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No Dominion | Charlie Huston | 2,006 | No Dominion Is the second book in the Joe Pitt Casebooks series written by Charlie Huston. Vampyre Joe Pitt is down on his luck, behind on rent and low on blood. With nowhere else to turn he finds himself asking his former boss Terry Bird head of the vampyre clan the Society. Bird tosses Joe a job, tracking down the source of a new drug on the streets, a drug powerful enough to cause those infected with the Vampyre Vyrus to freak out. For this one Joe has to cross Coalition turf and head down to Harlem, home of the vampyre clan known as the Hood. |
Sector 7 | David Wiesner | 1,999 | The story is set at the observatory of the Empire State Building where a class of school children are on a field trip. The primary character is a boy befriended by a cloud and whisked away to Sector 7, the depot for clouds. There the boy proceeds to produce new blueprints of fantastic shapes for the disgruntled group of young clouds. As the young clouds experiment, they delight in their new forms as ocean creatures. The adults running the cloud depot are furious when they discover of the young clouds' misbehavior, so escort the boy back to the observatory with his cloud friend. Once the drawings are examined further by the adults they begin to admire the possibilities. As the children return on the school bus, the New York skyline is filled with a profusion of clouds in the shapes of aquarium fish and ocean creatures. |
The Mysterious Benedict Society | Trenton Lee Stewart | 2,007 | After seeing a newspaper advertisement addressed to children with special abilities, the eleven-year-old orphan Reynie Muldoon goes to a building where he and many other children take a written test with many strange questions relating to logic and bravery. Before that, in front of the building, he helps a queer girl named Rhonda Kazembe, who then offers to give him the test answers. He refuses twice. Only four gifted children pass the tests: George "Sticky" Washington, a boy with a photographic memory who ran away from his family because he believed they only wanted him so he could keep winning awards for fame and wealth; Kate Wetherall, a strong and agile girl with strong physical abilities and an abandoning father; Constance Contraire, a very stubborn small girl; and Reynie. On the third test, they meet and discover that Rhonda was a grown up and not a child. After much introducing, all of them are surprised that all of them had met Rhonda Kazembe and find out that her offer to help them to cheat was part of the test. They are introduced to Mr. Benedict, a genius and the man behind the tests. Mr. Benedict answers their questions and explains to them why he had advertised the tests. The children discover that Mr. Benedict needs a team of children to act as 'spies' for him in a well-known school named Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened (L.I.V.E.). Inside the Institute the children see a multitude of people besides students: the Helpers, who refuse to answer questions about themselves and always seem depressed; the Messengers, talented students with 'special privileges', which Mr. Benedict believes includes sending telepathic messages to brainwash the world's people;the Recruiters, who kidnap and recruit seemingly gifted children for the Institute; the Executives, who are especially talented Messengers who were promoted as assistants of Mr. Curtain; and the Institute's founder, Ledroptha Curtain, who turns out to be Mr. Benedict's twin brother, and a victim of narcolepsy. At the Institute, the lessons are repetitive, seeming to echo the messages that Mr. Benedict and his assistants pick up through a special receiver (the above mentioned telepathic messages). Communicating with Mr. Benedict via Morse Code with a flashlight or sometimes a light switch, the children slowly uncover Curtain's plan: to control the world and imprison his enemies with The Whisperer, the brain-sweeping machine invented by Curtain, was supposed to be turned on full blast by Curtain in order to start his plan. However, it was not fully ready at that point. The children manage to stall Mr. Curtain's plan and use his narcolepsy to knock him out, allowing Mr. Benedict to shut down the Whisperer. Though Mr. Curtain escapes, the children share a party together with Constance, who, it is revealed, is turning three years old. Reynie is adopted by his former tutor; Sticky goes back to his parents, who were searching for him; Kate finds out that her long-lost father was Milligan, Mr. Benedict's bodyguard, and an early victim of the Whisperer; and Constance is adopted by Mr. Benedict and his assistants, Rhonda Kazembe and Number Two. |
The Fatal Eggs | Mikhail Bulgakov | 1,925 | The Fatal Eggs can be described as a science fiction novel. Its main protagonist is an aging zoologist, Vladimir Ipat'evich Persikov, a specialist in amphibians. The narration begins in Moscow of 1928, which seems to have overcome the destructive effects of the Russian Civil War and is quite prosperous. After a long period of degradation, research at the Zoological Institute has revived. After leaving his microscope for several hours, Persikov suddenly noticed that the out-of-focus microscope produced a ray of red light; amoeba left under that light showed an impossibly increased rate of binary fission, reproducing at enormous speeds and demonstrating unusual aggression. Later experiments with large cameras — to produce a larger ray — confirmed that the same increased speed of reproduction applied to other organisms, such as frogs, which evolved and produced a next generation within two days. Persikov's invention quickly becomes known to journalists, and eventually to foreign spies and to the GPU, the Soviet secret service. At the same time, the country is affected by an unknown disease in domesticated poultry, which results in a complete extinction of all chickens in the Soviet Russia, with the plague stopping at the borders of the country. An entrepreneur Aleksandr Semenovich Rokk (whose name is also a pun on the novel's title, Rok meaning fate) receives an official permission to use Persikov's invention to attempt to restore the chicken populace to the pre-plague level. However, the chicken eggs which are imported from outside the country are, by a mistake, sent to Persikov's laboratory while the reptile eggs destined for the professor end up in the hands of the farmers. As a result, Rokk breeds an enormous quantity of large and overly aggressive snakes, ostriches, and crocodiles which start attacking people. In the panic that follows, Persikov is killed by a mob — which blames him for the appearance of the snakes — and his cameras are smashed. The Red Army attempts to hold the snakes back, but only the coming of sub-zero weather in August—described as a deus ex machina—puts a stop to the snake invasion. In an earlier draft the novel ends with the scene of Moscow's complete destruction by the snakes. |
The Painter of Signs | R. K. Narayan | 1,976 | This bittersweet novel is as fresh and charming today as it was when originally published. Telling the story of Raman, a conscientious sign-painter, who is trying to lead a rational life, the novel is filled with busy neighborhood life and gossip, the alternating rhythms and sounds of the city from morning till night, and the pungent smells and tantalizing flavors of home cooking, as Narayan portrays everyday life in Malgudi. The city is growing and changing, as its inhabitants try to carve out some individual successes within the juggernaut of “progress.” Raman, a college graduate, brings a sense of professionalism to his sign-painting, taking pride in his calligraphy and trying to create exactly the right sign, artistically, for each client. Living with his aged aunt, a devout, traditional woman whose days are spent running the house and tending to her nephew’s needs and whose evenings are spent at the temple listening to the old stories and praying, Raman prefers a rational approach to life, avoiding the explanations of life’s mysteries which religion provides. As he begins to write his aunt’s biography, which she is dictating, with all its portents and interventions by deities, Raman asks, “How could the Age of Reason be established if people were like this?” For his own life, he believes that “ultimately he can evolve a scheme for doing without money,” and that he can “get away from sex thoughts,” which he believes are “too much everywhere.” Then he meets Daisy. A young woman devoted to improving the lives of women and the standard of living of the country through strict family planning, Daisy becomes his biggest customer, commissioning signs for all the family planning clinics she helps establish through the city and outlying rural areas. Accompanying her so he can select exactly the right location and style for the signs that are needed in the countryside, he finds himself totally bewitched by this liberated and high-minded young woman. Inevitably, his attraction to Daisy proves more powerful than this desire to avoid the entanglements of marriage. Narayan is a master of the domestic scene, as he presents the major and minor conflicts of family life through the different points of view of the participants. Respect for his characters and a good-humored (and often humorous) presentation of their issues give warmth to his scenes and allow the reader to feel real empathy with the characters. Raman’s belief in his own rational enlightenment and his simultaneous vulnerability to Daisy’s manipulations provide the author with unlimited opportunities for dramatic irony—Ram’s extreme naivete sets him up for major crises and “learning experiences.” Scenes between Ram and his devout, elderly aunt provide a glimpse of the conflicts between old and new India, in addition to the generational conflicts every family faces between its young and its old. Scenes between Ram and Daisy reflect the changes in the role of women in society, as women become more assertive and liberated. These reflect the idea that Painter of Signs contains the preoccupation with human character and human relationships. As Raman finds himself being torn between his Aunt and Daisy, the traditional way and the modern way, we see the protagonist as being "in-between" in the town of Malgudi. At the end of the novel, Raman's aunt left for Benares on a pilgrimage and Daisy left the town of Malgudi to pursue her career which means that Raman is left alone in Malgudi. This depicts the fact that it seems as though Raman cannot facilitate either women or what they represent (traditionality and modernity respectively), thus presenting the problematic themes of human character and their relationships with one another. hi:द पेंटर ऑफ़ साइन्स |
Radiant | James Alan Gardner | 2,004 | At the start of the story, Youn Suu is a rookie Explorer on her first assignment in interstellar space. Like most Explorers, she suffers from a significant physical deformity—in her case, a facial blemish that has been left untreated to "qualify" her for the Explorer Corps. Her first assignment, with her partner Tut, is to investigate a sudden infestation of the Balrog in a domed city on the home world of the Cashlings. While there, she is herself infested by the red moss. At the same time, Youn Suu and Tut encounter Admiral Festina Ramos, present on a mission of her own. Aboard an Outward fleet starship, Youn Suu is monitored medically, though there is no cure for her condition and no real treatment. The Balrog, far more than a parasite, is a hive mind well above the human level of development, so that killing it would violate the central precept of the League of Peoples. As its symbiotic relationship with its human host develops, the Balrog comes to share the mental functioning of its host, and prolongs the host's life while consuming her body—"her" because the only prior human host was also female (and also a Buddhist). Youn Suu is also exposed to potential exploitation, by people who want to use the Balrog's special abilities for their own purposes. Meanwhile, Ramos and the other explorers are called to an emergency rescue on a planet called Muta, where Unity survey teams have suddenly disappeared, with barely a peep of a distress signal. The planet Muta, temperate and Earth-like, is to outward appearances almost ideal for colonization; yet colonizing efforts by the Unity, and the Greenstriders, and perhaps others, have mysteriously failed. The three Explorers land on the planet; even with the most elaborate precautions they fall prey to its peculiar circumstances, and find themselves stranded and contaminated with a microbe that threatens to destroy their bodies. Investigating their predicament, they learn that the entire planet was once a global research station for the Fuentes, a species that discovered a way to transcend the physical body and transform itself into energy-based or consciousness-based entities. The research done by the Fuentes on Muta 6500 years earlier had been in pursuit of that goal—but had gone horribly wrong, dooming Fuentes and Greenstrider and Unity individuals to a disembodied but tortuous existence. While being hunted by raptor-like reptiles, the three Explorers must find a way to repair alien technology to reverse the damage, before their own bodies collapse. |
Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret | Obert Skye | 2,006 | After escaping a deranged dream-master and destroying the hidden gateway, Leven Thumps and his band of travelers must now journey across Foo and restore Geth from his shape as a toothpick to the rightful king he once was. But Foo is still in chaos, and Leven must overcome several adversaries and survive the Swollen Forest in order to save his friends and keep hope alive. As fate would have it, nothing goes as planned, and even Geth begins to wonder if they will succeed. Bad goes to worse as Leven digs up a long buried secret- one that stalks him, determined to whisper a truth that could be deadly in the wrong hands. Through it all, Leven finds the courage to do what is right and continues to discover an inner strength and a power he never thought possible. |
