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Theory of International Politics | null | null | CHAPTER 1: Laws and Theories Although laws might just describe a correlation (with a given probability), theories explain them. CHAPTER 4 Theories of international politics deal with events at both the sub- and supra-national levels. "Reductionist" theories explain "the behavior of parts"--they seek to explain international outcomes solely through the behavior of units, leaving aside the effect their environment may have. However, "it is not possible to understand world politics simply by looking inside of states." (p. 65) This is because every new observed phenomenon would require the addition of new unit-level variables, which leads to the highly subjective addition and wild proliferation of variables. Moreover, though the actors and nature of actors in international politics change significantly, patterns of international politics recur. "If the same effects follow from different causes, then constraints must be operating on the independent variables in ways that affect outcomes." (p. 68) A system-level explanation of world politics solves both of these problems. By focusing on the structure, or "set of constraining conditions," (p. 74) of the international system one can parsimoniously explain why dissimilar units may behave in similar ways. Structures, however, are not direct causes—they act "through socialization of the actors and through competition among them." (p. 74) CHAPTER 5: Political Structures If we want to consider how actors will interact, we must look at the system within which they interact. This isn't a new concept; economists look at structural constraints (e.g. capitalism vs socialism, I guess), political scientists argue that presidents will behave differently from prime ministers, and so on. Waltz begins by looking at domestic political structures and sees three important characteristics: The principle by which the system is ordered (what form of hierarchical structure is in place), the functions that each unit fulfills (presidential vs parliamentary, etc.), and each unit's capacity/ability to act. By analogy, Waltz extends these three principles to the international system. The ordering principle is anarchy; if this changed, inter-unit interactions would also change. In anarchy, different units exist in a self-help system; there is therefore no functional differentiation among them. So the two relevant characteristics of the international system are anarchy and relative capacity (power). By analogy, Waltz argues that microeconomic thinking should explain how states will act. States in the international system are like firms in a domestic economy. Every state has the same fundamental interest: to survive. Even if it wants to do other things, it can't do them unless it survives. [But are there higher needs? How do you explain what a state will do if its survival isn't threatened? Can you use this model to explain trade, or environmental treaties, and so on?] Waltz argues that states are the only important actors in this model. He recognizes that other actors exist, but says they don't matter. He uses an economic analogy to justify this: If all firms are equally sized, they all matter. If the market is dominated by a few large firms, however, then economic models need focus on these. Similarly, since states are the "large firms," models can disregard the insignificant "small firms" (NGOs, IGOs, etc.). Extending this analogy means we should focus especially on more powerful states. [from handout]: A structure is defined first by the principle by which it is ordered or organized, then by the differentiation and specification of its units, and finally by the distribution of capabilities across units. For Waltz, anarchy, or the absence of central authority, is the ordering principle of the international system. By analogy to microeconomic theory, Waltz argues that international systems emerge from the "coaction of self-regarding units." (p. 91) In a microtheory, whether economic or political, the motivation of actors is assumed rather than realistically described. Waltz assumes that "states seek to ensure their survival." The real aims of states may be endlessly variable, but in a world without security survival is the essential prerequisite and thus a useful foundation for the theory. "Internationally, the environment of states' action, or the structure of their system, is set by the fact that some states prefer survival over other ends obtainable in the short run and act with relative efficiency to achieve that end." (p. 93). The second aspect of structure, the differentiation of units, is rendered unnecessary by the condition of anarchy. "Anarchy entails relations of coordination among a system's units, and that implies their sameness. ... [S]o long as anarchy endures, states remain like units." (p. 93) Which is to say they are "autonomous political units" (p. 95) who face similar tasks. While Waltz recognizes the existence of non-state actors, he dismisses their importance because states are still the most powerful actors on the world state—they have the most influence and they set the rules. Thus, the international system is defined in terms of states. "Students of international politics make distinctions between international-political systems only according to the number of their great powers. The structure of a system changes with changes in the distribution of capabilities across a system's units." (p. 97) Although this may seem to violate the notion that structure must be defined independently of the attributes of units, Waltz argues that "although capabilities are attributes of units, the distribution of capabilities across units is not." (p. 98) The key result from this approach is a "positional picture" that describes a system "in terms of the placement of units rather than in terms of their qualities." (p. 99) CHAPTER 6 Anarchy does not imply that violence is common in the international system but rather that the threat of violence is ever present. Anarchy means that the international system is one of self-help. Waltz identifies two ways in which the structure of the international system limits cooperation. First, "the condition of insecurity--at the least, the uncertainty of each about the other's future intentions and actions--works against their cooperation. ... A state worries about a division of possible gains that may favor other more than itself." (pp. 105-6) Second, "a state also worries lest it become dependent on others" through trade and/or cooperation, and therefore also chooses to limit its cooperation with other states. (p. 106) "States do not willingly place themselves in situations of increased dependence. In a selfhelp system, considerations of security subordinate economic gain to political interest." (p. 107). The structure of the system forces states into this kind of behavior; the only way out is structural change. Nevertheless, Waltz sees virtues in anarchy—principally that the high costs of organization in a hierarchic order are avoided and that states can preserve their autonomy. Balance of Power Theory (pp. 116-128 in chapter 6): [still from handout]: States are unitary actors who seek, at a minimum, their own preservation and, at a maximum, universal domination. States seek to achieve their goals either through internal balancing (increasing economic and military strength) or external balancing (creating alliances). For this theory to operate, we must see two or more states in a self-help system with no superior authority over them. In seeking to test his theory, Waltz arguing that confirming cases (as opposed to just falsifiable cases) are acceptable, particularly if hard cases (those where you would not expect the theory to hold) are chosen. He also suggests that one should infer empirically verifiable predictions. However, he concedes that balance-of-power theory's predictions are indeterminate; it posits only a loose condition of balance, and thus it is unclear when that condition does not hold. Also, internal conditions may preclude states from balancing consistently see balancing behavior, even in cases where one would not ordinarily expect—he points to the French-Russian alliance of 1894 or the U.S. and Soviet decisions to rearm after WWII. Finally, Waltz contrasts balancing with bandwagoning, in which weaker states choose to ally with the stronger state. Waltz argues that "because power is a means not an end, states may prefer to join the weaker of two coalitions." (p. 126) Again, the structure of the international system and the necessity of survival dictate this behavior. CHAPTER 8: ALLIANCES In this section, Waltz investigates how changes in the structure of the international system affect alliances. He focuses, in particular, on the difference between multi-polar and bi-polar alliance systems. He defines multi-polar systems as those containing more than two major powers, finding most distinctions between different multi-polar systems as generally faulty. The primary difference between multi-polar and bi-polar balancing is that multi-polar balancing occurs externally (among states), while bi-polar balancing occurs internally. Because external balancing is more uncertain, bi-polar balancing tends to produce less conflict. Waltz discusses several additional features of multi-polar balancing: States will woo alliance partners by adapting to them. Example: France and Russia attempting to appear more alike one another in order to form their alliance in 1894. For security, states are willing to align with anyone. The weaker partner in an alliance will determine policy in a moment of crisis International competition will tend to force states in a multi-polar order into two blocs. Having two blocs DOES NOT mean that the system is bi-polar, because alliance shifts and defections can still occur. These alliance shifts and defections make the multi-polar order dangerous. The flexibility of alliances makes for rigidity in strategy. For bi-polar alliances: Alliance leaders do not need to worry much about the faithfulness of followers. In bi-polar systems, there will unequal burden-sharing between the major and minor powers in an alliance. Major powers in a bi-polar system do not need to make themselves attractive to alliance partners. Example: the Soviet Union and the U.S. did not alter their strategies to accommodate allies [comment: was the U.S. more accommodating than the U.S.S.R? Were its alliance commitments more credible?]. The rigidity of bi-polar alliances makes for flexible strategy. For its parsimony and theoretical rigor, neorealism has been the baseline for most of IR theory over the last 20 years. It has prompted a rich literature critiquing it on a number of fronts: for instance, neoliberals say that it does not take seriously enough the possibility that states may choose absolute over relative gains, particularly in situations where institutions can alter payoffs; constructivists argue that its fails to recognize the manner in which agents and structures are mutually constitutive; and people from all over the map say that it is too generalized and yields little in the way of testable implications. Nevertheless, the theory has been hugely influential. |
Courtship Rite | Donald Kingsbury | 1,982 | The novel details the attempts of two of the priest-clans, the Kaiel and the Mnankrei, to expand into territory controlled by the Stgal. Ultimately, all the priest clans are trying to attain dominance of the planet through the use of new technology, propaganda, treachery, and "war", a new concept in this world. Previously, killing was done merely in order to provide food. Jo Walton remarked that Courtship Rite "is about a distant generation of colonists on a planet with no usable animals. This is the book with everything, where everything includes cannibalism, polyamory, evolution and getting tattoos so your skin will make more interesting leather when you’re dead." |
He Knew He Was Right | Anthony Trollope | 1,869 | A wealthy young English gentleman, Louis Trevelyan, visits the fictional Mandarin Islands, a distant British possession, and becomes smitten with Emily Rowley, the eldest daughter of the governor, Sir Marmaduke Rowley. The Rowleys accompany Trevelyan to London, where he marries Emily. When the rest of the family goes home, Emily's sister Nora remains behind, under Trevelyan's protection. The marriage is initially a happy one and the couple has a baby boy. Then a seemingly minor matter undermines their marriage. Colonel Osborne, an old friend of Sir Marmaduke's, visits Emily much too frequently for her husband's taste. Though nothing improper occurs, Trevelyan overreacts and orders his wife to avoid the man in future. Emily resents his lack of trust and makes no attempt to hide it. Their relationship deteriorates to the point that they separate. Meanwhile, Nora attracts two admirers, the wealthy Charles Glascock, the eldest son and heir of Lord Peterborough, and Hugh Stanbury, a close friend of Trevelyan's from their days at Oxford University. Stanbury ekes out a precarious living writing newspaper articles. Glascock proposes to Nora, but despite the fact that Stanbury has given no indication of his feelings for her, she rejects the future nobleman, not without a great deal of struggle and much to the dismay of her friends. Another subplot involves Jemima Stanbury, the capricious, formidable spinster aunt of Hugh. In her youth, she had been engaged to the eldest son of a leading banker. They had had a falling out and parted company, but upon his demise, he had left everything to her, making her very wealthy. Aware of the poverty of Hugh's branch of the family, she had generously paid for his education and helped him get a start in life. However, when he chose to work for what she considered to be a radical publication, the staunch Tory withdrew her support. She then offers to accept one of Hugh's sisters as a companion. After some debate, timid, unassertive Dorothy Stanbury is sent. Trevelyan arranges to have Emily and Nora live with Hugh's mother and her other daughter, Priscilla. However, Emily obstinately receives a visit from Colonel Osborne, against all advice to the contrary. Trevelyan finds out and becomes further maddened. In the meantime, Aunt Stanbury tries to promote a marriage between her niece and a favoured clergyman, Mr Gibson. This causes much resentment with Arabella and Camilla French, two sisters who had considered him a future husband for one of them (though which was still a matter of much debate). However, this plan is derailed. Aunt Stanbury had always intended to bequeath her wealth back to the Burgess family, rather than to her Stanbury relations. She had chosen as her heir Brooke Burgess, the nephew of her former fiancé. When he visits her for the first time as an adult, everyone is charmed by his warm, lively personality, especially Dorothy. When Gibson finally proposes to her, she cannot avoid unfavourably comparing him to Brooke and declines. Her aunt is at first much put out by Dorothy's obstinacy. Eventually however, she places the blame on the clergyman, which results in a serious breach between them. The feud with his former patron leaves Gibson so distracted that he finds himself engaged to a domineering Camilla French. After a while, he comes to regret his choice. Finally, finding Camilla's overpowering personality unbearable, he extricates himself by agreeing to marry the milder Arabella instead. Camilla is driven to extravagant threats and is finally sent to stay with her stern uncle in the period leading up to the wedding. Then Aunt Stanbury becomes very ill, resulting in Dorothy and Brooke spending a good deal of time in each other's company. Brooke takes the opportunity to propose to an unsuspecting Dorothy. She however is reluctant to accept, fearing that her aunt will disinherit Brooke. Instead, the old woman blames her niece. They quarrel and Dorothy returns to her mother. Aunt Stanbury misses Dorothy greatly and makes it known that she would welcome her back, though she still vehemently opposes her marriage to Brooke. Dorothy does come back, and even tries to break off her engagement, but Brooke won't stand for it. In the end, Aunt Stanbury's love for her niece is stronger than her desires and she gives her blessing to their wedding. Meanwhile, Trevelyan departs England to escape the shame he feels. During his aimless wanderings, he meets Mr Glascock, who is on his way to Italy to visit his father. They meet two attractive young American ladies, Caroline and Olivia Spalding. Glascock's father is in such poor health that the son is obliged to remain in the country to await his probable demise. While waiting, he courts and wins Caroline's hand in marriage, despite her misgivings about her reception in English society. Trevelyan receives word that Colonel Osborne has dared to visit Emily once again. While Osborne had not been permitted to see Emily, Trevelyan doesn't believe it and has the boy taken away from his mother by deception; he takes his son back to Italy, where he descends further into madness. Eventually, he is tracked down by his wife and friends. Emily persuades him first to give her their son, then to return with her to England; he dies, however, shortly after their return. In his dying moments, Emily, asking Louis if she had been faithful to him, begs him to kiss her hand in agreement. Whether or not he does is unclear, but Emily believes "the verdict of the dying man had been given in her favour." |
Clash Of The Sky Galleons | Chris Riddell | 2,006 | The story is set aboard the Sky pirate ship The Galerider. Wind Jackal wants revenge against his previous quartermaster, Turbot Smeal, for burning down the Western Quays in Undertown along with most of Wind Jackal's family. Meanwhile the Leagues of Undertown begin making preparations for war with the sky pirates. The Galeriders crew encounter several dangerous traps as Wind Jackal carries out his quest to find Smeal. The crew of The Galerider are puzzled but it soon becomes clear, as it turns out in the end that the alleged Turbot Smeal was an imposter, greater and far more envious. Eventually in the end, only Wind Jackal, Quint, Tem Barkwater and Spillins the Oakelf remain of the original crew. They come to the wreck of a skyship and meet a man in a skullpelt mask who claims to be Turbot Smeal. Wind Jackal and 'Turbot Smeal' have a duel and Wind Jackal is killed. The man reveals himself to be one of the crewmembers, Thaw Daggerslash. The truth is revealed at the end of the book. The book features a massive sky battle between the Leagues of Undertown and the Sky Pirates. The Climax comes when the Leagues launch the Bringer of Doom. |
Tangerine | Edward Bloor | 1,997 | A summary of Edward Bloor's novel Tangerine, about a boy who discovers that his brother steals and murders---8============>21:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)72.70.104.124 (talk) 21:34, 1 November 2012 (UTC)(0) The story starts with the Fisher family (Paul, mom, dad, and Erik) move from Houston, Texas to a development called Lake Windsor Downs in Tangerine County, Florida. You learn that Paul is vision impaired. His parents tell Paul it's because he stared into a solar eclipse, but Paul doen's remember it at all. After they unpack, Paul goes for a tour in his school, Lake Windsor Middle school. Mike Costello, a high school football player is introduced, along with his little brother and middle school soccer player, Joey Costello. On his first day of school, he meets Coach Walski, a soccer coach. Paul knows he is a good goalie and tries out for the team. Paul learns that he can't make the team because his mom filled out an IEP (individualized education plan) for him because of his vision impairment. A few days later, while Paul is at his school, a sinkhole collapses. Many try to rescue the people who are trapped and fortunately, no one gets seriously injured. The emergency relocation plan gives the kids the chance to stay or go to Tangerine Middle School (the school on the other side of the county). Paul chooses to go to Tangerine MS because he doesn't have an IEP filed there so he can play soccer. In Tangerine Middle School, many people are introduced including Tino, Henry D., Theresa, and Victor. They all are soccer players at the school, except for Theresa. Paul convinces Joey to come to his new school and the soccer and football seasons begin. As the story proceeds, Joey starts to get sick of the new school because none of Paul's new friends like him and he thinks that Paul has changed and become cowardly to all the other people at TMS. Joey finally went back to Lake Windsor, leaving the Tangerine Middle School soccer team also. Throughout the story, houses in Joey's neighborhood have to be put under blue tents and sprayed with poison to kill termites. While under tents, many of these houses are robbed. Paul suspects it is Erik and Arthur. Luis is also introduced. He is the brother of Theresa and Tino. Luis works at his parent's citris farm and is working on developing a new kind of tree called Golden Dawn. While at Paul's house for a school project, Erik punches Tino who ends up bruised after making a comment about how Erik fell down while attempting to a kick an extra point in a football game earlier in the book. Luis finds out and goes to Erik's football practice to confront him. Erik distracts him while signaling for Arthur to hit him in the back of his head with a blackjack. Luis is fine for a couple of days but is found dead. Only Paul knows the real truth, but others suspect it too. On the night of the Seniors Award Night, tino and victor show up to beat up Erik and Arthur for killing Luis. The two of them escape, and Paul runs back to his house. When he is at the front of his house, he has a flashback from his childhood, the day his vision was damaged. Erik believed that Paul told on Erik and his friend Vincent for spray painting a wall in their old neighborhood, so to get back at him, Erik held Paul's arms behind his back and held open his eyes while Vincent sprayed spray paint in Paul's eyes. He is angry because his parents seem to never get Erik in trouble. Later on in the story, Paul's mom finds a one of Erik's gym bags with gas masks and valuables that he and Arthur stole from the tented houses in the families storage unit on route 22. Erik is sent to jail for robbery, and Arthur for murder. Paul is expelled from school for attacking a coach, but says he will stay in touch with all his friends, including Joey, whom he made up with. |
And Now Tomorrow | null | null | Dr. Vance, who grew up poor in Blairtown, returns there from Pittsburgh, where he runs a clinic for the underprivileged. He shares a taxi with wealthy Emily Blair, a snobbish rich girl he never liked while growing up together, but she has since contracted meningitis and is deaf. Emily has postponed her wedding to Jeff Stoddard, a member of high society like herself, while leaving town to seek treatment. In her absence, her sister Janice has fallen in love with Jeff, but they don't know how to break the news to Emily. Although the doctor doesn't usually care for upper-class patients and Emily doesn't wish to be used as a guinea pig, she agrees to an experimental treatment. It causes Emily to go into a coma, but ultimately her hearing returns. She realizes the depth of her feelings for Dr. Vance, which clears the way for Janice and Jeff. |
Thunder Cave | Roland Smith | 1,995 | After the death of his mother, who dies in a fatal car accident, fourteen-year-old Jacob Lansa embarks on a journey across the globe to Kenya, to find his father. On his journey he meets a Maasai named Supeet whose goal is to bring the long rains. Supeet believes that Jacob is in Kenya for other reasons than to find his father, which bides true after an accident that could end the chance to bring the long rains. |
The Butterfly Kid | Chester Anderson | 1,967 | The novel is primarily set in Greenwich Village, and is thoroughly saturated with psychedelic and 1960s counterculture elements. The time is an undefined near future, indicated by SF elements such as video phones and personal hovercraft; the Bicentennial is also mentioned. The use of psychoactive drugs and their effects are a central element of the story; much of the action revolves around an alien-introduced drug (referred to as "Reality Pills") that cause LSD-like hallucinations to manifest physically, generally causing chaos. The book's protagonist shares a name with the author, and another character shares the name of Michael Kurland, a friend and roommate of the author's at that time. The book's title refers to a character, Sean, who is able to spontaneously produce butterflies of all shapes, sizes, and colors after taking a "Reality Pill." Although Sean is introduced very early in the story, he is not the novel's central character. |
The Radiant Seas | Catherine Asaro | 1,999 | Kurj has to deal not only with the shocking sudden death of Soz, whom he imagined as his successor, but also with the political intrigues of the Eubian emperor Ur Qox, who draws the Allieds on his side, using lies and dirty tricks. When Ur tries to take Kurj prisoner, this leads to the destruction of a part of his fleet and to the death of both Ur and Kurj, leaving their two empires presumably heirless. Soz's brother Althor inherits her position of the imperial heir after her apparent death. When he learns that his sister is alive, he promises his father Eldrinson to keep the secret for himself. But later he is captured by the Eubians during a space battle and unwillingly reveals this information after a brutal torture. The widowed empress Viquara sees an opportunity to provide the Eubian Concord with an heir without losing her political power. Sauscony abandons her life as a Jagernaut and abdicates her role as heir, fakes her own death, and elopes with Jaibriol Qox, the heir to the Eubian Concord. They relocate, with help, to an Allied-discovered, unknown planet which they call Prism. They have four children and live a simple and happy life, knowing that they will most probably never be able to return to their warring civilizations. Their children are heirs to both the Skolian Empire and the Eubian Concord. Then Jaibriol is kidnapped by Viquara's soldiers and forced to act as a "puppet emperor" with Viquara and her new husband Quaelen wielding the power from behind the throne. Soz hides her children on Earth in the custody of former family member Seth Rockworth (once married to Dehya as part of the Icelandic Accord) and returns to Skolia to assume her rightful position as the new Imperator. In order to get her husband back and save her people from the power-hungry Aristo caste of Eube, she launches an attack that will become known as the Radiance War. |
The Sledding Hill | Chris Crutcher | null | The novel is narrated by Billy Bartholomew, the best friend of the protagonist, Eddie Proffit, as Eddie struggles not only with Billy’s recent death, but that of his father as well. An intelligent boy who is seemingly afflicted with ADHD, Eddie cannot stop talking until he is confronted with these two sudden deaths. The only way he can cope with these tragedies, then, is to stop talking entirely. Eddie’s mother seeks solace in the local Red Brick Church, an evangelical church run by the Reverend Tarter, who is a teacher at the local high school. Though his mother wants him to join the church, Eddie is disgusted by Tarter’s bigotry, and finds little help among his peers until his high school English class starts to read the fictional novel Warren Peece by Chris Crutcher. Tarter is horrified that high school students would be allowed to read a novel that is full of what he terms “bad language” and homosexual characters. This propels a challenge from Tarter’s church board to the school to get the novel removed from the curriculum. Eddie begins talking again when he testifies in front of the Red Brick Church announcing he will not only not join the church, but will also speak in favor of Warren Peece at the school board meeting. A misinterpretation of his testimony compels the church members to have Eddie placed into a mental health facility supposedly because Eddie thinks he is Jesus Christ. Crutcher places himself in the novel’s climax as a speaker at the board meeting on the removal of the book. |
Still Forms on Foxfield | Joan Slonczewski | null | The planet Foxfield is inhabited by people who left Earth on the brink of a nuclear war. After a century on their new planet, the inhabitants are contacted by people from Earth. Foxfielders are members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, who have kept their faith while dwelling on a rather inhospitable planet. The Foxfielders' survival was made possible only by the natives of Foxfield, the Commensals, who were initially assumed to be hostile, but whose chemical talents have made human survival on Foxfield possible. When Commensals finish their life span, they go to the jungle, to a mysterious structure known as the Dwelling, to add their body and mind to the collective consciousness, the One. Allison Thorne, a widow with a twelve year old son, David, who is in charge of the main settlement's technical center, is the one contacted by the Earth dwellers, United Nations Interplanetary. The UNI, who have been observing Foxfield secretly for years, are welcomed by the Foxfielders, who learn the history of the past century — that the war occurred, but was not as bad as thought — and begin to catch up on technology. Friction soon begins to develop between Foxfielders and the newcomers. Credometers, worn like wristwatches, are accepted by Foxfielders without realizing that doing so makes them irrevocably part of UNI. Aspects of UNI culture, such as majority voting and violent space games in which people are killed, shock the Foxfielders. The UNI representatives have difficulty in understanding the Foxfielders, not surprising given that religion in the UNI is reduced to "preservation societies". Foxfielders fear they will soon be lost in the UNI masses—while the contact affects UNI culture as well. Matters are brought to a head when the One announces that it intends to destroy the UNI ship, and reveals that it has already destroyed satellites. The Foxfielders mount an expedition to the Dwelling with Alison, her boyfriend, Seth Connaught, and a UNI citizen. They are able to persuade the One not to follow through on its plan. A final chapter, set some months later, shows Foxfield slowly integrating into UNI society while insisting on maintaining its own identity. |
Funeral Games | Mary Renault | 1,981 | The chapters of the book have the years of the events for their titles: *323 BC. Alexander the Great dies in Babylon. Perdikkas seeks to be appointed as Regent for the king's yet-unborn heir. Meleager wants Arrhidaios acclaimed as king. The dispute threatens to become a civil war. Roxane murders the daughters of Darius and their unborn children. Perdikkas becomes Regent, with both Phillip Arrhidaios and Alexander IV (son of Roxane) as nominal joint kings. Ptolemy and Bagoas reach an agreement. The Greeks revolt; Antipatros crushes them. *322 BC. Perdikkas crushes the Isaurians. Bagoas visits Ptolemy in Alexandria, and together they advance their plans for relocating the mummy of Alexander to that city. The daring plan is carried out, and the Mummy and golden bier of Alexander are relocated to Alexandria. Kynna and Eurydike receive news of the death of Alexander and decide it is imperative that Eurydike marry Phillip Arrhidaios (as pre-arranged) and so advance her claim to the throne. Alketas murders Kynna, but Eurydike survives, and marries Arrhidaios (the marriage is celebrated but not consummated). *321 BC. Eumenes defeats and kills Krateros (more commonly known as Craterus.) Perdikkas marches towards Egypt, seeking to depose Ptolemy, but the invasion is a total disaster. Perdikkas is assassinated by his own lieutenants. Eurydike seeks to become Queen on her own right, but she is frustrated by the inconvenient arrival of her menstrual period. Peithon and Arridaios/Arybbas become the new co-regents. *320 BC. Under the leadership of Ptolemy, Alexandria becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Babylon. Egypt propspers greatly. *319 BC. In the spring, Antigonos One-Eye defeats Eumenes and drives him eastward. In the summer, the aged regent Antipatros passes away. He passes over his own son Kassandros (whom he knows to be cruel and much too ambitious, likely to seize the throne for himself) and appoints his elderly colleague Polyperchon as his successor as regent of Macedon. *318 BC. Olympias appeals for help from Eumenes. Eumenes dedicates a royal tent to the spirit of great Alexander, complete with golden throne, golden crown, and golden scepter. *317 BC. In the spring, with an army and navy supplied by Antigonos, Kassandros (Cassander) crosses the sea and takes Athens unopposed. Polyperchon, with king Arrhidaios in tow, marches against him. Roxane, with her son, flees to join Olympias in Dodona in Molossia. Eurydike, infuriated at being left behind from the southern war, seizes the Regency for herself, with the help of Kassandros, his brother Nikanor, and their whole clan. Polyperchon sends Arrhidaios back to Eurydike. Olympias invades Macedon. The Macedonians refuse to fight against Alexander's mother. Olympias deposes, imprisons and tortures Eurydike and Arrhidaios. On hearing this, Kassandros delays and slows down his march to Macedon. Olympias murders Arrhidaios and forces Eurydike to commit suicide. *316 BC. Olympias is executed, in a Biblical-style stoning, by the relatives of her victims. *315 BC. Kassandros visits the Lyceum in Athens and tells them monstrous slanders against Alexander. *310 BC. Kassandros murders Roxane and Alexander IV. *297 BC. Kassandros dies a horrible death from disease. *286 BC. Pharaoh Ptolemy completes writing a book to refute the evil lies of Kassandros. sh:Funeral Games (roman) |
