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They're Playing Our Song | Marvin Hamlisch | null | Act I Top pop music composer Vernon Gersch, hoping to find a new collaborator, meets offbeat Sonia Walsk, who has already had some success writing lyrics and is in awe of his accomplishments, at his luxury Manhattan apartment. She is surprised that his Oscar is so light, and Vernon quips, "They're chocolate inside." He is aloof and focused, while she is disorganized and distracted, but Vernon has already written music to one of Sonia's lyrics, and they decide to forge ahead. Sonia, frazzled by her break up with lover Leon, arrives a day late for their first work session. When they begin, she tells Vernon they should get to know each other on a personal level in order for their work to gel, and they decide to have dinner at "Le Club." Sonia, who has been trying to ease Leon's anguish, is late yet again, and the evening begins badly. She and Vernon argue, then dance in an effort to calm down. The two settle down to enjoy the evening, and they hear their own songs being played over the sound system. Another work session, in which the two really don't listen to each other, follows, but Vernon convinces Sonia to join him for a romantic weekend at a Long Island beach house. The trip to the island in Vernon's small sports car is fraught with engine trouble, calls to Leon, and arguments. They finally arrive at the house, but a phone call from Leon threatens the romantic mood. Determined to concentrate on Vernon, Sonia tells Leon that she can't help him and hangs up. Act II It's a week later and Vernon is suffering from insomnia. Sonia manipulates her way into his apartment by telling him she has no place to stay since Leon is back living at her place. Sonia and Vernon's romance and collaboration seems successful for a while, but the relationship begins to crumble because of her inability to send her ex-boyfriend away. Also, away from his piano, Vernon is a bundle of neuroses and unable to express his deepest feelings. After some psychologizing about the difficulties of living and working together, the pair split up at a recording session. A few months later, while Vernon is in a Los Angeles hospital, Sonia arrives unexpectedly with a tiny red child's piano as a get-well gift. Months later, both have separately come to the realization that, despite their differences, they are better together. Vernon arrives at Sonia's apartment in New York to tell her that he wants to try again. She agrees, and they reconcile with a kiss. |
A Midsummer Tempest | Poul Anderson | 1,974 | Prince Rupert is taken by the Roundheads; held captive at a country house, he falls in love with his captor's niece, Jennifer. One of his troopers, Will Fairweather, followed him to the house where he was held captive; with the help of Jennifer, Will brings him to Oberon and Titania, who offer magical aid. Rupert and Jennifer exchange magic rings that will aid them as long as they are true to each other. Rupert sets out with Will to find the books that Prospero sank, in order to aid King Charles. Rupert, fleeing Roundheads, finds refuge in a magical inn, The Old Phoenix, which proves to be a nexus between parallel worlds. Inside the tavern, he meets Valeria Matuchek, who is from an alternate history twentieth-century America. (Originally, the character had been a child in Anderson's Operation Chaos and a teenager in its sequel, Operation Luna, but is now an adult.) Holger Carlsen is another guest, born in a world where the Matter of France is history, and later trapped in "our own" twentieth-century America (the hero of Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions). Valeria explains what will happen in the English Civil War in "our" timeline, including the king's execution, strengthening Rupert's determination to change events here. He finds a Spanish ship that will transport him; it is carrying an ambassador and his wife. Jennifer's Puritan uncle discovers her on her return, when she resolves to use the ring to find Rupert. She is brought, captive, to a port, where the ring enables her to steal a boat and set sail. The ambassador's wife uses a magic potion to seduce Rupert, and the rings fail. Rupert cannot find his way to the island, and Jennifer is stranded at sea. Despairing, Rupert takes to the library at Milan to try to work out where to find the island and books. Jennifer's plight becomes desperate from thirst, but Ariel (from The Tempest) finds her and brings her to the island. Rupert works out the location, and Jennifer and he are reconciled. They retrieve the books and magically bear them back to England. Charles I has taken up a position near Glastonbury Tor for reasons he does not understand. Rupert attempts the magic; Will Fairweather is possessed by a spirit of England and stirs up the magic of the land. The Roundheads are defeated, and Charles I wins the English Civil War. At the Old Phoenix, Valeria believes that even if "romantic reactionaries" like Charles I won the English Civil War here, there is still the prospect of technological advance in North America. However, the fairies believed differently—they supported the Cavalier cause to delay the disenchantment of this world. Rupert and Jennifer return the rings to Oberon and Titania, and retire to a peaceful married life. |
The Doctor is Sick | Anthony Burgess | 1,960 | The "doctor" of the title is Edwin Spindrift, Ph.D., an unhappily married professor of linguistics who has been sent home from Burma to England suffering from a mysterious brain ailment. While Edwin is confined to a neurological ward, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests, Mrs. Spindrift amuses herself with some disreputable new friends at the surrounding pubs. Sometimes, to Edwin's distress, she sends these friends to keep her husband company during visiting hours, rather than come herself. Most of the novel is a dream sequence: while anesthetised for brain surgery, Edwin's anxiety over his wife and the company she keeps turns into a slightly surrealistic fantasy in which Edwin leaves the hospital and encounters his wife's friends, with whom he has various adventures. |
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents | Julia Álvarez | 1,991 | The novel is written episodically and in reverse-chronological order. It consists of fifteen chapters divided in three parts: Part I (1989–1972), Part II (1970–1960), and Part III (1960–1956). Part I is centered around the adult lives of the García sisters; Part II describes their immigration to the United States and their adolescence, and Part III recollects their early childhood on the island, in the Dominican Republic. The Garcías are one of the Dominican Republic's prominent and wealthy families, tracing their roots back to the Conquistadores. Carlos García, a physician and the head of the family, is the youngest of 35 children his father sired during his lifetime, both in and out of wedlock. Laura, Carlos's wife, also comes from an important family: her father is a factory owner and a diplomat with the United Nations. Many members of the extended family live as neighbours in large houses on an expansive compound with numerous servants. In the early 1950s the García girls are born. Carla, Sandra, Yolanda and Sofía enjoy a happy, protected childhood and are brought up by their parents, aunts and uncles to preserve the family traditions. Their countless cousins serve them as playmates. The first part of the novel establishes Yolanda at the centre of the story as she narrates the opening and closing chapter: "Antojos" and "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", respectively. In third person, Yolanda's return to Dominican Republic as an adult is described in the context of a family birthday party and a road trip. Their unity as sisters as "The Four Girls" is introduced in the third chapter, which is a communally narrated. They celebrate Carlos, the patriarch's, birthday, and Sofía introduces her baby son to his grandfather, helping to repair the father and daughter's relationship somewhat. During Sofía's chapter, "The Kiss", it is revealed that Carlos discovered a packet of love letters addressed to his daughter, enraging him and leading to a conflict which ends in Sofía running away to her German lover. A major focus in this section is the romantic relationships between the four sisters and their partners. Sofía is married to a "world-class chemist"; Carla and Sandra are in long-term relationships; and Yolanda is in love with her psychiatrist and has previously broken up with a man named John. Part I closes with "The Rudy Elmenhurst Story", narrated by Yolanda. This describes Yolanda's first real relationship, and the tension between her upbringing and American relationships: "I would never find someone who would understand my particular mix of Catholicism and agnosticism, Hispanic and American styles." Part II details the family's collective experience of living in the United States as immigrants. The girls first attend a Catholic school in New York and later boarding school, and assimilate fairly well to their new environments, although meeting with a few set-backs along the way. Their time in the US begins with the opening chapter, "A Regular Revolution", and delivers the girls' (collective) opinion that "We didn't feel we had the best the United States had to offer. We had only second-hand stuff, rental houses in one redneck Catholic neighborhood after another". While during their first few months in New York they regularly pray to God that they will soon be able to return to their homeland, they quickly start appreciating the advantages of living in a "free country" so that even being sent back to the Dominican Republic for the summer becomes a form of punishment for them. A major turning point in the novel comes with Laura's discovery of a bag of Sofía's marijuana, and her subsequent punishment of being removed from her boarding school and forced to spend a year in the Dominican Republic with family. This event is representative of the girls' transformation into Americans and away from the Dominican culture and Laura and Carlos' conflicted relationship with the assimilation. Laura "still did lip service to the old ways", and Carlos makes a point of educating the accents out of the girls, thus showing the tension between the cultures. Carla becomes the victim of racism in the third chapter, "Trespass", with school boys telling her to "Go back to where you came from, you dirty spic!" Later she is subjected to a child molester who masturbates in his car while pulling up at the curb and talking lecherously to her through the open window. The second part of the novel finishes with the chapter "Floor Show", in which the García family goes to a Spanish restaurant and Sandra witnesses the host's wife amorously attempting to kiss her father on the way to the bathroom. Overall, Part II presents the unexpected aspects of living in the United States and becoming Americans, and explores the tensions that develop with the immigrant experience. The five chapters in Part III, the concluding section, focus on the García family's early years in the Dominican Republic, and are the most political of the novel. The first chapter, "The Blood of the Conquistadores", opens with an account of two of Trujillo's agents coming to the family home looking for Carlos. His revolutionary politics and work against the Chapitas made the family a target, and this chapter explicitly details the danger of their situation. The issues in past chapters appear superficial in comparison to the life-or-death nature of the conflicts that the Garcías face earlier in their lives. The family escapes persecution, but is forced to emigrate immediately, establishing their motive for relocating to New York. As Part III progresses, the narrative switches to describing their upper-class life on the island, and filling details of the lifestyle the family was born into. The story of the voodoo practicing Haitian family maid is elucidated: she escaped Trujillo's massacre of Haitians and came to work for Laura, although much of her family was not so lucky. In the last three chapters Carla, Yolanda and Sandra narrate stories from their childhood surrounded by the extended family, and the girls' relationship with the United States begins. "An American Surprise" tells of their early ideas of New York City, "where it was winter and the snow fell from heaven to earth like the Bible's little pieces of manna bread." The reader realizes that the innocence of childhood and idealized vision of their soon-to-be adopted country, given the reverse-chronological narration of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, are left behind with the García's home in the Dominican Republic. |
La Symphonie Pastorale | André Gide | null | It is about a pastor who adopts a young blind girl whom his daughter, Charlotte, names "Gertrude". The title refers to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (also known as the Pastoral Symphony) which the pastor takes Gertrude to hear. It also refers to the pastor's own symphony with Gertrude. His wife, Amélie, resents Gertrude because the pastor dedicates more attention to Gertrude than to their five children. She tries to prompt him to a recognition of the true nature of his feelings for the young woman in his care. Her ability to "see" this is contrasted with the "blindness" of the pastor in this regard and the reader is invited to judge him on his intellectual dishonesty. As a religious man, the pastor takes the Bible very seriously and tries to preserve Gertrude's innocence by protecting her from the concept of sin. Because the pastor is really the main character in Gertrude's limited world, she feels herself to be in love with him and to some extent he has similar feelings toward her. When his eldest son Jacques, who is about the same age as Gertrude, asks to marry her the pastor becomes jealous and refuses despite the fact that Jacques is obviously in love with her. Gertrude eventually gets an operation to repair her eyesight and, having regained the ability to see, realizes that things are not as beautiful as the pastor made them seem. She attempts suicide by jumping into a river, but is rescued and contracts pneumonia. She realizes that the pastor is an old man, and the man she pictured when she was blind was Jacques. She tells the pastor this shortly before her death. |
Human genetic history | null | 2,002 | According to the recent single origin hypothesis, human ancestors originated in Africa, and eventually made their way out to the rest of the world. Analysis of the Y chromosome is one of the methods used in tracing the history of early humans. Thirteen genetic markers on the Y-chromosome differentiate populations of human beings. It is believed, on the basis of genetic evidence, that all human beings in existence now descend from one single man who lived in Africa about 60,000 years ago. The earliest groups of humans are believed to find their present-day descendants among the San people, a group that is now found in western southern Africa. The San are smaller than the Bantu. They have lighter skins, more tightly curled hair, and they share the epicanthal fold with the people of East Asia, such as the Chinese and Japanese. Southern and eastern Africa are believed to originally have been populated by people akin to the San. Since that early time much of their range has been taken over by the Bantu. Skeletal remains of these ancestral people are found in Paleolithic sites in Somalia and Ethiopia. There are also peoples in east Africa today who speak substantially different languages that nevertheless share the archaic characteristics of the San language, its distinctive repertoire of click and pop sounds. These are the only languages in the entire world that use these sounds in speech. As humans migrated out of Africa, they all carried a genetic feature on the Y chromosome known as M168. The first wave of migration out of Africa stayed close to the oceans shores, tracing a band along the coastal areas of the Indian Ocean including parts of the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and into South East Asia, down into what is now Indonesia, and eventually reaching Australia. This branch of the human family developed a new marker, M130. This first wave appears to have left dark-skinned people along its path, including isolated groups of dark-skinned people in south east Asia such as the aboriginal population of the Andaman Islands (around 400 km off the west coast of Thailand), the Semang of Malaysia, and the Aeta of the Philippines. The second wave of migration took a more northerly course, splitting somewhere in the area around what is now called Syria to sweep to interior Asia, where it split several more times in Central Asia, north of Afghanistan. The lineages that flowed into Central Asia carry M9. Other markers were added after the migration paths went on in several different directions from Central Asia. From Central Asia, a small group migrated towards the northeast, following reindeer. These were the Chukchi people, a few of whom still live a nomadic lifestyle today. An even smaller group, estimated at no more than 20 Chukchis, crossed what is now the Bering Sea approximately 13,000 years ago during the last glacial period, and migrated into North America. They are the ancestors of Native Americans, and 800 years later, they had reached as far as South America. The African diaspora is believed to have begun some 50,000 years ago, long enough for many changes to have occurred in humans remaining in Africa. The genetic trends reported involve humans who left Africa, and their genetic histories. The diversity found outside of Africa may well have been accentuated since populations migrating to new hunting grounds would rarely have had individuals moving backwards into previously settled regions. But within Africa, isolation would have been geographically aided primarily by the Sahara Desert, leaving people in areas not separated by the desert to travel and migrate relatively freely. |
Le Bleu du ciel | Georges Bataille | 1,957 | Henri Troppmann goes from his sick-bed in Paris to Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War in time to witness the first General Strike of the Catalans against the Spanish. He is torn between three different women, all of whom arrive in the city at that time. One of them, Lazare, is a Marxist Jew and political activist, who is preparing herself for prospective torture and martyrdom at the hand of General Francisco Franco's troops if she is captured. "Dirty" (or Dorothea) is an incontinent, unkempt alcoholic who repeatedly has sex with Troppmann. Xénie is a young woman who had previously nursed him to health during his violent fever in Paris. The novel is introduced by a scene of extreme degeneracy in a London hotel room, followed by the narrator's description of a dreamlike encounter with 'the Commendatore' (English: "the Commander"), who in the Don Juan myth is the father of one of Don Juan's victims, and whose statue returns at the end of the story to drag Don Juan down to hell for his sins. Troppmann has to choose between the abject Dirty and her associations of sex, disease, excrement and decay, the politically engaged Lazare, and her ethical values of commitment, resistance and endurance, and Xénie, who has outlived her usefulness. While looking at Lazare beneath a tree, Troppmann realises that he respects her for her social conscience, but also sees her as a rat, and chooses Dirty instead, whilst sending Xénie off with a friend, who is subsequently killed in the street. He travels with Dirty to Treves, the home-town of Karl Marx, where the two copulate in the mud on a cliff overlooking a candle-lit graveyard. They see a Hitler Youth group, lending Dirty a vision of the war to come and their probable deaths. Troppmann leaves her to return to Paris. |
You Can't Go Home Again | Thomas Wolfe | 1,940 | George Webber has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town, he is shaken by the force of outrage and hatred that greets him. Family and life-long friends feel naked and exposed by what they have seen in his books, and their fury drives him from his home. Outcast, George Webber begins a search for his own identity. It takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of ex-patriots; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler's shadow. The journey comes full circle when Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope. |
The October Horse | Colleen McCullough | 2,002 | The book begins with Gaius Julius Caesar's Egyptian campaign in Alexandria, his final battles with the Republicans led by Metellus Scipio, Cato the Younger, Titus Labienus and the brothers Pompeius in Africa and Spain, and ultimately Caesar's assassination on the Ides of March by Marcus Brutus, Gaius Cassius and the Liberators. The latter stages of The October Horse chronicle the death of Cicero, the emergence of Octavian and his battles with Mark Antony, and conclude with the Battle of Philippi. The title of the book comes from a peculiar chariot race in Rome on the Ides of October, after which the right-hand horse of the winning team was sacrificed to the Roman gods. Then two teams, one from the Subura and the other from the Via Sacra, competed for the Horse's head. Julius Caesar, figuratively the best war horse in Rome, represents the October Horse in this novel. |
Mary Reilly | Valerie Martin | 1,990 | The novel is about a young girl working at the home of Dr. Henry Jekyll who falls in love with her master. Jekyll's assistant, Edward Hyde, is generally considered her nemesis. This however is often debated amongst readers. |
Two for the Lions | Lindsey Davis | 1,998 | As part of his attempts to earn enough money to buy himself into the upper middle ranks, and thus make his relationship with Helena Justina respectable, Marcus Didius Falco has offered his services to Vespasian as a tax collector during the 'great Census' of AD 73. Unfortunately, his plan has several flaws, one major one being his need to take on Anacrites as a partner. Whilst conducting the audit of two gladitorial training schools, Falco stumbles upon the apparent murder of a star man-eating lion and an apparent rivalry between the schools. When a gladiator also ends up dead, Falco takes on the investigation, one which leads him to Tripolitania. To add to the confusion, Helena's younger brother, Camillus Justinus, has eloped with the betrothed of his older brother, Aelianus. They too have made their way to North Africa, drawn by Justinus' quest to find Silphium, an expensive herb already deemed extinct. |
The Emigrants | Vilhelm Moberg | 1,949 | The story takes place in the 1840s up to 1850. The first part of the novel describes the hardships faced by rural families in Sweden. Karl Oskar Nilsson and his wife, Kristina, own a farm in Ljuder Socken in Småland. They have four children and work hard to make a living, but the poor harvests lead to famine, a catalyst for the beginnings of emigration to the United States in search of a better life. Karl Oskar and his brother Robert want to go, but Kristina doesn't want to leave her home country, knowing that she will never see the rest of their family again. But after the death of their oldest child, she accepts her husband's plans when she realizes that they are in just as much danger from their lives in Sweden as on the big sea and in a New World. They pack up all their belongings and book passage in a group with others from their parish. The characters illustrate some of the motives that prompted people to leave Sweden in the 19th century. The travelers include: * Karl-Oskar, Kristina and their four children - seeking to escape poverty and famine and finding a place where their work pays off. * Robert, Karl Oskar's adventurous brother - landless, as the second son of a farmer whose holding is too small to sub-divide. He seeks escape from the harsh conditions of hired farm help. * Danjel Andreasson with family, Kristina's uncle, who had been banished from the country due to his religious "delusions". The state Lutheran church was very powerful, and dissent, even in the simple form of home Bible study, was not tolerated. They bring their farmhand Arvid, who is a friend of Robert. * Jonas Petter Albrektsson, who seeks to escape from an unhappy marriage at a time when divorce was not possible. * Ulrika of Västergöhl, a former prostitute, looking to leave her past behind and start afresh with her daughter Elin. The second part of the book tells how they board the ship in Karlshamn, and then how the life goes on during the ten weeks they spend on board - battling sea-sickness and scurvy, before finally reaching New York City in midsummer of 1850. sv:Utvandrarna (bok) |
Unto a Good Land | Vilhelm Moberg | 1,952 | This novel describes the journey of the Emigrants from New York City, New York to Taylors Falls, Minnesota. They settle at the lake Ki-Chi-Saga (now Lake Chisago) in what is today Chisago County, and start building their home. Robert, Karl-Oskar's brother, takes off to California with Arvid in search for gold. sv:Nybyggarna |
The Settlers | Vilhelm Moberg | 1,956 | The book tells about the group's new life in America where most of them now have started to feel at home. It also follows Robert and Arvid's journey on the California Trail. |
The Last Letter Home | Vilhelm Moberg | 1,959 | This novel tells about Karl-Oskar and Kristina in their late life and eventual death. The novel has a slightly more reflective perspective than the other three, and it follows events such as The American Civil War and the Sioux Outbreak of 1862 through the perspective of the settlers. |