Leven Thumps and the Eyes of The Want | Obert Skye | 2,007 | Foo—the place between the possible and the impossible—is a realm inside the minds of each of us that allows mankind the power to hope and imagine and fly. The powerfully gifted Leven Thumps, once an ordinary fourteen-year-old boy from Oklahoma, has been retrieved from Reality and sent to stop those in Foo who are nurturing dark dreams and plan to invade and rule Reality. Hold on to your popcorn! In book three, the war to unite Foo and Reality has begun. Not only must Leven race across Foo to stop the Secret about how sycophants die. He must stop it before the deadly truth is revealed, he must travel to the island of Lith, the home of the Want—the manic dreammaster who can give Leven the gifts he needs against a foreboding army of rants and other Foo being. Our hero, Leven, starts his journey in a hotel with Geth, Clover, and Winter. Later in the night, The Whispered Secret speaks to Leven. The secret it holds is the Secret of the Sycophants, explaining how Sycophants die. The secret blackmails Leven with the life of Clover (the secret will kill Clover if Leven refuses to unlock it). Leven unlocks it, but then sees the secret sell himself to a man, who buries it. Soon, the sycophant population on Sycophant Run hears through the Lore Coil that the sycophant secret has been revealed. Meanwhile, Tim Tuttle meets Dennis and Ezra. Dennis is already being controlled by Sabine, and gives Tim a wristband which poisons Tim with the influence of Sabine. At this point in time, Dennis is leading the gang (instead of Ezra). The trio carjacks a van and then starts driving across the U.S. to get to the Atlantic Ocean. Dennis, Tim, and Ezra start building the gateway. When Dennis is gone, Tim remembers a secret: he hates Dennis. With this knowledge, he believes that he has the power to fight off the influence of Sabine. When Leven and Clover get separated from Winter and Geth, their onick takes them to Lith, the island where The Want resides. Once the duo gets to Lith, they meet The Want. He looks like a human with a long, red beard. Leven starts feeling powerful emotions, because The Want sees every dream that comes in and out of Foo. The Want takes Leven to a room known as The Den of the Dead, where Antsel comes alive and gets the scoop on how things are in Foo. Leven then learns more about his past and sees his mother. Leven is then taken up to a high tower where The Want wants to have a chat him. The Want says that tonight he’ll ask Leven to do a great task for him. Leven will have to listen to his voice, and do what it instructs. Winter and Geth’s onick flies them to a random place, where they are captured by an old defendant of Foo, named Azure, who has turned to Sabine’s side. Azure takes them the Hall of the Council of Wonder, the meeting place of the defendants of Foo where he tortures Geth by reading the names of the previous defendants who have died. Azure also says that he has tricked The Want into releasing The Dearth, the evil soil under Foo that has been controlling Sabine, into coming to Foo where it will mesh Foo and reality if it gets above ground. Azure then takes all of them to Lith, where he imprisons Geth, Winter, and two of his other servants in one cell. On the way, Azure tells Geth and Winter that he is destroying them and Leven in exchange for the location and instructions to open the second gateway to Foo. Once Winter and Geth are in the cell, Lith starts sinking, but, with the assistance of Clover, they find a way out. Meanwhile, Tim Tuttle falls off a tree and becomes unconscious. Dennis and Ezra leave him because Ezra gets a sense that there’s another gateway, so Dennis follows him. Tim has a sudden revelation and remembers the gateway. He dives in the Konigsee and gets to Foo. Leven is alone in a building on The Want’s instructions. Leven listens to The Want’s voice saying “come.” What The Want is doing is transferring his powers to Leven. Leven then hears the instructions telling him to thrust a sword into the darkness. Leven does, and realizes he killed The Want. While The Want is dying, he reveals that he is really the third Want, and Leven’s grandfather, Hector Thumps. He also tells him that he was sick of being the Want, and had planned for a long time to have Leven "accidentally" kill him. The Want also reveals that Leven is now The Want because he transferred the powers to him. Before Hector dies, he wishes Leven luck in saving Foo. Soon, Leven reunites with Geth, Winter, and Clover, and Geth says that Leven being The Want will give them an advantage in saving Foo. They then continue on their journey to save Foo. |
In the Ceiling the Stars Are Shining | null | null | The film starts off with a girl, Jenna, who is seen doing househould activities such as cleaning and shopping, and gradually it is revealed that her mother is sick and dying of cancer. Her daughter Jenna, who is in her mid-teens and has problems herself, gradually parts ways with her mother and grandmother, and makes friends with a girl she used to dislike. After a while, she starts to smoke, drink and even has sex as a way to forget about her mother's disease. Eventually, Jenna and her mom reunite, shortly before the latter's death, when Jenna realizes how much she has missed her. At the end of the film, Jenna and her grandmother go to Thailand together, a thing Jenna has always dreamed of but originally involving her mother. |
Faith, Science and Understanding | null | null | In 1. Theology in the University Polkinghorne suggests that "the essential purpose of a University is the discovery and propagation of knowledge"(p4) and that universities are institutionalised expressions of the beliefs in the value of knowledge for knowledge's sake and the essential unity of all knowledge. He says that quantum theory illustrates the principle "Do not make common sense the measure of everything but be prepared to recognise aspects of reality in those modes that are intrinsic to their natures, however strange these modes may at first sight be."(p7). He argues that personal experience is a fundamental aspect of reality and that the human intuition of an infinite Reality is another fact about humanity and that one of the roles of theology is the intellectual study of the religious dimension of personal experience (p19), whilst theological metaphysics can offer a more profound understanding of reality (p22) In 2. Motivations for Belief he rejects simplistic accounts of science, commending instead the approach of Michael Polanyi. He points out that the laws of nature operate all the time, but that understanding is only possible if we have access to regimes that are particularly transparent to our enquiry (p36) and suggests that God is always there, but there have been particular moments in history that have been unusually open to the divine presence, and that Scripture is evidence, the record of foundational spiritual experience (p37). He expounds the doctrine of the Trinity and commends John Zizioulas's Being as Communion. In 3. The Role of Revelation he suggests that "revelation bears an analogy with the role played by observations and experiment in science" and that the pursuit of simplicity through studying extreme conditions (such as Deep inelastic scattering) is an important part of science. He also suggests that the fact that the Bible is still read with attention and spiritual profit by so many people so long after it was written is a fact that should be taken into account. (p56) In 4. Design in Biology? he discusses the Anthropic Principle and in addition to the well-explored physicist perspective he commends the explorations of Michael Denton of properties of the physical world that seem to be tuned to life's necessities and the Nobel-prizewinner Christian de Duve's assertion "to Monod's famous sentence 'The universe was not pregnant with life, nor the biosphere with man,' I reply: 'You are wrong. they were.'" and also discusses with caution Michael Behe's claims about irreducible complexity. In 5. Second Thoughts he modifies some of his earlier positions somewhat, especially in relation to multiverse theory. In 6. Kenotic Creation and Divine Action he discusses Arthur Peacocke and the nature of causality In 7. Natural Science Temporality and Divine Action he identifies "four different metascientific accounts of the nature of time, each claiming to derive from contemporary physics" In 8. Contemporaries he discusses the ideas of Wolfhart Pannenberg, Thomas Torrance and Paul Davies In 9. Science and Theology in England he sketches "the long English history of interaction between theology and science" from Robert Grosseteste via Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne and Robert Boyle, citing Charles Kingsley, Aubrey Moore and Frederick Temple who "all played an important part in welcoming the insights of Charles Darwin" and noting that the great British physicists of the 19th Century "Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin and Stokes were all men of deep religious faith" (p198). He "feels that every German theologian writes with Kant looking over one shoulder and Hegel looking over another" whereas the English "tend to enjoy a more relaxed relationship with philosophy"(p202) |
The Moon Moth | Jack Vance | 1,961 | Edwer Thissell, the new consul from Earth to the planet Sirene, has trouble adjusting to the local culture. The Sirenese cover their faces with exquisitely crafted masks that indicate their social status or strakh. They also communicate by singing, accompanying themselves with one of a dozen musical instruments, selected based on the social situation. Furthermore, errors of etiquette may prove fatal. Thissell is a maladroit musician and lacks confidence in the alien society, so he is forced to wear a lowly Moon Moth mask. One day, he receives an alert to arrest a notorious assassin named Haxo Angmark, who is due on the next starship. Thissell, however, gets the message too late. He races to the spaceport, but Angmark, thoroughly comfortable with Sirenese customs, has already landed and disappeared. Thissell commits a number of serious social blunders in his haste to reach the spaceport and in enquiring after Angmark. The next morning, Thissell is shown the body of an outlander. He concludes that, since the fugitive would be unable to pass himself off as a native, Angmark must have killed and taken the place of one of the handful of expatriates on the planet. But since even they wear masks, how is Thissell to know which one? Eventually, Thissell solves the mystery by borrowing a slave from each of the suspects and determining their masters' mask preferences before and after Angmark's arrival. He succeeds in identifying his quarry, but is captured and forced to walk unmasked in public (the ultimate impropriety to the natives), while Angmark masquerades as Thissell, even to wearing his Moon Moth mask. However, the Sirenese turn on Angmark and kill him for the perversion of unmasking another man and, ironically, for Thissell's previous gaffes. Thinking quickly, Thissell cleverly represents his humiliation as an act of unsurpassed bravery, asking if any present would be willing to be so shamed in order to destroy his enemy. With his new-found confidence, Thissell receives offers of gifts (the acceptance of which would enhance the prestige of both the giver and the recipient). He first goes with a mask maker to procure a covering more befitting his lofty new strakh. |
Talkative Man | R. K. Narayan | 1,986 | The main character is an ordinary man who is wealthy and works as a journalist. He has a regular routine in his life: post articles in the post box, have a talk with people in a tea shop, go to library and house. One day, he meets a man from an unknown land called "Timbuctoo", another of Narayan's creations, the land being similar to the US. The man seems to have come for an official duty for UN and, seeing the calmness of the place, decides to stay here for his work. There comes a twist of what is exactly the man up to and how the main character of the novel solves the problem. The story is simple, and the author honestly admits to being a short story writer, rather than a novelist as he tells; most of the people skip the intrinsic details given about the places and only catch the content (at the end of the book, his words about the story). It is a good read book and can be read for the calmness with which Narayan writes his story, as a critic rightly points out . |
Wooden Heart | Martin Day | null | Martha and the Doctor discover an apparently deserted starship, and soon, a village appears in the middle of the craft. As they try to work out the mystery of the village, and its connection to the ship, they find out that the village has other problems - fog and monsters surround them at every turn, and their children have been going missing. |
