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Time of the Twins | Tracy Hickman | 1,986 | After detailing the meeting between Crysania, Raistlin, and Astinus, the book shifts to Riverwind arriving at the Inn of the Last Home in Solace. He meets Tika Waylan there, and later he asks about Caramon. Tika avoids the question, as Caramon has become a fat drunk in the two years the companions had been apart. Soon, Tanis Half-Elven arrives as well, bringing with him Crysania. The pair of them had been followed and chased by dark creatures, who were sent by Raistlin. Later, Tika casts Caramon out of the house to accompany Tas, Crysania, and Bupu (a gully dwarf who fell in love with Raistlin), who are travelling to the Tower of Wayreth. En route, they encounter Lord Soth, a death knight, who would have killed Crysania had not Paladine interceded and brought her soul to dwell with him. The group continues on to the Tower where they find out Raistlin plans to travel back in time and gain power to challenge Takhisis, head god of evil, and take her place. It is decided that the group, minus Tas and Bupu, will go back to stop him. This serves a twofold purpose, as Crysania can find the healing she needs in the past. However, during the spell, Tas interrupts and goes back with them, defying the law that kender, dwarves, and gnomes cannot go back in time for fear of disrupting and changing it. The group finds themselves in pre-Cataclysm (Dragonlance) Istar, a holy empire and residence of the Kingpriest, the most powerful cleric in the world. However, thanks to Raistlin's intercession, guards discover them and they think that Caramon has attacked Crysania, as he is dressed in rags and she is covered in blood. Crysania is taken to the Temple of Paladine, home of the Kingpriest, and Caramon is taken to the Games of Istar, a colosseum-like arena which pits contestants against each other in mock fights. Raistlin has sent Caramon to the Games so that he can regain his former strength and recover from his drunken, fat self. Unbeknownst to Caramon, Raistlin has in fact bought Caramon for the games. Caramon realizes at this time it is necessary to kill Fistandantilus to save Raistlin. After getting back into shape and being duped into killing a fellow gladiator, Caramon enacts his plan. However, once he is about to kill Fistandantilus, he finds out that Fistandantilus has been replaced by Caramon's brother, Raistlin. Caramon cannot kill him; it is revealed that Raistlin has taken Fistandantilus's lifeforce into himself, fully taking control of his body. The scene shifts to Crysania, who is talking to Denubis, an old cleric. When Crysania leaves, the ancient elven cleric Loralon contacts Denubis and takes him away, as all true clerics in the world were taken away before the Cataclysm. Crysania then goes to the Kingpriest's chamber and meets Raistlin there. He reveals the Kingpriest for what he is, a mere man. Crysania runs, broken, from the chamber. Later, around Yuletime, she meets again with Raistlin and he warns her of the anger of the gods. Caramon, back at the games, discovers that Raistlin had nothing to do with the death of the man Caramon had killed in the games. Caramon, after meeting with Crysania, tries to deter some friends of his from staying in Istar, but they do not listen. Caramon then goes after the magical device that can return one person (not many people, as Caramon believes) to their proper time, but finds Tas has taken it in the hopes of preventing the Cataclysm. Finding out that Raistlin has arranged for Caramon's friends to fight him in the Arena, Caramon decides that he must kill Raistlin. Tas, with the magical time travelling device, goes to the chamber where the Kingpriest will make his demand of the gods for great power in order to defeat evil. Crysania also arrives, as she wants to hear his exact words. Crysania is contacted by Loralon, but refuses his offer to go with him. The Kingpriest makes his demand of the gods. Caramon begins the battle against his friends at the same time Tas activates the device. To Tas's horror, the device falls apart. Caramon then fights his friends, resulting, though not by his choice, in their deaths. Crysania, Tas, and Caramon rush to Raistlin's chambers beneath the Temple, as Istar crumbles around them. Tas is pinned beneath the falling ceiling. Caramon approaches Raistlin, bent on killing him. However, Crysania risks her life to save Raistlin, and she stops Caramon long enough with a prayer so that Raistlin may complete the time-travel spell that will save them from the Cataclysm. At the end of the novel, the Cataclysm strikes. |
Fathom Five | Robert Westall | null | The novel reunites some of the characters from The Machine Gunners, specifically Chas McGill, "Cem" Jones and Audrey Parton, whilst introducing the middle-class Sheila as Chas's sometime girlfriend. Set in 1943, two years after the events of The Machine Gunners, it traces the attempt to uncover a spy in Garmouth. |
Meet the Austins | Madeleine L'Engle | null | Vicky Austin's noisy, loving, mostly-happy family is disrupted when the family's honorary uncle dies in a plane crash. His co-pilot was also killed, leaving behind a ten-year-old daughter, Maggy, who has no one to care for her. The Austins take Maggy in, and she proves to be a spoiled, troubled only child who had very little family life. Maggy encourages Vicky's sister Suzy to misbehave, which makes everyone's life more difficult. Meet the Austins is largely episodic; each chapter covers a specific incident such as Vicky's bicycle accident or a family vacation. Throughout the book Vicky comments on the changes her family experiences during this time, and the reader sees her growing self-awareness. Although Vicky will later appear in three novels that have fantasy and/or science fiction themes, there are no such elements in Meet the Austins. |
Duma Key | Stephen King | 2,008 | Edgar Freemantle, a St. Paul, MN contractor, barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was crushed by a crane. Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. As a result, Edgar also has violent mood swings and thoughts of suicide. During one of those mood swings, he attacks his wife, who later claims that as a main reason why she divorced him. On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical" - a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house on Duma Key, a small island off the west coast of Florida, after reading about it in a travel brochure. Edgar's beach house is located on a part of the island called Salmon Point; Edgar nicknames the house "Big Pink," because of its rich pink color. On the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he moves into Big Pink. He settles in with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student. Edgar becomes obsessively involved in his art, painting with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar brings up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife is having an affair with his former accountant by painting these situations. While exploring the island with a visiting Ilse, Edgar drives past an elderly woman, Elizabeth Eastlake. Ilse becomes violently ill as they drive into an overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key "has never been a lucky place for daughters". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease. Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. As it turns out during the conversation, Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns half of the island, while the other half is a subject of dispute. The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition. Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the "table is leaking". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with "Where our sister?" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by "Perse" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of "Girl and Ship" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns "The End of The Game" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter. Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key. Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota. The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key. A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to "Hello". Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch. As he finds out from one of the novel characters, he lives in the house where Salvador Dalí stayed in the latter part of his life, having an affair with Elizabeth Eastlake. The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players. *Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and he eventually takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse. *Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm. *Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island. *Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin. *Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his "past life" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world. *Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel. *Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she will eventually escape again. Her full name, Persephone and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld (although, like many of King's entities, she is also decidedly Lovecraftian). Perse's ghost ship (The Persephone) resembles the Caleuche, a ghost ship from Chilote legends. There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's "other life" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season. |
The White People | Arthur Machen | 1,904 | A discussion between two men on the nature of evil leads one of them to reveal a mysterious Green Book he possesses. It is a young girl's diary, in which she describes in ingenuous yet evocative prose her strange impressions of the countryside in which she lives, as well as conversations with her nurse, who initiates her into a secret world of folklore and ritual magic. Throughout, she makes cryptic allusions to such topics as "nymphs", "Dôls", "voolas," "white, green, and scarlet ceremonies", "Aklo letters", the "Xu" and "Chian" languages, "Mao games", and a game called "Troy Town" (the last of which is a reference to actual practices involving labyrinths or labyrinthine dances). The girl's tale gradually develops a mounting atmosphere of suspense, with suggestions of witchcraft, only to break off abruptly just at the point where a supreme revelation seems imminent. In a return to the frame story, the custodian of the diary reveals that the girl had "poisoned herself—in time", making the analogy of a child finding the key to a locked medicine cabinet. |
The Flame Knife | Robert E. Howard | null | Conan, leader of a band of kozaki in the service of King Kobad Shah of Iranistan, quarrels with his patron over the latter's command to capture Balash, chief of the Kushafi and Conan's friend. Instead, Conan takes his band to warn the Kushafi. In the Gorge of Ghosts, the two bands are attacked by members of the Sons of Yezm, a cult of assassins whose symbol is the flame knife. The cultists kidnap Nanaia, Conan's current girlfriend. The Cimmerian tracks them to their stronghold, where he becomes embroiled in a conflict with his old enemy Olgerd Vladislav, a foe first encountered in Howard's story "A Witch Shall be Born". |
Sixth Grade Secrets | Louis Sachar | 1,987 | When Laura Sibbie starts a secret club at school, she makes the other members give her something totally embarrassing as "insurance," to make sure they don't tell anyone else about the club. She promises to keep the insurance secret, unless someone blabs. Gabriel wants to join, but when Laura asks him, there is a misunderstanding and he storms out to form a rival club, Monkey Town. The pranks they play on each other escalates into ugly and destructive acts. It gets to a point where Gabriel steals the insurance, and reveals it to the school. Sheila (whom hates Laura) and a friend, Howard, corner Laura on her way from school and cut a large chunk out of her long hair. Laura gets a new, short, curly hair style which Gabriel, arriving with daisies, likes. The sheared Laura sees how foolish they've been, and the truth of Gabriel's affection comes to light. |
Paradise of the Blind | Dương Thu Hương | null | Paradise of the Blind begins in the 1980s. Hang, a young Vietnamese woman receives a telegram telling her to visit her uncle in Moscow, who is very ill. Hang works in a textile factory in Russia, thousands of miles from Moscow. The account of her train journey to Moscow is then interspersed with her reminiscences of her childhood and adolescence in Vietnam and the earlier history of her family. Que, Hang's mother, lives alone in a village after the death of her parents. After her tragedy, a community ritual is held where the citizens of the town offer her piesches, but she is confused by the thought of the Vietnamese delicacy and declines it. When she is twenty she marries Ton, a schoolteacher. They are happy together for nearly two years, until Que's brother Chinh returns, in about 1956. He has been fighting with the communists, who now run the country. Chinh forbids Que to speak to Ton because his family are landlords and are therefore enemies of the peasantry. They belong to what Chinh calls the exploiting class, who must be denounced and punished. Such denunciations are carried out in front of all the villagers. All the landowners are denounced, and their land is confiscated, which includes Que's sister-in-law Tam and her grandmother Nhieu. However, Hang's father escapes. Que is left alone; Chinh will not even let her talk to Tam. Distressed, Que disappears from the village for six months, during which Chinh also leaves. Some years later, the land reforms are rescinded. The Special Section for the Rectification of Errors arrives in the village, and at public gatherings the villagers vent their grievances over the injustices they suffered. Que is a target for vengeance, because Chinh is her brother, but Tam protects her. On the train ride to Moscow, Hang recalls a visit she made with a friend to Kiev and then returns to the family story. Her mother could no longer live in the village and leaves for Hanoi, where she lives in a working-class slum and makes a living as a street vendor. Ten years later, Hang is born. She grows up miserable and lonely, knowing nothing about her father, since her mother refuses to answer her questions. When Hang is nine, Uncle Chinh returns. It is ten years since he and his sister have seen each other. Que invites her neighbors to meet him, and they are all impressed that he is responsible for ideological education in a northern province. Chinh reproaches Que for being a street vendor, since he thinks such people are members of the bourgeoisie who are enemies of the revolution. He says he will get her a job in a factory, even though she does not want one. The real reason for Chinh's visit is that he wants his share of the money from the sale of their parents' house. Que takes Hang to the village to get the money. Finally, Hang's mother tells her the story of her father. Ton flees the village and finds shelter at the home of the parents of a former student of his. They ask him to leave quickly, however. Ton takes a three-day trip up the river in a sampan. Eventually he arrives in a Muong minority region, where he settles down and marries again, becoming the son-in-law of the village vice president. He teaches the village children, and his wife bears him two sons. After six years, a traveling salesman stops at the village, and it transpires that he knows Hang's mother. Ton visits her in Hanoi, and that is when Hang is conceived. Hang next recalls a visit she and her mother made to Aunt Tam, who has become rich. It is the first time Hang has met her aunt, and Tam tells the story of how she survived after she was evicted from her house. During the Rectification of Errors, her house was restored to her as well as her five acres of rice paddy fields. She tells of what happened to Ton. After visiting Que, he returned to the Muong village and his wife, but she refused him permission to visit Que again and to care for his child. Feeling shamed, Ton drowned himself in a river. Tam has not forgiven Chinh for his persecution of her brother. Back in the present, Hang recalls a quarrel with her roommates in Russia over a lost sewing machine, before returning to her childhood memories. She recalls how, as she and her mother are about to return to Hanoi, Aunt Tam showers her with love and gives her gold earrings. It is an unsuitable gift for a nine-year-old and it makes Hang feel uncomfortable. When they are back in Hanoi, Uncle Chinh visits and tells Que that he has found her a job as a clerk in the office of a factory. But she refuses to accept it. After Chinh leaves, Que is depressed but is comforted by her neighbor, Neighbor Vi. During Tet, the national holiday celebrating the Lunar New Year, Aunt Tam arrives, bringing huge provisions as a gift for Hang. She also gives Hang money. A year or so passes, and Que and Hang visit Uncle Chinh and his wife and two young sons. They believe Chinh has recently been very sick, but he denies it, although he is clearly undernourished. Que discovers a new purpose in life by sending gifts to her two young nephews, even though she is robbed of everything she has at her vendor's stall. At Tet, she takes more gifts for the boys, but Hang does not enjoy the visit and decides she will never visit her uncle again. Meanwhile, Aunt Tam showers gifts on Hang, who is now a teenager. Hang remembers when Aunt Tam stayed at their house, looking after Hang as she studied for her college entrance exams. Because Aunt Tam is looking after Hang, Hang's mother becomes indifferent to her. Hang tries to win back her love, while Que seeks acceptance from Uncle Chinh's family. Hang goes to stay with her aunt for a week, where she enjoys the feasts that Aunt Tam prepares. At one banquet, almost the entire village is invited, including Duong, the village vice president, who is hated for his high-handed behavior. Aunt Tam criticizes him to his face about an incident in which a man was arrested without a warrant. She says the man's only crime was that he insulted Duong and the Party secretary. Aunt Tam then tells stories about wise and foolish leaders in Vietnamese history, which everyone enjoys except Duong. Embarrassed by Aunt Tam's taunting of him, he makes an early departure. Hang reveals that this is not her first trip to Moscow to see her uncle, who visits Moscow on government business. She saw him there a year ago and discovered that he makes money by trading on the black market. Ten days after the banquet, Hang returns to live with her mother and also to attend the university. She is happy for a while, but then Chinh falls ill with diabetes. He needs American medicine, and Que makes sacrifices in order to provide it. As a result, she and Hang do not have enough to eat. Hang wants to sell one of the rings that Aunt Tam gave her, but her mother will not let her. Aunt Tam finds out about the situation and demands her gifts back. She refuses to allow her money to be used to help Chinh, whom she regards as a mortal enemy of her family. After this, Hang's relationship with her mother deteriorates, and during a quarrel her mother throws her out of the house. For a while Hang stays at a dormitory in her high school while she continues her college education, supported by Aunt Tam. But then her mother is hit by a car, and her leg is amputated. Hang visits her in the hospital and they are reconciled. Hang discontinues her studies and takes a job in Russia, so she can support her mother. Back in the present, Hang arrives in Moscow. Uncle Chinh is no longer in the hospital but is staying at the apartment of Mr. Khoa, a Vietnamese graduate student. She finds Chinh alone in Khoa's room. It turns out that he works for Khoa and two other Vietnamese students, cooking and housekeeping for them. When the men return, they do not treat him well. When he is not there they speak mockingly about him, and the one Hang calls the Bohemian picks an argument with him over his practice of enforcing Communist Party orthodoxy. The next morning, the Bohemian gives Hang money to cover shipping expenses for Chinh's black market trading. Hang returns to the Russian province where she lives in a dormitory for textile workers. She finds a telegram asking her to return home because Aunt Tam is dying. She returns to Moscow where the Bohemian helps her to get an exit visa and also buys her a plane ticket. She returns briefly to her mother's house before going to the village where Aunt Tam lives. Aunt Tam has managed to hang on to life, waiting for Hang to come. She gives Hang a key to a trunk that holds the jewelry she bought for her and map of the garden to show where Hang's inheritance is buried. After Aunt Tam dies, Hang arranges for three memorial ceremonies, but she decides to disobey her aunt's instructions to live in her house. She cannot live in the past and must strive to fulfill her own dreams. |
The Great Gilly Hopkins | Katherine Paterson | 1,978 | Gilly Hopkins a mean, brash young girl is going to another foster home. She hates living with different people all the time and just wants to settle in with her birth mother Courtney Rutherford Hopkins. While living at Trotter home, Gilly initially gets into trouble as usual. Gilly doesn't like how Trotter looks, and she quickly decides she is going to hate her for the rest of her life. Gilly quickly hatches a plan to escape. She knows that her mother lives in San Francisco so she writes a letter to Courtney saying that her beloved Galadriel will be with her soon. When Gilly escapes the first time, she gets caught by some police people at the train station and Trotter is to immediately come down to the station to retrieve her. Gilly was really disapppointed because she really wanted to go to her Mother. After some days have passed, Gilly's grandmother, Nonnie comes to Trotters house and tells her that she will come and take her home. But now Gilly realizes that she really wants to be with Trotter. Unfortunately, Gilly has to get picked up by Nonnie, and she goes to Nonnie's house. Then Gilly has good news: her mother Courtney is coming. But when she goes to the airport, Courtney is not the Courtney she remembers: Courtney has become fat, her hair color got whiter, and a lot of other things Gilly didn't expect. Gilly also finds out that her mother only came because Nonnie paid her, not because she wanted to come. She realizes for the first time, how foolish she had been, and who she really loved was Trotter. |
Cashel Byron's Profession | null | null | In Shaw's preface "Novels of my Nonage", written in 1901, he disparages his early work, including Cashel Byron's Profession: "...people will admire [the author] for the feats any fool can achieve, and bear malice against him for boring them with better work." He also resurrects a heavily edited Robert Louis Stevenson quote used to promote the book. The full text of the quote breaks down the story into parts, including one part “blooming gaseous folly”. The novel follows Cashel Byron, a world champion prizefighter, as he tries to woo wealthy aristocrat Lydia Carew without revealing his illegal profession. Lydia is portrayed as a moral and intelligent woman (although "priggish" according to Shaw) and is constantly contrasted with the "ruffian" Cashel. Lydia was advised by her recently deceased father to find a husband with a profession, as opposed to an idle gentleman or an art critic like her father. Cashel’s childhood ends when he runs away from school to Australia and becomes apprentice to an ex-world champion boxer. When Cashel goes to England to secure his world title in that country he meets Lydia at her country manor. After much miscommunication and drawing room comedy, Cashel gives up boxing and succeeds in marrying Lydia. As in his postscript to "Pygmalion" (1912), in which he describes Eliza Doolittle's future life, Shaw chose to portray the Byron marriage in a realistic manner and narrates how Lydia comes to regard Cashel as "one of the children". According to "Note on Modern Prizefighting" (1901) Shaw intended the fights described in Cashel Byron's Profession to turn the public away from the sport but the novel is written in such a light-hearted tone this unlikely result never materialized. |
Brightness Reef | David Brin | 1,995 | Starting around the year 930 C.E., and continuing until the 23rd century, sooners belonging to eight patron-class races illegally plant colonies on the planet Jijo. ("Sooner" is a term from US history, and is used in the Uplift stories to describe illegal settlers on worlds that have been declared fallow, i.e. to be left uncolonized so that the ecosystem will recover and native intelligences may have a chance to develop.) The eight races are: g'Keks, Traeki (similar to Jophur), Glavers, Qheuen, Hoon, Tytlal (AKA noor beast), Urs, and Human. By the beginning of the novel, the Glavers have (partly) regressed to pre-sentient animals and the Tytlal have successfully disguised themselves as wildlife. The novel begins with the discovery of a badly injured stranger. The stranger is nursed by Sara, daughter of Nelo the Papermaker. The stranger cannot speak and does not seem to recall his origin. While Sara oversees his recovery, the story shifts to her two brothers, Lark and Dwer. Lark is a widely known biologist and a heretic: he preaches a belief that the members of the Six races should make themselves extinct by not breeding. Only by doing this, he believes, can they be redeemed for their ancestors' sin of settling on Jijo. Dwer is a master hunter who serves the Council of the Six Races by keeping members of all sooner races from going beyond the Slope. The other two main characters are the young adult — and keen writer — Alvin the Hoon (proper name: Hph-Wayuo) and traeki High-Sage Asx. On a mission for the Council, (with an annoying noor called Mudfoot in tow) Dwer encounters a teenage girl, Rety, who was raised in a human tribe in the forbidden lands beyond the Slope. She is chasing a robotic bird she discovered spying on a hunting party of her tribe. She escapes from Dwer and continues tracking the bird; Dwer follows, and they both become ensnared in the domain of a crazy mulc spider. The spider attempts to capture the two humans and robot, but is seriously damaged when a second larger robot arrives and shoots down the robot bird. In the flames and confusion, Dwer and Rety are rescued by Lark. The robot bird's origins remain mysterious, but the second robot came from a starship that landed near the Glade of Gathering (the center of the annual Gathering festival). Several humans emerge from the starship and proclaim themselves servants of the Rothen — the secret patrons of Humanity. The Rothen representatives (also called Daniks) are very secretive about their purpose on Jijo, but they request the assistance of the council of Sages in their exploration of Jijo, and the council provides the assistance in an attempt to discover what the Rothen are hiding. Lark is employed as a biologist to escort the Danik researcher Ling as she surveys Jijo's biosphere. On the southern coast of the slope, Alvin and his friends Huck (a g'Kek), Pincer-Tip (a qheuen) and Ur-ronn (an urs) receive unexpected assistance from Uriel the smith in completing their summer project: a submarine to explore part of the Midden — an undersea subduction zone that destroys the form of anything placed on it. The Midden is where each of the races on Jijo sunk their starships, and where the races still continue to deposit the bodies of their dead and non-decomposable trash (all of which are called "dross"). In return for her assistance, Uriel requests that Alvin and his friends locate a hidden cache of galactic technology. Rety recovers from her injuries after the robot firefight and is sent to the Glade of Gathering where the council and a Rothen shuttle reside. When the council concludes that the Rothen may destroy all sooners on Jijo to keep their existence and activities secret, Rety is drafted to help humans from the Slope join her family's illicit colony east of the Rimmers (a local mountain range). Rety, loathing the idea of returning to her impoverished (and abusive) clan, adopts a small male urs (yee) as her 'husband' and together they steal the remains of the robotic bird she tracked from the Sage studying it, and join the Rothen — using the bird as a bartering chip. Dwer, also recovered, is sent to lead the expedition over the Rimmers without Rety's aid. When the expedition arrives at Rety's tribe, they discover Rety and the Danik pilot Kunn subjecting the human tribe and a recently captured group of urs. Rety and Kuhn are trying to learn the source of the robot bird from the tribesmen who first saw it. The members of the expedition start to develop a plan to free the urs when Kunn learns the information he sought and departs. He leaves Rety with a robot to protect her until he can return. Using a gun (made without any metal) the expedition members attack the robot and damage it. When the robot fires back, Dwer climbs aboard to damage its weapons pod. He's still on the robot when it begins to retreat; also on the robot is Rety and the noor Mudfoot. The mute stranger and Sara travel to Biblios — the great library of Jijo — where Ariana Foo, a retired human sage, attempts to discern the stranger's origins. After the stranger recognizes music from Earth, Ariana is convinced he is a member of the galactic Human race. The stranger and Sara then depart for the Glade, but are ambushed by a pack of urs and wild men. The stranger disables many of the urs using sleep pills and knowledge of the native fauna. After fighting the wild men and the remaining urs, the stranger, Sara, and their companions worry that they won't be able to escape urrish retribution, as the urs can travel faster than they. Shortly thereafter, the sound of hooves signals the arrival of women riding horses (thought to be extinct on Jijo) in the company of friendly urs. In the Glade, two Rothen depart their ship to greet the denizens of Jijo and ask to participate in a ceremony to see the Holy Egg — a rock-like Jijoian artifact of great religious and spiritual importance to the Six Races. The Rothen also claim they sent the Holy Egg to Jijo to protect Humans by pacifying the other races. This causes immediate fracturing between humans and the other races, but the ceremony continues until a heretic blocks the way and claims the Rothen must leave or the Holy Egg will dispel the Rothen from the planet. The Rothen leader, Ro-kenn says the heretic has no power to stop him, but soon after there is an explosion down slope and the Rothen research station and several Rothen robots are destroyed. A quick investigation reveals the Holy Egg did nothing — the heretics planted and ignited explosives beneath the shuttle. The second Rothen, Ro-pol, and several Danik servants are dead. In a fit of rage, Ro-kenn points to a fleck in the sky and says it is his ship decelerating from orbit to bring retribution. In the course of several arguments between the council sages and Ro-kenn it is revealed that the Rothen intended to use the Holy Egg to transmit thoughts of hatred to the participants and turn the Jijoan peoples against one another. Following this realization, the Jijoan militias assault the remaining Galactics and manage to capture Ro-kenn and his remaining Danik servants. The story ends as Asx witnesses the arrival of a second galactic ship that easily disables the Rothen cruiser. Preparing to negotiate on the behalf of the six, Asx watches in horror as the hatch opens to reveal piled stacks of rings. These are the Jophur, religious fanatics who were engineered from the Traeki. They are enemies of all other races, and have come to Jijo. |
High Deryni | Katherine Kurtz | 1,973 | The novel takes place in June and July 1121, less than a year after the coronation of fourteen-year-old King Kelson Haldane. At the beginning of the book, Kelson is leading an army into the Duchy of Corwyn to put down the rebellion of an anti-Deryni zealot named Warin de Grey. Warin is allied with Archbishop Edmund Loris, the leader of the Holy Church. Together, they have taken the ducal capital of Coroth and are openly revolting against the Crown due to Kelson's support of his Deryni advisors, Duke Alaric Morgan and Monsignor Duncan McLain. Morgan and Duncan decide to go to Dhassa and seek to reconcile with the six bishops who have refused to follow Loris' anti-Deryni crusade. Meanwhile, in the border city of Cardosa, King Wencit Furstán, the powerful Deryni ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, seeks to convince Earl Bran Coris of Marley to betray Kelson and assist in an invasion of Gwynedd. Morgan and Duncan arrive at Dhassa and surrender to the bishops, who are led by Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan. After hearing their explanations for their previous actions, the two bishops agree to forgive them. On the border, Earl Sean Lord Derry, Morgan's aide, is captured by Bran Coris. Coris has decided to betray Kelson and immediately turns Derry over Wencit, who begins to torture Derry both physically and mentally. Morgan senses Derry's pain when he attempts to contact him, but his use of his powers is detected by Bishop Arilan, who reveals that he is also Deryni. Kelson's army then marches to Coroth, where the young king confronts the rebellious archbishop. Unwilling to assault Coroth directly, Morgan sneaks into the castle with Kelson, Duncan, and Bishop Cardiel. Once inside, they confront Warin and force him to re-evaluate his beliefs by comparing his mysterious healing ability to Morgan's. Having acquired Warin's aid, Kelson confronts Loris the following morning and takes the archbishop into custody. With the internal ecclesiastical schism now resolved, Kelson's army prepares to face the invading Torenthi army. Kelson learns of Bran Coris' treason, but is nonetheless determined to win the war. The Gwyneddan army arrives at the border shortly thereafter and is greeted by grisly evidence of Bran Coris' betrayal. During a parley session with the Torenthi invaders, Morgan manages to rescue Derry, but the army is unable to prevent the murder of fifty Gwyneddan soldiers, including Duncan's father. Wencit challenges Kelson to a Duel Arcane, a form of ritualized magical combat in which each king will be accompanied by three companions. Before Kelson can agree, Arilan suddenly requests a brief period to consider the challenge. A short time later, Arilan reveals that he is not only Deryni, but also a member of the Camberian Council, a secretive group of highly-trained Deryni who oversee and regulate such duels. In issuing his challenge, Wencit claims that he has secured the cooperation of the Council, but Arilan has heard nothing of such a request. He establishes a Transfer Portal in Kelson's tent and travels to the Council's chambers, demanding an explanation from his comrades. They soon realize that Wencit has attempted to trick Kelson by bringing four imposters to the duel. Though initially reluctant to arbitrate the duel, the Council finally agrees after Arilan brings Kelson, Morgan, and Duncan to confront them. The following morning, Kelson rides out to face Wencit, accompanied by Morgan, Duncan, and Arilan. Although furious when the real Council arrives, Wencit eventually concedes to their presence. The Duel Arcane begins, but it is suddenly interrupted before the first spell can be summoned. One of Wencit's allies reveals himself to be another member of the Camberian Council, one who has been working to bring down Wencit for years for his own personal reasons. He provided poisoned wine for Wencit and his other allies, and all four are soon dying from its effects. Unwilling to let his enemies suffer needlessly, Kelson uses his powers to kill each of them. With Wencit's death, the Duel Arcane is ended and Kelson emerges victorious. |
Live and Let Die | Ian Fleming | 1,954 | British Secret Service agent James Bond is sent by his superior, M, to New York City to investigate "Mr. Big", real name Buonapart Ignace Gallia, an agent of SMERSH and an underworld voodoo leader who is suspected of selling 17th century gold coins to finance Soviet spy operations in America. These gold coins have been turning up in Harlem and Florida and are suspected of being part of a treasure that was buried in Jamaica by the pirate Sir Henry Morgan. In New York, Bond meets up with his counterpart in the CIA, Felix Leiter. The two decide to visit some of Mr. Big's nightclubs in Harlem, but are subsequently captured. Bond is personally interrogated by Mr. Big, who uses his fortune telling-girlfriend, Solitaire (so named because she excludes men from her life), to determine if Bond is telling the truth. Solitaire lies to Mr. Big, supporting Bond's cover story. Mr. Big decides to release Bond and Leiter and has one of his men break one of Bond's fingers. Bond escapes, killing several of Mr. Big's men in the process, whilst Leiter is released by a gang member, sympathetic because of a shared appreciation of jazz. Solitaire later contacts Bond and they travel to St. Petersburg, Florida. While Bond and Leiter are scouting one of Mr. Big's warehouses used for storing exotic fish, Solitaire is kidnapped by Mr. Big's minions. Felix later returns to the warehouse by himself, but is either captured and fed to a shark or tricked into standing on a trap door over the shark tank: he survives, but loses an arm and a leg. Bond finds him in their safe house with a note pinned to his chest "He disagreed with something that ate him". After getting Felix to the hospital, Bond investigates the warehouse himself and discovers that Mr. Big is smuggling gold by placing it in the bottom of fish tanks holding poisonous tropical fish. Bond is attacked in the warehouse by Mr. Big's gunman, the "Robber", and the resultant gunfight destroys many of the tanks in the warehouse: Bond tricks the Robber and causes him to fall into the shark tank. Bond then continues his mission in Jamaica where he meets Quarrel and John Strangways, the head of the MI6 station in Jamaica. Quarrel gives Bond training in scuba diving in the local waters. Bond swims through shark and barracuda infested waters to Mr. Big's island and manages to plant a limpet mine on the hull of his yacht before being captured once again by Mr. Big. The following morning, Mr. Big ties Solitaire and Bond to a line behind his yacht and plans to drag them over the shallow coral reef and into deeper water so that the sharks and barracuda that he attracts in to the area with regular feedings will eat them. Bond and Solitaire are saved when the limpet mine explodes seconds before they are dragged over the reef: though temporarily stunned by the explosion and injured on the coral Bond and Solitaire are protected from the explosion by the reef, and Bond watches as Mr. Big, who survived the explosion, is killed by the sharks and barracuda. Quarrel then rescues Bond and Solitaire. |