Wheelers | Ian Stewart | 2,000 | Wheelers chronicles mankind's first contact with an alien intelligence, a meeting which takes place out of necessity when a rogue asteroid enters the solar system and is set on a collision course with Earth by an advanced and hitherto unknown Jovian species as a way of avoiding a devastating impact to their own world. The story opens with a feeling of anachronism, as two of the novel's central characters (Charles Dunsmoore, a career archaeologist and his volatile graduate student Prudence Odingo) work in the year 2194 to interpret and preserve artefacts found in the vicinity of the Great Sphinx, which is being disassembled in order to save it from the advancing waters of a clogged and flooding Nile River after the collapse of the Aswan Dam. A lover's quarrel between the two sends Prudence off in a blind rage, and leaves Dunsmoore the sole caretaker of an important discovery—a position which catapults his career and sets the tension for the novel's second half. Professionally and personally embittered by the success of Dunsmoore, Prudence begins a life of semi-legal interplanetary exploration (referenced by the book but never fully explained) and makes a living selling cosmic oddities to the highest black market bidder. This dangerous and profitable lifestyle acquaints her with legal authorities as well as the Belters—a group of Zen Buddhists (known as The Order of the Cuckoo) who have populated and mined both Earth's Moon and the asteroid belt that lies between the terrestrial planets and the Jovian worlds of the outer solar system. Her smuggling career culminates with the discovery of a trove of buried, wheeled, and presumably alien artefacts on Callisto. She takes these 'wheelers' to earth intending to sell them, but a government investigation headed by Dunsmoore concludes them to be inauthentic. As the story progresses, another main character materializes in the form of the aptly named Moses Odingo, son of Prudence's sister Charity and animal-handler extraordinaire. His life becomes one of the novel's several core plots, circumstance and apparent fate conspiring to send him on a worldwide journey of hardship and tribulation. During this time, both Earth-bound scientists and the Belters notice that the innermost moons of Jupiter have mysteriously realigned, altering the trajectory of a once unimportant comet and setting in motion a direct collision with Earth. This is courtesy of the stuffily bureaucratic blimps—intelligent extraterrestrials living in the turbulence of Jupiter's upper atmosphere whose advanced gravity technology allows them to alter the orbital plane of the planet's moons and thereby avoid the type of cometary impact which, obliquely, precipitated their exodus from an unknown 'Firsthome' to Jupiter itself. Left with 12 years until impact and now convinced of the wheelers' authenticity, Earth's governmental authorities speed a mission to the Jovian satellites in hopes of contacting the as yet unseen alien lifeforms. Dunsmoore is selected to lead the group, with the assumption that his experience with decrypting anthropological artifacts on earth will aid in establishing communiqué with the Jovians. The years tick by without consequence as Dunsmoore and his team search in vain for evidence of alien life on Jupiter's moons, convinced by terrestrial scientists that the planet itself is entirely inhospitable to life (he is warned of the danger of this erroneous presupposition by, appropriately enough, contemporary science-fiction authors). As the tension on Earth grows unbearable, Prudence Odingo flies her personal craft out to give Dunsmoore's team a push in what she believes to be the correct direction. Hacking into one of the probes that Dunsmoore's been carefully bobbing around the lifeless stratosphere of Jupiter, Odingo's team sends the RCV into the lower atmosphere, immediately encountering alien lifeforms both advanced and simplistic. Through a quirk of fate and timing, her team manages to save a blimp by the name of Bright Halfholder of the Violent Foam, part of a 'skydiving' rebel faction known as The Instrumentality. Odingo encourages Moses, now a young man, to make a harrowing high-speed journey out to the moons, hoping to use his uncanny knack for animal communication to establish a rapport with Halfholder. The ploy works, but the Jovians—who live for millions of years and rely on an arcane and tedious system of legal councils—spend too long arguing and contemplating to successfully redirect the comet. The Instrumentality stages a successful coup, but in the end it is Dunsmoore (who has been redeemed by the threat to his home planet) who hijacks the alien gravity technology and pilots Io into a diversionary orbit around the comet itself, barely saving Earth from total annihilation—though millions die as the remnants of the comet and the sulfurous outgassing of ruined Io cascade into Earth. |
Bloodring | Faith Hunter | 2,006 | The story take place about a century after an apocalypse. It includes "neomages", a new race of beings that arose during the time of the apocalypse. They live in an area known as the Enclave, which is both a prison and sanctuary, and are able to work with "leftover creation energy". Thorn St. Croix is a neomage in exile from the Enclave. Thorn (unlike most mages) is telepathic, and she constantly hears the thoughts of the other mages in the Enclave. This threatened to drive her insane when it began during her adolescence and forced her to live amongst humans whose thoughts she does not hear. Because mages without a special license are not allowed amongst the human population, Thorn must hide her true nature lest she be killed, either by the humans - who would torture her first - or by the seraphs who have ruled the earth since the apocalypse began. Thorn is a "stone mage", and channels her talents with stone into lapidary work and jewelry-making, running the store, Thorn's Gems, with her partners, Rupert and Jaycee, in the small town of Mineral Springs, Carolina, where they all live. Thorn's life is suddenly disrupted when police officer Thaddeus Bartholomew comes to her door and announces that her ex-husband Lucas, (who is also Rupert's brother) has been kidnapped. She is a suspect. Thadd, it turns out, is a kylen, progeny of a seraph and a mix of human and mage. Thorn realizes this when he "kindles" her mage-heat. Amazingly, Thadd appears not to know he is anything but pure human, and were he to discover her secret, he would immediately arrest her for being an unlicensed mage outside of Enclave. She must risk death in order to save the father of her former stepdaughter, Ciana - the child of her heart. |
Liliom | Ferenc Molnár | null | The play takes place partly in Budapest, Hungary, and partly in Heaven. The story concerns Liliom, a tough, cocky carousel barker who falls in love with Julie, a young woman who works as a maid. When both lose their jobs, Liliom begins mistreating Julie (he even slaps her once) out of bitterness, although he loves her. When she discovers that she is pregnant, he is deliriously happy, but unbeknownst to Julie, he agrees to participate with his friend Ficsúr, a criminal, in a hold-up to obtain money to provide for the child. Liliom is unwilling to leave Julie and return to his jealous former employer, the carousel owner Mrs. Muskat, and feels that the robbery is his only way left to obtain financial security. The hold-up is a disaster, but Ficsúr escapes, and Liliom kills himself to avoid capture. He is sent to a fiery place, presumably Purgatory. Sixteen years later, he is allowed to return to earth for one day to do a good deed for his now teenage daughter, whom he has never met. If he succeeds, he will be allowed to enter Heaven. He fails in the attempt, and is presumably sent to Hell. The ending, though, focuses on Julie, who obviously remembers Liliom fondly. A contrasting subplot involves Julie's best friend, Marie, and Wolf Beifeld, a rather pompous hotel porter who marries Marie and eventually becomes the wealthy owner of the hotel at which he once worked. The two eventually have seven children, but the children never appear onstage in Molnár's play, although they are a very unpleasant bunch in Carousel, in which the number of children is increased to nine rather than seven. There is also a Carpenter in Liliom who is in unrequited love with Julie, and who, in contrast to Liliom, has a stable job. |
The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes | null | null | Goody Two-Shoes is a variation of the Cinderella story. The fable tells of Goody Two-Shoes, the nickname of a poor orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who goes through life with only one shoe. When she is given a complete pair by a rich gentleman, she is so happy that she tells everyone that she has "two shoes". Later, Margery becomes a teacher and marries a rich widower. This earning of wealth serves as proof that her virtuousness has been rewarded, a popular theme in children's literature of the era. |
Northworld | null | null | The novel begins with Commissioner Nils Hansen and his Special Police Units team in a violent confrontation with criminal android Solbarth and his gang members, who are barricaded in a building. Because of his reputation, Hansen is able to talk Solbarth and his gang members into surrendering with the promise that their lives would be spared. As the villains are being led away, Hansen is summoned by non-human messengers who take him to the leaders of the Consensus. The Consensus needs Hansen's skill and ruthlessness to discover what has happened to cause Northworld to disappear. The planet Northworld, named after Captain North who was in charge of the colonization of the planet, is missing. The Consensus rules 1200 worlds, every world that is known except for Northworld. The Consensus initially wanted to colonize Northworld. Prior to the events in the novel five expeditions, consisting of three fleets and a colonizing expedition, had been sent to Northworld to either colonize or investigate the disappearance. The first fleet was and the colonizing expedition consisted of humans. Between the first fleet and the colonizing expedition Captain North, and his team, sent to investigate the second fleet was crewed by androids (similar to the replicants of Blade runner). The third fleet was composed of sentient machines. In each case the expedition disappears. At the opening of the series Commissioner Hansen is sent alone to investigate the missing planet. Hansen first arrives in Diamond, a peaceful world that forbids weapons of any kind. Hansen encounters a warm welcome from the curious people, but he finds that the weapons he carries begin to disintegrate in Diamond; however, he does not stay in Diamond long. Ruby, another world occupying the same dimesional space as Diamond, interposes itself over Diamond, causing Diamond's destruction. Hansen then travels to a very different part of the Matrix called the Open Lands. There he is greeted by Walker (who later reveals himself as North), who takes on the appearance of several talking animals, gives Hansen advice, and tries to gain his oath of allegiance. Hansen refuses, and instead decides to go out on his own, entering into the land filled with warfare. Hansen is originally ignored by the battling warriors and left for the slaves to kill and take what they want from him. Hansen is forced to kill the slaves after they attack him to get his clothing. He then sees a suit of left behind armor that was left in the snow. He then follows Lord Golsingh’s army back to Lord Golsingh's town called Peace Rock where he wins a place in the army by challenging one of the soldiers to fight him. The people, though they live in primitive conditions with little technology, have very sophisticated powered armor. This Armor has one major weapon, an electric arc extending from the suit's gauntlets. Length as well as power density can be controlled by opening and closing the thumb and forefinger of the gauntlet. A secondary weapon is the bolt, a single, one-time discharge of arc energy. this is little-used, as it renders the suit powerless for a time while it rechargs. The suit is completely vulnerable to attack during this period. The suits also have some shielding, the ability of which to withstand attack depending on the quiality of the armor. Hansen describes his impression of the world thusly: “The whole thing was barbaric and pre-technological; whereas the warriors’ armor was extremely sophisticated, though idiosyncratic.” Nothing provides insight into how this can be. The smiths that repair the armor claim that the armor cannot be fixed solely with human skill, but the smith must instead mentally enter the Matrix to repair the armor. As Hansen discovers, the armor is not understood by the people. Often setting aside his original objective of finding North, Hansen begins to become a part of the society. Hansen learns the customs of the society and he teaches the warriors how to fight in teams and so become more effective, but not without obstacles. Previously, the warriors had little tactics, but through the guidance of Hansen, the army is turned into a successful force that would be able to conquer the opposing merchant army in a quest for peace for the war-filled land — a dream that is a priority for Lord Golsingh. Meanwhile, the gods of the land encounter many problems and friction. All the worlds of the Matrix are threatened by destruction. Diamond has been destroyed by Ruby, a militaristic and heavily armed world of the Matrix, and the gods decide that Ruby's destruction will eliminate the threat to the Matrix. After the battle with the merchants, Hansen finds himself in a room similar to that in which he was briefed on his mission by the Consensus. It is here that Hansen meets the gods that rule Northworld, the head of which is Captain North. Hansen is told to destroy Ruby in retaliation for the destruction of Diamond. In the process, Hansen must be made into a god so that he can enter into Ruby from inside the Matrix. |
The Smoky God | Willis George Emerson | null | For two years Jansen lived with the inhabitants of an underground network of colonies who, Emerson writes, were 12 feet tall and whose world was lit by a "smoky" central sun. Their capital city was said to be the original Garden of Eden. Later works by other authors, such as Agartha - Secrets of the Subterranean Cities, have identified the civilization Jansen encountered with Agartha (a mythical subterranean city), although Emerson did not use the name. |
The Legend That Was Earth | James P. Hogan | null | At the onset of the story, aliens called Hyadeans have established contact and friendly business relations with Earth. They think Earth is fascinating, because it so different from their own bleak, austere culture. Though they are highly interested in studying the planet and its cultures, Hyadeans are far more technologically advanced and have a more accurate knowledge of science. Many humans, also known as Terrans, accept this alien presence; however, there are many who do not trust the Hyadeans and believe they are plotting to take control of Earth. One group that espouses this belief is CounterAction, which the American government lists as a terrorist organization. When a flyer (advanced aircraft) carrying both Hyadean visitors and Terran politicians is shot down, CounterAction is blamed and the Internal Security Service (ISS) is intent on shutting down their organization by any methods necessary. The action follows savvy Roland Cade who gives up his comfortable life when he is pulled into CounterAction. Because he was formerly married to Marie Cade, a political activist who plays a strong role in CounterAction, the ISS uses him to trace her. His mistress, Julia, is secretly an ISS agent, and convinces him to use his contacts with CounterAction to take in her friend, a supposed political dissident. He takes the friend to Chattanooga, where he unexpectedly runs into Marie. Julia's friend turns out to be an ISS plant and he is forced to flee with Marie; the government believes he is a part of CounterAction because of his wife’s association with the group. They both use their connections to get aid in dodging the government, and these connections form an unlikely bond. CounterAction has been strongly anti-Hyadean, however, they find allies in Cade’s Hyadean friend Vrel and some of his comrades. For much of the story, the action switches between Cade’s group of friends’ attempt to escape capture and the actions of the ISS as more information is revealed. While Cade and his friends learn that states and regions of the country are seceding, the Hyadean officials take over the increasingly impotent government and use military force to subdue resistance. However, a pro-Terran alien interviews Cade and Marie and films footage of Hyadean and government cruelty. This interview gets broadcasted to both different locations on earth and Chryse, the aliens’ planet; many Hyadeans pledge their support and Terrans are given courage to fight for their freedom. The struggle stops being an Earth vs. alien skirmish, and becomes a fight for the rights of both Terran and Hyadean. While Cade, Marie, and their posse travel from country to country to gain new allies and to find shelter, the Hyadean military steps ups its campaign and CounterAction comes under more attacks. They are attacked everywhere they flee, and their Hyadean allies suffer a massive defeat when a Hyadean mission is bombed. Finally, it appears the organization is done for entirely when a formation of giant airships appears. The ships are believed to be both Hyadean and capable of mass destruction. However, the ships belong to a friendly third party of a different alien civilization, the Querl; these aliens have come to help Terrans. CounterAction gets the news that the Hyadean government has just crumpled from popular indigenous support for Earth, and the war is over. New governments form and a stronger, benevolent union between Earth and Chryse begins. Gaysss pipi pene polla boobs esto pasa por confiar en wiki pedia XD |
My Sweet Audrina | V. C. Andrews | 1,982 | Audrina Adare lives with her father Damian,who has a strange past, mother Lucietta, aunt Ellsbeth and cousin Vera. Nine years before Audrina was born, her elder sister—who was also named Audrina—was raped and murdered in the woods. Damian convinces the younger Audrina that, by a process of self-hypnosis, she can gain all of the First Audrina's memories and become just as beloved and special as her dead sister, which is what Audrina wants more than anything else in the world. Audrina is haunted by dreams of her dead sister's rape and is terrified of sex and men. When she is eight, she meets Arden Lowe and his mother Billie, an amputee. Meanwhile, Lucietta is pregnant yet again. On Audrina's ninth birthday, Lucietta goes into early labor and dies in childbirth; the baby, a girl, is named Sylvia. More than three years after her birth, Sylvia finally comes home from the hospital and turns out to be mentally challenged. A few years later, Audrina discovers the affair between Lamar and Vera and that Vera is pregnant. In the ensuing confrontation, Vera has a miscarriage. The next day, she leaves town with Lamar. She leaves a note stating that she is Audrina's paternal half-sister, due to an affair that Ellsbeth had with Damian before he met Lucietta. Shortly after she turns eighteen, Audrina discovers that Damian and Ellsbeth are lovers again; however, tragedy strikes again when Ellsbeth threatens to leave Damian because he will not let her help Vera, who is alone after Lamar committed suicide. The next morning, she is found dead from a mysterious fall down the stairs. Audrina elopes with Arden, hoping to escape her controlling father, and takes Sylvia with her. However, she is still not prepared for sexual intimacy, and her wedding night goes terribly wrong. When the newlyweds return from their disastrous honeymoon, they find that Damian has won over Arden's mother. He also offers Arden a job at his company. Audrina is upset but goes along with it for the sake of peace. Vera returns suddenly one day and, against Damian's wishes, stays for a while. It is not long before Vera attempts to seduce Arden. Tragedy strikes again when Billie "falls" down the same steps and dies. Depressed, Audrina pulls away from Arden and Sylvia—Vera and Arden begin an affair. But when Audrina's love and sexuality finally awakens, she tells Arden that she doesn't want to lose him and they spend the first happy night of their marriage together. One night, she is pushed down the stairs and falls into a coma. With Sylvia's help, she awakens and escapes, realizing that she cannot die without learning the secret of First Audrina. Audrina confronts her father and he confesses that the First and Best Audrina never existed. It was Audrina herself who was gang-raped in the woods. The rape left her so traumatized that she attempted suicide. In an attempt to save Audrina from herself, Damian subjected her to electro-convulsive therapy, trying to erase the memory of the rape. Following Damian's lead, the family conspired to convince Audrina that the rape didn't happen to her but to an older sister who died before she was born. Eventually the repetition of this story worked. Since the family deliberately changed the clocks in the house and also ripped off calendar days, her sense of time was also altered. Audrina realizes that Arden had been present and witnessed the rape but ran away in fear. She also realizes that Vera was the only other person who knew she would be coming home through the woods that day. However, Vera denies being involved, though her reaction suggests she is in fact guilty. When Vera turns to run, she falls down the stairs, later dying of her numerous injuries. Heartbroken, Audrina decides to take herself and Sylvia away but Sylvia refuses to leave. Audrina realizes that where there is love, there can be forgiveness and the promise of a fresh start. She decides to stay, finally feeling like the loving "First" Audrina she has always strived to be. |
An Assembly Such as This | Pamela Aidan | null | The book focuses on Fitzwilliam Darcy's initial visit to Hertfordshire during the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice, as seen from his viewpoint. The book begins as he arrives in the town of Meryton, to stay at Charles Bingley's estate of Netherfield. Darcy expects to be bored by provincial manners and society, and he finds that is the case at a local town ball. To his surprise, however, he becomes fascinated by Elizabeth Bennet, whom he has accidentally offended due to her inadvertently overhearing a tactless comment that he made about her to Bingley. Uncomfortable in his current surroundings, Darcy worries about his sister Georgiana, vulnerable following an unpleasant encounter with George Wickham. Amidst attempts of unwelcome advance by Bingley's sister Caroline, he finds himself repeatedly thrown into Elizabeth's company, particularly when her sister Jane falls ill whilst visiting Netherfield, forced to stay until she recovers. Darcy comes to admire Elizabeth's lively spirit, generous nature and confident refusal to be cowed by her social 'betters'. However, Elizabeth is without money or fine connections and possesses embarrassing and 'unfortunate' relations who make her unsuitable for a wife. Darcy, protective of the somewhat naive and easily-trusting Bingley, attempts to dissuade him from entering into an unfortunate and hasty relationship with Jane Bennet whilst struggling with his own feelings for Elizabeth. Eventually, Darcy determines to explore his feelings for Elizabeth despite his misgivings, resolving to both make amends and attempt to charm Elizabeth during a ball that Bingley is holding. Unfortunately, despite the assistance he receives from his personal valet, fate has conspired against Darcy: Wickham has recently moved into the area, joined the local militia and become acquainted with Elizabeth. As such, when Darcy dance with Elizabeth at the ball, Darcy is subject to extremely cold and unfriendly treatment from her. He realizes that Wickham has managed to poison Elizabeth against him with false tales of their previous dealings, and that she (and others in the village) have become distant towards Darcy because of his perceived arrogance and by Wickham's charming nature and lies. Too proud to set the record straight, however, Darcy refuses to defend himself. Worse, Bingley's unguarded behaviour towards Jane Bennet, her mother's tactless gloating and more examples of ill-breeding from her family strengthen Darcy's conviction that he must prevent his friend's potential ruin at all costs. Darcy dissuads him from marrying Jane Bennet, detecting no hint of regard for his friend beyond politeness. Despite the fact that to do this would permanently alienate Elizabeth, Darcy resolves to act in what he sees as the best interests of his friend; the next day, as the Netherfield party return to London, Darcy sows the seeds of doubt in Bingley's mind about Jane's regard for him, convincing Bingley not to return to Netherfield and declare his intentions to Jane. The novel ends with Darcy resolving to harden his heart and forget about Elizabeth. |
The Amateur Gentleman | Jeffery Farnol | 1,913 | The format of the novel is essentially that of a bildungsroman. It tells the story of Barnabas Barty, the son of John Barty, the former champion boxer of England and landlord of a pub in Kent. At the start of the tale Barnabas comes fortuitously into the possession of a vast fortune - £700,000, an astronomical amount by Regency standards - and determines to use this fortune to become a gentleman. His father objects to this plan and they quarrel, and settle their differences in a round of fisticuffs, which Barnabas wins, beating his father fair and square. Barnabas sets off for London in the furtherance of his ambitions and on the way there contrives to make a number of influential friends and enemies. Farnol ploughs an uncomfortably dualistic furrow vis-á-vis his protagonist. He ruthlessly exploits the naïvety of the youth to comic effect, for instance the youth is gulled by the chapman who sells him a book on etiquette at an outrageous mark-up, and Farnol makes much play of this. At the other end of the spectrum, Farnol is equally disdainful of Barnabas' sophisticated concealment of his identity. * The Amateur Gentleman website dedicated to Sidney Olcott |
Ascending | James Alan Gardner | 2,001 | The novel opens with "A Word About Oar", a brief recap of the earlier story. At the end of Expendable, Festina left the apparently deceased Oar lying in one of the Towers of Ancestors on her planet, where her people absorb high-energy radiations that sustain their lives. At the start of Ascending, Oar regains consciousness in the tower where Festina left her, to find that she is being accosted by a diminutive and odd-looking orange being. This is Uclodda Unorr, a professional smuggler who has been hired to gather evidence on past misdeeds of the Technocracy's Outward Fleet—and who is surprised to discover that Oar is alive. He informs her that four years have passed since Festina left Melaquin, which makes the year 2456 A.D. Unorr has been sent to gather evidence before representatives of the Outward Fleet can arrive to destroy or conceal it; thanks to Festina's activities, a scandal has erupted that will expose the corruption of the High Council of Admirals (events recounted in Gardner's Hunted). Unorr and Oar find it in their interest to escape the planet forthwith; but as they and Unorr's large and muscular (but demur) wife Lajooli are leaving in a bioneural spacecraft, they are confronted by the Shaddill, who have come to use Oar's corpse in an experiment and are also sursprised that she is alive. The little party of Oar, Unorr, and Lajooli manage to escape from the Shaddill for the present; and so they find themselves fleeing across space from both the Shaddill and the Outward Fleet. In the process, Oar is contacted mentally by a very strange alien being who calls himself the Pollisand; he, or it, has a form resembling a headless white rhinoceros, but seems to be one of the very advanced and cryptic galactic beings who exist far above the mundane material level. The Pollisand claims responsibility for Oar's recovery from death; and it, or he, enlists Oar's help in a grand plan to destroy the Shaddill. Oar lets her animus outweigh her suspicion, and agrees to work with him. Fortunately, Admiral Ramos is also rushing to Melaquin to prevent the destruction of evidence; Oar and friends detect her approach and race to the Admiral's ship to escape the pursuing Shaddill. They sacrifice their own ship to incapacitate the Shaddill's enormous vessel (though only temporarily), and are rescued by the humans. Festina is astonished to find that Oar is "alive and causing trouble again". Trouble, however, approaches from all sides. The Outward Fleet has been deeply corrupted from the top down, and Festina's ship is soon sabotaged by a rather incompetent saboteur. Indeed, it becomes clear that the human society of New Earth, which calls itself the Technocracy, is rife with incompetence and corruption on all levels—part of a pattern of degeneracy that is afflicting other societies helped by the Shaddill, societies that have grown increasingly "decadent, temperamental, and culturally sterile", and filled with "wicked, arrogant, self-centered" individuals. Festina tries to rescue the situation by contacting an eccentric and unpleasant species called the Cashlings; but before her plan can succeed, humans and Cashlings, Oar and Uclod and all are captured by the technologically overwhelming Shaddill. Human and Melaquin resourcefulness, however, manage to outwit and outmaneuver the enemy; Oar and Festina learn the secrets behind the Shaddill's malicious manipulation of humanity and other species. Oar triumphs over her adversaries, and also fulfills her bargain with the Pollisand, who in turn presents her with a remedy for the "Tired Brain" syndrome that leaves her people comatose in the Towers of Ancestors. With a new maturity of her own, she brings the cure back to Melaquin, becoming something very close to the savior of her people. Festina is more than a little amazed at the change in her old friend, back from the dead. |
False Mirrors | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | Former diver Leonid (the protagonist of the first novel) is a virtual mover. He receives small wages for hauling virtual furniture. His relationship with his wife Vicka is strained, as he spends most of his time in Deeptown. Due to deep psychosis, a condition he developed at the end of the first novel, he has trouble distinguishing reality from the deep. Unlike Leonid, Vicka (a former diver) managed to let go of Deeptown and rarely ventures there. While all divers are still able to exit the deep at will, their ability to see programming holes and back doors visually disappeared. Additionally, an upgraded deep-program includes a built-in mandatory 24-hour timer. Divers are immune to the timer, for some reason. Leonid's life changes when he finds out that a hacker broke into a small development company and was attacked by its security forces. One of the virus weapons used on him killed the hacker in real life. Leonid contacts his old hacker friend Maniac, who now lives and works in the US, and asks him if he knows the dead hacker. Maniac gives him a real-life Moscow address of a former acquaintance. Leonid goes there and finds himself in a luxurious apartment of a rich businessman named Chingiz. Chingiz turns out to be a down-to-earth fellow who makes money by cracking programs and games and selling them on the street. Another inhabitant of the giant two-story apartment is a hacker named Bastard and amateur hacker teenager Pat — Chingiz's protégé. Bastard explains that he was hired to hack the development company by a man calling himself the Dark Diver, who managed to retain his diver abilities. Bastard asked a 17-year-old hacker to help him break into the company and steal certain files. Securities turned out to be too high for a small company and the teenage hacker was killed by a third-generation weapon (first- and second-generation weapons attack software and hardware, respectively). Apparently, the weapon use a modified deep-program to cause cardiac arrest, which can only be reversed by immediate CPR. When Bastard reveals that the hacker's name was Roma, Leonid realizes that the dead hacker was a former diver. Leonid asks Chingiz for a virus pack, as he goes to search for the files Roma stole. In Deeptown, he encounters a colleague of his from the delivery company, who informs him that he has a letter from Roma to be delivered to the mythical Temple of Diver-in-the-Deep. The letter can only be opened at destination, but Leonid doubts the place exists. He contacts several former divers and asks them for the location. The only one who responds is Dick (AKA Crazy Tosser), security chief of the popular Deeptown game "Labyrinth of Death". He informs Leonid that out of all divers, only three (Dick included) agreed to create the Temple as a monument to the lost diver community. Each hid their entrance at a familiar place. By now, only Dick's entrance exists, but it can only be accessed from the last level of the new "Labyrinth". At the same time, Dick offers Leonid a job at the company. Two years ago, Gunslinger (one of Leonid's avatars) shocked the "Labyrinth" as a master player. Dick believes that Leonid can still show the players a thing or two to promote the game as the legendary figure. Leonid responds that he will think about it, as he has other things on his mind. He tries out the new "Labyrinth" only to find out that the new game is impossible to beat without a good team. He returns to Chingiz's apartment (in Deeptown), which looks exactly like his real one, and discusses the situation with the three hackers. They agree to help him beat the game and find out why Roma died. At that moment, a shadowy figure enters the apartment and introduces himself as the Dark Diver. He attempts to convince them not to attempt the trip, but Pat shoots him, and the conversation erupts into a firefight. Pat is gunned down by a second-generation virus, as is Leonid, but not before he hits the Dark Diver with one too. When his computer refuses to turn on, Leonid calls Bastard and asks him to come over and look at the machine. Vicka comes home, and Leonid explains everything to her and what he plans to do. Bastard arrives and fixes Leonid's computer. He also asks Vicka if she will allow her husband to go back into the "Labyrinth", then she explains the nature of their strained relationship — Leonid never went to the train station to meet her for the first time. Leonid tells Bastard that, in his mind, he met her there. Apparently, that was the time he developed deep psychosis, although Vicka still insists that they still kissed while flying above Deeptown and that his advanced diver powers disappeared shortly after Jinx left. Leonid returns to Chingiz's virtual apartment to find Maniac, Dick, and Mage (reclusive hacker who used to work for Vicka) already there. They go to the "Labyrinth" lobby and find themselves in the new version of the game. The original "Labyrinth" was an evolved version of Doom, which had players fighting a resistance battle against an alien invasion. The new "Labyrinth" is a sequel — after defeating the invaders, the humans send a retaliation force to the alien homeworld. The tougher (and smarter) enemies make the "lone wolf" tactics impossible. Leonid's team makes it through several levels before encountering a woman named Nike, who joins the team and turns out to be pretty good. At one point, Leonid even confesses that he is attracted to her. Realizing that it would take too long to reach the last level, Leonid confronts Maniac and asks him if he brought the Warlock virus with him. The reluctant Maniac reveals that he managed to smuggle parts of his new-and-improved "Warlock 9300" virus. He assembles the virus, and it turns into an elevator. Crazy Tosser is reluctant to enter the elevator, as he believes they will be traced and kicked out but does so anyway. The elevator takes them to a high-rise on the last level of the "Labyrinth", where they manage to surprise several monsters. Tosser finally reveals that, earlier that day, he sent an email to his superiors informing them of a security drill — an attempt to smuggle a virus into the game. He even offers Maniac a $500 reward for "assisting" in testing the company's security. Since there is no obvious way to get down from the roof of the building, they make a hole in it and decide to climb down the girders on the inside of the building. Tosser offers to climb down first to make sure it's safe. Leonid takes one of his team-mates on his shoulders and proceeds next (using his diver ability to exit the deep while he is climbing down). Eventually, everybody got down, although Chingiz almost fell along with the person he was carrying. Nike (with Pat on her shoulders) managed to get down without a problem, which made Leonid suspicious. After several more challenges, they managed to reach the Emperor's castle. According to Tosser, the Temple entrance is located behind the Emperor's throne. The creature itself is a giant human with energy beams coming out of his eyes. Apparently, the Emperor is a prototype program that learns on its enemies' mistakes. The Emperor proves a tough enemy, and the rest of the team stay behind to hold him off to allow Leonid, Pat, and Nike to reach the throne room. As Leonid blasts the throne to reveal the entrance, the Emperor enters and grabs Pat. Leonid is shocked, when the Emperor looks at him and asks "Who am I?", before being blasted by Nike's rocket launcher, along with Pat. Leonid then confronts her and accuses her of being a diver. They both aim weapons at each other, but only Leonid fires. He then enters the door and finds himself facing a nightmare he kept seeing in his sleep for months — a chasm with two walls (fire and ice) and a string crossing it. Every time he tried to cross the chasm before, he would always fall and wake up. This time, he simply jumps down and floats towards an entrance he sees hovering in nothingness. The Temple then appears on the edge of Deeptown, showing that Leonid passed the test. As the Temple now has a Deeptown address, Leonid contacts his former colleague and tells him where to go to find the building. While he's waiting for the letter, a vehicle stops outside the Temple, and Man with no Face (AKA Dmitry Dibenko) gets out. He enters the Temple with Leonid's help (apparently, only divers may enter without assistance), and explains that Roma's death was an accident — the person who shot him was unaware of the weapon's lethality. He also says that he has been hiding from the Dark Diver for a long time. Apparently, the Dark Diver wants him dead. Man with no Face does not reveal what is in the stolen files. Instead, he gives the prototype weapon to Leonid, saying that most of the bullets are stun rounds and the last one is deadly. He leaves, after which Leonid's team-mates arrive, followed by the deliveryman. Leonid takes the letter, opens it, and reads it. The files describe an attempt by Man with no Face to create "shadow consciousness" — a sort-of echo of a person who logs off from Deeptown. Apparently, there was some success in allowing an avatar to exist and interact with Deeptown for a period of time after the user leaves. The ramifications of this discovery are staggering — should Dibenko succeed, Deeptown will soon be populated with "ghosts" of real-life people. There will be no knowing who is real and who is not. Also, those "ghosts" will eventually achieve a form of AI, as evident by the Emperor in the "Labyrinth of Death" (his question "Who am I?" is the proof of his self-awareness). After locking the file on Chingiz's computer with four passwords (Leonid's, Chingiz's, Bastard's, and Pat's), they all leave the Temple and agree to meet up later in Chingiz's Deeptown apartment. Leonid logs off to find Vicka near her computer. He realizes that she was Nike and was helping them reach the last level. He also sees that Vicka was not even trying to hide her identity from him (Victoria is a Roman name for the Greek goddess Nike). Despite Leonid's expectations, Vicka is not the Dark Diver. Now Leonid is in trouble — he told Nike he liked her before knowing that she was his wife. Vicka, however, does not mind, perhaps because Nike was a personification of her. At the agreed time, Leonid returns to Deeptown and goes to Chingiz's apartment. He also receives a message from Crazy Tosser, who is in the hospital from a heart attack (he is not a young man). Dick says he will be fine but is unable to help Leonid in the near future. Leonid goes to the apartment to find only Chingiz and Bastard waiting for him (Pat is doing homework in the real world). While they are deciding on what to do with the files (Chingiz suggests physically destroying the hard-drive, just to be sure), the Dark Diver reappears and paralyzes the three with stun rounds. He then forces them to call Pat and tell him to unlock the files and send them to the virtual apartment. Pat, while sending the file, suspects something is wrong and enters the apartment armed. The Dark Diver, however, is quicker and shoots Pat. Too late does he realize that the bullet is lethal. He disappears with the file, as Pat's heart stops beating. Chingiz's virtual computer is too far away, so Leonid takes drastic measures. Somehow, he forces Chingiz to see the deep for what it really is (i.e. become a diver) and log off. Bastard rushes to his own virtual computer to log off, and Leonid leave the apartment and goes to his favorite bar/restaurant in Deeptown. There, he calls the Dark Diver, and the figure appears by him. Leonid finally knows the Dark Diver's true nature — he is an echo of Leonid and the power he once held. Apparently, after Jinx left, Leonid decided that he did not wish to be a diver anymore. So, subconsciously, he altered the deep-program to have a built-in timer and removed diver ability to see programming holes. The part of him that had the power to manipulate any program and access Deeptown without a computer split off and formed its own personality, while still remaining a distant part of him. That is why the Dark Diver did not know about the lethal round in his gun — it was Leonid's gun. Deep Diver's life is a curse — he is unable to perceive Deeptown the way human do. All he see are rough shapes and colors. He is also alone and was trying to steal Dibenko's files to create more like him. Leonid decides that it is time for him to embrace his destiny and the two merge. This restores all of Leonid's abilities, as well as abilities of other Divers. He contacts Chingiz and finds out that he managed to perform CPR in time to save Pat. Leonid then returns to the "Labyrinth" and frees the Emperor from his captivity in the game. |
