated by Ted to drive his unhappy wife, Marion, to infidelity. Marion, unable to forget her dead sons, shows little affection to her daughter. Ted has always conducted extramarital affairs and would likely lose in a custody battle for Ruth in divorce court. If Marion had an affair, he feels that this would strengthen the case for custody to be awarded to him. Ted picks Eddie specifically to tempt Marion, since he bears a striking resemblance to his two dead sons. Eddie and Marion's affair leads to Marion's disappearance at the end of the summer. It is 1990 and Ruth is thirty-six. She is in Europe, dealing with the failures of her love life as she herself has become a successful writer. Ruth is doing research on prostitutes in Amsterdam's red light district, and finds herself hiding in a closet while she observes the murder of a prostitute by the prostitute's client. She makes note of certain details of the murder which, in the future, lead to the murderer's arrest. The detective who solves the murder case is left with the identity of the mysterious "witness" unknown. Ruth is now forty-one, has a son, and is about to fall in love for the first time. This section covers Ruth's brief widowhood ("A Widow for One Year" is a literal description of Ruth's situation as well as a quote from one of her novels). The detective who solved the murder case that Ruth witnessed four years before realizes that Ruth is the witness, because Ruth included details of the victim's room in her novel, and the detective is a fan of Ruth's work. Ruth discovers that the murder was solved and the murderer caught. Ruth meets with the detective, and they fall in love. After a whirlwind romance in Paris (the next stop on Ruth's book tour) he agrees to follow Ruth to Vermont, where they marry. Eddie O'Hare and Ruth, unexpectedly, re-unite with Marion. They end up living happily in Vermont. |
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