I Loved Tiberius | Elisabeth Dored | null | The story begins in Rome. Julia, the daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, suffers with an awkward relationship between her and her sixteen year old stepbrother Tiberius. He is frequently unfair to her leading to them often fighting and them being punished. Through the harshness of living in Livia's strict household Tiberius becomes attracted to Julia's more affectionate nature despite her being merely thirteen. Very quickly Julia becomes smitten with him and he obsessed with her. Tiberius decides that he wishes to marry Julia and plans to ask Augustus. However, before he has a chance, Augustus announces that Julia will be married to Marcellus as soon as she turns fourteen. Marcellus, who is in love with a consul's daughter, confides the truth to Julia. She gives him her blessing to go on seeing this girl but the affair ends after she becomes pregnant and her father marries her to a friend. Meanwhile Julia discovers Tiberius is conducting affairs with other women. Julia and Marcellus comfort each other and finally consummate their marriage. Nonetheless Julia finds Marcellus repugnant. Marcellus becomes jealous of Agrippa when Augustus nearly dies from an illness and names Agrippa his heir by giving him his signant ring. Shortly after Augustus recovers Agrippa and Marcella (His wife and Julia's cousin) nearly die in a fire at their house that was purposely lit. Agrippa confides to Julia that he suspects Livia might be involved. He subsequently decides to leave Rome and travel to Lesbos. Marcellus dies from the illness that nearly killed Augustus and Julia. Worried about her future Julia writes a letter to Agrippa (via Maecenas) begging him to return home. Meanwhile Tiberius approaches Julia in the hope that he might finally have her for himself. However Augustus decides to marry her to Agrippa. Julia marries to Agrippa; and Tiberius to Agrippa's daughter Vipsania. The depression over not being able to marry Julia for a second time drives Tiberius to drink until he his confronted with it by Julia and Agrippa. He stops for the sake of his marriage to Vipsania. Agrippa is deeply in love with Julia and has been since her marriage to Marcellus and to try and win favour with her he spoils her. However he is aware that she was in love with Tiberius and he with her. After a party where Tiberius attempts to seduce Julia, he begins to worry that the two will use Vipsania and himself as an excuse to see each other. Nonetheless, Julia chooses to go with Agrippa, rather than stay in Rome with Tiberius and Vipsania, when he leaves for a campaign in Gaul. Julia later discovers that Vipsania is in love with someone else, Gellus. She attempts to break them apart only to be blocked by Agrippa who says that she is only doing it to spite Vipsania. After this, Julia decides to distance herself from Tiberius as much as possible by travelling with Agrippa around the empire. Along the way, the pair discover that Livia has many spies, and Julia advises Agrippa to reduce the influence of these spies to ensure that, in the event of Augustus falling ill and dying, they won't be run out by Livia's followers. The most notable is Salome, Herod the Great's sister. Agrippa and Julia advice Herod to reinstate his first wife Doris to reduce Salome's influence. Livia realises this and attempts to get rid of Julia and her two sons by drowning them in a set-accident. However they are saved by Agrippa. Not long after this, Agrippa dies, and Julia's close ally and friend Maecenas, suggests that Livia had him poisoned. Julia becomes very depressed following Agrippa's death but tries to stay strong to ensure that her unborn child will be healthy. She gives birth to a little boy who is born feet first, like Agrippa was, and names him Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Postumus in honour of his father. Eventurally Julia and Tiberius marry and are happy until the death of their son, Nero. After the death Tiberius becomes paranoid that Julia will betray him. Following the death of his brother Drusus he begins to take out his sorrow and anger on her as well as taking to drink again. He begins treating her badly, on one occasion twisting her arm so hard he dislocates it. When Augustus asks about it Julia tries to lie but he quickly realises Tiberius is abusing her. Augustus is disgusted with this and Tiberius leaves. He leaves telling Julia that it is probably best for keeping both Augustus and Livia off his back. The absence of Tiberius allows Julia to focus on her children and friends. She raises Agrippina and Postumus, as her elder children live with her father. She also raises Tiberius' only son Drusus. She also becomes fond of her cousin Antonia's son Claudius, who Postumus forges a friendship with due to their rejection by most other people. Julia begins a close friendship with her cousin Julus, Mark Antony's son. He proves to be a good protector to her sons as well as someone to talk to. However he quickly confesses he wants them to be lover; she rejects him at first but eventually gives in although Julia disbelieves that Julus has love in his nature. However her father's servant (and Livia's spy) Crispus, who was at one time considered as a "safe" husband choice for Julia, suspects something. Julia is eventually is arrested for trumped up charges of treason and is exiled. Her mother Scribonia chooses to go with her. She manages to sneak a letter from her children, written by Gaius, promising that once Augustus was dead they would bring both her and Scribonia back to Rome and charge Livia with the murder of their father, Agrippa. However all her children meet tragic fates: her son Lucius is poisoned and Gaius murdered on a campaign; her daughter Julilla is also exiled on trumped up charges of adultery; and her youngest son Postumus exiled. Julia learns from Agrippina that Postumus had become depressed and violent as a result of losing his mother and he was exiled for hitting Livia after she confesses to having his mother exiled and his brothers murdered. While in exile Postumus comes to see the error of his ways and is allowed to write a letter to his mother, telling her that he is studying well and working to make her proud. Meanwhile in Rome Augustus forgives Postumus when he realises, with the help of Agrippina, what Livia has been doing and tries to call him back. After seeing the change in Postumus' character he decides that he will change his will to make him his heir, rather than Tiberius. However Augustus becomes ill and dies before he is able to call Postumus back. Realising that he might die before Postumus is saved Augustus plans to have Postumus secretly removed from exile and replaced by his slave Clitus. To ensure that the plots to make Postumus emperor and restore Julia to favour come to nothing, Livia has Postumus secretly murdered. After hearing of the death of her last son Julia decides to kill herself. She confides to her mother that she intends to write down her story before she dies so that it can be passed on to her one surviving child, Agrippina. Before she dies, she realises that Tiberius has become corrupted by power like her father had and that it was Agrippa, not Tiberius, whom she truly loved; and that Agrippa and Scribonia are the only people that truly loved her. |
Magic Steps | Tamora Pierce | 2,000 | When her three foster-siblings leave Summersea to travel the world with their teachers, Sandry and her teacher, Lark, remain alone in Winding Circle Temple. After her uncle, Duke Vedris, suffers a severe heart attack, Sandry leaves Discipline Cottage to live with and care for him. While out riding with her uncle, Sandry makes two discoveries: the murder of Jamar Rokat, a myrrh trader, part of the war between organized crime families Rokat and Dihanur, and a boy named Pasco Acalon, whose dancing is visible to Sandry's magical vision as imbued with ambient magic. Sandry, a newly accredited mage, discovers that one of the responsibilities implicit in her mage's medalion is a duty towards any newly-discovered mage who has no teacher. When she finds that ambient dancing magic is so rare as to be unheard of, she is forced to teach Pasco to control his magic himself, while Lark puts her in contact with Yazmín Hebet, a non-mage dancer and an old friend of hers who takes Pasco as her student. Between the two of them they must teach Pasco how to dance spells and convince his strict family of harriers, Summersea's local police, that such a seemingly-frivolous education is necessary. When the perpetrators of the Rokat murders are discovered to be using Unmagic, the rare and deadly counter-magic that swallows energy and kills those who use it, Sandry and Pasco find out that they are the ones best suited to capturing the murderers. Sandry spins a net of unmagic, gathered at the scenes of the various murders, to capture the murderers, but her student Pasco is caught in the net, due to lingering to watch the capture- despite being told to leave the house. Sandry was forced to kill the murderers to save Pasco. With the murderers dead, Sandry realizes that she has outgrown living in winding circle and decides that she should stay with her uncle. |
Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? | Don Petersen | null | The story is a racially charged drama about teen drug addicts at a rehabilitation center, located on an island in a river bordering a large industrial city. An English teacher tries to make a difference in his students' lives. He encounters barriers in trying to do this -- the same barriers created by the system that hinders the addicts' development and keeps them coming back. One addict, Bickham, is a tough teenager who searched for his father and found him working in a seedy barber shop. Upon meeting his son, the barber shows him a dirty photograph. Contrasting Bickham is Conrad, an African-American addict. Conrad wants to recover and marry his love, Linda. During the play, his character leaves the rehabilitation group to live with his sister, who is also an addict. Aside from the students, there are only four characters in the rehabilitation center - a teacher, a psychiatrist, a policeman, and the center's principal. |
Bikini Planet | David S. Garnett | null | Waking in the 24th Century, Wayne claims to be John Wayne. He's appointed a GalactiCop Police Sergeant by his new employer, Colonel Travis. Unbeknownst to Norton, Travis sends Wayne as his double to Hideaway, the entertainment planet. On the nearby prison planet Arazon (colliquially known as "Clink"), the female prisoner Kiru (a neurotic) falls into league with a band of space pirates planning to escape. The mute bodyguard Grawl decides to protect Kiru. He even kills his friend Aqa after he and Kiru have sex. Once she escapes and gets to Hideaway, Kiru gets away from Grawl. He had planned on transplanting all of her organs to keep himself going. Wayne arrives on Hideaway and checks in as Robin Hood. He comes across a tailors' shop run by Janesmith, a princess-in-exile from the female-dominated planet of Algol. After identifying himself as Duke Wayne this time, Janesmith immediately has sex with him, thinking he's an aristocrat. Wayne is unwilling to continue, though, after discovering Janesmith has vagina dentata, but she uses hypnosis to knock him out. Wayne awakes up in his room alone, but a few seconds later Kiru comes rushing in to hide from Grawl. The two have sex and are then arrested, while still naked, by a band of amoeba aliens who have already captured the escaped space pirates. Both Wayne and Kiru escape the aliens' ship, but in different escape pods. Kiru ends up riding with Colonel Travis (under the false name of Eliot Ness) and Wayne ends up stuck with Grawl. Both escape pods land on an unknown planet. While Kiru and Travis land safely, Grawl sacrifices himself to help Wayne escape before the pod floods in the alien sea. Wayne is rescued and learns from Travis that the planet is to be the new Las Vegas, in direct competition with Hideaway. It will be called either Cafe World or Vegas World. The inhabitants all wear bikinis for uniforms, even while construction is underway. There are three alternate endings to the story. Two of which involve Kiru and Wayne marrying on Vegas / Cafe World, while the other involves a massacre of the characters by a resurrected Grawl. |
For One More Day | Mitch Albom | 2,006 | The book's theme is mortality: it analyzes how people might react to the chance to have a dead relative back for a day. The book tells the story of Charley “Chick” Benetto, a former baseball player who encounters a myriad of problems with his career, finances, family and alcohol abuse. This leads him to become suicidal. Charley goes on a drunken rampage and decides he is going to end his life in his old home town, but when he misses the exit, he turns around driving down the wrong side of the highway causing an accident, Charley flees to his old home – his suicide attempt an apparent failure – to see his mother, who had died eight years prior. Benetto returns to his old family home, and spends one more day with his mother, wherein a number of previously unknown factors related to his difficult childhood and troubled relationship with his father are revealed to him. His mother assists him in resolving his issues and getting his life back on track. The day ends when Benetto regains consciousness at the scene of the accident in a police officer's arms. The book's epilogue describes how Benetto was inspired by his experience to quit drinking and reconcile with family, including his daughter, Maria, before his death five years later. At the end, Maria is revealed to have been the narrator of the story. |
Ticktock | Dean Koontz | 1,996 | The story opens with Tommy getting a new corvette. He argues with his mother, refusing her offer for dinner. In a fit of rebellion, he eats two cheeseburgers, something his mother dislikes. He meets a blond waitress there (which he will meet later in the story again). His radio quits working during one of these two trips, and in the static are eerie voices. Once home, he finds a Rag doll on his front steps, along with a note, written in Vietnamese, which he knew when he was a child, but in his quest to be a true American forgot. After taking the doll into his study, it soon bursts open to reveal an evil creature who seems intent on killing Tommy. A message is left on his computer screen saying he has until dawn, but what will happen at dawn, Tommy does not know. After fate brings a meeting with Del, a woman who appears to speak somewhat cryptically, they embark on a race to flee the creature. She believes him too quickly, and often has mixed stories for all of her abilities. (At one point she stole a car, saying one minute she hotwired it, and the next that the key was in the ignition.) The doll appears to be growing larger as their journey continues. They visit Tommy's brother, Gi, to try and translate the note. They then go to Del's apartment, where we learn she's quite rich, but is a waitress anyway. She also shows another side to her when Tommy wants to see her paintings, and she threatens to shoot him if he does. Her dog seems incredibly smart, something that unnerves Tommy. In their journey to escape the ever growing doll, Tommy's Corvette is trashed, two cars are stolen, and one large boat is trashed. They arrive at Del's mother's home, which seems utterly odd. They claim to be able to listen to live stuff from the past with their radio. Del's mother shows an uncanny sense of time when she knows exactly when the rain will stop. Gi calls and tells Tommy to go to their mother, and not to bring the blonde along. Tommy brings Del along anyway, where he then learns the doll was conjured to scare him back home by a friend of his mother. They begin a ritual that, after a few harrowing minutes, completely dispels the monster. Tommy sees Del's paintings and they're of him. She had remotely viewed him over the past 2 years because she knows he is her destiny. He and Del get married in Vegas. Then they go back to their normal town, and in a conversation with Tommy's mother, Tommy learns Del is actually an alien, implanted in her mother when her mother and father were abducted a long time ago. Del's dog is also an alien, sent to be her guide. They are supposed to find the evil extraterrestrial influence and remove it. Del states that it is very lonely, but now it won't be because she has Tommy. |
The Wedding! | David Michelinie | 1,987 | Spider-Man is web slinging through town and runs into Electro. He defeats him and then returns home, to find Mary Jane in the process of moving in. MJ leaves for a photo shoot, leaving Peter to ponder how on earth he'll be able to provide for him and MJ. Peter takes his photos of Spider-Man defeating Electro to the Daily Bugle and is surprised by the staff with a party in honor of his upcoming wedding to Mary Jane. J. Jonah Jameson arrives, clearly irritated, and starts to complain about why they are hosting a party when they're supposed to be working. As soon as Peter leaves, he states that he wants to cut the pay of everyone who didn't attend. Peter is barely able to sleep that night, contemplating his impending wedding. The next day he meets Mary Jane. He leaps to the ceiling and goes down to one knee, asking her to marry him once again. "I hate cleaning footprints off the ceiling," she responds with a smile. They both eat, but can't help shake their worries about the wedding. Mary Jane leaves for a meeting, where her old boyfriend presents her with two tickets to Paris, that she can only take if she skips the wedding. Peter goes to Aunt May's house, and goes through a scrap book, remembering his most prominent times with Mary Jane. MJ and her aunt arrive, and they announce the upcoming marriage to their family. She leaves in a Ferrari with her ex boyfriend, and Peter takes the subway home. Both are starting to have second thoughts about their marriage. When they meet up again that night, Spidey takes MJ out web-slinging to clear their heads. The next day, Peter's best man, Flash Thompson, and his best friend, Harry Osborn, take Peter out for a bachelor party, but he's beginning to show his true feelings about the wedding. They try to convince him that love conquers all. Meanwhile, Mary Jane is having a grand party across town. Peter finally decides to go home for the night, and has nightmares about all of his enemies trying to attack MJ, and being helpless to stop them. He wakes up in a sweat, wondering what he should do. Meanwhile, MJ is out with Liz Allan, wondering the same. Later at City Hall, all of the guests are in attendance, but both Peter and Mary Jane are late, leaving everyone confused. At the last minute, they both appear and are married by Mary Jane's uncle, judge Spenser Watson. (MJ's wedding dress was designed by real-life designer Willi Smith.) MJ gives Peter the tickets to France with which her ex-boyfriend tried to tempt her, and they go off on their honeymoon to begin their new life together, as Mr. and Mrs. Peter Parker. The wedding occurred simultaneously in the Spider-Man comic and in the daily news strip. In an attempt to save Aunt May's life, the 2007 storyline, Spider-Man: One More Day erased the wedding from continuity by Mephisto. Both participants are single again. How the changes prevented the wedding was explained in the storyarc O.M.I.T. In the first issue Spider-Man stops Electro and his gang. One of the gang members, Eddie, makes note of the arresting officer's name. Then Mephisto, as a red pigeon, swoops down and unlocks the door of the cop car Eddie is in. The officers are all occupied with cuffing Electro and Eddie escapes. Spider-Man is out patrolling that night and hears the gunshots of Eddie shooting at the arresting officer and his wife. While saving the cop and his wife, Spider-Man gets hit in the head with a cinder block. He chases after Eddie and tackles him off the side of a building. Spider-Man misses his web shot to save them because of the cinder block to the head, so he turns his body to absorb the impact and they both crash to the ground with Eddie on top of Spider-Man. On the wedding morning, MJ shows up but Peter does not as he is laying unconscious in an alleyway. When he wakes up and rushes to where the wedding was to take place, he finds Mary Jane there and the two decide to take what happened as an omen and simply live together. At which point, the bulk of the Spider-Man stories from that point to the events of One More Day take place as they did normally, but with the two as a couple and living together while being unmarried. However, Mary Jane makes it clear she does not want to be an unmarried mother, and thus Peter and MJ never conceive their child. |
The Alien | K. A. Applegate | 1,997 | After destroying the Vag, the Animorphs assumed that they would see people freeing themselves of the Yeerks. They are disappointed until the day they take Ax to the cinema. A man's Yeerk is seen dying publicly. However, a Controller-policeman kills the free man. The Animorphs take Ax to the school as Philip, Jake's cousin, and a Yeerk who controlled one of Jake's teachers is seen dying as well. Chapman appears, orders the students to leave, and kills the non-Controller teacher. Jake and the other Animorphs become very angry with Ax because they feel betrayed. Innocent people are dying as a result of their actions. Ax retorts that they would not have destroyed the Kandrona had they known the consequences, to which Jake replies that he, Ax, still has a lot to learn about humans. That night, Ax feels lonely, and confused. Running, he ends up in Cassie's house. Cassie notices Ax's sadness, and asks him to have dinner with her family. Shocked at the fact that she noticed it, Ax accepts and enters, morphed as Jake. He has dinner and chats with the family. The next day, he meets with Marco to go to a bookshop in hopes that Ax would trust them if they trusted him. However, Marco forgets the money they collected for him to buy a book at home, so he and Ax go to Marco's house to pick it up. While Ax waits for Marco in the living room, he plays what he thinks is a game on Marco's father's computer called "Fix the mistakes.". He ends up messing up the computer. It turns out that he had developed a new system that was very advanced. Before destroying it, he used it to communicate with his home world. There, an Andalite made him assume all the responsibility for Elfangor's action and is consequently forgiven. When he was about to speak with his parents, he is interrupted by a Controller whose loved one had died when Visser Three chose to sacrifice her after the Kandrona's destruction. To avenge her, he tells Ax where and when Visser Three feeds his Andalite body. Ax decides to go alone and not tell the others about the information he received. He poisons Visser Three by morphing into a rattlesnake and biting him. As Ax is about to die, the Animorphs arrive to save him. With his host body having been poisoned, the Yeerk Visser Three leaves it. However Ax is unable to kill a fellow Andalite. So Visser Three's host Alloran-Semitur-Corrass asks him to tell his family that he is still alive and that he has not lost hope. Ax returns to the observatory, calls his home planet, and delivers Alloran's message. He announces Earth is his new home, and that he will tell the Animorphs everything. Ax tells the Animorphs that Seerow was the first Andalite to go to the Yeerk home planet, and that he felt sorry for the Yeerks and gave them the technology they later used to conquer the world. Contrary to what Ax had expected, the others didn't blame the Andalites for their problem. They recognized the good action and told him to keep trying to get the D, but to be more careful the next time. |
The Changeling | Zilpha Keatley Snyder | null | The novel's plot follows the developing friendship of two adolescent girls: shy, fearful Martha and free-spirited, mystical, imaginative Ivy. Ivy belonged to the shunned Carson family, who lived in the hills above town in a derelict Victorian mansion surrounded by neglected fruit orchards that had been handed down to her mother. But Ivy was not a typical Carson. Ivy explains to Martha when they first meet that she is a changeling, a child of supernatural parents who had been exchanged for the real Ivy Carson at birth. She returns to this theme with particular emphasis when she is threatened or harmed in any way. Martha comes from a well-to-do family completely in thrall to suburban values and suspicious of Ivy due to her background. The girls become friends in the second grade and soon are inseparable. Among other things, Martha discovers that Ivy is "absolutely fearless"; not courageous, but fearless. It is implied that this is at least in part due to abuse by her father or brothers. When Ivy cries, which is rarely, she sheds few tears and makes no sound at all. The illustrations as well as the text emphasize the contrasts between the girls. Ivy is dark, thin, beautiful, graceful and mature; Martha is blond, overweight, bucktoothed, clumsy, and cries easily. What they have in common is bright imagination, which they soon pool into a shared fantasy, almost a belief system. They play regularly in a beautiful, magical part of the woods and develop an elaborate paracosm called the Land of the Green Sky. Whenever they have trouble in their lives they enact rituals of their own devising which have an uncanny way of cadencing in the same way that their problems eventually resolve. As they grow older and enter their teen years, Ivy longs to be a ballet dancer and directs Martha into a career in drama. Martha becomes braver, bolstered by Ivy's encouragement. Ivy family’s reputation means she is never able to get a fair chance. Martha's family considers her a bad influence. She is blamed for anything that goes wrong. When the girls are in 8th grade, vandals strike their school and because Ivy is one of the "jailbird Carsons," she is wrongfully and maliciously accused of the crime. Ivy's family responds to this crisis in the manner typical of when one of their own has trouble with the law - they pack up their old, red truck and, with no warning, flee in the dead of night. Martha is devastated by the loss and confused by Ivy's cryptic and emotional assertions when they spoke for the last time. Martha must now come of age without her magical, kindred friend by her side. No one knew or loved Martha as Ivy did. Martha is left alone to make more shallow friendships with classmates. |
The Horn of Mortal Danger | Lawrence Leonard | 1,980 | Simon "Widgie" and Jen Widgeon are innocently exploring the abandoned Highgate rail tunnel near their home when they discover a hidden gateway halfway along it. Through this they find their way to a little old-fashioned railway station. At first the tunnels seem deserted. As Jen wanders down the tunnel to explore, the Railwaymen emerge and capture Widgie. Jen in her turn discovers an underground canal, complete with a little steamboat, which the railway crosses by means of a retractable bridge. Men emerge from the boat and take her captive. It quickly becomes apparent that Widgie and Jen have become caught up in an entire underground civilisation, the North London System, kept secret for centuries from the world above. Two civilisations, in fact, seemingly perpetually at war. Their arrival is the catalyst for a climactic battle between the Railway and the Canals. Widgie manages to escape and rescues Jen, and the realisation of the threat they pose should they escape above ground and expose the System forces the Railwaymen and the Canallers to set aside their differences for the time being in a vain effort to recapture them. In the course of the battle, giant Rats, kept imprisoned in a blocked-up tunnel, are released and proceed to spread through the whole system. As Widgie and Jen escape into the Post Office Railway, it appears that the entire civilisation is on the verge of disintegration under the assault from the Rats. |
Song in the Silence | Elizabeth Kerner | 1,997 | Lanen Kaelar is a young woman who has been raised in Hadronsstead, believing that Hadron (the horse-breeder) was her father. She leads an unhappy life as she secretly longs to meet the Dragons of legend, for which she has had a powerful fascination, but she is forced to remain at Hadron's farm. When Hadron eventually dies, she feels freed. After an abrupt proposal from her cousin (who gets a bruise from her fist in response), she leaves to seek out the True Dragons of legend. On the journey she learns that her true father Marik has promised her as a demon sacrifice since before her birth, in payment for the making of an artifact that allows the user to see distant people and places. She finds a ship to the Dragon Isle for the Lansip harvest that used to occur every ten years, but no ship has returned from the trip in over 100 years due to the violent storms that lie between Kolmar and the Dragon Isle. After travelling on the ship with her father Marik lurking dangerously on board, she makes it safely to the Dragon Isle and meets Akhor, the mighty silver-scaled king of the Kantri (known to humans as "dragons"). She seeks him out with the two words that she utters on instinct, that he respects her instantly for; 'My brother?' Akhor, weary of the 'ferrinshadik' (a longing to know the mind of another species, similar to what Lanen herself feels), reveals himself, and discovers that Lanen alone of the humans (Gedri) he has ever known, is capable of hearing and replying in Truespeech, the Kantri form of telepathy. It is a trait all the Kantri share. Lanen comes to know Akhor, and for the first time since the Kantri departed the mainland, Kantri and Gedri are once again communicating with one another. Their meetings must be secret and both must break the rules of their people in order to meet with each other. In a madly short time they fall in love, knowing even as it happens that it is folly. When Lanen is horribly burned while helping Mirazhe, another of the Kantri, to give birth to the first dragon child born for many years, Akhor is terrified that she will die of her injuries and reluctantly delivers her into the hands of the only healer on the island - an ally of Marik's. Lanen is swiftly healed by the skilled ministrations of Marik's Healer, Maikel (Healers are humans who can wield a magical power to heal others), but is then spirited away by Marik, who intends to sacrifice Lanen to a demon in order to pay off a dark debt he has long owed. Lanen is kept ensorcelled and unable to call for aid, but Akhor learns of her plight from Rella, a human who came to the island ostensibly to gather Lansip leaves (which are worth their weight in silver due to their special healing properties), but she is actually a member of a order of spies, and she was hired to protect Lanen. Akhor manages to save Lanen in the nick of time, slaying the demon lord Lanen was to be sacrifed to, but Marik and his demon-caller ally Caderan manage to avoid Akhor's notice. The assembled Council of the Kantri soon learn of Lanen and Akhor's love, and their transgressions, and are prepared to sentence them to exile or death when Lanen manages to sway them incline them to mercy with an impassioned speech in defense of their actions. However, during Lanen's speech, Marik, consumed by greed, comes and steals the Soulgems of the Lost, a precious and irreplaceable treasure of the Kantri, while they are distracted. Akhor and two other of the Kantri pursue Marik back to his camp and a battle ensues, for Marik and his demon-calling servant Caderan had prepared for the possibility of a fight and so had demonic powers and items ready to oppose the Kantri with. Caderan is slain and Marik is driven insane, but Akhor suffers terrible wounds at Marik's hands and Rishkaan, one of the other kantri present at the fight, is killed. Akhor as an entity dies of his wounds, but he is mysteriously transformed into human form. Together they travel back to Kolmar and are eventually married. |
Deep River | null | null | The story traces the journey of four Japanese tourists on a tour to India. Each of these tourists goes to India for different purposes and with different expectations. Even though the tour is interrupted when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by militant Sikhs, each of these tourists finds their own spiritual discovery on the banks of the Ganges River. One of the tourists is Osamu Isobe. He is a middle-class manager whose wife has died of cancer. On her deathbed she asks him to look for her in a future reincarnation. His search takes him to India, even though he has doubts about reincarnation. Kiguchi is haunted by war-time horrors in Burma and seeks to have Buddhist rituals performed in India for the souls of his friends in the Japanese army as well as his enemies. He is also impressed by a foreign Christian volunteer who helped his sick friend deal with tragic experiences during the war. Numada has a deep love for animals ever since he was a child in Manchuria. He believes that a pet bird he owns has died in his place. He goes to India to visit a bird sanctuary. Mitsuko Naruse, after a failed marriage, realizes that she is a person incapable of love. She goes to India hoping to find the meaning of life. Her values are challenged by the awaiting Otsu, a former schoolmate she once cruelly seduced and then left. Although he had a promising career as a Catholic priest, Otsu’s heretical ideas of a pantheistic God have led to his expulsion. He helps carry dead Indians to the local crematoria so that their ashes can be spread over the Ganges. His efforts ultimately lead to his peril as he is caught in the anti-Sikh uproars in the country. Meanwhile, Mitsuko meets two nuns from the Missionaries of Charity and begins to understand Otsu's idea of God. |
The Black March | null | null | The journal of Peter Neumann is presented in chronological order: it begins in 1939 with various entries of his activities in the Hitler youth, and discussing plans with his friends to enter the SS. Peter's early entries are more jubilant and optimistic. He recounts his cruel training involving many life-or-death exercises, e.g., outrunning attack dogs, having to dig a fox hole before a tank rolls over him and the other men in training. He tells of how a few men died in such exercises. Peter's girlfriend reveals that she is a Jew; this, however, does not affect Peter negatively. During the middle of his entries he regards his duties with admiration and disdain for his commanding officers. Peter is, in one entry, awarded the Iron Cross second class for saving the lives of several battalions from a Sniper's nest (who were also armed with RPGs). In later entries, he tells of fierce combat in Russia, the most notable being a tale from a Russian civilian, in an occupied town, telling Peter and his fellow soldiers of the Partisans of Odessa and the Russian genocide at the hands of the Nazis. Towards the end, Peter returns home on leave were he informs his friend's parents of the their son's death, and on a visit to his home Peter is informed that his girlfriend has been moved to a ghetto. On visiting her he expresses sympathy for her condition but writes that he couldn't care less about other Jews in the same situation. He also talks with two concentration camp technicians at a bar, who tell him of their grisly job fixing incinerators. At the end, Peter and his unit are on the retreat. Peter, at this point, has been promoted to captain and expresses extreme discontent with both the SS and with the many civilians who are blaming the SS for aggravating the Russian troops. He hears many tales of Russian cruelty. At the end, Peter is trapped, alone and wounded, and surrounded by Russian troops. He hides in a small room filled with dead German soldiers and fires a damaged gun at a Russian 'clean-up' squad. The bullet he intends for himself does not do the job. His last words are "Why couldn't they have killed me?" |