Pearl in the Mist | V. C. Andrews | 1,994 | Ruby's school life immediately gets off to a bad start when the school's headmistress, Mrs. Ironwood, informs her that Daphne has made her aware of her Cajun background (implying that she is badly brought up and a troublemaker) and that she will be keeping an eye on her. Giselle quickly ingratiates herself to the small clique of girls she and Ruby first meet when arriving at Greenwood, using them to amuse herself. Despite her problems with her sister, Ruby manages to make friends with the blind piano player Louis Turnbull, who is the school founder's only grandson; the art teacher, Miss Stevens; and a fellow student, Abby, who shares Ruby's intellectual ambitions. She even rekindles her relationship with Beau Andreas. As time goes on however, Giselle becomes jealous of Ruby's friendship with Abby. She exposes Abby as a quadroon at the school's Halloween dance, a secret Abby had been keeping in order to study at Greenwood. Abby leaves the dance in the middle of a violent storm, but returns the next morning to formally withdraw, as Mrs Ironwood will not permit her to stay with her ethnic background. Disgusted by Giselle's behavior, Ruby is poised to leave as well, but Abby urges her to stay and continue in her artistic endeavors. Miss Stevens comforts Ruby later, telling her that she will always have her help and guidance if she needs it. Days later, Ruby discovers to her horror that Pierre has died of a heart attack. After the funeral, Mrs Ironwood threatens to expel Ruby, saying she has eyewitness accounts of her having sexual liaisons with the school caretaker. Fortunately, Louis and Miss Stevens come to her aid, testifying that Ruby could not have been in those places at that time, as she was with Louis. Miss Stevens vouches for Ruby's character and Ruby is exonerated, though the mystery remains. During the Christmas vacation, Ruby walks in on Giselle standing up without the aid of a stick. She forces her sister to confess that she was the one who met the school caretaker, but Giselle dismisses what happened, since Ruby was not expelled. Although walking is still difficult, she says her legs are getting stronger. Ruby threatens to tell Daphne that Giselle is using her paralysis to make people run and fetch for her, but Giselle merely retorts that she will tell Daphne about Ruby resuming her relationship with Beau. After this less than merry Christmas, Ruby and Giselle return to Greenwood, where Ruby discovers that Miss Stevens has resigned over a scandal where she was accused of seducing a female student. Ruby knows this to be a lie, but is powerless to do anything to help Miss Stevens. Her troubles are further compounded when she learns that she has become pregnant with Beau's child after they had unprotected sex during a visit to the campus. Ruby leaves Greenwood and returns to New Orleans, where Daphne informs her that Beau's parents have sent him away to attend school in France after learning about the pregnancy. She then arranges for Ruby to have an illegal abortion. Ruby feels so depressed and alone that she does not object, but after seeing the dilapidated state of the clinic Daphne sends her to, she runs back to her home town of Houma. On her way there, she tries to get in touch with Beau, but discovers that he has already left for France. Despondent, Ruby contacts her half-brother, Paul Tate, instead. He is glad to hear from her, but warns her that Grandperè Jack is in a terrible state, having gone semi-mad after she left. They find him near the old shack she shared with Grandmere Catherine, but after a brief altercation with Paul, Jack runs off and drowns in the swamps. Later Paul offers her a home for her and her baby in a newly built mansion named Cypress Woods, but Ruby is very reluctant to accept the offer, as she knows people will assume that the child is Paul's if she accepts his help. She also suspects that he is still in love with her and does not want to encourage his feelings. At the climax, Ruby gives birth to her daughter, Pearl, in a hurricane which blows away many (if not most) of the surrounding homes. This is later described as one of the worst storms in decades. At the end of the story, Ruby is uplifted by the birth of her baby and believes her future is bright and hopeful. |
Spring Fever | P. G. Wodehouse | 1,948 | Wealthy New York businessman G. Ellery Cobbold has sent his son Stanwood, a blundering ex-American football player, to London, to separate him from Hollywood starlet Eileen Stoker with whom he is in love. When Cobbold discovers that Stoker is also in London, making pictures, he insists that Stanwood goes to stay with a distant relation, curmudgeonly widower Lord Shortlands. But Stanwood stays put. Instead, good-looking movie agent Mike Cardinal goes to Shortlands' castle (Beevor, in Kent), posing as Stanwood. He is pursuing Shortland's beautiful daughter Terry. But Terry is wary of him because he is too handsome. Lord Shortlands himself is in love with his cook, Mrs Punter, and would like to marry her. Unfortunately she insists on £200 to buy a pub, which Shortlands doesn't have, the purse-strings at Beevor Castle being firmly in the control of his domineering elder daughter Adela. Also, he has a rival in suave butler Mervyn Spink. Things look up for "Shorty" when he discovers that a stamp in his collection is worth £1000. But Spink fools Adela into believing that the stamp is his, and it gets locked up in a safe. It so happens that Stanwood's butler, Augustus Robb is an ex-safe breaker, and Mike masterminds a burglary. This goes disastrously wrong, and Mike gets hit in the face with a bag of safe breaking tools. The up-side is that his battered face makes him suddenly attractive to Terry. So, after a final misunderstanding, things end happily for Mike and Terry. Stanwood and Eileen also get together. But Mrs Punter runs off with Augustus Robb, leaving Shorty and Spink ruing their loss. |
Children of Tomorrow | A. E. van Vogt | 1,970 | Commander John Lane returns from a ten year mission in space to find that the teenagers of Spaceport City have organized themselves into "outfits", well disciplined, non-violent little gangs with their own customs and argot, and that the parent's role in teen upbringing has become minimal. His 16 year old daughter Susan belongs to the Red Cat Outfit, whose newest member Bud is actually a spy for the alien fleet that has secretly followed John Lane as he returned to Earth. |
David Golder | Irène Némirovsky | 1,929 | The novel opens with Golder refusing to help his colleague of many years, Marcus. As a result of this, Marcus, bankrupt, commits suicide. Following the funeral, Golder travels to Biarritz where he has a huge, opulent house. His wife and daughter reside there in luxury, spending Golder's cash like water. On the train, he suffers a heart attack. Seriously ill, he is forced to re-evaluate his life. |
The Game | Diana Wynne Jones | null | Hayley’s parents disappeared when she was a baby. Since then, she has been raised and homeschooled by her grandparents. Grandad is overworked and travels a lot; Grandma is much too strict and never lets her meet any children her own age. When Hayley does something wrong—she is not quite sure what—they pack her off to her aunts in Ireland. To Hayley’s shock, her family is much bigger than she thought; to her delight, the children all play what they call “the game,” where they visit a place called “the mythosphere.” And while she plays the game, Hayley learns more about her own place in the world than she had ever expected. |
Ttyl | Lauren Myracle | null | Three friends, Angela Silver (SnowAngel), Zoe Barrett (zoegirl), and Madigan "Maddie" Kinnick (mad maddie) are just starting tenth grade of high school. At the beginning of the book, the trio (also known as the winsome threesome) believe that they will stick together forever. Zoe wants something meaningful and big to happen in her life, Angela knows it is going to be a fabulous year and that she is going to meet the boy of her dreams, and Maddie can't help but feel low and down on herself. When Angela discovers that Rob Tyler is in her French class, she develops a crush on him. Maddie notices how mean Jana Whitaker, the school's queen bee, is to her and to other students. Zoe talks to Maddie about her meeting with the english teacher that she calls Norman (in which she says they talked about Christianity and the meaning of life) and Maddie quickly concludes that he is "hitting" on Zoe. Rob finally asks Angela out and the two have a fun time together, which is how Angela describes it. Later, she reveals to her friends that Rob is "the one", as in the one she goes all the way with. The next day, Angela is unable to go on a planned date with Rob since her mother grounded her for going to a bar without permission. Angela then learns that Rob went out with Tonnie Wyndham while she had to stay home. Rob apologizes and states that Tonnie refused to let him call Angela. Days later, Rob goes on another date (while he was supposed to be on a date with Angela and left her waiting) with Tonnie and says that she asked him out and he didn't know how to say no. Angela breaks up with him after this. Maddie gives Jana a ride home (when she was supposed to give Angela a ride) and Angela gets mad at her. While they are instant messaging (IM), Angela reveals to Zoe that she now has a crush on Ben Schlanker, a boy in the Drama club. Four days later, Zoe tells Angela that there was feces on the side of her jeans after driving her home from church (presumably Norman's). Maddie reveals the idea that she and Jana came up with: to cause a traffic jam by slowing down to the speed limit. After Maddie and Jana (with several other students) try this out, Angela gets mad at Maddie for bragging about it via IM. Zoe tells Angela that Norman spilt urine in her hair while she was in his car. For Halloween, the trio plan to go trick or treating as mold, fungus and dust. When Halloween arrives, though, Maddie ditches her friends and doesn't show up. She messages Angela later in the night and explains everything. Apparently, Jana had taken Maddie to a party where Maddie got drunk, took her shirt and bra off, and defecated everywhere and did a table dance in front of everyone. To Zoe, Maddie tells her the reason she suspects Jana took her to the party and got her drunk. Once when Maddie was driving Jana home, she made fun of Jana by recalling the time when one of Jana's friends called Jana a lesbian. Later, Angela accidentally tells Zoe about Maddie's table dance and Maddie gets angry at Angela because she didn't want Zoe to know. Maddie stops talking/instant messaging her friends because of this. Meanwhile, Zoe realizes Norman really is hitting on her after he invites her to go hot tubbing with him and tells her that she "would look good in a bikini". Zoe also informs Angela that Jana started a chain letter with a picture of Maddie half naked and covered in feces, and that the title of the letter was "Lesbian slut". Angela sends Maddie a message saying that there was an emergency and Maddie starts to IM again. The trio decide to go hot tubbing with Norman together, since that way Zoe won't be alone with him. At the end of the book (after they have gone hot tubbing with Norman), the winsome threesome patch up and decide to go to a breakfast bar to celebrate. |
On the Eve | Ivan Turgenev | 1,860 | The story revolves around Elena, a girl with a very affected mother and a father who is a retired guards lieutenant and keeps a mistress. On the eve of the Crimean War, Elena is pursued by a free-spirited sculptor (Shubin) and an uptight student (Berzeniev). But when Berzeniev's dashing Bulgarian friend Insarov meets Elena, they soon fall in love. Secretly marrying the Bulgarian revolutionary, Elena invites the ire of her parents, who had hoped to marry her to a more respectable suitor. Insarov falls ill, but partly recovers. On the outbreak of the war, Insarov's call home only complicates matters further. Insarov returns with Elena to Bulgaria, but dies on the way in Venice. Elena is never heard of again. |
The Rules of Survival | Nancy Werlin | 2,006 | The book starts out with an introduction when Matthew Walsh is writing a letter to his younger sister Emmy to tell her the story of their mother's vicious abuse. The True story sister, Callie. Callie is eleven, Matthew is thirteen, and Emmy is a toddler. Callie and Matthew go to the Cumberland Farms store to get Popsicles, because there is a heat wave. They see Murdoch, who protects a kid from being openly abused. Matthew and Callie like Murdoch, and both of them want to track him down so that they can be his friend. Meanwhile, the first act of abuse that is shown in the book comes when Nikki hits Matthew with a bag of clams after Nikki finds the address of Murdoch that Callie found on the Internet. Nikki begins to date Murdoch, but eventually they break stalking him. Nikki is angry and sends a man called Rob to brutalize Murdoch. Nikki and Rob eventually end up in jail. After she gets out of jail, she recklessly drives in search of Murdoch. Instead, she finds pleasure in tormenting Julie, a friend of Murdoch. Julie loses the use of her legs, and Nikki ends up in jail again. Ben, Matthew's father (who is scared of Nikki), and Bobbie, Nikki's sister, use this . Things are fine for a while until Nikki kidnaps Emmy and gets her drunk, although she is from Emmy and she tells him where she is. Matthew rescues Emmy, only to run into Nikki who greets Matt with a joke involving which alcohol Emmy Nikki unconscious and contemplates killing her when Murdoch appears. After coming to Murdoch advises Nikki to run away and never come back. But this and the fact no one has seen her in not the end of Nikki. Letters continue to come. Some of them are normal, but some contain threatening messages like "I will kill you" or "It was Murdoch's fault." The book ends with Murdoch telling Matt that he was also abused when he was younger leading to him killing his father. Mathew thanks Murdoch for stopping him. In the end, Matt never gives the letter to Emmy stating that it wasn't really for her it was for him. |
The Mezzanine: A Novel | Nicholson Baker | null | On the surface it deals with a man's lunch-time trip up an escalator in the mezzanine of the office building where he is employed, a building based on Baker's recollections of Rochester's Midtown Plaza. In reality, it deals with all the thoughts that run through a person's minds in any given few moments if he or she were given the time to think them through to their conclusions. The Mezzanine does that through extensive use of footnotes, some making up the bulk of the page, travelling inside a human mind, through the thinker's past. The footnotes occasionally are detailed and rambling to the point of Baker consciously digressing within the footnote; and towards the end of the book there is a multi-page footnote on the subject of footnotes themselves. |