The Fountain | null | null | In the winter of 1535, an army of Spanish soldiers is searching for the Tree of Life. Father Avila feels that their long journey is about to serve its purpose when he notices that a symbol on a blade he is carrying matches a symbol drawn in the sky, as well as on the ground. He presumes this must be the location of the Mayan temple that houses the Tree of Life. The soldiers accompanying him are reluctant and feel that his theories will only add to the loss of soldiers they have had. Captain Tomas Verde is seen holding a gold ring. He kisses the ring and says to "prepare the men." The soldiers begin their assault on the temple only to be met by the Mayan warriors who are protecting the temple. Father Avila advances up the temple and is met by a Mayan priest who slowly emerges from the temple. He grabs Avila's throat, takes his knife and cuts out his heart and bites it. Captain Tomas progresses up the temple stairs to meet the Mayan Priest. He tells the soldiers that all they must do is drink from the tree and no one can harm them. Tomas and the Mayan priest stand ready to fight, when the priest takes his knife and stabs Tomas deep in the shoulder; Tomas is about to die. In the winter of 2463, a man is meditating on a tree. He and the tree are in a sphere on the edge of a nebula that is surrounding a dying star. The nebula is named Xibalba. The man is young "except for his wound." He grabs sap from the tree to spread across the wound. It never heals. A woman appears to the man, a woman that "never leaves" but is also never there. The woman tells him the tree is dying and if he continues to use it, they will die together. The man says he will not use the tree anymore. He says that once they reach the nebula, the energy will make the tree bloom again and they will both live. He hungers for the tree's sap and indulges himself. He begins meditating. He explains the tattoos on his arms. One ring for every year alive, just like the rings of the tree. He says he has tried to seed the tree to no avail. He goes to drink from the tree and discovers it has died. He screams in frustration before noticing particles from the nebula's edge. He thinks he is close enough to the nebula to save the tree. He uses a knife to exit the sphere. The woman tries to stop him and tells him the tree is already dead and that he cannot save it. Tom falls off the bubble and drifts away from the tree as the woman tells him to "remember your promise." In the winter of 1997, Thomas Creo meets a woman named Izzi and they share an intimate night under the stars. During sex, Izzi says that she wants to be with him, "together, forever." The story cuts to the year 2005. Dr. Thomas Creo is fatigued, sitting at a computer. He is about to perform surgery on a monkey that has a tumor. His colleagues tell him the surgery is canceled and they are going to euthanize the animal. Thomas brings up an ethnobotanical compound from Guatemala that he insists be injected into the animal. He opens his text and points to a tree. Against his colleagues' objections, the monkey is injected with the sap. Lilly, a fellow doctor, enters asking how Izzi is. Izzi, Thomas' wife, has cancer. Lilly tells Thomas he should be spending time with Izzi instead of working. Lilly scolds Thomas for injecting the compound into the monkey. Thomas goes home to find Izzi outside looking at the sky. She tells Thomas she is looking at a Nebula called Xibalba. She explains that it is where the Mayans believed dead souls go to be reborn. Thomas asks how she knows this and she says it's part of her book. He gives Izzi a bath and notices she can't feel temperature changes. He worries and puts her to bed. She stays up to write more of her book when Thomas' office calls asking him to come in. In the office, he learns the tumor is the same but the monkey neural activity has increased. He goes back home to find Izzi asleep and lies down next to her. He awakes abruptly and screams for her. He feels his shoulder as if he is in pain. He finds a note that says Izzi has gone to the museum. Thomas meets her in the museum. She tells him about the tree of life. She explains how the first Mayan created the tree by sacrificing himself. The tree burst from his stomach, his head became Xibalba and the roots became Earth. Izzi collapses in the museum and is brought to the hospital. Thomas leaves Izzi to work on the monkey whose condition has improved despite the tumor still being present. Lilly sees him in the lab and yells at him for not being with Izzi. He returns to her and she hands him the book. The title is "The Fountain" and she asks him to finish it. Thomas picks up the book and begins to read it. The first page of the book tells the same story as the 16th century story arc. In the winter of 1532, a Franciscan friar is being tortured by the Grand Inquisitor. The inquisitor wants to know what was found in Chetumal. The friar says he only answers to the queen before passing out. The queen enters, clutching a gold ring around her neck. The inquisitor flees the room and slips on a puddle of blood. He looks up and sees the body of a Dominican friar and notices the knife. The knife with the symbol that leads to the Tree of Immortality. Captain Creo enters and captures the inquisitor whose name is Silecio. The Queen asks what the church wants and Silecio responds that they want the land that Spain acquired recently, Chetumal. She says the only thing there is jungles and savages, but she plans to protect all God's creatures, even the savages of Chetumal. The queen excuses herself and summons Captain Creo to her bedroom. They share an intimate moment. The queen tells Creo that she gave the church the land of Chetumal and brings in Father Avila to ask him what the church wanted there. He takes the Mayan knife out of his cloak and explains that the knife was taken from a Mayan Priest. The words on the knife describe a Mayan City, that houses the birthplace of life. Silecio says that the tree is life and life belongs to God and therefore he is the owner of the tree, not Spain. Creo charges at the Dominican friars until Silecio grabs the queen and places the knife to her neck. He says that Creo and his army must join the church in order to spare the queen's life. He refuses and Silecio calls for the executioner to chop off the queen's head. The executioner enters and just when he is about to strike the queen, he reveals himself as Ariel. The queen then grabs the blade from Silecio and murders him. She tells Creo that they won today's battle but the Dominican church will be back again. She says the only way out of this is in Chetumal. The queen gives Creo the golden ring and tells him to return and release Spain from bondage. He takes the ring and says he will return with love eternal. In 2005, Thomas realizes Izzi has died. He becomes enraged and is restrained by other doctors. He runs out to the hall screaming that he has a new enemy: death. Lilly asks Tom if he heard the good news. She explains that the monkey's tumor is gone. He becomes enraged again and runs to Izzi's bedside. Lilly screams at him and tells him it's over, Izzi is gone. He weeps and cries "It's not too late." In 2463, Tom is falling into oblivion screaming "Izzi." He remembers the Mayan Priest about to take his life after stabbing him deep in the shoulder. In 2005, Thomas is reading Izzi's story "The Fountain." It ends, "A dream unfinished." He weeps. He takes Izzi's fountain pen and gives himself a tattoo of a ring around his finger. He sees Lilly who tries to comfort him, telling him that Izzi was not afraid of death. He begins screaming. Death is only a disease to him, a disease that can be cured and pledges to never give up. The story returns to 2463, Tom runs and hugs the woman and screams, "Izzi." He is alone, the woman disappears. He says it's all right, that he understands that all life ends. He meditates and remembers his encounter with the Mayan warrior. The story flashes back to the moment the Mayan priest stabbed his shoulder. The Mayan priest is about to stab Tomas again when he stops and bows. He hands the knife over to Captain Creo. Tomas takes the knife and murders the Mayan priest. He enters the temple and finds the Tree of Life. He stabs the tree and rubs the sap on his wound. He stabs the tree again and drinks its sap. He coughs and flowers emerge from his mouth. He falls to the ground in pain. The gold ring falls from his hands. He lies on the ground and his stomach is spread wide open, flowers begin to spill from his intestines. He becomes the tree. In 2463, Tom places the ring over the tattoo that he first gave himself. He hears the woman's voice again, "Are you afraid?" He responds, "A little, but it's all right." He then jumps from the sphere and into the depths of space. Xibalba explodes and the tree blooms again. The woman is standing next to the lush flowering tree. She takes a seed from it. The story cuts to 1997 and we see Thomas enter his bedroom and lay next to Izzi. She asks if he will stay and he responds "Yes, forever." The story cuts to the woman from the tree and the seed she carries. She walks in the snow to the grave of "Izzi Creo." She buries the seed in the snow next to her grave. We see Xibalba explode. |
The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma | null | null | Nicodemus Dyzma is a small-town man who comes to the Polish capital from the Eastern provinces (known as "Kresy") in search of work. While walking the streets of Warsaw, he finds a lost invitation to a party reception. Hoping for a free meal, he decides to use it since he owns a tuxedo. At the reception, he befriends a Member of Parliament and wins the hearts of guests with his attitude. He is introduced to a wealthy landowner by the name of Kunicki, a former con artist, who is so impressed by Dyzma that he offers him a job as superintendent of his country estate. At the estate, Dyzma meets Kunicki's wife, Nina, who quickly falls in love with him. Soon Dyzma takes control of all affairs of the estate and starts to climb the social and political ladder. He is offered a series of prestigious appointments; however, he is also forced to hide his past from the prying eyes of his adversaries and the general public. |
Talley's Folly | Lanford Wilson | null | Talley's Folly is the story of one night in the lives of two unlikely sweethearts, Matt Friedman and Sally Talley. The one-act play takes place in a dilapidated boathouse on the Talley farm in Missouri. It is the Fourth of July in 1944. The play opens with Matt directly addressing the audience, telling them that the play will take ninety-seven minutes and he hopes to capture and relate his story properly in that amount of time. Taking the time to point out some staging elements, he tells the audience that the gazebo-like structure next to him is a Victorian boathouse, which has unfortunately fallen into disrepair. While on vacation in Lebanon, Missouri the previous summer, Matt met Sally and has sent her a letter every day since. Though the single reply from Sally gave him no hope for romantic encouragement, he has bravely returned to ask her to marry him. Sally arrives at the boathouse and is in disbelief that Matt has shown up uninvited, even though he had written her that he planned to come for the holiday. Matt's arrival has created quite a stir in Sally's conservative Protestant household, where a Jewish man is not welcomed easily, especially when his intentions are to court their daughter, eleven years younger than he. Matt's interest in Sally had never waned; once, he drove from his home in St. Louis to the hospital where she worked and waited hours for her, even after being informed that she was not available. The conversation turns to the boathouse structure. Sally tells him it was constructed by her uncle, who built "follies" all over town. Her uncle did only what he wanted to do and Sally considers him the healthiest member of the family for his courage. Eventually, the couple begins to reminisce about the night they met and the time they spent together last summer. Matt takes it as a positive sign that she has changed into a nice dress before coming to see him tonight. Sally's protests do not match her behavior and he pushes forward; she is the most mysterious and intriguing girl he has ever met and he determined quite a while ago to make her his wife. Admitting that he has called Sally's aunt every two weeks during the past year, Matt reveals that he knows Sally was fired from a Sunday school teaching job. Apparently, she had been encouraging the students to read Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class in addition to the Methodist reader. The rise of labor unions was affecting the families of the children in her class and she felt obligated to help educate them. Her unorthodox methods earned her the consternation of the church elders as well as her own family members, who own the garment factory on which the labor issue centered. Turning the tables, Sally tries to glean some information about Matt's background, a subject about which he is very guarded. He finally admits to Sally that he was probably born in Kaunas, Lithuania. His father had been an engineer. In 1911, his father was overheard in a French cafe discussing some work related to a nitrogen bomb. The family was later detained when they were trying to cross the border. Matt's father and older sister were tortured until the French realized that the father had no information of any value to them. In the meantime, the sister had fallen into a coma from which she never awoke. They later went to the German authorities and were again detained. Matt escaped to America through the help of some relatives. Haunted by his childhood grief, Matt vowed never to bring another child into a world that is filled with so much pain. Matt was content with his activities until he met Sally. Now he feels forever changed and hopeful for possibly the first time in his life. Having risked the vulnerability of revealing his background, Matt presses Sally to share why she, a beautiful woman of 31 years, has never married. She characteristically diverts the conversation to economics, which frustrates Matt beyond bearing. Sally finally reveals her disappointment in love many years ago, which makes her reluctant to fall in love again. Sally's family had partnered her with Harley Campbell, whose family was also wealthy. Theirs was to be a match made in heaven, especially for the business interests of the two families. Sally had been a cheerleader and Harley a basketball star. Unfortunately, the families' fortunes waned during the Depression. In addition, Sally was struck with tuberculosis and was sequestered for a long time. A pelvic infection had left her barren and Harley's family would no longer condone their marriage. Matt can't help but comment on the irony of their situation. All last winter he lamented over the fact that he was in love with a girl but could never have children, and now this same girl presents him with the same situation. He believes that an angel has guided his path to her. Sally agrees to marry him and move to the city, and they vow to return to the boathouse every year so they don't ever forget the place where they fell in love. |
The Moon by Night | Madeleine L'Engle | null | In The Moon by Night (ISBN 0-374-35049-3), Vicky and her family are on a cross-country camping trip, meant to be a transition between their life in rural Thornhill, Connecticut and a very different one in New York City, where Vicky's father, Dr. Wallace Austin, will be doing research. In another big change in Vicky's life, Maggy Hamilton, an orphan who has been living with the Austins since her father's death, goes to live with her legal guardian Elena, who is marrying Vicky's uncle, Douglas Austin. Uncle Douglas and his new family move to Laguna Beach, California, where Vicky's family is to visit them during their travels. The first chapter begins with the wedding of Elena and Douglas. The family's adventures show its differences from contemporary society. Along the way, they meet a teenage gang in Tennessee, help rescue children from a flood in Texas, and find an abandoned baby at a campsite in Utah. Vicky's younger sister Suzy grows emotionally during the trip, from wanting to adopt a fawn near the beginning to her later swift and competent rendering of first aid when another child is injured, despite wrong-headed demands by nearby adults. They see bears several times, and though they always act properly, their peers sometimes do not, with dangerous results. They also encounter anti-U.S. sentiment in a campground in Canada and intimations of the Cold War throughout their journey. Early in the trip, at a Tennessee campground, Vicky meets Zachary Gray, who arrives with his parents in a luxuriously equipped tent trailer pulled by a brand new black station wagon. She finds him charming, handsome and intelligent, but also frightening in his cynicism and recklessness. He pursues her (in person and with notes left behind) at other campgrounds across the country and in Laguna Beach. Vicky enjoys this attention, but the rest of her family dislikes Zach. She resents this, torn between obedience to her family and her growing need for independence. Observing Zachary's paleness and shortness of breath during an interpretive hike in Mesa Verde, Vicky's father, a doctor, deduces that he has a history of rheumatic fever that has damaged his heart. Dr. Austin several times orders the boy to avoid strenuous exercise as he accompanies Vicky and her family in their sightseeing. Late in the trip, at Yellowstone National Park, Vicky meets Andy Ford, another boy who becomes interested in her. Andy is more emotionally stable than Zachary and far more cheerful, but also less exciting. Zachary turns up with his parents at the Austins' next destination, in the Black Ram section of Wyoming, and exhibits jealousy toward Andy. A few hours later, a game of hide and seek ends with Zachary missing. As the Austins search for him, Zachary lures Vicky to a remote mountainside to speak with her privately about Andy. Vicky turns to return to her family, but is unable to do so after an earthquake brings down her side of the mountain in an avalanche. Zachary is trapped between two large rocks with a broken wrist. Vicky comes to terms with her concerns about the precariousness of life and the existence of a loving God, and Zachary promises to take better care of himself. Vicky waits with Zachary until help arrives. |
Labyrinth of Reflections | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | In the late 90s, Dmitry Dibenko, a Russian programmer known for dabbling in mysticism and mind-altering substances, created with a program playing a short movie that would allow him to achieve a new level of awareness during meditations. He dubbed the program Deep, placed it on a webserver and forgot about it. The revolution happened when a simple Ukrainian chap, stayed in office after the work to play his beloved Doom. He watched Dibenko's program, shrugged and launched the game — and fell into it. It seemed to him that it was he running along the corridors, ducking the fiery balls and snarling monsters' mugs. Although he was aware that what he was experiencing could not possible be true, he was unable to break the illusion. Left with no choice but to play the game, he completed all levels. When he finished in morning, the illusion ended and he found himself back in the real world, badly covered with bruises. Realizing that the program effectively fooled its users into thinking that whatever virtual environment they were viewing was as real as the world around them. Furthermore, the environment did not have to be particularly elaborate. Even if the graphics were crude, human subconscious would fill in details and sensations that would enhance the realism. However, they were drawbacks. Because the illusion was so convincing, people who used the Deep program were unable to leave it. Just as that guy needed to finish the game in order to break the illusion, the Deep users needed specially designed exit points that would provided subconscious triggers that facilitated the exit. The leading computer companies quickly seized upon Dibenko's invention to create a cartoonish virtual city that came to be known as Deeptown. Because of the low-tech nature of its graphics, it became available to anyone who had a computer and a dial-up connection. Deeptown gained instant popularity, drawing people from all walks of life and all parts the world. It offered freedom from real-world constraints, which became a style of life and religion of many. But a vast majority of people are unable to leave the Deeptown at will — their subconsciousness prevents them from it. They need free communication with their operational systems which was mostly forbidden, or in most cases proper exit terminals. Along with Deeptown, Deep timers were developed to limit the duration of user's stay, because in the worst-case scenario people became so consumed by Deep illusion that they competely lost awareness that Deeptown was not the real world, and were effectively trapped in the Deep until they died from dehydration. Once the time passed, the timer would deactivate the Deep program. However, it didn't solve the problem, as many users managed to switch off their timers. Around this time, the first Divers emerged, people able to break illusion of the Deep program. This allowed them to help those who were trapped in Deeptown, since they could exit the Deeptown instantly and call for help. This ability also freed them from physical constraints other users were bound by, allowing to perform seemingly impossible feats, survive otherwise crippling injuries and change avatars within seconds. In addition to that, Divers were able to see flaws in Deeptown's programming codes (usually in the form of holes). Thanks to those abilities, Divers found employment as in-house rescuers, corporate saboteurs and security consultants, among others. As their numbers grew, Divers began to organize. They created a Code of Divers, which established a set of principles that guided their behavior. Along with other things, it held up the right to privacy as a fundamental right of all Divers. Another important principle was the prohibition against using their abilities to harm their fellow Divers. If a Diver violated any aspect of the Code, he had to submit to a hearing conducted by the rest of the Diver community and abide by whatever penalty they would decide on. Further violations would incur progressively harsher penalties. By the time the events of the book began, Divers were a strange, but accepted part of Deeptown society. Their powers were subject of speculation by the rest of Deeptown community, which is only furthered by Divers' penchant for secrecy. The first novel is told from the first-person perspective and is told by a diver living in a run-down apartment in St. Petersburg. Like most divers, he has to maintain his identity secret, as divers are a prized commodity. They are able to overcome obstacles that can stop even elite hackers. The diver first demonstrates his ability by walking across a string suspended above a chasm, something no normal human is capable of doing, by leaving the deep and walking across by looking at the monitor (it is much easier, as there is no wind or fear of falling). He is soon located by a strange Man Without a Face and offered a job: he must go into a popular virtual game called the "Labyrinth of Death" to complete a task two other divers started but never completed. In return, he will get Order of Permissiveness that grants its bearer right to do everything he wants within Deeptown. The "Labyrinth of Death" is a massive multiplayer game based on Doom, where the players must battle monsters, zombies, and each other through large levels of a post-alien-invasion city to reach the end. As told by the director of the company that owns and runs the game, the diver must rescue a trapped player, who disabled his exit timer, before his real world body dies of dehydration or starvation. Adopting the nickname Gunslinger (from a Stephen King eponymous novel), the diver goes on a rampage through the "Labyrinth", using his diver ability to return to his own body and use standard keyboard and mouse controls to quickly dispatch enemies. Eventually, the other human players stop crossing his path, as rumors of his skill quickly spread throughout the game. After setting a record on the number of levels beat in a short time, the diver (Gunslinger) saves and leaves the "Labyrinth" only to encounter about a hundred angry players in the exit lobby. All of them are waiting for Gunslinger, but nobody recognizes him without his mask and gear. As he is leaving the lobby, the director of the company calls out and congratulates him on his record. The diver runs out, followed by the angry mob of players, and manages to duck into the nearest "building" - a virtual brothel. There, he looks through the catalog and, to his surprise, sees a near-perfect image of his operating system (rendered as a woman). He goes to the "room" where she is and asks her if he can call her Vicka (the same name he calls his computer). She agrees (after all, it's his fantasy), and they start talking about random things. The diver feels tired and falls asleep in her bed. When they wake up, he asks if he can see her again, to which she initially replies by warning him not to fall in love with a virtual image, as the person wearing it can be completely different. Vika then gives up and tells him to ask for her the next time he comes. The diver returns to the "Labyrinth" and manages to reach the trapped player. Initially, Gunslinger is frustrated when the player refuses to reveal his name or address (real-life location) but is amazed when he finds out that the "Jinx" (as the director called the player) is a crack shot and should have been able to beat the level without a problem. However, as the pair is nearing the exit, they are ambushed by a large group of monsters, and the Jinx is killed. While Gunslinger is trying to figure out what is going on, the two divers employed by the company show up and tell him that something about Jinx makes him unable to continue. One of them even killed the player 13 times within a 5 minute limit, which should have automatically kicked Jinx out but did not. The two divers ask Gunslinger to give them 6 hours to try to get Jinx to the end of the level, after which Gunslinger can return and try again. He agrees and leaves to the exit lobby, where a dozen players are waiting for him. Instead of attacking him, they offer him a deal: Gunslinger stops killing other players, and the players do not attack him or the Jinx. If a player breaks the deal, then Gunslinger is allowed to kill him or her. To seal the deal, they go to the BFG9000 - a bar near the "Labyrinth." After several virtual drinks, the diver goes back to the brothel and asks for Vicka. He finds her room, and she invites him to the brothel's restaurant. There the diver meets the Mage, a hacker employed by the brothel to provide their server with excellent security. Vicka gets upset when one of her regular clients (who keeps accusing the virtual prostitutes of being the scum of society) arrives and asks the diver to take her to his favorite place. He takes her to a bar/restaurant he frequents and asks for a private room. The room looks like a beautiful forest. After unsuccessfully attempting to make love to Vicka (her timer kicks her out), the diver goes back to the "Labyrinth". The company's divers tell him that they believe that Jinx is only pretending to be in trouble and that they plan to give up their attempts to get him out. The diver, however, has other ideas. After one more unsuccessful attempt, he leaves the game and travels to "Al Kabar" - the pharmaceutical company he robbed at the beginning of the novel. The company's spokesperson informs him that they are aware of Jinx and suspect that he is the next stage in human evolution - a person able to enter the virtual world without the aid of a computer or a phone line. They also tell him that the owner of "Labyrinth" will reach a similar conclusion soon. That is when "Al Kabar" will move in to snatch Jinx to find out what makes him tick. Determined to save Jinx at all costs, the diver logs off and contacts his hacker friend Maniac. He asks him for a virus he could smuggle through "Labyrinth" security. Maniac is hesitant but he upgrades the diver's Gunslinger character with his latest "Warlock 9000" virus, which is designed to look like a belt. As the diver is re-entering the "Labyrinth", the two companies make their moves to grab Jinx. The two "Labyrinth" divers attempt to stop him, but he uses the Warlock as a whip and attacks them (as seen on the book cover). The attack also opens a vortex-like hole in the program, allowing the diver and Jinx to slip out of the "Labyrinth" server. With the companies and Man with no Face in hot pursuit, he drags Jinx into the brothel and asks Vicka for protection. Just then, the Deeptown police commissioner makes a PA-like announcement, accusing the diver who looks like Gunslinger of using an illegal virus to attack a company. Vicka, upon finding out that he is a diver, lashes out at him but quickly calms down and admits that she is one too. The brothel comes under a massive attack from "Labyrinth" and "Al Kabar" security forces, backed by Deeptown police and Man with no Face. The Mage's defenses manage to put up a fight but are crumbling. The diver, Jinx, and Vicka jump out the window of her room into a virtual landscape she created before the brothel server shuts down, leaving them stranded in the landscape. The diver then tells Vicka what he thinks Jinx really is - a non-corporeal entity from another world who can only interact with humans through Deeptown. Jinx neither confirms nor denies his true nature, only says that he has been travelling for many years through silence. Vicka is skeptical and insists that Jinx is simply a devious hacker playing a game with everybody. They travel for several days through the landscape before finding out that the diver's use of the Warlock virus somehow linked Vicka's landscape with an RPG server, where fantasy fans play in a Lord of the Rings-like world. They find out that the game server plays out a war between King Legolas's elves and an alliance of orcs and dwarves. They leave Jinx (who is wounded from "Labyrinth") by a road and log off to rest and come back as fantasy characters. While the diver is eating, the Maniac shows up and cleans up his computer, erasing all trace of Warlock and the Gunslinger persona. He then helps the diver design a fantasy character for him - a human healer Elenium (by the name of the tranquiliser). The diver returns to the fantasy server and finds that Vicka is now a male elf archer. They go back to Jinx and try to get him back into Deeptown but are intercepted by Man with no Face and several armed goons. Another diver shows up and attacks the goons looking like a big wolf. As the three are escaping to the streets of Deeptown, Man with no Face manages to attack the wolf with several powerful viruses. Vicka and Jinx manage to escape, but the diver gets attacked with a perpetual deep-program. Even his diver's mantra cannot help him escape the swirling images that keep his subconsciousness in VR. As he is "walking" through the dream-like world, Jinx appears and tells him that only the diver has the power to escape it. The diver then reverses his mantra and embraces the deep. As he "wakes up" in Deeptown, he realizes that the virtual world has changed for him. He can now see things as they are (shapes and colors) and can move through programs at will. On the way to his Deeptown house, he encounters Man with no Face, who is surprised that the diver escaped his trap. They sit down and talk about Jinx. Man with no Face is convinced that Jinx is a projection from the future. The diver knows that Man with no Face is really the hacker who created the original deep-program. Man with no Face believes that his creation of the program was no accident. He believes Deeptown was a creation from the future and wishes to know more about it. The diver realizes that his companion is stalling and jumps directly to his Deeptown house to find it surrounded by the two companies' security forces and the police. They open fire on him, but he sends out a virtual wave that erases all the shooters. He then threatens the commissioner, the spokespersons of the companies, and Man with no Face that he can make their lives very unpleasant unless they leave him and Jinx alone. He returns to his house and tells Jinx that he must leave this world. Jinx opens a virtual portal and leaves. The diver takes Vicka and they fly through the Deeptown sky, kissing. At the same time, the diver uses his new abilities to remove all trace that he was ever online. He wipes his computer, his internet provider's logs, and everything else related to him. They then agree to meet in real life. Vicka asks him to wait at the airport with a flower. As the diver logs off, he remembers that he forgot to pay his phone bill - his phone has been disconnected for three hours. He was in Deeptown all on his own. When he finally arrives to the train station, he waits for Vicka. She approaches him from behind and, as he turns around, he is relieves to find out that she looks exactly the same as her virtual persona (as does he). |