The Children of Húrin | Christopher Tolkien | 2,007 | Húrin and his brother Huor visit the hidden Elvish city of Gondolin. After a year, they swear not to reveal its location and are permitted passage to Dor-lómin. Húrin marries Morwen Eledhwen and they have two children, a son Túrin and a daughter, Lalaith. Lalaith dies almost in infancy, but Túrin grows to boyhood with a thoughtful nature. A kind woodworker in Húrin's employ, Sador, becomes his first friend. In the disastrous defeat of the Battle of Unnumbered Tears Húrin is captured alive and taken to Angband, stronghold of the dark lord Morgoth. Morgoth personally torments Húrin, trying to force from him the location of Gondolin, but despite his efforts, Húrin defies and even scorns Morgoth. For this, Morgoth places a curse on his family whereby evil will befall them for their whole lives, and imprisons Húrin high on a mountain, forcing him to witness his family's fate through Morgoth's own twisted eyes. At Morgoth's command, the allied Easterlings overrun Hithlum and Dor-lómin. Morwen, fearing her son's capture, sends Túrin to the Elven realm of Doriath for safety. Shortly after Túrin's unwilling departure, Morwen gives birth to a second daughter, Nienor. In Doriath, Túrin is taken as foster-son by King Thingol and becomes a mighty warrior, befriending the Elf Beleg Strongbow, and living more often with him on the marches of Doriath than in Thingol's halls. At one point during his life with Beleg on the fringes of the forest Túrin returns to Thingol's court, where his wild and unkempt appearance draws the scorn of Saeros, a proud Elf who believes that Men should be kept out of Doriath. After Saeros hurls a snide insult directed at Túrin's mother and sister, Túrin throws a dish in Saeros's face, injuring him. Saeros, angry over what happened in the hall, attacks Túrin from behind in the woods the next day. Túrin overpowers him, however, and strips him, forcing him to run naked through the woods shouting for help as Túrin pursues him. The Elf Mablung follows them, crying for Túrin to stop, but Túrin continues chasing Saeros until the terrified Elf attempts to jump a gorge too wide for him, and falls, dying in the water below. Mablung, having witnessed only the chase through the woods and not Saeros's original assault upon Túrin, believes that Saeros was humiliated without provocation and wishes to bring Túrin back to trial in Doriath. Túrin's pride restrains him from either correcting the misunderstanding or submitting to trial, and he chooses rather to leave Doriath and become an outcast. Thingol holds an absentee trial for Túrin, and as the only evidence is that Túrin humiliated Saeros without cause, Thingol is on the verge of outlawing him from Doriath until he should choose to return and ask for pardon. Just as the King's judgment is about to be put into effect, however, Beleg rushes in late accompanied by an Elf-maid named Nellas, who witnessed Saeros's assault upon Túrin from her vantage point in a tree. With Nellas's evidence taken into account, Thingol grants Túrin a full pardon, and Beleg leaves Doriath to find Túrin and bid him to return to Doriath. Túrin meanwhile joins a band of outlaws in the wild, the Gaurwaith or "Wolf-folk", who live by raiding and pillaging the property of the few Men left in the land. He kills one of their members by throwing a stone, then offers to take his place. Soon afterward Túrin kills the leader of the band to prevent him from killing a young woman from a nearby homestead, and the leaderless outlaws promote Túrin to the position of captain. Beleg traces the signs of Túrin's band, gathering news of Túrin from those who had seen or heard of him, but the outlaws repeatedly throw off his pursuit. After a year in the wild he succeeds in overtaking the band at a time when Túrin is absent. Mistrusting Elves in general and having become cruel through long lives of self-centered crime, the men mistreat Beleg in an attempt to elicit any information he might possess. After being tortured by the lawless gang for several days, Beleg is on the verge of death when Túrin returns. Túrin is horrified to see his friend so maltreated by his own men, and while tending Beleg Túrin vows to forsake the evil and cruel habits he has fallen into while among the lawless men, recognizing that his band's senseless cruelty towards the innocent Beleg can be traced back to his own lax standards. When Beleg recovers, he is able to deliver to Túrin the message of the king's pardon; Túrin is torn, but in spite of Beleg's pleas refuses to humble his pride, and will not accept the pardon and return to Doriath. Beleg then departs in order to participate in battles upon the north-marches of Doriath, in spite of Túrin's request that Beleg stay by his side. Some time later, Túrin and his men capture Mîm the Petty-dwarf, who ransoms his life by leading the band to the caves in the hill of Amon Rûdh, where the ancestral home of the Petty-dwarves is hidden. Despite the unfortunate death of Mîm's son at the hands of one of Túrin's band, Mîm grows to respect Túrin, and the outlaws set up a permanent base in the caves. In Doriath, Beleg decides against his better judgment to return to his friend, and arrives at Amon Rûdh to a loving reception from Túrin. The other outlaws resent Beleg's presence, however, and Mîm, who had earlier proclaimed his enmity towards the Elves, grows to hate him bitterly. Nevertheless everything proceeds smoothly for a while, the outlaw band gradually increases to a great number (though only the original fifty men are allowed entrance to the hidden caves of the Petty-dwarves), and becomes more daring and successful in the warfare against Morgoth's troops. At length, Túrin and Beleg even establish the realm of Dor-Cúarthol, and word spreads that Beleg and Túrin, long unheard-of, have appeared again as the captains of a great host. However, Mîm's hatred towards Beleg eventually reaches a breaking point, and he approaches a band of Orcs with an offer to lead them to the outlaw's headquarters on Amon Rûdh, in return for the promise of monetary compensation. (A footnote explains that there is another version of the tale in which the vital information is tortured out of an unwilling and captive Mîm; but the canonical version seems more likely, considering Mîm's later conduct.) Mîm lays down several other conditions, among them the demand that after the Orcs depart from Amon Rûdh, Beleg must be left behind, helpless, to Mîm's own mercy. The Orcs agree to all of Mîm's conditions, without the intention of fulfilling any of them except for that regarding Beleg. The dwarf leads them to the hidden caves, and Túrin's company is taken unawares. They retreat to the top of Amon Rûdh to defend themselves, but the entire band are eventually killed, excepting Beleg and Túrin, whom the Orcs want alive. They bind Túrin and carry him off towards Angband, while leaving Beleg wounded and helpless, chained to a rock. Mîm approaches him after all the Orcs depart and is on the verge of torturing the Elf to death, when Andróg, one of the outlaws, who is wounded and had appeared dead, rouses himself enough to drive Mîm away and release Beleg before succumbing to his wounds. Beleg remains in Amon Rûdh until his own wounds are healed, and then, knowing that Túrin is not among the dead and must have been taken captive, follows the company of Orcs. In pursuit of the Orcs, Beleg comes across a mutilated elf, Gwindor of Nargothrond sleeping in a forest. Gwindor had been an Elvish lord before being taken captive and forced to serve in Angband for many years, and Beleg remains with him. They see the Orc company pass by, and entering their camp that night find Túrin sleeping, and carry him away from the Orcs. When at a safe distance they stop, and Beleg begins to cut Túrin's bonds with his sword Gurthang, which Beleg had been warned was an evil blade which would not stay with him long. The sword slips in his hand and Túrin is cut; and Túrin, mistaking Beleg in the dark for an Orc who had come to torture him, leaps to his feet and kills Beleg with his own sword. When Túrin sees Beleg's face in a flash of lightning and realizes what he has done, he falls into a kind of frenzy, not speaking or weeping, but refusing to leave Beleg's body. In the morning Gwindor is able to bury Beleg, but Túrin remains crazed and witless with grief. Gwindor leads Túrin through the wild for months, and Túrin remains in a fixed state of grief and guilt, not speaking, but doing only what Gwindor bids him. At length, however, the two reach Eithel Ivrin, where Túrin finally weeps for Beleg, and is healed. Having regained his senses, he and Gwindor proceed to Nargothrond, where Gwindor lived before his long imprisonment in Angband. There Túrin gains favour with King Orodreth and earns the love of his daughter Finduilas, although she was previously engaged to be married to Gwindor, and Túrin does not reciprocate her romantic feelings. After leading the Elves to considerable victories, Túrin becomes the chief counsellor of Orodreth and effectively commander of all the forces in Nargothrond. This fuels Túrin's pride, and he begins giving extravagant orders which are arrogant and ill-thought-out, and eventually hasten the doom of Nargothrond. Messengers sent from Círdan warn Túrin to hide Nargothrond from Morgoth, but Túrin refused to retract his rash and prideful plans for full-scale battle, and treats the messengers rudely. However, after five years Morgoth sends a great force of Orcs under the command of a dragon, Glaurung, and defeats the army of Nargothrond on the field of Tumhalad, where both Gwindor and Orodreth are killed. Easily crossing over a great bridge which Túrin had had built against all counsel, Morgoth's forces sack Nargothrond and capture its citizens while its forces are engaged on the field of battle. Túrin returns just before the prisoners are led away by the Orcs, and in an attempt to prevent this, Túrin encounters Glaurung. The dragon, wielding the evil power of Morgoth, enchants and tricks him into returning to Dor-lómin to seek out his mother and sister instead of rescuing Finduilas and other prisoners, which, according to the last words of Gwindor, is the only way to avoid his doom. When Túrin returns to Dor-lómin, he learns that Morwen and Nienor have long been sheltered in Doriath, and that Glaurung deceived him into letting Finduilas go to her death. An enraged Túrin incites a fight among the Easterlings who now inhabit Dor-lómin and is compelled to flee once more. He tracks Finduilas's captors to the forest of Brethil, only to learn that she was murdered by the Orcs when the woodmen attempted to rescue the Elvish prisoners. Almost broken by his grief, Túrin seeks sanctuary among the Folk of Haleth, who maintain a tenacious resistance against the forces of Morgoth. In Brethil Túrin renames himself Turambar, or "Master of Doom" in High-elven, and gradually overrules the gentle, lame Chieftain Brandir. Meanwhile, in Doriath, Morwen and Nienor hear rumours of Túrin's deeds at Nargothrond, and Morwen determines either to find Túrin living or hear certain news of his death. Against the council of Thingol she rides out of Doriath alone, and when the king sends a group of Elves to follow and protect her, Nienor conceals herself among the riders and rejoins her mother. Mablung, leading the group, does not wish to proceed with Morwen's mission, but feels compelled to protect her and Nienor. When they approach Nargothrond, Mablung leaves Morwen and Nienor with a group of riders, and takes the rest to explore the ruins of Nargothrond in the hopes of finding information about the fall of the city and of Túrin's fate. There they encounter Glaurung, who has established himself in the ruins of Nargothrond, and he scatters Mablung's force before proceeding to the hill on which the women and Elves are waiting. His coming drives all of horses mad, and in the frenzy Nienor is separated from all the others. When she regains the hilltop alone, she comes face-to face with Glaurung, who, upon discovering her identity, enchants her so that everything she knows is lost, and her mind is made blank. When Mablung returns to the hill alone, also separated from his company, he finds her waiting on the hill like a lost child, and is forced to attempt the long journey back to Doriath on foot, leading Nienor by the hand. The two of them become stranded in the wilderness, and only the arrival of a few of the other Elves from the scattered group prevents them from starving to death. The few Elves continue their long journey to Doriath, but in an affray with a band of Orcs Nienor runs into the woods and is lost. Eventually she collapses near Brethil on the grave of Finduilas, where Túrin finds her and brings her back to the town. There she gradually recovers the use of speech, although she has no memory of any past life. Brandir falls in love with her, but though she feels a sisterly affection for him, she and Túrin develop a strong mutual attraction; Túrin has never seen her, and she remembers nothing of what she once knew about her brother, and not realizing their kinship, they fall in love. Despite the counsel of Brandir, they soon marry, and Nienor becomes pregnant. After some time of peace, Glaurung comes to exterminate the Men of Brethil. But Turambar leads a perilous expedition to cut him off, and stabs the dragon from beneath while he is crossing the ravine of Cabed-en-Aras. Meanwhile, Nienor and several other of the people of Brethil leave the safety of the town and, wishing to know what transpired between the men and the dragon, join the scouts waiting for Turambar's return on a hill a short distance from where the dragon was stabbed. As Glaurung is dying on the bank of the ravine, Turambar, who is now alone, pulls his sword from the dragon's belly, and the venomous blood spurts onto his hand and burns him. Overwhelmed with pain and fatigue, he faints. Nienor eventually comes to the place of the battle, followed by Brandir hobbling on his crutch. She takes Turambar's swoon for death and weeps over him, as with a last effort of malice Glaurung opens his eyes, and informs her of the fact that she and her husband are in reality brother and sister, taunting her with her incestuous pregnancy. Glaurung then dies, and his spell of forgetfulness passes from her, and she remembers her entire life. Forced to acknowledge that the dragon's words were true, she throws herself off the nearby cliff into the river Taeglin, and is washed away, as Brandir watches helplessly. When Turambar wakes and returns to the hill where the scouts are waiting, Brandir bitterly informs him of Nienor's death and of hers and Turambar's true relationship as siblings, concerning which he overheard the dragon's words. Believing that Brandir has concocted the story as a lie stemming from jealousy of Nienor's love for Túrin, Túrin kills Brandir, who declares before dying his hope that he will rejoin Nienor across the sea, which only further infuriates Túrin. However, running crazed into the wild, Túrin meets Mablung, who has been seeking Nienor for years; as well as Morwen, who was never found after Glaurung's scattering of the Elvish company. Mablung, without knowing anything that has transpired since Nienor was lost in the woods, innocently confirms Brandir's tale. After Túrin has learned all the terrible truth from Mablung, he returns to the place where Nienor threw herself from the cliff, and takes his own life upon the sword, Gurthang, which killed Beleg so many years before. The main part of the narrative ends with the burial of Túrin. Appended to this is an extract from The Wanderings of Húrin, the next tale of Tolkien's legendarium. This recounts how Húrin is at last released by Morgoth and comes to the grave of his children. There he finds Morwen, who has also managed to find the place, but now dies in the arms of her husband with the following sunset. |
The Black Prince | Iris Murdoch | 1,973 | The Black Prince is remarkable for the structure of its narrative, consisting of a central story bookended by forewords and post-scripts by characters within it. It largely consists of the description of a period in the later life of the main character, ageing London author Bradley Pearson, during which time he falls in love with the daughter of a friend and literary rival, Arnold Baffin. For years Bradley has had a tense but strong relationship with Arnold, regarding himself as having 'discovered' the younger writer. The tension is ostensibly over Bradley's distaste for Arnold's lack of proper literary credentials, though later the other characters claim this to be a matter of jealousy or the product of an Oedipus complex. Their closeness is made apparent from the start of the book, however, as Arnold telephones Bradley, worried that he has killed his wife, Rachel, in a domestic row. Bradley attends with another character, Francis Marloe, in tow. Bradley then starts to get trapped in a growing dynamic of family, friends, and associates who collectively seem to thwart his attempts at achieving the isolation he feels necessary to create his 'masterpiece'. During this time he falls in love with the Baffins' young daughter, Julian. Despite a private vow never to confess or seek to realise this love, he promptly blurts it out to Francis, thereafter abandoning self-control, embarking on a brief, intense affair, stealing Julian to a rented sea-side cottage, neglecting pressing needs at home. During his absence his depressed sister, Priscilla, commits suicide. While Bradley postpones returning, Arnold arrives, enraged, to collect his daughter, though leaves, apparently, without her, with a promise that she will return home the next day. Yet Julian vanishes in the night, in Bradley's mind (at least), is taken off and hidden against her will. The final action of the main section takes place at the Baffins' residence, where Bradley attends an incident parallel to the opening one: Rachel appears to have struck Arnold with a poker, killing him. Bradley's arrest, trial, and conviction for Arnold's murder are briefly described, bringing to a close Bradley's telling of the events. This section is told from the point of view of the other characters, each being said to have had the luxury of reading the main section before drafting their responses. Each interprets the action differently, focusing on separate issues to a more or less selfish degree. The author's purpose in creating the post-scripts is to cast doubt on the veracity of the fiction that preceded it, but also on themselves. They also allow Murdoch's meticulous craft to be laid bare, exposing some of the finer nuances of her work. Some of these are discussed in the Influences and Themes section below. |
The Reluctant King | L. Sprague de Camp | null | The trilogy follows the adventures of ex-king Jorian, a native of the village of Ardamai in the kingdom of Kortoli, one of the twelve city-states of Novaria. Jorian is a powerful and intelligent man who has trained extensively for a life of adventure, but hampered by garulousness and a weakness for drink and women. When first seen, Jorian is the reluctant king of Xylar, another Novarian city-state. The Xylarians select their king every five years by executing the reigning monarch and tossing his head into a crowd; the man who catches it becomes the next king. Jorian, having been selected for the position five years before, is at the end of his term as ruler. He miraculously escapes his fate with the aid of the Mulvanian sorcerer Dr. Karadur. The tale continues through a pair of spectacularly disastrous quests in aid of his savior, the first taking them through the exotic lands of Mulvan, Komilakh and Shven and the second south to the ancient empire of Penembei. In the course of the later adventure Jorian is tapped to be ruler of Penembei, an office nearly as hazardous as king of Xylar. Adroitly ducking this second crown he endeavors to recover from Xylar his favorite wife Estrildis, with whom he hopes to retire to a life of quiet obscurity, only to have things once again go wrong... |
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | null | The story opens with the narrator wandering the streets of St. Petersburg. He contemplates how he has always been a ridiculous person, and also, how recently, he has come to the realization that nothing much matters to him any more. It is this revelation that leads him to the idea of suicide. The narrator of the story reveals that he had bought a revolver months previous with the intent of shooting himself in the head. Despite a dismal night, the narrator looks up to the sky and views a solitary star. Shortly after seeing the star, a little girl comes running towards him. The narrator surmises that something is wrong with the girl's mother. He shakes the girl away and continues on to his apartment. Once in his apartment, the narrator sinks into a chair and places his gun on a table next to him. He hesitates to shoot himself because of a nagging feeling of guilt that has plagued him ever since he eschewed the girl. The narrator grapples with internal questions for a few hours before falling asleep in the chair. As he sleeps, he descends into a very vivid dream. In the dream, he shoots himself in the heart. He dies but he is still aware of his surroundings. He gathers that there is a funeral and he is also buried. After an indeterminate amount of time in his cold grave, water begins to drip down onto his eyelids. The narrator begs for forgiveness. Suddenly his grave is opened by an unknown and shadowy figure. This figure pulls the narrator up from his grave, and then the two soar through the sky and into space. After flying through space for a long time, the narrator is deposited on a planet, one much like Earth, but not the Earth that he left through suicide. The narrator is then placed on what appears to be an idyllic Greek island, or in Christian literature, the earth before the Fall. Soon, the inhabitants of the island find him, and they are happy, blissful, sinless people. The narrator lives in this utopia for many years, all the while amazed at the goodness around him. One day the narrator accidentally teaches the inhabitants how to lie. This begins the corruption of the utopia. The lies engender pride, and pride engenders a deluge of other sins. Soon the first murder occurs. Factions are made, wars are waged. Science supplants emotion, and the members of the former utopia are incapable of remembering their former happiness. The narrator pleads with the people, he begs for martyrdom, but they will not allow it. The narrator then awakes. He is a changed man, thoroughly thankful for life. He promises to spend the rest of his days preaching the truth that he saw. His main lesson is to love others like yourself. At the conclusion of the story, the narrator states that he found the little girl, and that he will go on and on, presumably a reference to atonement for his past mistakes. |
Moth Smoke | Mohsin Hamid | 2,000 | Darashikoh, or Daru as he is referred to, is a mid-level banker with a short fuse. His aggression had served him well as a college-boxer but an out-of-character outburst gets him fired. The loss of income brings to the fore a widening gap between him and his classmates, and Daru exposes his bitterness to the wealthy in his commentary. This contrast in income, though present through their years at school becomes evident to Daru only now as he comes to realise that money and wealth mean more than his personal traits can offer. He is content to interact with his rich friends all the same, and finds comfort in the arms of Mumtaz - Daru's best friend's wife. Mumtaz falls for Daru too, but unlike Daru she is not an idealist. This mismatch of thought comes to the forefront soon after the long and rocky affair begins. While cuckolding his best friend, Daru is content to sell him drugs, which are socially acceptable among his friends. This life of duplicity leads to spiralling loss of control in his life. |
The Child Garden | Geoff Ryman | 1,989 | In a future semitropical England cancer has been cured, but, as a result, the human lifespan has been halved. The novel tells the story of Milena, a young woman who is immune to the viruses which are routinely used to educate people. It is a world transformed by global warming and by advances in genetic engineering. Houses, machines, even spaceships are genetically-engineered life-forms. Milena works as an actress and the story follows her attempts to stage an opera based on Dante's ' Divine Comedy using holograms. The opera is written by her genetically modified friend Rolfa. As she works on the opera she encounters the ruling body of the world, "The Consensus", a hive mind made up of the mental patterns of billions of children. Milena slowly discovers that this gestalt consciousness is lonely and afraid of dying and is looking to Milena as a form of salvation. |
Foundations of Christianity | Karl Kautsky | 1,908 | In his foreword, Kautsky expressed his hope that the book would be 'a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present, in order to hasten the attainment of a better future'. He began his analysis by looking for evidence that 'the person of Jesus' existed at all, using pagan and Christian sources. The next dozen chapters are then taken up with a materialist description of the ancient Roman society from which early Christianity sprang. Kautsky then went on to describe the history of the Jewish people, up to the point where Christianity began. Having set the scene, Kautsky described the beginnings of Christianity. The next five sections are called 'The Primitive Christian Community', 'The Christian Idea of the Messiah', 'Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians', 'The History of Christ’s Passion' and 'The Development of the Christian Community'. Kautsky contended that Christianity was born out of a group of Jewish proletarians in a decaying Roman empire, who sought to defeat the Romans through a violent insurrection. |
The Return of Tarzan | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,915 | The novel picks up where Tarzan of the Apes left off. The ape man, feeling rootless in the wake of his noble sacrifice of his prospects of wedding Jane Porter, leaves America for Europe to visit his friend Paul d'Arnot. On the ship he becomes embroiled in the affairs of Countess Olga de Coude, her husband, Count Raoul de Coude, and two shady characters attempting to prey on them, Nikolas Rokoff and his henchman Alexis Paulvitch. Rokoff, it turns out, is also the countess's brother. Tarzan thwarts the villains' scheme, making them his deadly enemies. Later, in France, Rokoff tries time and again to eliminate the ape man, finally engineering a duel between him and the count by making it appear that he is the countess's lover. Tarzan deliberately refuses to defend himself in the duel, even offering the count his own weapon after the latter fails to kill him with his own, a grand gesture that convinces his antagonist of his innocence. In return, Count Raoul finds him a job as a special agent in Algeria for the ministry of war. A sequence of adventures among the local Arabs ensues, including another brush with Rokoff. Afterwords, Tarzan sails for Cape Town and strikes up a shipboard acquaintance with Hazel Strong, a friend of Jane's. But Rokoff and Paulovitch are also aboard, and manage to ambush him and throw him overboard. Miraculously, Tarzan manages to swim to shore, and finds himself in the coastal jungle where he was brought up by the apes. He soon rescues and befriends a native warrior, Busuli of the Waziri, and is adopted into the Waziri tribe. After defeating a raid on their village by ivory raiders he becomes their chief. The Waziri know of a lost city deep in the jungle, from which they have obtained their golden ornaments. Tarzan has them take him there, but is captured by its inhabitants, a race of beast-like men, and condemned to be sacrificed to their sun god. To his surprise, the priestess to perform the sacrifice is a beautiful woman, who speaks the ape language he learned as a child. She tells him she is La, high priestess of the lost city of Opar. When the ceremony is fortuitously interrupted, she hides him and promises to lead him to freedom. But the ape man escapes on his own, locates the treasure chamber, and manages to rejoin the Waziri. Meanwhile, Hazel Strong has reached Cape Town, where she encounters Jane, and her father Professor Porter, together with Jane's fiancé, Tarzan's cousin William Cecil Clayton. They are all invited on a cruise up the west coast of Africa aboard the Lady Alice, the yacht of Lord Tennington, another friend. Rokoff, now using the alias of M. Thuran, ingratiates himself with the party and is also invited along. The Lady Alice breaks down and sinks, forcing the passengers and crew into the lifeboats. The one containing Jane, Clayton and "Thuran" is separated from the others and suffers terrible privations. Coincidentally, the boat finally makes shore in the same general area that Tarzan did. The three construct a rude shelter and eke out an existence of near starvation for some weeks until Jane and Clayton are surprised in the forest by a lion. Clayton loses Jane's respect by cowering in fear before the beast instead of defending her. But they are not attacked, and discover the lion dead, speared by an unknown hand. Their hidden savior is in fact Tarzan, who leaves without revealing himself. Later Jane is kidnapped and taken to Opar by a party of beast-men pursuing Tarzan. The ape man tracks them and manages to save her from being sacrificed by La. La is crushed by Tarzan's rejection of her for Jane. Escaping Opar, Tarzan returns with Jane to the coast, happy in the discovery that she loves him and is free to marry him. They find Clayton, abandoned by "Thuran" and dying of a fever. In his last moments he atones to Jane by revealing Tarzan's true identity as Lord Greystoke, having previously discovered the truth but concealed it. Tarzan and Jane make their way up the coast to the former's boyhood cabin, where they encounter the remainder of the castaways of the Lady Alice, safe and sound after having been recovered by Tarzan's friend D'Arnot in another ship. "Thuran" is exposed as Rokoff and arrested. Tarzan weds Jane and Tennington weds Hazel in a double ceremony performed by Professor Porter, who had been ordained a minister in his youth. Then they all set sail for civilization, taking along the treasure Tarzan had found in Opar. |
Camber of Culdi | Katherine Kurtz | 1,976 | The novel spans the time period between September 903 and December 904, beginning shortly after the murder of a Deryni lord named Rannulf. Unable to locate Rannulf's murderer, King Imre Furstán-Festil issues a decree ordering the deaths of fifty human peasants unless the murderer is identified. The peasants are tenants of Earl Camber MacRorie of Culdi, a respected Deryni master who formerly served Imre's father. Meanwhile, the Healer Rhys Thuryn attends the final hours of an elderly patient. Before his death, the patient confides that he is really Prince Aidan Haldane, the sole survivor of the Deryni coup that overthrew the Haldane kings eight decades earlier. He begs Rhys to seek out his grandson, Prince Cinhil Haldane, who is the last remaining member of the former royal bloodline. Rhys recruits the assistance of Father Joram MacRorie, and the two of them determine that Cinhil is one of five monks living in seclusion in various religious houses throughout the realm. Before continuing their search, the seek the counsel of Joram's father, Earl Camber. In the capital city of Valoret, Lord Cathan MacRorie, Camber's eldest son and heir, continues to request mercy for the imprisoned peasants. Although a close friend of the king, Cathan is unable to persuade Imre to revoke his decree. However, Imre permits Cathan to save just one of the peasants, forcing him to personally choose from among the doomed commoners. Unable to prevent the executions, Cathan nearly goes mad with grief. Rhys and Joram continue their search for the Haldane prince, but it is Camber and Rhys who eventually discover Cinhil, who is living the peaceful religious life of a monk in a secluded abbey. Unwilling to compromise Cathan's position at court, they do not tell Cathan of their discovery, but Cathan's position is already being undermined by his ambitious brother-in-law, Lord Coel Howell. Coel continually sows mistrust between Imre and Cathan, and eventually succeeds in framing Cathan for the murder of another Deryni lord. Convinced that Cathan has betrayed him, Imre murders his friend. Racked with grief and self-loathing, Imre seeks comfort in the arms of his sister, Princess Ariella, and soon begins an incestuous relationship with her. Cathan's body is returned to his father, who decides to immediately move forward with his plans to overthrow Imre. After dispatching Joram and Rhys to retrieve Cinhil, Camber and his daughter, Evaine, meet with the Michaelines, a militant religious order who has agreed to provide military support for the upcoming coup attempt. Soon thereafter, Imre's suspicions grow to include the entire MacRorie family, and he soon orders their arrest. However, the MacRories manage to escape capture, and the entire Michaeline order goes into hiding to elude Imre's wrath. Rhys and Joram manage to abduct Cinhil, but the prince is unwilling to abandon his religious life. Although Camber and his allies attempt to convince Cinhil that he must become king for the greater good of the realm, the anguished prince is haunted by his conscience and his heart-felt vocation as a priest. Nonetheless, Camber continues to prepare Cinhil for the throne, attempting to teach him about the secular world that he abandoned. Camber eventually convinces Archbishop Anscom, the Archbishop of Valoret and one of Camber's oldest friends, to support their cause. Anscom absolves Cinhil's religious vows, acknowledges him as the legitimate heir to the throne, and presides over his marriage to Camber's ward. After several months of working with Cinhil, Camber becomes convinced that Cinhil has the unique ability to acquire Deryni-like powers. Assisted by several members of his family, Camber performs a ritual to designed bestow Deryni powers on the prince. Although they believe the ritual to be successful, Cinhil refuses to display any indication of his new abilities for several months. However, at the baptism of his son several months later, Cinhil's powers become clearly evident. When his son is poisoned by an unwitting assassin, the furious prince uses his powers to locate and kill the murderer. From that point on, Cinhil becomes dedicated to avenging his slain son, vowing to overthrow and kill Imre. In December, the coup is finally launched. Using several Transfer Portals, Camber, Cinhil, and their Michaeline allies infiltrate the royal palace in Valoret in the middle of the night. Their forces quickly overcome the guards, and soon burst into the royal bedchamber. While Imre is captured, his sister escapes through a secret passage, bearing her brother's child in her womb. Imre lashes out with his powers at Cinhil, but the Haldane prince uses his own powers to withstand the attack. Realizing he cannot win, Imre commits suicide rather than submit to imprisonment. As the fighting comes to an end, Camber crowns Cinhil as King of Gwynedd. |
Psycho II | Robert Bloch | null | Norman Bates (disguised as a nun) escapes from the mental asylum where he was committed to at the end of the first novel. The police believe that Bates did not survive his escape attempt because of a fire. However, a growing body count causes his doctor to suspect that Bates is headed to Hollywood where a movie based upon his real-life murders is being filmed. |