The Grateful Servant | null | null | The Duke of Savoy was betrothed to Princess Leonora of Milan — but the current Milanese ruler has reneged on the commitment. The indignant Duke decides to court a local gentlewoman named Cleona instead. Foscari, Cleona's former betrothed, is believed dead; but he suddenly shows up in the Savoyard capital quite alive, and accompanied by a handsome young page called Dulcino, whom Foscari rescued from bandits. Foscari, unaware of the Duke's interest in Cleona, sends Dulcino to her to announce his arrival; the Duke meets Dulcino there, and is powerfully struck by the page's resemblance to Leonora. Cleona, for her part, is faithful to Foscari and pleased to learn he's alive and well. Foscari, however, through an exaggerated sense of loyalty, resolves to resign his interest in Cleona to the Duke and decides to become a Benedictine monk. He informs the surprised Duke of his decision, and sends Dulcino to tell Cleona that the news that Foscari is alive is actually false. Foscari even convinces a hesitant Dulcino to join the Benedictine order along with him. A monk named Valentio arrives to arrange their admission — but Valentio instantly greets Dulcino as "dear Leonora." Valentio reveals that Leonora had fled the Milanese court when her father died, for she feared being forced to marry her uncle. She disguised herself as a page and came to Savoy, with Valentio as her companion and chaperon, to see if the Duke would honor their previous commitment. Two weddings, of the Duke and Leonora and of Foscari and Cleona, determine the happy ending. As usual in Shirley's drama, this main plot is supported by secondary material. The Duke has a libertine brother, Lodwick; at the start of the play his wife Astella has left him and is staying with Cleona. Lodwick commands his follower Piero to commit adultery with Astella, so that Lodwick can divorce her. Lodwick's old tutor, Lord Grimuldo, tries to persuade his former student to repent; failing this, Grimuldo pretends to have been testing Lodwick and to be, in reality, a fellow libertine. Grimuldo offers to introduce Lodwick to a superior mistress, and brings him to a lush garden filled with strange music, where they watch a masque of nymphs and satyrs. The woman Lodwick meets there is enticing but disturbing; she hints that she has unusual powers, and offers him unlimited dominion — and finally concedes that she is a devil, a succubus. A deeply upset Lodwick flees homeward, only to find Piero with Astella. Piero tells his master that he has fulfilled his command, and expects reward; Lodwick tries to kill him, forcing Piero to admit that Astella has not submitted to him. The chastened and reformed Lodwick decides to renew his vows with Astella, making them a third matrimonial couple at the play's end. Lodwick also demands punishment for the "libertine" Grimuldo — but the devil-woman turns out to have been Grimuldo's wife Belinda; the ruse is exposed. Comic relief is provided by Jacomo, Cleona's steward; ambitious but foolish, he resembles Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. The plot device of a courtier trying to get another man to sleep with his wife so he can divorce her is re-used by Shirley in his next play, The Humorous Courtier. |
Mistress Masham's Repose | T. H. White | null | Maria, a ten-year-old orphaned girl, lives on a derelict family estate, her only companions being a loving family Cook and a retired Professor of Ancient Latin. These two try to protect Maria from her tall, fat, strict Governess, Miss Brown. The Governess makes the child's life miserable, taking her cue from Maria's guardian, a Vicar named Mr. Hater. Miss Brown and Mr Hater are conspiring to keep Maria poor and abandoned. The little girl does not go to school. In church, she has to walk all the way to her seat in over-sized football boots which make a great deal of noise. She is shy, lonely and starved of affection. Meeting the Lilliputians and being tempted to love, to fear and to bully, she must save her friends and herself. |
Here Lies Arthur | Philip Reeve | 2,007 | The novel starts with an attack by Arthur and his war-band, and the escape of Gwyna, a servant girl. She is found by Myrddin, a bard who hopes to build Arthur's reputation as a great hero so that he can unite the native British against the Saxons who have occupied the east of the country. Myrddin tells Gwyna to give Arthur Caliburn while pretending to be the Lady of the Lake. When she does that successfully, Myrddin disguises her in boy's clothes so that she can travel with the war-band as his servant. Throughout her travels, she meets a boy who was brought up as a girl, tricks a holy man, swims in the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis, takes part in a battle, and witnesses Arthur's brutality, piety and immorality, all the while observing her master create the fantastic stories that have made 'King Arthur' one of the most famous men in legend. After Arthur's death she creates some stories herself, conceding that the legend is more important than the mere facts. |
Drunkard's Walk | Frederik Pohl | null | The novel tells the story of a professor who discovers a monstrous plot. |
Beau Brocade | Henry Austin Dobson | 1,907 | After their recent defeat, the hamlets and villages of Derbyshire are no longer ringing with the wild shouts of Bonny Prince Charlie's Highland Brigade; instead troops loyal to King George are looking for those accused of high treason and are offering a reward of twenty guineas for the death of any traitor or rebel. Philip James Gascoyne, eleventh Earl of Stretton, is in hiding, in fear for his life after being wrongly accused by Sir Humphrey Challoner of being a traitor to the King. For months Philip has been a fugitive, disguised in rough clothes and hiding in odd places, trusting no-one, but now he has been given shelter and a cover by honest John Stitch, the local blacksmith, and is pretending to be his nephew while trying to get a note to his sister, the beautiful Lady Patience Gascoyne. John Stich is also friends with the notorious Beau Brocade, a masked highway man who roams the moors holding up coaches so he can steal from the rich and give to the poor. Beau Brocade is actually Captain Jack Bathurst of His Majesty's White Dragoons, a handsome but tragic figure on whose head the Government has put the price of a hundred guineas. The blacksmith gets Beau Brocade to deliver a letter from Philip to his sister and a couple of days later she turns up at his forge in her coach. Reunited with his beloved sister, Philip gives Patience a packet of letters which prove his innocence and asks her to take them to London and clear his name. Just as they are discussing when she can leave, they spot Sir Humphrey's coach in the distance, Philip goes back into hiding while Patience heads towards the inn in Aldwark village to get a couple of hours rest for herself and the horses before starting the journey to London. |
Room 13 | Robert Swindells | 1,989 | Fliss Morgan has a nightmare on the night before her school trip to Whitby, and upon arriving in the seaside town a series of strange events begin to occur. At midnight each night, a Room 13 appears in the Crow's Nest Hotel. And one of Fliss's classmates, Ellie-May, starts acting very strangely. Fliss, Lisa, Gary and David decide to join forces to stop a nightmare thats come true. |
La 628-E8 | Octave Mirbeau | 1,907 | Titled after the number of Mirbeau's licence plate, La 628-E8 begins by recounting Mirbeau’s travels to Belgium, whose colonial exploitation of Belgian Congo rubber and abuse of the indigenous people Mirbeau excoriates. The book then proceeds to the Netherlands, where he finds remembrances of Rembrandt, Van Gogh and also Claude Monet. It is during his sojourn in this country that Mirbeau encounters his old friend, the deranged speculator Weil-See, whose reflections on mathematics and metaphysics are among Mirbeau’s most colorful pages. Mirbeau's fictional car trip then takes him to Germany, whose industry, cleanliness, and order stand in contrast to what Mirbeau regarded as the slovenliness and laxity of his own countrymen. |
Totem and Ore | B Wongar | 2,006 | The Australian Aborigines are the only people who have lived through a duel nuclear tragedy, the mining of uranium and the subsequent British nuclear testing, both of which took place on tribal land. The photographs of Totem and Ore collection tell what it was like to be at the forefront of the tragedy. |
American Born Chinese | Gene Yang | 2,006 | American Born Chinese consists of three interwoven, yet, parallel stories that ultimately merge into one narrative by the climax of the novel. The first tale is based upon the legendary folk tale of Sun Wukong, or The Monkey King, a character from the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. The second tale is the story of a second-generation child of immigrants named Jin Wang, who has moved from San Francisco's Chinatown to a mostly white suburb. Jin Wang struggles to fit in within his new school, and within white American culture. His story links the other two narratives, and fits the form of an ethnic bildungsroman. The third tale tells the story of a white American boy named Danny, whose Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (as in "Chinky") comes and visits every year. Chin-Kee displays many American racial stereotypes of the Chinese in terms of accent, dress, hairstyle, physical appearance, eating habits, academic performance, and hobbies. Danny is troubled by Chin-Kee's visits. |
The Court Secret | null | null | A Spanish nobleman named Piraquo was banished from Spain in his youth; after a very profitable career as a pirate and a stay at the royal court of Portugal, his banishment has been lifted by Don Carlo, the heir to the Spanish throne. Piraquo's son Don Manuel is a close friend to Don Carlo, and returns to Spain with his father. Don Manuel quickly falls in love with Clara, the daughter of Duke Mendoza. Clara loves him in return and agrees to marry him — but the Spanish princess, Maria, also falls for Manuel, even though she is betrothed to marry Prince Antonio of Portugal. Don Carlo is also engaged to a Portuguese princess, Isabella — though Carlo too is in love with Clara. Carlo's and Maria's father, the King of Spain, is unhappy about all of this. The King's brother, Roderigo, informs Prince Antonio that Carlo courts Clara instead of Maria; he provokes Carlo's anger at the idea that Manuel is courting Maria. The fact that this is not strictly true does not bother Roderigo; the play's Machiavellian stage villain, he creates as much trouble as he can. Yet another complication arises: Pedro, who is both a kinsman to Piraquo and Manuel and a servant to Duke Mendoza, knows a secret — the "court secret" of the title, which somehow involves Duke Mendoza and a mysterious treasure, and Carlo and Manuel too. The jealous Prince Antonio meanwhile provokes a duel with Manuel, which leads to Manuel's imprisonment. A meeting between Clara and Princess Maria shows them that they are rivals for Manuel's love; similarly Carlo and Manuel learn that they are rivals for Clara. Don Carlo gains Manuel's release and reconciles him with Prince Antonio; Manuel responds by releasing Clara from their marriage contract and letting her choose for herself — though Clara once again chooses Manuel. Carlo, stung by her rejection, challenges Manuel to a duel; Clara suspects, but Manuel pacifies her fears. Arriving at the place appointed for the duel, Manuel hears cries of alarm; a page runs to him and says that a Moor has killed Don Carlo. Manuel rushes to Carlo's rescue, meets, fights with, and defeats the Moor...who turns out to be Carlo is disguise. At the same time, Princess Isabella arrives from Portugal, and the court is thrown into disorder when Don Carlo cannot be found. Manuel reveals what has happened; and Duke Mendoza is prominent among the voices that call for Manuel's punishment. But Prince Antonio reveals that the dying Carlo confessed his ruse, and that Manuel though he was rescuing Carlo rather than killing him. More crucially, Piraquo and Pedro reveal the "court secret" — a baby switch: the dead man is actually Mendoza's son Julio, whom Mendoza and his wife, the baby's nurse, had put in Carlo's place when the royal infant was stolen by pirates. (Which means that the false Don Carlo, in pursuing Clara, was courting his own sister.) Clara and Princess Maria meet in Manuel's prison cell. Manuel, who does not yet know the truth about Carlo/Julio, tries to persuade Maria that she must renounce him, since he killed her brother — but Maria still will not yield. Manuel asks Clara to play Maria's part, to show how impossible the situation is; but Clara, knowing the court secret, also says that she can still love him despite the death. The exasperated Manuel tells Clara-playing-Maria that their love can never be — and Clara faints. Watching Manuel trying to revive Clara and seeing the strength of their mutual bond, Maria yields her interest in Manuel, and informs him of Carlo's true identity. Maria ultimately accepts her original intended spouse, Prince Antonio. Yet since this is a tragicomedy, Julio the false prince is not really dead; he recovers from his wound. While recovering, he sends messages to Isabella begging her forgiveness for his duplicity; and Isabella, taken with his contrition, decides she wants to marry Julio, phony prince or not. So, two happy couples are united...though the King of Spain does not share their joy, since he is effectively down one heir to the throne. He swears to punish Duke Mendoza — which prompts Piraquo and Pedro to reveal the rest of the court secret: that they were the pirates who kidnapped the infant Carlo...who is actually Don Manuel. Happy ending. The play's "extraordinary complexity of plot" has been noted by critics; Arthur Nason maintained that "Rarely among the complicated plots of Shirley is the complication at once more elaborate and more finely knit...Shirley, in The Court Secret, shows his greatest mastery." |