The Lay of the Land | Richard Ford | 2,006 | The Lay of the Land takes place in the fall of 2000, and Ford's character Frank Bascome is preparing for Thanksgiving at his home in Sea Clift, New Jersey. His son Paul, who is now a greeting card designer in Kansas City, Paul's girlfriend, who has only one hand, and Frank's daughter, Clarissa, who is an on-and-off lesbian, are all expected to attend. Frank has ordered a ready-made organic meal to be delivered on the holiday. Frank's second wife, Sally, has reunited with her formerly AWOL and presumed-dead husband Wally, and they now live in the British Isles. Frank is in the last throes of a fight against prostate cancer, and Frank's first wife, Ann, has moved back to Haddam, New Jersey, after the death of her second husband. Frank has started RealtyWise, his own company, and employs Mike Mahoney, a Tibetan who has adopted an American Republican lifestyle, except inasmuch as he believes in Buddhist philosophy. Over the course of three days, Frank has a range of painful experiences with everyone he meets, including potential home buyers, the father of an old flame, his former wife, his son, and an old acquaintance whom Frank assaults in a bar. Frank's most redeeming moments as a character are in a lesbian bar where he waits for repair work on his Chevrolet Suburban, and when he gets shot in the chest by teenagers who have murdered his unlikable neighbors. In the end, Frank and Sally are flying to the Mayo Clinic to get the final word on his prostate. |
A Pattern of Roses | K. M. Peyton | 1,972 | While his parents are renovating a cottage in an English village, Tim Ingram uncovers a mystery about the 15 year old boy who had once lived in the house and had died in 1910. With the help of his friend Rebecca, Tim investigates, but finds events from the past being mirrored in his own life. |
The Chinese Agent | Michael Moorcock | 1,970 | Arnold Hodgkiss, a jewel thief who has come to London to steal the Crown Jewels, is dreamily casing the Tower of London when a strange man approaches him and says "The crown is large." Hodgkiss, nonplussed, replies "And very heavy", unwittingly giving the correct countersign. The man, a spy, thrusts a parcel at Hodgkiss and disappears. Hodgkiss keeps the parcel, hoping to turn it in some way to his advantage. Soon afterward, Jerry Cornell receives a new assignment: he is to discover the whereabouts of plans for "Project Glass," which have been stolen. Although the thief has been caught, the plans are still missing, and are believed to be in the hands of a fiendish Chinese agent named Kung Fu Tzu. Meanwhile, Kung is hopping mad because he never actually got the plans; they were given to Hodgkiss by mistake. The comedy of errors intensifies as Cornell tracks Kung, who in turn follows Hodgkiss, who eludes Kung but finds trouble aplenty when he tries to steal a brooch from a stall on Portobello Road. |
The Young Unicorns | Madeleine L'Engle | null | As the story opens, the Austin family has settled in a New York City apartment after the events of The Moon by Night, and made some friends; blind young pianist Emily Gregory and Josiah "Dave" Davidson, who helps Emily get around. Emily is studying under the tutelage of the passionate, leonine Emmanuel Theotocopulous, better known as Mr. Theo. Canon Tallis, newly arrived at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine after the events of The Arm of the Starfish, meets the Austin children and their friends just as they encounter an anachronistic Genie in a junk shop. Tallis advises and helps to protect the children as they are drawn into a mystery involving the Genie, a street gang called the Alphabats, and the local bishop's strange behavior. Dave is skeptical of the Genie, as is Suzy Austin, but the others are not sure. Centralized, single-minded activity on the part of the criminal Alphabats excites the suspicion of Canon Tallis, who interrogates Dave and Dr. Wallace Austin. Dr. Austin has been working on the creation and perfection of a laser-based Micro-Ray, which is so unerringly precise that it may do more than simply penetrate the corporeal. Dave was once a member of the Alphabats, but has turned from their ways. He is in denial of his past, not even talking about it. Tension builds as the 'Bats try to draw Dave into their new mischief, whose mastermind is none other than the Bishop himself. The Genie appears to be the bishop's servant, and also appears to possess a Micro-Ray. It is revealed that the bishop has given up hope for the world; that he hopes to establish a state of control over humanity, whereby he may prevent anything he deems detrimental to its success. His Genie, Hythloday, uses the Micro-Ray to control the Alphabats. A concentrated beam from it stimulates the brain's pleasure center, giving the victim a feeling of flight. The Alphabats, hoping to receive more of this pleasure as a reward, carry out the bishop's demands. Eventually, Rob Austin is captured. Vicky and Emily track him to the Cathedral, where they are joined by Vicky's family, Canon Tallis, and Mr. Theotocopulous. The united group expose the bishop as his (the bishop's) own brother, actor Henry Grandcourt, in disguise; break apart his plans to seize power; and unmask Hythloday as the dishonest scientist Dr. Hyde. The Micro-Ray is seized. Dave makes his peace with both his past and future, coming eventually to look upon those who have been with him as his family. |
This Town Will Never Let Us Go | Lawrence Miles | 2,003 | Inangela - a would-be recruit for Faction Paradox, the subcultural phenomenon that may or may not actually exist. Valentine - an ambulance driver with dangerous opinions about the War. Tiffany - a world famous pop star whose public image is starting to get out of control. Over the next six hours, their paths will intersect, and they will uncover more than they bargained for. There's something buried underneath this town - something that could alter the course of human history. |
People Might Hear You | Robin Klein | 1,983 | Don't ever let them know you're here. 'Our religion is for every day we live, every living moment. You mustn't ever raise your voice or call out... people outside might hear you... Clement had a good life until her aunt marries Mr Tyrell. Francis is pushed into a sinister mansion enclosed by unclimbable walls. At first she trustingly accepts her aunt's new life, and tries to be a 'worthy member of the temple'. But as she uncovers its sinister secrets she realises she has to escape ..... |
Talk Talk | T. Coraghessan Boyle | null | Dana Halter is an American woman in her early thirties who at the age of four suffered an infection which left her profoundly deaf. Since then, she has been able to master her life astonishingly well: she has acquired an academic degree and teaches at a school for the deaf in San Roque, likely analogous to Santa Barbara, California. Her boyfriend, Bridger Martin, is a "hearie", a man a few years younger than herself who creates special effects for the film industry. Out of love, Martin has gone to great lengths to accommodate her disability. For example, he has taken a course in sign language to be able to communicate with her as best as possible. William "Peck" Wilson is an American raised in Peterskill, New York who is angry with society for failing him. Once a promising young restaurateur, he enters into a sour marriage, has a child with his wife, becomes dependent on his father-in-law's money, and is eventually dumped by his wife. Subsequently, his life takes a turn for the worse, he has to serve a short prison sentence. When he is released from jail, he moves to Marin County, California, takes up a criminal career of stealing others' identities and spending these identities' money to furnish his elaborate tastes. One such stolen identity belongs to Dana Halter, the deaf woman. Peck believes Dana is a man, and now has a driver's license and a credit card in "his" name. He lives together with an attractive Russian gold digger called Natalia and her daughter by a former lover. He has made Natalia believe that he is a physician. Peck and Natalia live a luxurious life at the expense of Dana Halter. After Dana Halter is put in jail on a charge perpetrated by Wilson in her name, she and Bridger Martin are irate. They decide to track down the identity thief, and a cross-country chase ensues that ends in Peterskill, New York. |
L'Abbe C | null | null | The novella centres on the antagonisms that exist between two brothers. It recounts the story of Robert, a priest whose conduct appears so exemplary that he is called "L'Abbé" ("the abbot"), and is also involved in the clandestine activities of the French Resistance. Against his perspective of ecclesiastical morality, one encounters his twin brother Charles, who is a "libertine." It is the Second World War, which serves as a backdrop for the paradox of interpersonal betrayal, anti-clericalism and its disconnection from public virtue that characterises this work. Charles has a sexual relationship with Eponine, a female libertine. However, Eponine is also attracted to Robert. Worse, Robert is secretly attracted to Eponine, which precipitates an atmosphere of psychological and sexual tension within this triangle. The story turns out badly for all involved, as the resolution of this unstable triangle is not a healthy outcome. The story is told mostly from Charles's point of view. Robert undergoes a nervous breakdown, as he faints at a church service that he officiates at, with Eponine in the congregation. Robert becomes an alcoholic, and starts to harass Eponine at home late at night, leaving behind traces that suggest growing psychological instability. He loses his moral compass, and eventually becomes insane, leaving his village for a hotel on its outskirts, and spends a fortnight with two prostitutes, Rosie and Raymonde, before the Gestapo apprehend Robert for his activities with the French Resistance. While he has abandoned his clerical vows, however, Robert will not betray his resistance colleagues, and dies an heroic death after severe torture at the hands of his Nazi captors. Charles mourns his death, unable to forget what happened to his brother, until he and his wife Germaine encounter the unnamed narrator of the bracketing sections of this work, read as if an autobiography. Two years after Robert's heroic death, Charles commits suicide, but the narrator fulfils his responsibilities and takes the work to a publisher. |
The Man on the Moor | null | null | One summer evening, a few hours after taking his regular train from London, he is found dead on a moorland road, at first glance from natural causes. Speculation is rife that he has some connections with the German court, especially when his alcoholic mother insists that he was the son of the German Emperor William II, as she had a brief affair with him before he was married. It is an assertion strongly denied by her daughter Charlotte Waters, married to James Waters, a junior government minister who is worried that such rumours could prejudice his parliamentary career. The mystery deepens when two German army officers are found staying in a cottage on Dartmoor, not far from where Stephens’ body was found. They leave rather hurriedly after being interviewed by police, and shortly afterwards Dick Priestley, owner of the cottage, returns there, hears noises outside one evening, and when he goes to investigate he is shot dead on his doorstep. |
The Antipope | Robert Rankin | null | Jim Pooley and John Omally live in the London borough of Brentford, spending much of their time drinking in the Flying Swan, backing horses, womanising, and being generally feckless. Their problems start when Archroy's wife sells his beloved Morris Minor for five magic beans. Or perhaps they start when a hideous tramp appears in the neighbourhood, putting the wind up Neville the part-time barman something rotten. To cut a long story short, the tramp is none other than Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgias, and the beans grow into hideous homunculi, whose only purpose is to serve their dark master, the Antipope. Pope Alexander takes up residence in the local Seaman's Mission, and eventually there is a final showdown between the forces of good and evil, with Alexander and his bean-men on one side, and the massed might of Brentford on the other, including Pooley and Omally, Professor Slocombe, Father Moity, and Archroy, now a master of Dim Mak, a deadly martial art. Before the denouement, though, there are numerous sub-plots such as Channel-wading, a cowboy night at the Flying Swan, a trip underground with Soap Distant, and meetings with several other interesting characters, like builders Hairy Dave and Jungle John, and the elusive Other Sam. |
The Straw Men | Michael Marshall Smith | null | The Straw Men is a book about serial killers. It opens with a scene set in a small American town, where a duo of gunmen open fire in a busy McDonalds fastfood franchise. The remainder of the book jumps between two storylines. The first is a first person narrative piece telling us about Ward Hopkins, a young man going home to bury his parents after they suffered a car accident. He encounters a video tape in the family home that suggests that maybe they are still alive. Investigations are pursued with and things quickly spiral as they typically tend to do. A friend who happens to be a CIA operative is enlisted to provide someone to crack wise with. The second strand is in conventional third person and concerns John Zandt, an ex-homicide detective who is persuaded to come out of early retirement since it appears that the psycho who abducted his daughter has found another victim. |
Pop Goes the Weasel | James Patterson | 1,999 | The book begins by introducing the villain, Geoffrey Shafer. He is a well-dressed and wealthy man who lives in Kalorama, Washington, D.C. and drives a Jaguar XJ12. In the beginning, he rushes into oncoming traffic causing a commotion, before a police officer pulls him over and asks him for some identification. This is when the reader finds out he is a British Diplomat who has diplomatic immunity. As Geoffrey feels he is losing control, he decides to play a fantasy game called the Four Horseman, in which he takes on the character of Death. As the game begins, he drives to the red light district, picks up a prostitute and e-mails the other Horsemen. |
Digging to America | Anne Tyler | 2,006 | Digging to America is a story set in Baltimore, Maryland about two very different families’ experiences with adoption and their relationships with each other. Sami and Ziba Yazdan, an Iranian-American family, and Brad and Bitsy Dickinson-Donaldson, an all-American suburban family, meet at the airport on the day their infant daughters arrive from Korea to begin life in America. The two families become friends and begin a tradition of celebrating the arrival of their adopted daughters each year. The differences between the two families are apparent from the beginning, especially in the way each couple decides to raise their daughters. Brad and Bitsy choose not to Americanize their daughter, Jin-Ho; they keep her Korean name and teach her about Korean culture as she grows up. Sami and Ziba, on the other hand, choose to raise their daughter Susan like other American children. Through the efforts of Bitsy, the two families begin a tradition of celebrating their daughters’ arrival in America with an Arrival Party each year. The celebration becomes a mix of American, Korean, and Iranian culture with the different food and people present. The story continues to progress through the early childhood of Jin-Ho and Susan, displaying the differences in how they are raised and the impact it has on them as they grow older. At times, the relationship between the two families is strained because of their contrasting opinions of some issues, but they remain good friends throughout the entire story. As the lives of the two families continue to become closer, a new and separate relationship starts to flourish between Bitsy’s widowed father, Dave, and Sami’s widowed mother, Maryam. Dave has recently lost his wife to cancer and is in need of a companion to help him recover from the loss. Maryam, who has been widowed for many years, is at first reluctant to change her life of privacy for Dave, but she eventually gives in. In the end, Maryam realizes that Dave is too much of a threat to the orderly boundaries of her life, and she ends their relationship. |
A Practical Man | Karen Traviss | null | The story opens in the lower levels of Coruscant in 24 ABY, only a few months prior to the Yuuzhan Vong Invasion. Boba Fett has just chased down another bounty, a Rodian art dealer who sold fake works to Gebbu the Hutt. Meanwhile on Nar Shaddaa, Nom Anor, posing under the alias Udelen, recruits a Mandalorian named Goran Beviin to assassinate a politician on Ter Abbes, a grim industrial planet off the Perlemian Trade Route. Bevin quickly realizes that if the man is killed it will trigger a civil war, but even after he voices his misgivings to Boba he still carries out the mission. Nom Anor notes that Bevin did an efficient job of removing the target and plans to meet Fett for the second time on Mandalore and the capital city, Kedalbe. Nom Anor notes that Mandalore is already on his list of a world that will be harder to subdue. Anor arrives on the planet, again under the alias of Udelen and provides Fett with the location of a rendezvous where he and a select number of Fett's troops are to meet. Anor plans to reveal his true nature to Fett as the location lies along the main invasion route the Yuuzhan Vong will take into the galaxy. As the Mandalorian fleet awaits the arrival of their client, Bevin becomes impatient and scouts around for Udelen. He soon encounters what he assumes to be an asteroid, but is actually a Yuuzhan Vong ship. Unsure of what to make of their new arrivals, the Mandalorians enter battle formation and wait. Soon though, Nom Anor makes contact with Fett and asks him to board the lead ship for a face to face meeting. Once aboard the miid ro'ik warship Fett orders Bevin to discreetly gather any samples he can, while Fett runs scans with his helmet. While touring the ship, Anor explains the Yuuzhan Vong vision for the galaxy and how the Mandalorians will play a part in shaping it and both Fett and Bevin witness first hand the plans the Vong have for the humans they capture. Anor then gives Fett the plans for the next mission he has planned for the Mandalorians, to secure a landing zone on Birgis, in exchange for their continued service the Mandalore sector will be left alone. Fett knows this is a lie and that the Vong will come for them eventually, he plans to ensure he's ready when that day comes. Fett plans to use the inside track he now has to do as much damage to the invaders as possible, while he appears to help them he will do all he can to hinder them at the same time. Nom Anor amends his report, instead believing that enslaving the Mandalorians is the best way of dealing with them. One week after the invasion of Helska 4, the Mandalorians assault the spaceport on Birgis. Fett, Bevin and Cham, another Mandalorian warrior, spearhead the assault. Fett hopes to use this moment to pass on vital intel to the New Republic. Passing the intel on to a pilot during the assault, Fett only hopes that the Republic won't blow their cover. Typically, the Yuuzhan Vong leave no survivors at the spaceport. New Holgha, however, the Vong's next target remains unevacuated, the Republic hasn't acted on the intel, obviously not trusting its source. With the planets defenses sabotaged and its troops relocated elsewhere, the world falls without a serious fight. Instead, the Republic diverted troops to Pedd 4 and now New Holgha suffers, as Fett observes a miit ro'ik digest everything around it for fuel, he is reminded of the Sarlacc. As he contemplates a better and more reliable way to pass intel to the Republic, a Vong warrior asks him to assist in killing a Jedi. While Bevin stalls the Vong, Fett and a few others subdue the Jedi, who is skeptical at first, but then believes Fett and agrees to take the information off planet. As the Jedi leaves for his hidden ship, Bevin arrives, followed by the Vong warrior. When he asks what happened to the Jedi, Fett and the others kill him, with Bevin using his crushgaunts to kill the warrior. While the others collect samples from the dead warrior, Bevin scalps him for a trophy. Briika, a Mandalorian female warrior, is fatally wounded in the encounter though and dies when she reaches Slave 1. Bevin, keeping a promise he made to her, adopts Dinua, Briika's daughter as his own. Nom Anor lays plans to accelerate the coming invasion of Mandalore, he believes that the reports of the Mandalorians savagery have been greatly exaggerated. He still plans to use them, keeping them undercover from the rest of the Vong warriors, but ultimately he plans to erase their culture from the galaxy. Fett, traveling across Mandalore space reflects that his plan is so far working fine. The Republic believe the Mandalorians are in league with the Vong, while his own engineers are working on weapons designed specifically to fight them. Then an X-Wing drops into pursuit course, but when it makes contact through one of Fett's own intel nodes he stays his trigger finger. The Jedi he saved on New Holgha, a man named Kubariet asks to meet face to face. Working with New Republic Intelligence, Kubariet confirms that Fett has a deal, the Mandalorians will continue to masquerade as Vong mercenaries while at the same time passing intel to the Republic. Before he leaves, Kubariet asks if Fett will spare a few of his best commandos to act as a kind of new Cuy'val Dar to train planetary militias to fight the Vong. Kubariet gives Fett a secure datachip, if he wants to pass on intel then he can only do it through the Jedi, in return Fett hands over 'spare parts' he's collected from the Vong. When Kubariet asks if there's anything more he can do for Fett he tells him to make sure everyone knows that a Mandalorian named Briika Jeban died saving a citizen of the New Republic. When Kubariet asks who she saved, Fett simply says: 'You, Jedi, you.' |
Silent to the Bone | E. L. Konigsburg | 2,000 | Silent to the Bone is a first-person narrative by Connor Kane, a 13-year-old boy. Connor's best friend Branwell Zamborska was struck dumb and taken to the Juvenile Behavioral Center on the day his baby sister Nicole slipped into a coma and was taken to Clarion County Hospital. Nikki suffered a head injury, he dialed 9-1-1 but did not speak, the au pair completed the phone call, and Branwell was blamed for dropping the baby. Connor knows there is some explanation for Branwell's silence and that Branwell did not intentionally hurt Nikki. He knows that Branwell needs him and visits daily. Because Branwell does not speak, Connor does all the talking and communicates by a kind of sign language, inspired by Jean-Dominique Bauby. "Remember the story of the paralyzed Frenchman who wrote a whole book with the blink of his left eye? I no sooner had the sentence out of mouth than Branwell blinked his eyes twice, very rapidly, and I knew he understood our rules of communication."Silent to the Bone, first edition, p. 34. Initially he elicits clues by presenting keywords on handwritten cards (depicted by the author in the original front cover illustration). Connor recounts his daily visits to his older half-sister Margaret, after her workday, and they solve the case together. Nikki was hurt by the au pair, Vivian, who neglected her. Vivian smokes which harmed the baby. When Margaret was Connor's age, about fifteen years ago, their father Kane left Margaret's mother for Connor's. Margaret remains chilled by the experience. Connor's parents are not friendly with her, but they welcome her care for Connor after school and sometimes late into the night. "Call your mother and tell her you're having dinner at the Evil Empire," she says to him one evening.Silent to the Bone, first edition, p. 79. Eventually she resorts to Dad's expertise as University Registrar Kane, regarding the Zamborska case; that and some prodding by Connor effect some warming between daughter and father. |