Violets are Blue | James Patterson | 2,001 | The book begins where Roses are Red ended, with Dr. Alex Cross at the home of murdered FBI Agent Betsey Cavalierre. Alex is in his room when his cellphone rings. Alex answers and the Mastermind is on the line. He tells Alex that he killed Cavalierre to toy with Alex. He's going to kill his grandmother and his children, and John Sampson, Cross' best friend and partner, who was watching over Nana Mama, Damon and Janelle, cannot stop him. Alex hangs up and calls Sampson, telling him what happened. Sampson tells Alex that the Mastermind can try but will not succeed. Alex is rushing home when the Mastermind calls him back and tells Cross that his family is safe for the moment. He warns Alex that he's next. Elsewhere, in San Francisco, California, a man and a woman jog through a Golden Gate Park. As they jog, the woman, Martha Wiatt, hears some kind of growling behind them. As they both run faster, she gains some distance between her and her boyfriend, Davis O'Hara. Then, she hears her boyfriend screaming behind her, and runs for help. She sees a van driving by, flags it down, and two people get out. They tell her that she and her boyfriend were chosen. The last thing she sees before dying are vampires. Later, Kyle Craig calls Alex about a similarity between two murders in San Francisco and a murder in Washington DC that they’d worked on a few months before. The case involved a runaway girl that was found hung from a light fixture in a hotel room. The FBI requests that he go to San Francisco to meet Inspector Jamilla Hughes. First, Alex takes Jannie and Ali to school but tells them he'll be back for Damon's choir concert. Kyle Craig calls him to make sure he received the information he had faxed. On the flight, he reviews the details of the murders, which include being hung with the blood drained, and remembers that the little runaway girl in DC had died in exactly the same way. Jamilla picks Cross up at the airport. She takes him to the morgue to see the bodies. A friend of hers, Dr. Allan Pang (a dental expert)is examining the bites on the victims. After reviewing the bites, he deduces that the man was bitten and mauled by a tiger and the girl was bitten by humans. The two brothers went hunting again at Mill Valley, California. They are given a mission from a person called The Sire. The Sire instructed them not to bring the cat when they go to kill the couple living inside the house. Inside, the couple were making dinner when Michael and William walked through the unlocked front door. The brothers bite the couple savagely, sucking on their blood. Before killing the woman, Michael whispers to her that they’re vampires. Jamilla and Alex are working out of her office when the Mastermind calls Alex. The Mastermind tells Alex that he knows about San Francisco and Jamilla. Later that evening, Cross is on the phone with Kyle Craig, who will be working with Cross on the case. Jamilla interrupts and tells Alex that they have to go to San Luis Obispo where they’re going to exhume the body of a girl whose murder could be related to the San Francisco murders. The girl had also been hung, her blood drained. The next day Alex arrives at the SFPD precinct where Jamilla works. Cross admires her work ethic. Jamilla was reading an e mail sent by the FBI and there had been eight murders similar in California and Nevada. Because of the murder in Washington DC, the FBI is now searching for similar murders on the east coast. That afternoon, Jamilla tells Alex that her friend Tim Bradley, from the San Francisco Examiner, has a few leads for her. Then, they are informed that the killers had struck again. At the crime scene, Alex discovers that, again, the bodies had been drained of blood and were hanging from the ceiling by a light fixture. William and Michael watch the story unfold on TV. They were on a mission and the publicity was part of the plan. William tells Michael that he has a plan for that night. The two brothers break into a funeral home and feast on a dead woman who had not yet been embalmed. Cross is still impressed by Jamilla’s work ethic. Alex is working on trying to find a lead on the tiger. He’s checking with zoos, veterinarians, and animal trainers. Jamilla calls Alex early the next morning regarding a lead from a reporter friend. They drive to Los Angeles to meet with a woman who had gotten away after an attack by two men, but she had been bitten several times. The attacks had happened over a year ago. The woman, Gloria Dos Santos, claims the attackers were in their 40’s, but she isn't certain. They’d bitten her multiple times and were going to hang her from a tree. Gloria believed the men were vampires. Luckily, she had managed to get away when she fell down the side of a hill and rolled all the way down. Gloria claims that earlier that night, she had been at a ‘fang’ club with others in the vampire culture. Gloria tells them she was into the Goth scene at that time. A patrolman interrupts the session. There was a murder in Sunset Blvd. The person was bitten and hanged. When they arrive at the murder scene, Kyle Craig is waiting for them. The body was discovered at Chateau Marmont. The man was a record company executive. While Alex looks through the crime scene, the Mastermind called Alex. The Mastermind knew that Alex was in LA. After a week, it looked like Alex would not be returning in time for Damon’s choir concert and so he calls home. Jamilla returns to San Francisco, but leaves her notes with Alex and Kyle. She believes that although the murders are similar, the patterns are different, and may have been committed by different people. Alex concurs. Jamilla tells Alex about the break-in at the funeral home. As Alex and Kyle leave the precinct, they are followed by Michael and William. William tells Michael that he senses one of them is extremely dangerous. Alex is going to Santa Barbara to meet with Peter Westin, a self-professed vampire and vampire expert. Westin dressed the part of a vampire, even to long fingernails but his teeth are normal and had no fangs. He tells Alex that there are several chapters in the US for people that consider themselves vampires. Westin tells Alex that a vampire is a person born with an extraordinary gift. They have the capacity to transform, channel, absorb and manipulate pranic energy. He tells Cross that blood is the highest form of pranic energy. The next day Alex drives to Fresno to see John Berreiro, who does tattoos and custom teeth for so-called vampires. William and Michael travel to Las Vegas, and they attend a magic show performed by two magicians named Daniel Erickson and Charles DeFoe. After the show, they seduce an actor and actress couple whom they had met at the show. They kill them in their own room at the Bellagio. Alex and Kyle examine the bodies after the murders are discovered. They have been drained of blood and dumped in the bathtub. Cross notes that there was nowhere for the bodies to be hanged. Jamilla calls Alex and confirms that there are at least four killers, based on dental evidence. The murders seem to stop and the trail go cold, so after being in the West coast for fourteen days, Alex returns home. Alex spends the whole day with his children and Nana Mama at the Smithsonian without any phone calls. The Mastermind had actually been following Cross and his family all day. After a few days of being with his friends and family, Alex gets word that the killers had struck in Charleston, South Carolina. Kyle is waiting for Alex down in Charleston. He informs Alex that there are dozens of unsolved murders related to the Vampire killing, dating back eleven years. Michael and William are in Savannah, Georgia and they kill again. The next day Cross and Kyle head there to investigate the murder. As Kyle and Alex examine the body of the young college student, laid inside a gothic church, they’re told of a murder in Charlotte, North Carolina. A young boy had killed his parents by bludgeoning them to death. A claw hammer was found on the scene. He had also bitten them. The boy had fled to an abandoned house nearby that was frequented by other runaways. Kyle and Alex, together with a squad of agents, observe the abandoned house for several hours. They are told to proceed carefully due to all the minors in the house. Kyle finds the boy and the agents rush him. The boy, Irwin Snyder, was pale, unhealthy looking, dirty and smelly. He growled and hissed at the agents. Surprisingly, he knew Cross’ name. He tells Cross he killed his parents to free himself and that he follows the tiger. Irwin rushes Cross with a knife. As Cross wrestles him, Irwin bites Cross’ hand and shoulder. The FBI agents pull him away as Irwin yells “Now you’re one of us” to Cross. Cross questioned Snyder, but got few answers. Cross asked Snyder how he heard about him. Snyder tells him to ask the tiger when they meet again. The next day, instead of going to hospital to address the wounds in his hand and shoulder, Cross returns to Washington. When he gets into the house, the phone rings and the Mastermind welcomes him back. Cross invites him to come and get him. The next day Cross' hand is even more swollen and painful. He finally gets his wounds checked. When he arrives at the hospital, he has a high fever. Alex had cellulitis in his hand, caused by bacteria that can be found in the mouth. The doctor gives Alex a prescription for the infection and sends him home. At home he goes to sleep but wakes up because he felt someone in the room with him. It was Janelle, and she talks with her dad and stays with him after he falls asleep. The Mastermind is inside the Cross’ house and was ready to kill him and his family, but on seeing him bandaged up, The Mastermind decides he's not a worthy opponent at that time and he leaves. Alex works from home for the next few days and tries to find a connection between the cities that the murders took place. After doing some research, he discovers that all the murders occurred whenever the magicians, Daniel and Charles, were in town. He called Kyle Craig and told him New Orleans, Louisiana should be next, based on their schedule. In New Orleans, the FBI put the magicians under surveillance and sees that they use white tigers in their show. At the end of the performance, Daniel and Charles go home in a limousine, which the FBI follows to their home. When the driver opens the door, two white tigers jump out but Daniel and Charles had disappeared. The magicians appear at a small private club in Abita Springs, LA.The men are taken to the basement where a teenage boy has been chained for their pleasure. Daniel was the Sire. After receiving clearance from the doctor to return to work, Alex meets up with Jamilla in New Orleans. They attend two performances by the magicians and are convinced they’re involved in the murders. Jamilla and Alex are on stakeout for a few days trying to catch the magicians. Daniel owns a large house in New Orleans that he’d inherited from his father. Through the surveillance, it is discovered that there will be a Gothic party on the grounds. Jamilla and Alex go to a local restaurant to talk, not knowing that they’re being watched by the Mastermind. He watches them leave the restaurant, sees Jamilla get in a taxi, and then follows Cross. He decides he’s going to kill Alex now, but at the last moment decides against it. The street Alex turned down was too dark, and he wants to see Alex’s eyes when he dies. The next morning, Kyle Craig is handing out the day’s assignments. Jamilla asks about her assignment, but Kyle tells her to see Cross. She tells Kyle she’s worked as hard as everyone else and would like an assignment. Kyle tells her that he doesn't care. Alex was surprised at Kyle’s behavior. In private, Jamilla tells Alex that Kyle is a control freak and that he may have serious issues with women. William and Michael have arrived at New Orleans. For several days, Charles and Daniel are under surveillance, but they hardly leave the house. When they do, they go to a restaurant or go shopping. Cross and Jamilla now think they are not the killers. William watches the police surveillance on Charles and Daniel. He wonders how long Charles and Daniel can go without killing. A few blocks down, William talks to a young teenage girl and then kills her after taking shots of her nude body. The next morning, Cross and Jamilla find out about the girl. They tell Kyle their plan to crash the party and Kyle approves. Alex and Jamilla wear costumes to the party. When they get to the main floor, they see that most of the people there have fangs. A deep voice announces that the Sire has arrived. Daniel and Charles come down the stairs, led by a white tiger. Daniel addresses the crowd and tells everyone he’s the Sire. They are there to anoint two new vampire princes. Suddenly, the lights go out. When the lights come back, Charles and Daniel lie dead. Their throats had been slashed and there were fang marks. The next day Jamilla is headed back to San Francisco. Alex takes her to the airport. They promise to keep in touch. Cross returns to Daniel’s house. He thinks the police have missed something. In the closet of the master bedroom, two dolls with the magicians' likeness were on the floor with scratch marks on their chest, necks, and face. Someone had been there after the police had sealed off the area. Alex goes through the tunnels in the basement where he is attacked by a man and a woman. The woman bites him. He manages to fight them off and then arrests them. At the station, Cross questions the two vampires. They are teenagers and both are runaways. The questioning proved fruitless and was interrupted when an officer informed him that a detective has been found dead and hung in her apartment. Cross rushes to the crime scene. The bites were different - superficial. Alex believed someone else had killed her. She was not drained of her blood. Alex’s cellphone rings. It was the Mastermind, and he asks Alex if he found the body yet, and asks what he thought. Alex hangs up and he notices that Kyle is watching him closely. Jamilla calls Alex to tell him that her reporter friend found some leads in Santa Cruz, California. There had been numerous disappearances there, and she was going to check them out. Cross told her to be careful and to always have someone with her. In Santa Cruz, Jamilla speaks with the local police. She decides to check the foothills outside of town. She believes several people are living there as part of a commune. When she arrives and parks her car, two handsome men approach her. It was Michael and William and they attack her but they don’t injure her. They throw her in the back of a pickup truck and gag her. They are taking her to see the Sire, and tell her they will kill her afterwards. Cross returns home and spends the whole day with the kids. When he returns home, Jamilla’s friend from the Examiner, Tim Bradley, had left a message for Alex. Alex calls him back and is told that Jamilla has gone missing. Alex calls the SCPD and is told that she went to the foothills. Alex calls Kyle Craig. and then he returns to California. In San Francisco, Alex is met by FBI agents who take him to the foothills. Once there, one of the agents tells Alex that the area used to be a preserve for wild animals, and the owners would train lions and tigers there. When they arrive near the ranch, Kyle is waiting with several agents. Kyle tells him that there are dozens of vampires inside led by the new Sire. There is no sign of Jamilla. That night, Alex watches Michael and William take the tiger out to play. Alex noticed Kyle was acting like a detached observer. Cross theorizes that the magicians, Daniel and Charles, had always been careful. They had killed for dozens of years without getting caught. The brothers, Michael and William, on the other hand were careless in their murders, and they were under orders to frame Daniel and Charles for their killings. Cross believes the brothers were finally given the order to kill the magicians in New Orleans. After a few hours of observation, the FBI is ready to go. They are surprised when the front doors of the ranch suddenly open, and several people come out dressed in dark clothes. They get on vehicles and park them closer to the building. Through the doors then come people in hooded robes, all with guns pointed at each other. They move towards the waiting vehicles. Alex is trying to spot Jamilla, but can’t see her because of the hoods. One of them suddenly drops to the ground. Alex knows it was Jamilla, and the FBI now moves in full force. Alex goes to Jamilla and they rush into the ranch. Inside, they find two dead bodies, bitten and drained of blood. There is a hole in the ground and Alex follows it down into a tunnel. Jamilla and Kyle join Alex and they proceed down the dark tunnel. The tiger is there and it rushes at Alex, who is forced to shoot and kill it. When they exit the tunnel, a vehicle approaches them at high speed. Alex sees the brothers inside, and he fires several shots before the truck flips onto its side. Michael gets out, bloodied, and rushes at Cross. William is dead. Cross is ready to tackle Michael when Kyle kills Michael. A voice comes from the truck. Cross was surprised when he saw the injured and bloody Sire, Peter Westin, inside. Peter Westin had met the magicians when they were performing in Los Angeles. Westin had his followers, but feigned allegiance until he felt he was strong enough to emerge as the Sire. He had dispatched the brothers to kill in the cities where the magicians were performing. At the airport, Alex gets a gut feeling about the Mastermind and Jamilla. He cancels his flight, rents a car and parks it a few blocks away from Jamilla's house. He waits and watches. He did not intend to have a third dead partner. Patsy Hampton had been murdered by Geoffrey Shafer and Betsey Cavalierre by the Mastermind. Cross recalls Cavalierre’s murder and how she had been knifed and mutilated, even between the legs. The Mastermind calls Alex and threatens his family. Cross calls Sampson, tells him what's going on, and gets him to move the family to a safe place. Jamilla arrives back home later that afternoon. After she gets inside her apartment, Alex calls her and explains to her that she might be in danger. Night arrives, and Cross suddenly sees the Mastermind. Everything had just made sense to him - his friend, Kyle Craig, was the Mastermind. Cross calls Jamilla and reveals the suspected identity of the Mastermind. She confirms to him that it made sense for Kyle to be the Mastermind. Alex tells her that he’s outside. Jamilla tells Cross to come in and join her through the back way into the house. Kyle had actually seen Cross and had decided to make an unexpected move. Kyle knew the FBI was also becoming suspicious of him. Kyle had killed Cavalierre because she was beginning to get suspicious of him. Inside, Alex and Jamilla wait for Kyle to come. The door opens, a man comes in, and Cross and Jamilla attack him. The man was not Kyle Craig, but an FBI Agent sent by Kyle to break into Jamilla's home. Ronald Burns, Director of the FBI calls Alex. Alex demands to know everything. Burns tells Cross that he believes that Kyle murdered LA Times reporter Beth Lieberman during Kiss the Girls case. She had made a connection between Kyle and the Gentleman Caller. Burns confirms that the FBI suspected Kyle was involved in Betsey Cavalierre’s death but they had no solid proof. Cross leaves for Washington DC to protect his family. Once home, Alex starts to contact those of his friends who might be next on Kyle's list of potential victims. Kyle calls Alex and tells him that he had just murdered the Taylors, who were good friends of Alex. The next day, Alex interviews several of Kyle’s family. Kyle’s older brother, Martin, had long suspected that Kyle killed his own middle brother, Blake. Alex decides he’s quitting the force as soon as he solves this case. Cross goes to North Carolina to speak with Kyle’s parents and younger brother. Then, he thinks about Kyle's next victim, and he decides it could be his old friend, Kate McTiernan from Kiss The Girls. After calling Kate and warning her to get out of town for her own safety, Alex rushes to her home. Alex goes inside to wait. Kyle calls him on the phone but it was a distraction ploy as Kyle was already in the house. Kyle jumps down to attack him from behind and they fight. Cross eventually hits Kyle in the head with a bottle. Then, Alex makes a call and waits for Kyle to awaken. They have a talk. Cross gets Kyle to tell him everything he had done, and at the end, Kyle boasts that Alex won't be able to prove anything. Alex takes out his phone and tells him the entire conversation was recorded on voicemail. Kyle jumps up to attack Alex but Alex punches him in the face. |
The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray | Chris Wooding | 2,006 | The story begins with Thaniel Fox hunting Wych-kin in the abandoned regions of London. He starts thinking about his childhood and how his mother was brutally murdered in an abandoned graveyard in Whitechapel when he was six years old and how his father, Jedriah Fox, had trained him in the art of Wych-hunting before he too died, leaving Thaniel alone. Hunting the Wych-kin down he eventually finds its lair and during the chase he is attacked by a girl, same age as him, in a confused state. This girl, the titular Alaizabel Cray, was brought back to his house while he tried to figure out what to do with her. Leaving her under the guard of Cathaline Bennett (a friend of his father's who became his teacher then friend), Thaniel began making enquiries at the mental wards run by Dr. Mammon Pyke, an associate who had often helped Thaniel treat the victims of the certain types of Wych-kin that caused madness. On this instance however, Thaniel got the impression that Pyke had an ulterior motive and gave the doctor false information concerning the girl. That night the killer Stitch-Face strikes again, Ms. Marey Woolbury who is a prostitute. During Alaizabel's slow recovery it becomes apparent that she has no memory of her past life apart from her name. Unbeknownst to any of them The Wych-kin Fraternity is watching them and waiting for their chance to recapture what is theirs. Eventually Thaniel is given another chance to kill the Wych-kin that eluded him the night he found Miss Cray. With the help of Inspector Maycraft he finally kills it, only to find that something has gone wrong in his absence. Thatch, a spirit that has remain dormant in Alaizabel, has awoken and takes control of her. During their attempt to understand what's happening; Thaniel and Cathaline discover that she was tattooed with the chackh'morg. This symbol allows ghosts, in this case the spirit Thatch, to enter Alaizabel's body, thus explaining the supernatural events surrounding Alaizabel. Despite his best attempts at keeping Thatch down and Alaizabel safe, Thatch almost escapes and a Wych-kin called Congealed Darkness, sent by the Fraternity, almost kidnaps her. Realizing the futility of hiding, Thaniel takes his friends to the safety of the Crooked Lanes. Thaniel and Cathaline decide to flee to an area called the crooked lanes where Thaniel has a friend called Crott, a beggar Lord, who owes him a favour due to his father's attempt to save Crott's wife. In return for ridding the lanes of a recent Wych-kin invasion he will be granted safe passage. The Wych-kin is defeated; but not without loss of life. Stitch-Face strikes again, this time targeting a deaf "God-fearing woman", a Ms. Priscena Weston. In her panic, Ms. Weston runs into a pack of wolves who attack her and chase away Stitch-face. Ms. Westen is miraculously saved when a man whose job it is to hunt large animals in Alaska and who is visiting family, kills the wolves and saves Ms. Westen's life. Meanwhile Inspector Maycraft and his partner inspector Carver are on the trail of a murderer known as the green tack killer who is believed to be Stitch-Face. Carver does not believe that but Maycraft refuses to listen. Eventually, as part of their deal, Crott uncovers someone who knows about Alaizabel's past, Perris The Boar. Perris tells them that Alaizabel was used by the Fraternity, an evil cult, led by none other than Dr. Pyke himself, which is bent on world destruction. They killed her parents and placed the spirit of Thatch inside her. During this time Thaniel and Alaizabel get closer. That night, Stitch-Face attacks Dr. Pyke's secretary, Lucinda Watt, and gathers information on the Fraternity's plans, leaving her body as a warning to the other members. By this point Carver realizes that Maycraft cannot be trusted and seeks out the beggar lord. He and Crott share information and thus Thaniel gains a new ally. Crott's Devil Boy Jack, a fortune teller of the highest order, whose eyes are sewn shut, predicts that the darkness is coming as soon as the last green tack murder takes place. The last victim's name is Leanna Butcher. The Green Tack murders are a series of sacrifices that, when all placed on a map, form the shape of the Chackh'morg. While trying to save the final victim, Thaniel realises that the culprit it really a Wych-kin called Rawhead, summoned by the Fraternity to carry out the killings, and although Thaniel defeated the monster, it succeeded in mortally wounding the unfortunate victim. The Fraternity also manage to kidnap Alaizabel from under his nose at the same time. Alaizabel has the spirit of Thatch removed and put inside a more obedient host body and she is left for dead in a cell. She escapes but is captured by Stitch-face. Thaniel, defeated and heartbroken over the loss of Alaizabel and knowing that he failed to stop the Green Tack killings and as a result all of the Fraternity's plans have now come to fruition, retreats and is about to give up. The others prepare for the inevitable as the victim dies and the darkness arrives upon London. The next day London is covered by red clouds blotting out the sun and the Wych-kin run rampant through the streets. This is only stage one of the Fraternity's plans. During this Stitch-Face, for reasons best known to himself, has mercy and returns Alaizabel to Thaniel who, reinvigorated by his love's return, leads the street gangs of London in their fight against the Fraternity. During this time Carver comes up with a plan to stop the Fraternity from completing the second and final stage of their evil scheme by invading their base and killing Lady Thatch. Thatch, it turns out, is essential to their plans as she is the only one who knows how to summon the Glau Meska, the Fraternity's hell gods. In order to get there they must acquire an airship, but have to travel overland in order to get one. Along the way the Devil Boy reveals that he knows who is going to die and survive but will not tell for fear of changing the outcome. Along the way, as the Devil Boy predicted, they lose Crott and his companion, Armand, to a group of Wych-kin called the Draug. Eventually they make it to the airship and now have safe passage to the Fraternity's HQ, an until now hidden Cathedral in the southern area of London, as no Wych-kin can fly. When they reach the castle Alaizabel reveals that she has retained some of Lady Thatch's memories and is able to gain access to their base. The pilot is told to stay put while they try to hunt down Thatch. On the way to the Cathedral, Thaniel reveals to Alaizabel how her arrival affected him emotionally for the better. After hearing this, Alaizabel kisses him. Dr. Pyke, enraged by the intrusion during the final stages of his plan and the most delicate part of the whole operation, releases the Wych-dogs. Only the memory of the aforementioned kiss he had shared with Alaizabel keeps Thaniel going. During the battle with the Wych-dogs, Carver is wounded and the Devil Boy reveals that he also foresaw his own death and is in the process of telling Thaniel that they will win in the end when he is shot by Curien Blake, Pyke's American assassin. Outside, the Airship pilot loses his nerve and decides to flee. Unable to cut the rope anchoring him to the castle, he drops the ship's payload and destroys the anchor rope and most of the castle wall. Inspector Maycraft, who has been one of Pyke's minions all along, is killed in the blast. Blake states that he was always a fan of Thaniel's father and challenges Thaniel to a duel. During this one-on-one knife fight, Cathaline is shot in the hand and Blake is defeated. Stalking deeper into the Castle, they find Thatch but Pyke shoots Thaniel in the stomach, but not fatally, before they can stop her. He also tells them of the true nature of the Wych-kin and how they came to exist. He says that when people came to rely completely on science and started to completely believe that God didn't exist is when the Wych-kin came about. Because when people still believed in God they had someone to blame for the evil, hate, and everything else that is bad in the world. But when the belief in God began to wane, people didn't know what to do with the blame and so subconsciously created the Wych-kin. However the damaged wall had allowed the Wych-kin to gain access to the castle and they begin killing the cultists. In the confusion Pyke escapes but Thaniel is able to kill Thatch just as Thatch is about to finish the spell that would have awoken the Deep Ones. The Wych-kin are all destroyed as the red clouds dissipate and they are caught out in the sunlight. With the defeat of the Fraternity, Thaniel and Alaizabel have now fully fallen in love and have gone to live together to some unknown place. Carver reflects on the better world emerging now that the Wych-kin are fully acknowledged and Stitch-Face begins hunting down any survivors of the Fraternity, beginning with an unsuspecting Dr. Mammon Pyke. |
Hello-out there! | William Saroyan | null | The play is set in a small Texas jail. There are two major characters, Photo-Finish and Emily, whom Saroyan refers to simply as "A Young Man" and "A Girl". Photo-Finish is a down on his luck gambler and ends up in jail in a hole-in-the-wall town as a result of a married harlot crying rape when he refused to pay her after having sex with her. There he meets Emily, an unhappy cook. When they meet, it is love at first sight. Emily and Photo-Finish fall in love and make plans to go to San Francisco, but their plans are crushed when the men looking for Photo-Finish find him, and kill him. |