What Would Joey Do? | Jack Gantos | 2,003 | The book deals with Joey as he tries to take charge of correcting the wrongs in his life and the lives of the people he knows, before finally learning that his priority should be doing what's best for himself and leaving the others to their own ways. The story starts out with his father, Carter Pigza, who also has ADHD, riding his motorcycle noisily around the neighborhood. Joey's mother, Fran, came out screaming at him, resulting in him crashing his motorcycle into an old apple tree, where a branch stabbed him. Carter was admitted into hospital, but he later ran off. Throughout the story, Frances had Joey home schooled by her old friend Mrs. Lapp, along with Olivia, Mrs. Lapp's sullen, bratty, blind daughter. Carter kept on bugging their family so Frances had to put out a restraining order to keep him away. Frances was also dating a new boyfriend, Booth Duprey, who was a photographer at her working place and whom Joey disliked. Joey's grandmother was concerned of Joey having no friends, and persuaded Joey to make friends with Olivia, which Joey found very depressing and tiring, for Olivia's main goal is to either make Joey so miserable he would ran off or establishing in her mother's point of view that Joey is up to no good, so as for her to be sent off to a boarding school, where she preferred to be. Olivia stated that many kids like Joey had come to be her homeschooling partner and had gone off, Joey would be the last one her mother would try. Some time later, Joey's grandmother declared that she would die if Joey could not bring Olivia to meet her and prove that she is Joey's friend. Meanwhile, a performance of the musical Godspell was in town, which happened to be Olivia's favorite show. However, Mrs. Lapp disliked the show due to its novelty portayl of religion and forbade Olivia from seeing it. Joey and Olivia later struck a deal: Joey finds a way for Olivia to see the show, and she will go to see his grandmother. Olivia then went to meet his grandmother. During the talk, Olivia revealed that her mother was bitten by a snake while she was pregnant, resulting in her blindness. As her mother is a dedicated Christian, the snake is like an evil being, like Satan. Because of that, Olivia believed she was hopeless and up to no good and behaved like she did. However, after hearing grandma's view on life and her past life, Olivia later confided to Joey that she felt they had a lot in common and it can be implied that she felt better about herself also. One day, Carter, who wanted a chance to talk with Joey and make it up to Frances, came and stole Pablo, Joey's pet dog. As Carter is unsure exactly which Chihuahua is Joey's, he took all Chihuahuas in town also. Joey ended up returning the dogs to their rightful owners before finally going out to meet his father. One owner, however, had another dog in their depression of their previous one, and the two dogs do not cope. Joey took the extra dog and renamed her Pablita. Joey advised Carter to be nice to Frances, so that maybe things could get better. But at Thanksgiving, Frances was enraged by the gifts Carter sent and the two had a violent row in front of the house, ruining the party they held and sending a visiting Mrs.Lapp into horror. Joey sprinted after her departing back. When he caught up with her at her home, Mrs.Lapp announced coldly that his family already had enough problems to deal with and for that she would not prefer him to help her in solving Olivia's problems anymore. Joey's Grandmother died the next day, and Booth broke up with Frances. Seeing that his plans for the others has all gone awry, Joey decided to do as his grandmother told him to; to care more about himself and leave everyone else to care about themselves. Joey arranged the remaining settings for his grandmother's funeral and used some of her savings on buying nice clothes and tickets for him and Olivia to watch her favorite show she had mentioned earlier. Late at the funeral, Frances and Carter had a row again, concerning the disdainful wooden coffin Joey's grandmother was laid in. Joey lashed out, telling them that it was because his grandmother would be cremated. Joey then ran away and in the evening asked Mrs. Lapp for permission to take Olivia to the show. She allowed him to and apologized for her anger in the Thanksgiving night, but maintained her decision of no more home-schooling, though she was happy for a visit occasionally. She told him that Olivia would be sent to a boarding school instead. Olivia was delighted after the show and by now was nicer and friendlier to Joey after all the help he had given her. Joe experienced his first kiss with Olivia before they departed and they promised to keep in touch. Later, Joey went back to study normally in his old school, and he stated that he 'was in where I belong'. |
The World of Nagaraj | R. K. Narayan | 1,990 | Nagaraj's world is quiet and comfortable. Living in his family's spacious house with only his wife, Sita, and his widowed mother for company, he fills his day writing letters, drinking coffee, doing some leisurely book-keeping for his friend Coomar's Boeing Sari Company, and sitting on his verandah watching the world and planning the book he intends to write about the life of the great sage Narada. But everything is disturbed when Tim, the son of his ambitious land-owning brother Gopu, decides to leave home and come to live with Nagaraj. Forced to take responsibility for the boy, puzzled by his secret late-night activities and by the strong smell of spirits which lingers behind him, Nagaraj finds his days suddenly filled with unwelcome complication and turbulence, which threaten to forever alter the contented tranquility of his world. |
The Poet | Michael Connelly | 1,996 | The book starts with Jack McEvoy, a crime reporter for the Rocky Mountain News ("Death is my beat"), relating how the news of his brother Sean's suicide was broken to him. Sean was a homicide detective with the Denver Police, who was found dead in his car in a remote parking lot. A one-sentence suicide note was found in the car with him, and it seemed impossible that someone else could have killed him. McEvoy, though, is reluctant to accept that his brother had succumbed to depression resulting from his investigations, even though the last one was particularly brutal: Theresa Lofton, a young college student, who was found in a park in two pieces. After much investigation on his own, including retracing his brother's investigation into the Lofton case, Jack concludes that his brother's death was simply made to look like a suicide by a serial killer. By focusing on homicide detectives who committed suicide in a similar fashion and left a one-sentence note quoting the works of Edgar Allan Poe (as Sean's did), Jack finds three clear matches to his brother's death. When the FBI finally realizes that he is on to something and attempts to block him from further access, he is able to trade his knowledge of the other deaths (one of which the FBI had not uncovered) for a role with the FBI investigative team headed by Robert Backus, the son of a famous agent within the bureau who has been overshadowed by his father's legend. Assigned the duty of handling him is agent Rachel Walling, one of Backus' main proteges, and the two of them become personally involved. The FBI nicknames the serial killer "The Poet" due to his use of Poe's lines with the victims. As the case focuses on an Internet network of pedophiles and one in particular (William Gladden), McEvoy is taken along on the operation to arrest Gladden, who is suspicious of the set-up and kills the FBI agent trying to arrest him, Gordon Thorson (Walling's ex-husband). McEvoy ends up killing Gladden himself while being held hostage. However, Gladden's comments about his brother's death lead McEvoy to believe that Gladden was not the killer, even though the case has been officially closed. He then finds evidence that the killings had a connection to the FBI and identifies a phone call to the FBI from Thorson's room that he links to a "boasting" fax sent to the bureau by The Poet. Since McEvoy knew that Walling had sent Thorson on a fake errand to buy condoms during the time the fax was sent, he suspects Walling of being The Poet and of posting to the pedophile network under the name "Eidolon", another Poe reference. He then learns that Walling's father, a cop, had committed suicide when she was a teenager ... and had been suspected by the investigating officers of molesting Rachel over a period of time. Since pedophiles tend to have been abused as children, McEvoy becomes worried enough to tell Backus of his suspicions. Backus tells McEvoy that they'll set a trap for Walling and then takes him to a remote location—where Backus drugs McEvoy into nonresistance. He admits that he himself is both Eidolon and The Poet, because the room mistakenly billed to Thorson was actually the one in which he stayed. He admits to all of the deaths and to his setup of Gladden as the "fall guy" for the murders. As Backus prepares to sodomize and then kill McEvoy, Walling (who was suspicious because of messages that she had received from both men) shows up and eventually saves McEvoy's life by knocking Backus out the window and down a long hill. Later the police find a body, however it is left open if this is Backus. Meanwhile, as the facts of the case become known, Walling's judgment is called into question due to her personal relationship with McEvoy and her professional relationship with Backus. A tabloid publishes a photo of McEvoy and Walling together. However, because McEvoy suspected her, Walling ends their relationship and takes a leave to Italy. McEvoy then takes a leave from his paper to write a book about the events, although Walling explains to him that the book will forever taint the FBI because of Backus. |
Akihabara@DEEP | Ira Ishida | null | A group of outcasts who meet each other through an online website decide to form an IT company. They seek to create a search engine that will become more popular than Google. They call their creation CROOK (クルーク). This new search engine uses Artificial Intelligence to understand the user's intentions and help them narrow their search. This attracts the attention of Nakagomi Takeshi, the president of Digital Capital (DigiCap), who after a failed attempt to take over Akihabara@Deep, steals the technology for himself. The group must then find a way to get their technology back from DigiCap. The novel is narrated from the point of view of CROOK's Artificial Intelligence. The Drama takes a much more lighthearted approach to the story. It all begins when a mysterious online personality named Yui decides to assemble these outcasts to try to form a group dedicated to solving the problems that plague Akiba by forming the "troubleshooting" company, Akihabara@DEEP, often shortened to just @DEEP. One example of this troubleshooting would be that the otaku of Akiba have come under a surge of bullying. @DEEP's first task was to eliminate this bullying. After getting rid of this problem, @DEEP began taking up other tasks as well. Some of these include clearing the name of a cosplayer in a case that involved the distribution of underground videos depicting other cosplayers getting undressed in dressing rooms, protecting a news anchor from attacks by otaku who were enraged at a story that she had previously worked on that bashed the youth of Akiba, and helping out a maid cafe that the people of Akiba frequent from an opposing maid cafe that was acting extremely hostile to this maid cafe and even provided various prostitution services to the visitors of the opposing maid cafe. While @DEEP solves these cases, the group unintentionally attracts the attention of a seedy character named Nakagomi Takeshi. The reason behind this is because of a secret past relationship between Nakagomi and Yui. What adds to this is a fully self-reliant AI program that Nakagomi would greatly benefit from if he got his hands on it. This is because he is the president of a very influential electronics company called Digital Capital, often shortened to DigiCap. He will eventually raid @DEEP's headquarters and steal Yui's AI. |