Strange Piece of Paradise | Terri Jentz | null | Terri Jentz and her friend Shayna Weiss are Yale students cycling across America in 1977. After stopping to camp at Cline Falls State Park in Oregon, they are brutally attacked when a man runs over their tent with a pick-up truck and assaults them with an ax. Despite their injuries, both survive. Weiss suffers partial blindness and memory loss. Jentz, her body scarred, bears her injuries mostly in guilt, anger, and fear. To help confront these feelings, Jentz returns to the area fifteen years later to investigate the crime even though the statute of limitations on attempted murder prevents her attacker's prosecution. During her investigation, she meets other victims of violent crime and their advocates who help her follow the most promising lead: a man whom locals have always suspected as the perpetrator. |
Sharpe's Revenge | Bernard Cornwell | 1,989 | As the novel begins, in 1814 Richard Sharpe and his second wife Jane are on bad terms over Sharpe's imminent duel with Captain Bampfylde, resulting from the latter's cowardice in the previous novel, Sharpe's Siege. As duelling is illegal, Jane fears that Sharpe may lose either his life or his military career. She is keenly looking forward to the end of the war, and retirement to England, and to assuage her fears, Sharpe grants her power of attorney over the considerable sum of money he has lodged with his prize agent in London. Sharpe fights the duel, wounding Bampfylde in the buttocks, and sends Jane to England with instructions to purchase a country home in Dorset. Sharpe takes part in the Battle of Toulouse, under the command of General Nairn who is killed in action, at which point Sharpe takes command, winning the battle. Shortly afterwards he learns that the war is finally over and Napoleon is defeated. Sharpe, with Harper and Frederickson, takes his men to Bordeaux to await transport to England. There he learns that Jane has closed out his account, withdrawing almost £18,000. Sharpe and Frederickson are arrested by military authorities in Bordeaux, accused of stealing Napoleon's treasury, which has been concealed at Teste de Buch, the fortress they had captured in the previous novel. A witness statement by Napoleon's spymaster, Pierre Ducos, an old anatgonist of Sharpe's, reveals the source of the false allegation. Sharpe and Frederickson realize that only the evidence of the fort's French commander, Henri Lassan, will exonerate them, and with help from Harper and Captain Peter d'Alembord, the two men escape and set out to find Lassan. In London, ignoring Sharpe's instructions at the urging of a friend, Lady Spindacre, Jane has taken a large and expensive town house in fashionable Cork Street. On hearing of her husband's arrest, she contacts Sharpe's former ally, Lord John Rossendale as directed in case of emergency. The two become lovers. Sharpe and Frederickson make their way first to Teste de Buch, then to Lassan's ancestral home in Normandy, to which he has retired. They arrive shortly after Lassan's murder, by assassins instructed by Ducos, disguised as British riflemen. Lassan's widowed sister, Lucille Castineau, a witness to the murder, mistakenly identifies Sharpe as the killer, and on Sharpe's arrival at the farm, shoots and injures him. Learning of her mistake from Frederickson, Lucille takes the two fugitives in, and nurses Sharpe. Harper and d'Alembord return to England to contact Jane and collect money. Jane refuses to receive them, and has Harper horsewhipped. In Normandy Frederickson grows attached to Lucille, and proposes to her, but is refused. He leaves for Paris to track down Ducos, leaving Sharpe to recover from his injuries. In his absence Sharpe and Lucille become lovers. Harper returns from London to confirm Sharpe's suspicions about Jane's loyalty, just as Frederickson sends word that Ducos has taken Napoleon's stolen treasure to Naples in Italy. The three men travel to Italy to confront Ducos, while Lucille, now pregnant, writes to the French prosecutor to exonerate Sharpe. Her letter is passed to Napoleon, in exile on Elba, who dispatches General Calvet, who faced Sharpe at Toulouse, to Naples in pursuit. In Naples, Ducos has assumed the identity of a Polish count, bought the protection of the local Cardinal, and assembled a small personal force of former French officers and locals mercenaries to guard the treasure. Calvet contacts the Cardinal, hoping prevent the English from reaching the treasure before him, but the Cardinal makes arrangements to confiscate the gold himself. Sharpe, Harper and Frederickson are intercepted by Calvet, and the former adversaries form an alliance; Sharpe will help to retrieve the gold for Napoleon in return for clearing his name. The combined force successfully infiltrate Ducos's villa, capturing the gold and Ducos himself, but before they can leave the Cardinal's forces surround the villa, cutting off access to the sea where Calvet's boats wait. Sharpe loads a small cannon with gold coins and fires it among the Neapolitans troops. The ill disciplined men break ranks to collect the coins, and allow the besieged company to escape by sea, taking the Ducos and the remaining treasure with them. Ducos is tried for the murder of Henri Lassan and executed by firing squad. Sharpe and Frederickson are cleared of all charges, but fall out when Frederickson learns of Sharpe's relationship with Lucille, and part on bad terms. Harper, discharged from the army, now also leaves Sharpe to return to Ireland. Sharpe returns to Normandy, to Lucille, and to a new life - no profession, no command, no troops, no friends, no money, and no wife. |
Eldorado | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,913 | It is 1794 and Paris, "despite the horrors that had stained her walls - has remained a city of pleasure, and the knife of the guillotine did scarce descend more often than did the drop-scenes on the stage." The plot begins when Sir Percy, the Scarlet Pimpernel, reluctantly agrees to take Armand St. Just, brother of his wife, Marguerite, with him to France as part of a plan to rescue the young Dauphin. Percy warns Armand not to renew any friendships while in Paris, but it doesn't take long before Armand has ignored his warnings and renewed a friendship with the scheming Baron de Batz (in the pay of the Austrian government), who wants to free the Dauphin himself and despises the Scarlet Pimpernel and all he represents. Whilst attending the opera with De Batz, Armand foolishly tells him that he is in the league of the Scarlet Pimpernel. While there, he falls in love with a young actress named Citizeness Jeanne L'Ange. De Batz introduces the couple backstage at the theatre and once they have fallen for each other, De Batz tells Citizen Heron of the general committee of Public Safety where and when they have arranged to meet. After covering for Armand at her house, L'Ange is arrested and thrown into jail. Learning of her peril and in the throes of passion, Armand fails to trust Sir Percy who has told him that he will rescue Jeanne, and forgets his promise to his leader. Armand, desperate to share Jeanne's fate, runs to the gate of the Temple prison and screams, "Long Live the King." There he's intercepted by none other than Percy's arch enemy, Chauvelin. Faced with the death of his love, Armand betrays Percy, unaware that The Pimpernel has already secured Jeanne's freedom. Sir Percy is then captured and imprisoned by Chauvelin and Heron in the cell that was home to Marie Antoinette in her last days. Chauvelin insists that Percy is to be deprived of sleep in the hope that he will be weakened and disclose where young Capet, the uncrowned King of France, is being held following his rescue. After 17 days in prison, Percy is sure that the dauphin has been transported safely into Holland. He then contrives, by pretending to crack and confess the dauphin's whereabouts, to make his escape. He tells Chauvelin and Heron that the dauphin is being held in an area in the north, near the coast of France, but that he has to show them, rather than tell them, because the paths are nameless and too small for them to find without him. Chauvelin and Heron, skeptical, bring along Armand and Marguerite as hostages. Once in the north, Percy takes advantage of a chance when Chauvelin and Heron are separated, and darkness, to subdue Heron, bind and truss him, put on his clothes, and direct the guileless French soldiers (who think that the bound Heron is Percy) to put him in the gated yard of a church. Percy, still thought to be Heron, drives a carriage with Marguerite and Armand inside to the coast, where his ship is waiting for them. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound | John Irving | 2,004 | It takes place in a house, late at night, when one young child, asleep in his bed, awakes to hear a sound he describes as "a sound like someone trying not to make a sound" to his dad, when he awakens him. The child also tells his dad it sounds like a “monster with no arms and legs” that “slides on its fur” and “pulls itself along on its teeth.” It turns out to be mice in the walls and the child is comforted by his parent. They go back to bed. |
Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future | Martin Caidin | 1,995 | Caidin's novel retells the story of Anthony "Buck" Rogers, a top pilot who is mortally wounded in a Fokker plane crash. Given zero chance of survival with modern-day medical methods, Rogers is placed into suspended animation at Cyberdyne Systems, in the hopes that at some point in the future new technologies will render his injuries survivable. Ultimately, as civilizations rise and fall, Rogers is kept in stasis for five centuries before he is discovered and revived. As with the original Buck Rogers story, the pilot must adjust to life in the 25th Century while also helping Earth battle various invaders. Along the way he falls in love with Wilma Deering, a top pilot in the Space Corps. |
Warlords of Utopia | Lance Parkin | 2,004 | The glorious Roman Empire has ruled for nearly twenty-seven centuries when Marcus Americanius Scriptor acquires a strange bracelet from a mysterious stranger. With this bracelet, he finds he is able to travel to alternate Romes, worlds where the course of history has diverged from that with which he is familiar. And further out, worlds where there is no Roman Empire at all, and a cruel new regime in Germania is on a path of conquest. This cannot be permitted. |
Foxmask | Juliet Marillier | 2,004 | When Thorvald turns 18, his mother Margaret decides to tell her son the truth about his father's identity. Upon learning that Somerled was his father, Thorvald decided to find the man. With his friend Sam's help, Thorvald begins his journey. Unbeknown to the two boys, Creidhe stows aboard. When the boat becomes damaged, they land on the lost isle that Somerled had landed on 18 years earlier, the Isle of Storms. To the south of the Isle of Storms resided the Unspoken, who, while capable of powerful magic, are in turmoil without their leader or seer - The one whom they call Foxmask. The Ruler of the Isle of Storms had had a daughter and a son. The daughter had been given to Foxmask’s people 7 years previously so she could give birth to a child who would become Foxmask. To save this heir from the maiming the Unspoken deemed necessary, the Ruler's son stole the child and hid it on the Isle of Clouds, an island to the west of the Isle of Storms. The Unspoken levied a curse on the Ruler’s people whereby no new children would be allowed to survive past the second morning of their life. This curse was to stay in effect until Foxmask was returned to his people or a new Seer was born to take his place. |
The Man Who Never Missed | Steve Perry | 1,985 | The Man Who Never Missed concerns an ex-soldier Emile Khadaji, formerly in the service of the "Confed", a generic star-spanning empire (formerly a confederacy, hence the name) of solar systems. The Confed has grown large and old, and to maintain its fading grip on power, uses its powerful military to brutally suppress any resistance and to colonialize further worlds. During one such campaign which results in the slaughter of three-quarters of a million people in a single pitched battle, Khadaji snaps and deserts while experiencing a religious epiphany which instills him the belief that taking the lives of sapient beings is wrong and that the Confed must be overthrown. He escapes and is believed dead by his military superiors. While wandering in the nearby city and pondering his experience, the young Khadaji runs into the mysterious priest "Pen" (Pen being not his real name but rather his title; as the current Pen, Pen goes about enshrouded such that his flesh cannot be seen), of the order of the Siblings of the Shroud. Pen takes Khadaji in as a student, training him in Pen's martial art sumito ("The 97 steps"; based on the martial art Silat, which inspired Perry). Pen also teaches Khadaji the surprisingly complex craft of bartending to the many worlds of the Confed. While working as a bartender on the world of Rim, Khadaji falls in love with an "exotic" albino—exotic is the term Perry uses for descendants of humans genetically engineered to be sexually attractive, to exude sex pheromones, and to have an extremely high libido. Eventually he realizes the extent to which she cheats on him and how she views his martial arts skills as a useful way to protect herself from lustful males. Khadaji comes to the conclusion that he needs to further his war against the Confed, but bartending on Rim was wasting time. At this point, Pen and Khadaji part ways after a relationship encompassing years. Travelling to a college planet, Khadaji begins learning economics and politics and military science. While there, he masters the nonlethal civilian weapon: the spetsdōd. The spetsdōd is a small weapon which is unobtrusively mounted on the back of one's hands; it is connected to the index finger. When hyperextended, the spetsdōd detonates the loaded dart, propelling it down the length of the index finger at whatever the shooter aims at. Within 20 meters, it is described as being an extremely fast and precise weapon—pointshooting taken to its logical conclusion. With his weapon and target chosen, Khadaji carefully embarks on a large-scale and careful career of smuggling—a career chosen for its ability to garner large sums of money which Khadaji needs and because it does not necessarily compromise his ethics; Khadaji reasons that as long as he does not transport health-compromising narcotics, his will be victimless crimes. His criminal empire grows quickly, and Khadaji devotes his fortunes to combat training with his spetsdōd. Eventually, he decides to test his skills against the best living opponents he can find, in real life-or-death situations: He considered where he could get such experience. There was the Musashi Flex, a loosely-organized band of modern ronins who travelled around challenging each other; he could try that. Or, there was The Maze. Such a thing was risky, but it offered a real test. Injury was likely, death a possibility in the game known as The Maze; if he could survive that, maybe he would be ready.... The Musashi Flex would later be the subject of Perry's 2006 novel of the same name. The Maze mentioned is a multiple-day unarmed combat tournament set in a ruined city; the last person conscious wins an extremely large monetary prize. No rules other than not interfering with the medical robots rescuing a downed contestant, and not bringing any weapons with one into the tournament, are observed. Khadaji wins, and is convinced to launch his war. This he does by buying and fortifying a bar on the recently occupied planet Greaves. While luring soldiers into his bar by day, Khadaji hunts and paralyzes them with a potent cocktail of drugs which induces total paralysis by night; the cocktail does not kill, but requires enormous sums of money and at least six months to cure. Over many months, he paralyzes 2,388 of the 10,000 troops on the planet, only missing with a handful of shots, which he carefully conceals. His guerilla tactics are so successful that the Confed forces estimate the "Shamba Freedom Forces" (or the "Shamba Scum" as the Confed calls them) to have hundreds of members. Eventually, he learns that his six months are about to lapse: the first soldiers he paralyzed are recovering. At any time one of the soldiers who saw Khadaji's face might recover and reveal to their compatriots that the genial, friendly, and generous bar-owner Khadaji is actually one of the insurgents. So Khadaji goes for broke. He calls the head commander of the Confed forces and reveals that he has learned the identity of the leaders of the Shamba Freedom Forces. When Khadaji enters the commander's office, he paralyzes the commander, and successfully escapes and locks himself inside the massive vault inside the bar (used to store receipts and the many drugs that his bar sold in addition to the usual array of alcoholic drinks). There he spends an hour meditating on his past and his life; in this flashback his history is revealed to the reader—the novel started in medias res. The army catches up to Khadaji. His vault is proof against most of their weapons; the officer tasked with his apprehension orders an "implosion" (possibly a miniature black hole) bomb fired against the safe. It, and presumably Khadaji, are compressed into a tiny lump; Khadaji is presumed dead, although the Confed forensics can only conclude that there was a human body in the remains, and not that the remains were of Khadaji. Mysteriously, shortly before the implosion round is fired, Perry writes of Khadaji handling a heavy, large, and secured package stored in the vault for the last six months. Afterwards, the Confederation military realize that he apparently knocked out almost 2,400 soldiers without missing a single time, a record which quickly becomes a legend, striking fear into the Confederation military ranks. |
Swastika Night | Katharine Burdekin | 1,937 | The novel takes place seven hundred years after Nazism achieved power, by which time Adolf Hitler is worshipped as a god. Though no major character is a woman, the story concentrates on the oppression of women, portraying the Nazis as homosexual misogynists. Christians are marginalized, Jews eliminated, and women disenfranchised — deprived of all rights. Germany and Japan won the "Twenty Years War" (analogous to World War II), the time it took the Nazis to subdue the Soviet Union. The protagonist is an Englishman named Alfred on a German pilgrimage. In Europe, the English are loathed because they were the last opponents of Nazi Germany in the war. The story correctly postulates the air power's importance in war. One of the religious sites Alfred was to visit was the "Sacred Airplane", which, according to long-established dogma, Hitler piloted on a mission to Moscow, thus achieving victory. The drastic rewriting of history, after living memory of Hitler, or the time when meaningful resistance to Germany existed, is the logical extension of Burdekin's contemporary view of Nazi Germany. Per official history, Hitler is a tall, blond god who personally won the war. Alfred is astounded when shown a secret, historic photograph depicting Hitler and a girl before a crowd. First, he is shocked that Hitler is a small man with dark hair and a paunch. The crowd seem more interested in the girl; this does not fit the worldview of Hitler as god. The photograph's most shocking betrayal of myth is the girl's appearance. Alfred believed her to be a boy — the attractive figure has a proud posture and long, blond hair — and is appreciated by the crowd. Women have developed self-loathing, becoming pathetic beings who have difficulty performing their sole, utilitarian function: reproduction. Elsewhere, the Japanese rule the Americas, Australia, and Asia, to the borders of European Russia and Persia. Though Japan is the only rival superpower to the Nazi West, their inevitable wars always end in stalemate. The fascist Germans and Japanese suffer much difficulty in maintaining their populations, because of the physical degeneration of their women. In the event, the SS murder Alfred, yet he passes the truth about Nazi history to his surviving son. |
1812: The Rivers of War | Eric Flint | 2,005 | The story, which takes place in 1814–15, centers around an alternate historical version of the War of 1812. The point of divergence is at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where Sam Houston, who was seriously injured in real history, sustains only a minor injury and is able to continue fighting. This leads to many changes down the line, culminating in the formation of the Confederacy of the Arkansas. |
Sacred Clowns | Tony Hillerman | 1,993 | The plot of the story surrounds several homicides and the relationship between Jim Chee and Janet Pete. Chee is still in training to become a Hatałii when he is assigned to work directly for Joe Leaphorn to solve the murder of a teacher killed at a mission followed by a violent death during a sacred clown dance. |
Some Like It Hot | Zoey Dean | 2,006 | It's Prom time at Beverly Hills High! Ben Birnbaum is back from Princeton University for the summer but also visiting is a friend of his family's. Maddy, a girl who's a junior in high school who has just had Gastric bypass surgery is staying with the Birnbaum's, and to Anna Percy's disdain, has quite the (newly) curvy figure. Adam discovers a shocking secret about Cammie's mom, one that will shake both her and her friend, Sam. Prom this year is being given by two B-List wannabes, Jasmine-Jazz and Ophelia-Fee. Sam tries to enter a film contest anonymously, and her subject for her documentary is the girls. She ends up helping much more than she intended, including securing the "Collusseum" where her father is shooting a remake of Ben Hur. Parker agrees to go with Sam to the Prom, in place of her sexy boyfriend Eduardo who can't make it because of a family engagement. They end up making out and unfortunately for Samantha she doesn't realize Eduardo's watching after he has come to show how much he cares for her and appreciates all Sam did for Prom. Anna explains to Ben that he should get off his horse and that she doesn't need saving. He says he loves her because she doesn't need saving. Between most of the couples in the A-List, on prom night, they are the only two that end the night without any problems. |
The Optimist's Daughter | Eudora Welty | 1,972 | The book begins with the main character Laurel Hand who travels to New Orleans from her home in Chicago to assist her aging father as a family friend and doctor operates on his eye. Laurel’s father remains in the hospital for recovery for several months. During this time, Laurel begins to get to know her outsider stepmother better, as she rarely visited her father since the two were married. Fay begins to show her true colors as the Judge’s condition worsens. To the distress of all who knew him, the Judge dies after his wife throws a violently emotional fit in the hospital and confesses to cheating and interest in his money. The two women travel back to the Judge’s home in Mount Salus, Mississippi for the funeral and are received by close friends of the family. Here, Laurel finds love and friendship in a community which she left after childhood. Ironically, the warmth of the town clashes with Fay’s dissenting and antagonistic personality. The woman from Alabama, who claimed to have no family other than the Judge, is soon confronted by her past as her mother, siblings, and other members of her family show up to her house to attend the funeral. Though Laurel confronts Fay as to the reason why she lied, she cannot help but feel anything except pity for the lonely, sullen woman. Directly after her husband’s funeral, Fay leaves to go back home to Madrid, Texas with her family. After her distraught and immature stepmother leaves, Laurel finally has time to herself in the house she grew up in with the friends and neighbors she knew since childhood. During the few days she remains, Laurel digs through the past as she goes through her house remembering her deceased parents and the life she had before she left Mount Salus. She rediscovers the life of friendship and love that she left behind so many years ago, along with heartache. Her visit to her hometown and the memories of her parents open up a new insight on life for Laurel. She leaves Mount Salus with a new understanding of life and the factors which influence it the most—friends and family. But most of all, she gains a new understanding and respect for herself. |
Conan the Rebel | Poul Anderson | null | Conan the Rebel details the involvement of Conan and his lover, the pirate Belit, in a rebellion of an eastern province of the kingdom of Stygia. Chronologically, it occurs between chapters 1 and 2 of the Robert E. Howard Conan story "Queen of the Black Coast". |
The Road of Kings | Karl Edward Wagner | null | The novel features Conan during his buccaneering days. He becomes involved in thwarting a plot to take over the turbulent kingdom of Zingara, complicated by sorcery rooted in the long lost realm of Acheron. At the end of the story he himself has the opportunity to take the Zingaran throne, but uncharacteristically turns it down. |
Conan the Mercenary | Andrew J. Offutt | null | A young Conan finds himself involved in plots against the throne of Khauran. After saving Lady Khashtris from an attack by Shadizar's thieves and some traitorous henchmen, Conan agrees to work as her bodyguard in return for his soul being freed from the mirror it has been trapped in since Conan's encounter with Hissar Zul. Conan's soul can only be freed by one of noble birth, and Khashtris convinces Conan that her sister, Queen Ialamis, will free him. Unknown to Conan, the Queen, and Khashtris, the Queen's new paramour, Sergianus, is actually a disguised Sabaninus, the elderly Duke of Korveka, a Kothian province that wishes to annex Khauran. The disguise is revealed when the Queen breaks the mirror containing Conan's soul; as his soul re-enters his body, Conan sees the Duke for who he really is. Conan, Lady Khashtris, and her loyal bodyguard Shubal, then plot to unmask the Duke and save Khauran. Ialamis is also the mother of Salome and Taramis, who feature prominently in Howard's Conan tale, "A Witch Shall Be Born." |
Chase | Dean Koontz | null | Chase is the story about Benjamin Chase. "Bejamin Chase is a retired war hero living in an attic apartment. He is struggling with a drinking habit. One night he rescues a young woman from an obsessed killer. As a result, the killer has changed his target to Chase. He begins phoning Chase and warning that he is out for revenge. The killer, simply named "The Judge" is threatening to kill Chase but the police don't believe him as he has a history of alcohol-related incidents. Chase is forced to take matters into his own hands and attempts to unmask The Judge himself and end the threat of a vengeful lunatic." |