Kävik the Wolf Dog | null | null | Kävik, a malamute sled dog, gets sold from Charlie One-eye to Mr. Hunter for $2,000 after winning the North American Sled-dog race and is loaded on a plane in an iron-barred cage. In the middle of the trip, something goes wrong and the plane crashes into the ground, killing pilot Smiley Johnson before he even has time to undo his seatbelt. Kävik's cage makes a gaping hole in the side of the plane as it crashes in the eye of a storm. After being trapped in a cage for three days while starving, freezing, and getting multiple wounds from neighboring animals, Kävik is found by young Andy Evans, a teenage boy who the plane wreck along his trapline. Andy uses a piece of the plane's wing to open the cage and to create a sled to carry the injured dog until they reach a cave, where Andy and Kävik spend the night. The next morning, Andy is shaken awake by his father, Kurt Evans, and they take Kävik back to their house. Laura Evans, Andy's mother, suggests that they take him over to Dr. Walker. When Dr. Walker arrives, he is led to believe by Andy that Laura was sick, but he learns that Kävik was injured instead and refuses to operate on him because he is a people doctor, not a veterinarian. But with Laura's tricky ways, he is persuaded to help Kavik to the best of his abilities. Over the period of a few weeks, Kävik almost fully recovers and heals. Andy notices he is as good as new when he climbs up the stairs and is able to open his door. One day, while Andy is at his job downtown, Kävik escapes to town and gets chased by a pack of dogs led by Blackie. It turns out he has lost his fighting courage due to the horrible plane wreck. A few weeks later, Andy comes home and notices that Kävik is nowhere to be found. His dad tells Andy that Mr. Hunter came by earlier that day and took Kävik back with him to his home in Colorado, despite being told by Andy's father that Kävik is a complete coward and that he had lost his wolflike courage. When Mr. Hunter goes to show Kävik off, Kavik escapes out of a window and sets out over 2,000 miles to return to Andy, the only person who ever loved him enough to take care of him. |
Of the Standard of Taste | null | null | Hume begins with the observation that there is much variety in people's taste (or the aesthetic judgments people make). However, Hume argues that there is a common mechanism in human nature that gives rise to, and often even provides justification for, such judgments. He takes this aesthetic sense to be quite similar to the moral sense for which he argues in his Book 3 of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740) and in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Furthermore, he argues that this still leaves room for the ability to refine one's aesthetic palate. (Fieser, 2006, §2) Hume took as his premise that the great diversity and disagreement regarding matters of taste had two basic sources - sentiment, which was to some degree naturally varying, and critical facility, which could be cultivated. Each person is a combination of these of two sources, and Hume endeavours to delineate the admirable qualities of a critic, that they might augment their natural sense of beauty into a reliable faculty of judgment. There are a variety of qualities of the good critic that he describes, each of which contributes to an ultimately reliable and just ability to judge. |
Fat City | Leonard Gardner | 1,969 | Set in the small-time boxing circuit of Stockton, California in the late 1950s, the novel concerns the revival of a semi-retired Billy Tully's career and the first fights of a novice, Ernie Munger. At twenty-nine years old and discouraged not only by his defeat to another lightweight fighter in Panama, but also from the desertion of his wife two years earlier, Tully meets Munger at the local YMCA and remarks on his talent, suggesting he visit his former trainer Ruben Luna. Disgusted by his lack of fitness and power, Tully entertains the idea of returning to the ring in a bid to reclaim his self-respect and possibly his ex-wife. Munger meanwhile impregnates his girlfriend, Faye, and marries her out of obligation, vowing to support his young family by winning fights. After losing his first amateur bout he attains some success and, despite his anxieties about marriage, seems poised to ascend the circuit ranks. Tully, meanwhile is wracked by uncertainty and divides his time between working as a low-paying farm laborer and drinking heavily in seedy bars and motels. After a brief affair with an alcoholic barfly named Oma, Tully strengthens his resolve and makes a concerted effort to prepare for a fight with a moderately well-known but aging Mexican fighter named Arcadio Lucero. Tully narrowly wins the fight on a bill with Munger, who is also victorious in his professional debut. Though momentarily bolstered by his victory, Tully pines for Oma, his ex-wife, or any woman, realizing that his career is over and the past can not be reclaimed. Alone and without any future prospects, he descends into an abyss of inebriation, becoming just another unshaven face at the bar recalling former greatness. Munger continues to fight and, hitchhiking home from a fight in Salt Lake City alone, he is picked up by two young women who eject him from the car on a stretch of highway in the dark of night after an awkward exchange revealing Munger's lustful longing. The novel ends with the suggestion that Ernie Munger may be starting down the same desperate and well-worn path as Billy Tully. |
The White Boy Shuffle | null | 1,996 | In the book's prologue, the reader meets the narrator, Gunnar Kaufman, a prolific African-American poet whose astronomically successful book, Watermelanin, has sold 126 million copies, elevating him to the status of "Negro Demagogue." The prologue asserts that what follows are Gunnar memoirs, "the battlefield remains of a frightened deserter in the eternal war for civility" (2). The novel opens with a comic survey of Gunnar's family tree, as his mother relates the tales of his family history to him and his sisters. Gunnar in turn regales his classmates with the tales of his ancestors, one of whom Gunnar claims dodged the bullet that eventually killed Crispus Attucks in the Boston Massacre. Gunnar is a young boy growing up in affluent, predominately white Santa Monica, California with his mother and sisters. His absent father is a sketch artist for the LAPD and rarely sees his children. Gunnar's friends are white, and he spends his free time making enough mischief to gain him mild admonishments from the Santa Monica Shore Patrol. When Gunnar and his sisters tell their mother they do not want to attend an all-black summer camp because the children there "are different from us," Ms. Kaufman immediately packs up a U-Haul and relocates her family to the West Los Angeles neighborhood of Hillside, a predominately black community surrounded by a concrete wall that Gunnar describes as the ghetto (37). In Hillside, the Kaufman children encounter an altogether different lifestyle than the one they were accustomed to in Santa Monica. Gunnar learns "the hard way that social norms in Santa Monica were unforgivable breaches of proper Hillside etiquette, and soon after arriving is beaten up by one of the area's local gangs, the "Gun Totin' Hooligans" (52). Enrolling in the local junior high, Gunnar is offered protection by an administrator who fears that Gunnar's unfamiliarity with Hillside social norms will make him an easy target for harassment. However, Gunnar soon strikes up a friendship with Nicholas Scoby when he is paired with the "thuggish boy" in a reading of William Shakespeare's Othello (66). Scoby is a prodigious basketball player, with a remarkable ability to make, without exception, every basket. Soon after meeting Scoby, Gunnar stuns the local children when he unintentionally exhibits his own, hereto unknown talent for basketball, dunking the ball into the basket in a pickup game. His talent gains him respect within the Hillside community of youths. Ironically, that his unusual talent causes him to stick out enables him to fit into the social scene. Around this time, Gunnar writes his first poem, "Negro Misappropriation of Greek Mythology or, I know Niggers That'll Kick Hercules's Ass" and spray paints the lines across the concrete wall surrounding Hillside. Later, instructed by Scoby, Gunnar changes his hairstyle and attire in an effort to further conform to Hillside society. As the years pass, Gunnar becomes incredibly popular, both for his talent on the basketball court and for his emerging poetic prowess. However, he remains somewhat of an outcast in his clear lack of dancing talent and his unease with women. His friends, Scoby and feared gang-member and assumed murderer Psycho Loco, dub Gunnar's awkward antics on the dance floor "The White Boy Shuffle." Because of Gunnar's apparent inability to talk to women, Psycho Loco secretly takes it upon himself to order Gunnar a mail order bride from Japan, using a service called "Hot Mamma-Sans of the Orient." Throughout high school, Gunnar continues to write poetry, much of which, we later learn, is published in magazines. During his sixteenth summer, Gunnar aids in his friends' stealing a department store safe during the turmoil of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. We learn that Psycho Loco has planned to steal the safe for nine years in retribution for the department store's having moved a race-car set the young Psycho intended to steal on the day he was to steal it. As Gunnar and his friends attempt to load the safe into a car, Gunnar's father and other policemen arrive. Gunnar's father beats him with a nightstick, and Gunnar is hospitalized. When he is released from the hospital, he learns that his friends have been unable to open the safe. Gunnar turns the safe over, finding the combination on the bottom, and opens it. Gunnar refuses to take any of the money, gold, and precious stones inside. In the last two weeks of summer, Gunnar attends a program for the top 100 high school basketball talents in the country, of which Gunnar is number 100. From camp, he sends his friends and family several e-mails, which are documented in the novel. From these e-mails, we learn that both of Gunnar's sisters are pregnant and have moved in with their father. We also learn that Gunnar, despite his basketball talent, is not incredibly interested in the game itself. He is constantly frustrated by his roommates' insistence on constantly talking about the game. Gunnar notes that his roommates even use basketball terms to talk about women. In return for his father not pressing charges against him and his friends for the safe incident, Gunnar agrees to attend an elite public high school in the San Fernando Valley. Gunnar travels an hour and a half to and from school on a bus. His return to a predominately white atmosphere is an easy one, and Gunnar notes that he "meshed well" (153). However, he disdains the arrogance of several of the rich, white boys with whom his mother insists he spend time. In his senior year, Gunnar begins receiving letters from the armed forces academies, Harvard University, and Boston University. He visits a wealthy, African American Harvard graduate in his large home, which overlooks Hillside, realizing that years earlier he and his Holligan friends had stolen a security sign out of the front lawn and destroyed the man's RV. Gunnar is disgusted by the man's superior attitude towards the residents of Hillside and decides he will never attend Harvard. When a recruiter from BU arrives at his house, Gunnar decides to attend BU instead. Before Gunnar leaves for college, it is revealed that Psycho Loco has indeed ordered Gunnar a wife from Japan when she arrives by UPS on Gunnar's 18th birthday. Yoshiko Katsu speaks little English but is an immediate hit with Gunnar's mother. For their honeymoon, Gunnar and Yoshiko drive to an amusement park, listening to the radio and attempting to bridge the gap between their two mother tongues. Moving to Boston, Gunnar attends one class at BU: Creative Writing 104. When he tells the class his name, he is overwhelmed by a chorus of accolades as the students in the class recite his now famous poetry back to him and barrage him with questions. Uncomfortable with the attention, Gunnar runs from the room, tearing off his clothes and walking home to his apartment. At the insistence of his professor, who has followed him along with the members of the class, Gunnar agrees to publish a collection of his poetry. The collection will become his book, Watermelanin. In Boston, Gunnar begins to face a degree of prejudice from other blacks for his marriage to the Japanese Yoshiko. At the insistence of Scoby, who is attending BU, Gunnar attends several meetings of student activist clubs such as the citywide black student union and SWAPO, or the Whities Against Political Obsequeiousness, of which he is the only black member. Waking simultaneously one night from dreams, Gunnar and Yoshiko realize that the latter is pregnant. Gunnar begins traveling on a basketball team with Scoby. He becomes increasingly depressed, and his only consolation are the boxes of Japanese literature sent to him on the road from Yoshiko. In return, Gunnar writes her letters. In these letters, he notes that Scoby "is going insane" (192). After basketball season ends, Gunnar—now an even greater celebrity—is asked by his publisher to speak at a rally protesting BU's decision to confer an honorary degree upon a corrupt African statesman. Initially unsure of what to say to the crowd, Gunnar eventually tells the crowd that "What we need is some new leaders. Leaders who won't apostatize like cowards. Some niggers who are ready to die!" (200). The frenzied crowd chants "You! You! You!" and Gunnar's place as "Negro Demagogue" is solidified. From his speech, the media assumes that Gunnar is an advocate of freedom through suicide, and though Gunnar makes it clear that he means only his own suicide, many across America begin killing themselves and sending their "death poems" to Gunnar. When asked when he plans to commit suicide, Gunnar replies "When I'm good and goddamn ready" (202). One night, on the beach, a deeply unhappy and depressed Scoby asks Gunnar what the highest building in Boston is before leaving the beach. The next morning Gunnar learns that Scoby has jumped from the roof of the BU law school, killing himself. On the roof, Gunnar finds his friend's suicide note, containing his own death poem. Gunnar and Yoshiko resolve to return to Hillside, but Gunnar is forced into hiding by an outstanding warrant for his arrest by the LAPD. One night, on the beach with Psycho Loco and Yoshiko, Gunnar walks out into the ocean, realizes he could die if he swam out farther, and gives himself to the currents. Hit with thoughts of his unborn child, he snaps out of a meditative state underwater and swims back to shore. Gunnar and Yoshiko check into a motel, where the spend the remainder of the novel ostensibly hiding from the LAPD, occupying their time by having debates and reading death poems from Gunnar's fans. However, one night, Gunnar walks to 7-Eleven and is caught in a police helicopter's search light. The light follows his home. He and Yoshiko begin taking nighttime walks through Hillside, their way constantly lit by the helicopter. Eventually, they are joined by other members of the community on their walks. With Gunnar's mother acting as midwife, Yoshiko gives birth to a girl, Naomi Katsu Kaufman, in a small pool in the local park. The birth is attended by a large crowd and is guarded by the members of the Gun Totin' Hooligans. As always, the LAPD helicopter hovers overhead. It drops a box of cigars attached to a parachute when Yoshiko gives birth. In what appears to be Gunnar's father's handwriting, a note is attached that reads, "Congratulations from the Los Angeles Police Department. Maybe this one will grow up with a respect for authority" (219). As the novel comes to a close, Gunnar begins holding weekly, outdoor open mics, reading his poetry to great crowds. At one gathering, on the two-year anniversary of Scoby's suicide, Gunnar shocks the crowd by chopping off the smallest finger on his right hand with a kitchen knife. His sacrifice "cement[s] his status as savior of the blacks" (223). Elevating Gunnar to the status of cult figure, "spiteful black folks" travel in droves to Hillside, prompting the government to threaten the community with an ultimatum: "rejoin the rest of America or celebrate Kwanza in hell" (224). Hillside residents respond by painting the roofs of the community with white targets. The novel ends with Gunnar, still living in the motel with Yoshiko and Naomi, beginning to tell his daughter the same stories of his family tree told to him in his youth by his mother. The first such tale is that of Gunnar's father. The novel ends with his death poem, left in his LAPD locker before he kills himself by swallowing his own gun. |
Hot House Flowers | null | 2,006 | A dandelion from outside a hothouse releases her seeds into the hothouse and the dandelions begin to use up all the water, soil, and sunlight. The native flowers, who remain silent for fear of appearing intolerant, begin to wither. The God-like hothouse owner removes the dandelions. When the original dandelion sends in more seeds the native hothouse flowers use their roots and stems to push the dandelion seeds to the bottom of the hothouse, where they cannot grow. Seeing this, the dandelions outside the hothouse stop sending seeds in. |
USS Seawolf | null | null | The story begins with a United States Navy submarine, the , on a mission to spy on the new Chinese nuclear missile submarine. The mission is successful until the submarine's second-in-command, the president's son Linus Clark makes a fatal error, and the submarine collides with a sonar array from a Chinese ship that is searching for them. The crew is imprisoned and tortured while the Chinese begin to strip the captured submarine for its secrets. Desperately, Arnold Morgan, the National Security Advisor, plans a mission to get the crew back, safeguard the sub's secrets, and punish the Chinese. He sends Navy SEALs to the island where survivors are being held and an American FA-18 Hornet to destroy the USS Seawolf which is being held in Canton harbor. But after the daring mission, several high-ranking U.S. Navy personnel and several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff resign when the president prevents his son from facing a court-martial for his part in the loss of the Seawolf. In an angry fit of revenge, the President uses his considerable influence to have the Seawolfs commander, court-martialed for not being on the bridge at the time of Linus' error. (The final premise of the book is in error, bordering on the absurd - as written on page 430, 1st ed. hardback, the CO of the Seawolf was convicted at court-martial for "gross negligence...on the grounds that he had been absent from his place of duty in the face of the enemy". But no state of war had been declared, so China was NOT an enemy of the USA. No military court would have issued such a verdict.") This causes Morgan to resign and destroys the president's credibility in the military, as well as destroying the president's ability to lead in a crisis situation. In a later novel, Robinson continues to build on the conflict between the discredited president and the military by further developing the character of Arnold Morgan. The novel identifies the Type 094 as "Xia III-class." The Type 094 submarine does exist, but its NATO reporting name is "Jin-class." And a "Xia Class" submarine does exist, though only a single Xia Class boat was made. It is not known if this somewhat jumbled name is an error, or simply artistic license taken by the author since the Type-094 is an improved design based on the original Xia Class submarine (Type 092), although the Type 093 submarine is an attack submarine and not a missile submarine. |
Watchman | Ian Rankin | 1,988 | The book tells the story of Miles Flint, a surveillance officer who works for MI5. After two high profile operations involving Flint are compromised with deadly consequences, he is sent to Belfast to witness what he believes is going to be the arrest of some Provisional Irish Republican Army men. However, after accompanying the security forces on their mission, he discovers that what has actually been planned is the assassination of the Irishmen - and with Flint having come along for the ride, he suddenly realises that his own life is at risk. As the killings are about to be carried out, Flint stages a daring escape with the aid of one of the Irishmen, Will Collins. Then, on the run, and playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with his own side, Flint and Collins begin to piece together a lethal conspiracy which they ultimately discover goes right to the very core of the British Government. |
Final Watch | Sergey Lukyanenko | null | Anton Gorodetsky is learning to use his new power when Gesar sends him to assist the Scottish Night Watch in Edinburgh in a murder investigation. A young Russian man has been murdered in a "Vampire Castle", a tourist attraction; the evidence shows that he was apparently killed by a vampire. The mystery is greater than it seemed. Someone tries to attack Anton using remote controlled guns. Finally the head of Scottish Night Watch, Thomas Lermont, reveals that someone stole an artifact from Merlin's grave and is apparently trying to use this artifact to open Merlin's secret storage. In that mysterious place Merlin apparently hid the "Crown of All Things" (nobody knows what it is). After the Night Watch is attacked by ordinary humans equipped with magical amulets and bullets, Thomas and Anton follow someone to the Twilight. They get as far as the sixth level (first time for Anton), but all they find out is that there are three people behind this - a Light Other, a Dark Other and an Inquisitor. Thomas also tells Anton that the seventh level of the Twilight is the Others' paradise, where they can exist in peace together (upon death, Others just vanish into the Twilight). Merlin has hidden the Crown of All Things in the seventh level of the Twilight. All Others are very worried about these happenings. Gesar sends Anton to Uzbekistan, to look up Rustam, a contemporary and friend of Merlin, and a former friend - later an enemy - of Gesar. He might know something about where the Crown is hidden and what it is. When Anton is visiting the Night Watch in Uzbekistan, they are once again attacked by humans with amulets and magical weapons. Various clues begin to point to Anton's friend, Kostya Saushkin, as one of the perpetrators, even though he is certainly dead. Anton manages to find Rustam. He tells him that the Crown of All Things is a spell which will destroy the barriers dividing individual levels of the Twilight, as well as the barrier between the Twilight and reality. It might cause the end of the world, strip all Others of their powers or maybe kill them - Rustam doesn't know, nor does he care. They are attacked again and Anton learns that his one-time friend, the Inquisitor Edgar, is one of the mysterious trio of Others. Back in Moscow, Anton figures out who is the Dark Other in the mysterious trio - it is Gennady Saushkin, Kostya's father. They can't identify the Light Other. Both Watches assign operatives to protect Anton's and Svetlana's five-year-old daughter, Nadya, the only zero-level Other in the world (she does not produce any magical energy, she can only absorb, therefore her power is practically unlimited; Merlin was also a zero-level Other). Only zero-level Others may get to the seventh level of the Twilight. Edgar and Gennady kidnap Anton (they can't get to Nadya) and take him to Edinburgh, so that he can help them figure out a way to get to the Crown. They tell Anton that Nadya is dead due to them planting a nuclear explosive near his apartment building. A nuclear bomb is the only weapon capable of destroying matter on all Twilight levels. Edgar found some information in the archives of the Inquisition saying that the Crown of All Things will give all the Others who departed into the Twilight the thing they want most. In Edgar's interpretation it will bring them back to life, and he wants to reunite with his wife who was killed. Gennady wants to get his son and wife back. They meet the third part of the trio, or as they call themselves, the Final Watch - the witch Arina, who managed to change her affiliation to Light. She also reveals that she sabotaged the nuclear bomb not to go off, as her new Light affiliation forbids the destruction of so many innocents. Anton does figure out Merlin's secret, but he knows the Final Watch will not like it and he manages to lie to them. They take him to the fifth level of the Twilight, where they encounter Merlin's guardian. While the Final Watch is busy fighting it, Anton gets to the sixth level. There he meets Merlin as well as Tiger Cub, Igor, Alice and all his Other friends who departed into the Twilight, including Kostya (who tells Anton that he does not blame Anton for killing him). They are all hoping he will activate the Crown. However, he cannot go back, because the Final Watch is there and he cannot go forward to the seventh level, because he doesn't have enough power. At this point Nadya appears - Svetlana just initiated her and sent her to get her father. Traveling through all levels of the Twilight is not a problem for Nadya. She takes Anton forward - back to the real world. The Twilight goes in a circle. The seventh level is the one we all live in. Anton goes to activate the Crown of All Things, which is indeed hidden in the seventh level. Merlin put the spell in the ancient stones of the Edinburgh Castle. The Final Watch appears, but Anton will not be bothered with them. Edgar got things wrong; the thing the Others in the Twilight want most is not resurrection, but death. There is no paradise there, they are stuck forever in a world where everything is just a pale copy, trapped in an imitation of life. They want it to end, because once they fully die, they can be reborn. Merlin has foreseen this and created his spell (its Twilight-destroying effect is temporary). However, the lost Others asked Anton to forgive, so he allows Gennady and Edgar to die, so that they can join their loved ones before it is too late. Arina chooses to live. Then Anton activates the Crown,and all Others in the Twilight die, including the incapitated Dark Others in the Plain of Demons. The final words of the book spoken by Anton could be interpreted as a possible hint at new episodes in the series, where Anton says to his daughter "You didn't think this was the last watch, did you?" |
The Sorcerer in the North | John Flanagan | 2,008 | This novel starts with Will traveling to his first assignment as a fully fledged ranger. During his travel to his assigned fief, he finds a female dog bleeding to death from by the roadside. Will takes her home, heals her, and she becomes his pet. After spending a few weeks at Seacliff, the fief to which Will is assigned, Will realizes that this fief has grown slack in the training of its knights and a little lax in its responsibilities. Just before the month is up, a Skandian raiding party consisting of around thirty men arrive at this lazy town. The soldiers are unprepared from the lack of practice and would certainly not stand a chance against the raiding party. Will rides out alone to meet them and they come to an agreement. The Skandian party had little choice but to raid the town because they would have starved otherwise; however, if they attacked, Will would have killed at least half of them with his new longbow before they even reached the town. Will had a better idea and forced the baron and battlemaster to supply a certain number of animals and food for the Skandians. By this, Will did two things: he taught the baron and battlemaster a lesson and protected Seacliff from being raided. After a few days, Alyss, Will's lifelong friend, arrived at Seacliff on a courier mission. While sitting in Will's cabin, Alyss mentioned Halt, Will's former master, and Crowley, the Ranger Corp Commandant, had a task for him, unfortunately their conversation was overheard by John Buttle the brutal man who had injured Will's dog earlier and was connected to a string of murders in the area. Will knocked him out cold, but Alyss wanted him dead. Will had a better solution and gave him to the Skandian raiders as a slave. Will traveled to Halt and Crowley as Alyss had instructed him. His master told him to go undercover as a jongleur (a sort of traveling jester or minstrel) and gather information in Norgate, a northern fief, at the castle Macindaw. Lord Syron, the master at castle Macindaw, had fallen sick from some strangely epitomic illness. Rumors had spread that a sorcerer was responsible for the illness and they wanted Will to investigate what was happening. At Macindaw, Will met Orman, the temporary lord of the castle as he is the son of Lord Syron. An irate bibliophile, he is always wearing black. Orman is an unpopular ruler due to the fact of his lack of skill in battle. Will also met Keren, Orman's cousin and a more popular man among the subjects in the castle. Will was immediately suspicious of Orman and so was Alyss, who just so happened to be his contact sent by Halt and Crowley. Alyss was undercover as Lady Gwendolyn, a pompous and superficial woman on her way to her fiance's castle in the next fief. Later as the plot unwrapped Orman summons Will to his quarters and it is revealed that the guise of a simple jongleaur failed and Orman knows Will to be a Ranger. Orman tells Will that Keren was planning a take over of the castle and that Keren had poisoned Lord Syron and has managed to do the same to him self. So Will escapes from the castle with Orman and his assistant to Grimsdell Woods where the "sorcerer" lived. Once there, they found Malcolm the "sorcerer" and asked him to heal Orman. Alyss was puzzled seeing Will help Orman and fantasized many conclusions none of which were right. Then Keren entered her room to tell her about the recent events, but as they were talking, John Buttle walks in. He recognises Alyss and she is captured. Will later went back to Macindaw in an attempt to save her. He climbed the tower wall and attempted to dissolve the bars protecting the window with a special acid he received from Malcolm. Will fails in rescue attempt and just barely escapes from the castle with his life. He is determined to get Alyss back. |
The Thieves of Ostia | Caroline Lawrence | 2,001 | June AD 79: The story begins in the home of Flavia Gemina, daughter of Marcus Flavius Geminus, sea captain. Flavia is sitting in the garden reading one of her favourite scrolls, when she hears her father call for her. Flavia enters her father's study to find him in a panic for he has lost hisCastor and Pollux signet ring which Flavia's late mother gave to him. Flavia promises to find it, and the search leads her to a magpie's nest in the necropolis outside the city wall, where she finds a gathering of jewels that the magpie has stolen. Suddenly a pack of dogs chase Flavia and she is rescued by Jonathan ben Mordecai. He takes her back to his house next door to her own where she meets his father Mordecai ben Ezra, a doctor, and his sister Miriam. Marcus takes Flavia to the harbor to sell the jewellery she found, and on the way she is moved to pity when she sees some recently-disembarked slaves on the way to the market. When she is given six hundred sesterces by the jeweller, she immediately decides to buy the young girl she saw with the slaves, to save her from a life of misery. Flavia treats the young slave-girl, who is called Nubia, very kindly, giving her dates to eat and beginning to teach her Latin. Later in the day she has a birthday party with her father, Nubia and the Mordecai family. A few days later, after seeing Marcus off on a voyage, they are shocked to find that someone has killed Jonathan's dog Bobas and taken away his head. Flavia decides this is another mystery to solve, and her friends agree. Following a lead from Cordius's freedman Libertus, they suspect a sailor called Avitus who hates dogs because his daughter died of rabies after being bitten. A young boy, treed by the wild pack, is rescued by Mordecai, who has to kill two of the dogs in the process. He looks after the boy when he falls from the tree and offers him a place to stay. He realises that the boy's tongue has been cut out and he cannot speak. Flavia recognizes him as the beggar boy from the forum and Nubia finds out that his name is Lupus. Lupus is the Latin word for wolf. Lupus agrees to help them solve the mystery. They cannot find any evidence against Avitus, so Lupus offers to follow him around town, as nobody notices a beggar boy. Although he finds out that Avitus just goes from tavern to tavern getting drunk, at one tavern Lupus overhears a conversation between gamblers about treasure at Marcus Geminus's house. Later he sees the grief-stricken Avitus commit suicide by throwing himself from the top of the lighthouse. When Lupus returns to find that Cordius's dog has been beheaded that afternoon, he is able to clear Avitus of the crime. He asks to stay at Flavia's house that night, but in the middle of the night is caught stealing gold coins from the storeroom - Cordius's money, secretly entrusted to Marcus. Flavia is shocked, but instantly realises that this sheds light on the mystery. Someone is after the treasure, but very few people know about it. Lupus confirms the identity of one of the gamblers he overheard. Next morning, they find a horrible sight in the street, a trident with three dogs' heads stuck on it, obviously intended to frighten them away. Flavia decides to lay a trap for the dog-killing thief, which the guilty Libertus falls into. The team is successful. Mordecai persuades Flavia and Jonathan to forgive Lupus, reminding them of his difficult life, and of their own imperfections, and they invite him to the celebration party. Cordius is grateful to the detectives and gives them all a reward of a gold coin, as Flavia explains the clues which led to the solving of the mystery. Nubia brings two puppies and gives one to Jonathan; they will be called Nipur and Tigris. Marcus promises them next time he goes away on a voyage, they will all go to his brother Gaius's farm in Pompeii, where they will be safe. |
Helena | Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis | null | The novel opens with the family of Éstacio, whose father, Conselheiro Vale, has just died. In his will, the Conselheiro has recognized a natural daughter, previously unknown to both Éstacio and his aunt Dona Úrsula, with whom he shares the family home. The daughter, Helena, arrives to a mixed reception. Estácio welcomes her warmly while his aunt shows marked hestitation over this unknown person. While Éstacio grows increasingly more fond of his half-sister, Helena in a series of events succeeds in also winning the affection of the stern Dona Úrsula. Life proceeds harmoniously in their household. Meanwhile Estácio, implicitly due to affections for Helena, defers an engagement with the beautiful, but less adroit Eugênia. Well into the novel it is revealed that Helena has been guarding a secret, one which seems to be related to a house nearby which Estácio and Helena frequently pass near while horseback riding. It is later revealed that the biological father of Helena, who is not Conselheiro Vale, lives in the house but in misery. At this point, Helena is being courted by Estácio's friend, Mendonça even though the attraction that Estácio feels for Helena is very apparent to the reader. This affection is never truly recognized by Estácio until the preacher Melchior warns Estácio that he feels romantic love for his new sister. As this is being revealed, the reader learns that Helena is indeed not the daughter of Conselheiro Vale and consequently not a blood relation to Estácio. However, Helena's neglect to admit that she is not truly related to the family and thus should never have been recognized proves to much for her conscience and she falls ill. Helena does not recover and by her death bed Estácio is horrified and distraught. |
Pulp | Charles Bukowski | null | Pulp is a pulp fiction novel which acts also as a meta-pulp. Pulp comments on the obsessions of the pulp fiction genre, making fun of itself as stereotypical of the genre in the grimiest form. Bukowski dedicates the story to "bad writing", as Bukowski did not plan his mystery novel well and frequently wrote Nicky Belane into holes from which he could not escape. Bukowski wrote some of his most violent, cynical, sarcastic, and shocking work during the final months of his life. Many critics have agreed this novel exemplifies Bukowski showing an acceptance of his own pending mortality. A convoluted detective story about a hard-boiled private eye who solves his cases by waiting them out, Pulp evokes Raymond Chandler, an author who lived in Los Angeles and set stories there, as did Bukowski. The novel also bears similarity to some works by Dashiell Hammett; and the name of character Nicky Belane rhymes suggestively with the name of author Mickey Spillane as well as Casablanca's main character Rick Blaine. |