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning | Laurie Lee | null | *In England In 1934 Laurie Lee leaves his home in Slad, Gloucestershire, for London, one hundred miles away. It was a bright Sunday morning in early June, the right time to be leaving home… I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges, but with a confident belief in good fortune. Never having seen the sea before, he decides he will go by way of Southampton though it will add another hundred miles to his journey. He begins to walk towards the Wiltshire Downs on country roads that "…still followed their original tracks, drawn by packhorse or lumbering cartwheel, hugging the curve of a valley or yielding to a promontory like the wandering line of a stream. It was not, after all, so very long ago, but no one could make that journey today. Most of the old roads have gone, and the motor car, since then, has begun to cut the landscape to pieces, through which the hunched-up traveller races at gutter height, seeing less than a dog in the ditch." He visits Southampton and it is here that he first tries his luck at playing his violin in the streets. His apprenticeship proves profitable and with his pockets full of change he decides to move on eastwards. He catches his first glimpse of the sea a mile outside Southampton docks - "It was green, and heaved gently like the skin of a frog, and carried drowsy little ships like flies". Lee makes his way along the south coast, to Chichester, where he is moved on by a policeman after playing Bless This House, to Bognor Regis, and then on again to Worthing, "full of rich, pearl-chokered invalids". From there he turns inland, to the "wide-open Downs", and heads north for London. "I was at that age which feels neither strain nor friction, when the body burns magic fuels, so that it seems to glide in warm air..Even exhaustion when it came had a voluptuous quality..." As he makes his way to London, he lives on pressed dates and biscuits. "But I was not the only one on the road; I soon noticed there were many others, all trudging northwards in a sombre procession..the majority belonged to that host of unemployed who wandered aimlessly about England at that time." He bumps into a veteran tramp, Alf, "a tramp to his bones", who gives him a very old and battered billy can for brewing up. Eventually, a few mornings later, coming out of a wood near Beaconsfield he sees London at last: " - a long smoky skyline hazed by the morning sun and filling the whole of the eastern horizon. Dry, rusty-red, it lay like a huge flat crust, like ash from some spent volcano, simmering gently in the summer morning and emitting a faint, metallic roar." He decides to take the underground, and finally meets up with his American girlfriend, Cleo, who is the daughter of an American anarchist. Living with her family in a dilapidated house on Putney Heath, Lee tries to make love to her but she is too full of her father's political ideology. Her father finds him a job as a labourer and he is able to rent a snug little room above a cafe on the Lower Richmond Road. However, he has to move on as his room is taken over by a prostitute, and ends up living with the Flynns, a Cockney family, who welcome him into the family's embrace. He lives in London for almost a year as part of a gang of wheelbarrow pushers, supplying newly-mixed cement to the builders. With money to spend, he whiles away his time wandering the London streets, scribbling poetry in his small bedroom and having occasional liaisons with some of the maids from the big houses around Putney Heath. However, once the building nears completion, he knows that his time is up and decides to go to Spain because he knows the phrase in Spanish for "Will you please give me a glass of water?". He pays £4 and takes a ship to Vigo, a port of the north-west coast of Spain. *In Spain He lands in Galicia in July 1935. The first half of his journey takes him from Vigo to Madrid. He has a tent, a blanket in which his violin is wrapped, and normally some fruit, bread and cheese to eat along the way. Joining up with a group of three young German musicians, he accompanies them around Vigo and then they split up outside Zamora. Passing through Toro, he watches a religious procession in which a statue of the Mother of Toro is taken around the town. Lee leaves town the next day, and gives a vivid description of the searing heat of the Spanish sun: "The violence of the heat seemed to bruise the whole earth and turn its crust into one huge scar. One's blood dried up and all juices vanished; the sun struck upwards, sideways, and down, while the wheat went buckling across the fields like a solid sheet of copper. I kept on walking because there was no shade to hide in, and because it seemed the only way to agitate the air around me...I walked on as though keeping a vow, till I was conscious only of the hot red dust grinding like pepper between my toes." Valladolid is 'a dark square city hard as its syllables'. It is full of beggars, cripples and beaten-down young Spanish conscripts who have nothing to do in their leisure time. The beggars he remembers, " as something special to Valladolid, something it had nursed to a peak of malformation and horror. One saw them little by day; they seemed to be let out only at night, surreptitiously, like mad relations..Young and old were like emanations of the stifling medievalism of this pious and cloistered city; infected by its stones, like the pock-marked effigies of its churches, and part of one of the more general blasphemies of Spain." The chapter ends on a sour note with his landlord's wife screaming and shouting at her husband because the Borracho has returned home drunk and tried to have sex with their daughter, Elvira. Making his way to Segovia, Lee's feet become hardened and his Spanish is also improving after almost a month on the road. He spends only a few nights in the town because he is impatient to reach Madrid. He makes the long climb through the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains and is finally given a lift by two young booksellers in their van. Counting London, Madrid is only the second major city he has seen. Lee feels like he has "... slipped into Madrid as into the jaws of a lion. It has a lion's breath, too; something fetid and spicy, mixed with straw and the decayed juices of meat. The Gran Via itself has a lion's roar, though inflated like a circus animal's - wide, self-conscious, and somewhat seedy, and lined with buildings like broken teeth." However, he loves the city and is impressed by the pride that its citizens feel. The city lies on a mile high plateau and is the highest capital in Europe, and there is the proverb: 'From the provinces to Madrid - but from Madrid to the sky'. He spends his time drinking wine in the cool taverns during the daytime and playing his violin in the evenings in the older part of the city, the cliffs above the Manzanares where the streets are 'intimate as courtyards, with lamp lit arches smelling of wine and woodsmoke.' He lives in a cheap posada and befriends Concha, the girl who buys his breakfast. She is a husky young widow from Aranjuez and spends her daytimes idling about, waiting for the return of her boyfriend from the Asturias. Sometimes Lee sits out the morning by rubbing fish-oil into her hair. His last night is spent on a late-night drinking binge. He starts at the Calle Echegaray, 'a raffish little lane, half Goya, half Edwardian plush, with cafe-brothels full of painted mirrors, crippled minstrels and lacquered girls' and ends up at the Bar Chicote being chatted up by a young prostitute but who leaves him when a minor bullfighter arrives with his court of gypsies. He returns drunk to his posada and is helped into bed by Concha, who makes the sign of the cross before she joins him. By August 1935 Lee reaches Toledo, where he has a meeting with the South African poet Roy Campbell, with his family, whom he comes across whilst playing his violin in the open-air cafés in the Plaza de Zocodover: "It was the poet's saint's-day, and the party had dressed in his honour and were drinking his health in fizzy pop. Campbell himself drunk wine in long shuddering gasps, and suggested I do the same. I was more than satisfied by this encounter, which had come so unexpectedly out of the evening, pleased to have arrived on foot in this foreign city in time to be elected to this poet's table." The Campbells invite him to stay in their house which lies close to the cathedral. Campbell spends the daytime sleeping but comes to life in the evenings: "During most of the daylight hours Roy lay low and slept, appearing at nightfall like some ruffled sea-bird, leaning against a pillar with his arms stretched wide as though drying his salt-wet wings. One saw him gathering his wits in great gulps of breath, after which he would be ready for anything." After a final day of drinking with the poet, Lee makes his departure the next day and is accompanied by the poet as far as the bridge by which he would cross the gorge of the Tagus. By the end of September he has reached the sea, having passed through Valdepeñas, Cordova, and Seville to reach Cádiz - " at that time..nothing but a rotten hulk on the edge of a disease-ridden tropic sea; its people dismayed, half-mad, consoled only by vicious humour, prisoners rather than citizens." He looks back on his last month on the road through September. He describes Valdepeñas as 'a surprise: a small graceful town surrounded by rich vineyards and prosperous villas - a pocket of good fortune which seemed to produce without effort some of the most genial wines in Spain.' It had been a very friendly town and whilst busking one evening three young men had invited him to go with them to a brothel. Lee played his violin and watched the customers coming and going as he was plied with wine by the old grandfather who ran the place. There were four girls, two sisters and two cousins, and the whole establishment had possessed a very intimate atmosphere, 'a casual atmosphere of neighbourly visiting, hosted by these vague and sleepy girls; subdued talk, a little music, an air of domestic eroticism, with unhurried comings and goings.' Then he came to the Sierra Morena mountains, "one more of those east-west ramparts which go ranging across Spain and divide its people into separate races." South of the Sierra, he met: "... a new kind of heat, brutal and hard, carrying the smell of another continent. As I came down the mountain this heat piled up, pushing against me with blasts of sand, so that I walked half-blind, my tongue dry as a carob bean, obsessed once again by thirst. These were ominous days of nerve-bending sirocco, with peasants wrapped up to the eyes,..but far down in the valley, running in slow green coils, I could see at last the tree-lined Guadalquivir.. " Entering the province of Andalusia through fields of ripening melons, he saw the first signs of the southern people: men in tall Cordobese hats, blue shirts, scarlet waistbands, and girls with smouldering Arab faces. Instead of taking the road south to Granada, he decided to turn west and follow the Guadalquivir, adding several months to his journey, and taking him to the sea in a roundabout way. He lives in Seville, - " dazzling - a creamy crustation of flower-banked houses fanning out from each bank of the river...[yet]..no paradise, even so. There was the customary squalor behind it - children and beggars sleeping out in the gutters.." He lives on fruit and dried fish, and sleeps at night in a yard in Triana a ramshackle barrio on the north bank of the river, which has 'a seedy vigour, full of tile-makers and free-range poultry, of medieval stables, bursting with panniered donkeys, squabbling wives and cooking pots.' Whilst he spends his evening trying to get cool on the flat roof of the Café Faro, eating chips and gazing at the river, he hears the first mention of the upcoming war: "Until now I'd accepted this country without question, as though visiting a half-crazed family. I'd seen the fat bug-eyed rich gazing glassily from their clubs, men scrabbling for scraps in the market, dainty upper-class virgins riding to church in carriages, beggar-women giving birth in doorways. Naïve and uncritical, I'd thought it part of the scene, not asking whether it was right or wrong ... A young sailor approached me with a "Hallo, Johnny" ... "I don't know who you are", he said, "but if you want to see blood, stick around - you're going to see plenty." Disliking Cadiz - 'life in Cadiz was too acrid to hold me' - Lee turns eastwards, heading along the bare coastal shelf of Andalusia. He hears talk of war - in Abyssinia, " meaningless to me, who hadn't seen a newspaper for almost three months." He arrives at Tarifa, the southernmost point of Europe, 'skulking behind its Arab walls' and moves on into the country, making another stop over in Algericas, a town which he very much likes for its aura of illicitness: "It was a scruffy little town built round an open drain and smelling of fruit skins and rotten fish. There were a few brawling bars and modest brothels; otherwise the chief activity was smuggling ... it seemed to be a town entirely free of malice, and even the worst of its crooks were so untrained in malevolence that no one was expected to take them seriously..I remember the fishing boats at dawn bringing in tunny from the Azores, the markets full of melons and butterflies, the international freaks drinking themselves into multi-lingual stupors, the sly yachts running gold to Tangier..." Half in love with Algeciras, he felt he "could have stayed on there indefinitely" but decides nevertheless to stick to his plan to follow the coast round Spain, and sets off for Málaga. He makes a stop over in Gibraltar, " more like Torquay", is questioned by the police, and told to report to their station at night. 'Leaving Gibraltar was like escaping from an elder brother in charge of an open jail.' It takes him five days to walk to Malaga, following a coastline smelling of hot seaweed, thyme and shellfish, and occasionally passing through cork-woods smoking with the camp fires of gypsies. At night he finds a field and wraps himself up in his blanket. "The road to Malaga followed a beautiful but exhausted shore, seemingly forgotten by the world. I remember the names - San Pedro, Estepona, Marbella, and Fuengirola..They were salt-fish villages, thin-ribbed..At that time one could have bought the whole coast for a shilling. Not Emperors could buy it now." In Málaga, he stays in a posada, sharing the courtyard with a dozen families who are mostly mountain people selling their beautiful hand-woven Alpujarras blankets and cloth in the city. The young girls are some of the most graceful he has ever seen, 'light-footed and nimble as deer, with long floating arms and articulate bodies which turned every movement into a ritual dance.' Malaga was full of foreigners, a snug expatriate colony, and everyone is very chummy apart from the English debs with 'that particular rainswept grey of their English eyes, only noticeable when abroad.' It is the young Germans who outnumber the rest of the colony, amongst them - " Walter and Shulamith, two Jewish refugees, who had walked from Berlin carrying their one year old child. I see them today as part of the shadow of the times.." Disaster seems to arrive during his last days in Malaga when his violin breaks. After his new line of work, acting as a guide to British tourists, is curtailed by local guides, he is then fortunate to meet a young German who gives him a violin for free . It had belonged to his girlfriend and she'd run off with a Swede. Winter 1935. Lee decides to hole-up in Almuñécar, sixty miles east of Malaga: "It was a tumbling little village, built on an outcrop of rock in the midst of a pebbly delta, backed by a bandsaw of mountains and fronted by a grey strip of sand which some hoped would be an attraction for tourists ... Almuñécar itself, built of stone steps from the delta, was grey, almost gloomily Welsh. The streets were steep, roughly paved, and crossed by crude little arches, while the square was like a cobbled farmyard...past glories were eroding fast." He manages to get work in a hotel run by a Swiss, Herr Brandt, who has unfortunately arrived there twenty years too early. The whole area is very poor, with the peasants just managing to scrape a living from the sugar cane grown in the delta, and the sea: "But the land was rich compared with the sea, which nourished only a scattering of poor sardines. As there were no boats or equipment for deep-sea fishing, the village was chained to the offshore wastes, shallow, denuded, too desperately fished to provide anything but constant reproaches...The only people with jobs seemed to be the village girls, most of them in service to the richer families, where for a bed in a cupboard and a couple of pounds a year they were expected to run the whole house and keep the men from the brothels." With nothing much to do in their spare time, Lee and his friend Manolo, the hotel's waiter, drink in the local bar alongside the other villagers, drinking rough brandy mixed with boiling water and eating morunos - little dishes of hot pig flesh stewed in sauce. Manolo is the leader of a group of fishermen and labourers and they sit in a room at the back discussing the expected revolution - " a world to come - a world without church or government or army, where each man alone would be his private government. " February 1936. The Socialists win the election and a Popular Front, People's Government, arrives. As Spring appears a whiff of change is in the air, with a loosening of social and sexual behaviour and manners: "Books and films appeared, unmutilated by Church or State, bringing to the peasants of the coast, for the first time in generations, a keen breath of the outside world. For a while there was a complete lifting of censorship, even in newspapers and magazines. But most of all it was the air of carnality, the brief clearing away of taboos, which seemed to possess the village - a sudden frank, even frantic, pursuit of lust, bred from a sense of impending peril." The villagers, in an act of revolt, burn down the church but then do a volte-face when Feast Day arrives and the images of Christ and the Virgin are brought out into the open, loaded as usual on the fishermen's backs. In the middle of May, there is a strike and the peasants come in from the countryside to lend their support as the village splits down the middle between 'Fascists' and 'Communists'. " The local flag of revolution was the Republican flag, the flag of the elected government. The peasants strung it like a banner across the Town Hall balcony and painted their allegiance beneath it in red ." There is also hope in the air that the working class will see an improvement in their terrible living conditions: "Spain was a wasted country of neglected land - much of it held by a handful of men, some of whose vast estates had scarcely been reduced or reshuffled since the days of the Roman Empire..Now it was hoped that there might be some lifting of this intolerable darkness, some freedom to read and write and talk. Men hoped that their wives might be freed of the triple trivialities of the Church - credulity, guilt and confession; that their sons might be craftsmen rather than serfs, their daughters citizens rather than domestic whores, and that they might hear the children in the evening coming home from the fresh-built schools to astonish them with new facts of learning." The middle of July 1936. War now breaks out. There had been anti-Government uprisings in the garrisons of Spanish Morocco - at Melilla, Tetuan and Larache. General Francisco Franco, the butcher of the Asturias, had flown from the Canaries to lead the rebels. With the disappearance of the police, " the village was on its own: Government supporters facing the enemy within." Manolo and El Gato (the leader of one of the new-formed unions) start to organise some kind of militia. Granada is held by the rebels, and so is Almunecar's neighbour Altofaro, ten miles down the coast. Almuñécar is mistakenly fired on by a Government warship that thinks it is shelling rebel-held Altofaro. Lee hears on Radio Sevilla Queipo de Llano exulting in the fall of the city. The rebel general is drunk and slurs his phrases. "Christ had triumphed, he ranted, through God's army in Spain, of which Generalissimo Franco was the sainted leader...'Viva España! Viva la Virgen!' ". Finally, a British destroyer from Gibraltar arrives to pick up any British subjects who might be marooned on the coast. Lee and the English novelist he is renting a room from are taken on board and he takes his last look at Almuñécar and Spain as they grow smaller in the distance. "All I'd known in that country - or had felt without knowing it - seemed to come upon me then; lost now, and too late to have any meaning, my twelve months' journey gone. Spain drifted away from me, thunder-bright on the horizon, and I left it there beneath its copper clouds." The Epilogue describes Lee's return to his family home in Gloucestershire and his desire to help his comrades in Spain. He is held back by a liaison with a wealthy lover but finally decides to make his way through France in order to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. After a desperate climb starting from Ceret in the foothills, in which he gets caught in a snow storm, he ends up in another French village. Here he is helped by a peasant, after another tortuous climb through the thick snow, to cross the border once more into Spain. |
The Secret River | Kate Grenville | 2,005 | After a childhood of poverty and petty crime in the slums of London, William Thornhill is sentenced to death for stealing wood, however, in 1806 his sentence is changed to transportation to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. With his wife Sal and children in tow, he arrives in a harsh land that feels at first like a death sentence. However, there is a way for the convicts to buy freedom and start afresh. Away from the infant township of Sydney, up the Hawkesbury River, Thornhill encounters men who have tried to do just that: Blackwood, who is attempting to reconcile himself with the place and its people, and Smasher Sullivan, whose fear of this alien world turns into brutal depravity towards it. As Thornhill and his family stake their claim on a patch of ground by the river, the battle lines between old and new inhabitants are drawn. The early life of William Thornhill is one of poverty, depredation and criminality, which is also seen in Charles Dickens. The early settlements are described passionately by the author. Though Thornhill is a loving husband and a good father, his interactions with Indigenous inhabitants are villainous. Thornhill dreams of a life of dignity and entitlement, manifested in his desire to own land. After befriending Blackwood under his employ, Thornhill finds a patch of land he believes will meet his needs, but alas, his past comes back to haunt him. His interactions with the Aboriginal people progress from fearful first encounters to (after careful observation) appreciation. The desire for him to own the land contrasts with his wife wanting to return to England. The clash is one between a group of people desperate for land and another for whom the concept of ownership is bewildering. |
Island in the Sea of Time | S. M. Stirling | null | An elliptical region, including the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts and the United States Coast Guard ship Eagle, is transported by an unknown phenomenon (called "The Event") back in time to the Bronze Age circa 1250s BC (corresponding to the late Heroic Age of the Trojan War). As the truth of what has happened sinks in panic grips the island. Chief of Police Jared Cofflin is given emergency powers and begins organizing the people to help produce food for the island so they can feed themselves. Meanwhile Captain Marian Alston takes the Eagle to Britain, with Ian Arnstein and Doreen Rosenthal as interpreters, where they trade Nantucket made goods with the Iraiina, which translates as "Noble ones", a tribe that has been steadily invading the island, for grain. The Iraiina are just one of the many Sun People Tribes. As a gift the Iraiina chief gives Marian a slave, Swindapa, a captured female "Earth People" warrior. Swindapa is freed and decides to stay with Marian. The Eagle leaves for Nantucket but takes with them Isketerol, a Tartessian merchant who hopes to learn from the Americans. While the people of Nantucket work for their survival, William Walker, a lieutenant on the Eagle, decides that with modern technology he could become a king in this time. With the help of Isketerol and others, Walker convinces some naive environmentalists to steal a ship and kidnap Cofflin's wife so they can give guns to Native Americans. Meanwhile Walker and Isketerol steal another ship and return to Britain to recruit soldiers for their eventual takeover of Greece. Marian decides to rescue Cofflin's wife first and saves her after defeating an Olmec army. Time passes as Walker solidifies his control over the Sun People and Nantucket creates a new government and prepares to take down Walker. Marian returns to Britain with a small army and uses Swindapa, who has become her lover, to convince the Earth People to fight with them to defeat Walker. Both sides meet at the Battle of the Downs and though Nantucket and its allies are victorious, Walker manages to escape with his followers to Greece. |
The Plains of Abraham | null | null | During the last half of the eighteenth century, in what was then New France (now part of Canada), Daniel "James" Bulain, son of a French habitant and of an English schoolmaster's daughter sees his world turned upside-down as his family and the people of the neighbouring seigneurie are massacred by a war party of Mohawks. In his escape into the wilderness he is united with the unrequited love of his childhood, Toinette Tonteur, daughter of the local seigneur, when they are captured by a war party of Senecas, brought to their hidden village far to the west in the wilderness and eventually adopted into their tribe. In the spring following their first winter with the tribe, believing that Toinette, now his wife, has been killed while he was absent from the village, James escapes and joins the French forces under Montcalm and three years later is gravely wounded at the battle of the Plains of Abraham at Quebec. Cared for by the nuns of the General Hospital, James rises from unconsciousness almost a month later and is reunited with his wife and discovers he has an infant son, after wandering about the battle-scarred town obsessed with finding the three-legged dog he saw pass between the French and English lines just before the battle, which so resembled his own Odd ("Odds and ends"), whom he had last seen in the Seneca village with his wife. |
Flight to Opar | Philip José Farmer | 1,976 | In this continuation of Hadon's adventures in the ancient Africa of 12,000 years ago, the last-ditch defense of the High Priestess he and his allies mounted against the tyrannical King's evil schemes segues into a perilous chase through various exotic cities, seas and islands. Hadon undertakes to take his mate, now pregnant with his child, to safety at his native city of Opar, but is pursued by members of a dark cult in the service of the king. The book ends as the war just gets seriously going, and with only tantalizing glimpses given of various interesting locations. Hadon's beloved clearly appears destined to a crucial future role which is never quite reached. Plainly, Farmer provided for further sequels which were never written. He has stated that he intended to have Hadon's son emigrate to the south in the wake of the catastrophe that would ultimately destroy the Khokarsan civilization in which the series is set, there to found the city of Kor that would afterward become the setting of H. Rider Haggard's classic fantasy novel She. |
The Brothers' War | Jeff Grubb | 1,998 | The prologue opens on a battlefield, "the night before the end of the world", over the bodies of two fallen giants. The massive machine and wood giants had destroyed one another and were now the meeting place for the lieutenants of the armies preparing for battle. Ashnod the Uncaring and Tawnos meet to discuss matters and reminisce about the war that brought them to that field. The main story opens at an archaeological dig site a few decades earlier. The head archaeologist, Tocasia, sits at her table examining an ancient relic: a metal skull. When the supply caravan from the city arrives to the camp, Tocasia meets two brothers around the age of ten. The older boy, lean and tawny-haired, is Urza, while his dark-haired and stocky younger brother is Mishra. Urza tells Tocasia that he and Mishra were born on the same year, he on the first day, Mishra on the last, so that on the last day, they were equal. Tocasia takes the boys into the camp to teach them her archeology. From the beginning, Urza and Mishra show a great aptitude for the study of 'artifacts', machines left over from the mysterious Thran people, and also show a violent capacity for argument curbed only by Tocasia. Over the next six years the brothers grow up in the camp, Urza becoming lean, wiry, and developing an encyclopedic mind for mechanics. Mishra grew muscular, learning to spend time with the native Fallaji diggers, drinking with them and learning their legends. They become permanent residents of the camp, after receiving word that their father died, and their stepmother does not send for them. After the discovery and rebuilding of an ancient flying machine (an Ornithopter), on Mishra's birthday, the brothers have a vicious argument over who gets to fly it first. In the end Urza wins, but both get a turn. The bird's eye view allows them to view pictographs in the desert, leading to the discovery of large artifact deposits. These discoveries point to a mountainous region that Urza believes was the heart of Thran civilization, but which the desert natives think is haunted. Urza, Mishra, and Tocasia fly to the ruined Thran city but are attacked by a roc along the way. At the heart of the ruined city, a cave entrance leads down past troves of machines to a pedestal with a large crystal set into the middle. Accidentally, the brothers break the stone in half, and each has a differing vision when they each end with a half in his grasp. Urza sees a world of metal cables and machines with many melting and burning forms. Mishra saw a long hallway made of lizard skin, with tiny figurines of screaming beings made of gold and mirrors showing him twisted images of a monster. When they awake from their visions, they see the automatons in the hall come to life and attack them. They discover Mishra's stone weakens the machines, while Urza's strengthens them. After escaping, Urza and Mishra get into a heated argument when Urza takes Mishra's stone. In frustration, Urza lashes his hand out to return the stone, while Mishra steps into his reach and is struck in the forehead with the stone. This results in a falling-out between the brothers. In the months after, the brothers remained angry. Urza deems his stone the Mightstone for its ability to strengthen, and Mishra's the Weakstone for its ability to weaken. One night, an argument between the brothers escalates to a violent pitch, where they begin using the powers of the stones on one another. Tocasia rushes in to stop them and is caught in the cross fire and killed. In grief and pain at the accusations of his older brother, Mishra flees into the night. Without Tocasia's leadership, the camp disbands and the students and workers return to their homes. After the deadly night, Urza leaves the camp without knowing of his brother's whereabouts. In the city of Kroog, capital of the neighbouring kingdom of Yotia, he becomes a clockmaker's apprentice. And first meets Kayla bin-Kroog, the Yotian princess, after fixing a music box of sentimental value. Upon learning that a Thran book is a part of the princess's dowry, he builds a mechanical man to win a contest set forth by Kayla's father to find her a strong suitor. The mechanical man moves a massive jade statue and Urza wins the contest. The warlord father is initially infuriated that Urza wins the contest, but is persuaded to allow the marriage when he realizes that he can use Urza's knowledge for himself. Meanwhile, Mishra is enslaved by the desert people. He is made a tutor for the son of the ruling tribe's chief. The son is initially uninterested in learning arithmetic or other languages and Mishra despairs that he will be demoted (though his friend Hajar knows failure will mean death) like many previous tutors who failed before him. Mishra manages to befriend the boy by telling him many legends and stories. However, Mishra is still a slave that will be executed upon the completion of the boy's education. One night, a massive mechanical dragon attacks the tribe, killing the chieftain. Mishra tames it with his stone and is promoted from a slave to being a "wizard" and advisor to the son, who succeeds his father as chieftain. With the Kroogian warlord's patronage, Urza begins a school for the creation of many devices and takes on an apprentice, Tawnos. Mishra takes on his apprentice, Ashnod when the desert Fallaji people begin their war against the other kingdoms. Urza's Yotian kingdom and Mishra's Fallaji begin to war, but hold a peace talk. The brothers are reunited, but the Kroogian warlord uses the peace talks as a pretense to launch a surprise attack against his hated Fallaji enemies. The Kroogian warlord is killed by the Fallaji chieftain in the ensuing battle. A war erupts, but another peace talk is held and Urza and Mishra attempt to reconcile their broken relationship. However, the talks break down when Mishra has Kayla steal Urza's stone and sleeps with her. With the aide of his war machines, Mishra escapes into the desert. Urza mounts a search for his brother in the hopes of getting revenge, leading to another war. After an unsuccessful attack by Urza's Ornithopter patrols on a false warcamp, Mishra attacks the Kroogian capital with three of his dragon engines (having found and tamed two more). The Fallaji chieftain attempts to kill Ashnod during the attack on the city, but fails and is killed by her instead. In the caverns where the stones were found, men who worshipped machines met a mostly mechanical demon from another world. He called himself Gix, and they did as well. Mishra becomes the new leader of the Fallaji, and builds himself an army of automatons to increase his military power. Urza flees the now-conquered Kroog and is appointed "Protector of the Realm" by an alliance formed against the Fallaji by the kingdoms of Argive and Korlis. Tawnos brings Urza's wife and newborn son (possibly nephew) to him, and together they begin to build an opposing army to Mishra. Ashnod builds her own army of brainwashed and surgically altered slaves and criminals, the transmogrants, to fight. The war continues for decades with each side participating in an arms race to build more effective weapons. Ashnod is exiled from Mishra's side, while Loran joins a group of scholars in unlocking the power of magic in the city Terisia. When Mishra invades, two of his dragon engines vanish into thin air. The Brotherhood of Gix infiltrates both sides and plays them against each other, while winning more power in Mishra's court. Mishra is secretly offered a method of gaining more power through artifice by the Brotherhood. Urza's son Harbin finds an island of Argoth, ruled by elves who worship the goddess Gaea, and was secretly aided to return to land by an elf. In a ploy to bring the brother's together, Gix gives information on the secret island to a member of the Brotherhood. Urza and Mishra both learn that this island is rich in resources like lumber and ore. Because their war has stripped the continent of resources and polluted the land, they bring their armies to the island in the hopes gaining the upper hand and ending the war decisively. Both armies exterminate the natives of the island. In the final battle of the war, the brothers' armies fight to a stalemate. Urza meets Mishra upon the battlefield, but Mishra has been warped into an amalgamation of machine-and-man by Gix, the Phyrexian demon. Ashnod sends the Golgothian sylex to Urza to end the war while she fights the demon Gix. Urza, suddenly awakening to the power of magic, uses the Golgothian sylex to unleash an enormous blast to destroy his brother and Gix. The blast destroys the island, ends the war and upsets the climate of Dominaria, ushering in a new ice age. Gix escapes through a portal to the plane of Phyrexia. Urza becomes a Planeswalker, a god-like being capable of traversing between worlds, and the Mightstone and Weakstone become his eyes. Regretting the destruction he has unleashed upon the world, Urza uses his newfound powers to leave Dominaria and travel to worlds unseen. ja:MAGIC URZA & MISHRA pl:Bratobójcza wojna ru:Война братьев |
Hardboiled & Hard Luck | Banana Yoshimoto | 1,999 | This book consists of two separate stories, making up the two parts of the book's title. The first story, Hardboiled, is written from the perspective of a woman who is hiking alone, passes a strange shrine and ends up in a hotel with a couple of surreal incidents that follow. Her back story is filled in as a mixture of narrative and dream sequences. The second story, Hard Luck, is about a woman whose sister Kuni is in a coma. Kuni's fiancé leaves her after the incident, but his brother continues to visit. It becomes apparent that he is interested in the protagonist of the story. |
Oracle's Queen | Lynn Flewelling | 2,006 | More and more people flock to Tamír's cause as they find out that she is Skala's promised Queen and that only by putting her on the throne will everything be alright once more. Tamír is much loved by the people and very popular, but she faces problems of her own. Ki, whom she loves, does not feel physical love in return, while Brother is back with more power than ever, introducing himself with only this line: "The dead do not rest until they have had vengeance." With every day that the two opposing could-be-future monarchs of Skala (Korin and Tamír), the soldiers become more and more restless, itching for a fight. However, Tamír doesn't want to fight her beloved cousin and tries to delay the battle as much as she can. |
Daja's Book | Tamora Pierce | 1,998 | The story opens with the four child-mages and their teachers at the end of a caravan. Rosethorn, Briar's teacher, stops to examine the tree-litter and while she does this, Daja catches a glimpse of a forest fire miles off. Tris, Briar, and Sandry all turn to look at the fire while Rosethorn asks their local guide when the last time was that they had a forest fire. However, their guide only laughs and says their mage, called Firetamer, takes care of all their fires, just like his father did. The caravan moves on, but Daja still has an uneasy feeling about the huge fire, noting how fire could be her friend and enemy. The caravan stops in a small town to study magic and assist the Duke of Emelan with the drought. As Daja is working in the smithy, a woman, a wirok, a scorned Trader who negotiates with lugsha, tradesmen, stops by to talk to the smith. As she notices the blank cap on Daja's Trader staff which signifies her exile status, the Trader refuses to talk to her. Moments later, Daja loses control of her magic because of her anger, putting energy into a clump of melted iron. Soon, it turns into a branch and the Trader is stunned. Throughout the book, Daja and the Trader converse in a bargain for the 'living metal'. All of the student's magic is so strongly combined that Sandry is forced to create a map of their magic, which she can use to separate their twined magic. Their teachers first noticed the mixed magic when Briar and Sandry used lightning by accident. While Daja is on her way to the privy, she releases a stream of hot water from within the earth, which spills out onto the stones before her. She and Briar investigate, finding that one of the hot springs leads to an area of ice/glaciers. Melting the water would refill the drying lake, saving one of the town's problems. They also discover a vein of copper which could be used to replenish the town's supply and stimulate trade. While all the teachers and students are at a watch tower, a huge fire erupts, utilizing all the mast that had built up in the years that Yarrun Firetamer had been suppressing all the fires. After the conceited fire tamer dies in an attempt to stop the fire, the rest of the people try to stop it. Daja is caught in the middle, though, and has to first convince the caravan she is riding with to listen to her, and then stop heading for the fire. She saves the caravan by thrusting all of the fire into a vein in the earth which leads to the glacier. Lastly, Daja creates a living metal leg with the copper which is now a part of her for the wirok, restoring the wirok's ability to work with horses, her original job. Daja is a trangshi, a Trader word which literally means "doesn't exist" or "bad luck." In the end, however, she becomes a Trader again because she had gained enough zokin, or honor, by saving the Tenth Caravan Idaram from the huge forest fire. |