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man | Fannie Flagg | 1,981 | Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man is told in diary writings starting in 1952 when the protagonist, Daisy Fay Harper, is 11 years old. She lives with her mother and her father in Jackson, Mississippi. Daisy Fay received her name from a vase of flowers that her mother had in her hospital room. Her father involves her in many of his ill-working schemes to make money or build inventions. He alienates his family members but makes great friends when he drinks. Her mother lives in a constant state of embarrassment, and tries to do what she can to make Daisy Fay into a lady, which consists of making her fetch endless cups of coffee in the cafeteria, and buying matching mother-daughter outfits. Her mother, Daisy's Grandma Pettibone, believes she married beneath her. (Despite both sets of Grandparents not speaking to Daisy's father, they absolutely dote on Daisy) The diary reveals Daisy Fay has an expansive imagination and a detailed memory as a long list of endearing and strange characters are described and the story is told in humorous vignettes. Soon after the beginning of the diary, Daisy Fay and her parents move to Shell Beach, Mississippi, after her father buys half a share of a malt shop on the beach with $500 her mother won at a Bingo game. Her father's plan is to become a taxidermist during the off season, and to use the malt shop's freezer to store the dead animals before stuffing them. The biggest town nearby Shell Beach is Magnolia Springs, where the school and a movie theater is. Her parents' relationship becomes more tempestuous as her father drinks too much and hangs around a vindinctive crop duster named Jimmy Snow, and they manage to get into impossible situations. When the fall starts, Daisy Fay starts the 6th grade and meets her classmates, which include the very snobby and spoiled Kay Bob Benson, who serves as a nemesis for Daisy Fay throughout the rest of the book. Daisy's other friend is Michael Romeo, a Catholic, and the only other child, aside from Daisy and Kay Bob, who lives in Shell Beach full-time. She also makes friends with classmates, Patsy Ruth Coggins and Amy Jo Snipes, among others, and is good friends with an African-American mortician/bar owner named Peachy Wigham and her co-hort, an albino named Ula Sour. Peachy, the owner of the Elite Nightspot bar, had a secret on the white Sheriff's daughter, (she had had an abortion) which was why she wasn't ever arrested. Also, she meets Mrs. Dudley Dot, a journalist (she writes the Dashes from Dot column for the local paper) and the leader of the Junior Debutantes, a pre-teen group which meets in the bait shop over the summer. Mrs. Dot is idolized by Daisy, and is eventually institutionalized after trying to kill her hateful husband. The taxidermy doesn't seem to work out well, as the bobcat had a smile on its face and the flamingo's neck was crooked. Added to that is the fact that Daisy Fay's father didn't add bread to the hamburgers, and his drinking increased. After the malt shop burns down in a suspicious fire (the insurance money wasn't enough anyway), Daisy Fay's mother, finally having had enough of Daisy Fay's father, leaves him to go live with her sister in Virginia. With her mother gone, her father devises a three-day scheme with a scheming local preacher named Billy Bundy to use Daisy Fay as a "glory getter" to bring her back from the dead and bilk the faithful religious out of their donations. The plan falls apart of course, when Daisy is asked to heal a handicapped girl named Betty Caldwell, the girl walked, and the crowd went berserk. Her father and she had to escape quickly in Jimmy Snow's cropduster to Florida, and the diary takes a hiatus for four years. Her mother finds out about what happened, and she is furious (allegedly Daisy's mother hears the news from Kay Bob Benson's equally snobby mother). She pulls Daisy Fay from her father and puts her in a Catholic Boarding School in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When the diary resumes, the year is 1956, Daisy is 16, and she has returned to Shell Beach from living in the Catholic boarding school. Her father still drinks - maybe even more - and her mother has died from cancer. Daisy Fay enters Magnolia Springs high school to find Kay Bob snobbier than ever, but now has a best friend, Pickle Watkins, to endure the trials of high school. She meets Pickle after she comes to Daisy's aid by helping her beat up another local girl, Dixie Nash, who had insulted her because of her living in a Catholic school, while Daisy called Dixie, a Baptist baboon. Along with Pickle, Daisy Fay meets her friend's siblings, older brother Lemuel and younger sister, Judy (aka Baby Sister), who also become her friends. Pickle is obsessed with being accepted by the popular seniors and gets them into situations where they must better themselves socially. Daisy Fay lives in various apartments, hotels, and porches with her father and Jimmy Snow. Pickle gets pregnant by her father, a member of the White Citizens Council, and drops out of school. So does Daisy Fay soon after and becomes involved in a community theater in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she and her father and Jimmy Snow had moved to. She manages the spotlight, then becomes an actor in the various plays and musicals they put on. Her closest friend at this point in her life, is a gay man named Mr. Cecil, a well known hat designer who owns a millinery shop in Hattiesburg. Mr. Cecil is the costume designer for the theater and he is often seen with his ten male cohorts called the "Cecilettes". Other friends at this point in her life included Professor Teasley, the head director of the theater; his wealthy and often eccentric mother Nanny Teasley; Tootie, Helen, and Dolores, three secretaries at the theater, J.R. Phillips, the theater's stage manager, who was supposedly also gay; Hubert Jamison, a fellow (and somewhat vain) actor; and a woman named Paris Knights, an artist who is a friend of Mr. Cecil's. At this point, she is engaged and almost married, but was jilted by her fiance, Ray Layne, when he returns to his former fiancee, named of Ann, and eventually marries her. Seeing her only break to be a professional actress, Daisy Fay, with Mr. Cecil's help, enters the Miss Mississippi pageant in Tupelo, Mississippi, once more meeting up with her perennial antagonist, Kay Bob Benson, who is also a competitor. However, she makes friends with four other girls, Darcy Lewis, Mary Cudsworth, Jo Ellen Feely and Penny Raymond (Darcy met Daisy Fay after overhearing her insult Kay Bob); and has to contend with how the Pageant was rigged by the Pageant's head, a Mrs. Lulie Harde McClay, who had promised the title to a Margaret Poole, who was supposedly sweet and kind, but was very much a hypocrite. Margaret drank, smoked and had many boyfriends. During one of her smoke breaks, while the pageant hopefuls were at the Tupelo Country Club, she tried to get Daisy Fay framed for smoking, and in trouble with Mrs. McClay. Mrs. McClay, spitefully, left Daisy Fay out of the Country Club talent show. However, Darcy and the others, possibly to get revenge on Mrs. McClay for what she and Margaret tried to do to Daisy, and having waited three years to do so, sang an extremely objectionable song which stuns the well-heeled audience, and gets them left backstage at the State Theater, during the final judging of the pageant. After that song, however, Daisy was again set to perform at the theater, with Mrs. McClay thinking that what Darcy and her friends did by singing such an objectionable song was far worse than Daisy smoking a cigarette, which she was innocent of. The talent portion of the show at the theater degenerated into a comedy of errors, as every other contestant's talent entries, excepting Daisy Fay's and a few others, were sabotaged in one way or another by the stagehands union, of which her paternal grandfather was president of (the theater's microphones malfunctioning; the house organ was unplugged; a dummy's mouth which was glued shut, Kay Bob Benson throwing her batons all over because her hands were covered with axle grease, etc.). They carried on like troupers, but afterwards, the sabotaged contestants would either react in abject rage or out of fear. Either way, they whose talent had been sabotaged ended up making fools out of themselves. It was shown that during the final vote, the judges got into a knock down drag out fight over the results. Only the snobbish Mrs. McClay and her ally, Mrs. Peggy Buchanan, the head of the Mississippi Junior League, were on Margaret Poole's side, while the other judges were rooting for Daisy Fay. However Margaret Poole herself had not wanted the title because she was secretly married to an African-American and was pregnant. Whether this was truth, or another scheme, wasn't revealed. This angered Mrs. McClay all the more, and she screamed that she was being sabotaged. She thought of Daisy Fay as white trash, and wasn't refined enough or enough of a Southern lady to be Miss Mississippi. The other judges, though, had their good names and reputations in the community to consider, and they didn't want to run the risk of the news about Margaret Poole being true, hence how they voted. With a lot of help from a lot of people (some of it not quite legitimate), she unexpectedly wins the pageant, to Mrs. McClay's disgust and outrage (because of this, she quits running the Miss Mississippi pageant for good because she felt betrayed) and is off to Atlantic City. After she won, she also discovers, to her shock and joy, that her maternal grandfather, who everyone had thought had died, was in fact alive and well and working as a cab driver in Tupelo. In fact, it was he who had driven his granddaughter to the pageant events. He had kept in touch with her Daddy over the years, despite their not speaking. Before she leaves for the Miss America pageant, however, she gets word that Jimmy Snow, who had been kind of a surrogate uncle to her, had been in a plane crash, and had died of a broken neck. She mourned him, as did her father, and her loyal friend, Mr. Cecil. Her father revealed to her that she was the only person that Jimmy really loved, which surprised Daisy. After that, she achieves her ends and gets out of Mississippi. At the book's end, she states that "I promise that I won't come back until I'm somebody. And I won't." |
The History of the Siege of Lisbon | José Saramago | null | Raimundo Silva, assigned to correct a book entitled The History of Siege of Lisbon by his publishing house, decides to alter the meaning of a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text, so that the book now claims that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese king in taking Lisbon from the Moors. This has repercussions both for himself and for the historical profession. The second plot is Saramago's simultaneous recounting of the siege in the style of a historical romance. |
Sting of the Zygons | Stephen Cole | null | The TARDIS lands the Doctor and Martha in the Lake District in 1909, where a small village has been terrorised by a giant, scaly monster. The search is on for the elusive 'Beast of Westmorland', and explorers, naturalists and hunters from across the country are descending on the fells. King Edward VII himself is on his way to join the search, with a knighthood for whoever finds the Beast. But there is a more sinister presence at work in the Lakes than a monster on the rampage, and the Doctor is soon embroiled in the plans of an old and terrifying enemy. As the hunters become the hunted, a desperate battle of wits begin - with the future of the entire world at stake. |
Tam Lin | Pamela Dean | null | The protagonist of Tam Lin is Janet Carter. Written in the indirect third person, from Carter's point of view, the novel is set during her years as a student in the early 1970s at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota. The characters include her fellow students, professors at the college, her family, and a childhood friend. The plot combines the story of a young woman's life at college with a retelling of the traditional Scottish fairy ballad "Tam Lin". |
The Last Dodo | Jacqueline Rayner | null | The Doctor and Martha Jones go searching for the last dodo. They end up in a museum featuing the last examples of extinct species, all in suspended animation. Many of the exhibits are going missing. The Doctor himself is in danger because he is the last of his race. |
Armadale | Wilkie Collins | 1,864 | The novel has a convoluted plot about two distant cousins both named Allan Armadale. The father of one had murdered the father of the other (the two fathers are also named Allan Armadale). The story starts with a deathbed confession by the murderer in the form of a letter to be given to his baby son when he grows up. Many years pass. The son, mistreated at home, runs away from his mother and stepfather, and takes up a wandering life under the assumed name of Ozias Midwinter. He becomes a companion to his distant cousin, the other Allan Armadale, who throughout the novel never discovers the relationship. But Ozias is constantly haunted by feeling that he might harm Allan, first after he reads the letter left for him, and then again after they spend the night on a shipwreck off the Isle of Man — the ship turning out to be the same on which the murder took place (the murderer locked his victim in a cabin as the boat filled with water). On the boat, Allan has a mysterious dream involving three characters. This dream fills Ozias with foreboding, justifiably so as its three scenes become fulfilled in the course of the novel. Allan inherits estates at Thorpe Ambrose in Norfolk after the mysterious death of three of the family. He is unused to wealth, and falls in love with the sixteen-year-old daughter of Major Milroy, to whom he has rented a cottage. This love affair is for a period thwarted by the machinations of Miss Milroy's governess, Lydia Gwilt. Lydia, who is thirty-five but looks twenty-something, is the villain of the novel and her colourful portrayal takes up much of the rest of the story. Originally Allan’s mother's maid, and a contributor to the conflict between Allan's and Ozias's fathers, she is a fortune-hunter and, it turns out, a murderess. Unable to alienate Allan's affections from Miss Milroy, she settles for marrying Midwinter, having discovered his name is the same. She plots to murder Allan — or to have him killed by her ex-husband, a Spanish desperado — and, since she is now "Mrs. Armadale," to impersonate his widow. Allan escapes the desperado's attempt on his life — he is supposed to have drowned in a shipwreck — and returns to England. Lydia's plans are thus foiled. Her last shot is to murder Allan herself — the weapon being poison gas, the scene being a sanatorium run by a quack called Doctor Downward — but she is thwarted by her own conscience. Midwinter and Allan have switched rooms, and she can't bring herself to murder her true husband, for whom she does have genuine feelings of love. After rescuing Midwinter and writing him a farewell note, she goes into the air-poisoned room and kills herself. Allan marries Miss Milroy; Midwinter, still his best friend, becomes a writer. Some linking passages consist of letters between the various characters, or of extracts from Lydia's journal, but the great majority of the text narrates the events as they occur. The novel is enlivened by many minor characters including Mr Bashwood, an old failure of a clerk who is infatuated with the beautiful Lydia; his son, James Bashwood, a private detective; Mrs Oldershaw, an unscrupulous associate of Lydia’s; the Pedgifts (father and son), Allan's sometime lawyers; and the Rev Decimus Brock, a shrewd (but not quite shrewd enough) clergymen who brings Allan up but who is kept out of the way for much of the book. Is the dream to be interpreted rationally or superstitiously, as Midwinter does? The question is never resolved. “The distortions of the plot, the violent and irrational reactions of the characters, reflect and dramatize the ways in which his readers’ perceptions were distorted by the assumptions and hypocrisies of the society in which they lived," writes Catherine Peters. In the end, the novel is a story of redemption that teaches that the sins of the fathers are not necessarily visited on the children, and the son of a murderer can turn out good. Collins was to take this up again later in The Legacy of Cain. |