Romanitas | Sophia McDougall | 2,005 | After attending his parents funeral, Marcus Novius Faustus Leo, the teenage nephew of the emperor (and heir apparent since the death of his father), is informed by his fathers secretary Varius that his father Leo and his mother were murdered by a conspiracy concerned about Leo's ambition to abolish slavery. While this is happening, Varius' wife eats sweets given to Marcus by his cousin Makaria and dies of poisoning. Varius promptly arranges for Marcus to flee to a hidden refuge in Spain, run by Delir, an anti-slavery activist and secret ally of Leo. Meanwhile, a British slave named Una, who has the ability to read minds, rescues her brother Sulien who has been falsely accused of rape and sentenced to crucifixion. The three runaways meet in Gaul. Despite initial suspicion, they agree to help each other and travel to the refuge. However, Varius has been arrested and the conspirators force him to reveal the location of the refuge, as well as making him confess to the murder of Marcus's parents, as well as the murder of Marcus himself. Upon discovering that Varius has confessed to murdering him and his parents, Marcus decides to go to Rome to reveal he is in fact still alive, planning to reveal the conspiracy in public so the conspirators will be unable to kill him. He runs away from the refuge and travels to Rome, evading the soldiers sent to capture him. Una and Sulien follow him, but are unable to find him in time to prevent him revealing himself. Marcus reveals himself but is captured and taken to a hospital. There he is injected with a hallucinogen by one of the conspirators so that when Emperor Faustus is taken to him, Marcus appears to be mad. As many of the Imperial family have succumbed to a hereditary madness in the past (including, apparently, Marcus' other uncle, Lucius), Faustus agrees to keep Marcus in seclusion. The runaway slaves make it to Rome, and manage to rescue Marcus from the asylum where he is being held. Thereafter, Marcus succeeds in revealing the truth about Varius' innocence to the emperor, as well as the plot to kill him. Makaria manages to exculpate herself from any involvement in the conspiracy, pouring suspicion onto the emperor's current wife, Tulliola. |
The Painted Veil | W. Somerset Maugham | null | Somerset Maugham uses a third-person - limited, point-of-view in this story, where Kitty is the Focal character. Kitty Garstin, a very pretty upper-middle class debutante, squanders her early youth amusing herself at cotillions and social events - during which her domineering mother attempts to arrange a “brilliant match” for her. By age 25, Kitty has flirted with – and declined the marriage proposals of – dozens of suitors. Her mother, convinced that her eldest daughter has “missed her market”, urges Kitty to settle for the rather “odd” Walter Fane, a bacteriologist and M.D., who is madly in love with Kitty. In a panic that her much younger – and less attractive - sister, Doris, will upstage her by marrying first, Kitty consents to Walter’s ardent marriage proposition with the words, “I suppose so.” Shortly before Doris’ much grander wedding, Kitty and Walter depart as newlyweds to his post in Hong Kong. Just weeks after settling in the far East, Kitty meets Charles Townsend, the Assistant Colonial Secretary. He is tall, handsome, able and extremely charming, and they begin to have an affair. Almost two years hence, Walter, unsuspecting, and still devoted to his wife, observes Kitty and Charles during an assignation, and the lovers, suspecting they’ve been discovered, reassure themselves that Walter will not intervene in the matter. Charles promises Kitty that, come what may, he will stand by her. Aware that the cuckolded Walter is his administrative inferior, Charles feels confident that the bacteriologist will avoid scandal to protect his career and reputation. For her part, Kitty, who has never felt real affection for her husband, grasps that, in fact, he is fully aware of her infidelity (though he initially refrains from confronting her) and she begins to despise his apparent cowardice. She discerns, however, an ominous change in his demeanor, masked by his “scrupulously polite” behavior. Walter suddenly confronts Kitty with an ultimatum: She must either accompany him to the Chinese interior to deal with a cholera epidemic, risking death, or he will file for divorce, with the caveat that Townsend divorce and remarry immediately with Kitty. Kitty goes to see Townsend who reveals his perfidy and refuses to leave his wife. Their conversation, when she realizes he doesn't wish to make a sacrifice for the relationship, unfolds gradually, as Kitty grasps Charlie's true nature. She is surprised to find when she returns home that Walter has already had her clothes packed—he knew Townsend would let her down. Heartbroken and disillusioned, Kitty decides she has no option but to accompany Walter to the cholera-infested mainland of China. At first suspicious and bitter, Kitty finds herself embarked on a journey of self-appraisal. She meets Waddington, a British deputy commissioner, who, though an inveterate skeptic – and an alcoholic - provides Kitty with insights as to the unbecoming character of her lover, Charles. He further introduces her to the French nuns who are nursing, at great personal risk, the sick and orphaned children of the cholera epidemic. Her husband Walter, has immersed himself in the difficulties of managing the cholera crisis. His character is held in high esteem by the nuns and the native officials, due to his self-sacrifice and tenderness towards the suffering children. Kitty, however, remains unable to feel attraction towards him as man and husband. Kitty meets with the Mother Superior, an individual of great personal force, yet loved and respected. The nun allows Kitty to assist in caring for the older children at the convent, but will not permit her to engage with the sick and dying. Kitty’s regard for her deepens and grows. Kitty discovers that she is pregnant and suspects that Charles Townsend is the father. Rather than answering Walter’s simple inquiry as to whether he is the father with a “yes”, she tells him the truth – “I don’t know”. She cannot bring herself to deceive her husband again, though she knows that to lie would be to deny him what he longs for most. Kitty has undergone a profound personal transformation. Soon after, Walter falls ill in the epidemic – possibly through experimenting upon himself to find a cure for cholera - and Kitty, at his deathbed, hears his last words. She returns to Hong Kong where she is met by Dorothy Townsend, Charles' wife, who convinces Kitty to come to stay with them - as Kitty is now mistakenly regarded as a heroine who voluntarily and faithfully followed her husband into great danger. At the Townsend house, much against her intentions, she is seduced by Charles and makes love with him one more time despite admitting he is vain and shallow, much as she once was. She is disgusted with herself and tells him what she thinks of him. Kitty returns to the UK, en route finding her mother has died. Her father, an only moderately successful barrister, is appointed Chief Justice of a minor British colony in the Caribbean and she persuades her father to allow her to accompany him there where she intends to dedicate her life to her father and to ensuring her child is brought up to avoid the mistakes she had made. |
The Boy Who Reversed Himself | William Sleator | null | A high school girl named Laura grows suspicious when a report of hers appears in mirror writing, and Omar, the weird boy next door, makes it go back to normal. Furthermore, he seems to be parting his hair on a different side than usual. He first refuses to explain what's going on, but after she repeatedly coaxes him, he reveals that he has access to the fourth dimension, where he accidentally "reversed" himself. He eventually allows her to visit it under his supervision, but he warns her that it is extremely dangerous and that he is violating some agreement by letting her in on the secret. She tries to use her access to the higher dimension to impress Pete, a popular boy she wants to go to the school dance with, but after she seems to disappear into thin air and unlock a door from the other side, Pete realizes something funny is going on, and she feels pressured to show him the truth, without Omar's knowledge. When she brings Pete into four-space, they lose their way and end up as the captives of four-dimensional creatures. Unfortunately, she determines that escaping might threaten the very existence of her own world by making the powerful 4-D creatures aware of it. With Omar's help, she finds a safe way out and learns the truth about how he came to know about other dimensions. |
The Kaiser's Last Kiss | Alan Judd | 2,003 | The story is set in 1940 and concerns Untersturmführer Martin Krebbs, a young and recently commissioned SS officer who has been sent to Huis Doorn to guard the exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II as the German Army advances into the Netherlands. While there, Krebbs meets and falls for Akki, an undercover British agent posing as a maid, who has been sent by the British Secret Service on the orders of Winston Churchill to assess the Kaiser's feelings about the war and his possible willingness to defect to Britain. As the story unfolds, and through conversations Krebbs has with both the Kaiser and Akki (who Krebbs discovers is Jewish), and a visit from Heinrich Himmler, Krebbs begins to discover some uncomfortable truths about the Nazis, forcing him to question the things he has been taught. When Akki's true identity is in danger of being exposed, Krebbs must choose between his duty to the Third Reich and his feelings for the woman he loves. |
Nature Girl | Carl Hiaasen | 2,006 | Honey Santana becomes irritated by telemarketers and invites a particularly obnoxious one to a phony real estate promotion - which she describes as an eco-tour - in the Ten Thousand Islands in order to teach him a lesson. It is thus that telemarketers Boyd Shreave and his reluctant mistress Eugenie Fonda make their way from Texas to Dismal Key in Florida with Honey, unaware that she is being stalked by Louis Piejack, Honey's perverted and disfigured ex-employer, who is unaware that he is being followed by Fry, Honey's wise and protective twelve-year-old son, and his courageous ex-drug runner father. Also on the island are a young half-Seminole man named Sammy Tigertail and his very willing captive, Gillian, a sex-obsessed, warmhearted Florida State coed. Various odd events surface along the way. |
The King of Elfland's Daughter | Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany | 1,924 | The lord of Erl is told by the parliament of his people that they want to be ruled by a magic lord. Obeying the immemorial custom, the lord sends his son Alveric to fetch the King of Elfland's daughter, Lirazel, to be his bride. He makes his way to Elfland, where time passes at a rate far slower than the real world, and wins her. They return to Erl and have a son, but in the manner of fairy brides of folklore, she fits uneasily with his people. She returns to the waiting arms of her father in Elfland, and her lovesick husband goes searching for her, abandoning the kingdom of Erl and wandering in a now-hopeless quest. However, Lirazel becomes lonesome for her mortal husband and son. Seeing that she is unhappy, the King of Elfland uses a powerful magic to engulf the land of Erl. Erl is transformed into a part of Elfland, and Lirazel and her loved ones are reunited forever in an eternal, enchanted world. During the course of the novel, the King of Elfland uses up all of the three powerful magic spells which he had been reserving for the defense of his realm. |
The Charwoman's Shadow | Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany | 1,926 | In Spain, during its Golden Age, a lord wishes to marry his daughter to a neighbor, but has no money for her dowry. He sends his son Ramon to a nearby magician who had befriended his father, in hopes that the son would learn to turn lead to gold. An old charwoman without a shadow works for the magician. The magician persuades him to trade his shadow for the knowledge, and gives him a substitute, and the charwoman who works for the magician laments that. He then learns that his substitute shadow does not grow and shrink as it ought to. His sister sends him a letter asking him to get her a love potion instead. He persuades the magician to teach him that instead, and he compounds it and gives it to his sister. When her betrothed husband arrives with a friend of his, a duke, she gives the potion to the duke, who falls deathly ill. Terrified, she nurses him; he recovers his health, enraged with everyone else, especially her betrothed, but in love with her. Their priest dispels Ramon's false shadow but sends him back to retrieve his own. He tricks the magician into telling him some of the magic words needed to open the box where the shadows are kept, and works out the rest. He takes out his own shadow and tries to find the charwoman's. He goes back to her to tell her that he cannot find it. She tells him that it was the one of a beautiful young girl. He brings it to her, and when they reunite, she is transformed back into that beautiful girl, as if the shadow were casting her. They find that her family is long gone, and Ramon brings her home. With the duke in love with his sister, his father intends to make a grand match for him. Ramon tries to appeal to his sister for help; she refuses to hear him without the duke. Angry, he pours out the story—including that their marriage makes his impossible—and the duke says he will appeal to the king. The king decrees that the charwoman is no longer of lowly origin, and both pairs of lovers marry. The magician sets out through Spain, drawing all creatures of magic and legend with him, and leaves for the Country Beyond the Moon's Rising, thus ending the Golden Age. |
The Ice People | Maggie Gee | null | At a point towards the end of the 21st century, Britain is in the grip of a new ice age. Men and women are largely living separately in different areas of the country, while civilisation and law and order have mostly broken down. As an old man living with a group of outlaws who will dispose of him once he has outlived his usefulness to them, Saul begins to tell the tale of his life, and in particular his marriage to Sarah. Their marriage is initially a good one, but as the climate changes begin to impact on the surrounding environment, the couple start to cool towards each other and drift apart. Sarah eventually leaves Saul, becomes a political activist, then finally tries to turn their son, Luke, against him. When Sarah refuses to let him see Luke, Saul kidnaps the boy and goes on the run, fleeing across the English Channel to Europe. Luke objects to being taken away from his home, however, and as Saul attempts to gain passage for them both to the warmer climes of Africa, Luke runs away. It later transpires that he has joined a group of bandits in Spain. Having lost his son, Saul returns to Britain, where he is involved in a car crash. He is pulled from the wreckage by the outlaws, who at first plan to kill him, but then decide to keep him alive when they discover his skills as a storyteller. But as the book comes to an end, the outlaws are becoming tired of Saul and his time is running out. |
Buddha Da | null | 2,003 | The book takes a mostly light hearted look at what might happen when two vastly opposing worlds and ways of life come into contact with each other. Following a chance meeting with a Buddhist monk in a Glasgow sandwich bar one lunchtime, painter and decorator Jimmy McKenna starts to develop an interest in Buddhism and begins to visit a meditation centre and go away for weekend retreats. The story is essentially about Jimmy's new found faith, and the reaction of his immediate family to this. It is told from three points of view - those of Jimmy, his wife Liz, and their daughter Anne Marie - and follows the family as Jimmy's desire to lead a better and more meaningful life begins to have an effect on them all. To begin with, this proves to be to their detriment as Liz and Anne Marie cannot understand why Jimmy - who has previously been an atheist - would suddenly want to become a Buddhist. However, as the story unfolds, a series of events allow everyone to gain some insight into the choices Jimmy has made. |
Beyond Black | Hilary Mantel | 2,005 | The book's central character is a medium named Alison Hart who, along with her assistant/business partner/manager, Colette, takes her one woman psychic show on the road, travelling to venues around the Home Counties, and providing her audience with a point of contact between this world and the next. On the surface, Alison seems like a happy-go-lucky woman, but this persona is only a mask she wears for her public. In truth, she is deeply traumatised by memories and ghosts from her childhood, and a knowledge that the afterlife is not the wonderful place her clients often perceive it to be. She spends much of the story trying to exorcise her demons, and by the end is ultimately able to overcome them. |
Falling | null | null | The book tells the story of a relationship that develops between Henry Kent, a sociopath and fantasist who preys on lonely rich women, and Daisy Langrishe, an ageing novelist with two broken marriages behind her. After meeting Daisy – who has recently bought a cottage in order to start a new life in the country – Henry quickly falls in love with her, and sets about tricking his way into her confidence. He initially offers to become her gardener – something she reluctantly accepts – then later begins to correspond with her after she suffers an accident during a prolonged trip abroad. These letters start as run of the mill pieces, but as he perceives that she is taking an interest in him, Henry begins to weave her a series of elaborate stories about his life – all designed to gain her attention and win her affection. When Daisy eventually returns home and Henry makes himself indispensable to her after she suffers a fall, they begin an affair. But when Daisy's family and friends learn about the nature of the relationship, they become concerned and start to investigate Henry. However, they soon begin to fear that the facts they unearth about his past might have come to light too late to save Daisy from harm. |
Une Page d'amour | Émile Zola | 1,878 | The story takes place in 1854-1855. When the novel begins, Hélène has been widowed 18 months, living in what was then the Paris suburb of Passy with her 11-year-old daughter Jeanne. Her husband Charles Grandjean fell ill the day after they arrived from Marseilles and died eight days later. Hélène and Jeanne have only been into Paris proper three times. From the window of their home, they can see the entire city, which takes on a dreamlike, foreign, and romantic, yet inaccessible, character for them throughout the novel. On the night the novel opens, Jeanne has fallen ill with a violent seizure. In panic, Hélène runs into the street to find a doctor. Eventually, she begs her neighbor Dr. Henri Deberle to come attend Jeanne, and his ministrations save the girl's life. Later that week, Hélène goes to thank Dr. Deberle, and befriends his wife Juliette and her circle of friends, including Monsieur Malignon, a handsome, wealthy man-about-town who is exceptionally comfortable in female society. Hélène's only friends are a pair of stepbrothers who were friends of her husband's: Abbé Jouve, the officiating priest at the parish church of Passy, and Monsieur Rambaud, an oil and produce merchant. The Abbé asks Hélène to visit one of his invalid parishioners, Mother Fétu. While Hélène is at her squalid apartment, Dr. Deberle pays a medical call. Mother Fétu immediately realizes that the Hélène and Deberle know each other and, seeing them so shy with one another, she immediately begins to attempt to bring them together. At a later visit, Mother Fétu arranges to leave the two of them alone together, but Dr. Deberle leaves before either can express their attraction. Juliette throws a party for the wealthy children of the neighborhood. At the party, Dr. Deberle passionately confesses to Hélène in private that he loves her. She leaves the party in confusion. On contemplating her life, Hélène realizes that she has never really been in love; though she respected her late husband, she felt no love or passion for him. She finds, however, that she is falling in love with Dr. Deberle. During May, Hélène and Jeanne begin attending church, where they regularly meet Juliette. Dr. Deberle frequently meets them after church ostensibly in order to escort his wife home, and continues to act as escort even on those evenings when Juliette doesn't attend services. At the end of the month, after Hélène's passion for Dr. Deberle is replaced by a passion for the church, Jeanne has another seizure. Her illness lasts three weeks, during which she is assiduously attended by Hélène and Dr. Deberle to the exclusion of all others. At last, the Doctor uses leeches and Jeanne recovers. Having saved her daughter's life, Hélène admits that she loves the Doctor. However, as Jeanne recuperates during the ensuing months, she witnesses Hélène and the Doctor talking quietly together and realizes that he is taking her place in Hélène's affections. She is then consumed by intense jealousy and refuses to see him. The symptoms of her illness return whenever he is present, until at last Hélène drives him from her home. Hélène realizes that Malignon has been pursuing Juliette and the two are planning an assignation. She learns from Mother Fétu that Malignon has taken rooms in her building, and guesses that this will be the place where the he and Juliette will meet. When Hélène goes out ostensibly to bring Mother Fétu some shoes, but in reality to look at the rooms (Mother Fétu thinks she is arranging a place for Hélène and the Doctor to meet), Jeanne is extraordinarily distressed to be left alone, especially because Hélène gives no explanation for not taking her along. The next day, Hélène attempts to warn Juliette not to keep her rendezvous with Malignon, scheduled for that afternoon, but she is unable to do so. Hélène slips a note into the Doctor's pocket with the address and time of the assignation. That afternoon, she decides to go to the apartment and stop the rendezvous, but before she can go, Jeanne insists on going with her. Hélène tells her she cannot go, and Jeanne becomes hysterical at being left and at being lied to. She says that she will die if she is left behind. Hélène goes anyway. At the apartment, she is met by Mother Fétu, who, feeling she has played the part of Hélène's procuress and confidante, lets her into the apartment with a knowing glance. Hélène successfully stops the rendezvous, but just as the prospective lovers part, Henri enters. He thinks that Hélène has arranged for them to be alone together. Hélène gives in to her feelings, and the two of them make passionate love at last. Meanwhile, Jeanne, left alone, furious and confused and jealous, makes herself sick by hanging her arms out of her bedroom window in the rain. Growing increasingly lethargic and listless, she believes her mother does not care for her anymore, especially after witnessing her mother and Dr. Deberle exchange silent, knowing glances while planning a family excursion to Italy. Eventually, she falls seriously ill, and Deberle diagnosis her with galloping consumption (the same disease her grandmother Ursule died of) and gives her three weeks to live. In due course, she dies. Hélène is completely grief-stricken, feeling responsible for her daughter's death. Two years later, she marries M. Rambaud and the two return to Marseilles. |
The Ballad of Peckham Rye | Muriel Spark | 1,960 | The novel begins with the telling of Humphrey Place saying "No" at the altar where he was due to marry Dixie Morse. Humphrey's immoral behaviour is assumed to be a result of his recent association with Dougal Douglas, a Scottish migrant who has since left the area of Peckham. Spark goes on to tell us the entire story of what exactly happened during Dougal's residence in Peckham. From his inaugural meeting with Mr V. R. Druce, head of nylon textiles manufacturers Meadows, Meade & Grindley, we learn that Dougal is employed to bridge the gap between industry and the arts. He befriends employees Merle Coverdale (who is in fact indulging in an unromantic, immoral affair with the married Mr Druce) and Elaine Kent, an "experienced controller of process", as well as Humphrey Place, a refrigerator engineer. After finding lodgings with Miss Belle Frierne (where Humphrey Place also resides), and splitting up with his fiancé Jinny due to her being ill (his "fatal flaw" is that he cannot bear anyone who is ill), Dougal embarks upon a mission of disruption throughout Peckham. Throughout this he falls foul of typist Dixie Morse and electrician Trevor Lomas and becomes the target of a gang consisting of Trevor, Collie Gould and Lesley Crewe. Throughout his stay in Peckham, Dougal carries out "human research" on the "moral character" of the people of the area. As well as working for Meadows, Meade & Grindley, he also works for their rivals, the more prosperous Drover Willis's textile manufacturers (under the pseudonym Douglas Dougal), as well as working as a ghost writer for the retired actress and singer Maria Cheeseman. Only Nelly Mahone recognises Dougal for the manipulative "double-tongued" rogue he is, but no one listens to her as everyone views her as a drunken Irish vagrant. The culmination of Dougal's antics results in his landlady Miss Frierne having a stroke, Mr Druce killing his mistress Merle Coverdale by stabbing her in the neck with a corkscrew, and the rejection of marriage to Dixie Morse at the altar by Humphrey Place. In the penultimate chapter Trevor tries to kill Dougal by stabbing him in the eye, but, despite injury, Dougal manages to leave Peckham and moves on to wreak havoc elsewhere. The novel ends with the marriage of Humphrey Place and Dixie Morse, two months after the original, aborted wedding. The final scene shows Peckham in a state of transcendence, not shown anywhere else in the novel, and is seen as a transfiguration of the commonplace world. |
Storm | null | null | A cyclone develops offshore Japan, and becomes a significant storm that moves into California as a blizzard of significance for the Sierra Nevada range, with snowfall amounts of 20 feet (6.1 m). The book is divided into twelve chapters: one chapter for each day of the storm's existence. The storm's beneficial effects include averting a locust plague and ending a drought. Its harmful effects include flooding a valley near Sacramento, endangering a plane, stalling a train, and leading to the deaths of 16 people. It spawns a new cyclone which significantly affects New York. |
Pierre et Jean | null | null | Pierre and Jean are the sons of Gérôme Roland, a jeweller who has retired to Le Havre, and his wife Louise. Pierre works as a doctor, and Jean is a lawyer. It recounts the story of a middle-class French family whose lives are changed when Léon Maréchal, a deceased family friend, leaves his inheritance to Jean. This provokes Pierre to doubt the fidelity of his mother and the legitimacy of his brother. This investigation sparks violent reactions in Pierre, whose external appearance vis a vis his mother visibly changes. In his anguish, most notably shown during family meals, he tortures her with allusions to the past that he has now uncovered. Meanwhile, Jean's career and love life improve over the course of the novel while Pierre's life gets significantly worse. Provoked by his brother's accusations of jealousy, Pierre reveals to Jean what he has learned. However, unlike Pierre, Jean offers his mother love and protection. The novel closes with Pierre’s departure on an oceanliner. Thus the novel is organised around the unwelcome appearance of a truth (Jean’s illegitimacy), its suppression for the sake of family continuity and the acquisition of wealth, and the expulsion from the family of the legitimate son. |
The Small Rain | Madeleine L'Engle | 1,945 | Young Katherine has not seen her mother Julie in three years, since the latter was in an accident that ended her career as a pianist. Katherine has been studying piano herself, doing a little professional acting, and living with "Aunt Manya", a family friend known to the rest of the world as Madame Sergeivna, a famous actress on the Broadway stage. When she is ten, Katherine is reunited with Julie, and lives with her until Julie's premature death four years later. Manya marries Katherine's father, a composer named Tom Forrester, with whom Katherine has a cordial but not especially close relationship, making Katherine doubly distant from the two of them. However, after a while, Manya's love for her begins to melt Katherine's iciness. However, just as Katherine starts truly loving Manya, Tom and Manya send her away to a boarding school in Switzerland. She is miserable there, unable to make connections with the other girls or the teachers, who are mostly cold and autocratic; in addition, her piano teacher doesn't mesh with her at all. This continues until Justin Vigneras, the piano teacher she was originally meant to study with but who was away at the beginning of the term, comes back. Katherine adores him, and is gratified that there is finally someone at school who understands and supports her passion for music and her need to practice. She also learns to get along better with her peers after the arrival of Sarah Courmont, a girl she previously met briefly on her seventh birthday in New York; the two begin to form an intense friendship. However, school officials misinterpret that friendship as another deep attraction, and Sarah becomes distant with Katherine after Miss Valentine interrogates the girls. Just as Katherine's relationship with Justin begins to develop into a closer relationship, he leaves the school. After suffering through the rest of school without Justin or the Sarah she once knew and a brief romance with Charles Bejart, a young physician and Manya's adopted son, Katherine returns to New York. There she studies with her mother's old teacher, whose style is extremely intense and different from Justin's, shares an apartment with Sarah, who is now an actress, and becomes engaged to Pete, who used to help look after Katherine at Manya's theater. She also meets Felix Bodeway, Sarah's friend, who appears in A Severed Wasp, though she's not often comfortable with the shady, questionable world that he seems to represent. Ultimately Katherine is betrayed by both Pete and Sarah, as Pete and Sarah become romantically involved with each other. Katherine leaves them behind and, upon Manya's urging, returns to Justin, ostensibly to study with him in Paris. |
Plows, Plagues and Petroleum | null | null | Ruddiman begins the book with a brief introduction to the science of climate change and the various individuals that have been key in influencing the field over the years. He also notes that the earth’s climate has been drifting toward cooler temperatures for the last 55 million years. The dominant hypothesis for this trend is that large volcanic eruptions have subsided while increasing amounts of carbon dioxide have been absorbed out of the atmosphere due to interactions between monsoon rains and ground up rock exposed by India pushing into Asia and creating the Himalayas. Additionally it is believed that the melting ice that produced higher sea levels resulted in the ocean absorbing more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These two natural occurrences resulted in less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hence possibly producing the general cooling trend. According to Ruddiman, beginning about 900,000 years ago the earth has begun to go through regular glacial cycles in which glaciers or ice have covered approximately one quarter of the earth’s total surface. These conditions typically last for about 100,000 years and are followed by brief interglacial periods of more temperate weather. Ruddiman cites various researchers in geology and astronomy who pioneered the understanding of earth’s climate as a function of its orbit. The various cycles of earth’s climate seem to be explained by the eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit as well as cycles in the amount of solar radiation. Ruddiman primarily relies on the groundwork by Milutin Milankovitch to explain the effects of solar radiation and earth’s orbit on the climate. By examining ice cores from around the world scientists have been able to link levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane to the various cycles of earth’s climate history. The discovery of carbon dating aided a great deal in developing this understanding. Upon investigating the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the earth’s atmosphere in the most recent interglacial period-10,000 years ago- Ruddiman noticed that levels of carbon dioxide and methane were steadily rising despite the fact that the earth’s natural cycles determined that they should have been decreasing. It was this discovery that lead to Ruddiman’s search for an explanation and ultimately the creation of this book. Ruddiman’s central argument is that this most recent interglacial period has deviated from the natural cycle because of human activities, most importantly farming. Approximately 10,000 years ago the ice that once covered large portions of the northern hemisphere began to recede and gave rise to a new way of life for early humans. In the beginning these early humans had little impact on the environment because they were primarily hunter gatherer societies that moved from location to location allowing previously inhabited locations to be reclaimed by nature. However, about 8,000 years ago humans first developed agriculture and a domesticated lifestyle that allowed them to continually inhabit regions and build large civilizations. Ruddiman claims that carbon dioxide emission records indicate that levels in the atmosphere began to rise at about this same time. This process was intensified as the centuries passed and new technologies such animal husbandry and the plow made their way into more and more cultures. These new technologies allowed for more efficient methods of clearing forests and making room for increasing populations. According to previous interglacial periods the concentration of carbon dioxide should have fallen by about 20 parts per million instead of rising by 20 parts per million. Ruddiman uses estimates of population, forest cleared per person and carbon emitted per each square kilometer cleared to approximate the total impact and concludes that the magnitude is reasonably close to the extra carbon dioxide accumulated during the period. Ruddiman also attributes the rise of methane gas in the atmosphere to human related activities. The most notable of these activities is the cultivation of rice in artificial wetlands in Asia and increased animal waste due to increasing populations of domesticated animals. According to Ruddiman methane concentrations should have peaked about 11,000 years ago slightly above 700 parts per billion and then declined to about 450 parts per billion today. Methane levels followed this cycle at first, but about 5000 years ago they began to rebound and currently the concentration is about 275 parts per billion above the previous trends. According to Ruddiman farming and related activities resulted in large amounts of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and methane) being released into the atmosphere at a time when natural cycles of the earth indicated they should have been falling. The result has been an unintended warming cycle that prevented the earth from entering into another ice age http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~claussen/papers/ruddiman+al_qsr_05.pdf. Ruddiman goes as far as to say that if these gases had not been released into the atmosphere, areas in northern Canada such as Hudson Bay and Baffin Island would currently be covered in ice today. The implications of this theory are wide ranging and most certainly worthy of further exploration. Throughout the record of carbon dioxide and methane emissions there are drops and rises in the amount of concentrations present in the atmosphere. Ruddiman explains these “wiggles” by claiming that they appear at times of major outbreaks of disease such as the bubonic plague in the 1,300’s and the prevalence of old world diseases in the Americas after the arrival of Columbus. Both of these events resulted in large numbers of people dying and the land they once inhabited being reclaimed by the forest. This resulted in increased amounts of carbon dioxide being taken out of the atmosphere, hence causing global temperatures to cool down. Ruddiman claims that the little ice age, starting in the 13th century and ending sometime in the early 19th century was caused by the decreased population and the re-forestation of previously cleared lands as a result from the diseases that killed off so many people. The last aspect of Ruddiman's discussion of climate change relates to the future of petroleum use on earth. It is commonly known that the world’s supply of fossil fuels is rapidly depleting and even conservative estimates claim that the supply will not last much more than 150-200 more years. Ruddiman claims that when this sources of natural fuels has been depleted, human kind will have to resort to using the large quantities of coal that still exist all over the planet. This, according to Ruddiman, will result in a continued warming trend that will only stop when technology either produces a new source of fuel or figures out a way to separate the carbon dioxide emissions prior to being released into the atmosphere. Ruddiman is quite skeptical of both scenarios in the near future because of the increased costs and technological advancements that would have to be made in such a short time. Eventually carbon and methane emissions will be controlled and lowered a great deal and Ruddiman asserts when this happens the earth will most likely begin an era of cooling temperatures. |