The Secret | K. A. Applegate | 1,997 | Cassie and the Animorphs discover from Ax and Tobias that the Yeerks have set up a dummy logging company, called Dapsen Logging Company, in the woods. The Yeerks want to destroy the forest in order to find the "Andalite bandits," who they believe to be living there. The Animorphs go to check it out, but are discovered, chased away, and shot at. Cassie and her father later find an injured skunk, that was hit by a Dracon beam in the fighting. Cassie's father finds that there is a good chance that the skunk had recently given birth, and Cassie is stricken with guilt. Cassie suggests to the others that they need to find out how the Yeerks got permission to cut trees in a National Forest. If they didn't have permission, the news media would bring attention to them; something they surely did not want. The group decides to go back and enter the logging camp to find this information. Tobias notices that there are termite tunnels in the building, and they decide to morph termites to get in. Jake causes a distraction by morphing into a wolf while the others (excluding Tobias) morph and enter the building. There is a brief episode where they are controlled by the termite queen's orders and lose control of themselves. Cassie kills the termite queen to free her friends and herself from the queen's control, but felt much guilt by it. The Animorphs get the information they need, disable the Yeerks' defenses, and escape unnoticed. The Animorphs find out that there is a committee of three people who must decide on giving the logging operation a go. One has already voted yes and one has voted no; the other, a man called Farrand, was due to make a visit to the camp in order to make his decision. The Animorphs decide to intercede when Farrand makes his visit, as the Yeerks will surely turn him into a Controller at that point to ensure an affirmative vote. Meanwhile, Cassie is still concerned with the skunk babies and decides to look for them. Tobias is able to tell her where the litter of kits is, having found five and eaten one. Cassie rescues them and the Animorphs take over tending the kits, with Tobias doing much of the skunk-sitting while the other Animorphs are in school. Marco ends up naming the skunk kits after members of The Ramones, such as Joey, Johnny, Marky and C.J. In the final showdown, the Yeerks capture Cassie and Farrand, but she morphs into a skunk and sprays all of the Controllers and Visser Three. Ax makes a bargain with Visser Three, offering information on how to get rid of the skunk smell in return for the release of Farrand. Visser Three agrees, and Farrand is transported to a hospital. As soon as he can, Farrand makes a phone call to vote against the logging, and he will likely bring litigation against the company. In return for the release of the human, Ax tells the Yeerks that grape juice will remove the stink (instead of tomato juice, which at best masks the smell), and Tobias later reports that a pool of grape juice was made for Visser Three to soak in. Visser Three hasn't gotten rid of the skunk smell, and in addition is a "lovely, attractive shade of purple." |
Visser | K. A. Applegate | 1,999 | The story starts with Edriss-Five-Six-Two, the Yeerk who would later become Visser One, in the body of Marco's mother, Eva. She leaves the house, saying goodbye to her husband and Marco, and heads out to her sailing boat, intending to fake her death so she can leave Earth and become Visser One. She takes her boat out to the ocean, and has a Bug Fighter that is waiting to pick her up to ram the boat, capsizing it. She leaves Earth, and everyone simply assumes that she drowns. Fast-forward to the present, where Edriss is on trial for treason by the Council of Thirteen. She is still inside Eva, and is currently being held in the Yeerk Pool under the city where the Animorphs live. The Council of Thirteen informs Edriss of her charges, which are five charges of treason, four containing the death penalty. Visser Three, her longtime enemy, is her prosecutor and the one who brought the charges against her. The Council of Thirteen orders her to tell her story of the events, which starts far before the invasion of earth, at the same point as the start of The Andalite Chronicles. At the start of her story, Edriss was stationed on a moon in between the Hork-Bajir homeworld and the Taxxon homeworld. Her task is to search for a Class Five species, which is a species that is powerful, extremely abundant and easy to take over. While training a group of new recruits, she receives information that a Class Five species has been found. This particular species were humans. Two humans were kidnapped by the Skrit Na, and then rescued by Andalites and taken by them to the Taxxon homeworld. A Yeerk Sub-Visser saw them and reported them to Edriss (these particular events are detailed much more in The Andalite Chronicles). Unfortunately, as soon as she receives this news, Edriss is informed she would be transferred to the Taxxon homeworld and be given a Taxxon host. Edriss, along with a fellow yeerk named Essam 293, steal a Yeerk ship and go looking for the human home world. Back in the present Visser Three demands that they view a memory dump (a recording of her memory) of Edriss's trip to Earth. It starts with Edriss and Essam finding the planet, and they land on it during the events of the Gulf War. Edriss infests an Iraqi soldier, and finds out from him that the most powerful country on Earth is America. They dispose of the host and fly their ship to Hollywood. There, Edriss infests a drug addict called Jenny Lines who is a struggling actor, and Essam infests a television producer named Lowenstein. At this point the memory dump ends. Garoff, a member of the Council of Thirteen, accuses Edriss of underestimating the humans, and Edriss says the only reason the humans haven't been taken over is because of Visser Three's incompetence. Visser Three says Edriss never had to deal with the "Andalite Bandits" when she was on Earth, and Edriss asks why Visser Three still hasn't defeated the Andalite bandits. At that point the Andalite bandits attack, however Visser Three and his troops makes short work of them. Edriss realises that they were simply animals, not the Andalite bandits, and Visser Three just had them brought in to trick the Council into thinking that he did kill the Andalite bandits. Unfortunately, the Council of Thirteen does get fooled by the demonstration, and suddenly Visser Three has a lot more credibility. Visser Three then says he has testimony from a witness who was with Edriss during the time that Edriss did not make any memory dumps. He says it is Essam, however Edriss says that can't be true, since Essam is dead. Visser Three's guard bring in a homeless bum named Hildy Gervais, who is revealed to be a former host of Essam. He says that he and one of Edriss's hosts, Allison Kim, fell in love, and so did their Yeerk captors. Eventually they had two children, twins. Edriss says this is true, and Visser Three claims this is proof of Edriss sympathizing with humans. Edriss continues her story, telling how eventually she disposed of Jenny Lines and infested Allison Kim, a scientist. Essam also infested Hildy Gervais. Edriss tells how Allison Kim was a far more intelligent, powerful host than Jenny Lines, and Visser Three demands this is proof that she admires the humans. Visser Three and Edriss get into an argument about whether slow infestation or all-out war is a better way to enslave the humans. Visser Three claims that the only reason Edriss doesn't want all out war is because she doesn't want the humans to actually be taken over, and Edriss argues that all out war would never work. Eventually Visser Three demands that Edriss is given a live memory dump, so they can view exactly what happened. Garoff agrees, and they enter her memory at a point a fair while after Edriss had infested Allison. Garoff demands they view various memories, all showing Edriss enjoying different aspects of human life, her falling in love with Essam/Hildy Gervais, and the birth of her children. Garoff claims that Visser One had become addicted to humans. Garoff ends the live memory dump, and demands Edriss continue the story. Edriss says the children were given up for adoption, and then says she needs a break to eat. Garoff agrees, and the trial is adjourned. She is taken by Visser Three's troops to the lunch room of the Yeerk Pool, where she sees a controller talking on her cell phone. Realizing the phone can work this far underground, she purposely bumps into the controller and steals her phone. She heads to the toilets and calls Marco, her current host's son. She tells him she needs him to attack the Yeerk Pool, so the Council will realize the last attack was a farce constructed by Visser Three. Reluctantly, Marco agrees, and then Edriss heads back to the trial. Garoff asks her to continue her story. Edriss says that after a year, the shipboard Kandrona was running out, so she contacted the Empire. When she told them she had found a Class Five species, they dropped all charges against her. During this time she had created a group called The Sharing, a boy scouts/girl scouts style club crossed with a cult, which was used to recruit voluntary controllers. She sent a tape of the first human-controller to the Yeerk Empire. When Edriss told Essam they were returning to the Yeerk Empire, he got angry, and tied Edriss up, forcing her to infest another host and taking off with Allison Kim and the children. Edriss takes after him, telling the Council that her intention was to kill him. At this point Visser Three interrupts, saying that the real reason Edriss went after him was to get the children back. Edriss claims she didn't care about the children. At this point Visser Three brings one of her children, Darwin, in. Visser Three demands Edriss kill him, to prove she doesn't care about him. Edriss stalls, unable to kill the kid, and suddenly the Animorphs attack. They knock out Edriss and take her outside to a part of the Yeerk Pool that is hidden by one of the Chee's holograms. Marco demands Edriss leave his mother's body, and she does. For a while she lies alone in the darkness, thinking the Animorphs will kill her, until she is suddenly put back into Eva's head. Looking for her memories, she sees that Eva convinced Marco to keep Edriss alive, because Edriss was the only one pushing for a slow infiltration, which is the only way the Animorphs can win. At that point they knock her unconscious again, to make her capture look authentic. Eventually she is found unconscious, and is taken back to the trial. Garoff asks her to continue her story. Edriss talks about how she found Essam at a hospital. He was dying from Kandrona starvation, and eventually he died within Hildy Gervais's head, causing part of Essam's body to become fused with Hildy's brain. Hildy started screaming about the aliens that had infested him, and was taken away to an asylum. Allison escaped, but soon returned for the children in disguise. Edriss killed her. The children were left in the hospital, and eventually adopted. She then killed Lore David Altman, the host she used to create the Sharing, infested Eva, and eventually left Earth to become Visser One. Garoff says that she has given enough information, and the Council retired to consider their verdict. After a while they returned, minus two Council members who did not agree with the verdict, and say that Visser One and Visser Three have both been sentenced to death by Kandrona starvation. However, the sentences were suspended, and both of them would be free of all charges if they completed the tasks the Council of Thirteen set for them. Visser Three has to complete the invasion of Earth. Visser One had to take another planet, the Anati homeworld. If either of them fail, they will be killed; however, both Visser One and Visser Three are released from custody, meaning Edriss (and Marco's mother) survive. As she is about to leave, Visser One considers telling Visser Three the truth about the "Andalite Bandits", but decides against it. |
Wizards at War | Diane Duane | 2,005 | The Lone Power, suspecting that a new threat is rising to its dark abilities, creates a surge of Dark Matter, called "the Pullulus", to eclipse the universe. Because of the way that the Pullulus affects the universe's structure, the Senior Wizards lose their wizardry and only wizards before adulthood are still able to fight. Ponch uses his tracking abilities to lead Nita, Kit, Ronan, and the wizardly tourists from Wizard's Holiday Filif and Sker'ret across the galaxy to try to find and activate an instrumentality that they are told is the only way to stop the Lone Power. Dairine and Roshaun take a trip back to the Motherboard from High Wizardry to consult the mobiles before joining the others. They find out that the 'weapon' is actually the a version of the Lone Power who never fell. After a few skirmishes with unfriendly agents of the Lone Power, the group finds the world the Hesper is on. Unfortunately, the world is one that is 'lost', or devoted to everything the Lone Power represents. Despite this, Nita, Kit, and the others go down to the planet and start searching for the Hesper, after adopting disguises to look like the giant bug-like natives. With Ponch's help, they find the Hesper, and Nita starts teaching her concepts about 'self' and 'choice', concepts that she had no previous understanding of. Nita ask the Hesper to make a choice to fight the Lone Power, but before she can choose, they are captured by the Lone Power, who suppresses all wizardry in the area — roughly analogous to cutting a Jedi off from the The Force. Ronan sacrifices himself to free the One's Champion, who resides inside him, to give the Hesper a final chance to make her choice. The Champion holds the Lone Power back and restores wizardry to the area, allowing the Hesper to become embodied. As the Hesper assumes her position, the Lone Power is defeated, and the wizards are free to go — but not unscathed, as Ronan is near death and the Pullulus is advancing towards Earth and Filif's home. The wizards head back to Earth, except for Filif, who returns to his planet to fight the Pullulus there. They arrive on the moon and find a gathering of all Earth's remaining active wizards, working on a spell to stop the Pullulus. The group joins in to gives energy to the spell, which at first seems to work in pushing the Pullulus back, but then fails due to a lack of power. As the Pullulus comes closer, Roshaun uses his ability to work with stars (with Dairine and Spot aiding) to directly channel some of the sun's matter to burn the Pullulus, which works for a period until the power drain becomes too great for a single wizard — and Roshaun disappears. While the remaining wizards prepare to make one last stand to destroy the Pullulus, Kit tells Ponch to take Carmela and Kit and Nita's parents away from Earth. Ponch starts to obey, but is caught between doing what he is told and staying with his master and friend. He decides to do neither — instead of running away or staying there, he completes the canine Choice, which had been held in abeyance because of the long-ago dogs' loyalty to their human partners. The Pullulus takes on a wolf-like shape and Ponch becomes a canine incarnation of the One; the wolf of darkness clashes against the hound of starlight, and it is the wolf that is beaten. Because Ponch has incarnated as a Power, much like the Hesper, he can no longer be with Kit. As he leaves Kit, however, Ponch says that some things will still stay the same. As Nita, Kit, Dairine, and the others pick themselves up, they realize that the Pullulus is gone, and they head home — with Ronan healed and without Roshaun or Ponch. The book ends with school starting again, Dairine resolving to discover what had really happened to Roshaun, and Kit finding Ponch in a "stray" sheepdog that had just shown up on his street. |
Saint Camber | Katherine Kurtz | 1,978 | The novel spans a time period of one and a half years, from June 905 to January 907. It begins as the allies and supporters of King Cinhil Haldane prepare to meet the invasion of Princess Ariella Furstána-Festila, the sister and lover of the deposed King Imre Furstán-Festil. Although Imre died in the coup that placed Cinhil on the throne, Ariella escaped to the neighboring kingdom of Torenth, where she has sought refuge with her relatives. Having given birth to Imre's bastard son, she now seeks to return to Gwynedd and retake the throne. She has been using magic to influence the weather, hoping to flood the plains and rivers of Gwynedd to facilitate the invasion of her army. Cinhil's closest advisors are preparing to meet the invaders, but the king himself has become aloof and withdrawn since his ascension to the throne. He has become convinced that he sinned against God by giving up his priestly vows to become king, and he displays increasing hostility and antagonism toward Earl Camber MacRorie of Culdi, the Deryni adept most responsible for placing Cinhil on the throne. Throughout the preparations for battle and the march to the battlefield itself, Cinhil constantly clashes with the Deryni closest to him, lashing out angrily as his resentment toward Camber in particular and Deryni in general continues to grow. Although Cinhil seems to place slightly more trust in Alister Cullen, the Deryni Vicar General of the Michaelines, even Cullen is rebuffed when he makes overtures of friendship to the king. The Gwyneddan army meets Ariella's invaders on the plain of Iomaire, and the two forces clash the following day. Despite being outnumbered, Cinhil's army emerges victorious and wins the day. Following the battle, Camber and his son, Joram, discover the scene of Ariella's final stand. While attempting to flee the battle, Ariella had been confronted by Alister Cullen and the two fought a brutal battle that claimed both of their lives. Camber soon realizes that Cullen's death will only further alienate the king, as Cullen enjoyed more of Cinhil's trust than any other Deryni. Without Cullen to temper Cinhil's growing mistrust of Deryni, Camber fears that an anti-Deryni backlash might sweep through the kingdom. Camber then convinces Joram to help him switch shapes with the slain Cullen, believing that he can do more to help Cinhil and the kingdom as Alister Cullen than he can as Camber MacRories. Joram initially resists the idea, but eventually concedes to his father's wishes. He helps Camber switch appearances with Cullen and then returns to the royal camp, bearing the body of a slain man bearing the appearance of Camber MacRorie. With the exceptions of Joram and Camber's son-in-law, Lord Rhys Thuryn, the rest of the world believes that Camber has died and Cullen has lived. As the army returns to Valoret, Camber does his best to act out the role of the new persona he has adopted. Although he managed to retrieve some of Cullen's memories, his inability to assimilate those memories in safety is beginning to affect his health. Shortly after returning to Valoret, Camber is able to begin the process of assimilating Cullen's memories with the assistance of Rhys, Joram, and his daughter Evaine, but the procedure is interrupted by Cinhil. Unable to stop the procedure, Camber's disguise briefly slips away and the king witnesses the momentary change. Shocked and confused, Cinhil orders that nobody speak of the incident and flees the room. Once in full possession of Cullen's remaining memories, Camber settles into his new identity with increased confidence. However, his former squire, Lord Guaire d'Arliss, remains despondent over Camber's supposed death. Taking pity on the man, Camber sheds his disguise and visits Guaire late one night, convincing him to cease his mourning. Guaire believes the visit is just a dream, but he takes heart from it and immediately asks to enter the service of the man he knows as Alister Cullen. Camber must next deal with a matter of conscience. Cullen was due to become Bishop of Grecotha before his death, but Camber knows that he will be breaking ecclesiastical law by pretending to be a priest. The night before Camber's consecration as a bishop, Joram convinces him to legitimize his status and be ordained as a priest. Camber reveals the truth of his identity to his old friend Archbishop Anscom, and Anscom agrees to perform the ceremony. The following morning, the newly-ordained Camber is consecrated as Bishop of Grecotha. Camber spends much of the next year in Grecotha and Valoret. The friendship that Cullen offered Cinhil is finally accepted, and the king and the bishop become very close. Believing he is finally free of Camber's influence, Cinhil finally seems to resolve his inner conflict and soon begins to evolve into an independent king. The potential that Camber observed in Cinhil before the Restoration is finally realized, and Cinhil starts to take an active role in governing the realm. Camber's desperate gamble appears to have paid off, as Cinhil shows more and more signs of becoming the true king of the realm. However, much to the surprise of Camber and his family, Camber's supposed death has resulted in more of a public impact than they ever expected. Grateful to Camber for his central role in the Restoration, some people have begun to venerate his memory, with some going so far as to form small cults dedicated to the belief that Camber had been a saint. Fully aware of the depth of their deception, Camber and his kin are horrified by these developments. Nonetheless, they cannot risk discovery of the truth by opposing such beliefs too vehemently or publicly. In an effort to ensure that their secret remains hidden, Joram and Rhys move Cullen's body out of Camber's tomb in August 906. Archbishop Anscom assures Camber that he will not allow any efforts to canonize Camber succeed, but Anscom died in September. The following month, Anscom's successor, Archbishop Jaffray, receives a formal request to canonize Camber MacRorie. During the ecclesiastical court that follows, Camber and his family are forced to remain silent, unwilling to reveal the truth that Camber is actually sitting in the very room where the court is determining his sanctity. Guaire relates the tale of Camber's visit, but he now believes that the event was actually a miracle. When Camber's tomb is revealed to be empty, Joram attempts to provide a legitimate excuse. However, his efforts to end the court are unsuccessful, and his father's empty tomb is also classified as a miracle. That night, Cinhil confesses to Camber that he has been secretly performing the rites of his former priestly vocation, even going so far as to celebrate Mass in private. Although stunned by this revelation, Camber realizes that Cinhil's illicit actions have served to soothe the king's tortured conscience, giving him a peace of mind that has enabled him to grow and develop as a ruler. Feeling that he has already inflicted too much misery upon Cinhil, Camber ultimately forgives Cinhil and promises to keep the king's secret. The following day, Cinhil is called as a witness before the ecclesiastical court. Although unwilling to get involved in the procedure, Cinhil reluctantly describes seeing Camber's face come over Bishop Cullen shortly after Camber's death. Unable to provide a logical explanation for the event, the court can only agree that Camber MacRorie somehow returned after death to help Alister Cullen. Believing it has evidence of three miracles, the court soon canonizes Camber MacRorie. Camber himself is helpless to stop the chain of events, and can only watch in silence. The novel ends shortly after the new year, as Cinhil and Camber examine a statue of "Saint Camber" that has been erected. As Cinhil leaves, he is still unaware that the man at his side is actually Camber MacRorie. |
I Put A Spell On You | Nina Simone | null | * Introduction, "I Know How it Feels To Be Free: Nina Simone 1933–2003", written by Dave Marsh. This introduction was included in the 2003 Da Capo Press reprint edition following Simone's death on April 21, 2003. * Acknowledgements * Prologue * Chapters 1 through 11 * Discography * Index |
Resurrection Day | Brendan DuBois | null | Set in the aftermath of a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States, the book chronicles the investigations of Carl Landry, a reporter for the Boston Globe. As the story unravels, Carl attempts to uncover the events leading up to the war, while at the same time running from those who would have the truth buried. The story begins in 1972, ten years after the nuclear war between the USA and USSR, which followed the Cuban missile crisis. Washington, D.C., New York, Omaha, San Diego, Miami and other American cities, principally those surrounding military bases, have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by Soviet nuclear attacks. Philadelphia is the capital of the United States, and although a civilian President is nominally in office, the USA is effectively under martial law. The Soviet Union has been utterly devastated by US nuclear strikes. Cuba is an atomic ruin, with Spain responsible for relief efforts aiding what is left of the island's population. One consequence of the war is that America's embroilment in Vietnam is abruptly curtailed. US military personnel in South Vietnam (and indeed across the world) are withdrawn in order to stabilise the USA in the aftermath of the Soviet missile and air strikes. The text of the novel also makes it clear that the People's Republic of China has collapsed, with numerous regional warlords waging a civil conflict against each other. US nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, and also to the release of a massive fallout cloud over much of Asia, killing further millions after the destruction of the USSR. As a consequence, The United States has become a pariah in the eyes of much of the world. Many governments regard members of the US Air Force (USAF) as war criminals, and its servicemen are advised not to travel abroad. After the 1962 war, nearly all the remaining countries of the globe have renounced possession of nuclear weapons. The USA alone retains an atomic arsenal. Europe survived the war largely unscathed. NATO collapsed almost as soon as hostilities commenced, and France and (a united) Germany now preside over the continent. Britain remains an ally of the USA, and actually assists in post-war reconstruction efforts in US states hit hardest by the war. The UK in the period after 1962, has managed to regain much of its pre 1939 colonial confidence in the vacuum left by the destruction of the U.S.S.R and the emasculation of the US in world affairs. The policy of decolonialisation has been halted and even reversed, some newly independent nations even returning to the remaining British "Empire" in the new, uncertain world created after the "Cuban War". While British aid is welcome, there is also a sense of resentment in America over excessive dependence on the UK. The presence of British and Canadian military personnel in the USA is also a source of contention, with some Americans wondering whether their allies possess ulterior motives. The story covers two parallel plot-lines. The first involves Landry's attempts to discover what happened in Washington DC in October 1962. US military propaganda accounts maintain that the Cuban war broke out because of John F. Kennedy's recklessness and incompetence, these claims are generally believed. Kennedy and his officials are regarded as butchers and war criminals and the only senior surviving member of JFK's administration - McGeorge Bundy - is imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth. In contrast, US military commanders (notably the Chief of the Air Force, General Curtis) are portrayed as the saviours of the nation. During the course of the novel Landry gradually discovers that it was Kennedy who sought to prevent the crisis over Cuba from escalating into war, and that last minute attempts to achieve a deal with Nikita Khrushchev to end the crisis were deliberately sabotaged by Curtis and other generals. The second plot-line concerns Anglo-American relations. Landry and a British journalist - Sandra Price - discover that elements within the British government and security services are plotting a military takeover (or anschluss) of the United States. This plan is under way near the end of the novel, and is called off at the last minute. |
Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot | Jean le Rond d'Alembert | null | In part one of the book, d'Alembert provides a general introduction to the origin of knowledge, which led to the works found in the Encyclopédie. He asserts that the "existence of our senses" is "indisputable," and that these senses are thus the principle of all knowledge. He links this idea to a chain of thinking and reflection that eventually leads to the need to communicate, which sets another chain of events in effect. One of his arguments for the origin of communication is that it was necessary for people to protect themselves from the evils of the world and to benefit from each other's knowledge. This communication led to the exchange of ideas that enhanced the ability of individuals to further human knowledge. Additionally, d'Alembert introduces the reader to the types of knowledge people store. The two main types that he describes refer to direct and reflexive knowledge. Direct knowledge is obtained by human senses and reflexive knowledge is derived from direct knowledge. These two types of knowledge lead to the three main types of thinking and their corresponding divisions of human knowledge: memory, which corresponds with History; reflection or reason, which is the basis of Philosophy; and what d'Alembert refers to as "imagination," (50) or imitation of Nature, which produces Fine Arts. From these divisions spring smaller subdivisions such as physics, poetry, music and many others. d'Alembert was also greatly influenced by the Cartesian principle of simplicity. In this first part of the book, he describes how the reduction of the principles of a certain science gives them scope and makes them more "fertile" (22). Only by reducing principles can they be understood and related to each other. Ultimately, from a high "vantage point" (47) the philosopher can then view the vast labyrinth of sciences and the arts. d'Alembert then goes on to describe the tree of knowledge and the separation and simultaneous connections between memory, reason, and imagination. He later explains that the ideal universe would be one gigantic truth if one only knew how to view it as such; the assumption that knowledge has intrinsic unity can be seen as the foundation of the project of making the encyclopedia. Part two of the book provides the reader with an account of the progress of human knowledge in the sequence of memory, imagination and reason. This sequence is different from the one described in Part I, where the sequence is memory, reason, and imagination. It is the sequence a mind left in isolation or the original generation follows whereas in Part II he describes the progress of human knowledge in the centuries of enlightenment that started from erudition, continued with belles-lettres, and reached to philosophy. Instead of writing in terms of general ideas, d'Alembert provides the dates, places and people responsible for the progress of literary works since the Renaissance leading up to his date. One key example is René Descartes, who the author lauds as both an excellent philosopher and mathematician. His application of algebra to geometry, also known as the Cartesian coordinate system, provided an excellent tool for the physical sciences. He focuses on the importance of ancient knowledge and the ability to understand and build on it. Reference is made that concepts of knowledge could not have advanced as quickly had there not been ancient works to imitate and surpass. He also clarifies that there can be disadvantages to the ability to retrieve information from the past. Noted in the text is the lack of improvement in philosophy in comparison to other advancements due to the ignorant belief that ancient philosophy could not be questioned. d'Alembert claims that it would be ignorant to perceive that everything could be known about a particular subject. Additionally, he makes an attempt to show how individuals could free their minds from the yoke of authority. His use of deductive logic provides a more philosophical base for the existence of God. He makes clear that all sciences are restricted as much as can be to facts and that opinion influences science as little as possible. d'Alembert states that philosophy is far more effective at the analysis of our perceptions when the "soul is in a state of tranquility", when it is not caught up in passion and emotion (96). He believes that the philosopher is key in furthering the fields of science. The philosopher must be able to stand back and observe science and nature with an impartial eye. Furthermore, the importance of science and the advancements of such intellects as Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Descartes, John Locke and others are explained. Part three of the book concludes by detailing the important attributes of the writing of the Encyclopédie and by mentioning important contributors. d'Alembert discusses how the Encyclopédie is open to changes and additions from others since it is a work of many centuries. In addition, he states that an omission in an encyclopedia is harmful to its substance which differs from an omission in a dictionary. d'Alembert also states the three categories of the Encyclopédie, which are the sciences, the liberal arts and the mechanical arts. He states that it is important that these subcategories remain separate and concludes with the fact that society must judge the Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot. At the end of the book, d'Alembert includes a detailed explanation of the system of human knowledge. This includes a chart entitled "Figurative System of Human Knowledge", which divides human understanding into its three constituents: memory, reason, and imagination. The chart then subdivides each of the three major categories into many other categories of human understanding. After his chart d'Alembert goes on to provide a detailed explanation of every division and subdivision apparent in his chart. The chart establishes a complex genealogy of knowledge and the way man has subdivided knowledge into the specific areas he feels they are applicable. It is important to remember that no one of these systems of human knowledge plays a more significant role than any of the others. These systems are designed around the idea that each uses the other two to build upon itself and further human knowledge as a whole. In context the chart shows a progression of knowledge through the ages, memory being the past, reason being the present, which examines and tries to either build or create new theories based on memory, and imagination which focuses on making new assumptions or theories about things in our human universe. |
Pretties | Scott Westerfeld | 2,005 | The book begins with Tally, the protagonist, as a Pretty debating what to wear to a bash. While attending the bash at which she is to be voted into the "Crims" clique, she is followed by someone who appears to be a "Special", a member of Special Circumstances. Tally can only remember her adventures as an Ugly in brief, disconnected bits —because, there are lesions on all the pretties brains. She is surprised to discover that the person stalking her is Croy, an old friend of hers from the Smoke. He has something for her, he tells her, but she must search for it later. She agrees, bemused by his repellent ugliness, including his big pores and tangled hair – all the imperfections that the surgery to become a Pretty transforms into beauty. Tally returns to her care-free life as a pretty. Her peace is disrupted when Zane, who is the leader of the Crims, asks her about David, whom she loved while she lived in the Smoke. Zane had once known Croy and had been determined to escape to the Smoke before his surgery. He regrets that he didn't go into the wilderness then. Zane is eager to accompany Tally in finding the object Croy has hidden for her. They face strenuous, dangerous physical challenges in order to locate the item, which is accompanied by a letter from Tally to herself, written before she went under the knife. The letter explained to her future self why she had become a Pretty – to take a brain lesion pill. Zane and Tally learn that the Pretties' brains are altered during their surgery. After taking the pills, their main goal is to be bubbly. "Bubbly" is the word Pretties use for being themselves and knowing who they really are. They try to help all the Crims stay bubbly. They do things to make the Crims bubbly, such as crashing a skating rink. When Shay, who, after becoming bubbly, remembered how Tally betrayed her, questions why Tally is bubblier than the rest of the clique, Tally told Shay about the pills. This makes Shay furious because she wanted Tally to share the pills with her. Shay forms a new clique known as the Cutters, who cut themselves to stay bubbly. Knowing that Special Circumstances will come after her any minute, Tally decides that she must go to the New Smoke. Meanwhile Zane is suffering extreme headaches and finding it hard to do everyday tasks. Thinking that this has something to do with the pills, they go to the New Smoke in a hot air balloon, taking the risk of dropping more than 500 feet in the air. Peris decides in the balloon that he does not want to go to the New Smoke. He stalls Tally, and instead of falling to the river, she falls into a reservation with rather primitive people who seem to be very violent. She is considered a god there because of her beauty. There she meets Andrew Simpson Smith, who is the only one who speaks her language. When she escapes the reservation, she goes to the Rusty ruins. When she calls, she sees someone coming down on a hover board and is shocked to find that it is David who has come to take her to the New Smoke. When she arrives, Maddy tells her that the pills she and Zane took separately were meant to be taken together by one person. The nanos that were supposed to eat away the lesions, but they ate more of Zane’s brain tissue because they needed the pill that Tally took to stop them. They soon discover that, when Zane went to the hospital for his headaches, a tracker chip was put in his tooth that sent a message to the Specials. Tally decides to stay with Zane instead of escaping with David. David is confused and believes that she only loves Zane because he is a Pretty. So he tells her she's only staying with him because he's pretty. To make David leave and not get caught himself, Tally tells him to "get his ugly face out of here", hurting him. It had the desired result and he flees. She stays with Zane which leads to her getting caught by the Specials. When she is at the Specials office she discovers Shay has been turned into a Special. The book ends with Shay saying 'face it Tally, you're special' which is showing that Shay is either going to make her special or she is going to torture her. tHIS IS THE STUPIDEST BOOK EVER LIKE REALLY DON'T EVEN READ IT |