Saturnalia | Joel Spector | 2,007 | It is the Season of Misrule in Rome, sheer misery for Falco. Uppity slaves give orders to their cringing masters, masters try to hide in their studies, women are goosed, statues wobble, a prince has a broken heart, Helena’s brother will not decide if his heart is broken or not, children are sick and even the dog can’t stand it any more. As the festival meant for healing grudges riotously proceeds, a young man who has everything to live for dies a horrific death while the security of the Empire is compromised by the usual mixture of top brass incompetence, bureaucratic in-fighting and popular indifference. The barbarians are not just at the gates, they are right inside - and that’s just the bombasts in the Praetorian Guard, encouraged by the pernicious Chief Spy. Doctors are making a killing. Alternative therapists are ecstatic. Members of the Didius family are about to receive some extremely unusual seasonal gifts. But for the non-persons on the fringes of society life is not so jolly, and dark spirits walk abroad (available for hire through the usual agents). Falco has a race against time to find a dangerous missing person, aided and hindered by faces from the past, while running the gauntlet of the best and worst Roman society can offer as Saturnalia entertainment. Unfortunately for him. This is the one with the giant vegetables. This novel makes numerous references to the events in Lindsay Davis' earlier novel in the Falco series, The Iron Hand of Mars (1992). |
The Harlequin | Laurell K. Hamilton | 2,007 | The events of The Harlequin take place one week after the events of Danse Macabre The Harlequin shows Anita and Jean Claude coping with a threat from Vampire Council enforcers. Desperate, Anita calls Edward for assistance. Edward arrives the same day, bringing Olaf and Peter (now 16), who we last saw in Obsidian Butterfly. The Harlequin exists to police and punish vampire leaders who violate various rules, such as Malcolm's resistance to the blood oath. It was formed by the Mother of All Darkness, modeled in style on the Commedia dell'arte and by action on the wild hunt. It is composed of very old and powerful vampires who are capable of not just manipulating the behaviors and emotions of humans or younger vampires and lycanthropes, but of Jean-Claude, Anita, and Richard. Under this influence, Richard and Jean-Claude nearly kill each other, and Anita must also be repeatedly resuscitated. Anita keeps them alive by feeding on first Rafael (and through him, all the wererats in the city); Belle Morte; and later, all the swanmanes in the United States via the swan king, Donovan Reece. Anita's second triumvirate also comes through, with Nathaniel and Damien "eating for five" so as to provide healing energy to Anita — and the others through her. However, the Harlequin appears not to be following its own rules, so by vampire law Jean Claude's people can strike back. Edward doesn't actually kill a Harlequin, Anita does through a psychic link that she accidentally creates while trying to remove a sort of vampire spell that one of the Harlequin has put on her in order to keep track of her and Jean Claude's etc. movements. They subsequently end up killing the human servant of that vampire after Anita has fed on Donovan the king of the swan manes. They recover in time to face off with the remaining members in Malcolm's Church of Eternal Life. They not only succeed, but determine that the Harlequin members were planning to take over Jean-Claude's territory and not operating on official Council orders. Anita almost allows the Mother of Darkness to become a full flesh being by allowing her anger to fester. Anita also leaves her former allies, the werelions, to potential death. At a point where Anita and many of her other allies are injured, sex is demanded from the werelion Rex Joseph so that Anita could gain the power to heal. The rex refuses because he is married and values being faithful to his wife. In a scene reminiscent of The Godfather series, Anita decides that this is a betrayal of their alliance and decides to abandon Joseph. |
Three Witnesses | Rex Stout | null | Wolfe and Archie are in court, under subpoena to testify as witnesses for the prosecution in a murder trial. The State contends that Leonard Ashe hired Bagby Answers, Inc., an answering service, and that he did so to get information about his wife's phone calls. The State also contends that when one of the operators refused to cooperate with Ashe, and threatened to tell his wife, Ashe strangled her with a phone cord. Wolfe and Archie are in court to testify that Ashe had tried to hire Wolfe to spy on his wife. Ashe had been circumspect about it, but that's what Wolfe inferred, and he turned Ashe down. Now Clyde Bagby, owner of the answering service, is on the witness stand and ADA Mandelbaum is questioning him. Bagby testifies that one of his operators, Marie Willis, came to him to complain that Ashe had asked her to listen in on his wife's telephone conversations. Miss Willis had refused, and was going to tell Ashe's wife, the actress Robina Keane, what her husband was doing. Bagby tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Miss Willis. That evening, the police phoned to tell Bagby that Miss Willis had been found, strangled, at her switchboard. At this point in Bagby's testimony, Wolfe leaves the courtroom, with Archie in tow. Wolfe wants to see some people, but Archie objects that they are both under subpoena and Wolfe's testimony is scheduled to follow Bagby's. Wolfe doesn't care: he has now concluded that Ashe did not kill Marie Willis, he does not want to testify in corroboration of Bagby, and the woman sitting next to him in the courtroom was wearing too much perfume. He's not returning until he has more information. Wolfe and Archie head for the answering service's office, where they find Bella Velardi and Alice Hart, two of Miss Willis' co-workers. Due to arcane employment regulations, the offices are in an apartment, where each of the employees has a bedroom. Wolfe and Archie invade one of the bedrooms, and Wolfe is determined to be as obnoxious as possible, so as to see how much incivility the service's employees will stand for. As they are questioning Miss Velardi and Miss Hart, they note the presence of an original Van Gogh painting on the wall, and a stack of racing forms on a table. The interrogations yield little information, except that the women are scared enough to submit to Wolfe's boorish behavior in their own rooms. Wolfe does learn that another employee, Helen Weltz, is in Westchester that afternoon, at a cottage that she has leased for the summer. That's Wolfe and Archie's next stop. When they arrive, Archie has to avoid hitting a new Jaguar parked in front of the cottage. Miss Weltz is not alone, but accompanied by Guy Unger, an acquaintance of several of the women who work at the answering service. To Archie, Unger has the look of an underworld character – mean little eyes and mouth in a big round face. He describes himself as a broker, but when Wolfe presses him, Unger is vague about the sort of business he transacts. Unger wants to talk with Wolfe alone. When Archie takes Miss Weltz for a stroll he learns that she wants out from under something, but is too frightened of Unger to tell Archie what it is. Archie gets her to agree to phone Wolfe's office that evening; Fritz will relay her call to Archie. Back in the car, Wolfe tells Archie that Unger tried to pay him to drop his investigation. Wolfe and Archie head back to the city. They can't go to the brownstone because the judge has issued a warrant for their arrest – they have not complied with their subpoenas. Archie phones Saul and arranges for them to spend the night at his apartment. First, though, Wolfe has another errand: he wants to meet with Ashe's wife. She agrees to see them, and Wolfe convinces her to set up a meeting with Ashe the following morning. By meeting with Ashe, Wolfe contrives to trap ADA Mandelbaum into asking a particular question – one with an answer that Mandelbaum doesn't want to hear. |
My Summer Of Love | Helen Cross | 2,001 | At the beginning of the novel, Mona's sister, Lindy, is getting married for the second time. The date is given as 23 May 1984. Mona is self-conscious of her appearance; she is a bridesmaid. She plays on the fruit machines in the pub in which her family live, and drinks alcohol to help her cope with the day. After the festivities of the day, she goes to a large house in a nearby village. She occasionally tends to the residents' pony, Willow, though the Fakenhams don't pay her much attention, or any money. This evening, however, Mr. Fakenham speaks to her and asks her, in rather an awkward manner, to befriend his youngest daughter, Tamsin - she has been sent home from boarding school and seems to be lonely. Mona herself is feeling quite friendless - she refers to 'poor lost Anne-Marie' as someone who had once been a school-friend. However, they have drifted apart - Mona had lost her mother to cancer a year previously, and she reflects that Anne-Marie was probably emotionally drained by having to support her through her bereavement. However, she thinks it's a very pitiful state of affairs that Tamsin's father is actually begging people to be her friend. Despite this, in the days after the wedding, Mona feels lonely and bored. She is off school - it appears to be exam leave - and she decides to visit the Fakenham's house. She finds Mr. and Mrs. Fakenham in a blazing row. The girls are then left to their own devices. Mona finds herself instantly drawn to - and fascinated by - Tamsin. |
Death Sentence | Brian Garfield | 1,975 | Continuing six months after Death Wish left off, Paul Benjamin has moved from New York to Chicago after his catatonic daughter died in an institution, a result of the brutal attack that changed Paul Benjamin into a vigilante. Paul resumes his private violent war as he stalks criminals in the streets of Chicago. The only thing that may distract him from his crusade is a beautiful woman he starts cordially dating in his new life. And as Paul ends up having a double life, an imitating vigilante is out in the streets violently killing off criminals just like Paul. What's worse is that vigilantism soon begins to become a cry of publicity as the police have to look for their man before innocent people start dying out of injustice. Paul is not only after criminals or justice anymore, but he's also looking for a man who is as equally as dangerous as the vigilante he has become. |
The Rose of Tibet | Lionel Davidson | 1,962 | Charles Houston makes a perilous and illegal journey from India into the forbidden land of Tibet during the unsettled time 1950/51, in the hope of rescuing his vanished brother. What he does not know is that his coming was prophesied a century earlier, and he is awaited by an impossible love, an enormous treasure, and the invading Red Chinese army. |
A Long Way to Shiloh | Lionel Davidson | 1,966 | Caspar Laing is a Professor of Semitic Languages who is asked to translate an ancient parchment found in Israel. Fragmentary as the message is, it appears to give directions to the hiding place of a holy candelabrum rescued from the Jerusalem Temple before its destruction by the Romans in 70 AD. But the Jordanians have a copy of the parchment as well, and the search for the priceless menorah becomes a deadly cat and mouse hunt in the burning Negev desert. The story draws from the Copper Scroll found at Qumran in 1952, which lists buried treasure. |
Kolymsky Heights | Lionel Davidson | 1,994 | A coded message is smuggled out of Russia, a plea for help from a supersecret laboratory deep in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The note is addressed to Johnny Porter, a Canadian Indian of the Gitxsan tribe with a genius for languages and disguises, and reluctantly he is forced to slip across the border on a rescue mission, the consequences of which he little imagines. The detailed picture of life in the Kolyma region and of the native peoples of the Russian Far East (such as the Evenks) and British Columbia (such as the Tsimshian) is impressive. |