The Information | Martin Amis | 1,995 | Gwyn Barry and Richard Tull have been friends since they roomed together at university. Richard Tull was a promising writer with a seemingly bright future. However his career flags and he finds himself depressed writing book reviews for a small literary paper and running a vanity press. To his chagrin, Gwyn Barry - whose literary skills Tull holds in low esteem - has written a phenomenally successful novel and won a lucrative and respected literary prize. Barry begins to enjoy a rarified life whilst Tull toils away with his unsuccessful pursuits. Tull, increasingly envious, begins to manufacture ways of bringing Barry down. These begin relatively innocently, attempts to cause Barry inconvenience. But later things become much more serious as Tull makes contact with violent men he later finds he cannot control. |
The Night of Kadar | Garry Kilworth | 1,978 | The Night of Kadar tells the story of a crew of interplanetary colonists. On their approach to a distant planet, while these human space voyagers were still in a state of suspended animation, an alien life force enters the ship. It investigates and interferes with the minds of the sleeping humans, and also subtly disrupts some of the on-board systems. Upon landing on the planet, the crew experiences confusion and disorientation. Certain elements of the colonization party are missing, and there is no sign of their spacecraft. Eventually one man, Osman, reluctantly takes a position of leadership. He organizes the setup of the colony and the exploration of the world, although he has only a fragment of the manpower and equipment originally assigned to the mission. An interesting distinction of this novel is in the religion of the crew: they are Moslems. Although they start out as rather secular people, Osman has them build a mosque, encouraging them to adhere to their religious principles. Throughout the novel, a sense of lost heritage and memory continues to gnaw at the colonists, if only in a vague, unsettling way. By embracing their religion, they gain a measure of solace. Although Islam is a relatively minor aspect of Kadar, it does make the novel stand out from the run-of-the-mill science fiction of the 1970s, anticipating by several decades the West's newfound interest in Islam. As they build a settlement and begin a new life, the colonists meet a variety of native life forms. At first, the creatures seem harmless, almost comical. Soon, however, some enormous, beetle-like creatures do pose a threat. The colonists also have occasional run-ins with a strange, glowing orb that appears and disappears without warning. Eventually, after a series of travels and adventures, the colonists discover a tribe of fierce, brutish humans. These savages vastly outnumber Osman's people, and eventually overwhelm them. At the end of the novel, Osman and his men learn the awful truth: their assailants are actually the crew of the missing spacecraft. These unfortunates have lost all knowledge of modern technology, and know no better than to turn broken bits of equipment into primitive weapons for slaughter. In the end, the reader learns that all of the tribulations of Osman and his people were machinations of an alien life force. The same being that had disrupted the minds of the crew in the first place has been operating the glowing orb as a kind of mobile, remote monitor. The orb serves to provide an entertaining spectacle to the formless alien that controls it from a location far from the planet where the action takes place. Thus, the novel's conclusion might be considered a deus ex machina. All human striving turns out to be nothing but a puppet show for superior beings, our very existence absurd. |
The Coma | Alex Garland | null | While traveling home on an underground train, Carl is forced to defend a young girl from the harassment of a group of men. For his efforts, Carl is violently attacked and falls into a coma. When he awakes, he quickly discovers that his seemingly normal world is very peculiar. |
Fourth Mansions | R. A. Lafferty | 1,969 | Fourth Mansions was inspired by Teresa of Ávila's Interior Castle, and contains quotations from the book, which quotations Lafferty uses as chapter headings. The Interior Castle is a metaphor for an individual's soul; its different rooms, different states of the soul. In the middle of the Castle the soul is in the purest state, which equals Heaven. Lafferty uses more complex symbols in telling a many-sided tale of an individual's reaching towards Heaven or Truth. The novel concerns a time of great change, when four forces - in the form of secret societies - contend to control the next phase of humanity's history. In the middle is Fred Foley, an innocent reporter. One of these forces intends to unleash a deadly virus on the USA, the others attempt to stop them. A revolution by Mexican migrants, the craft of "mind weaving" and a strange group of "Patricks", all apparently tramps but with great resources, appear in the center of a narrative. |
Big Apple Take Down | null | 2,006 | The story begins in December 2001. WWE Chairman Vince McMahon meets with old aide Phil Thomson, a government official. Thomson proposes to Vince the creation of a covert group consisting of McMahon's most refined wrestlers, knowing their exaggerated, constantly touring lifestyle will provide excellent cover. McMahon accepts the deal, and recruits John Cena, Triple H, Dave Batista, Chavo Guerrero, Torrie Wilson, and finally himself as leader. By March 2006, the team has formed a tight unit, and is given its latest assignment, to break into a methyl-amphetamine development lab that is financially supporting terrorists in the European regions. When one of their own is taken prisoner, the wrestlers must stage a rescue which could endanger their careers and their lives. |
Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars | Daniel Pinkwater | 1,979 | The story is about a portly kid named Leonard Neeble moving from his old neighborhood to West Kangaroo Park, Hogboro. There Leonard goes to a new school, Bat Masterson Junior High. He suffers greatly at the hands of the other kids, even the other nerds, until one day a new student appears in his class: a boy named Alan Mendelsohn, recently relocated from The Bronx. They are soon friends. Leonard's torment results in his grades falling off. The school counselor refers him to a child psychologist, Dr. Prince. With Dr. Prince, Leonard takes up smoking cigars. While well-meaning, his hit and miss methods eventually enable Leonard to get him to give him a week off from school. He spends this time with Alan, who has been suspended after he tells students that he is a Martian, touching off a riot. Together they take a trip to Hogboro where the two meet Samuel Klugarsh, owner of an occult bookstore, who claims to have developed a course of psychic training called "Klugarsh Mind Control." Samuel Klugarsh sells the two friends a kit for learning how to produce "Ω (Omega) waves," a type of brain waves supposedly generated when one meditates one's way into the mental state known as "State Twenty-Six." Leonard and Alan soon learn how to go into State Twenty-Six, but all they can make others do is take off their hats and rub their bellies and sometimes dance. The friends get tired of mind-control and go back to Samuel Klugarsh's store for a refund. Instead of what the two wanted, Samuel Klugarsh lets Leonard and Alan trade in their mind-control set for a course in "Hyperstellar Archaeology," the study of lost civilizations such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Waka Waka, along with a copy of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Alan and Leonard are skeptical of the course's wild claims and predictions until they unexpectedly find a prediction in the text mentioning them both by name. They start to take the book more seriously, and when they follow its directions for interpreting Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary, they get better results with their telekinesis and mind control experiments. Later, the two boys run into Samuel Klugarsh at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlor, and their conversation is overheard by a biker who happens to be Clarence Yojimbo, the (Venusian) author of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary. Clarence is passing through town with his biker-gang of folk singers, and he sets them straight on the real secret purpose of Yojimbo's Japanese-English Dictionary: when decoded with the proper key, it is an instruction manual for travelling among different planes of existence. The two learn how to do this and go to Waka-Waka. There they discover that the fleegix-obsessed people of Waka-Waka are being ruled by three cruel Nafsulians: Manny, Moe and Jack who pretend to be a deadly invisible monster, the Wozzle. Alan Mendelsohn and Leonard Neeble are able to expose the three Nafsulians and make them take off their hats and rub their bellies, which just happens to be the Nafsulian gesture of submission. They cannot take back the gesture so they have to relinquish control of Waka-Waka. While in Waka-Waka Leonard learns that Alan really is a Martian. In the Waka-Waka plane of existence Martians travel to and from the Earth plane so Alan is able to let Rolzup, the Martian High Commissioner, know that his family is stranded on Earth and arrange for them to be taken back to Mars. Alan and Leonard then go back to West Kangaroo Park where Alan is picked up by a spaceship. Leonard, after recovering from the shock of losing his best friend, begins to follow in Alan's footsteps by studying independently, showing up the teachers during classes, and participating in an alternative gym class where they play chess or do yoga. Leonard eventually decides to throw a party at the Bermuda Triangle Chili Parlour. He meets Samuel Klugarsh there and Klugarsh gives Leonard a letter from Alan Mendelsohn. Alan says that Leonard can come visit him in "the Bronx, if you know what I mean," for the summer. |
Wren to the Rescue | Sherwood Smith | 1,990 | Wren to the Rescue tells the story of an orphan girl who learns her best friend and purportedly fellow-orphan Tess, is in fact Teresa Rhisadel, princess and sole heiress of the neighbouring country of Meldrith. Tess proceeds to reveal her reason for remaining in hiding these many years: a curse. Namely, that of Andreus self-styled king of the nearby and ever-menacing nation of Senna Lirwan. In hopes that after twelve years Andreus has lost interest in his threat of revenge, and out of their ceaseless desire to be reunited with their daughter, Tess’s regal parents have sought her return home to Cantirmoor, capital of Meldrith, and have given Tess permission to invite Wren to accompany her. The plan backfires, however; when the girls are resting in Cantirmoor, the subterfuge of a Lirwani agent succeeds in abducting Tess. In the ensuing confusion, Wren is largely forgotten by the Cantirmoor officials. In frustration and wanting to help Tess, Wren slips away to the Cantirmoor Magic School, which already had been a waypoint of the trip to the palace from the orphanage. There Wren meets a magic prentice, Tyron, whose own plan to rescue Tess she joins. The pair rides to the Free Vale, a magically-protected Free Haven located south of Cantirmoor. Tyron intends to seek the aid of Idres Rhiscarlan, an inhabitant of the Free Vale, to rescue Tess. Idres’ reluctance due to past animosities between her and Tess’ father prevails, however, and the most she aids them is to discuss an approach to Andreus’ mountain-encircled land. At the next major stop on their journey of rescue, Horth Falls Town, Wren and Tyron encounter another prominent sympathizer to the Princess’ plight, Connor Shaltar, also technically a prince of another land, whose provisions breath new hope into the mission. The international scope of the conflict becomes clear as debate over a retaliatory invasion against Senna Lirwan heightens in Cantirmoor, ad interim Wren’s rescue party faces an escalating variety of threats as they make their way into, in to, and through, the border mountains. Once on the Lirwani side, some transmogrification (conferred in the rear dust-jacket text in most editions of the print volume of the story) is the only thing which saves Wren from the ambush-laden land’s defenses. This magical intervention proves to be provided by an unexpected ally, whose previous rescue of the rescuers went anonymous. Her compatriots being overrun and captured by the intensifying security measures on the planes of Andreus’ blighted land, Wren is able narrowly to escape, still being in animal form herself. Wren defies the directive of hastening home to be restored human before her mind is lost forever, instead electing to expand her rescue mission to include all of her friends now bound in the highest tower of Edrann. Through a daring combination of skilful infiltration on the part of Wren, and the ingenuity and magic ability of her friends, all six foreign detainees win free, though Wren’s dignity at the following feast in their honor leaves something to be desired. What shall happen next remains indefinite as this volume comes to a close, with two of the planet’s most prestigious magicians setting off on their own mission to bring Andreus’ educator to justice, while the former’s position in control of Senna Lirwan remains all-too-secure. |
First Person Plural: My Life As a Multiple | null | 1,999 | West recovers memories of early childhood sexual abuse and is diagnosed with DID as an adult. The book chronicles the first few years of his struggle to accept and heal from his disorder. West describes a system of 24 different personalities that emerge one by one. The presence of personalities is tied to flashbacks West experiences in which he is molested by his mother and grandmother as well as one or more unidentified male perpetrators. Alters emerge who either hold memories of West's abuse, carry the pain of the experience, or protect West's psyche in one way or another. One personality, named Switch, physically injures West's body in an effort to release pain. Unlike the classic "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason), West experiences co-consciousness and doesn't have fugue states. Throughout his long journey to acceptance, West undergoes intensive therapy, and through hospitalizations in DID-centered programs, meets many people who share his condition. His wife Rikki's constant support as well as his love for her and his son motivate West to accept his abuse and begin to heal from the damage it did to his psyche. One chapter, written entirely from Rikki's point of view, depicts her attempts to understand. In the final pages, West allows himself to be videotaped as his alters emerge and speak. After viewing this tape, West begins to fully realize and accept the exact nature of his condition and his denial begins to abate. West pursues the study of psychology and is awarded a Ph.D.. |
Conan the Destroyer | Robert Jordan | null | Princess Taramis of Shadizar promises to bring Conan's lost love Valeria back to life if the Cimmerian will procure two magical items that she hopes will gain her ultimate power, a wizard's gem and a horn that can awaken the dreaming god Dagoth. He undertakes the quest together with his thief partner Malak and Taramis' niece Jehnna and henchman Bombaata. On their journey they are joined by two additional allies whom Conan saves from dire fates; the magician Akiro and the female warrior Zula. At their goal, the castle of the wizard Amon-Rama, Jehnna is kidnapped. Thanks to Akiro's magic she is located in Amon-Rama's lair and a way in is discovered. Inside, Conan is separated from the others and forced to battle a Man-Ape in a hall of mirrors, which he is only able to defeat by destroying the mirrors. He also mortally wounds the wizard, who is hiding behind one of them. Jehnna, who is the only person who can safely handle the wizard's gem, retrieves the first magical item. Afterwards the group beats off an attack by Corinthian soldiers, and continues on to the fortress that holds the horn. It is retrieved at the cost of a battle with its Dagoth-worshipping keepers, whose leader Akiro defeats in a sorcerous duel. Bombaata and Jehnna escape through a tunnel, which the former closes to the others by starting a landslide. Back at Taramis' palace, the queen conducts a ritual to awaken Dagoth that entails the placing of the horn on the forehead of the sleeping deity, and ultimately the sacrifice of Jehnna. Conan, Akiro and Zula, having survived the landslide, interrupt the proceedings. Conan fights and defeats Bombaata while Zula rescues Jehnna. In the absence of the sacrifice, Dagoth is an uncontrollable monster on his revival, eating Taramis and threatening the destruction of everything else. On the advice of Akiro, Conan rips the horn from Dagoth's forehead, and the creature finally falls. In the aftermath, Jehnna succeeds to the throne of Shadazar and takes Zula, Akiro, and Malak as advisors. She offers Conan her hand and a place at her side as king, but the Cimmerian prefers to win his own kingdom. |
Power | null | null | In the story, a 12-year-old boy from New York named Daniel Chang wakes one night to what he thinks is a clap of thunder, only to discover some days later he is possessed of superhuman abilities of nearly god-like proportions. He and his best friend, Paulie, are then sought out by a survived branch of The Knights Templar and befriended by another host of The Power, an old man known only as Voice. Power is an 80-chapter paperback and also exists as a full-length screenplay. |
Bloodthirst | Jeanne Kalogridis | 1,987 | The Enterprise is called to a remote bio-research lab on planet Tanis to answer a distress call, finding only a single survivor upon arrival. The survivor, Dr. Adams, is uncooperative in discussing the details of the research on Tanis, or how the other members of the research team died. Eventually, it is revealed that Tanis was an illegal biological warfare lab, run by a secret faction within Starfleet. The story also focuses on a security officer, Stanger, who becomes infected after an attack by Dr. Adams. |
Wonder of the Worlds | null | 2,005 | In the first installment, Wonder of the Worlds, Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Houdini pursue Martian agents who have stolen a powerful crystal from Tesla at the historically pivotal 1893 Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Along for the ride aboard Tesla's airship are other historical figures, reporters Lillie West and George Ade, as well as Kolman Czito, Tesla's assistant. On the journey to the Red Planet, the adventurers are treated to a hidden history of conflict between the Earth and Mars, as well as Tesla's stunning knowledge of geophysics of the two planets. Upon arrival on Mars, the team pursues the crystal deep into the underground civilization ruled by Kel, the mad emperor determined to subjugate Earth with the power of the crystal. |
Netochka Nezvanova | Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 1,849 | The story is about the sorrowful life of a young girl living in extreme poverty in Saint Petersburg, who ends up an orphan and is adopted by a wealthy upper-class family. When she meets her new stepsister, Katya, she instantly becomes infatuated with her and the two soon become inseparable. However, one day Katya is forced to leave to Moscow with her parents, and for the next eight years Netochka lives with Katya's older sister, who becomes her new mother figure. The story ends abruptly before the two girls reunite. |
The Warriors | Sol Yurick | null | The novel begins with a quote from the Anabasis. Throughout the novel, the character Junior reads a comic book version of the story. It is the evening of July 4. Ismael Rivera, leader of the Delancey Thrones, the largest gang in New York City, calls a grand assembly of street gangs to the Bronx. Gangs from all over the city, signaled by a Beatles song on the radio, head to the meeting place at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. As per instructions, none of them carries weapons, except for a handgun – a peace-offering to Ismael. Among the gangs are the Coney Island Dominators, a black (Afro American) / Hispanic gang who are the central characters of the novel. The Dominators are Papa Arnold, the leader, Hector, second-in-command, Lunkface, the strongest and most dangerous member, Bimbo, the advisor, Hinton, the gang's artist and central character of the novel, Dewey, the most level-headed member and The Junior, the youngest of the group and the gang's mascot. At the meeting, Ismael announces his plan, with other Thrones relaying the message to the ones in back who cannot hear. He proposes a grand truce designed to challenge 'The Man', society otherwise called the 'Others'. After a stirring speech, the assembly dissolves into chaos as several dissident gangs begin fighting. When the police arrive, having been tipped off about a big "rumble", many gangs believing Ismael has set them up, turn their peace-offering handgun on Ismael killing him. When Arnold disappears amidst the rage of Ismael's gang members, it is up to Hector the new leader of the Coney Island Dominators, to lead the remaining delegates from the Bronx back to Coney Island, passing through enemy ridden gang turfs. When Hinton suggests removing their gang insignia - Mercedes symbols stolen off cars and converted into stick-pins from shop class at school which the gang wears on their hats - he is severely chastised. As Hinton is more familiar with the neighborhood, having lived there before, he is given the task of leading the gang out of Woodlawn Cemetery where they have escaped the cops in the chaos. The gang decides to call Wallie, the youth board worker assigned to their case, to come and drive them home. While waiting for him to arrive, the gang gets restless and jumps the subway. After a while, the train is stopped due to track work and the gang must take a different route. En route to the other subway station, the gang encounters the Borinquen Blazers, a Puerto Rican immigrant gang. Hector meets the leader to parley for safe passage and all goes well until a girl, one of the Blazers’ debs, desires one of the Dominators’ insignia pins. When they refuse, the girl chastises the Blazers’ leader, challenging his manhood. The leader then demands that the Dominators remove their pins in exchange for safe passage. Things escalate into an argument with the Dominators heading off to their destination and the Blazers not retaliating because their reinforcements have not arrived. Angry, Hector riles up the gang into a violent mood, deciding to spite the Blazers by going through their turf as a “war party” – an act performed by a gang ritual of changing the positions of the cigarettes in their hat brims. The Dominators realize they’re being tailed by the deb and a scout from the Blazers. They ambush them taking away the scout’s switchblade, then chase him off. Lunkface convinces the girl to stick around on the promise of a pin and a rank (of “sister”) in the gang. The Dominators then encounter an individual and start a fight, the girl cheering them on while they take turns stabbing the man with the stolen blade. The Dominators turn on the girl and gang-rape her, abandoning her in the street as they rush off to the subway. Throughout the novel, the gang play games of ‘manhood’, either to relieve boredom or to settle disputes: waiting for the train, the Dominators have a contest as to who can urinate the farthest. Later, on the train, Hector passes out pieces of candy bars he has bought to the gang. When they start teasing Lunkface with a piece that’s fallen on the floor, he gets so angry he quits the gang right there. Hector eases the situation by selecting a member for punishment – Hinton – and Lunkface "insults” him by puffing on Hinton’s “war cigarette”. Then Hector holds another “manhood” game involving the gang sticking their heads out the train window until it passes into the subway tunnel. Hinton wins, nearly killing himself in the process. Arriving at the 96th Street and Broadway station, the Dominators encounter a transit cop eyeing them suspiciously. Aware that the police are trying to round up all the gangs in the city, and that they are still holding the knife they used to stab the (possibly) dead man, The Dominators evade the transit cop by jumping off the train just as he boards, but more police show up and they flee: Hinton jumping onto the tracks into the subway tunnel, Dewey and Junior jumping an uptown train and Hector, Lunkface, and Bimbo running out of the station. Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo run into Riverside Park. Now, without the other gang members to see them, the trio removes their insignia pins so to avoid arrest. They encounter a large, fat, alcoholic nurse sitting on a bench and Lunkface takes an interest in her. The woman is only interested in Hector, referring to Lunkface and Bimbo as “niggers”. Hector lures her to a secluded spot where they jump her and she accepts them willingly. When Bimbo starts rifling through her purse, she reacts angrily. When Lunkface, frustrated, hits her to keep her still, the woman retaliates with unexpected strength and starts screaming “Rape!” The trio, unable to overpower her, flee but are promptly caught by the police. Hinton, inside the subway tunnel takes time for reflection. Feeling like an outsider and resenting the gang, he unleashes his contempt by writing on the wall, putting the gang down. Feeling guilty, he rubs out his insults and replaces them with the gang “tag” (he has been doing this throughout the novel). Hinton arrives at Times Square station, the meeting place. While waiting for the gang he enters a public bathroom and has sex with a prostitute, shakes off a homosexual and a young junkie offering sexual favors for money, travels back and forth on the shuttle to Grand Central and overcome with an inexplicable hunger, eats incessantly. When he comes to an arcade, he plays a shootout game with a dummy sheriff, winning twice, reflecting his resentment of authority. Before he knows it, he has achieved everything he usually does with the gang, and wonders why he needs them. Dewey and Junior meet up with Hinton and the trio head off to complete their journey. Although Dewey outranks Hinton, Hinton takes over the role of leader as he has an unexpected knack for the job. A pair of jocks, returning home from their senior prom with their dates, eye the trio challengingly but Hinton doesn’t back down, feeling a sense of moral victory as he does and the jocks depart. Hinton, Dewey and Junior finally arrive in Coney Island. After a brief moment of celebration, Hinton, all riled up with anger and the sense of victory, impulsively calls out a rumble against the Lords, the rival gang to the Dominators. Rushing to the Lords’ regular hangout, Hinton calls them out. They don’t respond and Hinton celebrates this victory by drawing a huge mural on the hangout wall, insulting the Lords and celebrating the Dominators. The trio then venture back to where the Dominators’ debs have been waiting, Hinton regretfully telling the girlfriends of Hector, Lunkface and Bimbo that they didn’t make it back. Papa Arnold’s girlfriend mentions that Arnold made it home hours ago and Dewey and Junior walk off with their girlfriends. Hinton, not having a girlfriend, goes home. There his mother, Minnie, is in the midst of sex with her boyfriend, Norbert. Hinton tends to the baby who was being neglected, then talks with his older half-brother Alonso about life in general and the future. Hinton crawls out onto the fire escape and falls asleep, his thumb in his mouth. |