The Penguins of Doom | Greg R. Fishbone | 2,007 | The Penguins of Doom is set in the fictitious city of Conwell, Massachusetts, which is described in the book as a suburb of Boston. Conwell is home to the book's main character, a seventh-grader named Septina Nash, who is one of a set of triplets. In an attempt to locate her missing triplet sister, Sexta, Septina leads an expedition into the fictitious "Frozen Triangle of Doom" region of Antarctica. The plot is conveyed through letters and notes written by Septina to her teachers, parents, and others. Most of the letters include Septina's doodle-style illustrations. Septina's early letters tackle her conflicted feelings toward her missing sister, with whom she did not always get along. Septina also describes a series of improbable events, such as the appearance of wild penguins in her hometown, the arrival of a mad scientist who proclaims himself to be Septina's arch enemy, and an encounter with a robot duplicate of herself programmed by the CIA. Septina attempts to distract himself from her problems, first by pursuing an ambition to become an Olympic-level skateboarder, then by trying to find a husband for her math teacher, and finally by helping a friend collect empty yogurt containers for a radio station contest. By the end of the novel, Septina learns to somewhat control her talents and locates her sister with the aid of her triplet brother, math teacher, arch enemy, three penguins, and school counselor. The title The Penguins of Doom is derived from the three penguins adopted as pets by Septina. The penguins hail from the Frozen Triangle of Doom section of Antarctica. |
Specials | Scott Westerfeld | 2,006 | The third novel in the Uglies series begins two months after events in Pretties, when Tally Youngblood has become a member of an elite group of "Specials" - surgically enhanced super-humans - called the Cutters. The Cutters were originally founded by Shay, who invented the use of ritual self-harm to become "bubbly" and clear-headed in spite of brain lesions used to make her pretty-minded. All of the specials in this group were able to get rid of the brain lesions on their own, and now live in the wild. They were adopted into Special Circumstances and given enhanced senses, strength and reflexes, and are among the youngest agents working for Dr Cable. The Cutters disguise themselves as Uglies in order to crash a party in Uglyville and search for members of the New Smoke. Tally successfully finds a girl giving out pills which cure the pretty lesions, which she encourages the Uglies to take to the Crims - Tally and Shay's old clique. The Cutters attempt to capture the girl, but she escapes on a hoverboard with David's help. Giving chase, the Cutters are ambushed by Smokies with unusually advanced technology, including infra-red masking sneak suits and electrical weapons. The Smokies kidnap Fausto, one of the Cutters, and leave Shay and Tally injured. Hearing that the pills are intended for Zane, Tally insists on going to see her boyfriend, who suffered brain damage in New Pretty Town and has been hospitalized since Tally turned Special. Tally discovers that while Zane is free of the pretty lesions, his brain has been damaged and his physical infirmity now disgusts her. She begins to wonder if she received a brain operation when being made Special which has given her feelings of superiority. Eager to show Dr. Cable that Zane is cured so that he will be made Special, Shay and Tally break into the city armory to steal something to cut off Zane's tracking necklace. They succeed, but in the attempt, they accidentally destroy much of the armory, putting the city on high alert. Then, they begin to secretly track Zane and the Crims as they journey to the New Smoke, although the pair split up when Tally receives a guide to the New Smoke from her friend Andrew Simpson Smith, an escapee from a reservation of primitive culture. Shay follows the guide straight to the Smoke, but Tally insists on staying with Zane. On the journey, Zane notices Tally and confronts her about her reasons for following him. The pair kiss, but Tally is still repulsed by Zane's tremors and runs away from him. Tally continues to follow the group to the New Smoke - a city called Diego, which accepts runaways freely, having widely adopted the pretty cure and rejected the rules about surgery, allowing anyone to look how they please rather than following the international standard. Tally is amazed by this, but horrified to hear that Diego is beginning to expand into the wild, clear-cutting forest like the Rusties did. Tally finds Fausto at a party for newly arrived runaways, but realizes his Special brain surgery has been cured. He had given informed consent before he became special to take a "cure" for having a special brain. Tally only just escapes being forcibly injected. Her escape attempt leaves her helpless, as she jumps off a cliff with only crash bracelets to catch her fall. She is picked up by Diego's authorities and locked up for her lethal strength and weapon-sharp teeth and fingernails, which they insist on removing. The doctors inform her that she has received brain surgery to give her flashes of anger and euphoria, along with feelings of superiority, although they will not change this without her consent. With Shay's help, Tally escapes just before the surgery begins. Shay and the other Cutters have all been cured by Fausto, but they want Tally's help to protect Diego from imminent attack by Dr Cable, who is blaming the so-called New System for the attack on the armory. Tally assists in the evacuation of the hospital, but learns after the attack that Zane, having just received surgery to cure his tremors, died of complications during the confusion of the attack. Grief-stricken, Tally leaves immediately to tell Dr Cable the truth about the attack on the armory. Just before she reaches the city, she meets David, who took a helicopter to talk to her in time. He tells her that he still believes she can think her own way out of her brain surgery, but gives her an injector full of the cure so that she has the option of curing herself. Arriving at Special Circumstances headquarters, Tally finds Dr Cable and the Specials have taken control of the city. Dr Cable knows that Tally was responsible for the attack, but has chosen to use the attack as a way to seize control over both this city and Diego. Tally tricks Dr Cable into stabbing herself on the injector, and is imprisoned underground for a month, watching the feeds as Dr. Cable slowly loses her grip on the city and the cure begins to spread. Diego publishes scans of Tally's Special body, calling her a "morphilogical violation," and the world is outraged by Dr Cable's "secret" experiments on unconsenting teenagers. Eventually, Tally is taken as the last remaining Special to be "despecialized", but she resists the surgeons and breaks out with Dr. Cable's help, becoming the only true Special left. She returns to David, still waiting at the Rusty Ruins, and realizes that her other friends have all found their places in the New System. She decides that she wishes to remain in the wild, free from surgery, and with David she will form the "New Special Circumstances", ensuring that nature is protected from mankind's excesses. |
The Dark Ocean | Jack Vance | null | Betty, an attractive California girl, takes a coming-of-age sojourn, embarking from San Francisco on an Italian freighter bound for ports in El Salvador, Panama, Venezuela, Spain and Italy. There are about a half dozen other passengers, including, to her dismay, Tom, an old boyfriend who infuriates her by introducing himself as her "fiancé", a notion of which she immediately disabuses both him and her fellow passengers. Betty develops an attraction for and engages in a mild flirtation with Mik Finsch, an older, mysterious man-of-the-world, but when she accepts an offer of drinks in his cabin, his amorous advances get way out of line and Betty find herself hard put to fend him off. Tom bursts into Finsch's cabin and the two start fighting; by the time the captain breaks them up, Tom has thrashed Finsch, who claims he was "just warming up". Betty tells Tom she could have handled the situation herself and she still has no interest in marrying him and wished he had not come. Another passenger tells Betty that Finsch's pride has been wounded and he will get revenge on Tom somehow. That night, Tom goes missing and a typewritten suicide note is found. There are suspicions, but no proof. When another "suicide" involving Finsch and the beautiful wife of a shipping agent leaves no doubt in Betty's mind that Finsch is a murderer, the two are pitted against one another, with Finsch seemingly holding all the cards. |
Mimi and Toutou Go Forth. The Bizarre Battle for Lake Tanganyika | Giles Foden | 2,004 | During World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika, which is the longest Lake in the world and was of great strategic advantage in Central Africa at the time. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee' (as the Germans called it). After the destruction of the Belgian warship - Del Commune and through the actions of a British informant known as Lee and his observations of the two German Warships, including the Hedwig von Wissman, the British Admiralty and Admiral Sir David Gamble decided that a naval expedition was needed to retake the Lake from the Germans. They were unaware of the existence of a much larger German vessel on the lake, the Graf von Götzen. So, in June 1915, a force of 28 men was dispatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their chief was an eccentric naval officer, Geoffrey Spicer-Simson who was known for being the oldest Lt. Commander in the Royal Navy, a man court martialled for wrecking his own ships and a complete liar. He was given command of two small gunboats, which he named Mimi and Toutou (childish onomatopoeia for "Cat" and "Dog" in French). After a month long journey to South Africa via the Atlantic Ocean, the boats and expedition travelled by train to the Congo. In the Congo, with great difficulty, the expedition carried the two boats, with the aid of steam engines and mules, to the edge of Lake Tanganyika. They captured one ship, the Kigani, and named her Fifi, sank the Hedwig von Wissman, but did not engage the formidable Graf von Götzen, which remained dominant on the lake until it was scuttled in the wake of an Anglo-Belgian attack by land on German positions. |
Blood and Guts in High School | Kathy Acker | 1,984 | Blood and Guts in High School is the story of Janey Smith, a ten-year-old American girl living in Mérida, Mexico, who departs to the U.S.A. to live on her own. She has an incestuous sexual relationship with her father, whom she treats as “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father." They live together in Mexico until another woman begins to interest Janey’s father. Janey realizes he hates her because she limits him and he wants to have his own life. Her father agrees to let her go and puts her into a school in New York City. For a period of time her father sends her money, but later she begins to work at a bakery and is appalled by the customers. She has many sexual partners. She ends up pregnant twice and has two abortions. She seems to be addicted to sex and does not care whom she sleeps with. In New York City she joins a gang, the Scorpions. One day the gang crashes a car while running from the police and Janey is the only one who survives. Afterwards she begins to live in the New York slums. Two thieves break into her apartment, kidnap her, and sell her into prostitution. She becomes the property of a Persian slave trader who keeps her locked up, trying to turn her out as a prostitute. We see Janey’s dreams and visions, and read her journal entries and poems. Shortly before the kidnapper is to release her to become a prostitute for him, she discovers she has cancer. The slave trader lets her go and she illegally goes to Tangiers. There she meets Jean Genet, the talented, iconic French writer, and they develop a relationship. Janey and Genet travel through North Africa and stop in Alexandria. Genet treats Janey badly, but the worse he treats her the more she loves him. He decides to leave her. Janey gets arrested for stealing Genet’s property. Shortly afterwards he joins her in prison. A rebellion breaks out and they are both thrown out of Alexandria. They travel together for some time. Then Genet gives Janey some money and leaves. Soon after they part company, Janey dies. |
The Roaring Girl | Thomas Dekker | null | Act 1, Scene 1: Sebastian's chambers in Sir Alexander's house Mary Fitz-Allard and Sebastian are in love, but their fathers will never permit the union, as Sebastian's father demands too large a dowry for the girl. However, Sebastian has a plan to enable the match: he will pretend to be in love with Moll Cutpurse, a notorious cross-dressing thief, and his father will be so worried that he will see marriage to Mary as the preferable alternative. Act 1, Scene 2: The parlour of Sir Alexander's house Sebastian's father is worried about his son's pursuing a grotesque "man-woman." Sebastian pretends to be outraged, and asks if his father would be happy if he married Mary instead. His father, Sir Alexander says no. Sir Alexander calls the spy and parasite, Trapdoor, and sets him to follow Moll, get into her services, and find a way to destroy her. Trapdoor agrees. Act 2, Scene 1: The three shops open in a rank A scene in the street. Various gallants are talking to the shopkeepers and flirting with their wives. The gallant Laxton flirts with Mistress Gallipot in the tobacco-shop. He does not actually like her much, but is keeping her on a string in order to get money from her to take other girls out. Jack Dapper, a young profligate, enters to buy a feather to show off with. Moll enters and Laxton takes a fancy to her, assuming that because she dresses as a man, she is morally loose. Laxton courts Moll; she agrees to meet him at Gray’s Inn Fields at 3 o’clock. Trapdoor then presents himself to Moll and offers to be her servant. She is dubious but agrees to meet him in Gray’s Inn Fields a bit after 3 pm. Act 2, Scene 2: A street Sebastian's father is spying on him at home. Moll enters and Sebastian woos her. She is polite but rebuffs him: she is chaste and will never marry. He says he will try again later. She exits and Sir Alexander rebukes his son, saying that Moll will disgrace him, that she is a whore and a thief. Sebastian says that there is no proof of that. Sir Alexander exits, still more resolved to publicly shame Moll. Sebastian decides that he must confess his plan to her, and get her to help him and Mary. Act 3, Scene 1: Gray's Inn Fields Laxton enters for his rendezvous with Moll. She appears dressed as a man; he goes towards her but she challenges him to a fight: he has impugned her honour, assuming that all women are whores. He is wrong to assume so – and also wrong to treat whoring lightly, as it is a sin that many good women are forced to, for lack of an alternative. They fight and she wounds him; he retreats, shocked. Trapdoor enters. Moll teases and taunts him, but finally accepts that his motives are good and agrees to take him on as her servant. Act 3, Scene 2: Gallipot's house Mistress Gallipot is continuing her covert affair with Laxton, which her husband does not suspect. He has sent her a letter asking for a loan of thirty pounds, which she does not have. She formulates a plan, tearing the letter and wailing. She tells Gallipot that Laxton is an old suitor of her, to whom she was betrothed before she married him. She thought him dead, but now he has returned to claim his wife. Gallipot is horrified, as he loves his wife and has had children by her. She suggests buying Laxton off with thirty pounds and he agrees. Laxton enters. Mrs Gallipot quickly apprises him of the situation and Gallipot offers him the money. Feigning anger at the loss of his "betrothed", he takes it and exits, musing on the deceitfulness of women. Act 3, Scene 3: Holborn Street Trapdoor tells Sir Alexander of a plan he has learned: Sebastian and Moll plan to meet at 3 o’clock in his (Sir Alexander’s) chamber to have sex. They decide to trap her. Meanwhile, Sir Davy Dapper talks to Sir Alexander about his son, Jack, who is still wild and profligate, whoring, drinking and gambling. He has decided to teach him a lesson: he will arrange to have him arrested, and a few days in the counter (the debtor's prison) will bring him to his senses. The sergeants enter and Sir Davy (pretending not to be Jack’s father) gives them their instructions. Jack and his boy Gull enter and are about to be set on by the sergeants; however, Moll is watching and warns him away. Jack escapes, and Moll mocks the police who can do nothing. Act 4, Scene 1: Sir Alexander's chamber Sir Alexander and Trapdoor await Moll and Sebastian. Sir Alexander lays out diamonds and gold in the hope that Moll will try to steal them. Sebastian and Moll enter with Mary (who is disguised as a page). Moll is now in on the plan and aiming to help them. She plays on the viol and sings. She then sees the jewels but only comments on them, rather than stealing them. Act 4, Scene 2: Openwork's house The citizens' wives discuss the various flirtatious gallants, and agree that they are simple creatures, who don’t really understand life, women or relationships. A young man enters pretending to have legal document calling the Gallipots to court for breach of contract. This is Laxton’s doing—after the thirty pounds, he demanded another fifteen, and now he is asking for a hundred in order to hold his peace. Mistress Gallipot is shocked. Her husband wants to pay Laxton off again, but she feels forced by the enormity of the sum to confess that all this was a lie, that she was never precontracted to Laxton. Gallipot asks for an explanation; Laxton ‘confesses’ that he had courted Gallipot’s wife but had been refused; she then promised that although she would not be unfaithful, she would always help Laxton out if he were in need, and hence ended up concocting this story to get money. Gallipot believes this tale; Laxton is not punished but ends up being taken home with them for dinner. Act 5, Scene 1: A street Moll tells Jack how she saved him from the sergeants and he thanks her. He knows that his father set them on him, and is amused that he thought time in jail would cure him, when in fact jail just teaches people how to be worse. Moll has grown to suspect Trapdoor’s honesty and has got rid of him. Trapdoor enters in disguise as a soldier but Moll sees straight through him and uncovers him. A gang of cutpurses enter to try to rob them but Moll sees them off: she is known and feared by all rogues. Moll explains how she thinks it is her duty to protect the honest through her knowledge of London’s low-lifes. Act 5, Scene 2: Sir Alexander's house The news has reached Sir Alexander that his son and Moll have fled to get married. Sir Guy Fitz-Allard, Mary’s father, enters and gently mocks his ex-friend, saying that it is his own fault for breaking off the match before. However, Sir Guy trusts Sebastian’s judgement and says that he will wager all his lands against half of Sir Alexander’s that the pair will not wed. Sir Alexander agrees to the bet. There is a rumour that Sebastian may have married someone else, and Sir Alexander says that anyone else in the world but Moll would make a welcome daughter-in-law. A servant announces that Sebastian has arrived with his bride; he comes in hand in hand with Moll. Sir Alexander is horrified, but capitalises on it and says that he will take Sir Guy’s lands. The trick is then revealed: Mary is brought in and shown to be Sebastian’s true bride. Sir Alexander is vastly relieved; he apologises to both Mary and her father for his behaviour, and agrees that half his land shall now go to the happy couple. Moll is asked when she will marry; she replies that she will never marry because certain values she holds to society will never be true. Trapdoor enters to confess that he was set on her by Sir Alexander; Sir Alexander promises that he will never again value something according to what public opinion thinks. |
Tarzan and the Ant Men | Edgar Rice Burroughs | 1,924 | Tarzan, the king of the jungle, enters an isolated country called Minuni, inhabited by a people four times smaller than himself, the Minunians, who live in magnificent city-states which frequently wage war against each other. Tarzan befriends the king, Adendrohahkis, and the prince, Komodoflorensal, of one such city-state, called Trohanadalmakus, and joins them in war against the onslaught of the army of Veltopismakus, their warlike neighbours. He is captured on the battle-ground and taken prisoner by the Veltopismakusians, whose scientist Zoanthrohago conducts an experiment reducing him to the size of a Minunian, and the ape-man is imprisoned and enslaved among other Trohanadalmakusian prisoners of war. He meets, though, Komodoflorensal in the dungeons of Veltopismakus, and together they are able to make a daring escape. Spanish actor/Tarzan lookalike Esteban Miranda, who had been imprisoned in the village of Obebe, the cannibal, at the end of the previous novel, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, also appears in this adventure. |
The Mask of Apollo | Mary Renault | 1,966 | Nikeratos is a successful professional actor, and the author vividly evokes the technologies and traditions of classic Greek Tragedy. There are detailed recreations of what might have been involved in the staging of a theatrical production of the time, describing the music, scenery, mechanical special effects devices, and especially the practice of the three principal actors sharing the various roles in a performance, along with authentic gossip involved in these casting decisions. Nikeratos befriends Dion, a moderate politician, who entrusts him with conveying sensitive documents between Athens and the powerful but unstable city-state of Syracuse. Dion is trying to bring stability and democracy to the transitional government there, but the young heir to the tyrant of the city, Dionysius the Younger, instead attempts ineptly to apply Plato’s theories of an ideal republic, with dire results. At the end of the book, Nikeratos encounters the young Alexander the Great and his lover Hephaistion, and laments that Plato never tutored Alexander, who might have pursued Plato's social ideals with greater success. |
Victory | Joseph Conrad | 1,915 | Through a business misadventure, the European Axel Heyst ends up living on an island in what is now Indonesia, with a Chinese assistant Wang. Heyst visits a nearby island when a female band is playing at a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg attempts to force himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma, later called Lena. She flees with Heyst back to his island and they become lovers. Schomberg seeks revenge by attempting to frame Heyst for the "murder" of a man who had died of natural causes and later by sending three desperadoes (Pedro, Martin Ricardo and Mr. Jones) to Heyst's island with a lie about treasure hidden on the island. The three die (Wang kills one) but Lena dies as well and Axel is overcome with grief and commits suicide. |
Green Thumb | Rob Thomas | 1,999 | Pudgy misanthropic boy genius Grady Jacobs wins a scholarship to participate in rainforest research and conservation. Upon discovering that our Grady is only thirteen, Dr. Carter, the scientist in charge, relegates him to the position of camp drudge. A healthier diet and much menial labor transforms Grady both physically and emotionally, making him a better and more complete boy by the end of the book. To add interest, during the course of his duties, Grady discovers a way to communicate with trees. This fantastic, pseudo-scientific power eventually comes in useful when it is discovered that Dr. Carter's project would in fact lead to the destruction of the rainforest. Grady escapes in the company of Amazonian natives and hatches a daring plan to thwart the evil scientist. |
A Gentle Creature | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | null | The story opens with the narrator in a frenzy about an apparent tragedy that has just befallen his household. His wife has apparently died, as he makes repeated references to her being laid out on a table, presumably lifeless. The narrator proceeds to make an attempt to relate the story to the reader in an effort to make sense of the situation. The narrator is the owner of a pawnshop, and one of his repeated customers was a young girl of sixteen who always pawns items to earn money to advertise as a governess in the newspaper. The narrator could see that she was in a dire financial situation, and he often gave her much more for her pawned items than they were reasonably worth. The narrator slowly develops an interest in the girl, and his interest seems at least marginally returned. The narrator investigates the girl's background, and finds that she is at the mercy of two greedy aunts. The aunts were arranging her marriage to a fat shopkeeper. Once the shopkeeper proposed marriage to the girl, the narrator countered with his own proposal. The girl decided, after much deliberation, to marry the narrator. The narrator's marriage started out cordially enough, but his miserly ways were taxing to his young wife. A dearth of communication and disagreements about how the pawnshop should be run eventually resulted in arguments, ending with the narrator's wife storming out of the house. She returns, having nowhere else to go. The narrator's wife makes a habit of leaving during the day, and eventually it is discovered that she is visiting Efimovich, a member of the narrator's former regiment. The narrator's wife eventually confronts the narrator with the details that she learned from Efimovich: details about the narrator's shameful departure from his regiment. The narrator is unfazed, and his wife continues her visits to Efimovich. One time, the narrator follows his wife to Efimovich, bringing a revolver. He listens in delight to a verbal duel between his wife and Efimovich, and eventually he bursts in and reclaims his wife. The narrator and his wife return home. They retire for the night separately. In the morning, the narrator opens his eyes to see that his wife is standing over him with the revolver pointed at his temple. He simply closes his eyes again, and he is convinced that he conquered her with his readiness to accept death. She does not shoot, and the narrator buys her a separate bed that day. That same day, she also contracts brain fever. The narrator spares no expense for his wife's medical care, and she slowly recovers. Throughout the entire winter the narrator watches his wife furtively, and a watershed moment happens when she begins to sing in his presence. The narrator kisses his wife's feet and promises to be a changed man. He recounts the story of his shame in the regiment, and he promises to take her to Boulogne-sur-Mer. Several days later, the narrator leaves the house to make arrangements for passports. When the narrator returns home, he is met with a crowd of people outside his house. His wife had committed suicide: she had jumped out of the window while holding an icon. The narrator is convinced that he was only five minutes too late, even though it was ultimately his narcissistic love that drove his gentle wife to suicide. |
Lazarus Jack | null | 2,004 | In 1926, magician Jackson "Lazarus Jack" Pierce accidentally causes his wife and three children to become trapped in an extradimensional void. Seventy years later, a mysterious young man offers the aging magician the opportunity to restore his youth, and save his family. |
Salt | Adam Roberts | 2,000 | Colonists from Earth set out for a distant planet, but during the voyage, a factional skirmish turns into an irrevocable grudge, to play out during the course of their colonisation. Rough-shod settlements are soon constructed around the sterile salt environment, yet old tensions quickly develop into war between two of these settlements, the rigid military dictatorship of Senaar and the Als anarchy. The novel explores the motivations of their warfare, and the viewpoints of the two narrators illuminate a dreadful, entwined inevitability. In all aspects of theme, setting, character development and prose style, Salt is a very stark, austere composition. |
The Forests of Silence | Jennifer Rowe | 2,000 | The book opens with a boy called Jarred, a friend of Prince Endon. After the death of King Alton and his queen, Endon is proclaimed King in his father's place. To consummate this, a magical steel belt, the Belt of Deltora, is set around Endon's waist. The Belt recognises Endon as Deltora's rightful king. Jarred, curious, goes to the library and learns that the evil Shadow Lord, a Sauron-like intelligence located in the Shadowlands, once tried to seize the land in which is the kingdom of Deltora. Because the people of those days were divided into seven tribes, the Shadow Army soon overwhelmed much of the land. Jarred learned that a blacksmith named Adin gathered the sacred talismans from each tribe and attached them to a chain of steel medallions. The people's trust in Adin, channeled through the gems, was powerful enough to drive back the Shadow Army into its own dark home, the Shadowlands. Adin later became king of the united land called Deltora; yet he never forgot that the Enemy was not destroyed. He therefore never let the Belt out of his sight. With every generation, the Belt was worn less and less, diminishing its effect. The kings and queens also let their power go to the administrative council, diminishing its power. Jarred, learning of this, urges Endon to put on the Belt and revive the custom of Adin. Before he can explain in detail, Chief Advisor Prandine enters and accuses Jarred of treason. Jarred escapes Prandine and finds that the city has fallen into disrepair, and Deltora has become a virtual dystopia. Jarred then becomes apprentice and successor to Crian the blacksmith, later to marry Crian's granddaughter Anna. Seven years later, the gems of Deltora were stolen by the Ak-Baba under the Shadow Lord and was scattered throughout the land. This also allowed the Enemy to enter the land. Jarred helps King Endon and Queen Sharn (Endon's pregnant bride) escape the invasion through a secret tunnel. Sixteen years later, the Shadow Lord tyrannically rules Deltora. A person identified as Jarred's son and apprentice, Lief, has been born during this time. He has been raised to reject the Shadow Lord, but never to show any obvious opposition. On his birthday, Lief's father sends his son, accompanied by a soldier named Barda, to find the lost gems from the Belt and restore them to it. The nearest gem, the golden topaz, is to be found in Mid Wood, which is one of three perilous Forests of Silence. While travelling to the forest, Wenns capture them and take them into First Wood as an offering to the predator known as Wennbar. Before being eaten, a forest-dwelling girl of Lief's own age, called Jasmine appears. Jasmine, after a brief reluctance, rescues Lief and Barda, later to leads them to the Dark in the heart of Mid Wood. There, they discover a wall made of steadfastly cultivated vines, enclosing a clearing in the very center of the forest. In that center grow three flowers called the Lilies of Life, whose nectar possesses healing properties. The wall of vines was guarded by a Jalis Knight called Gorl, who sought to drink of the Nectar of Life and become immortal. Over the years, Gorl's body has rotted away, leaving nothing behind but his memories and his intentions. He captures Lief and Barda. Under their questions, Gorl narrates all, while Barda strives to break the psychokinetic control held by the knight over the questers' bodies. Barda breaks the grip, but is given a mortal wound by Gorl's sword. As he is about to kill Lief, Jasmine persuades a tree to drop a limb onto Gorl, thus destroying him and breaching his wall. Sunlight enters the Dark, and the Lilies of Life bloom at last. Jasmine and Lief use their nectar to heal the dying Barda. As the Lilies fade, Jasmine takes the last of the nectar into a jar, so that she might use it on future injuries. Lief takes the topaz from its position as the pommel of Gorl's sword and fits it into the Belt of Deltora. The three relax and recuperate, while animals from all over Mid Wood enter the breach in Gorl's wall and devour the vines. Later, Barda and Lief re-embark, with Jasmine and her companions Kree & Filli in company. |
The Lake of Tears | Jennifer Rowe | 2,001 | In The Forests of Silence, the topaz had been retrieved by Lief, Barda, and Jasmine. They continue on their way to the Lake of Tears, to retrieve the ruby. They learn that the land surrounding the Lake of Tears is controlled by the evil sorceress Thaegan, who has 13 monster children. As the companions travel through the countryside they rescue a man named Manus from the Shadow Lord's servants, Grey Guards. Manus is from the city of Raladin. 100 years ago, Thaegan put a spell on Raladin that caused them and all of their offspring to never be able to speak. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine also learn that Thaegan put a spell on the city of D'Or and turned it into the Lake of Tears. The companions, with Manus, escape from the Grey Guards only to be captured by Jin and Jod, two of Thaegan's children. They eventually defeat Jin and Jod and journey to the city of Raladin, where Manus hopes to find his people. Upon arrival, they find the city empty. Only when the Ralad people hear the companions, they come out of hiding. Lief, Barda, and Jasmine tell the Ralads that they must journey to the Lake of Tears, despite the Ralads pleas, but they do not tell them they are going in quest of one of the gems of the Belt of Deltora. Manus agrees to be their guide. When they get to the Lake of Tears, the monster Soldeen attacks them. Soldeen is a giant fish-like creature who is very deadly and has the ability to speak. Using the power of the topaz, Lief persuades Soldeen to give them the ruby. As Soldeen agrees, Thaegan appears and threatens to kill them all. The ruby flies out of Lief's hand and into the depths of the Lake as Thaegan uses her magic to harm them. Just as Thaegan is about to kill them all, Jasmine's bird Kree comes and kills Thaegan by drawing blood. All of Thaegan's spells are broken: the Ralads can now speak and the Lake of Tears turns back into the city of D'Or. Soldeen is a man named Nanion and gives the three companions the gem and wishes them well on their quest. The Belt now holds the topaz and ruby and now they journey towards the City of the Rats. |
A Body in the Bath House | Lindsey Davis | 2,001 | When Marcus Didius Falco discovers a corpse hidden under the floor of his new bath house he starts to track down the men responsible - Glaucus and Cotta. He also receives a commission from the Emperor Vespasian. A building project for the British Chieftain Togidubnus is running late and over-budget. Suspecting that the men he seeks have fled to Britain Falco accepts the mission and travels there with his wife, two baby daughters, their nurse and his two brothers-in-law Aelianus and Justinus. Falco arrives at Fishbourne and starts by investigating corrupt practices. However events quickly take a turn for the worse when the Chief Architect is found murdered in the bath-house of the British King. Falco takes over the project and investigates the killings. |
Enchanted Boy | Richie McMullen | 1,989 | Richie is routinely physically abused by his father, a drunk who works in the construction industry. Richie adores his elder brother James and leads a life a petty crime and childhood dares with his friends. At the age of eight, he is molested in a cinema by a man who persuades him to come home with him. It is the first time he realises the power a knowing boy can have over a desperate pedophile. Richie regularly runs away from home and finds that this has the effect of stopping the abuse from his father. He is also sexually abused by his older cousin who is in the British Merchant Navy. By the age of twelve, his thoughts were continually turning to sex and he experiments with Pip. His prostitution excites and disgusts him in equal measure and the realities and dangers of rent boy prostitution are brought home when he is raped by two men. At fourteen, he had fallen for Mike, but Mike prefers girls and so their relationship is long-lasting but doomed. At fifteen, Richie is thinking of leaving home and thinking of making his living in London as a rent boy in Piccadilly Circus. |