Dragon Raja | Lee Yeongdo | null | Amurtaht the black dragon's existence has plagued Fief Heltant for long, and the king has sent the white dragon Catselprime and his raja, a young son of the House of Halschteil to subdue the black dragon. A blind wizard Tyburn arrives at Heltant and helps guard the town while during the battle with Amurtaht. Hoochie helps Tyburn, who gives him in return a pair of Ogre Power Gauntlets or OPG, which gives the wearer great muscle power. The news comes that Catselprime has lost to Amurtaht and died, while the remnants of soldiers including Hoochie's father have been taken prisoner by Amurtaht, who demands a ransom of an enormous amount for their release. Hoochie, Karl and Sanson set out on a journey to the capital Bysus Impel, to report the news of battle to the king and to attain aids for the ransom. The trio attack a group of orc bandits that has killed a traveler, and the orcs begin chasing the trio for revenge. But Hoochie defeats them powered by his OPG. Repeated battles with the orcs bring Hoochie together with Iruril Serenial, a beautiful elf woman, and Axelhand Eindelf, an old magnanimous dwarf, both of whom become his friends. Hoochie and his party visits Lenus City and solves affairs with the city's arena, and at the next city they visit, Fief Carlyle, they face difficulties from a strange pathological phenomenon all over the city. They meet Edhelin, a troll priestess, and find out that the crisis is caused by Sacred Land, a curse that combines magical and divine powers. They find out that Djipenian agents are behind the curse, which was a military experiment for the current war between the Bysus and Djipen (pronounced: Jah-ee-pun). They take one of the agents, Unchai, as a witness in reporting the curse to the king. As they reach the Brown Mountains just west of the capital, they meet Neria, a red-haired "nighthawk" or a thief that is a member of the thieves' guild, and Gilsian, a warrior on a bull with a chattering sword, who is revealed as Prince Gilsian Bysus, the older brother of the king and the ex-heir apparent. Throwing off the orcs' pursuit, the party finally arrives at the capital. They meet the king to bring the news of Catselprime's demise, and report the Djipenian operation. The king decides to help pay the ransom and they're delighted, but only briefly, for they find that there aren't enough jewels left in the capital. In the jewel mines of the Brown Mountains signs are observed of an awakening dragon that terrorized the continent 20 years ago: Kradmesser the Blazing Spear. The House of Halschteil, the bloodline of dragon rajas, has a lost daughter. Hoochie and others hope that she is a dragon raja, so she can make the dragon raja's covenant with the awakened Kradmesser. The only thing known about her is her age and the red color of her hair. While the party prepares for the trip to find the girl, a young nobleman Nexon Huritchell captures Neria and forces the party to steal a book with state secrets from the Halschteil mansion. The party works together to rescue both Neria and the book of secrets from Nexon's hands. Condemned of treason, Nexon attacks the party along with the vampire sorceress Shione. But Iruril returns in time to save the party from the vampire's threat. Iruril has information about a girl in the Duchy of Ilse who may be the lost daughter of the Halschteils. They head to Ilse, along with Unchai to tell Djipen's plots to the Grand Duke of Ilse and gain Ilse's cooperation in the war. Karl and Unchai heads to the Duchy's capital, while Hoochie, Sanson, Neria and Iruril head to a temple of Teperi of Haflings and Crossroads, to hire Jereint Chimber, a young priest empowered to have the answer to any polar question. They head to the Port Del Hapa where they find Rennie who indeed turns out to be the dragon raja they were searching. The next day, Port Del Hapa and several cities of Ilse are turned into Sacred Lands in the hands of Shione and Nexon, who, in the havoc and confusion that ensues, kidnaps Rennie. The party chases Nexon and his underlings into the mysterious Eternal Forest, where whoever enters, on certain conditions, are divided into separate selves with identical looks but divided memories. Iruril's wisdom saves the party, but Nexon and most of his underlings fall into panic and murder each other, including three of Nexon's selves. Nexon takes Rennie and survived subordinates into the Great Labyrinth of the Dragon Lord. The party follows them in through dangers of every shape and meets Dragon Lord, who offers them access to his treasures, enough to pay off Amurtaht's ransom and some more. After leaving the Great Labyrinth, the party ambushes Nexon to rescue Rennie and they rush back to Bysus. At Red Mountains, they encounter Jigoleid, the blue dragon who fought the war for Bysus with another Halschteil raja. The raja released the dragon not only from the covenant with him but also from the battlefield with Djipan, to serious military consequences. The party stop by Kan Adium, a city in the middle of wild plain, where they face another attacks from the orcs, now a big army, and defeat them. They arrive at the capital, and find out that Marquess Halschteil has been making plans to take hold of a raja who could make the covenant with Kradmesser, and use the legendary dragon's power to take over Bysus. The party hasten to take Rennie to the Brown Mountains where Kradmesser's lair is. In the mountains, they pass the Lake Levnane where lives the Fairyqueen Darenian who was Handrake the archmage's lover 300 years ago. Kradmesser is awakened at last. Haschteil, Nexon and Hoochie's party race and fight against each other to meet the dragon first. Kradmesser however, reveals that he intends neither to destroy Bysus and the continent, nor to accept another covenant with a dragon raja. Nexon, who has succeeded the gift from his father, the previous raja to Kradmesser, convinces the dragon forcibly to make the dragon raja's covenant with him. When their covenant is complete, Shione the vampire reveals her true intention. |
The Detective | Roderick Thorp | null | Joe Leland, a private detective, begins investigating a case for the recently widowed Norma MacIver. Norma requests that Leland find out everything he can about her deceased husband. Norma requests Leland personally because her husband had mentioned knowing him in the past. It turns out that Leland and Colin MacIver served in the same military unit during World War II, but at different times. Leland interviews Colin's first wife, his mother and the security guards at the track where Colin supposedly killed himself. Norma introduces Leland to her neighbor and former therapist, Dr. Wendell Roberts. During their conversation Wendell reveals that he knew Leland's wife. It turns out Wendell was friends with the man with whom Karen Leland had had an affair. As Leland's investigation deepens he uncovers evidence of corruption and murder. Eventually, Leland discovers that Colin was connected to a homicide during Leland's earlier life with the police department as a detective. During the investigation of Teddy Leikman's death a confession was obtained from Felix Tesla, Leikman's roommate. Tesla was subsequently executed by electric chair. It turned out that Colin MacIver was the true murderer. Joe's partner, Mike Petrakis, managed to decipher Colin's coded notes and reveal a paper trail of corruption. |
Senhora | José de Alencar | null | Aurélia Camargo, daughter to a poor family, fell in love with Fernando Seixas, an ambitious man, who she had been engaged to. However, Fernando ended the relationship, wanting to marry a rich lady, Adelaide Amaral, from whose father he would be given a dowry as the law stated. Some time after her father's death, Aurélia receives a large inheritance from her grandfather (who she didn't know to be rich) and rises socially. Being the owner of great beauty, she then starts to be the big sensation on the parties and events of that time. Torn between love and her hurt pride, she puts her uncle Lemos in charge of a negotiation to offer Fernando a large amount of money to marry her. The deal, however, states that the identity of the bride should remain a secret until the day after the wedding ceremony. When he finds out that Aurélia is his bride, Fernando is very happy, for he never really stopped loving her. He then opens his heart to her and confesses his love. The young woman, however, on their first night together, makes it very clear: she "bought" him to be the husband a woman of her social position should have. They sleep in different rooms. She doesn't want to be his and takes every opportunity she has to criticize him with sarcasm and irony. pt:Senhora (livro) |
Cocorí | null | null | The story concerns a small native boy from the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, who meets a blonde tourist girl who gives him a rose. In return, she asks for a squirrel monkey. Smitten, he fulfills his promise by setting a trap made out of rice and a coconut, but when he returns to where he had seen her, the boat she had come in was gone. When he returns, to his home, he finds that the rose she had given him had wilted. He asks his mother, Drusila, why it had lived such a short time while other things last much, much longer. She doesn't know, so he ran around his village, asking the neighbors the same question. None of them know, so he asks his friend, Doña Madorra the turtle, his question. She doesn't know, so she brings him and the squirrel monkey around the jungle, asking some old and wise animals including Don Torcuato the alligator, Talamanca the Bocaracá, and the snake. After the interrogations of the alligator and the snake go disastrously, Cocorí returns home to find that Drusila had planted the stem of the wilted rose and so grown a rose bush. Here the book ends. |
The Body | Richard Sapir | null | When a female archaeologist discovers an ancient skeleton of a man and an Aramaic inscription which reads Melek Yehudayai (King of the Jews), the Israel government invite Vatican to investigate the matter, as they suspect the body could be that of Jesus Christ. When one of the renowned archaeologist-priests of Vatican committed suicide as a man of broken faith, former soldier and Catholic priest Jim Folan is assigned to continue the investigation. Father Folan arrives in Israel to work with the reluctant archaeologist Sharon Golban, the mystery deepens with danger and intrigue. Suddenly they find that the Vatican, the United States, the Soviets, the Mossad and the mafia are after the truth. it:Il corpo (Sapir) |
The Urth of the New Sun | Gene Wolfe | 1,987 | Unlike the four part novel of the Book of the New Sun, Urth of the New Sun mostly takes place outside Urth. The book is yet again a continuation of Severian's narration of the aftermath of his ascent to the throne and subsequent journey "between the suns" to be judged and win back the fountain of life that will rejuvenate the slowly dying sun and revive life on earth. When the book begins, Severian has already rewritten his accounts of before and is beginning his new log aboard the spaceship that will take him to Yesod, an enigmatic planet, home to the godlike beings who have the power to grant Urth and its sun a new lease on life. Aboard the ship, Severian meets Zak, a mysterious being, who begins small and soon develops human form and turns out to be the all-powerful Tzadkiel of Yesod. Once in Yesod, Severian faces an immense task of facing all the deceased people he has encountered since his childhood, including Thecla and Master Malrubius. After his return to Urth from Yesod, he finds the sun restored to its former glory as he enters the vicinity of the solar system. Once on Urth, he learns that many years have passed on Urth during his absence. He also learns that he possesses healing power that he once attributed the Claw of the Concilator. He finds his wife Valeria and his old enemy Baldanders (who has grown enough to match the size of an undine) sitting in the throne room. Shortly after Severian reveals himself, an apocalyptic flood washes away the citadel and much of the land area of Urth, thus bringing destruction in the wake of rebirth. |
The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born | Ayi Kwei Armah | 1,968 | The unnamed protagonist, referred to as "the man", works at a railway station and is approached with a bribe; when he refuses, his wife is furious and he can't help feeling guilty despite his innocence. The novel expresses the frustration many citizens of the newly-independent states in Africa felt after attaining political independence. Many African states like Ghana followed similar paths in which corruption and the greed of African elites became rampant. Corruption in turn filtered down to the rest of society. The action takes place between 1965's Passion Week and February 25, 1966 – the day after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. The 'rot' that characterized post-independent Ghana in the last years of Nkrumah is a dominant theme in the book. |
Mam'zelle Guillotine | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,940 | Mam'zelle Guillotine follows Gabrielle Damiens, the daughter of Francois Damiens, a man arrested for attacking the King of France with a pocket knife. Although the wound was minor, Damiens' punishment for drawing royal blood was to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At age 16, Gabrielle finds letters written by her father which prove that his crime had been instigated and aided by a body of noble gentlemen, who planned it as warning to the King to change his ways. Damiens bore the brunt of this conspiracy in silence while the aristocrats remained immune. With the evidence of their crime, Gabrielle sets out to confront the Marquis de Saint-Lucque, the only person named in the letters, and succeeds in extorting a large amount of money from him. She also starts an affair with his son, Vicomte Fernand, who is oblivious to the whole situation. Before long Gabrielle is living in luxury and has aspirations to marry the young Vicomte. Her plans are dashed when Fernand breaks off their affair as the King has decided that the Vicomte should marry his illegitimate daughter, Neve de Nesle. Furious, Gabrielle tries to blackmail Vicomte into marrying her using the letters which prove his father's guilt. But she has not counted on Neve's mother, Madame de Nesle, who on hearing of the situation, uses her position as the King's favourite to have Gabrielle, now 19, thrown into prison without trial. She spends the next 16 years in prison, feeding her rage and lust for revenge on the Saint-Lucque family. On July 14, 1789, she is released from the Bastille after it is stormed by the mob, the French Revolution having begun. Mad for revenge, Gabrielle works her way into the favour of the men behind the new republic, and before long has become the public executioner of Artois. As France's only female executioner she is feared by many and known throughout Artois as Mam'zelle Guillotine. When the Saint-Lucque family (Fernand, Neve and their three children) are captured as traitors, Gabrielle determines that finally she will have her revenge. English spies manage to rescue the Marquis and his young son, but his wife and two daughters are still in danger of being sent to the guillotine. Blind with rage and consumed with her plots for revenge, Gabrielle fails to notice that the new sleuth sent from Paris by Chauvelin to track down the English spies is really the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
Honey for the Bears | Anthony Burgess | null | British antique dealer Paul Hussey and his American wife Belinda travel to Leningrad for a holiday but with a suitcase of drilon dresses, which he plans to sell on the Soviet black market as a favor to the widow of his recently deceased friend Robert. Belinda develops a rash during the trip over and is taken to a hospital in Leningrad, leaving Paul to fend for himself while suspicious Soviet agents tail him. Finding the USSR quite different from his preconceptions, Hussey has various sexual adventures — with both men and women — and seeks to secure the freedom of a descendant of a dissident composer. |
Damia | Anne McCaffrey | 1,993 | Damia is told mainly from the point of view of Afra Lyon, the Rowan's assistant, a character first introduced in the previous book. It begins with his childhood on the strictly regimented colony planet orbiting Capella. It then shows Lyon's view of the events of The Rowan, followed by his helping to raise Rowan and Jeff Raven's children, especially the precocious and powerful Damia. Lyon later realizes that he has fallen in love with his young ward, which gives him rather conflicted feelings. In the end, the two wind up defending humanity against an even more dangerous alien enemy than the Hive faced by the Rowan. |
The Secrets of Jin-Shei | Alma Alexander | null | A tale of bonding sisterhood, this novel is set in Syai, an imaginary Chinese kingdom. Jin-shei is a pledge given by one woman to another, and once accepted can never be broken. This declaration of loyalty transcends social class and normal customs. Through jin-ashu, a unique language passed on from generation to generation of women (inspired by a real example of secret women's writing, Nü Shu), the lives within the sisterhood continue to intertwine throughout time. The story begins with Tai, daughter of a court seamstress, who becomes jin shei bao of the Little Empress Antian. An earthquake claims the lives of the royal family, leaving an obstinate Liudan, Antian's younger sister, as the unexpected new Empress. Antian, during her dying moments, binds Tai to look after her sister. Tai is comforted by Yuet, an apprentice healer. A new pledge is made, and Tai finds herself with a new jin shei bao who works tirelessly to bridge the gap between Tai and Liudan. The initial moves are tentative, for Liudan remains insecure throughout her lonely life in the imperial court. During her time of sorrow, Tai is also consoled by her childhood friend Nhia. A club-footed young girl, Nhia grew up in the vicinity of the great temple, and has learned much about the Way. She is a sage with a pure heart who later becomes Syai Chancellor. It is also at the temple that Nhia meets Khailin, to whom she pledges sisterhood. A restless soul, Khailin is actively seeking knowledge about the Way. However, her thirst for information leads her down the path of darker forces. Khailin secretly marries the Ninth Sage Lihui. Within Liudan’s court, an exceptional young Guard trainee named Xaforn is injured and Yuet is summoned to heal her. Xaforn is jin shei bao to Qiaan, binding their lives beyond adoptive sisterhood. Xaforn is protective by nature, while Qiaan is nurturing. Through a series of events, the circle of sisterhood between these young ladies will test their loyalty, determination, courage and bravery. Liudan, in her quest for absolute rule over her empire, declares herself to be Dragon Empress. However, when the existence of Tammary, the late Emperor’s illegitimate daughter with a Traveller, comes to light, Liudan becomes obsessed by her need to maintain her power. In order to protect Tammary, Tai pledges sisterhood and tries to act as the peacemaker. Qiaan is then discovered to be the daughter of Cai, the Ivory Emperor's concubine, and becomes a pawn of Lihui, who wants to rule as Emperor and overthrow Liudan. An increasingly insecure Liudan resorts to extraction of duties of sisterhood despite mistrusting her sisters who try fervently to bring her back to their fold, to a life with some sense of calm and peace. They fail, and their failure comes with a huge price, as one sister after another dies. The story ends with Tai in her old age, looking back to her youth and reminiscing that her life was joyful yet marred by occasions of unhappiness, a life that was changed by a single promise - Jin-Shei. |
Description of a Struggle | Franz Kafka | 1,912 | "Description of a Struggle" is one of Kafka's longer minor works and is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is narrated by a young man attending a party and tells of his "acquaintance" (as he is referred to in the story) that he meets there. The second chapter is the longest and is itself split into several sections. The narrator leaps onto his acquaintance's back and rides him like a horse and imagines a landscape that responds to his every whim. He then meets an extraordinarily fat man carried on a litter who tells him the story of a "supplicant" who prays by smashing his head into the ground. In the third chapter, the narrator returns to reality, so to speak, and continues his walk up the Laurenziberg in winter with his acquaintance. |
See Delphi and Die | Lindsey Davis | 2,005 | Through his brother-in-law Aulus, Falco hears details of two young Roman women who have died in Greece while seeing the sights of the ancient world. Falco and his wife, Helena, travel to Greece to meet up with the tour party which included one of the women, seeking clues to her murder, passing through Olympia, Corinth, Delphi and the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia before finally arriving at Athens. The wayward Aulus is playing truant in Greece where, instead of studying law at Athens, he is investigating the death of Valeria Ventidia, a newly married Roman girl at Olympia, as well as another death which occurred three years ago around the same area. Falco's mission has two objectives: to send Aulus back to school, and solve the mystery behind the deaths at Olympia. Eventually, a connection between the two deceased women is deduced: both had joined tours provided by Seven Sights, a tour company of dubious reputation, currently operating in Greece. Falco's investigation does not go smoothly, however: the Roman authorities are not interested in properly investigating the deaths (much less governing Greece itself), and at Olympia Falco is attacked by a potential suspect, who later turns up dead in suspicious circumstances, the death blamed on Falco's ward Glaucus. Low on funds and unwilling to be confronted by the angry locals, Falco and his followers - Helena, Albia, Glaucus and Falco's nephews - are forced to leave Olympia for Corinth but not before discovering that Valeria's killer may have been connected to athletes who trained at Olympia. Things do not look better at Corinth however: the governor is out, and his deputy, the quaestor Aquillus Macer, is proven to be extremely inept and inexperienced. Fortunately the tour party has been apprehended at Corinth but worse is still to come: Aulus and Valeria's widower, Tullis Stratianus, have run away to Delphi to seek answers from the Oracle there, and another member of the Seven Sights travelling party is murdered. Fearing that Stratianus would be the killer's next victim, Falco and Helena rush off to Delphi but lose Stratianus, who flees this time to Lebadeia and then disappears without a trace. Dejected and defeated, Falco and his group travel to Delphi on their original mission: to persuade Aulus to return back to studying law at Athens. Falco also gets to meet Aulus' mentor, a formidable lawyer named Minas who offers his aid in capturing the killer - by hosting a party for the Seven Sights tour party, now freed and in Athens too after the operators Phineus and Polystratus managed to threaten the Corinth government with legal action advised by Minas. Falco has no confidence in Minas' methods, but during the course of the party, more evidence is found by Falco and his nephews, revealing that Phineus and Polystratus had athletic training, and that female travellers on Seven Sights may have been sexually harassed by the men. Finally, Polystratus is unmasked as the real killer, and the remains of the missing Statianus are found in a stew being prepared by the former for the party, proving his guilt. |
The House in Paris | Elizabeth Bowen | null | The novel opens in Paris, early in the morning, as eleven-year-old Henrietta Mountjoy, accompanied by Miss Naomi Fisher, travel via taxi to the house of Mme Fisher, an elderly and sickly lady who for years has taken in well-off girls for a season. Henrietta is traveling to Menton, in the south of France, to spend time with her grandmother, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Henrietta that she will be spending her day with Leopold, a nine-year old boy who is supposed to meet his mother there for the first time; Miss Fisher asks Henrietta to "be a little considerate with Leopold", and "to ask Leopold nothing". After breakfast and a nap in the salon, Henrietta awakens to find Leopold standing before her. The two young children talk about their life: Leopold explains Mme Fisher's illness and his own anticipation regarding the arrival of his mother later that day; Henrietta reveals to Leopold that her mother is dead. Even though Leopold angers Henrietta by spilling the contents of her handbag, the two children develop a rapport. Miss Fisher leads Henrietta to Mme Fisher's room. While they are upstairs, Leopold rummages through Miss Fisher's handbag, discovering three envelopes. He disregards the first, a letter pertaining to Henrietta. The second envelope, with a Berlin postmark, is from his mother, but the envelope is empty, and he feels like Miss Fisher has "done him down." The third envelope contains a letter from Marian Grant Moody, his adoptive mother, to Miss Fisher. Besides discussing the boy's itinerary, she writes exhaustively of Leopold's delicate and rather unstable constitution, and says more than once that the boy has not had a sex education yet, so any explanation of his birth will have to be handled delicately. Leopold returns to the first envelope concerning Henrietta, written to Miss Fisher by Henrietta's grandmother, Mrs. Arbuthnot. Referring repeatedly to her old acquaintance and present addressee as "Miss Kingfisher", she informs Miss Fisher that Henrietta is to spend the remainder of the winter with Mrs. Arbuthnot in the south of France, and should only be staying a day in Paris. The tone of the letter is manipulative: Mrs. Arbuthnot subtly chastises Miss Fisher for not visiting her, all the while asking that Henrietta be allowed to spend the day in Paris. During this time, Henrietta is introduced to Mme Fisher in her upstairs bedroom. As Miss Fisher sits knitting, her mother and the young girl converse, Mme Fisher frequently critiquing her daughter, commenting on her own bad health, and, ultimately, discussing Leopold: Henrietta learns that Leopold's now-dead father at one time broke her daughter's heart. Henrietta then returns to the salon and discovers Leopold going through the handbag. The section concludes with the arrival of a telegram, summarized by Miss Fisher: "Your mother is not coming; she cannot come." "Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own." The novel's second section shift back a decade to the story of Leopold's parents. The introductory pages of the section make clear that this the entire section is imaginary, perhaps a long and dramatic imaginative vision on Leopold's part. The section contains the information that may have been exchanged between Karen and Leopold should she have actually kept her promise to her son and arrived as scheduled that day in Paris. Karen Michaelis, ten years or so before the day of the previous section, is sailing from her native England to visit her Aunt Violet and Uncle Bill Bent at Rushbrook, County Cork, Ireland. Karen is escaping the pressures of her recent engagement to Ray Forrestier, ambivalent about the wedding; Ray himself is on a business trip. Her time with Uncle Bill and Aunt Violet is rather uneventful and uninspiring until Uncle Bill, a nervous and socially inadequate man, tells Karen that Violet is to have surgery in the coming weeks, a procedure that could prove fatal. Back in England, Karen finds Naomi Fisher waiting for her; she has traveled to London to see to the affairs of her recently deceased aunt, and tells Karen of her engagement to Max Ebhart, whom Karen met years before during while she was one of the girls staying at Mme Fisher's house. Despite Karen's objections—she had always been afraid of Max—Naomi insists the three spend time together before Max and Naomi return home. During a picnic, Max and Karen come close, sharing a secret touch and holding hands. Afterward, Karen resigns herself to her upcoming marriage, but before too long, the Michaelis family receives news of Aunt Violet's death, and once again things are in a state of disorder. During this chaotic time Max calls and asks to see Karen. They meet clandestinely in Boulogne and spend the day together. Max reveals that Mme Fisher believes her daughter is not good enough for him, but according to Max, Naomi is an acceptable match, simply because she is "like the furniture or the dark", comfortable and reassuring. Ultimately, however, she evokes no passion in him. Likewise, Karen confides that she does not wish to marry Ray. They part, but meet again on Folkestone pier the following Saturday, spending the remainder of the day and evening in a hotel room. Karen awakens in the middle of the night and while examining her and Max's shared circumstances, she develops a type of unconscious awareness of Leopold, despite having no clear evidence he will eventually exist, suggested by the author in second person: "All the same, the idea of you, Leopold, began to be present with her." The following day, Max writes a letter to Naomi, explaining his relationship with and feelings for Karen. Karen implores him to rethink the revelation, specifically the unreality of the arrangement ("You and I are the dream. Go back to her".) She tears up the letter, and they agree that while Naomi must be made aware of the affair, it is best both to write her and tell her in person. Karen's rendezvous with Max is eventually discovered by Mrs. Michaelis, and while Karen tries to explain the relationship, Mrs. Michaelis cannot understand. Next, Karen learns through the French newspapers that Max has committed suicide, and Naomi arrives in London, where she explains the circumstances surrounding his death: after receiving his letter and informing Mme Fisher of his intentions, Naomi is quarantined by her mother, who intends to keep Naomi from seeing Max and removing any possibility of spoiling Max's chance for happiness with Karen. Max does visit Naomi, however, speaking to her of the failure inherent in his relationship with Karen: "'What she and I are' he said, 'is outside life; we shall fail.'" He is visibly distressed as Mme Fisher returns to the salon. Naomi returns to her upstairs bedroom. There is a commotion in the salon, and Naomi returns to find her mother strewn across the sofa and blood on the floor. Max has cut his own wrist, making his way out the door into the street, and dying in an alley. In the following days, Mme Fisher will observe that "it was the commendation he could not bear. I was commending him when he took his knife out." At the end of the section, Karen reveals to Naomi that she is pregnant with Max's child, and will leave for Germany to try to avoid any scandal. The first sentence of the last section repeats the last sentence of the first: "Your mother is not coming; she cannot come." Leopold again imagines how the meeting would have gone if it had occurred. Henrietta senses Leopold's disappointment; she holds him and cries. Miss Fisher reenters the salon, informing Leopold that Mme Fisher would like to see him. Not unlike the earlier exchange with Henrietta, the conversation between Leopold and Mme Fisher is uncomfortable and at times Mme Fisher is blunt, even cruel. She attempts to explain Karen's unique nature to the disconsolate boy, abandoning any of those delicacies requested in Marian Grant Moody's earlier letter. She explains Leopold his history, including the details of his birth, the death of his half-sibling, his adoption, and his general displacement in the world. Leopold begs to remain in the house, exclaiming, "At Spezia when I am angry I go full of smoke inside, but when you make me angry I see everything." At this point Miss Fisher returns to the room and whisks Leopold away again. Ray Forrestier is waiting in the salon for Leopold. When the child arrives, their interaction is strained, distant, and uncomfortable. A good portion of the narrative focuses on Ray's conflicting feelings about Leopold, his marriage to Karen, the child's inescapable presence in their shared life, and Ray's own situational obligations. Ultimately, Ray and Leopold leave the house together, dropping off Henrietta at the train station on the way; the two children say their goodbyes and head off in different directions. |
So Yesterday | Scott Westerfeld | null | A young man named Hunter works as a cool hunter, finding and selling new trends to his corporate sponsors. His latest find is Jen, an honest-to-goodness 'Innovator' whom he spots based on her unique shoelaces. Together they are drawn into a mystery when one of Hunter's bosses disappears after she runs a 'cool tasting' for a new brand of shoe. |