Birth of the Firebringer Trilogy | Meredith Ann Pierce | null | ISBN 0-14-250053-4 Although his father is the prince of the unicorns, Jan worries that he isn't worthy of his prophesied destiny and that he can't live up to his father's legacy. When he follows the warrior unicorns on their pilgrimage, he accidentally leads his friend Dagg and a warrior named Tek through a series of dangers, culminating in a battle with a deadly wyvern, the hated enemy of the unicorns. ISBN 0-316-70744-9 Jan and Tek, finally adults in the eyes of the herd, pledge their love only to have their blossoming relationship interrupted by a vicious attack. Jan is swept by the ocean to a foreign land while Tek, pregnant with their offspring, flees from Jan's father to the protection of her hermit mother. Trapped in a human city by a population that believe him to be a god, Jan struggles to regain his memories. With the help of Ryhenna, a plain horse rather than a unicorn, he escapes back to the sea. As he tries to find his way back to his herd, Jan begins to understand his role as the new prince. ISBN 0-14-250074-7 Jan and Tek confront their past while their children, gifted with foresight, help them prepare the unicorns for realizing their destiny. When his father goes mad and flees from the herd, Jan crosses through the plains of the renegade unicorns, a parched desert, and finally into the realm of dragons, where he is shown the history of the terrible wyverns. |
The Sea Fairies | L. Frank Baum | null | Mayre Griffiths, nicknamed Trot, or sometimes Tiny Trot, is a little girl who lives on the coast of southern California. Her father is the captain of a sailing schooner, and her constant companion is Cap'n Bill Weedles, a retired sailor with a wooden leg. (Cap'n Bill had been Trot's father's skipper, and Charlie Griffiths had been his mate, before the accident that took the older man's leg.) Trot and Cap'n Bill spend many of their days roaming the beaches near home, or rowing and sailing along the coast. One day, Trot wishes that she could see a mermaid; her wish is overheard, and granted the next day. The mermaids explain to Trot, and the distressed Cap'n Bill, that they are benevolent fairies; when they offer Trot a chance to pay a visit to their land in mermaid form, Trot is enthusiastic, and Bill is too loyal to let her go off without him. So begins their sojourn among the sea fairies. They see amazing sights in the land of Queen Aquarine and King Anko (including an octopus who is mortified to learn that he's the symbol of the Standard Oil Company). They also encounter a villain called Zog the Magician, a monstrous hybrid of man, animal, and fish. Zog and his sea devils capture them and hold them prisoner. The two protagonists discover that many sailors thought to have been drowned have actually been captured and enslaved by Zog. Trot and Cap'n Bill survive Zog's challenges, and the villain is eventually defeated by the forces of good. Trot and Cap'n Bill are returned to human form, safe and dry after their undersea adventure. As many readers and critics have observed, Baum's Oz in particular and his fantasy novels in general are dominated by puissant and virtuous female figures; the archetype of the father-figure plays little role in Baum's fantasy world. The Sea Fairies is a lonely exception to this overall trend: "The sea serpent King Anko...is the closest approximation to a powerful, benevolent father figure in Baum's fantasies." |
Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood | Ann Brashares | 2,007 | Lena is taking an extra painting class in the summer at RISD and becomes interested in the anonymous painter who comes in late on the first day. She soon discovers that it is Leonardo (Leo), one of the most acclaimed artists at the college, and she is tempted to look at his progress on his painting. She is overcome by his skill level. Leo sees her examining his work and they cultivate a friendship. Leo invites Lena over to his house for dinner, where she meets his mother, a professional artist. His mother suggests that Lena and Leo pose for each other's figure paintings, leaving Lena flustered, although she still agrees. However, due to her extreme shyness and strict upbringing, she is uncomfortable painting Leo in the nude and is unable to draw him the way she wants to. Leo, however, sees extreme beauty in Lena's body, kissing her after their first session. He asks her to pose for another one. Lena's feelings for Leo grow. However, shortly following the session, Kostos appears at her dorm room. He tells her that he divorced his wife after she apparently lied to him about being pregnant with their child. Lena, is at first in shock by Kostos's sudden appearance, but later becomes angry and yells at Kostos for coming back and expecting her to be waiting for him after he abandoned her. When she goes to apologize the next day, Kostos has already left. Lena poses for Leo, and after he kisses her, they make love. After, she goes to her apartment and cries, realizing that she never had feelings for Leo the way she had for Kostos. Later, while in Greece, she meets up with Kostos, who admits that he had gone to the US planning to propose to Lena, and never thought she might say no. Lena apologizes for her actions at her dorm and cries in his arms, and the two of them agree that they may never fall in love with anyone else. They kiss and part ways, but not before Kostos says one word in Greek to Lena, meaning "someday", which indicates that their relationship may not be over for good. Tibby is staying in NYU over the summer to work and take a script-writing class. Early in the summer, her long-term boyfriend, Brian, visits and tells her that he has successfully transferred to her college and will join her in the fall. Tibby is overjoyed, both with Brian's news and their relationship in general, and her happiness is so extreme that she begins to worry that it will not last. Later that evening, the two drink to celebrate, and they get moderately drunk and make love for the first time. At first, Tibby is content with their actions, but this quickly changes when she has a pregnancy scare. She begins to have doubts about her relationship with Brian, and these persist even after she realizes she is not pregnant; this leads to her breaking up with Brian. However, she begins to second-guess her actions when Brian tells her that he will not be transferring to her school- the realization that Brian truly accepts their break-up shakes her. She becomes even more upset when Effie, Lena's younger sister, meets Tibby to ask her if she would mind it if Effie and Brian dated. Tibby lies and says that she would not be bothered. Later in the summer, Tibby realizes that she allowed her fear over the pregnancy to darken her relationship and her feelings for Brian. She tells him that she is sorry and that she still cares for him, and he returns the sentiment. They soon resume their slightly modified relationship. Bridget is upset to learn that her boyfriend, Eric, has taken a job as a coach at a summer camp in Mexico. She doesn't want to spend the summer at home, wishing to avoid both missing Eric and her family; following her mother's death, both her father and brother became very withdrawn and antisocial. She impulsively signs up to take a trip to Turkey to work on an archaeological dig with some of her classmates. Once in Turkey, Bridget finds that she loves the work, especially painstakingly unearthing a floor in a room discovered by the archaeological team. Equally enthusiastic is Peter, a handsome young professor. They both find themselves equally attracted to each other, and on Peter's thirtieth birthday, they kiss. Peter reveals that he wants it to turn into something more, but instead, they part ways for the night. The next day, Peter's wife and kids visit and Bridget, seeing his family in person, becomes disgusted with herself. She realizes that she almost ruined what she longs for most: a family. Upon returning home, she attempts to get closer to her father and brother. Eric visits her at her house and her family, while clearly uncomfortable in social situations, tries to get to know him for Bridget's sake. Later that evening, Eric tells Bridget how much he missed her, and she realizes that she missed him as well. Eric stays the night at her house, and they make love. After Eric leaves the next morning, Bridget finds some boxes in the basement filled with carefully organized and preserved mementos of her mother and her younger self. It becomes evident to Bridget that despite her father's coldness, the work he put into the boxes shows that he truly cares about her. She realizes that, despite their limitations, her family does have something to offer her. Carmen, after a year of social transparency at her new college and a self-proclaimed loss of identity, has maintained only one new friendship--Julia, the resident Drama Diva of the freshman year at Williams, and one of the few freshman widely known in the social standings. Julia is glamorous, sophisticated, exuberant, and popular—the very antithesis of the new Carmen. Julia invites Carmen to work on the sets of the school play, and later on convinces Carmen to attend a summer drama program with her. Julia hopes to win a starring role, whereas Carmen just wants to build sets. However, after having been talked into auditioning for a part in one of the plays performed, Carmen outshines all the other camp attendants and lands the coveted role in the largest of the performed plays (that of Perdita in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale). Julia, meanwhile, gets only a small role in the community play. She grows immensely jealous of Carmen, who begins to make new friends and regain her confidence in herself. Julia's happiness only returns when Carmen begins to struggle with her acting, and Carmen realizes that Julia enjoys Carmen's misery and feelings of unworthiness, as they make Julia feel better by comparison. At the end of the summer, Carmen performs wonderfully in the play and regains her identity, and ends her friendship with Julia. At the end of the summer, Effie, depressed at the loss of Brian to his original love, runs off to spend a week in Oia, Greece with her grandmother. She impulsively takes the Traveling Pants with her in order to get back at Tibby (for getting back together with Brian) and Lena (for always choosing her friends over her sister). She accidentally loses the Pants so she calls Lena, and when the other girls find out, they all travel to Greece to try to find them. It is here that Lena patches things up with Kostos and finds out everything was a mistake. Despite days of searching, the girls do not find the Pants. However, they enjoy spending time together, realizing that they haven't all been together in a year. They went to the ocean and saw a colour in the ocean from something, the pants. They also realize that they had begun to rely on the Pants to maintain their connection, rather than trying to maintain it themselves. They vow to always maintain their bond but not to allow it to keep them from moving forward. |
Sons of the Oak | Dave Wolverton | 2,006 | The book details the life of Fallion and his rise to power. When the Earth King, Gaborn val Orden dies, the nations mobilize to destroy his children, fearing they'll usurp power over the kingdoms. An army quickly arrives, led by the locus Asgaroth. Fallion, his brother, Jaz, and Rhianna, a girl they rescued from monsters called strengi-saats, flee with their mother and the family of Sir Borenson. Asgaroth eventually catches up with them but his host is slain by Fallion's mother, Iome. The exiles board a smuggler's ship and flee the Courts of Tide. Fallion befriends the captain and most of the crew—including a flameweaver they call Smoker. Smoker recognizes Fallion's power, calling him the torch bearer, and begins teaching him how to use his abilities. Eventually Fallion and Jaz are captured by the evil Runelord Shadoath, who is parasitized by the locus of the One True Master of Evil. She tortures them in order to win their loyalty, but they, along with Shadoath's daughter, are rescued by Myrrima and Smoker. Smoker transforms into a fire elemental, destroying the city where the children were being held captive and seriously wounding Shadaoth. Only her numerous endowments of stamina and brawn save her. During this, Rhianna is mistakenly presumed dead and left behind, where she becomes a Dedicate to the sea ape of Shadoath's son. Five years pass, and Fallion and Jaz grow older in the land of Landesfallen. Shadaoth eventually tracks them down, and finds the hidden lair of the Gwardeen, a group of child graak riders. Fallion realizes she is coming and leaves to look for her Dedicates. As she begins her assault on the Gwardeen base, Fallion locates her Dedicate Keep and wounds the sea ape while entering. Among the Dedicates is Rhianna, who he'd supposed dead. As the sea ape dies, she revives. Unable to slaughter so many innocents, Fallion awakens his powers as a flameweaver and Bright One. This destroys several loci residing in the innocent children Shadaoth has taken, including Asgaroth which had possessed Rhianna. When Shadoath realizes what has happened, she tries to flee back to the remnant of the One True World. Fallion follows her there, destroys Shadoath and injures the One True Master of Evil within her. The One True Master of Evil abandons Shadoath and escapes. |
Jaws | Peter Benchley | null | The story is set in Amity, a fictional seaside resort town on Long Island, New York. One night, a young tourist named Chrissie Watkins swims out in the open waters where she is attacked and killed by a great white shark. When her body is found by the police washed up on the beach, it is obvious that she had been attacked by a shark. Police chief Martin Brody orders Amity's beaches closed, but is overruled by mayor Larry Vaughan and the town's selectmen, fearing it would damage the summer tourism on which the town's economy is heavily dependent. With the connivance of Harry Meadows, the editor of the local newspaper, the attack is hushed up. A few days later, the shark kills a young boy and an old man not far from the shore. A local fisherman, Ben Gardner, is sent out to kill the shark, but disappears out on the water. Brody heads out with his loyal deputy Leonard Hendricks and finds Gardner's boat anchored off-shore, empty, and with large bite marks in the side. Hendricks pulls a massive shark's tooth from one of the holes. Blaming himself for these deaths, Brody again moves to close the beaches, and has Meadows investigate the people Vaughan is in business with to find out why the Mayor is so determined to keep the beaches open. Meadows uncovers his links to members of the Mafia, who are pressuring Vaughan to keep them open in order to protect the value of Amity's real estate, into which they had recently invested a great deal of money. Meadows also brings in ichthyologist Matt Hooper from the Woods Hole Institute to advise them on how to deal with the shark. Meanwhile, Brody's wife Ellen is dissatisfied with life and misses the affluent life she left behind when she married Brody and had children. She immediately strikes up a friendship with Hooper, especially after learning that he is the younger brother of a man she dated years before. The two have a brief affair in a motel outside of town. Throughout the rest of the novel, Brody suspects they have had a liaison and is haunted by the thought. With the beaches still open, people begin pouring to the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of the killer shark. Still haunted by the guilt of the previous deaths, Brody sets up patrols on the beach and on the water to watch for the fish. After a boy (dared by his friends to go out into the water, with the promise of ten dollars) narrowly escapes being attacked by the shark close to the shore, Brody finally closes the beaches and hires Quint, a professional shark hunter, to find and kill the fish. Brody, Quint, and Hooper set out on Quint's vessel, the Orca; the trio soon find that they are struggling against each other as well as the shark. Hooper is angered by Quint's methods, which include disemboweling a blue shark they catch and his use of an illegally-fished unborn dolphin for bait. Quint taunts Hooper for refusing to shoot at beer cans with them, which are launched from the Orca at sea with a device similar to a skeet launcher. Brody and Hooper constantly bicker as Brody's suspicions about Hooper's possible affair with Ellen grow stronger. At one point, Brody attempts to strangle Hooper on the dock. Their first two days at sea are unproductive, and they return to port on each night. On the third day, Hooper reveals to Brody and Quint a shark proof cage that he had shipped from Woods Hole. Initially Quint refuses to allow the cage on the boat, suspecting that it will be useless for protection against this particular fish, but he relents when Hooper offers the captain an extra hundred dollars in cash. Once out on the ocean, after several unsuccessful attempts by Quint to harpoon the shark, Hooper goes underwater in the cage to attempt to kill it with a bang stick. He is so taken with the shark that he resolves to first take photos. However, the shark attacks the cage and, after ramming the bars apart, kills him. Brody is dispirited and also realizes that there is no more money to pay Quint to continue the hunt, but Quint no longer cares about his fee; he is now obsessed with killing the shark. Meanwhile, Larry Vaughan arrives at the Brody house before Brody himself returns home and informs Ellen that he and his wife are leaving Amity. Before he leaves, he reveals to Ellen that he always thought they would've made a great couple. When Brody and Quint return the following day, the shark repeatedly rams into the boat, and Quint harpoons it three times. The shark leaps onto the stern of the Orca and the boat starts sinking. Quint plunges another harpoon into it, but as it falls back into the water, his foot gets entangled in the rope, and when the shark drags him under, he drowns. Now floating on a seat cushion, Brody spots the shark swimming towards him and shuts his eyes, preparing for death. The shark gets to within a few feet of him before stopping and succumbing to the wounds inflicted by Quint. It sinks down out of sight, its dead body suspended in the water just beyond the light by the barrels attached to it, and with Quint's body still dangling from it. Using the cushion as a makeshift float, Brody starts to paddle back to shore. |
Roses are Red | James Patterson | 2,005 | Alex Cross returns for the sixth book in the series with a new killer on the loose. A series of meticulously planned bank robberies leave behind a wake of bodies. Alex Cross must not only battle against the sadistic criminal who calls himself The Mastermind, but also the risks that he may be putting his family in. Cross takes a plunge into a case where mind games lead to violence and the slightest mistake will be punished with death. |
Half a Life | V.S. Naipaul | 2,001 | Willie Somerset Chandran is the son of a Brahmin father and a Dalit mother. His father gave him his middle name as a homage to the English writer Somerset Maugham who had visited the father in the temple where the father was living under a vow of silence. Having come to despise his father, Willie leaves India to go to 1950s London to study. There he leads a life as a poor immigrant and later he writes a book of short stories and manages to publish it. Willie receives a letter from Ana, a mixed Portuguese and black African girl, who admires his book, and they arrange to meet. They fall in love and Willie follows her to her country (an unnamed Portuguese colony in Africa, presumably Mozambique). Meanwhile Willie's sister Sarojini marries a German and moves to Berlin. The novel ends with Willie having moved to his sister's place in Berlin after his 18 year stay in Africa. Half a Life is a precursor to Naipaul's 2004 novel Magic Seeds which starts with Willie in Berlin. |
Gender Blender | null | null | One day, Tom, one of the main characters, is playing an early morning baseball game with his friends. However, he doesn't know that one of his classmates -- Jane Hennessey -- is going to play. He desperately tries to strike her out by hitting the ball. It lands towards the Grrlzillas and it rolls under Margaret's skirt. He gets tangled in the skirt and tries to convince the Grrlzillas that he just didn't want to be beat by a girl (which was true). The girls dismiss him as pathetic and go back to school calling him a "skirt perv". The chemistry between him and Emma is now really not good. Later on in the novel, Emma and Tom both try to jump onto the same school trampoline, but they have a serious collision and unknowingly switch bodies and souls. Emma is now Tom, and Tom Emma. The next morning, Emma wakes up with an erection (as she calls it, a "boner"). At first she thought it was a chipmunk in the bed with her. Tom discovers he's having Emma's menstruating period, and he has to wear Emma's bras. Eventually in the end, they have another collision and become themselves again. |
The Book of Evidence | John Banville | 1,989 | Freddie Montgomery is the unreliable narrator who tells his life-story and recounts the events leading up to his arrest for the murder of a servant girl in one of Ireland's "big houses". A cultured but louche Anglo-Irish scientist who has been living abroad for many years, Freddie returns to his ancestral home seeking money after falling foul of a gangster in the Mediterranean. Shocked to discover that his mother has sold the family's collection of paintings, Freddie attempts to recover them. This leads to a tragic series of events culminating in Freddie's killing of a maid while stealing a painting. On the run, he hides out in the house of old family friend, Charlie, a man of some influence, before being arrested and interrogated. The novel ends as Freddie sits in jail and has the first feelings of remorse for the girl's death while casting doubt on the truth of what he has recounted. |
Sky Island | L. Frank Baum | null | Trot is near her home on the coast of southern California when she meets a strange little boy with a large umbrella. Button Bright has been using his family's magic umbrella to take long-range journeys from his Philadelphia home, and has gotten as far as California. After an explanation of how the magic umbrella works, the two children, joined by Cap'n Bill, decide to take a trip to a nearby island; they call it "Sky island," because it looks like it's "halfway in the sky" — but the umbrella takes them to a different place entirely, a literal island in the sky. Sky Island is another split-color country in Baum's fantasy universe, like the Land of Oz or the Island of Yew (in The Enchanted Island of Yew, from 1903). Divided in two halves, blue and pink, Sky Island supports two separate and hostile races of beings. The three travellers land on the blue side of Sky Island, which is a grim country ruled by a sadistic tyrant, the Boolooroo of the Blues. In Sky Island, as in Oz, no one can be killed or suffer pain, but that doesn't mean one is safe: the Boolooroo's method of punishing disobedience in his subjects is to split his victims into halves using a huge guillotine-type knife, and then join the wrong halves back together, creating very unhappy asymmetrical mixed people. This is called "patching." The Boolooroo threatens to do the same to his new visitors; meanwhile he keeps them imprisoned, and gives Trot as a slave to his daughters, the Six Snubnosed Princesses (named Cerulia, Turquoise, Sapphire, Azure, Cobalt, and Indigo). The three protagonists manage to escape from the Blues; penetrating the Great Fog Bank that separates the island's halves and meeting its strange inhabitants, they reach the pink or "sunrise" side of the island. The pink country is a much friendlier and more relaxed place than the blue side, with cheerfully chubby residents. The visitors get a better reception, since they are rather pink in color themselves, albeit of a sadly wan and pale shade. Unfortunately, the laws of the pink country insist that the visitors be thrown off the edge of Sky Island; even the country's ruler, the sylph-like Tourmaline the Poverty Queen, cannot pardon them. Polychrome, however, descends from the rainbow like a deus ex machina to resolve the problem. Trot is promoted to Queen of the Pinkies, because she has the palest skin among them. After Cap'n Bill leads an invasion of the opposite side, Trot becomes "Booloorooess" of the Blues as well; and so she is able to "regulate" both societies into more sensible forms. The three travellers eventually return to their homes, more than a little relieved at their escape from Sky island. The bipartite structure of Sky Island allows Baum to inject ironic and satiric commentary on xenophobia, isolationism, race and color prejudice, social biases, personal vanity, and related issues. The Blues think that their dismal island-half "is the Center of the Universe and the only place anyone would care to live." Their scientists have "proven" that the Earth below, a ball of mud and water, cannot support life. The Snubnosed Princesses think that a snub nose is "the highest mark of female beauty" and "an evidence of high breeding which any lady would be proud to possess." |
Bad Kitty | Michele Jaffe | null | Jasmine Callihan is a 17-year-old girl on vacation in Las Vegas with her family. She is spending her vacation trying to avoid her cousin Alyson and her "Evil Hench Twin" Veronique, get the 'cute guy across the pool', Jack, to notice her, and prove to her father that she is a model daughter. However, as soon as she is attacked by a three-legged cat (Mean and Dangerous Joe, or Mad Joe for short), things go haywireShe is suddenly caught up in a mystery regarding the murder of Len Phillips, and is determined to solve it with her best friends, fashion-wise Polly, crazy and eccentric Roxy, and Tom, sensible and totally in love with Polly.Along the way, she gets to know the 'cute guy across the pool', who may or may not be involved with the murder. It is a typical afternoon by the pool at the Venetian hotel. Jas is feeling listless, frustrated and flat in her green bikini. Her cousin Alyson is being her obnoxious and snotty self. Her overprotective father coos with his twenty-years-younger wife and clearly has no intention of letting Jas follow her dream—a career as a detective—any time soon. The sun is shining, the water is cool. The cat incident leads to Jas's first run-in with hotel security and her introduction to the cat's owner, the eight-year-old son of Fiona Bristol. Fiona is a famous model who was embroiled in scandal a year earlier when her lover was killed and her husband was arrested for the murder. Jas's three best friends sense she needs help and show up to offer insight into the case and fashion advice. When the cute guy at the snack hut turns out to be deeply enmeshed in the case, Jas has to figure out whether he is a friend or a foe. |
Operation Nuke | Martin Caidin | 1,973 | Steve Austin, an astronaut-turned-cyborg working for a secret branch of American intelligence, is set in pursuit of a criminal syndicate using nuclear blackmail to hold the world to ransom. |
High Crystal | Martin Caidin | 1,974 | Steve Austin, an operative for the US government who is part man, part machine, is sent to Peru to investigate a mysterious power source in the ruins of an ancient civilization, but Austin and his team soon discover that a criminal organization also has their sights set on obtaining the power contained within the "High Crystal". |
Cyborg IV | Martin Caidin | 1,975 | In Cyborg IV, Caidin takes the notion of cyborg to new extremes as Steve Austin's consciousness is hooked up to a next generation spacecraft, creating a new form of union between man and machine. Meanwhile, an enemy force plans to use similar technology for their own ends. |