The Dynasts | Thomas Hardy | null | In addition to the various historical figures, The Dynasts also contains an extensive tragic chorus of metaphysical figures ("Spirits" and "Ancient Spirits") who observe and discuss the events. Part First contains a Forescene and six Acts with 35 Scenes. The time period of the events in Part First covers 10-months, from March 1805, the time when Napoleon repeated his coronation ceremony at Milan and took up the crown of Lombardy, through January 1806, the time of the death of William Pitt the Younger. The principal historical events entail Napoleon's invasion plans for England, which are abandoned when French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve sails for the south, the Battle of Trafalgar, and subsequently the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of Austerlitz. The division of the Acts and its Scenes is as follows: Fore Scene. The Overworld Act First: * Scene I. England - A Ridge in Wessex * Scene II. Paris - Office of the Minister of Marine * Scene III. London - The Old House of Commons * Scene IV. The Harbour of Boulogne * Scene V. London - The House of a Lady of Quality * Scene VI. Milan. The Cathedral Act Second: * Scene I. The Dockyard, Gibraltar * Scene II. Off Ferrol * Scene III. The Camp and Harbour of Boulogne * Scene IV. South Wessex - A Ridge-like Down near the Coast * Scene V. The Same - Rainbarrows' Beacon, Egdon Heath Act Third: * Scene I. The Chateau at Pont-de-Briques * Scene II. The Frontiers of Upper Austria and Bavaria * Scene III. Boulogne - The St Omer Road Act Fourth:— * Scene I. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex * Scene II. Before the City of Ulm * Scene III. Ulm - Within the City * Scene IV. Before Ulm - The Same Day * Scene V. The Same - The Michaelsberg * Scene VI. London - Spring Gardens Act Fifth: * Scene I. Off Cape Trafalgar * Scene II. The Same - The Quarter-deck of the "Victory" * Scene III. The Same - On Board the "Bucentaure" * Scene IV. The Same - The Cockpit of the "Victory" * Scene V. London - The Guildhall * Scene VI. An Inn at Rennes * Scene VII. King George's Watering-place, South Wessex Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Field of Austerlitz - The French Position * Scene II. The Same - The Russian Position * Scene III. The Same - The French Position * Scene IV. The Same - The Russian Position * Scene V. The Same - Near the Windmill of Paleny * Scene VI. Shockerwick House, near Bath * Scene VII. Paris - A Street leading to the Tuileries * Scene VIII. Putney - Bowling Green House Part Second contains six Acts with 43 Scenes. The time period of the events of Part Second ranges over 7 years, from 1806 to just before the French invasion of Russia in 1812. The listing of the Acts and Scenes is as follows: Act First: * Scene I. London - Fox's Lodgings, Arlington Street * Scene II. The Route between London and Paris * Scene III. The Streets of Berlin * Scene IV. The Field of Jena * Scene V. Berlin - A Room overlooking a Public Place * Scene VI. The Same * Scene VII. Tilsit and the River Niemen * Scene VIII. The Same Act Second: * Scene I. The Pyrenees and Valleys adjoining * Scene II. Aranjuez, near Madrid - A Room in the Palace of Godoy, the "Prince of Peace" * Scene III. London - The Marchioness of Salisbury's * Scene IV. Madrid and its Environs * Scene V. The Open Sea between the English Coasts and the Spanish Peninsula * Scene VI. St Cloud - The Boudoir of Josephine * Scene VII. Vimiero Act Third: * Scene I. Spain - A Road near Astorga * Scene II. The Same * Scene III. Before Coruna * Scene IV. Coruna - Near the Ramparts * Scene V. Vienna - A Cafe in the Stephans-Platz Act Fourth: * Scene I. A Road out of Vienna * Scene II. The Island of Lobau, with Wagram beyond * Scene III. The Field of Wagram * Scene IV. The Field of Talavera * Scene V. The Same * Scene VI. Brighton - The Royal Pavilion * Scene VII. The Same * Scene VIII. Walcheren Act Fifth: * Scene I. Paris - A Ballroom in the House of Cambaceres * Scene II. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene III. Vienna - A Private Apartment in the Imperial Palace * Scene IV. London - A Club in St. James's Street * Scene V. The old West Highway out of Vienna * Scene VI. Courcelles * Scene VII. Petersburg - The Palace of the Empress-Mother * Scene VIII. Paris - The Grand Gallery of the Louvre and the Salon-Carre adjoining Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Lines of Torres Vedras * Scene II. The Same - Outside the Lines * Scene III. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene IV. Spain - Albuera * Scene V. Windsor Castle - A Room in the King's Apartments * Scene VI. London - Carlton House and the Streets adjoining * Scene VII. The Same - The Interior of Carlton House Part Third contains seven Acts with 53 Scenes, and an After Scene. The historical time period of Part Third covers Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 through his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The division of the Acts and Scenes is as follows: Act First: * Scene I. The Banks of the Niemen, near Kowno * Scene II. The Ford of Santa Marta, Salamanca * Scene III. The Field of Salamanca * Scene IV. The Field of Borodino * Scene V. The Same * Scene VI. Moscow * Scene VII. The Same - Outside the City * Scene VIII. The Same - The Interior of the Kremlin * Scene IX. The Road from Smolensko into Lithuania * Scene X. The Bridge of the Beresina * Scene XI. The Open Country between Smorgoni and Wilna * Scene XII. Paris - The Tuileries Act Second: * Scene I. The Plain of Vitoria * Scene II. The Same, from the Puebla Heights * Scene III. The Same - The Road from the Town * Scene IV. A Fete at Vauxhall Gardens Act Third: * Scene I. Leipzig - Napoleon's Quarters in the Reudnitz Suburb * Scene II. The Same - The City and the Battlefield * Scene III. The Same - from the Tower of the Pleissenburg * Scene IV. The Same - At the Thonberg Windmill * Scene V. The Same - A Street near the Ranstadt Gate * Scene VI. The Pyrenees - Near the River Nivelle Act Fourth: * Scene I. The Upper Rhine * Scene II. Paris - The Tuileries * Scene III. The Same - The Apartments of the Empress * Scene IV. Fontainebleau - A Room in the Palace * Scene V. Bayonne - The British Camp * Scene VI. A Highway in the Outskirts of Avignon * Scene VII. Malmaison - The Empress Josephine's Bedchamber * Scene VIII. London - The Opera-House Act Fifth: * Scene I. Elba - The Quay, Porto Ferrajo * Scene II. Vienna - The Imperial Palace * Scene III. La Mure, near Grenoble * Scene IV. Schonbrunn * Scene V. London - The Old House of Commons * Scene VI. Wessex - Durnover Green, Casterbridge Act Sixth: * Scene I. The Belgian Frontier * Scene II. A Ballroom in Brussels * Scene III. Charleroi - Napoleon's Quarters * Scene IV. A Chamber overlooking a Main Street in Brussels * Scene V. The Field of Ligny * Scene VI. The Field of Quatre-Bras * Scene VII. Brussels - The Place Royale * Scene VIII. The Road to Waterloo Act Seventh: * Scene I. The Field of Waterloo * Scene II. The Same - The French Position * Scene III. Saint Lambert's Chapel Hill * Scene IV. The Field of Waterloo - The English Position * Scene V. The Same - The Women's Camp near Mont Saint-Jean * Scene VI. The Same - The French Position * Scene VII. The Same - The English Position * Scene VIII. The Same - Later * Scene IX. The Wood of Bossu After Scene. The Overworld |
Indiana | George Sand | 1,831 | In the story an attractive, young Creole from Réunion named Indiana is married to an older ex-army officer named Colonel Delmare. Indiana does not love him, and searches for someone who will love her passionately. She overlooks her cousin Ralph, who lives with her and the colonel and who has loved her steadfastly from a young age. When their young, handsome, and well-spoken neighbor, Raymon de Ramiere declares his interest to Indiana, she falls in love with him. Raymon has already seduced Indiana's maid, Noun, who is pregnant with his child. When Noun finds out what is going on, she drowns herself. Indiana's husband decides that they will move to the Île Bourbon. Indiana escapes the house to faithfully present herself in Raymon's apartments in the middle of the night, expecting him to accept her as his mistress in spite of society's inevitable condemnation. He at first attempts to seduce her but, on failing, rejects her once and for all. He cannot bear the thought that her will is stronger than his and writes her a letter intended to make her fall in love with him again, even though he has no intention of requiting it. Indiana has moved to the Island with the Colonel by the time she reads the letter but does not fall under Raymon's spell again. She escapes once again to France, where the Trois Glorieuses revolution of 1830 is taking place. In the meantime, Raymon has made an advantageous marriage and bought Indiana's house. The stoic Sir Ralph, whom she has always seen as 'égoiste', comes to rescue her and tell her that Colonel Delmare is dead from illness. They decide to commit suicide together by jumping into a waterfall at the Île de Réunion. But on the way home they fall in love. Just before the suicide, they declare their love for one another and believe they will be married in Heaven. At the end of the novel comes a conclusion, a young adventurer's account of finding a man and woman, Ralph and Indiana, living on an isolated plantation. |
Caps for Sale | null | null | Based on a folktale, the story follows the life of a mustachioed cap salesman who wears his entire stock of caps on his head. He strolls through towns and villages chanting, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!" One day, the peddler sits down under a tree to take a nap, with all his wares still on his head. When he awakens, all the caps but his own are gone - stolen by a troop of monkeys, who now sit in the tree wearing them. The peddler orders them to return his caps, scolds them, and yells at them, while the monkeys only imitate him. The peddler finally throws down his own cap in disgust - upon which the monkeys throw theirs down as well, right at his feet. He stacks the caps back on his head and strolls back to town, calling, "Caps! Caps for sale! Fifty cents a cap!" |
The Fallible Fiend | L. Sprague de Camp | null | On the demonic Twelfth Plane the demon Zdim is drafted for a year's indentured servitude on the human Prime Plane, the demon society having an agreement to provide service to human sorcerers in return for supplies of iron, a raw material it desperately needs. Zdim is duly summoned to the Prime Plane by the sorcerer Dr. Maldivius of Novaria. There he strives to do his duty, but his demonic literal-mindedness hampers him. Assigned to protect the Sibylline Sapphire from any trespassers, he promptly eats Maldivius' apprentice Grax when the latter intrudes. Similar misadventures result in the disgusted Maldivius selling his contract, and the demon is passed from one master to another, from circus master Bagardo to the rich widow Roska of Ir, all the while doing his level best to figure out what the muddled humans truly wish of him. Against all odds he becomes a hero when he recruits aid for the city-state of Ir after it discounts intelligence of an imminent invasion by the cannibal Paaluans. Returning to his home plane early and with extra iron, he resolves never again to leave the comforts of the Twelfth Plane — until he realizes how dull it is compared with the picturesque insanity of the human realm... By internal chronology, The Fallible Fiend is the second story in the Novarian series, coming after the short story "The Emperor's Fan", which is set centuries before the others, and prior to the Reluctant King trilogy. (The Paaluan invasion of Ir is mentioned in the second and third books of the trilogy, The Clocks of Iraz and The Unbeheaded King, respectively, as an event occurring either recently or some generations past.) Note: The name of Ir, the subterrranean city-state where much the plot takes place, is simply the Hebrew word for "city" (עיר). |
The Damnation Game | Clive Barker | 1,985 | Marty Strauss, a gambling addict recently released from prison, is hired to be the personal bodyguard of Joseph Whitehead, one of the wealthiest men in the world. The job proves more complicated and dangerous than he thought, however, as Marty soon gets caught up in a series of supernatural events involving Whitehead, his daughter (who is a heroin addict), and a devilish man named Mamoulian, with whom Whitehead made a Faustian bargain many years earlier, during World War II. As time passes, Mamoulian haunts Whitehead using his supernatural powers (such as the ability to raise the dead), urging him to complete his pact with him. Eventually Whitehead decides to escape his fate after a few encounters with Mamoulian and having his wife, former bodyguard, and now his daughter Carys taken away from him. With hope still left to save Carys, Marty Strauss, although reluctant to get involved in the old man Whiteheads deserved Punishment, decides to get involved and attempt to save the innocent gifted addict from being another victim to the damnation game. |
Gradisil | Adam Roberts | 2,006 | Gradisil takes place over several generations of the Gyeroffy family, the novel's timeline spanning from 2059 to the first half of the 22nd century, circa 2130. On these generations hang the novel's basic plots – a murder story, a domestic story, a political story and a revenge story. The first involves Klara Gyeroffy and her father, an aeronautics hobbyist, in their establishment of the low Earth orbit settlement of the Uplands. With the advent of more efficient propulsion technology, space travel reaches a new level of attainability, the Uplands phenomenon being a product of direct access, for those wealthy enough, to the lower orbits. The Uplands has no legal or taxation systems, civic obligations, boundaries, politics or treaties. In 2059 Klara's father Miklós flies Kristin Janzen Kooistra, a tenant who requires a hideaway, for their Upland lodging. Kooistra kills him during docking, it being later revealed that she is a serial killer at large. Klara, orphaned, flees to Jon, a neighbour in Canada, in distress. The pair soon remove Upland and organise a more permanent residence there, with other billionaire eccentrics of the neighourhood. The next portion of Gradisil is largely an exposition of the environment's domestic capacity, Roberts investigating the challenges and novelties of day-to-day Upland life, the question of zero-g as hindrance and boon, and ever-present logistics issues. Jon and Klara become sexual partners, but she soon tires of him and develops a relationship with Teruo Nakagomi, a shrewd businessman. After falling pregnant by him, Klara returns to Earth to deliver her child. Her daughter, Gradisil, is born in 2063. Gradisil is about Earthbound conflict as well as Upland conflict. United States-EU tensions of the previous century have become critical, with war finally erupting in 2065. Politically, the Uplands is still a non-entity and the pioneers remaining proudly aloof to "Downland" politics. Klara remains on Earth, supporting Gradisil. In 2081 the first seizure of "EU houses" by the US takes place in the Uplands. The orbit settlement is now transformed into both a political and military battlefield, with the US anti-Upland and EU pro-Upland, and receives increasing coverage by Earth media over the coming years. Klara is appointed EU envoy to the Uplands in 2075. Two new narrators are introduced: Lieutenant Slater of the United States Upland Corps, providing insights into the exigencies and metamorphoses of that nation's military-industrial complex in the late 21st century; and Paul Caunes, Gradisil's second husband, who would later betray her to US authorities. As the Uplands comes into its own as the first extraterrestrial country in human history, Gradisil consolidates her role of political activism and de facto media ambassador. Many Uplanders later address her as "President" during her household visits. She is embarked on a campaign to awaken in the rudimentary nation "matriotism"—a unique nationalism for a unique entity—which aims to preserve a default peacetime anarchy. In 2091 and 2093 Gradisil's sons, Hope and Solidarity respectively, are born, however Paul Caunes is the biological father of neither. 2099 sees the onset of the US-Upland war. Every logistical aspect of the war has been meticulously designed by the US to fulfil a new legal bureaucratic order (for instance, the war must officially conclude before the turn of the century and take no longer than 72 hours in all), Slater contending that the real war takes place in the courts. Gradisil and her young nation lie under siege for months, their supply lines cut off by USUC forces. All the while she has turned pregnant with her first child to Paul. Knowing that she cannot return to Earth without being captured, she sacrifices the foetus in orbit. Gradisil waits for the opportune moment to launch a kamikaze attack on USUC orbital stations. It proves effective, and shatters the image of US unassailability that the European loss of the "war of '81" cemented. There occurs a realisation, both Down- and Upland, that the United States can never exercise any meaningful control over the territory. Upon embarking on the victory rounds, Gradisil and her retinue are soon led into a trap, she falling into US custody. The novel leaps forward twenty years, to focus on an adult Hope, on business excursion to the Uplands, trying to secure an investment for a mining project on Mercury. However, his brother Sol is also at the hotel complex at which he's lodged, on an assassination mission, the target being Paul Caunes. Hope has a run-in with an undercover American agent, under the assumption that Hope conspires with his brother. Sol kills him, shortly secures his father and escapes with him and Hope. On board the escape ship, a kangaroo court is held in what turns out to be a makeshift Upland town hall. Caunes is sent into the vacuum to die, after telling his sons that he is "sorry". |
Kill the Messenger | Tami Hoag | null | Bike messenger Jace Damon attempts to live under the radar in Los Angeles with his younger brother (Tyler, who has an IQ of 168). The two are raised by their mother, who does her best to remain anonymous. When she falls ill Jace takes her to the hospital, making sure that he is not associated with her. The mother dies, and her children cannot claim her body. Instead, Jace takes his brother to find a new place, deciding that the Chinese community would be the best for them; eventually an elderly Chinese businesswoman (Madame Chen) takes a liking to the pair of boys and gives Jace a part-time job and a place to stay. He also takes a job as a bike messenger, since he can be paid in cash for it. One night, Jace accepts a delivery just as he is about to go off-duty; it is a pickup from the office of one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, Lenny Lowell. He is not happy about the late delivery since it is a wet miserable night, but the dispatcher tells him that everyone else has gone off duty, and he is the only one available. Lowell is extremely (despite his reputation) nice to Jace, giving him a good tip. When Jace approaches the delivery address, he finds an empty lot which makes him nervous, so he decides to abort the delivery. Before he can get away, a large black car comes racing towards him to run him down. He barely survives the collision and is forced to abandon his bike. On foot, he is able to elude his pursuer, but loses his delivery bag (but retains the package). Jace returns to the scene of the collision and is relieved to discover that he will only have to replace the wheel. He returns to Lowell's office, only to find it crawling with police; he learns that Lowell has been murdered. Jace does not trust police, so he leaves the scene. In a city fueled by money, celebrity and sensationalism, the slaying of a bottom-feeder like Lowell won't make headlines. So when LAPD's elite show up, homicide detective Kev Parker (assigned to Lowell's case) wants to know why. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer--or to the end of his career. Because if there's one lesson Parker has learned over the years, it's that in a town built on fame and fantasy, delivering the truth can be murder. |
The Three Christs of Ypsilanti | null | 1,964 | To study the basis for delusional belief systems, Rokeach brought together three men who each claimed to be Jesus Christ and confronted them with one another's conflicting claims, while encouraging them to interact personally as a support group. Rokeach also attempted to manipulate other aspects of their delusions by inventing messages from imaginary characters. He did not, as he had hoped, provoke any lessening of the patients' delusions, but did document a number of changes in their beliefs. While initially the three patients quarreled over who was holier and reached the point of physical altercation, they eventually each explained away the other two as being mental patients in a hospital, or dead and being operated by machines. |
The Carved Lions | Molesworth | 1,895 | The story features the interaction between the children of the household and the carved lions featured, who come to life and take care of them. |
Doctor DeSoto | William Steig | 1,982 | The story is about Dr. De Soto, a mouse-dentist who lives in a world of animals who act as humans. He and his wife, who serves as his assistant, work together to treat patients with as little pain as possible. Dr. De Soto uses different chairs, depending on the size of the animal, with Mrs. De Soto guiding her husband with a system of pulleys for treating extra large animals. However, they refuse to treat any animal who likes to eat mice. One day, a fox with a toothache drops by and begs for treatment. Mrs. De Soto convinces her husband that he needs to help the fox to get rid of his pain, so Dr. De Soto reluctantly agrees. They give the fox some anesthetic and proceed to treat the bad tooth. However, while under the effects of the anesthetic, the fox unknowingly exclaims how he would love to eat the mice, but also expresses it is crass to attempt to eat someone who had just relieved him of much pain. The De Sotos remove the bad tooth, and tells the fox to come back tomorrow to get a false tooth. Later that night, Dr. De Soto expresses his disgust that they trusted a fox who had hoped to eat them, although Mrs. De Soto claims that the effects of the anesthetic just got to him. They prepare the new tooth, but come up with a plan to place it in without getting eaten. The next day, which was originally the De Sotos' day-off, the fox comes back much happier than before and anxiously awaits the placement of his new tooth. The De Sotos proceed with their work, but the fox is licking his lips and thinking about eating the mice. The De Sotos use a long stick to open his jaws and put in the new tooth. However, the fox has decided to eat them. Fortunately, his jaws were held tightly apart from each other, so he couldn't trap them in his teeth. Dr. De Soto uses a special mouth glue and spreads it onto the fox's teeth. When the fox closes his mouth, his teeth were stuck together! The De Sotos told him to wait a few days or a few hours before the special glue wore off (they kept their plan a secret from the fox and pretended that it was part of the treatment). The fox then went home, not realizing that he had been tricked, but clearly disappointed that he couldn't eat the De Sotos. The book ends with the DeSotos triumphant at having "outfoxed the fox". Mrs. De Soto joins her husband for a day off work and says she will never again disagree with his policy of refusing to do business with hostile animals. |
26 Fairmount Avenue | Tomie dePaola | 1,999 | The book deals with the early life of Tomie dePaola. He has just moved to a new house in Connecticut and the 1938 hurricane has just hit. Tomie expresses unhappiness for seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the theatres. |
The Pirate | Walter Scott | 1,821 | Mr Mertoun and his son had arrived as strangers, and resided for several years in the remaining rooms of the old mansion of the Earls of Orkney, the father leading a very secluded life, while the son Mordaunt became a general favourite with the inhabitants, and especially with the udaller, Magnus Troil, and his daughters. On his way home from a visit to them, he and the pedlar Snailsfoot sought shelter from a storm at the Yellowleys' farmhouse, where they were amused with their penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers. The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged. Cleveland was in fact a pirate, but they did not know this. The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore. After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for St John's Eve, to which he had not been bidden. As he was brooding over this slight, Norna touched his shoulder, and, assuring him of her goodwill, advised him to join the party uninvited. Warned by his father against falling in love, and with some misgivings as to his reception, he called at Harfra on his way, and accompanied Yellowley and his sister to the feast. Minna and Brenda Troil replied to their discarded companion's greeting with cold civility, and he felt convinced that Captain Cleveland had supplanted him in their esteem. The bard, Claud Halcro, endeavoured to cheer him with his poetry and reminiscences of John Dryden; and, in the course of the evening, Brenda, disguised as a masquer, told him they had heard that he had spoken unkindly of them, but that she did not believe he had done so. She also expressed her fear that the stranger had won Minna's love, and begged Mordaunt to discover all he could respecting him. During an attempt to capture a whale the following day, Cleveland saved Mordaunt from drowning, and, being thus released from his obligation to him, intimated that henceforth they were rivals. The same evening the pedlar brought tidings that a strange ship had arrived at Kirkwall, and Cleveland talked of a trip thither to ascertain whether it was the consort he had been so long expecting. After the sisters had retired to bed, Norna appeared in their room, and narrated a startling tale of her early life, which led Minna to confess her attachment to the captain, and to elicit Brenda's partiality for Mordaunt. At a secret interview the next morning, Cleveland admitted to Minna that he was a pirate, upon which she declared that she could only still love him as a penitent, and not as the hero she had hitherto imagined him to be. He announced, in the presence of her father and sister, his intention of starting at once for Kirkwall; but at night he serenaded her, and then, after hearing a struggle and a groan, she saw the shadow of a figure disappearing with another on his shoulders. Overcome with grief and suspense, she was seized with a fit of melancholy, for the cure of which the udaller consulted Norna in her secluded dwelling; and, after a mystic ceremony, she predicted that the cause would cease when "crimson foot met crimson hand" in the Martyr's Aisle in Orkney land, whither she commanded her kinsman to proceed with his daughters. Mordaunt had been stabbed by the pirate, but had been carried away by Norna to Hoy, where she told him she was his mother, and, after curing his wound, conveyed him to Kirkwall. Here Cleveland had joined his companions, and, having been chosen captain of the consort ship, he obtained leave from the provost for her to take in stores at Stromness and quit the islands, on condition that he remained as a hostage for the crew's behaviour. On their way they captured the brig containing the Troils, but Minna and Brenda were sent safely ashore by John Bunce, Cleveland's lieutenant, and escorted by old Halcro to visit a relative. The lovers met in the cathedral of St Magnus, whence, with Norna's aid, Cleveland escaped to his ship, and the sisters were transferred to the residence of the bard's cousin, where their father joined them, and found Mordaunt in charge of a party of dependents for their protection. When all was ready for sailing, the captain resolved to see Minna once more, and having sent a note begging her to meet him at the Standing Stones of Stenness at daybreak, he made his way thither. Brenda persuaded Mordaunt to allow her sister to keep the appointment, and as the lovers were taking their last farewell, they and Brenda were seized by Bunce and his crew from the boat, and would have been carried off, had not Mordaunt hastened to the rescue, and made prisoners of the pirate and his lieutenant. Norna had warned Cleveland against delaying his departure, and his last hopes were quenched when, from the window of the room in which he and Bunce were confined, they witnessed the arrival of the Halcyon, whose captain she had communicated with, and the capture, after a desperate resistance, of their ship. The elder Mertoun now sought Norna's aid to save their son, who, he declared, was not Mordaunt, as she imagined, but Cleveland, whom he had trained as a pirate under his own real name of Vaughan, her former lover; and having lost trace of him till now, had come to Jarlshof, with his child by a Spanish wife, to atone for the misdeeds of his youth. On inquiry it appeared that Cleveland and Bunce had earned their pardon by acts of mercy in their piratical career, and were allowed to enter the king's service. Minna was further consoled by a penitent letter from her lover; Brenda became Mordaunt's wife; and the aberration of mind, occasioned by remorse at having caused her father's death, having died, Norna abandoned her supernatural pretensions and peculiar habits, and resumed her family name. |
Father of Lies | Brian Evenson | 1,998 | Eldon Fochs is a 38-year-old accountant and lay provost. He is happily married with four children. Feshtig works as a therapist in an Institute of Psychoanalysis funded and controlled by the church. Fochs is persuaded to go to Feshtig by his wife, who has a growing suspicion that her husband harbours dark secrets. Fochs slowly reveals the contents of his dreams and his "disturbing thoughts" about children to Feshtig. He reveals two dreams; one when he strangles and dismembers a girl and another of a 12-year-old boy. In the dream, the boy comes into his office and Fochs brutally sodomises him. He frightens the boy with threats and forces him to admit to having been molested by an uncle, something that never happened. Fochs claims that in his dream he was guided by God. In the chapters where Fochs is in the first person, he describes how he assaulted and murdered a 14-year-old girl. He also describes his ecclesiastical superior confronting him with allegations from two mothers that he has molested their boys. He denies the allegations, and his superiors choose to believe him. Feshtig meets with one of the mothers and starts to counsel her son Nathan Mears, and he gradually uncovers the extent of the damage that Fochs has done to the young boy. As the abuse allegations reach the media, the pressure on the church mounts, but it does everything to protect itself and its reputation, going as far as to excommunicate the two mothers. The pressure on Fochs from his wife is more difficult to answer as she presses him on what he was doing the night the girl was murdered. Eventually he rams his car into a tree, having surreptitiously unclipped his wife’s seat belt. She is thrown through the window and killed. Feshtig reveals his conclusions to the police, but their DNA tests are inconclusive. Protected by the church, Fochs still contrives to spend time alone with young boys in order to molest them. He is eventually transferred to a teaching position in another city, free to carry on his abuse. As the novel ends, having assaulted his children’s babysitter, Fochs sinks to further level of depravity and starts a cycle of incest with his eldest daughter. |
Capable of Honor | Allen Drury | 1,966 | In the novel, Harley Hudson, the affable but inept Vice President from Advise and Consent, is now president and seeking a term of his own against a backdrop of Soviet-instigated war, as the Soviet Union backs rebel governments in Panama and in the fictitious African republic of Gorotoland. Hudson responds with U.S. troops in both countries, and the conflicts soon bog down. The election season soon turns on these foreign policy questions, with the media and others seeking a peace candidate — and finding it in the popular but weak-willed Governor Ted Jason of California. Having announced his candidacy late, Hudson announces an open contest for the Vice Presidential nomination, in which Secretary of State Orrin Knox, who supports Hudson's policies, opposes Jason. The media, who had supported Jason heavily when it looked like it would be a Knox-Jason race for the Presidential nomination, continues its effort for a Jason victory by any means they can. At the convention in San Francisco, extreme elements of the Left and Right combine to support Jason, and there are several violent incidents, including one in which Knox's daughter-in-law is brutally attacked. When it becomes clear that the convention is split down the middle in fights over the platform, Jason challenges Hudson for the Majority Party's nomination (the novels never use the proper names "Republican" or "Democrat" but the descriptions of Majority Party corresponds strongly to the Democrats of the 1960s). The media, meantime, spins merrily away, filtering what the country is allowed to see and hear from San Francisco. Ceil Jason, the Governor's wife, leaves him when her husband's lack of principle and willingness to tolerate the violence sinks in to her. Hudson wins narrowly, and Jason expects the Vice Presidential nomination since he commands the support of almost half the convention. Hudson seems amenable, and places Jason on the dais as he makes his acceptance speech. Hudson humiliates Jason by making it clear that he considers Jason a panderer, and states he will accept Knox, and only Knox, as his running mate. The convention duly nominates Knox, but almost half its delegates walk out, to the pleasure of the media commentators, who predict a third-party convention from among the disaffected delegates. |
English Passengers | Matthew Kneale | null | In 1857, after their attempts to smuggle contraband goods land them with a heavy fine from the British Customs, Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his crew of Manx sailors are forced to offer their ship for charter. The vessel is quickly hired by a party of Englishmen headed by an eccentric Vicar, the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, who believes that the Garden of Eden is located in Tasmania and wants to mount an expedition there to find it. However, unbeknownst to the clergyman, one of his fellow travellers has an entirely different reason for journeying to the island. Dr Thomas Potter is a renowned surgeon who is developing a thesis on the races of man and hopes to find some interesting specimens there. Running parallel with this story, but starting some 30 or so years earlier, are the recollections of Peevay, one of Tasmania's natives, who describes the devastating impact the white settlers had on his people, and the aborigines' struggle to adapt to the cultural changes which were forced on them. Many of the chapters alternate between the two different time periods, but when the Manx ship eventually docks in Tasmania, both strands of the story are brought together for the book's conclusion. |
Preserve and Protect | Allen Drury | 1,968 | After winning his party's nomination in Capable of Honor, newly-elected U.S. President Harley Hudson dies in a suspicious plane crash. William Abbott, the Speaker of the House, is reluctantly elevated to the Presidency. The Majority Party immediately convenes its National Committee, torn between the supporters of California Governor Ted Jason and those of Secretary of State and former Illinois Senator Orrin Knox. Eventually Knox defeats Jason, but names Jason as his vice presidential nominee. At the conclusion of the novel, a gunman appears and opens fire on the two candidates and their wives. |
The Transall Saga | Gary Paulsen | 1,998 | The story begins with Mark Harrison, a 13-year old survival enthusiast, hiking through the mountainous Magruder Missile Range when he is struck by a mysterious blue beam of light. He wakes up in a strange world that he believes is an alien world with many similarities to Earth. He uses his survival skills to live off the land and, while exploring the forest, he discovers a camp of some short human-like creatures with webbed feet and dark, olive-colored skin, though he finds them too warlike to interact with. He also hears a creature called the howling thing. Soon after, he is enslaved by the Tsook, a metal-weapon wielding race. Over the next three months, he learns their language and develops feelings for Megaan, the chief's daughter. When, after escaping, he returns to warn the tribe about an impending attack, he is granted freedom and official entry into their tribe. Mark then discovers that, despite his misconceptions earlier, this world is actually just Earth in the future. Megaan's brother gives Mark a shard of a Coca-Cola bottle and the Merkon (leader of The Transall) reveals the events between Mark's time and this future, also revealing that he too was sent there by the beam of light. Apparently, a strange highly contagious form of the Ebola virus wiped out most of the human race. Those remaining used nuclear weapons on each other, forcing civilization to start over. After severely wounding the Merkon in a swordfight, Mark asks Megaan to marry him. However, the Merkon's son has sworn revenge and Mark flees the village to protect them. He leads the Merkon's army to the jungle, away from his new home. Once in the jungle, Mark systematically kills the army but forgets about a scouting party that attacks him. Mark hides behind a boulder for protection and suddenly the boulder is struck by lightning and sends off a charge which brings Mark into his normal time. Twenty years later, Mark has become a scientist working tirelessly to find a cure for the Ebola virus. |