The Hunters | James Salter | 1,956 | On a frozen February evening in Fuchū, Japan, Captain Cleve Connell restlessly waits for assignment orders completing his transfer to Korea. Billeted for four days in a warehouse, he has tired of seeing Tokyo – and of watching others come and go – and his clean laundry is nearly gone. He walks to dinner at the Officers Club reflecting on his ability as a flyer (he's a good one, with a reputation among his peacetime peers), his reluctance to leave the Air Force although pressured by civilian friends to do so, and his desire to test himself in combat. He senses that his feelings of time lost and lack of accomplishment are corrosive. He shares dinner with a fellow pilot en route to the war and while they are discussing women, the war in general, and the tedium of waiting, a group of loud young lieutenants enters the club. One stands out from the rest, however, emanating cool confidence amidst their obvious insecurity, and mildly harasses a pretty Japanese bar waitress. Cleve's companion chastises the lieutenant, who reluctantly backs down, resisting just enough that Cleve catches his name in the discussion: Pell. Cleve shrugs aside the episode and the next morning receives his orders. He arrives in Korea on a frigid afternoon and despite a feeling of exhilaration, his first impression of Korea is a dreary, impoverished country made drearier by the slow-moving military bureaucracy. Assigned to an elite fighter wing at the primitive Kimpo air base, Cleve arrives to find it abuzz with an outgoing mission and talk of a bad end to a bad week: the leading ace in the wing has just been shot down and killed. He meets pilots he knew in Panama, just after the end of World War II, including Carl Abbott, now a major. Cleve is mildly shocked to find that his young comrade of just a few years ago now looks old, out of shape, and lacking in spirit. Though genuinely glad to see Cleve, Major Abbott's effectiveness as a combat pilot is gone; he has been put out to pasture and does not care. That evening, in the officers club, he greets his wing commander, Colonel Imil, a former squadron commander in Panama. Imil is a larger-than-life personality who shows off Cleve to the veterans as a "real fighter pilot", and enthusiastically introduces him to Colonel Moncavage, a former ace just returned to flying. Moncavage's cool response prompts Imil to goad him, revealing a competitive friction between the two commanders. Cleve is put through a brief period of training. One morning, he goes to the operations office to follow the progress of a mission over the radio. The operations officer is Desmond, another old friend. In their discussion, he learns that Desmond also feels that Abbott "doesn't have it any more", and the conversation turns to the quality of their MiG opponents. While nearly all are poor adversaries, a few are very good, particularly one nicknamed Casey Jones, the only MiG pilot to best Imil in a fight. Desmond reassures him that Casey Jones isn't seen on missions any more, his tour apparently over. Cleve begins flying missions as Desmond's wingman. They encounter MiGs in large numbers on one mission and although seemingly everywhere, the clashes are so fleeting that Desmond's flight is unable to ever catch up to any. Cleve has a feeling afterwards that perhaps his flight was "playing it safe" and makes the mistake of saying so to Desmond, offending him. At the post-mission debriefing, they learn that a pilot, Robey, has claimed his fifth MiG. Another pilot asks Desmond, "Did he really get this one for a change?", prompting Desmond to relate to Cleve that Robey had once gotten Imil to cajole a reluctant wingman into confirming a kill he had not witnessed. Even so, Cleve notices that news of the fifth kill gets around quickly, and that he, like everyone else, feels a "mystic fulfillment" at being a part of the same fight. Imil makes Cleve a flight leader despite his having flown just eight missions. The flight consists of two veteran pilots, DeLeo and Daughters, and two untried replacements, Billy Hunter and Pettibone. All are aware of his reputation as a flyer and accordingly respectful, but it becomes apparent that he has been made flight lead because the flight has yet to shoot down any MiGs. Though nothing goes wrong in their first mission together, he is left with the strong feeling of a "wasted mission", until he learns that nobody in the wing saw any MiGs. Just as he is about to recover his good humor however, he encounters a new pilot in their barracks and assigned to his flight, Ed Pell, the loud lieutenant from Japan. Cleve is acutely disquieted. Pell upsets the balance of things; Cleve becomes uncomfortably aware that he is the leader, and much is expected of him. A quarter of the way through his tour, he has yet to see combat, and on days when the wing is in a fight, Imil chides him for missing it. Trapped by a feeling of helplessness, his growing self-doubt begins to gnaw away his confidence as he fears he is not just unlucky but possibly lacking something vital. The feeling worsens when Major Abbott, about to be exiled from the Wing, comes in to say goodbye and begins sobbing uncontrollably, possibly foreshadowing his own fate. Other missions go by without combat until one day Colonel Moncavage, who also had lacked success, shoots down two MiGs, eviscerating Cleve emotionally. The bad feelings vanish when Cleve, with Billy Hunter on his wing, shoots down a MiG. Both exultant and relieved, he learns at debriefing that Pell, too, has shot down a MiG and almost gotten DeLeo killed in the process: DeLeo accuses Pell of flying off on his own in the middle of the fight and leaving his leader to the mercies of the enemy. Pell denies the accusation and Cleve tries to smooth over the situation as a misunderstanding in the heat of battle. He discovers that his redemption is short-lived when, five days later, a big fight occurs after Cleve left himself off the schedule. The doubt and ominous fear return immediately. Then he finds that Pell has shot down another MiG. DeLeo remains hostile and skeptical of Pell, but Daughters confirms the kill. The arrival of spring brings a long spell of bad weather that shuts down almost all combat missions. Cleve and DeLeo decide to go on leave to Japan "to enjoy civilization". The night before the leave they head into Seoul for a steak dinner at the plush officers club of Air Force Headquarters, where they run into Abbott who insists with a pitiful obsessiveness on hearing the details of Cleve's MiG kill. Cleve realizes that the other pilots hated Abbott because they saw themselves in him. Reaching Tokyo, their leave starts as a typical R&R with martinis and steak for breakfast, followed by an afternoon nap, then an evening of hopping from cocktail lounge to cocktail lounge. DeLeo disappears to make a phone call and while he's gone the fragrance of perfume from a passing woman makes Cleve realize that he has suppressed all physical desires. DeLeo has booked them a night at Miyoshi's, a well-known Soapland-style brothel, that is spent in samisen music, saki, the baths, and sex with two young Japanese women. Cleve waxes philosophically about such luxury in contrast to their spartan existence in Korea, and DeLeo warns him that while "trying" (to get MiGs) is enough for DeLeo, he knows it won't be enough for him. The next night while making the rounds of the clubs, they run into a former friend of Pell's during cadet training, an obvious admirer whose drunken praise confirms all of Cleve's misgivings about Pell's deviousness and ambition, and he knows he has entered "a dark, ultimate battle." The next day, as a favor to his father, he searches for and finds Miyata, a Japanese artist, whose brother was a friend. Despite losing his life's work in the fire raids, Miyata is not only not bitter but seems above the miseries involved in living. They find a common interest in films and Miyata introduces Cleve to his daughter Eiko. He spends the next day with Eiko. She draws him out, asking him about his ambition. He replies that he has chased many ambitions of his own choosing but now has had one forced on him: to become an ace. He explains that he knows it is the result of a fatal pride but that flying fighters becomes first a sport and then a refuge. Finally he tells her that he wants to be remembered for something, a real performance akin to her aspiration to act in a great movie, and that in the final analysis his ambition is "Not to fail." Beyond that, he has no answers. With two days of his leave remaining, they make plans for the next day. Back at his hotel, he hears important news. There was a big fight the day before over the Yalu River, with eight MiGs shot down and three pilots lost, including Desmond. He feels sickened and helpless having missed it again, but there is more: Casey Jones is back. DeLeo tries to talk him out of it, but Cleve immediately goes back to Korea, followed by his reluctant, disgusted wingman. Cleve returns to Kimpo before dawn and puts his flight on the morning mission. In the locker room after the briefing, he is surly with Pell, who is not only cocky but full of suggestions on how the mission ought to be flown and somewhat contemptuous of its veteran pilots. In an ensuing dogfight, Cleve gets on the tail of a MiG, cripples it, and just as he is about to make the kill has to break off to rescue Pell, who mysteriously fell behind and is under attack by two other MiGs. One of the attacking MiGs spins out of control and crashes. Pell claims it as a kill. Pell has Imil's ear now, and despite the fact that the kill was only confirmed by Cleve, suggests that he lacks the stomach for combat and leaves hanging in the air his belief that he ought to be leading the flight. Later, he insinuates the same to Cleve and taunts him when rebuked. Behind his back, Pell undercuts Cleve with the other rookies of the flight. His resentment of Pell blinds Cleve to Pell's intentions when Daughters tries to support him, plus he is distracted by all the talk regarding Casey Jones. He wants to be free of competing for MiGs but he's only too aware that he's expected by everyone, even Daughters and DeLeo, to match Pell's accomplishments. Cleve's flight is scheduled for three missions the next day, a reconnaissance and two MiG sweeps. He assigns himself to the sweeps and puts Daughters, with Pell as wingman, on the early morning reconnaissance, where nothing is likely to happen. To his anguish, the recon flight is jumped by six MiGs and shoots down two. Worse, only three ships of the flight return. They ran into Casey Jones, DeLeo says, who had him cold a dozen times but never fired. Daughters — with only a handful of missions to go — was shot down in flames. Pell got both MiGs and DeLeo accuses him of failing to do his assigned job: warning Daughters that MiGs were behind him. Pell protests his innocence, but when Cleve tells him he's going to ground him for abandoning his leader, Pell just smirks confidently. Imil, caring only about MiG kills, supports Pell and angrily accuses Cleve of trying to wreck the outfit, insinuates that he's shirking combat, and says that he "and that Italian...have got it in for Pell". Cleve realizes he's lost Imil's support. Imil lionizes Pell, and when the new ace tries to ease his conscience with rationalizations of how Daughters might have gotten himself killed, Imil refuses even to listen. Pell is sent to Japan as a reward for making ace and, curiously, asks that Hunter and Pettibone accompany him. No one except Cleve realizes (or cares) that Pell is making them acolytes to undermine Cleve's authority. Cleve imagines Daughters' terror at being shot down, and in the realization of his own mortality, comes to believe that his salvation will be in killing Casey Jones. When Pell returns, now a celebrity, he holds court for the other pilots, using Hunter as his Boswell. Cleve comes to hate Pell in a way that seems to wipe out everything else from his life, and when Imil admits he was wrong and tries to apologize, Cleve doesn't back down from his desire to ground Pell, angering the colonel even more. DeLeo finishes his tour; two new pilots join the flight and immediately become Pell's disciples. Hunter, who has ambitions of his own, remains loyal to Cleve, but clearly admires Pell. In June, when Cleve has only six missions remaining, the entire group is briefed for an anticipated huge air battle. A major attack on a North Korean dam has been ordered and hundreds of MiGs are expected to defend it. Every plane in the group is sent, but Cleve is put in the last flight, with Hunter as his wingman. Large numbers of MiGs react, yet the strike is unopposed. Cleve and Hunter, the last in the area, almost stay too long trying to make contact and start back low on fuel. Cleve spots four MiGs and heedless of his fuel state turns toward them. Unexpectedly four more appear above them and break into pairs; Hunter reports that the leader has black stripes. The MiGs try to corner them, but Cleve is determined to take the fight as far south as he can, in case the MiGs are also low on fuel. In their twisting, evasive turns they get off some bursts, descend to an altitude where their jets perform better, and the MiGs lose their advantage. Cleve seizes an opportunity and closes in behind Casey Jones. The fight becomes a battle of wills and descends near the ground, where Casey tries an impossible diving maneuver. Cleve somehow follows him through it and shoots him down. Their fuel tanks nearly empty, Cleve and Hunter climb to 40,000 feet to attempt to glide back to base, a too-common practice. He notifies Kimpo about their dire situation. Imil asks if they got any MiGs. Cleve tells him "they" got one. Out of fuel and without power, they try to land. Cleve makes it, but the less experienced Hunter stalls and crashes just short of the field. Imil wants to know about the kill; Cleve is intoxicated, knowing it was Casey Jones. Then he learns Hunter was killed in the crash and that his own gun camera failed to function. Imil laments there is no way to confirm the kill. Cleve tells him it doesn't matter; it was Casey Jones. Pell objects strenuously that there is no way to confirm the kill. Imil, who has proclaimed that no one less skilled than himself could ever get Casey, quickly agrees with Pell. Cleve responds in a way he had never conceived possible, and finds his destiny. "I can confirm it," he declares suddenly, "Hunter got him." Two missions later Pettibone loses sight of Cleve, who does not return to base. Pell, back after his seventh kill, tells a correspondent interviewing him that Cleve was one of the best, who taught him everything about air combat, but never got lucky himself. Cleve was like his brother. "But don't write any of that," he says. |
Go | John Clellon Holmes | 1,952 | Go concerns protagonist Paul Hobbes' struggle to maintain his marriage to his wife, Kathryn, while simultaneously indulging in the world of the 1940s and 1950s Beat Generation. It follows the complications of interpersonal relationships arising from a group of disillusioned and often eccentric young people. Hobbes finds himself in a world of promiscuity, casual drug use and petty crime but retains a certain detachment from it, sometimes to the annoyance of his friends. From wild all night parties to Allen Ginsberg's visions of William Blake to the death of Bill Cannastra, the events of the book are largely real events, some of them alluded to in other beat works, most notably Ginsberg's "Howl". Holmes has said that the only plot element entirely invented by himself is Kathryn's infidelity. |
The Shaughraun | Dion Boucicault | null | The play is about Robert Ffolliott, fiance of Arte O'Neil, who has returned to Ireland after escaping from transportation in Australia. At the play's onset, we are informed that Robert is a Fenian fugitive, but it soon becomes clear that he is no such thing; rather, he is an innocent local gentleman who was tricked into pledging himself to a criminal disguised as a Fenian whose intent was to then betray him to the police. A country squire who arranged the betrayal, Kinchela, who also conspires to force Arte into marriage, tries to hunt Robert down and arrest him, with the help of a police informer, Harvey Duff. Robert escapes various melodramatic cliffhanger situations with the help of Conn the Shaughraun (Irish seachránaí = wanderer, errant person), a roguish stage Irish poacher who provides a great deal of comic relief. Robert's sister, Claire Ffolliot, is in love with an English soldier, Captain Molineaux, who is tracking down Fenians in the area. She cannot decide whether or not to protect her brother or betray the Captain. However, Molineaux's fish out of water attitudes to rural Ireland provide comic relief, and all ends well. The Fenians receive a general amnesty, the couples marry, Kinchela is arrested, and Harvey Duff falls off a cliff. |
The Falcon's Malteser | Anthony Horowitz | 1,986 | The first chapter introduces Nicholas 'Nick' Simple and his older brother, Herbert Simple, who goes by the pseudonym 'Tim Diamond'. They live in a flat above a supermarket in Fulham, and are down on their luck, with hopeless Herbert not being able to get a suitable job. The first chapter also introduces Johnny Naples, a vertically-challenged South American who comes to the office carrying a suspicious package, and acting as if he is being trailed. He tries to explain the situation, whilst Herbert tries (and miserably fails) to put on a hardman act. When Naples offers them £300 just to look after the package, 200 now and 100 if the package is safe on the day he returns, Herbert accepts - but from the very start, Nick is dubious. The next day - after going to the cinema to see 101 Dalmatians - they find their flat turned over by someone during the day. Luckily, Nick took the envelope with him. After a sleepless night repairing their apartment, they check the mail to find a note left by 'The Fat Man'. The Fat Man, Herbert says, is the biggest criminal in England, involved in almost any crime there is - armed robbery, arson, theft and armed burglary are some of the things Herbert lists. The note demands that the Diamonds meet him in Trafalgar Square It turns out that the pseudonym Fat Man is rather inappropriate - when the man himself is finally revealed, he is one of the thinnest men Nick has ever seen, with the rings on his fingers slipping off almost constantly. He says his doctor told him to lose weight, so over the past year he has eaten yoghurt and lost 135 kg. Almost pleasant conversation elapses into threats when Nick tells the Fat Man that they do not have the box. However Herbert trying to fool the Fat Man causes him to realise the package hasn't been stolen. The Fat Man then gives Nick and Herbert two days to find the box. When they return home, they discover that what is in the package is nothing more than a box of Maltesers - a very popular type of sweet in Britain, with a crunchy centre coated in milk chocolate. Dumbfounded as to why Johnny Naples would pay them nicely to look after a box of chocolates, they visit the (fictional) Hotel Splendide after a quick enquiry at a shop traced using a sign on the envelope, with the keeper saying that the owner of a hotel in Portobello Road mentioned to him that a dwarf was staying at his hotel. When they go to Room 39 at Hotel Splendide however, they arrive at exactly the time that he is shot. Nick rushes into the room just in time to see someone jumping out of the window to safety. Naples opens his mouth and is able to say "The sun...", and then "the falcon...", before he dies. A plain-clothes police man, disguised as a drunk in the street, arrests them, and they are sent to Ladbroke Grove Police Station, where Herbert's old boss, Chief Inspector Snape, accompanied by his violent assistant Boyle, arrives to question them. Snape - who could not stand Herbert during his service there - apparently forms a grudging respect for Nick when he realises how smart he is for his age. When Nick offers to tell Snape everything the Diamonds know in exchange for what the police know, Snape begins to tell his story. The Falcon that Naples mentioned with his dying breath is the alias of the late Henry von Falkenberg, an English-German international criminal who had been living in La Paz, Bolivia, when the police last heard of him. Snape describes him as a great criminal, being involved in all sorts of crimes all over the world (Snape's various locations include Russia, Canada, Holland and England). The Falcon would only deal in one currency - uncut diamonds. Snape and the police suspect that the Falcon had stashes of uncut diamonds in many cities around the world, including London, which was the base of his operations. When the brothers inquire into how Johnny Naples fits into all of this, Snape tells them that he was a quack doctor living in La Paz, with a run-down practice in the city's backstreets. However, with the Falcon, his luck changed. A month earlier, as he crossed the road to catch a plane to London from El Alto Airport, the Falcon was mown down by a bus, and Johnny Naples was the doctor who rode back to the hospital with him, in the back of an ambulance. Although the Falcon died on his way to hospital, he seems to have passed on a secret to Naples about a large stash of diamonds in London, with an estimated value of £3,500,000. With this knowledge, Naples quit his job in Bolivia soon after the Falcon's death, and caught a flight to England. The police picked him up in passport control at Heathrow, before losing him for a short while, until they found him at the Hotel Splendide in Portobello Road. The police were watching Naples, because of various criminals that, they suspected, would also be interested in the diamonds, and would be tailing him so they could inquire about the diamonds. Snape then begins to write up, on a blackboard, the number of people who might have had an interest in the diamonds: *The Fat Man: The number one criminal in England, the Fat Man had often done deals with the Falcon, according to Snape, and he probably knew where Naples was staying before the police did. Also, if the Fat Man had £3,500,000 he could probably become an international criminal himself, the next Falcon. *Beatrice von Falkenberg: The Falcon's Dutch wife, Beatrice von Falkenberg was once the greatest actress in the Netherlands. The Falcon fell in love with her when he saw her in Othello in the title role. But he never apparently told her where the diamonds were hidden. Therefore, she would probably want to know. *William Gott and Eric Himmell: Gott and Himmell were German, but they were educated at Eton. It is largely implied that they murdered the P.E. instructor, the local vicar, and the deputy headmaster, who was found hung with his own school tie. They were the Falcon's two lieutenants, and arrived in England the day after Naples. *The Professor aka Quentin Quisling: Professor Quentin Quisling (his name is not mentioned until the chapter The Professor) was once the Falcon's technological whiz-kid, inventing various things for the Falcon. However, a year previous to the book, he goes missing. According to Snape, he could be dead. Snape then tells Herbert he is a suspect, mainly because they were found with Naples dying, in his hotel room, just moments after a gunshot rang out - and Herbert was holding the gun that had killed the dwarf. The Chief Inspector then demands why Naples came to the Simples in the first place. Nick tells him that he'd been looking for protection of some sort. In the end, Snape lets them go, but with a caution, saying he doesn't believe them and neither will anybody else. They head over to a fast food restaurant called Grannys, as a publicity stunt only Grannies are hired, where they chew the case over. Herbert suggests sending Nick to Australia or to Auntie Maurie in Slough, who has a semi-detached house, and a semi-detached hip, and often forces Nick to give her round the clock nursing. However Nick says he would feel safer with Herbert, as the Fat Man could kidnap him. They then decide to find out where Johnny went. After finding a matchbox from a nightclub called The Casablanca Club (a nod toward another one of Humphrey Bogart's movies), they decide to pay the club a visit. At home they find the Club is open, but their cleaning lady Betty Charlady says no good will come of it. Quickly, they find that Naples must have been a regular there - a waiter mistakes Nick for him, and offers him a bottle of free champagne, and a singer called Lauren Bacardi (a take-off of film noir star and Bogart's wife Lauren Bacall) asks of Johnny's well-being. However, just moments after the brothers feel they are getting somewhere, Bacardi is snatched by two shady figures in a blue van. Nick manages to step onto the back of the van, but as the van hits 60m/h (96 km/h), he is thrown off and into a wall of cardboard boxes, perhaps he could have held on but he was half drunk. After getting a taxi during the night, Herbert discovers the next day that the Falcon's funeral is being held at Brompton Cemetery, nearby. Most of the suspects that appeared on Snape's chalkboard had arrived to 'grieve' for the Falcon. Nick spots the Falcon's wife, who pretends to mourn for her loss. They encounter the Fat Man, who tells them their time is up. On the way home Nick buys a box of Maltesers as a decoy, At their flat they find the Fat Man's chauffeur Lawrence dead. Snape then arrests them, but Nick is let out the next day, although he tells Herbert not to reveal what Naples gave them. Nick is intrigued by Beatrice's fake mourning and visits her after she calls him. The Falcon's widow, Beatrice von Falkenberg, claims that she deserves the diamonds (she is really poor and has had to sell all her property except her mansion) and threatens Nick with an alligator in order to make him promise to give her the Maltesers. Nick goes back to the hotel, where Naples was staying, in order to investigate, while Snape keeps Herbert for interrogation. In the midst of finding some scientific words scrawled in rough English on some scraps of paper, a grenade is hurled into the room and the hotel is destroyed. Nick escapes, narrowly avoiding an assassination attempt by the hotel's owner Jack Splendide, and discovers from him that it was the Fat Man who threw the grenade into the room, having paid the Owner to call him if Nick came back. Nick leaves the hotel owner hanging over the flyover and leaves the hotel, not knowing what happened to him and not really caring. Back in the flat the following day, Nick is visited by the Professor, one of Snape's suspects, who offers Nick half the Falcon's money if he gives him the Maltesers. Nick gives him the fake packet and follows the Professor halfway down the road, but then is intercepted and kidnapped by Gott and Himmell, the most dangerous criminals in pursuit of the Maltesers. They threaten Nick with death over some tea and ask him for the Maltesers. Nick sends them to Victoria Station where he has said he has left the Maltesers in Locker 180, but in reality he is just buying time, for Gott and Himmell have also kidnapped Lauren Bacardi, Naples' girlfriend. They are both tied up and left in a locked room but Lauren frees herself, revealing she was once an Escapologist's assistant. Nick and Lauren almost escape Gott and Himmell's apartment after Nick climbs through a window and unlocks the door to the room but just as they get out of the room they were locked up in, the assassins return. Nick pushes a Beethoven piano out the upper-story window with Lauren's help onto the assassins' van, injuring them. Nick and Lauren then return to Lauren's apartment where Lauren reveals more about her life with Naples and how he saw the truth in John Lewis in the city. They both go to John Lewis but meet Gott and Himmell, and they try to elude them and Nick ends up in Santa's Grotto, but Himmell shoots Santa and Nick escapes. Nick and Lauren return to the apartment and Nick just realizes he has discovered the truth - the barcode on the Maltesers opens up the Falcon's bank account. Nick arranges a meeting in Brompton Cemetery with the Fat Man, Gott and Himmell. Gott and Himmell arrive, bringing Herbert, whom they have kidnapped. Nick tells them the truth and the Fat Man and Himmell shoot each other. Gott tries to shoot the Simples, but then is shot by the Falcon's widow, Beatrice, whom, it turns out, was the Simples' housekeeper all along. She tries to shoot Nick and Herbert but in doing so the police arrive and arrest her. Nick, Herbert and Snape open the Falcon's bank account in his grave, and inside they find - nothing. It has turned out Lauren has stolen the diamonds because she worked out the truth. But in one last gift she sends Nick and Herbert a Malteser - a Malteser with a diamond inside. Nick realises it must be valuable and decides to do something useful with his Christmas holiday, like going skiing, though Tim breaks his leg before they get on the plane. |
Whale Talk | Chris Crutcher | null | The story takes place in Cutter High School, which prides itself heavily on the physical achievements of its students, and thrives on the winnings of the football and basketball teams. Many teachers there display favoritism toward star athletes, such as Mike Barbour, and turn a blind eye to the bullying that occurs, such as Barbour tormenting Chris Coughlin. Mr. Simet, a teacher, wants to start a swim team to avoid having to be an assistant coach for Wrestling. He encourages T.J., who formerly swam and was very talented, to join and recruit others. T.J. gets together six others to form a seven-man team: the mentally challenged Chris Coughlin; the obnoxious and extremely intelligent Dan Hole; the kind and talented bodybuilder/musician Tay-Roy Kibble; the rude and antagonistic Andy Mott; the quiet and generic Jackie Craig; and the obese Simon DeLong. All of them have predicaments, which they slowly reveal to each other as they grow to become friends. During the year, T.J. meets a little half-black girl named Heidi. Her step-dad is the drunkard Rich Marshall, who frequently abuses her and her mother, Alicia. T.J. helps his therapist, Georgia Brown, with Heidi, and they form a close bond. |
Four Blind Mice | James Patterson | 2,002 | The novel features Washington D.C. Metro Police homicide detectives Alex Cross and John Sampson as protagonists. While investigating the wrongful conviction and execution of US Army Sergeant Ellis Cooper. Their investigation uncovers a series of Army personnel wrongfully convicted and executed for murdering countless civilians. In each instance, the murderer's modus operandi involved painting the corpse blue. In the course of the investigation, Cross and Sampson discover that three Army Rangers had committed similar crimes during the Vietnam war. The three Rangers, nicknamed "The Three Blind Mice," had performed a series of unauthorized killings of unarmed villagers and subsequently painted the bodies red, white, and blue. Cross and Sampson track down the killers, but all three are killed in the resulting gunfight. Cross determines that the mastermind behind the murders is General Mark Hutchinson, Commandant of West Point. Hutchinson had been ordering The Three Blind Mice to frame Army personnel who had committed atrocities while serving in Vietnam. Another victim, Colonel Handler, had discovered the plot and was killed so as to not jeopardize Hutchinson's candidacy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hutchinson captures Cross, but before he can murder him, Hutchinson is killed by members of a Vietnamese street gang in retaliation for his sanctioning of and involvement in Vietnam War atrocities. |
The Voter Decides | null | null | The Voter Decides developed three theories as to how a person acquires Party ID. 1) Party attachment, like church preference, may be passed down from parent to child. 2) It may be the case that people remain in the same class, ethnic and religious groups as their parents and are subject to the same group influences as their parents. 3) People may tend to consciously or otherwise make the memory of their parent's partisanship conform to their own attachments In short, once a Party ID is acquired from a person's parents (through unknowing absorption from a very young age) the person spends the rest of his or her life adopting views and positions that create a reason for their party affiliation. |
The Second Invasion from Mars | Boris Strugatsky | null | The story occurs in an unknown city and country, but almost certainly on Earth. All characters and few places mentioned have characteristically Greek names, but there is nothing specific to Greek culture in the plot; rather, use of neither Russian nor English names may have been an attempt to put the novel outside of the ideological war, which was extremely active at the time. The main character, Apollon, is a retired school teacher living with his daughter (from a now-deceased wife) and housekeeper. He has presumably retired only very recently, as he is no longer working, but is not receiving pension yet. The subject of his pension is by far his most important worry during the entire two weeks described. His pension is about to be awarded, pending decision from the Minister about pension degree, and correspondingly, amount. The difference between first and third degree translate to him as the difference between not being able to afford anything that is not strictly needed, and being able to pursue his hobby (and the only other significant interest), stamp collecting. At the same time, very strange things happen in the nearby city, and then in his town. Initially the unusual sounds and imagery generated considerable panic and even higher interest among the public, but gradually it becomes widely accepted, even if not understood, that the country (and, perhaps, entire planet) is being "invaded" by the Martians. It is at this point that the reader is exposed to perhaps the most shocking, yet highly natural, reaction of the majority of the population. Rather than being extremely curious as to the exact information about an event that is happening for the first time in the entire history, most of the people, including Apollon who is portraying the views of the majority very well, seem only to be concerned about what this change means for them, in very practical terms. The main hero, for example, is worried about what this uncertainty will mean to his pension, and whether new stamps will be printed by the supposed new Martian government. As the events unfold, it becomes clear that the invaders, whether they are Martians or not, value gastric juice for a completely unknown reason, and are willing to pay the considerable amount to any human that volunteers to donate it. This discovery gradually changes the overall mood in the town from cautious to very optimistic, and the citizens rejoice about the upcoming addition to their income. Again, no one cares as to why the Martians need such fluid, or even whether the reported invaders are Martians or extraterrestrials at all. The extra money, which is immediately used by many in a nearby bar, is alone more than sufficient to win the support of the majority of population. The farmers are overjoyed as well. One of the first actions of the supposed new government was to buy (at a higher than normal price) all current harvest, whether fully grown or not, and to provide the farmers with a new variety of grain, which gives rise to blue bread. The new grain grows very fast, and the resulting bread, although possessing an unusual color, appears tasty and provides (as almost immediately becomes known) a very good source of moonshine. The government even provides the farmers with an advance towards the future purchase of the bread, thus completely turning them loyal. |
A Charmed Life | Mary McCarthy | 1,955 | The story begins with the simple trials and tribulations of everyday life experienced by John and Martha Sinnott. Their background stories are gradually introduced, especially during their picnic with the Coes in the beginning. One night when John is away, Martha and Miles drunkenly have sex at Martha's house after a party at the Coes. Martha becomes pregnant soon after, and rather than having a baby whose paternity is ambiguous, she decides to have an abortion. Warren lends Martha the money to have an abortion. The story ends with Martha dying in a car accident on her way home from the clinic. |
East Is East | T. Coraghessan Boyle | 1,990 | The book tells three basic stories, which take place between November of 1907 and late May of 1908. The first story is about Will and Eleanor Lightbody. Eleanor, a fan of Dr. Kellogg, drags Will to Kellogg's sanitorium. Hoping to improve his marriage, Will goes along but is constantly filled with doubts about Kellogg's health methods. The second story is about Charlie Ossining, a man who gets into a cereal business scheme with a man named Bender. The third story is about Dr. Kellogg himself; how he runs the sanatorium and of his growing irritation with his adopted son, George. --> <!-- |