The Ganymede Takeover | Ray Nelson | 1,967 | The novel takes place on a future Earth (vidphones, telepaths, androids, ionocraft are normal) recently conquered by aliens from Ganymede: limbless, worm-like creatures whose physical needs are attended to by a slave-race of specialist 'creeches'. Mekkis is the leader of a Ganymedean faction that opposed the war when his Oracle (a creature capable of precognition) foresaw a 'coming darkness'. The apparent success of the invasion means he is now discredited. As a result, Mekkis is saddled with the troublesome Bale of Tennessee, home to the last remaining core of resistance, the 'Neeg-parts' led by Black Muslim leader Percy X. Unknown to all concerned, another resistance movement operates covertly under cover of the World Psychiatric Association. One of its agents, Doctor Paul Rivers, is seeking to protect Percy X by assassinating his former girlfriend, TV host Joan Hiashi who is collaborating with the Ganymedeans to capture Percy X. Although Joan Hiashi switches sides after discovering that Percy X is a trained telepath who can read her mind, Percy X is still captured thanks to a tracking device planted on her by racist landowner Gus Swenesgard. Mekkis offers Percy X the chance to become the puppet ruler of Tennessee. When the offer is violently declined, Mekkis sends Percy X and Joan to the Norwegian clinic of psychiatric genius Rudolph Balkani, who has had exceptional success turning resistors into enthusiastic collaborators via sensory deprivation therapy. Dr. Rivers manages to free Joan and Percy X, replacing them with androids. On discovering the ruse, Rudolph Balkani commits suicide. This along with a number of other suicides (encouraged by the World Psychiatric Association) lead the Ganymedians to wrongly assume that Balkani has helped the resistance infiltrate their collaborationist regime. Judging their proxy rule of Earth to be impractical, they decide to withdraw from the planet and destroy all life through a device that will block the sun's rays. Meanwhile the Neeg-parts have seized a cache of weapons developed by Rudolph Balkani during the war — machines that turn illusions thought up by their users into reality, and a 'hell-weapon' that was never used against the aliens, as it would destroy humanity as well. After most of his troops desert due to the psychological problems caused by the illusion machines, Percy X is finally defeated by an army of robots created by Gus Swenesgard. Dr. Rivers is sent to kill Percy X, both to prevent his capture and stop him activating the hell-weapon. Mekkis has become obsessed with the theories of Rudolph Balkani. In order to get revenge on his enemies he forms a telepathic link with Percy X that will enable the hell-weapon to destroy those Ganymedians who are not on Earth. After killing Percy X, Rivers is able to switch off the device before humanity is destroyed, but the Ganymedians instinctively form a group mind in times of danger, and so become trapped in a permanent existential and experiential 'hell' within a dark void, unable to contact their creeches for help. The novel ends with the creeches returning to Ganymede to start their own society, and the World Psychiatric Association supporting Gus Swenesgard as a useful puppet ruler until democracy is restored, though Dr. Rivers can't help wondering as to their true motives. it:L'ora dei grandi vermi |
The Stoic | Theodore Dreiser | 1,947 | Cowperwood, still married to his estranged wife Aileen, lives with Berenice. He decides to move to London, England, where he intends to take over and develop the underground railway system. Berenice becomes close to Earl Stane, while Frank has an affair with Lorna Maris, a relative of his. Meanwhile he tries to fix Aileen up with Tollifer, but she becomes enraged when she finds out it was a ruse. Finally, Cowperwood dies of Bright's disease. His inheritance is squandered in lawsuits. Aileen dies shortly after. Berenice travels to India, where she is moved by poverty. Back in the United States, she realises there is poverty there too, and decides to set up a hospital for the poor, as Cowperwood intended. |
The Financier | Theodore Dreiser | 1,912 | In Philadelphia, Frank Cowperwood, whose father is a banker, makes his first money by buying cheap soaps on the market and selling them back with profit to a grocer. Later, he gets a job in Henry Waterman & Company, and leaves it for Tighe & Company. He also marries an affluent widow, in spite of his young age. Over the years, he starts misusing municipal funds with the aid of the City Treasurer. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire redounds to a stock market crash, prompting him to be bankrupt and exposed. Although he attempts to browbeat his way out of being sentenced to jail by intimidating Mr Stener, politicians from the Republican Party use their influence to use him as a scapegoat for their own corrupt practices. Meanwhile, he has an affair with Aileen Butler, a young girl, subsequent to losing faith in his wife. She vows to wait for him after his jail sentence. Her father, Mr Butler dies; she grows apart from her family. Frank divorces his wife. Sometime after being released, he invests in stocks subsequent to the Panic of 1873, and becomes a millionaire again. He decides to move out of Philadelphia and start a new life in the West. |
Pilgermann | Russell Hoban | null | Narrated by the disembodied spirit or consciousness of Pilgermann, a European Jew, the novel opens with the newly castrated Pilgermann having a vision of Christ after being mutilated by a gentile mob for being caught sleeping with a merchant's wife. Christ tells Pilgermann that he must make his way to Jerusalem where he will meet with Sophia. Reluctantly, and in theory with nothing better to do, Pilgermann sets off. As Pilgermann travels across Europe he is joined by other characters, including his own Death which walks alongside him. Life in Europe is seen through a series of grotesque, Brueghel and Bosch-like images of horror, violence, degradation and death. Nevertheless Pilgermann continues, keeping his cool with a mixture of detachment, compassion and irony throughout. Half way across the Mediterranean his boat is ambushed by Pirates who sell him to a Muslim grandee in Antioch in Syria, Bembel Redzuk. Pilgermann and Bembel become friends, although never social equals (as a Jew Pilgermann can only ever be a dhimmi in Muslim society). Pilgermann conceives of, designs and builds an enormous Kabbalistic courtyard and tower with a patterned design on the floor for Bembel which rapidly takes on numinous power among the community, attracting the displeasure of the Islamic authorities. Things come to a head when Frankish Crusaders besiege Antioch. As it becomes increasingly clear that the city will fall, the Islamic authorities become more and more suspicious of non-Muslims and Pilgermann's life becomes increasingly threatened. Finally the city falls and Bembel and Pilgermann are killed fighting a Crusader, but not before Pilgermann has a vision of Jerusalem - which he is never destined to get to - and sees Sophia lying, dying among a pile of corpses after a Crusader massacre. |
The Yearling | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings | 1,938 | Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ory and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods at the end of the 19th Century. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy which makes it difficult for Ma Baxter to bond with Jody. Jody loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother Ory says they only have enough food to feed themselves. A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear, and continue to fight about nearly anything. The Forresters steal the Baxters' pigs and while Penny and Jody are out searching for their stolen pigs, Penny is bitten by a rattlesnake in the arm. Penny shoots a doe to use its liver to draw out the snake's poison. Penny recovers, but the doe leaves behind a fawn. Jody adopts the fawn, whom he names Flag, and it becomes his constant companion. The story revolves around the life of Jody as he grows to adolescence along with the fawn. The plot also centers on the conflicts of the young boy as he struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death (of his childhood companion, Fodder-wing Forrester, due to sickness), and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood. Throughout, the Baxter family is in contrast to their uncouth neighbors the Forresters, and the Baxters' more refined relatives in the village of Volusia. Jody experiences tender moments with his family, his fawn, and their neighbors and relatives. Along with his father, he comes face-to-face with the rough life of a farmer and hunter. As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between his pet Flag and his family. The parents realize that the now-adult Flag is endangering their very survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop which the family is relying on for their food the next winter. Jody's father orders him to take Flag into the woods and shoot him, but Jody cannot bring himself to do it. When his mother shoots the deer and wounds him, Jody is then forced to shoot Flag in the neck himself. In anger at his mother, Jody runs away, only to come face-to-face with the true meaning of hunger, loneliness, and fear. After a failed attempt to run away in a broken-down canoe, he is picked up by a mail ship and dropped off in Volusia. In the end, Jody returns home and assumes his role as the emerging caregiver to his family and their land. |
The Animals of Farthing Wood | Colin Dann | 1,979 | The humans have dug up the heath that surrounds Farthing Wood, and have reduced the size of the wood itself to little more than a copse. When the pond is filled in leaving only a small trickle in the stream due to an ongoing drought, Badger and Fox take it upon themselves to call an Assembly of the wood's inhabitants in order to devise a solution to their problem. Calling all the animals to be at this assembly, which takes place in Badger's burrow, both Badger and Fox hope that one of them comes up with a solution. Unfortunately, as the meeting goes on, they realise that there is little that they can do to stop the humans and are about to break up the meeting when Toad, who had disappeared almost a year ago, arrives. He explains that he had been captured in a jam jar and taken far away. He eventually managed to escape and followed his homing instinct to get back to Farthing Wood. As he travelled, he met a group of frogs that lived in a pond, who told him all about the fact that the pond was located in a nature reserve called White Deer Park. It is then that Toad himself suggest that they should leave Farthing Wood and travel to the reserve in the hope that they will be safe from humans there. All the animals agree to do that journey with Toad as their guide. Tawny Owl also insists that they should choose a leader in order to lead them, to which they choose Fox. Still, the smaller animals do not trust the larger animals, especially Tawny Owl, Kestrel, Adder, Badger and even Fox himself, who are their natural enemies, and refuse to go on a journey with them, knowing that they could be eaten by one of them. In order to solve that problem, Badger insists that they all should take an oath; the Oath of Mutual Protection, in which each animal resolves to put their natural differences and instincts aside in order to help each other. Making all the arrangements needed, on the night after what is left of Farthing Wood is destroyed, the animals set off on their journey with Fox as their leader and Toad as their guide. Problems soon arise due to each animal's different abilities, such as how fast they are or what they eat. Mole is only able to make the journey by piggy-backing on Badger, a source of some guilt to him for which he constantly looks to make amends for. There is also the problem caused by each animal's character: whilst most swiftly learn to trust the carnivores Fox, Badger, Tawny Owl and Kestrel, the herbivores are nervous around the cynical Adder and the loner Weasel - the former taking a malicious delight in tormenting them that he (and to an extent Fox and Badger) cannot be trusted to maintain the Oath ahead of his own self-interest. On that same night, they all cross a housing estate, where they drink from a pool, and later on as the day starts to break, they cross a busy road, taking refuge in some marshland, which is also an army land, where the military are seen practicing. It is also here that the Lizards decide to stay due to finding the journey much too overwhelming, there being little point in continuing when the marshes will suit them. In the end, Fox respects and accepts the Lizards decision, but not without lammenting the fact that the party is not complete anymore. A couple of hours later, the animals are soon forced to flee when a fire, caused by a cigarette stub, occurs. Toad, who ended up in the middle of the fire, is saved by Fox. Mole also gets into mischief when he digs for worms, and ends up being caught by one of the firemen who appeared on the site to try to extinguish the fire; he would be later saved by Kestrel. As the fire starts to get controlled by the humans, a sudden storm helps to extinguish it. Having survived the fire, the animals manage to cross the rest of the army land, and enter in to farm land, where they all hope to be safer. A few days later, it starts to rain and they take shelter in an open barn, but are trapped inside by the farmer who thinks Fox is the fox who has been eating his chickens. While on watch the pheasants are both shot. Trapped inside the barn, Mole decides to dig a tunnel in order to get out of the barn. Digging as fast as he can, he tunnels it and so, all the animals manage to get out of the barn and take shelter in a nearby copse; all except for Adder, who stays behind in order to distract the farmer's dog and so, buy the other animals some time to run. Later that night, Tawny Owl flies over the farm, showing Adder which way he should go. At the copse, the rest of the animals find out that it is inhabitted by some rooks, who welcome them. Feeling refreshed after a few days spent with the rooks in the copse, the animals proceed journey. Leaving the farm land behind them, they soon arrive at a river. Feeling unease about crossing a river, the animals fear that it is too wide for them to cross it. Still, Toad tells them that the river is a little wide, but he assures them that the current is very slow and that crossing it will not be a trouble. Whilst swimming across, the Rabbits panic and Fox, as well as some of the other animals, goes back to help them. After saving the rabbits, Fox is too tired to swim. In order to save Fox, Badger tries to help him, but a mass of debris sweeps them both down the river. Kestrel keeps an eye for the debris, where Fox and Badger are caught in, as the other animals try to follow him. When the debris fall from a waterfall, there is not trace of either Fox or Badger, and the party assumes that they both perished in the incident. But to everyone's amazement, they find out that Badger is alive. Being tangled by the weeds, it takes the combined efforts of Weasel, Toad and the Hares to free him. Kestrel follows Fox downstream, but he disappears under a bridge. With no sign of Fox, Kestrel heads back to where the rest of the animals are, informing them of what happened. The nimals know that they will have to tell Badger the bad news when he wakes up, but none of them wishes to do it. Fox's presumed death presents the largest crisis for the party. Badger - partly weakened by the events at the river in which he almost drowned, takes charge not without some discord from Tawny Owl taking it as read that he and Badger - as the cleverest - should be joint leaders, with Weasel believing that there can be no direct replacement for Fox and they simply have to work as one - "I don't believe Fox ever named a deputy." Badger's leadership is strained when Toad leads them around in a circle (thanks to being half way between Farthing Wood and White Deer Park, confusing his homing instinct), whilst the mice and voles leave the party due to several becoming pregnant - the rest of the party refusing to remain where they are until the babies and mothers are fit to travel. The smaller animals agree that they should stay, while Badger tries to convince them that they should stick together, and that they had to continue the journey, because there was no time for the party to wait until the newborns were old enough to accompany them. This swiftly ends in tragedy when it transpires that they are in the territory of a Red-backed Shrike, or 'Butcher Bird' (which in fact finally became extinct within the UK only a few years after the book was published), who kills all of the mice and voles' babies. Upon seeing the tragedy happening, Weasel remarks that there were a couple of Butcher Birds in Farthing Wood, back in the old days, and the two of them were even more dangerous and vicious than Adder himself. Feeling guilty over not taking Badger's advice in account, the mice and voles rejoin the party, now understanding that they cannot leave the safety of the party until they reach their final destination. But, they are not the only ones who feel guilty for not doing what they were supposed to; Badger also feels guilty, blaming himself for what happened, asking himself what would have Fox done if he was still with them. Unknown to all of the animals, Fox is very much alive and he is on his way to find his friends. It so happens that Fox flots down the river on some driftwood, which soon catches against a small motorboat. Fox is taken down the river and into a lock, where he is seen by several humans so he jumps up onto the land and runs away from the town into the countryside. While on the countryside he meets a horse who tells him that he is walking through hunting country and warns him to get away as soon as possible. As night falls, Fox comes across a large burrow and rests for a while, before waking up to the sight of a vixen, who allows him to continue resting in her burrow. The two foxes go hunting and Fox tells Vixen about his friends and their journey to White Deer Park. Seeing her as the most beautiful creature on Earth, Fox wishes Vixen to be his mate, but she only agrees to accompany him as he looks for his friends, although she tells him she will consider becoming his mate along the way. Gathering information from a barn owl, they discover that the other animals are safe and well, and the two foxes head off in pursuit of them. Along the way the scent becomes divided and the foxes split up to search in both directions. Vixen soon discovers she has taken the wrong route and heads back towards Fox, but she is pursued by a fox hunt and tries to lose them in some woods and becomes trapped. Fox distracts the hunt, attracting them towards him, ending up reunited with the rest of the Farthing Wood animals, who he did not know were hidden in a copse on top of a hill, trying not to be noticed by the Hunt. He blames himself for almost putting them in danger, but none of the animals blames him for it, for they knew that he did not know they were there. Vixen, who starts to climb the hill to join Fox, is almost caught by the Hunt Master, when Adder saves her and the rest of the party by jumping out of the grass, and biting the Hunt Master's horse, causing the Hunt Master to break his arm when flung and cease the hunt. Adder brushes off his actions by saying the horse was about to stand on him, but with there being little doubt he'd specifically prepared an ambush to save Fox and Vixen (and the others in the process), it is the turning point in his relationship with the group. After that, they keep going, until they find a quarry, where they acquire a new member to their party, the droll heron Whistler, who saves Toad's life, after he was almost swallowed by a huge carp. Toad asks Whistler to through it back into the pond, and the heron does so. This shows that all the animals have learned to respect life, through the use of the Oath. Before going on, they all organize a small party, where Vixen and Whistler get to know everyone a little better (with the exception of Adder, who stays up all night looking for the fish that almost swallowed Toad), and where they both take the Oath. The next morning, they arrive to a motorway. Upon seeing it, they all ask Toad (who crossed it when it was still being built, and did not know that it was already finished) if there is another way to get to the other side. Toad tells them that there is not another way, and that the only way he knows to White Deer Park continues after that motorway. Some animals suggest that they should wait for the night to fall in order to cross the motorway, but Fox tells them that even at night the motorway would still have traffic, but mostly because they are not out of fox hunting territory. Decided to cross the motorway, Fox decides that the bigger animals will cross into groups, while Whistler will carry the smaller ones on his beak. All the animals manage to cross, with the exception of the two oldest hedgehogs, who are run over by a truck after becoming scared while crossing the road and curling up. Whistler couldn't carry them as they were too prickly. Adder, who stayed behind in order to make sure that the hunt would not follow the group, arrives to the motorway and Whistler carries him to the other side. A couple of days later, they enter a field of cabbages, and find out that it has been laced with pesticide. Mole, who disappeared once again in order to search for worms, tells them that all of the worms are dead, confirming what Tawny Owl had found out about the pesticide. Toad states that they are getting nearer the reserve, but that they have to keep going in order to avoid the humans. The larger animals and the birds all fly into town and gather food for the smaller animals, as soon as its dark. Taking precautions, they cross the field, where they are photographed by a naturalist, who is astounded by the fact of seeing so many different animals travelling together. At night, they reach a town, which is the last obstacle on the animals' trek. It starts raining and the group decides to find some shelter, hoping that the next day will be better. They find it in a church. Entering in it through a hole in one of the walls, they all fall asleep, behind the church organ. When morning comes, they find out that the hole had been covered by the humans, and that they are now trapped inside. Fortunately, a wedding takes place right that day, and they all manage to get out, after the pandemonium created by the church organist, when it starts playing the organ. Finally, a few hours later, they arrive at White Deer Park, where the White Deer himself welcomes them to the park, having heard from other birds of their journey and all of the dangers that they faced in order to get there. A couple of nights after their arrival, Toad invites the animals to join him in a celebration. They notice that he is quite cheerful (the reason is that he tasted a sip of sherry from a bottle that the park's warden accidentally dropped). Gathering around near the park's warden cabin, who they find out was the same naturalist that photographed him when they were crossing the field of cabbages, they enjoy each other's company, remembering those who started the journey with them, and that did not make it, but also the misadventures that they all shared, stating that they would keep following the Oath, as a remembrance of their journey. |
The Enchanted Island of Yew | L. Frank Baum | null | Sesely, daughter of Baron Merd of Heg, and two companions are enjoying a picnic in the Forest of Lurla when they are accosted by a fairy. The fairy, bored with centuries of insipid fairy life, amazes the girls by pleading to be changed into a mortal. Though the girls are surprised that they might have the power to do such a thing, the fairy explains how it can be done. The girls agree to transform the fairy into a human boy for the space of one year. The newly-minted male is dubbed Prince Marvel, and, furnished with fairy arms and armor and an enchanted horse (a deer transformed), sets out to have adventures. Since Yew is so dominated by robbers and rogues, Prince Marvel doesn't have to travel far to find said adventures. He starts off by confronting and besting the bandits of Wul-Takim, the self-styled King of Thieves. Marvel captures all fifty-nine of the band and is ready to send them to the gallows — but Wul-Takim convinces the naive ex-fairy that the robbers are now honest men, whom it would be unfair to hang. Marvel rescues a prisoner from the robbers, a young man named Nerle, who becomes Marvel's squire-boy. The match is a good one: while Marvel yearns for adventure, Nerle actually longs to suffer pain and deprivation, and often reproaches Marvel for saving him from harm. A greater challenge awaits him in Spor, where he faces the Royal Dragon of King Terribus. The dragon is visually spectacular: {| align=center cellpadding+5px cellspacing=0 border-0 style="background-color:#FFFDD0" |- | "...more than thirty feet in length and covered everywhere with large green scales set with diamonds, making the dragon, whenever it moved, a very glittering spectacle. Its eyes were as big as pie plates, and its mouth — when wide opened — fully as large as a bathtub. Its tail was very long and ended in a golden ball, such as you see on the top of flagstaffs. Its legs, which were as thick as those of an elephant, had scales which were set with rubies and emeralds." |- | | valign=bottom | |} The dragon, however, is far less formidable than it appears: its inner fire was blown out in a gale, and its keepers are out of matches. It can't lash its tail or gnash its teeth, either — because they hurt. In the end, even after getting its fire re-lit, the beast refuses to fight Prince Marvel; it's too much a gentleman. With such opposition, it isn't surprising that Marvel is victorious in Spor as well. He next has a stay in the curious hidden kingdom of Twi. It is a land of perpetual twilight, hence its name. Everything is doubled in Twi, and everyone is a twin. The people even lack a word for "one." The local rulers, the High Ki of Twi (twins like everyone else), are considering the fate of the intruding Marvel, when he places a spell on the twins, dividing them from their united and shared mind into two separate consciousnesses. The results are chaotic, and Marvel has to remedy the mess by re-uniting the twins. Marvel next exposes the pretended magician Kwytoffle (a fraud, like the more famous Wizard of Oz). He meets his sternest test when he confronts the Red Rogue of Dawna; even then, however, his native fairy abilities enable him to emerge victorious. By the end of his mortal year, Marvel has pacified the formerly troublesome inhabitants; the Island of Yew has become civilized. Baum adapted material from the novel into Prince Marvel, a short play for children printed in 1910 in L. Frank Baum's Juvenile Speaker. |
3 NBs of Julian Drew | null | 1,994 | The boy is locked up in the car port, while his father, stepmother, and four siblings live a pleasant life in the house. Julian spends his time writing notes to his deceased mother. After starting at a new school, Julian makes a friend, meets a loving teacher, and finds a job. He slowly starts to write normally, instead of in code. |