Körkarlen | Selma Lagerlöf | 1,912 | The novel is set in a small town in Sweden at the beginning of the 20th Century. Edith, a young "Slum Sister" (social worker) in the service of the Salvation Army is on her death bed dying of "consumption" (tuberculosis). She requests that before she dies, she would like to see again David Holm, one of her charges. It becomes apparent she has a special relationship with David Holm. A year earlier, he was the first patron of the newly opened social welfare house that Edith started. He also had infected her at the time with tuberculosis after she stayed up all night mending his torn and infected coat. Over the next year Edith wanted to help him, but he was a violent alcoholic and always cruelly rejected her. This only increased her resolve and Edith developed a deep love for David. Edith then learned David is married with children, but they had to leave home because David was so violent. Edith persuades David's wife to return home, but they are treated worse than ever by David. This makes Edith feel guilty as David threatens to deliberately infect his children with TB. On her death bed, Edith now wants to try one last time to put things in order. Meanwhile, David is sitting in the park with drinking buddies and telling them a horrible story about the coachman of death - as it happens, the last person to die each year is recruited by Death incarnate to travel for the next year picking up the souls of the dead in the Phantom Carriage. David heard this story from his friend George, who died last year on New Year's Eve. After more drinking, David gets into a fight with his companions, is hit in the chest and suffers a hemorrhage (a complication of TB) and falls lifeless to the ground. At the same moment the clock strikes midnight. None other than David's old friend George then appears in the Phantom Carriage. David now has to replace George and serve as the driver for a year of death. When David refuses, Georges binds him and throws him into the death cart. Now a ghostly apparition, George takes David to see the people that David loved most and whom he has most harmed. First they visit the dying Edith. When David learns that Edith has loved him, he softens and falls to his knees in front of Edith. Edith can now die in peace, and Georges commands her soul from her body. David and Georges then go to a prison in which David's younger brother is incarcerated. The brother had been led astray by David, starting with drinking alcohol and then committing a murder. Now, David's brother is dying of TB. The brother regrets that he his failed to fulfill a promise he once made to a sick child to see the ocean. David vows that he will fulfill his brother's promise, and so David's brother dies in peace. Finally, George and David go to David's wife. She has decided to kill herself and the children, life with David is no longer tolerable and she sees no way out. David feels love for his children for the first time in his life. David pleads with George to allow his soul to return to his body so the he may stop his wife from killing herself and the children. This Georges does and David redeems himself to his wife in a tear filled reunion. Georges will serve another year as driver to the dead. David prays the New Year's prayer that he has learned from George, God, let my soul come to maturity before being harvested. |
Camber the Heretic | Katherine Kurtz | 1,981 | The events of Camber the Heretic span roughly one year, from January 917 to early January 918. The novel begins as the Deryni Healer Rhys Thuryn and his wife, Evaine MacRorie Thuryn, attempt to treat an injured colleague, Earl Gregory of Ebor. While tending to Gregory's wounds, Rhys accidentally discovers an innate ability to block Gregory's Deryni powers. Stunned and amazed by his discovery, Rhys seeks the advice of his father-in-law, Camber MacRorie, the legendary Deryni adept who has been living in the guise of Bishop Alister Cullen for the past decade. Although equally shocked by Rhys' discovery, Camber is unable to provide any insights, and they soon return to Valoret to tend to the king. King Cinhil Haldane is dying, a fact which deeply concerns Camber and his family. Although Cinhil himself has never truly overcome his distrust of Deryni powers, he has kept the peace between the races throughout his reign, due largely to his close friendship with the man he believes to be Alister Cullen. However, with Cinhil's death fast approaching, Camber realizes that the ambitious human lords at court will soon be able to wage open war on Deryni throughout the kingdom. Prince Alroy Haldane, Cinhil's eldest son and heir, is a sickly twelve-year-old boy, and Camber knows all too well that the Regency Council that will control the throne during Alroy's minority will not treat Deryni kindly. Despite his misgivings about his own powers, Cinhil is nonetheless forced to admit that some of his powers are extremely beneficial to a king. Accordingly, he asks Father Joram MacRorie, Camber's son, to assist him in a magical ritual to bestow such powers upon his three sons. The following night, Camber, Joram, Rhys, Evaine, and Jebediah d'Alcara perform the ritual with Cinhil, mirroring the same ritual that gave Cinhil his own powers fourteen years earlier. The ritual is successful, but the strain is too much for the ailing king. Cinhil soon collapses and dies, but not before he finally learns the truth about Camber's secret identity. With Cinhil dead, the human lords waste no time in making their bid for power. At the first meeting of the Regency Council, Camber is quickly removed by his fellow Regents. Additionally, almost all of the Deryni members of the Royal Council are forced to resign. Only Archbishop Jaffray is spared, as the Archbishop of Valoret is entitled to serve on the council for life. As the Deryni at court begin to make new lives for themselves, the Camberian Council discusses Rhys' discovery. Fearful of the persecutions that will soon be coming against Deryni throughout Gwynedd, Camber suggests a desperate plan to save some of their people. By blocking their powers under the guise of a religious blessing, some Deryni may escape the persecutions by living as normal humans. Conditions continue to deteriorate for Deryni after Alroy's coronation as king. Prince Javan Haldane's personal Healer, Lord Tavis O'Neill, is attacked and mutilated by a group of Deryni for serving the human prince. An attempt to infiltrate the royal court ends in disaster when Earl Davin MacRorie of Culdi, Camber's grandson, is slain while defending the king's brothers. The Michaelines, a militant religious order with many Deryni members, finally decide to leave Gwynedd completely, and many other Deryni flee the increasingly hostile kingdom. Additionally, Tavis and Javan begin to remember details of the night of Cinhil's death, spurring their curiosity to discover the whole truth of the night's actions. Finally, in late October, Archbishop Jaffray is killed in an anti-Deryni uprising. The Curia of Bishops meets in Valoret to choose Jaffray's successor. The Regents make no secret that they want Bishop Hubert MacInnis to be elected, and they actively campaign for his selection. Nonetheless, many of the bishops refuse to vote for Hubert, and the deadlocked Curia is unable to choose a new primate. Finally, a group of bishops approaches Camber and asks him to accept their nomination. Although initially unwilling to accept, Camber eventually agrees to their proposal. After his election the following day, Hubert and the other Regents erupt with rage. They order their forces to attack several prominent Deryni religious houses, but Camber and Joram are unable to warn the houses in time. Meanwhile, Tavis summons Rhys to attend to Javan, then drugs him to read his memories of Cinhil's death. In doing so, Tavis discovers that he also has the ability to block Deryni powers. On Christmas Day of 917, Camber, as Alister Cullen, is enthroned as Archbishop of Valoret and Primate of All Gwynedd. Rhys convinces Tavis to release him, and immediately attempts to warn Camber that the Regents are planning to attack the cathedral itself. A tense stand-off between the bishops and the Regents results in a bloody confrontation as the Regents attempt to arrest the assembled clerics. Although Camber and many of his allies manage to escape, Rhys does not survive the incident and soon dies in Camber's arms. Having routed the Deryni, the Regents immediately move to press their advantage. Hubert is soon elected Archbishop, and the Regents embark on a ruthless campaign of Deryni suppression. New laws and religious doctrines are quickly passed, forbidding Deryni from holding land or office and banning Deryni from the priesthood. The lands of Deryni nobles are savagely attacked, their people murdered and their estates burned. Camber's sainthood is not only revoked, but the supposedly dead Deryni lord is declared to be a heretic. Additionally, all members of Camber's family are outlawed and sentenced to death. While attempting to flee to safety, Evaine is stunned by the feeling of Rhys' death. Accompanied by her nephew, Ansel MacRorie, she travels to Trurill to retrieve her eldest son. However, the Regents' forces have reached the castle first, and Evaine and Ansel discover a scene of barbarous destruction. The castle is burned and nearly all the occupants are dead, including Evaine's son. The deaths of her husband and her son send Evaine into premature labor and she soon gives birth to her second daughter, Jerusha. Nonetheless, Evaine and Ansel manage to evade pursuit and reach safety. Shortly after the beginning of the new year, Camber and Jebediah travel to rendezvous with Evaine, Ansel, and Joram. Despite their attempts to remain incognito, they are recognized by several of the Regents' men, who soon attempt to capture the pair. Camber and Jebediah are sorely wounded in the fight, and Jebediah quickly succumbs to his injuries. As he lies bleeding in the snow, Camber ponders his past and his powers, remembering a dangerous spell that may enable him to elude death once again. Weakened and dying, he decides to cast one final spell. Later, as Evaine and Joram gaze the body of their father, they notice the odd shape of his hands, and they wonder aloud if there might still be a way for Camber MacRorie to live. |
Fortune's Favourites | Colleen McCullough | 1,993 | The novel opens with Lucius Cornelius Sulla's return from the East, the second civil war his rise to the Dictatorship, and his proscriptions against those who formed an antagonistic government under Marius (now dead) while he was away. While Sulla's shadow covers the majority of the rest of the book—his physical deformity, after his pale skin is all but destroyed by intense sun exposure, is always contrasted with his near-absolute political power—after his willing resignation of power, retirement to a pleasure villa and dramatic death, three young men of the next generation begin to vie to become the Masters of Rome in their own right: Pompey the Great's youthful campaigns and his fierce battle against the Roman renegade Quintus Sertorius are narrated, as are Marcus Licinius Crassus' struggle against Spartacus, the Roman wars in the East against Mithridates, and the youthful adventures of Gaius Julius Caesar. The novel culminates with halcyon year of Pompey and Crassus' first joint consulship. The book's title is a reference to an often repeated theme in the series, and expresses the Roman belief that Fortuna, the Goddess of Luck, would take a hand in the lives of those who please her, helping them along when they needed it most. it:I favoriti della fortuna |
Peony | Pearl S. Buck | 1,948 | Peony is set in the 1850s in the city of K'aifeng, in the province of Honan, which was historically a center for Chinese Jews. The novel follows Peony, a Chinese bondmaid of the prominent Jewish family of Ezra ben Israel, and shows through her eyes how the Jewish community was regarded in K'aifeng at a time when most of the Jews had come to think of themselves as Chinese. The novel contains a hidden love and shows the importance of duty along with the challenges of life. This novel is one that follows the guidelines of Buck's work. The setting is China, religion is involved, and there is an interracial couple (David and Kueilan). A prefatory note before the title page tells the reader of the assimilation of the Jews of K'aifeng. "Today even the memory of their origin is gone. They are Chinese." Not all the 1st editions have the same cover design; some have a light blue binding with the title centered in a 3"x 1.5" simple gold imprint on dark blue background, the sun shining on a field, with the title at the top and the author's name at the bottom. Much more is known today (2010) than in Buck's lifetime about the K'aifeng Jews. nl:Pioenroos (roman) |
The Bishop's Heir | Katherine Kurtz | 1,984 | The Bishop's Heir details the events of a period of time lasting roughly a month and a half, beginning in late November 1123 and ending in early January 1124. The novel begins as the Curia of Bishops meets in Culdi to choose the successor to the deceased Bishop of Meara. The selection of the next bishop is a delicate matter, as the Mearans have made several attempts to secede from Gwynedd over the past century. King Kelson Haldane addresses the assembled clerics, then departs to make a survey of the local barons. Shortly thereafter, Kelson is reunited with Lord Dhugal MacArdry, an old friend who he has not seen since before his coronation, and the king decides to visit Dhugal's father, Earl Caulay MacArdry of Transha. While visiting Transha, Kelson learns more about Princess Caitrin Quinnell, the Mearan Pretender. Descended from the ancient line of Mearan rules, Caitrin is determined to establish herself as queen of a free and independent Meara, a land which has been ruled by Gwynedd for over a century. However, Kelson is forced to return to Culdi after Duke Alaric Morgan contacts him and informs him that Duncan McLain has been attacked and wounded. Upon returning to Culdi, Kelson acknowledges the election of Bishop Henry Istelyn, who has been chosen as the new Bishop of Meara. Shortly after Kelson returns to his capital of Rhemuth, Dhugal is captured while attempting to stop the escape of Edmund Loris, the former Archbishop of Valoret who was imprisoned for his past treason. Loris takes Dhugal to the Mearan city of Ratharkin, where he places both Dhugal and Istelyn in confinement. When the news of Loris' escape and Dhugal's capture reaches Kelson, the king decides to make a daring winter raid on Ratharkin. Caitrin arrives in Ratharkin, accompanied by her children and her husband, Dhugal's uncle Sicard MacArdry. Although Istelyn refuses to assist Loris and Caitrin in their treason, Dhugal pretends to agree, hoping to find a way to warn Kelson. He eventually manages to escape Ratharkin, taking his cousin Sidana prisoner as he flees. Dhugal is rescued by Kelson's approaching forces, and Sidana's younger brother, Llewell, is also captured. Kelson gives Sicard until Christmas to surrender Loris, then returns to Rhemuth with Caitrin's two youngest children as hostages. Upon returning to Rhemuth, Kelson eventually bows to the pressure of his advisors and agrees to marry Sidana if her mother refuses to surrender, hoping to avert open rebellion by joining the two royal lines. A short time later, when Duncan is consecrated a bishop, the power of the ceremony nearly overwhelms Dhugal, who possesses mental shields that no human should have. When Christmas finally arrives, Caitrin's messenger brings Istelyn's severed head to court, openly defying the orders of the king. Although reluctant to marry a girl he barely knows and who has been raised to hate him, Kelson nevertheless follows through on his promise and asks Sidana to marry him. Sidana reluctantly agrees, but Llewell is furious at the possibility of his sister marrying his enemy. Two weeks of preparations ensue, during which time both Kelson and Sidana try to adjust to the realities of their approaching nuptials. On the morning of the wedding, Duncan recognizes a cloak clasp that Dhugal is wearing, which is the same clasp that Duncan gave his wife many years ago. Duncan tells the tale of his unusual marriage to Dhugal's mother, and Morgan uses his powers to confirm that Duncan is Dhugal's natural father. Realizing that he is part-Deryni, Dhugal is finally able to lower his shields, and father and son quickly exchange memories of their lives during their time apart. A short time later, Kelson and Sidana ride through Rhemuth to the castle, where the entire court waits to witness the marriage of their king and their new queen. Kelson and Sidana exchange their vows as man and wife, but the ceremony is suddenly interrupted when Llewell slashes his sister's throat, making a final desperate attempt to prevent the wedding. Morgan and Duncan frantically try to save Sidana, but she dies almost instantly. Stunned and horrified, Kelson can do nothing but hold the body of his dead bride and weep. |
The Toyminator | Robert Rankin | 2,006 | Eddie Bear has been deposed as the mayor of Toy City and the toymaker has taken away his modifications. Jill has left Jack and he is now working in Nadine's Diner. One day, a drunk Eddie witnesses bright flashing lights and a copy of him appear in an alleyway. He attributes it to being drunk. Soon after, the toys in the toy city are dying. When touched, the toys crumble to dust. Jack and Eddie start investigating even though Jack doesn't plan on it. Their investigations end up getting them in trouble with Inspector Bellis who arrests them on trumped up charges but lets them go in return for them promising to solve the mystery. With the help of the Phantom of the Opera and a calculating pocket called Wallah that Jack steals from Tinto, Jack and Eddie discover that a pair of their doppelgängers are sucking the souls of the toys. They try to stop them in the opera but fail. While pursuing the doppelgangers by following their smell, Jack and Eddie come to the old and dead Toy Town. There they discover that the hiding place of the doppelgangers is Bill Winkle's old house. They get captured by a UFO (flying saucer) trying to get away from Bill's house and experiments are done on them by the aliens, including implanting implants up their bottoms. Eddie decides to get Jack hypnotized by a hypnotist at the circus. After listening to what Jack had to say, the hypnotist becomes catatonic and Jack and Eddie escape with the hypnotists wallet. With proof of alien's involvement, they decide go back to Bill's house in Toy Town and follow the doppelgangers. This time again the flying saucer tries to attack them and Jack destroys it by firing at it and throwing grenades that he stole from Bill's house. The doppelgangers go through "The Second Big O" - the second O in the sign that reads "TO TO LA" which stood for TOYTOWNLAND. Eddie and Jack go through the second big O themselves and end up on the other side in the world of men. When they look back, the sign reads HOLLYWOOD. In the land of them, the instruments they brought with them from Toy City stop working. After meeting with an aspiring actress named Dorothy they visit Golden Chicken Diner for a cup of coffee and discover that the dead toys from Toy City are being given away for free in the diner. To find out the person responsible behind the chain, they decide to infiltrate the chain of diners by joining it at a low level and rising up the level (following the American Dream). Meanwhile, Eddie is kidnapped by the other Jack and taken to Area 52. As an assistant chef, Jack's boss, the head chef, tells him that it is impossible to breed as many chickens and eggs that men eat and proves that all chickens served in the diner are artificial. The following day, at the conference, Jack tries to take over the conference and find out the leader but instead gets captured by LAPD. He escapes their custody and frees Dorothy. Together, they steal a squad car and drive madly to escape the chase given by LAPD. They end up close to Area 52 and go in to investigate. Inside Area 52, the other Eddie reveals to Eddie, who is dying as he is out of Toy City, about the plan by the chickens to take over the land of men (by making them addicted to chicken and then making them fight each other) and Toy City (by sucking the souls of the toys and enslaving the men in Toy City just like the men in the land of men). When LAPD gets to Area 52, Eddie tells the other Eddie to let Jack go outside and give himself up. The police beat up the other Jack for all the problems caused by Jack and this pleases Eddie as the other Jack was very abusive towards him. At the police station, the other Jack is revealed to be a robot and he escapes the police station, steals a sulphuric acid truck and drives towards Area 52, chased by the LAPD in an armed helicopter and a lone Air Force jet. The chickens fly out with a dozen flying saucers to cross over to Toy City through the Hollywood sign and Jack followed by LAPD and the lone Air Force jet follow them. There is a big collision at the entrance and half a dozen flying saucers are destroyed along with the robot Jack. The portal is destroyed as well. Once in Toy City, Eddie regains his full strength and Jack and Dorothy who survived the falling elevator in Area 52 (the other Eddie tried to kill them there) attack the other Eddie. Jack shoots the other Eddie as his identity is revealed when he uses a corroborative noun ("as simple as blinking"). The head chicken, a queen, emerges from the body of the other Eddie and Dorothy wrings her neck and kills her. This is very fortunate because the next queen automatically reverses the previous queen's policies and that is not because she wants to but because of tradition. Toy City is prepared as well because Eddie sent a telepathic message to a space man in a space suit who informed Inspector Bellis who instructed all the toy tanks and others to be armed. All the flying saucers are shot down. Eddie, Jack and Dorothy come out of the lead flying saucer alive. Dorothy is revealed to be a vegetable from a different world, so Jack buries her he expects she will set roots and grow. The book ends with Inspector Bellis telling Eddie that he can influence enough people to get Eddie the position of City Mayor. |
In the Line of Fire: A Memoir | Pervez Musharraf | 2,006 | The book consists topics regarding Musharraf's personal life to the international and national issues and his rise to power. He writes about his childhood and education and a life he spent in Turkey. The memoir also includes some very important international events which had direct connection with Musharraf and his policies. |
Loser Takes All | Graham Greene | null | Mr. Bertram and Cary are about to get married. An unambitious assistant accountant, Bertram's plans for marriage are not particularly exciting. One day, he comes to the attention of Dreuther, the powerful director of his company, who changes Bertram's plan for him: they are to wed and honeymoon in Monte Carlo. Dreuther will meet the couple in Monte Carlo and be their witness, on board his private yacht. Bertram and Cary arrive in Monte Carlo but Dreuther does not show up. The couple are therefore forced to stay there. Bertram is angry with Dreuther. In order to make sure they can pay the hotel bills, Bertram visits the casino. At first he loses, but gradually his system starts working, and he begins to win big money. He wins so much money that he gets the attention of Mr. Bowles, another director of the company gambling in Monte Carlo, who is also a rival of Dreuther. Bowles wants Bertram to lend him money. In exchange, Bertram wants Bowles' shares of the company, so that, in gaining control of the company, he will get his revenge on Dreuther. Meanwhile, Cary is disappointed that Bertram becomes obsessed with his system. A romantic person, she does not want him to become rich. At this time, she meets a "hungry" young man who expresses his love for her. She decides to leave Bertram. Devastated, Bertram does not know what to do. He blames Dreuther for ruining his marriage. Just at this time, Dreuther arrives on his yacht. He explains that his no-show is not deliberate: he is only forgetful. Bertram, while still doubting Dreuther's sincerity, tells him about his trouble. The wise and well-meaning Dreuther then devises a plan that would help Bertram gets Cary back. The plan works perfectly. With Cary coming back to him, Bertram is happy even though he loses all his money to Bowles (thereby cancelling his deal with him) and the hungry young man. Hence, it is "loser takes all". |
Bridge of Souls | Fiona McIntosh | null | Wyl Thirsk, former general of the Morgravian army and bearer of the curse known as Myrren's gift, is running out of time. Marriage between his beloved Queen Valentyna and his sworn enemy, the despotic King Celimus, is imminent; yet, despite the impending nuptials, war looms between the two nations, while the threat from the Mountain Kingdom grows stronger. Trapped in a body not his own, with his friends and supporters scattered throughout the realm, Wyl is as desperate to prevent the wedding as he is to end Myrren's "gift" -- a magic that will cease only when he assumes the throne of Morgravia. Clinging to an ominous suggestion from his young friend Fynch, an increasingly powerful mage, Wyl must walk his most dangerous path yet—straight into the brutal clutches of Celimus in a desperate attempt to save his nation, his love, and himself. |
Myrren's Gift | Fiona McIntosh | null | All Wyl Thirsk ever wanted was for his family to be happy, to be loyal to his monarch, King Magnus, as his father was and, most importantly, to follow in the footsteps of his father, Fergys Thirsk. But change is in the wind after Magnus married a foreign woman who gave him a cruel but handsome son - Prince Celimus. |
The Runestaff | Michael Moorcock | 1,969 | Baron Meliadus is summoned to an audience with King-Emperor Huon, where he is threatened with dismissal if he does not learn the means of the escape of the Asiacommunista emissaries. Meanwhile Countess Flana wonders at the fate of Hawkmoon and her lover D'Averc. Hawkmoon attempts to break free from his destiny by sailing to Europe, but finds his way blocked by numerous sea creatures which drive their ship to crash upon an island. On the island Hawkmoon and D'Averc meet the Warrior in Jet and Gold's brother Orland Fank who gives them a boat to coninue on their original journey to the city of Dnark. Orland informs Hawkmoon that the inhabitants of Castle Brass are safe, though Elvereza Tozer has escaped. Orland stays with Hawkmoon's crew to repair their ship, while Hawkmoon and D'Averc depart for Dnark. Hawkmoon and D'Averc arrive back in Amarehk and find themselves in a strange city of glowing organic buildings. There they meet a child called Jehamia Cohnahlias who confirms that this is the city of Dnark - the home of the mythical Runestaff and inhabited by the ghostly forms of the Great Good Ones. There they also meet Count Shenegar Trott, who claims to be visiting as a peaceful emissary of King-Emperor Huon. The next day Shenegar Trott leads an army to capture Dnark, threatening to kill Jehamia Cohnahlias if Hawkmoon tries to stop him claiming the Runestaff. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are rescued from Trott's forces by the Great Good Ones, who transport them to the location of the Runestaff. There they confront Shenegar Trott and find themselves joined by Orland Fank and the Warrior in Jet and Gold. Jehamia Cohnahlias frees himself from Trott's grasp, revealing himself as the spirit of the Runestaff, into which he disappears. Hawkmoon summons the Legion of the Dawn and they begin attacking Trott's forces, but Hawkmoon is knocked out in the fight and as he loses consciousness the Legion disappears. By the time he recovers consciousness and the Legion returns The Warrior in Jet and Gold has been killed. Hawkmoon kills Shenegar Trott and his army is defeated by the Legion of the Dawn. Jehamia Cohnahlias instructs Hawkmoon to take the Runestaff to Europe and decide the battle between himself and Meliadus once and for all. Baron Meliadus conspires with Countless Flana to overthrow King-Emperor Huon and enthrone Flana as Empress. Huon orders Meliadus's loyalty tested on the Mentality Machine but Baron Kalan agrees to doctor the results. Meliadus visits Taragorm who informs him of the return of Elvereza Tozer after his escape from Castle Brass, and that he will soon have the means to return Castle Brass to this dimension. King-Emperor Huon summons Meliadus and sends him on a mission to Amarehk to learn of Shenegar Trott's fate. Meliadus summons the various captains of his assembled army and convinces them to aid him in treason. Hawkmoon and D'Averc are transported back to Castle Brass by the Great Good Ones, where Yissela tells Hawkmoon she is to bear him a child. Baron Meliadus leads his fleet back up towards Londra and begins his assault on Huon's forces. Meliadus meets Taragorm who tells him his device is now ready to transport Castle Brass back into this dimension. King-Emperor Huon's forces are pressed back towards the palace, and Huon dispatches a messenger by ornithopter to summon aid from his generals in Europe. Taragorm uses his sonic device to shatter the crystal device that is keeping Castle Brass in another dimension, and the castle returns to the destroyed Kamarg. In a nearby village Hawkmoon finds that the Dark Empire army has left, but have destroyed the village behind them. Orland Fank appears and gives Hawkmoon and company a collection of mirrored helmets to be worn by the leaders of the Kamarg: Hawkmoon, Count Brass, D'Averc, Oladahn, Bowgentle, and Yisselda. Baron Meliadus's forces are swelled by those of Adaz Promp as he joins forces. Kalan creates a war machine to breach the walls of the palace, but after it does so it explodes, killing Taragorm in the process. Meliadus breaches the throne room and kills King-Emperor Huon, but suffers temporary blindness from the flash of Huon's shattered throne globe. Hawkmoon and his army cross into Granbretan and defeat the awaiting Dark Empire army, forcing Meliadus to flee back to Londra by ornithopter. Kalan works on a device to reactivate the Black Jewel embedded in Hawkmoon's skull, and Hawkmoon begins to feel the effects, though the Red Amulet holds its full power at bay. Hawkmoon and his army attack Londra and Oladahn, Count Brass, Bowgentle, and D'Averc are all killed. Hawkmoon kills Baron Meliadus though his army is overrun by the Dark Empire forces. Overwhelmed with grief at D'Averc's death Flana stops the fighting and orders Kalan to remove the Black Jewel from Hawkmoon's head. Flana vows to make amends for Granbretan's evil and Orland Fank takes the Runestaff, the Red Amulet, and the Sword of the Dawn into safekeeping, till Hawkmoon should need them again. |
La Terre | Gérard Gengembre | 1,887 | The novel takes place in the final years of the Second Empire. Jean Macquart, an itinerant farm worker, has come to Rognes, a small village in La Beauce, where he works as a day labourer. He had been a corporal in the French Army, a veteran of the Battle of Solferino. He begins to court a local girl, Françoise Mouche, who lives in the village with her sister Lise. Lise is married to Buteau, a young man from the village, who is attracted to both sisters. Buteau's father, the elderly farmer Fouan, has decided to sign a contract known as a donation entre vifs (literally: "gift between living people"), whereby his three children, Fanny Delhomme (married to a hard-working and respected farmer), Hyacinthe (aka "Jesus Christ", a poacher and layabout), and Buteau will inherit their father's estate early; they agree to pay their parents a pension in return. The property is painstakingly measured and divided up between the three children, as the Civil Code of 1804 dictated. Almost as soon as the contract is signed, Buteau begins to resent the pension, and quickly refuses to pay it. In the house Lise shares with her sister (the property having been shared between them on the death of their late father), Buteau begins a campaign of sexual advances towards his sister-in-law, which she attempts to repel. Midway through the novel, Fouan's wife dies and, since it seems wasteful for Fouan to retain their marital home, the property is sold, and Fouan goes to live with Fanny and her husband. While Fanny is scrupulously respectful of the conditions of the donations entre vifs, she nevertheless make it clear that she resents his presence. Fouan eventually moves to live with his son "Jesus Christ" who shares a shack with his daughter "La Trouille", a put-upon dogsbody. Under "Jesus Christ's" influence, Fouan's self-respect dwindles: while previously law-abiding, he now joins his son on poaching expeditions and takes part in Hyacinthe's favourite evening activity, farting contests. Eventually, however, Hyacinthe's abusive drunkenness is directed against Fouan, who leaves to take up residence with Buteau and Lise. Meanwhile, Françoise and Jean have married. Françoise can no longer remain under the same roof as Buteau, whose sexual overtures are becoming more and more persistent: Lise, jealous of Françoise, insists that her sister is behaving in a deliberately provocative way. Françoise, who is now pregnant with Jean's child, decides to leave, but demands that Buteau and Lise buy out her share of the house, which the couple cannot afford to do. The situation worsens until, in a shocking scene, Buteau and Lise set upon Françoise when she is alone in the fields at harvest time. Lise restrains her sister while she is raped by Buteau, then pushes her onto a sickle, wounding her in the belly and killing her unborn child. The two flee the scene. While Françoise is still conscious when she is found, her family pride leads her to refuse to name Lise and Buteau; she claims instead that her injury was the result of an accident, and dies shortly after. Back in the Buteau home, the greedy couple turn their attention to Fouan, whose obstinacy in remaining alive has become a serious financial drain. One night while Fouan is asleep, they steal into his bedroom and smother him; finding he is still alive, they set fire to him, while arranging the scene to look like an accident (their story is accepted by the local community). The Buteaus refuse to pay Jean the money for Françoise's share of the family home, which is now rightfully his as her next-of-kin. Horrified by his suspicions regarding both his wife's and Fouan's deaths, and by the heartlessness of those around him, Jean returns to his wandering, and leaves the region for good. As he leaves, he passes the freshly dug burial mounds of Françoise and Fouan, and the ripe corn in the harvest fields. |
Traitor's Purse | Margery Allingham | 1,941 | A man wakes in hospital to find he cannot remember anything except that he has something vital to do, connected to the number fifteen. He hears voices outside discussing the unconscious patient - who they say has killed a policeman and will be hanged. He escapes in a stolen car. He is followed, but instead of the police, the car contains a woman who seems to be helping him. She calls him Campion. Also in the car is an old man, Mr Anscombe, who they drop off at his house before continuing to Lee Aubrey's house, where they are staying. Campion remembers that the woman is called Amanda and thinks she must be his wife, so he is shocked when she tells him she wants to break off their engagement. He does not tell her about his amnesia. Campion receives a letter from Stanislaus Oates telling him to investigage Anscombe - but then Superintendent Hutch arrives and tells them that Anscombe is dead. He takes Campion, the last person to see Anscombe alive, to see the body. Pyne, who had just arrived to visit Aubrey, accompanies them - Campion guesses he must be an old friend and talks to him accordingly but then finds out they only met three days before. Amanda tells Campion that she is falling in love with Lee Aubrey. Then Hutch takes Campion to Bridge, where he smuggles him into the Council Chamber, the headquarters of the Masters of Bridge, built into caves in a hill overlooking the town. Campion finds an agenda for a meeting which mentions Minute Fifteen, and Anscombe's intended retirement. Exploring further, he finds a vast cavern filled with hundreds of trucks. Next day, Aubrey takes Campion for a tour of the Institute. They meet Mrs Ericson, whose volunteer workers are housed in the Institute grounds - she is clearly infatuated with Aubrey. They also see a researcher who is developing a new, very powerful explosive. Pyne tips Hutch off that Campion might be an impostor. Hutch asks Campion questions to prove his identity, but his mind is blank. He hits Hutch, knocking him out, and drives to Coachingford, the main town in the area. Acting automatically, he goes to a newsagent's shop. In a back room he meets Lugg, who he does not recognise. Campion tells Lugg about his memory loss and Lugg patches up his injuries - and shows him the basket full of pound notes which he left on his last visit. Then a man with a gun arrives and offers Campion cash to leave town - he runs when he realises it is the real Campion, not a fake. Lugg recognises him as one of many professional criminals who have arrived in town. Amanda summons Campion to a hotel where he meets Miss Anscombe. She gives Campion her brother's diary, and tells him she believes he was smuggling contraband in the caves under the hill. The hotel is surrounded by both police and criminals, so Campion escapes over the roofs and catches a train to London where he meets Sir Henry Bull. He tells Campion that Minute Fifteen is a war loan, details of which are going to be mailed to every taxpayer in the country. Campion rushes back to Coachingford - he now knows that Pyne must be working with the criminals and believes he is responsible for Anscombe's murder. But as he gets off the train, he is arrested. Trying to get away from the police station, he is knocked out again. Waking up he has forgotten what happened since his original injury but remembers everything before. He is investigating counterfeit currency being given away to crooks and vagrants. Amanda arrives and he finally puts the two halves of the story together - the trucks are going to be used to distribute vast amounts of forged currency to cause economic crisis. He is left waiting in the police station until Hutch, with a broken jaw, arrives from speaking to Oates, who has been in hospital, unconscious and under guard - he was the prisoner that Campion heard being discussed when he first woke up. When Campion gets to the cave, the trucks are already leaving. He uses the experimental explosive from the Institute to blow them up, killing Pyne and many of his criminal employees. In the debris he finds letters showing that the cash was going to be posted out to poor people disguised as a social security payment - the vast number of envelopes would have been disguised by the letters about the war loan going out on the same day. Campion and Hutch realise Pyne could not have carried out the plan by himself. The mastermind turns out to be Lee Aubrey, who admits what he has done - his idea was to bring down the government and install himself in its place. Amanda and Campion talk - it turns out that Aubrey lost interest once he thought he had made her fall in love with him. They decide to get married the next day. |
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