Mission to Moulokin | Alan Dean Foster | 1,979 | The novel follows the continuing adventures of Skua September, Ethan Fortune and Milliken Williams on Tran-Ky-Ky as they try to help the native race, the Tran, win admission to the Commonwealth. During their struggle they deal with corrupt Commonwealth officials and an insane Tran leader, find the fabled city of Moulokin and learn of the history of the Tran. |
The First Team | null | null | The book begins with a Soviet governor already securely ensconced in the White House, and a young Air Force officer who tried to resist the occupiers being summarily executed on the White House lawn - without explaining exactly how things got to that dire pass. The reader is, however, made to understand that the Soviet takeover was made possible because of widespread cultural malaise. Undermined by Hippies and anti-war protesters, corrupt military-industrial complex producers who created faulty military hardware, weak-willed US Senators, and the super-power that was the USSR's propaganda machine (not to mention the Vietnam War's hangover), the USA was unable to defend against Soviet power. The country finds itself under an iron-willed Soviet bureaucrat, backed up by a vicious Soviet Colonel. The Soviets embark on blatantly anti-Semitic policies, making no effort to reconcile them with Marxist ideology, and drive hundreds of thousands of American Jews into Israel, where they are housed in makeshift tent camps. Small-time criminals soon turn into paid informers for the new regime. An unpaid collaborator is a hitherto popular singer, who openly welcomes the occupiers and tells his audience that "things could have been far worse" - whereupon attendance at his performances plummets. Rather than making use of him, the Soviets just ignore him and finally he is killed "by mistake" by a Soviet army unit that misunderstood his wish to welcome them on American soil. Another character at whose misfortune the reader is invited to smile is an imprisoned radical Black leader, who expects to be set free by the Soviet invaders, only to find that they have no intention to loose such a trouble-maker as himself, and that in fact the new warden (a Russian woman) is far tougher than her American predecessor. American students try to voice their protest but find the Soviet occupiers' response far more brutal than anything they encountered in the years of the anti-war movement. And a trade union official in an (unnamed) East Coast port, who tries to obstruct the occupiers, is summarily shot. However, hope is not lost. The main protagonist - US White House interpreter Raleigh Hewitt, kept at his post by the invaders - comes to be recruited into a secret underground resistance organization, "The First Team" of the title. It turns out that the fall of the United States wasn't altogether unforeseen, and that a very resourceful band of patriots was already in place, with considerable material resources - such as a well-equipped secret control centre - prepared for them carefully in advance. There are months of careful preparatory work, secret manoeuvrings and counter-manoeuvrings, using especially the classic spying device of a small private brothel sited in a Washington. D.C. suburb - before the brave conspirators are ready to strike. This work includes the political conversion of a formerly liberal Senator, whose son had been a patriot, killed by the Soviets during a planning session. Key to ending the Soviet occupation is the USS Ramon Magsaysay, a fully armed and fueled nuclear ballistic missile submarine at a Navy yard in the San Francisco Bay. The Magsaysay is critical because all other US Navy subs had obeyed orders to put into foreign ports and be taken over by the Soviets, while the Magsaysay is readily accessible. The patriots put a team aboard during a false "reactor emergency" (a subplot later used in Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October) and manage to steal the sub -- without provisions aboard. The last part of the book involves the pressure of both sides not knowing whether the sub and its possibly starving skeleton crew has successfully escaped Soviet forces and reached a place where the missiles could be fired. |
Erasing Sherlock | Kelly Hale | 2,006 | "Seeking maid-of-all-work. Master of Arts required. Opportunities for research in the field. Must be able to relocate in time." A doctoral candidate, in the guise of a housemaid working at 221B Baker Street, believes she is there to observe the 25-year-old Sherlock Holmes, and document his methods at the beginning of his career. She soon learns she is operating under a serious misapprehension. |
The Alien Sea | Lucien Soulban | null | The book begins with a prologue about how Apoletta met Zebulah, her previous husband. Zebulah, a red-robed human mage, was exploring the sunken ruins of Istar, while Apoletta was the Steward of Istar at that time, guarding it from humans. While she secretly watches him, it is mentioned that she was taken by his respectfulness, curiosity, and honesty towards the ruins. After conversing with him to discover his intent, she also becomes impressed by his truthfulness as a "would-be invader". Returning to the present, Chapter One begins with Apoletta finding herself hosting a Conclave concerning the World Gash, a quickly spreading volcanic field, with representatives from many different species, including shoal elves (Dimernesti), merfolk, ocean striders, sea giants, and brathnoc. However, she is annoyed at the petty bickering going on over fishing grounds, even including the Dimernesti, who were supposed to help host the Conclave but hadn't even selected a representative. Apoletta attempts to quench her anger by seeking advice from Slyphanous, an old Dargonesti elf. During their conversation, Apoletta reveals the depth of the rift between the Dargonesti and Dimernesti, of which the Dimernesti do not trust the Dargonesti anymore. Returning to the task at hand, she attempts to wait for everyone's attention, but finds out that the bickering has taken precedence over civility and decorum. Forced to resort to magical means, she casts a spell, causing a large sphere of water to vanish from the area, causing the heavy ocean to rush in and fill the void, resulting in a large crack, nudging the delegates and even swaying a large circular slab of coral suspended from the ceiling. Apparently gaining the Conclave's attention, she attempts to continue, however the merfolk chime in, exclaiming that they haven't finished "negotiating" with the ocean striders over access to fishing grounds. Redirecting the delegates back to the issue at hand, she again attempts to continue, but this time is interrupted by a male Dimernesti, who sneeringly proclaims "Your so-called World Gash, is it again?" Her temper rising, she attempts to refute him, however is told "You're wasting my time." The delegates return to their own issues, with the merfolk arguing over hunting domains, the oceans striders concerned about the influx of undead, and the Dimernesti harboring grievances against Dargonesti. |
Survivor | Octavia E. Butler | null | Although set within the broader plot of the Patternist series, the entire plot of Survivor is largely separated from the events of the other books in the series. Butler begins the novel in medias res, during the "rescue" of the main character, Alanna, from the "Tehkohn," a group of extraterrestrials. Although the main narrative follows Alanna's perspective after the rescue, Butler also inserts a series of flashbacks, some of them from the perspective of other characters. Through this literary device, the readers learn about Alanna's past gradually, even as they follow the efforts of the other characters to discover that past as well. Eventually, the narrative reveals Alanna's background. The novel is set in the indeterminate future, sometime after the events that Butler would later describe in her novel Clay's Ark and before the events of Patternmaster. At the time of Survivor, humanity is threatened by the "Clayark plague," an extraterrestrial disease that has destroyed half of the Earth's population, either by killing them or by mutating them and their children into the bestial "Clayarks." Humanity survives in an embattled state, supported somewhat by the "Patternists," a group of mutant humans previously living in secret. (The development of the Patternists is described in more detail in Wild Seed and Mind of My Mind, and a later stage of their conflict against the Clayarks is described in Patternmaster.) Prior to the main events of the novel, Alanna's parents died saving her from a Clayark attack. After several years living as a feral child, Alanna was captured by a group of Missionaries, a Christian religious sect dedicated to maintaining humanity as God's chosen form in the face of Clayark and Patternist competition. Although some of the Missionaries distrusted Alanna, either because of her wild upbringing or because of her African American and Asian ancestry, she adapted quickly, and became the foster daughter of the group's leader, Jules Verrick, and his wife Niela. Some time later, the Missionaries receive an opportunity to flee Earth on a Patternist starship as part of a program to seed humanity on other planets in order to preserve the species from the Clayark plague. After arrival on the planet, the Missionaries encountered the Kohn, intelligent inhabitants of the planet. Although the Kohn had fur, camouflage abilities, and claws, they were broadly humanoid, and the local tribe—the Garkohn—assisted the Missionaries in developing their settlement. Shortly thereafter, the settlement was raided by the Tehkohn, a rival group of Kohn, and several Garkohn and Missionaries were captured, including Alanna. Eventually, the story reveals that just as Alanna once altered her behavior to fit in among the Missionaries and "survive," she also was successful in joining the Tehkohn, ultimately marrying their leader, Diut, and bearing a child. Through her experiences with the Tehkohn, Alanna has learned that the Garkohn have addicted the Missionaries to a plant under their control and intend to assimilate the physically weaker Missionaries and use their technology against the Tehkohn. Aware that she will lose the humans' trust if they realize she is in a relationship with a native, Alanna plays a dangerous game, but is ultimately largely successful, leading the Missionaries to trust (reluctantly) the Tehkohn long enough to escape the influence of both native nations with the Tehkohn's help. At that point, Alanna reveals her relationship to the other humans, is disowned by her father, and returns to live with the Tehkohn. |
Snap! | null | 1,997 | When Patrick is given a Polaroid camera for his birthday, it leads to a bizarre adventure involving bullies, bras and bank robbers. |
No Place for Grubbs! | null | 1,998 | Coming Soon... |
Frog City and the Racing Frogs | null | 2,004 | Frog City and the Racing Frogs centres on Todd Tinpot, a frog who needs to win Superfrog in order to avoid being evicted from his home. However he has never trained or raced before. He gets some help from Boris at the gym but can never seem to do well in races. Sly's henchmen almost kill him in one of the races and, as this resulted in Todd missing three races, Todd got a free entry into Superfrog. Todd knew it would be hard to win so, together with Gecko, he times each route to find out which is best. Todd and Gecko are right and, on the day of the race, Todd takes the route they planned, wins the race and stays in his home |
Mary: A Fiction | Mary Wollstonecraft | null | Mary begins with a description of the conventional and loveless marriage between the heroine's mother and father. Eliza, Mary's mother, is obsessed with novels, rarely considers anyone but herself, and favours Mary's brother. She neglects her daughter, who educates herself using only books and the natural world. Ignored by her family, Mary devotes much of her time to charity. When her brother suddenly dies, leaving Mary heir to the family's fortune, her mother finally takes an interest in her; she is taught "accomplishments", such as dancing, that will attract suitors. However, Mary's mother soon sickens and requests on her deathbed that Mary wed Charles, a wealthy man she has never met. Stunned and unable to refuse, Mary agrees. Immediately after the ceremony, Charles departs for the Continent. To escape a family who does not share her values, Mary befriends Ann, a local girl who educates her still further. Mary becomes quite attached to Ann who is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Mary's feelings. Ann's family falls into poverty and is on the brink of losing their home, but Mary is able to pay off their debts after her marriage to Charles gives her limited control over her money. Ann becomes consumptive and Mary travels with her to Lisbon in hopes of nursing her back to health. There they are introduced to Henry, who is also trying to regain his health. Ann dies and Mary is grief-stricken. Henry and Mary subsequently fall in love but are forced to return to England separately. Mary, depressed by her marriage to Charles and bereft of both Ann and Henry, remains unsettled, until she hears that Henry's consumption has worsened. She rushes to his side and cares for him until he dies. At the end of the novel, Charles returns from Europe; he and Mary establish something of a life together, but Mary is unhealthy and can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband; the last few lines of the novel imply that she will die young. |
The Mockery Bird | null | null | The story takes place on a (fictitious) tropical island called Zenkali. The island seems to be populated by the most eccentric people who came there from all around the world, along with the two indigenous tribes, the Fangoua and the Ginka. The Ginkas used to worship a dolphin god, while the Fangouas worshipped a strange avian, the Mockery Bird, which was hunted to extinction by the former French colonizers. Zenkali is ruled by King Tamalawala III, usually referred to as "Kingy" by his people. Peter Foxglove arrives to Zenkali to be the assistant of Hannibal Oliphant, Kingy's Political Advisor. Zenkali, once a British colony, is about to get self-government. They are also planning to construct a military base, an airport and a power station, and this will mean the flooding of a large, unexplored valley, owned by the villainous businessman, Looja. Peter, along with the beautiful Audrey Damien, visits the valley before it is totally destroyed, and makes a fantastic discovery: a small population of Mockery Birds still live in the valley! Peter's discovery attracts the attention of the world press, environmentalists, politicians and businessmen from all around the world, and this leads to a couple of adventures. Finally, Professor Droom, a biologist, discovers that the main and only agricultural product of Zenkali, the Amela tree is ecologically linked to the Mockery Birds (explained below), so the flooding of the valley will make the island's economy collapse. Consequently, the construction of the airport is cancelled. |
A Touch of Frost | R. D. Wingfield | 1,987 | The murder of a local drug addict, the hunt for a serial rapist, a hit-and-run involving the spoiled son of an MP, and a robbery at a strip joint all have something in common. Detective Inspector Jack Frost has been assigned with the thankless task of investigating them. Fighting the stress and ignoring his mounting pile of paperwork, Frost soon finds himself up against the various manifestations of criminality... |
I Will Repay | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,906 | The story starts before the French revolution. It's 1783 and wealthy Paul Déroulède has offended the young Vicomte de Marny by speaking disrepctfully of his latest infatuation, Adèle de Monterchéri. Déroulède had not intended to get into the quarrel but has a tendency to blunder into things -- "no doubt a part of the inheritance bequeathed to him by his bourgeois ancestry." Incensed at the slur on Adèle, whom he sees as a paragon of virtue, the Vicomte challenges Déroulède to a duel, a fight which Déroulède does not want—for he knows and respects the boy's father, the Duc de Marny. Swords drawn, the fight ensues in the centre of the salon but despite his noble lineage, the Vicomte de Marny is no match for Déroulède's swordplay, especially when addled with wine and rage. Déroulède disarms his opponent and having won the duel, draws back but the boy refuses to back down without complete satisfaction and demands that Déroulède get down on his knees and apologize. Finally losing his temper with the young Vicomte, Déroulède raises his sword to disarm his protagonist once more, however de Marny lunges wildly at his opponent's breast and manges to literally throw himself on Déroulède's weapon. The boy is dead and Déroulède can do nothing but leave the establishment. On hearing of the death of his only son, the Duc de Marny (by now a cripple and almost a dotard) is distraught. The Duc summons his fourteen-year-old daughter, Juliette, to his side and forces her to swear an oath to ruin Déroulede in revenge for her brother's death, telling her that her brother's soul will remain in torment until the final judgement day should she break her promise. The story picks up ten years later, and Citizen Déroulède, though no longer rich, is a lawyer popular with the people and is allowed to go his own way, for Marat has said of him "I'll n'est pas dangereux". He leads a quiet life, living alone with his mother and his orphaned cousin Anne Mie in the Rue Ecole de Médecine. At 6 pm on 19 August 1793, Juliette Marny walks into the Rue Ecole de Médecine and stopping just outside the house belonging to Citizen-Deputy Déroulède, suddenly starts to draw attention to herself, invoking the anger of the crowd through her proud aristocratic manner. She hammers on Déroulède's door as the crowd shout and lash out at her, but just before they can drag her away, the door opens and she is pulled inside. Having tricked her way into Déroulede's home Juliette is invited to stay for her own safety. She agrees and eventually reveals her identity, but even after hearing Déroulede's side of the story, she fails to realise that he only wishes to make amends for the death of her brother and continues to plot revenge on her host. Unaware of her intentions, Déroulede tells Juliette that he has accepted the post of Governor of the Conciergerie prison where the Queen is imprisoned. Later he is visited at home by Sir Percy Blakeney and Juliette overhears Sir Percy warning his friend off a scheme to free Marie Antoinette, for it is doomed to failure. He advises Déroulede to burn a bundle of papers relating to the plot, which if found would result in him being arrested for treason and sentenced to death. Juliette sees her chance and posts a letter denouncing her host, but realises too late that she has failed to take account of the fact that not only has Paul Déroulede fallen madly in love with her, she has also come to love the man she has vowed to destroy. When soldiers arrive to search Déroulede's home, Juliette hides the letter box, then escapes to her room where she attempts to burn it. She places the burnt remains among her belongings, and when the soldiers discover them, they arrest her. Because the search turned up nothing suspicious against Déroulede he is allowed to remain free. During her trial, Juliette keeps to the story that the burnt letterbox contained love letters. However, Déroulede defends his love and admits that the letters are his own and that he has committed treason. Both of them are sentenced to death. The Scarlet Pimpernel and his comrades manage to rescue the condemned couple on their journey from the courthouse to the prison. |
Sir Percy Leads the Band | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,936 | The book starts with a description of the events of January 1793, with the arrest, trial and execution of Louis XVI, King of France (now just known as Louis Capet). The Baron de Batz (a real life figure who also features in the Pimpernel novels Eldorado and The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel) has hatched another impossible plan to rescue the King on his way to the guillotine. De Batz is trying to persuade a Professor (who is actually the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise) to take him to the Abbé Edgeworth, an Irish priest who remains loyal to the King. He plans to substitute the Priest for the one chosen by the convention to accompany the King to the guillotine and thus spare His Majesty the distress of being with an apostate priest when he will need all of his courage. Disguised as the Professor, Sir Percy refuses to take part in the scheme as he knows that the 500 royalists that De Batz claims to have ready to rush the carriage on the way to the Place de la Revolution and drag the King out, will never get past the 80,000 armed men that will be guarding the route. Monsieur le Professor tells the Baron that he will not drag the Abbé Edgeworth into a scheme which will only lead to his death. It soon become apparent that although the Baron's scheme is doomed to failure he has managed to involve the Abbé Edgeworth anyway. In the chaos after the inevitable royal execution, the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel manage to rescue the priest before he can be arrested and condemned to death. Sir Percy, once more disguised as the Professor takes the priest to the Levet's house. M. Levet's daughter Blanche, is popular with the local young men, but she only has eyes for Doctor Simon Pradel, who has been tending to her ill mother. Blanche in turn is being pursued by Louis Maurin, a young lawyer who is pro the revolution. He is incensed with jealousy over Blanche and is determined to gain her affections by impressing her with his connections. Maurin plots to get the Levet family arrested on a false charge and then take the credit for getting them freed. With this end in mind he reports to the local commission that a stranger, who may be the missing Priest, is staying at the Levet's house and tries to get the professor to back up his story. The Levets are indeed arrested although a thorough search of their house turns up nothing expect the body of Madam Levet who has died following the news of the King's execution. The priest meanwhile has been taken to relative safety in the château de la Rodière where the young Marquis, his mother and sister Cécile are still living with their two loyal servants, even though it has long since been looted by the mob. The Abbé Edgeworth falls ill and Doctor Pradel is called to the château. Although he should report the priest to the police, the doctor is in love with Cécile and so promises to keep the secret. After a difficult night looking after the priest he meets Cécile in the gardens as he is leaving but her brother, the Marquis, sees them talking and infuriated by the doctor's obvious affection towards his sister, beats him about the head with a riding crop. One of the league, Lord St John de Devinne is nearby but does nothing to help the doctor, for he is also in love with Cécile de la Rodière and wants nothing more than to be rid of the Doctor. The news of the attack on the Pradel, who is popular in town, soon gets around and with both Lord St John de Devinne and Louis Maurin out to get him, the plotting starts in earnest. The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel disguise themselves as a group of shabby second-rate musicians, so they can keep track of what is going on. However, Devinne is eaten up by jealously and can no longer be trusted to do what Percy asks of him. To make matters worse Citizen Chauvelin is soon hot on their heels having realised that the plight of the Marquis de la Rodière and his family, is just the sort of situation to attract the attention of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Can the Pimpernel save the innocent Rodière family? What will happen to Doctor Pradel Will the treachery of Lord St John de Devinne be the final undoing of the Pimpernel? Will Chauvelin have his revenge at last? de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
Between the Acts | Virginia Woolf | 1,941 | The novel takes place in a country house somewhere in England, just before the Second World War. It is the day when the annual pageant is to be performed in the grounds of the house. The pageant is traditionally a celebration of English history, and is attended by the entire local community. The owner of the house is a widower Bartholemew Oliver a retired Indian Army officer. His sister Lucy, who is also living in the house is slightly eccentric but harmless. Oliver has a son, Giles, who has a job in the city and is restless and frustrated. His wife, Isa, is staying at the house with her two children and has lost interest in Giles. She is attracted to a local gentleman farmer, Haines, although the relationship goes no further than eye contact. In the course of the day, Mrs Manresa and her friend William Dodge turn up and stay for the pageant. The pageant has been written by Miss La Trobe, a strange and domineering spinster. The day is interspersed with events leading up to the pageant. Lucy Swithin fusses around making all kinds of preparations, from the decorations to the food. Oliver frightens his grandson by jumping out at him from behind a newspaper and then calls him a coward when he cries. Mrs Manresa flirts with Oliver and Giles and is clearly being provocative, and William Dodge is dismissed as obviously gay. The pageant takes place in the evening and is made up of three main parts. After a prologue by a child, the first scene is a Shakespearean scene with romantic dialogue. The second scene is a parody of a restoration comedy, and the third scene is a panorama of Victorian triumph based on a policeman directing the traffic in Hyde Park. The final scene is entitled "Ourselves", at which point Miss La Trobe shocks the audience by turning mirrors on them. The book ends quietly with life returning to normal. |
A Modern Instance | William Dean Howells | 1,882 | The novel explores the deterioration of what could have been an otherwise healthy marriage through industrial enterprise and capitalistic greed. The story chronicles the rise and fall of the romance between Bartley Hubbard and Marcia Gaylord, who migrate from Equity, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts following their marriage. The reader believes at the beginning of the story that their love for each other is unbreakable, but as the plot advances, more and more troubles arise, alienating the couple. Soon their entire marriage collapses, inundated with problems from a wide array of areas. Marcia Hubbard, lost and desolate in the gloom of her husband's abandonment, is offered solace in the comforting touch of her friend Ben Halleck, who secretly is attracted to her. However, he worries that she may reject him, unable to move on from her previous partner. The story concludes in a meaningless vortex of isolation representing modern society. Marcia Hubbard, still attached to Bartley, confines herself to her father's home in Equity, Maine, from which she never leaves. Bartley, on the other hand, has died. Ben Halleck stands hesitantly, unable to determine whether or not he should seize the chance and propose to her. |
Lord Tony's Wife | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,917 | The year is 1789 and Pierre Adet, a young French peasant, is incensed at the unfair treatment of the local peasantry, who are no more better off than slaves to the local aristo. His brother-in-law is about to be hanged for poaching two pigeons from the woods belonging to the Duc de Kernogan in Nantes and this proves the final straw. After months of planning Pierre leads a mob against the Duc against the advice of his father. Before the mob have had the chance to storm the Chateau, they come across the Duc's daughter Yvonne returning home and attack her carriage. In the ensuing scuffle, Adet assaults Yvonne 'And just to punish you, my fine lady,' he said in a whisper which sent a shudder of horror right through her, 'to punish you for what you are, the brood of tyrants, proud, disdainful, a budding tyrant yourself, to punish you for every misery my mother and sister have had to endure, for every luxury which you have enjoyed, I will kiss you on the lips and the cheeks and just between your white throat and chin and never as long as you live if you die this night or live to be an hundred will you be able to wash off those kisses showered upon you by one who hates and loathes you --a miserable peasant whom you despise and who in your sight is lower far than your dogs. Shortly afterwards the Duc's private army arrive and dispatch the mob. Adet is seriously injured and seeks refuge from a local priest before fleeing Nantes and the death sentence which has been passed on him. Determined that someone must pay for the incident, the Duc de Kernogan ensures that Pierre's father is hanged for his son's crime. By the time Pierre finds out it is too late and he is driven to seek revenge against the Duc and his daughter. It's now 1793 and Adet is living in England under the alias of Martin-Roget. He has spent the intervening years educating himself and with the aid of an introductory letter, obtained by blackmailing the Bishop of Brest, has ingratiated himself into English society—to the extent that he has gained the favour of the Duc de Kernogan (who is now living near Bath) and is Yvonne's favoured suitor. Needless to say, both Yvonne and her father are ignorant of Martin-Roget's true identity and are unaware that he is seeking revenge. With the help of Chauvelin, he plans to marry Yvonne and lure her and the Duc back to Nantes and to their death as ci-devants on the guillotine. Adet's plans suffer a setback when he discovers that, warned by Sir Percy that she is at risk from Martin-Roget, Yvonne has eloped with Lord Antony Dewhurst. The Duc, believing that Martin-Roget is a millionaire banker whose marriage to Yvonne would have resulted in substantial funds being given to the French royalist cause, is furious that his plans have been thwarted and refuses to recognise the marriage, which would not be legal in France due to Yvonne's age. Martin-Roget convinces the Duc that he still wishes to marry Yvonne and soon persuade him to lure Yvonne away from Lord Tony. He then kidnaps her and the three set off for France. Lord Tony must seek the help of The Scarlet Pimpernel to save his wife. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
The Elusive Pimpernel | Baroness Emma Orczy | 1,908 | It is September 1793 and French Agent and chief spy-catcher Chauvelin is determined to get his revenge for the previous humiliations dished out to him at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Chauvelin travels to England as an official representative of the French government tasked with looking after the interests of French citizens, but this is only a cover and his real purpose is to trick Sir Percy Blakeney into returning to France, where he can be captured and put to the guillotine. The plot is hatched at a gala on Richmond Green, with the help of a young French actress, Désirée Candielle, whom Chauvelin has enlisted with promises of money, pardon and fame if she succeeds. Désirée is manning a tent with a model guillotine under the premise of raising money for the poor of Paris. Marguerite Blakeney enters her stall and starts talking to Désirée. On discovering her to be a fellow French actress, she is soon taken in by the young woman's sob story and before long had invited her to perform at her house in Richmond in front of the Prince of Wales. Once the offer has been made and accepted, Désirée's official chaperone is revealed as Chauvelin. Marguerite realises she's been set up, but the offer has been made and Sir Percy insists that both of them should come to his house as arranged. Juliette de Marny (whose rescue by the Scarlet Pimpernel is told in the novel I Will Repay), is staying with them at Blakeney Manor. Chauvelin has managed to get his hands on her family jewels (which were being looked after by the local priest) and has given a diamond necklace, which belonged to Juliette's mother, to Désirée Candielle. When Désirée turns up at the Blakeney's Richmond mansion wearing the jewels there is a bitter argument between the women. Désirée manages to engineer the situation so that Sir Percy must fight Chauvelin in a duel to avenge the insults levied against her—for which they must go to France, as duelling is outlawed in England. The following morning Percy leaves Marguerite behind in Richmond and heads for Boulogne. Chauvelin has no intentions of actually fighting the Englishman, but to ensure the Pimpernel cannot escape before he can be captured, Chauvelin sets a further trap for Marguerite who falls for it completely. Before long she has been arrested for attempting to enter France on a false passport, given to her by an apparently apologetic Désirée Candielle, as part of Chauvelin's plot. With Marguerite in prison and the citizens of Boulogne threatened with death if she escapes, Chauvelin appears to have an air-tight plan to secure and discredit Sir Percy that will end the meddling of the Scarlet Pimpernel for good... but as always Percy is more than a match for his arch-enemy. de:The Scarlet Pimpernel fr:Le Mouron rouge |
Ann Vickers | Sinclair Lewis | 1,933 | A Bildungsroman, the novel follows the heroine, Ann Vickers, from tomboy school girl in the late 19th Century American Midwest, through college, and into her forties. It charts her post-graduate suffragist phase in the early 20th century. As a suffragist, she is imprisoned, and her experiences there lead her to become interested in social work and prison reform. As a social worker in a settlement house in the First World War she has her first sexual love affair, becomes pregnant and has an abortion. Later, having become successful running a modern and progressive prison for women, she marries a dull man, more out of loneliness than love. Mired in a rather loveless marriage, she falls in love with a controversial (and perhaps corrupt) judge. Flouting both usual middleclass convention as well as that of her progressive social circle in New York, she becomes pregnant by the judge, and has a son. |
First Love: A Gothic Tale | Joyce Carol Oates | 1,996 | 11-year-old Josie arrives in upstate New York to live with her great-aunt after her mother abandons her father for no apparent reason. There, she meets her 25-year-old cousin, Jared, who is studying to be a minister. Her stay is very unpleasant; she is physically and psychologically abused by both her mother and great-aunt. She is also bullied without mercy at her new school. Her mother turns her away for love and comfort. Feeling abandoned and unloved, she turns to Jared for the affection she longs for. However, Jared's intents are anything but to love and care for her. He uses false affection to get her to self-mutilate herself, drink her own blood, look at pornographic material, and endure verbal abuse from him. He soon begins sexually abusing her, which Josie mistakes to be him expressing true love to her, although she knows that what they are doing is wrong. Josie eventually discovers that her mother is incapable of love because she was always felt unimpressed by Josie's father and several other men. After staying there for an extended period of time, Josie starts to have a psychological breakdown within herself, probably from her taboo relationship with Jared. At one point in the novellette, she and Jared, after initiating sexual intercourse by a creek, sit together. Then, Jared cuts his chest with a stone, and Josie licks the blood off before he dies from blood loss. This is the climax of the novella. After, she leaves the mansion, breaking free of Jared's prison. |
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