Original Stories from Real Life | Mary Wollstonecraft | null | Modelled on Madame de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore (1782) and Tales of the Castle (1785), both of which have frame stories and a series of inset moral tales, Original Stories narrates the re-education of two young girls, fourteen-year-old Mary and twelve-year-old Caroline, by a wise and benevolent maternal figure, Mrs. Mason. (Wollstonecraft probably named these characters after people in her own life. She became acquainted with a Miss Mason while teaching in Newington Green, whom she greatly respected, and she taught two girls named Mary and Caroline while she was a governess for the Kingsborough family in Ireland. Margaret King, who was greatly affected by her governess, saying she "had freed her mind from all superstitions, later adopted "Mrs Mason" as a pseudonym.) After the death of their mother, the girls are sent to live with Mrs. Mason in the country. They are full of faults, such as greediness and vanity, and Mrs. Mason, through stories, real-world demonstrations, and her own example, cures the girls of most of their moral failings and imbues them with a desire to be virtuous. Mrs. Mason's amalgam of tales and teaching excursions dominates the text; although the text emphasizes the girls' moral progress, the reader learns very little about the girls themselves. The work consists largely of personal histories of people known to Mrs. Mason and of moral tales for the edification of Mary and Caroline and the reader. For example, "The History of Charles Townley" illustrates the fatal consequences of procrastination. Mrs. Mason takes the girls to Charles Townley's ruined mansion to tell them the cautionary tale of a "boy of uncommon abilities, and strong feelings"; unfortunately, "he ever permitted those feelings to direct his conduct, without submitting to the direction of reason; I mean, the present emotion governed him ... He always indeed intended to act right in every particular to-morrow; but to-day [sic] he followed the prevailing whim" (emphasis Wollstonecraft's). Charles wants to help those in need, but he is easily distracted by novels and plays. He eventually loses all of his money but his one remaining friend helps him regain his fortune in India. Yet even when this friend needs assistance, Charles cannot act quickly enough and, tragically, his friend is imprisoned and dies and his friend's daughter is forced to marry a rake. When Charles returns to England, he is overcome with guilt. He rescues the daughter from her unhappy marriage, but both she and he have gone slightly insane by the end of the story, she from her marriage and he from guilt. Original Stories is primarily about leaving the imperfections of childhood behind and becoming a rational and charitable adult; it does not romanticize childhood as an innocent and ideal state of being. The inset stories themselves emphasize the balance of reason and emotion required for the girls to become mature, a theme that permeates Wollstonecraft's works, particularly A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. |
Empire | Orson Scott Card | 2,006 | The book opens with Major Malich, a Captain at the time, leading a Special Forces team in a town of some unknown country, presumably somewhere in Iran or Afghanistan, because of the use of Persian. They are attacked and return fire, saving a village with only one civilian casualty and earning Captain Malich a promotion to Major. Major Malich works at the Pentagon, where he writes the plans to find holes in American security, having no idea that they will fall into the wrong hands. The plans call for a stealthy underwater entrance into Washington, D.C., followed by a rocket launcher attack on the White House, relying on an inside informant to give the location of the President. Malich and Coleman come upon the attack in progress, and, after acquiring rifles, attempt to prevent the attack. Although they succeed in killing one of the men holding the launchers, the second fires and hits the south wall of the West Wing, killing the President, Secretary of Defense, and several others. It is later revealed the Vice President had been assassinated by a dump truck backing up into his limousine. Suspicion then turns to Malich, as he had written the plans and was present at the attack. While Malich is being debriefed at the Pentagon, Coleman is asked to participate in a right wing coup to correct the existing government. Coleman recounts the meeting on live television and retreats to Malich's side in New Jersey. The next morning they both decide to take a borrowed SUV to Ground Zero. They are caught in an uprising led by high tech mechs that fire on anyone wearing uniforms. After rescuing a squad of New York Police officers, they escape on foot via the Holland Tunnel to New Jersey where they collaborate with the National Guard to repel a horde of the mechanized warriors. Two Air Force F-16 jets are shot down into New York Harbor, one hitting the gown of the Statue of Liberty. Once back in New Jersey, Malich and Coleman join Malich's wife who used to work for an Idaho congressman who is now, due to the order of succession, President of the United States. Malich's wife is summoned by the new President. He asks for Malich, Coleman and Malich's former Special Forces buddies to help save the United States. Malich is ordered to retrieve his operations report created at the Pentagon. While there, his trusted secretary, DeeNee, betrays him, shooting him in the eye and killing him before his Secret Service escorts could react. Coleman escapes only to be pursued by more mechanized warriors and hover-bikes. They are eventually repelled by Apache gunships dispatched by the President. The new National Security Advisor, Averell Torrent, is one of Malich's former professors. He sends a team including Malich's Special Forces buddies and Coleman out to discover information about the Restoration group responsible for Malich's death and the subversion of the United States of America. Upon finding the Progressive Restoration's lair, the team, led by Coleman, reconnoiter the Washington mountain hideout. They invade and take its leader prisoner. After the defeat of the Progressive Restoration, Torrent is elected in a landslide victory as he was the presidential nominee for both the Democratic and Republican parties. Rather than wait until the next year's inauguration, the current president immediately steps down to let Torrent start his term. Towards the end of the novel, Reuben's wife Cecily begins to suspect Torrent's involvement in instigating the entire conflict in order to ascend to power. She discovers many of the key rebel leaders were taught at some point by him. From the notes Reuben left from his classes with him, she uncovers Torrent's obsession with the transition between the Roman Republic and the Empire, and Torrent's belief that the United States is in the same stage. The book ends with Cecily and Coleman, to whom she reveals her suspicions, wondering whether this is truly the case. No indication is given as to how Torrent will use his power, setting the novel up for a sequel. |
The Immaculate Conception | Gaétan Soucy | 2,006 | The Immaculate Conception has been described as echoing "the writing of Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky" and illuminating the "sublime, the uncanny, and the horrific that burns at the core of ordinary lives". Set in the mid-1920s in the isolated, working-class parish of Nativité in East-end Montreal, the novel chronicles the aftermath of a deadly fire—75 people die when a neighborhood restaurant is burned to the ground by an arsonist. The cast of characters includes a pianist, mortician, bank clerk, a clubfooted school teacher, demonic fire chief, demented lumberjack, and the bank clerk's wheelchair-bound father. Chronicling the "ordinary" lives after the inferno, the story gradually reveals a series of horrific events from the clerk's childhood and ultimately the reader is reminded that some crimes will forever remain secrets. |
Amazons | Don DeLillo | 1,980 | The novel is a fictitious autobiography narrated by Birdwell centering on her experiences as the first woman to play professional hockey in the NHL. It is in some ways similar to DeLillo's second novel, the football-themed End Zone, though more humorous and smaller in scale, replete with social satire and comedy. The story follows Birdwell and her teammates on the New York Rangers, as they travel around North American cities playing games and engaging in sexual adventures. The prose is distinctly and obviously DeLillo's, but as further proof of his authorship, readers cite the appearance of the character Murray Jay Siskind, a sportswriter in the novel, who later appears as the eccentric former sportswriter-turned-"visiting lecturer on American icons" in DeLillo's novel White Noise. |
Strong Medicine | Arthur Hailey | 1,984 | The book begins with two of the chief characters, Celia Jordan and her husband, on a flight home to the US anticipating trouble that the reader is not yet fully in on, involving a certain Senator Donahue. The action then goes back some 40 years to when Celia, unmarried, was a drug sales rep for a Pharmaceutical company and her husband to be, an intern beginning his career at a New Jersey hospital. Andrew Jordan is perplexed with the case of a young woman dying from hepatitis A, not a usually fatal infection, that she acquired on a cheap holiday in Mexico. Celia happens to know that her company is researching a drug that would combat the womans symptoms, and manages to get through the protocols to find some, and as a last desperate measure, the drug is administered and the woman's life is saved. Next morning, She and Andrew Jordan become engaged, largely it appears, on a whim of Celia's. Celia quickly turns out to be someone who knows what she wants and gets it, and we soon learn the story of how she came to be in her present selling position, where she has made a name for herself already by going out of the way to become more knowledgeable about her job, and after one particularly bruising encounter, earn the respect rather than the ridicule of practising doctors. On their honeymoon the two share their various family histories, Andrew's mother and father having separated and left him to the care of an aunt who has sacrificed all she has to get him to where he is, Celia's father having died in the attack on Pearl Harbor. On return from work, Celia is engaged to speak at the annual company conference, and is planning a major assault on what she sees as the lack of training and sharp practice that is rife even among her own company. Her manager Sam Hawthorne strongly advises against any such thing, but when Celia goes ahead anyway and delivers her speech, to not great enthusiasm from her company bosses, she is within a whisker of being fired when Sam intervenes to save her. Shortly afterward she is promoted to a new position and then begins a gradual rise through the company, interspersed with bringing up family and generally turning out to be a woman who is determined to have the best of both worlds at work and at home, and manages to somehow fit it all in. By this time she has two children, Lisa, who appears to inherit much of her organisational sense, and Bruce, a history fanatic. Strains in the Jordan's marriage however, surface on a posting to Ecuador where both acknowledge they have let their standards slip, Andrew having spent many years covering for his Chief at the hospital, who is a closet drug addict, and due to which at least one patient has died in preventable circumstances. Sam Hawthorne is promoted in the course of time to company president, and Celia is promoted behind him. Other characters to become important later include Bill Ingram, a Harvard Business School graduate with a similar no nonsense approach to Celia's. There is a deathbed encounter between Celia and the president who almost fired her, Eli Camperdown, at his home, at which he urges her to always follow her conscience. Years before, Celia had deflected the company away from marketing Thalidomide, and possibly saved them great trouble. Sam meanwhile quickly makes two far reaching decisions, one ultimately to be of great benefit, and the other a total disaster. He has a whim to set up a British based research unit to tap into what he sees as the great pool of British talent for new ideas, and at the same time buys up an abandoned French project for an antiemetic for use in pregnancy. Celia and Sam visit England to look at prospective sites for the unit, and at the same time meet a young Cambridge researcher, Martin Peat Smith, who is researching memory loss and dementia, spurred on by the case of his mother, who no longer knows him. Sam offers Martin the job of head of the British unit, which Martin at first refuses but then Celia is able to persuade him with a bare faced head on assault on his vulnerabilities. Meanwhile back in the US, Celia has serious misgivings about the Montayne project and ends up resigning from the company, recalling Eli Camperdown as she does, whereupon she and Andrew embark on a round the world tour, ending up in Hawaii where Andrew has secretly arranged a visit to her father's ship, with the children, recalling a wish that Celia revealed on her honeymoon many years before. She is recalled to the company amidst the news that Montayne is indeed the danger that she feared, Sam shortly afterward commits suicide, for reasons that Celia only partly understands, that he gave some to his then-pregnant daughter about two years prior; her child, now one, has been destroyed. A deeper secret concerning the licensing of the drug and blackmail of the FDA official responsible, a Dr Mace, remains hidden. Celia takes over as vice president but is effectively running the company. After the suicide of Sam, the board typically refuse to appoint her to the top job. They appoint a pro tem president, who is in post for 6 months before he dies. Celia then becomes president. She now has to get the company back on track, and quickly. Unfortunately, Senator Donaghue, a well known two-faced politician, has ordered a Senate enquiry into Montayne, amidst all the other legal actions that inevitably result. In a heated debate at the Senate, Celia discredits Donaghue publicly against the urging of her legal team(as he had originally been against delaying the release of Montayne, and he is very much in the control of the big-tobacco lobby), earning a brief reprieve but possibly stirring trouble for later on. Back in England, Martin's research project is bearing little fruit, and has already survived one attempt to close it down by the Felding Roth board who are concerned at the expense and lack of progress in a time of severe financial pressure. (Before his death, Celia was sent by Sam to investigate and make a recommendation on the activities of the British Institute, and after a short visit during which she visits the institute and talks to various people, (and she and Martin inevitably make love), she recommends that the project continue). His home life is enriched by a relationship with one of the technicians at the institute, Yvonne, and (in circumstances that she doubtless has great amusement in recounting to Celia when they eventually meet), Yvonne one morning makes a chance remark that triggers a new line of enquiry in Martin and the eventual development of a memory enhancing peptide, that is eventually developed and becomes a great success for Felding Roth, much to the disdain of the head of research Dr Lord. Vincent Lord is an ambitious scientist who rather feels that his talents are always overlooked, and took a very cold attitude to Celia on her rise through the company. The financial rescue of the company, Martin Peat Smith's knighthood and eventual marriage to Yvonne after a separation, Vincent Lord's eventual breakthrough discovery of a free radical quenching drug of unquestionably great promise, follow on, and the company appears to be heading for calmer waters. Trouble strikes though when it turns out that at least some of the research into Lord's discovery, is falsified, and that Lord, rather than expose the fraud, has attempted to cover it up. Ultimately this creates trouble, and inevitably the matter comes to the attention of Dr Mace at the FDA and Senator Donaghue, who sense a chance to exact revenge on Celia and Felding Roth. At this point we are in the know about the opening conversation of the book and the story closes there. fr:Le Destin d'une femme |
Gone-Away Lake | Elizabeth Enright | 1,957 | Gone-Away Lake opens on a train traveling through the countryside of western New York state. Ten-year-old Portia Blake and her six-year-old brother Foster are going to see their favorite cousin, enthusiastic amateur naturalist Julian Jarman. The Jarmans have recently purchased a house in the country. Once there, Portia and Julian spend their days exploring, and one day they discover an abandoned Victorian resort community next to a bog. Elderly siblings Mr. Payton and Mrs. Cheever, the town's only remaining inhabitants, soon become friends with the children, who set up a club in one of the empty houses. Stories of the days when the bog was a lake called Tarrigo are interspersed with the modern-day adventures of Portia and Julian, who at first keep the lake and their new friends a secret. Foster soon discovers the secret and eventually the rest of the Jarman and Blake families also become acquainted with the charms of Gone-Away and its inhabitants. In Return to Gone-Away, a sequel published in 1961, the Blake family buys and restores a house at Gone-Away. |
Batman: The Ultimate Evil | Andrew Vachss | 1,995 | At a party, Bruce Wayne meets Debra Kane, a caseworker with Child Protective Services. He asks to join her while she visits clients. She agrees and shows him the varying degrees of child abuse she encounters in the course of her job. Wanting to understand the factors behind child abuse, Wayne, as Batman, breaks into Hellgate Prison and talks with an informant who points him to a child pornography and prostitution ring. With Wayne showing frustration with these types of crimes, his butler Alfred reveals that Bruce's mother, Martha Wayne, had been secretly investigating a similar child prostitution ring and was assassinated so that her investigation would stop. Picking up where his mother's files left off, Wayne finds a connection to a southeast Asian country named Udon Khai. Using the assumed name Big Jack Hollister, Batman travels to San Francisco to meet a contact who explains how the sex tours to Udon Khai operate. As Hollister, Batman travels to Udon Khai, where he meets Rhama, a local translator hired by Alfred. Rhama shows Hollister life in Udon Khai and how the child sex tour industry has impacted its population. Saying he was sent by Hollister, Batman introduces himself to Rhama. Batman and Rhama confront a man who buys and sells children and they rescue a girl who had been sold by her family. They return the child to her village and find that her father, living in extreme poverty, had sold her so that the rest of the family could survive. The population mistakes Batman for a warrior of legend who would break the barriers that confine the population. Believing this to be their chance for a revolution to overthrow the military dictatorship, a rebel group joins Batman in storming the headquarters of the kingpin who controls the sex tour industry. Though Batman returns to Gotham City, the rebels continue to dismantle sex tour industry and overthrow the dictator of Udon Khai. |
Finding Cassie Crazy | Jaclyn Moriarty | 2,003 | The novel follows the correspondence between students from two rival schools. Cassie Aganovic, Emily Thompson and Lydia Jaackson-Oberman, attend the prestigious, private Ashbury High; Matthew Dunlop, Charlie Taylor, and Sebastian Mantegna ("Seb") attend the public and notoriously rough, Brookfield High. In a special pen-pal program between the schools (previously seen in Feeling Sorry for Celia and set up by Mr. Botherit), Cassie begins to write to Matthew; Emily writes to Charlie; and Lydia exchanges letters with Seb. The letters are initially different degrees of hostile. Emily and Charlie poke fun at each others writing, while Lydia and Seb bicker about whether or not they can trust each other. Matthew however, is much worse. He continuously threatens Cassie (i.e. "I'll break your fingers one by one"), but she responds calmly and tells no one of the abusive letters. Over time, the letters change tones. Charlie and Emily go on "practice dates" to help Charlie date the girl of his dreams, Christina Kratovac (who was the Brookfielder Elizabeth Clarry wrote to in Feeling Sorry For Celia). Lydia and Seb participate in "Secret Assignments" that eventually lead to their forming a close relationship. Cassie and Matthew begin to go down a similar path and plan a meeting after Cassie finally starts getting civil responses from Matthew. However, his sudden kindness is a ploy. He stands her up and then, on a following meeting, proceeds to rip up a letter that she had sent and openly mock her. This is especially hard for Cassie, because her father had recently died of cancer and Cassie had not yet come to terms with his death. This is why she never reported Matthew's initial abusive letters, she had not been feeling like herself and had lost her confidence. When Lydia and Emily find out what Matthew has done, they ask for help from Seb and Charlie to get Matthew back. They soon discover that Matthew is not a real person. They are forced to hatch numerous plots to find who Matthew really is, or if he even exists. By the clever use of glitter in a letter, they discover that Matthew Dunlop's true identity is Paul Wilson, the form captain and star of the school drama club. He is also, coincidentally, the boyfriend of the girl Charlie likes, Christina. The five (Emily, Charlie, Lydia, Seb and an initially reluctant Cassie) work together for revenge. Seb beats Paul up after Paul humorously tells him the story of his deception. Seb is set to be going to an art show the very next morning, and Paul threatens to tell the principal in an attempt to penalize Seb. But just when this is about to happen, Lydia, Emily and Cassie pretend to be casting agents and call Paul, telling him he has a job and needs to come to a certain time and location to get his makeup done (Paul is an aspiring actor) and practice lines for a last-minute filming rehearsal. The girls' prank is successfully pulled off and Paul realizes at the end that it was all an elaborate plan to stop him from telling the school principal. During all this time Emily and Charlie seem to show signs that they like each other. Meanwhile, Lydia and Sebastian kiss on a secret assignment. A small amount of time goes by before Brookfield is attacked (spray painted and the like). During this time Charlie and Emily get into a fight about a prank that had been pulled off earlier in the year that had disastrous consequences for Charlie and was caused by Emily; Seb and Lydia also argue, this time about a Secret Assignment that involved discovering each other first at a cafe without knowing what the other looked like (an Assignment which Seb cheated on). There are cruel sayings (e.g. "Brooker Bites") spray-painted on the walls of Brookfield High, each phrase followed by the Ashbury crest. Reasonably, the Brookfielders retaliate. For a time, acts of vandalism are perpetrated between the schools, until a Brookfield student — whom the staff keep anonymous — incorrectly pinpoints Cassie, Emily, and Lydia as the instigators of the first attack. When told by their form mistress, Mrs. Lilydale, that diaries, letters, etc. are going to be read for clues, the girls are angered. In coordination with Cassie's mother (who is a lawyer), Mrs. Lilydale arranges a trial so that the girls can prove that this would be an unjust invasion of their privacy. Emily, fascinated by law, is appointed to represent the students in a Brookfield-Ashbury co-trial. Principals and school officials from the respective schools are all present at the trial. When the time for the trial comes, only Emily and Lydia are present at first. Emily turns the tables on the staff and proves that she, along with her classmates, has a right to privacy, and the administration agrees not to read their letters. Cassie then bursts in during the middle of the trial, with Seb and Charlie behind her. They are carrying evidence of the vandalism, such as the paint used to write "Brooker Bites" on the wall and the grapeseed oil that is used to smear the science laboratory floors. When questioned by Emily, Charlie reveals that the items came from the bedroom closet of none other than Paul Wilson. Paul attempts to fight back but his guilt is clear and he has no logical explanation for Charlie, Seb and Cassie's discovery. He runs out the door in tears and all charges are dropped against the Ashbury students as the Brookfield attacks were "inside jobs." The story ends happily as the year wraps up with the makeup of Charlie and Emily, and Seb and Lydia. Seb and Lydia decide to begin officially dating and Charlie and Emily show signs that they are heading in the same direction. An art show is put on by the students of both schools. Lydia, an aspiring author, and Seb, a talented artist, contribute a children's book and Cassie uses words from a fake, but sweet, letter from "Matthew" as the lyrics to a song she writes and sings. This is important to her because before her father died of cancer he told her that he thought he'd gotten sick because of the nervousness and fear he'd experienced his whole life, and had let built up. Cassie, hearing this, had promised her father "not to be scared." Singing in public is scary for her, so she decides to face her fear with her friend's support. She is able to accept her father's death. |
Physik | Angie Sage | null | "When Silas Heap UnSeals a forgotten room in the Palace, he releases the ghost of a Queen who lived five hundred years earlier. Queen Etheldredda is as awful in death as she was in life, and she's still up to no good. Her diabolical plan to give herself everlasting life requires Jenna's compliance, Septimus's disappearance, and the talents of her son, Marcellus Pye, a famous Alchemist and Physician. And if Queen Etheldredda's plot involves Jenna and Septimus, then it will surely involve Nicko, Alther Mella, Marcia Overstrand, Beetle, Stanley, Sarah, Silas, Spit Fyre, Aunt Zelda, and all of the other wacky, wonderful characters that made Magyk and Flyte so memorable. With heart-stopping action and a dash of humor, Angie Sage continues the fantastical journey of Septimus Heap." - from Nitsuj |
Cop Killer | Per Wahlöö | 1,974 | Martin Beck investigates the murder of a woman in Anderslöv in Southern Sweden, and begins by looking at the murderer he put away in "Roseanna". At the same time, Malm leads a manhunt for the surviving partner of a teenage criminal who killed a policeman during a gunfight. |
The Terrorists | Maj Sjöwall | 1,975 | The story opens with a trial where an eighteen-year old woman is accused of a bank robbery she never intended to commit. Later, a pornographic film producer is found murdered at the home of his mistress. The main plot of the book involves Martin Beck leading a team of policemen to prevent a presumed terrorist attack on a highly unpopular American senator who is paying an official visit to Sweden. The attack is led by terrorist Reinhard Heydt, born by a Danish mother in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. |
Murder at the Savoy | Per Wahlöö | 1,970 | Martin Beck has to search through the high powered business man Viktor Palmgren`s many enemies when the business man is shot in front of a dozen witnesses at a high-end restaurant. |
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