Master of the Five Magics | Lyndon Hardy | 1,980 | The book focuses on the adventures of its main character and hero, Alodar, in the fictional land of Procolon. Alodar's self-imposed quest for much of the book is to distinguish himself sufficiently to wed the queen, Vendora. The book is divided into six parts, each of the first five of which corresponds to a discipline of magic learned by Alodar in that portion of the narrative. The final part is entitled "The Archimage" and corresponds to Alodar's mastery of all other forms of magic. In the first three parts, Alodar learns enough of a particular type of magic to make a notable achievement, but the antagonist of that part usurps Alodar's credit and becomes a recognized suitor to the queen. Alodar is then left with an artifact of some type that allows him to begin learning a new discipline of magic. The first part also introduces Aeriel, a female character important in the second half of the book. The fourth part does not feature an artifact; instead, Alodar discovers an ancient wizard placed in suspended animation, who reveals the basics of his craft to Alodar at the start of the fifth part. The fifth part of the book reveals that Alodar's journey was planned by the ancient wizards, who predicted the now-imminent demonic invasion. In the sixth and final part, Alodar uses his knowledge of all five magical disciplines in combination to defeat the leader of the demon army. However, Alodar spurns both marriage to the queen and an offer by his previous antagonists to support a coup placing Alodar on the throne; instead, he chooses to marry Aeriel and continue his apprenticeship. |
The Interpretation of Murder | Jed Rubenfeld | 2,006 | On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on his first - and only - visit to the United States in 1909, a stunning débutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night, another beautiful heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents' home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her ordeal. Soon Freud and his American disciple, Stratham Younger, are enlisted to help Miss Acton recover her memory, and to piece together the killer's identity. It is a riddle that will test their skills to the limit and lead them on a journey into the darkest places of the city, and of the human mind. |
Aggressor Six | Wil McCarthy | null | In this novel humanity is under assault by an overwhelming technologically superior alien race called "Waisters" who are threatening to exterminate the human race. Unlike his later books which focus on humanity's technological evolution and how it affects the definition of humanity, Aggressor Six is a piece of military science fiction. However this novel is set apart from other military science fiction novels in that it maintains Wil McCarthy's adherence to technical scientific realism, particularly during the combat scenes. One major point of the story is that the aliens are technologically far more advanced than the humans, meaning the standard naval models of combat used in many science fiction works would be impractical, requiring a re-examination of how space combat will occur. It also examines the idea that aliens, if encountered, will be truly 'alien'- driven by desires and motives which will not be immediately obvious to humans. |
The Sun Chemist | Lionel Davidson | 1,976 | Letters in the archive correspondence of Chaim Weizmann, first president of Israel, hint that, in his profession as a distinguished organic chemist, Weizmann had stumbled on a method for the cheap synthesis of petroleum. Now, decades later, a world buffeted by oil shocks and perpetually rising prices would welcome such a chemical miracle. But Weizmann's laboratory notebooks must be found first, and an unseen and powerful enemy will stop at nothing to keep them hidden. |
The Chelsea Murders | Lionel Davidson | 1,978 | Someone is killing residents of the hip bohemian London neighborhood of Chelsea, home to literary giants of the past like Virginia Woolf. What thread connects them in someone's mad mind? The only clue is a fragment of film, which accidentally caught images of the murderer, dressed in an outlandish costume and mask. |
Labour | Laura Albert | null | A young boy lives with his mother and her good-for-nothing boyfriend in a small trailer. When a new baby comes along, he must take care of it the best he can, drawing inspiration from a book about the labours of Hercules. |
The Dice Spelled Murder | Ralph Salaway | null | Danny Hogan, a truck driver disaffected with his job at Torgus Trucking, meets beautiful Velma Reed in a seedy Los Angeles bar where she has been working as the bartender's shill, enticing lonely men to buy drinks. Danny doesn't recognize Velma, but the two of them attended the same high school in a distant city, where they were only casually acquainted. Danny was expelled from high school after being caught using loaded dice in an after-school craps game. A short time later, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma became pregnant and also left school and their home town. Now, a dozen years later, Velma recognizes Danny and renews their acquaintance. Appealing to his greed and his masculinity, she convinces him to use his skills with crooked dice in a confidence game to help her separate convention-goers from their money. At first reluctant because of a beating he received in the Army after being caught using altered dice, Danny eventually agrees, hoping to amass enough money to start his own trucking company. He soon comes to realize that Velma, too, has a loftier purpose in mind—buying a motel in Las Vegas that she can operate, in order to become "legit" and no longer feel ashamed of the way she earns money to support her young son, whom she has placed in a boarding school. The bulk of the novel's action surrounds Velma's artful pickup of likely suckers at conventions, mostly in California cities, and Danny's subsequent fleecing of them in craps games. Their adventures bring them into contact with a number of ordinary and extraordinary characters, including a gay con artist toward whom Danny displays a disdain that was probably more politically correct in 1957 than it seems now. Various close calls ensue, and Danny loses some of his enthusiasm for the con. He tells Velma he wants to quit, but she convinces him to run the con with her one last time. Along the way, and unbeknownst to Danny, Velma and another male friend, Joe Lovelli, have committed blackmail. Velma has twice enticed men to her hotel room, where Joe waited in a closet with a camera. Using infrared film, Joe snapped photographs of the men in compromising positions with Velma. The blackmailers then extorted—or attempted to extort—hush-up money from their victims. Danny remains unaware of Velma and Joe's sideline until near the end of the book, when Velma's second blackmail victim, a mob-related big shot, propels the novel to its climax in a fatal car chase. After struggling with a conflict between conscience and ambition, Danny mails the bulk of his dishonest gambling earnings to Velma's young son, keeping only enough to buy a good used truck so that he and Jill Conner—the pretty, young, former office manager at Torgus Trucking—can start their own trucking firm. |
Revelation | Karen Traviss | 2,008 | As Ben Skywalker seeks to find proof that Jacen Solo had killed Ben's mother, Mara, Darth Caedus seeks the Imperial Remnant's help in combating the Galactic Alliance's enemies in the galactic Confederation. While the Moff Council is attracted to Caedus's bid for added power and territory, the Imperial Remnant's leader, Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, is reluctant, as Caedus's actions throughout the war against the Confederation have been horrendous. So Pellaeon contacts fellow Admiral Natasi Daala to help him counter Caedus should he do anything stupid. In response, Daala hires out Boba Fett and his Mandalorians to be on standby should Caedus make a stupid decision, as expected, when the Galactic Alliance and Imperial Remnant ally to defeat the rebels on Fondor. With Fett and his ilk is Jaina Solo, who is training with the Mandos in order to understand how to fight in an unorthodox, which can help her defeat her brother. Meanwhile, Caedus's fellow Chief of State, Admiral Cha Niathal, is a traitor to Caedus, and is secretly allied to Luke Skywalker's Jedi Coalition, for even she knows that Caedus's actions have been too drastic in the war. When the Second Battle of Fondor commences, Caedus's forces easily overwhelm the rebels to the point that the latter group surrenders. Nevertheless, Caedus makes his stupid move by pressing on the attack in order to make sure that the Fondorian rebels will never pose a threat to the Galactic Alliance ever again. As Pellaeon proceeds to turn on Caedus with Daala and her Mandalorian allies for backup, Caedus's envoy to the Imperial Remnant, Tahiri Veila, threatens Pellaeon at blasterpoint to commit the Imperial forces to Caedus's cause. Pellaeon refuses, and is shot to death for his betrayal. As a result, Daala's forces attack Caedus's fleet just as Niathal reveals her true colors and goes against Caedus. Despite this, a large majority of the Alliance fleet still somehow supports Caedus despite his actions, which leaves Niathal and her supporters to go into exile from the Sith Lord's rule. Tahiri is rescued from the invading Mandalorians by Caedus himself, and both of them barely escape death as they return to Caedus's remaining Alliance fleet. In the end, Caedus's forces win as they get the Imperial forces on their side, now that they are ruled solely by the Moff Council in the aftermath of Grand Admiral Pellaeon's death. Ben manages to corroborate enough evidence that points to Jacen being Mara's killer. This becomes especially apparent when Ben's ally in the Galactic Alliance Guard, Lon Shevu, gets Jacen to confess not only that he eliminated Mara, but also that he is the Sith Lord Darth Caedus. The revelation of the story had come to pass in the end. |
If Death Ever Slept | Rex Stout | null | Millionaire Otis Jarrell retains Nero Wolfe to get a snake out of his house – the snake being his daughter-in-law, whom he believes is ruining his business deals by leaking information to his competitors. Since Archie and Wolfe are in the midst of one of their periodic squabbles, it is decided that Archie will move into Jarrell's Fifth Avenue penthouse apartment, posing as his new secretary. While he's away, Orrie tests out Archie's desk. |
And Four to Go | Rex Stout | 1,958 | Wolfe occasionally riles Archie when he takes Archie's services too much for granted. On Wednesday he tells Archie to change his personal plans of two weeks standing so that he can drive Wolfe to Long Island for a meeting on Friday with an orchid hybridizer. After counting ten, Archie explains that he cannot and will not chauffeur Wolfe on Friday. He has promised his fiancee that he will attend her office Christmas party, at a furniture design studio. To substantiate his claim, Archie shows Wolfe a marriage license, duly signed and executed: the State is willing for Archie Goodwin and Margot Dickey to wed. Wolfe is incredulous, but hires a limousine to take him to Long Island as Archie attends the party. There, a conversation between Archie and Margot reveals that Margot has been trying to get her employer and paramour, Kurt Bottweill, to quit procrastinating and marry her. She has suggested to Archie, who is no more to her than a friend and dancing partner, that a marriage license might motivate Bottweill to propose and follow through. Archie gave her the license on Thursday, and now Margot tells him that the plan worked perfectly, that she and Bottweill are to marry. Also attending the party are Bottweill; his business manager Alfred Kiernan; an artisan named Emil Hatch who turns Bottweill's designs into marketable merchandise; Cherry Quon, an East Asian who is the office receptionist; and Mrs. Perry Jerome and her son – Mrs. Jerome is a wealthy widow who is the source of Bottweill's business capital. The Bottweill-Jerome business relationship is apparently based on intimacy, which her son Leo is bent on disrupting. Santa Claus is also present, tending bar. Bottweill starts to toast the season but before he can do so Kiernan interrupts. Everyone has champagne, but Bottweill's drink is Pernod – he keeps an entire case of it in his office. Kiernan brings Bottweill a glass of Pernod. Bottweill finishes his toast, tosses back the Pernod, and promptly dies of cyanide poisoning. As Archie is issuing instructions – call the police, don't touch anything, nobody leave – he notices that Santa has already left. Hatch says no one has left via the elevator, and the only other exit is to Bottweill's office. There's nothing unusual there, and Archie pushes a button that calls Bottweill's private elevator. When it arrives, Archie finds Santa's wig, mask, jacket and breeches on its floor. The police arrive, led by Sergeant Purley Stebbins, and after several hours of questioning he dismisses the partygoers. Purley's first task is to try to find Santa, and if that approach leads nowhere then he'll start after the others. Archie heads back to the brownstone, where Wolfe, having returned from his errand, is eating dinner. Wolfe has heard on the radio a report of Bottweill's death, and after discussing it briefly, Wolfe sends Archie to his room to bring him a book. Archie finds the book, and also finds, draped over it, a pair of white gloves that appear to be identical to the gloves that Santa was wearing while tending bar. Stunned at first, Archie works it out that Wolfe was the bartender in a Santa costume. He must have arranged the charade in order to judge for himself whether Archie and Margot were genuinely involved or the marriage license was flummery. For Wolfe to have gone to such an extreme must mean that Wolfe regarded the situation as potentially desperate. Finally, Wolfe left the gloves for Archie to find so that he would reason it all out for himself, thus sparing Wolfe the necessity of admitting how much he depends on Archie. Archie returns to the office and, skipping the issue of Wolfe's motives, reports on the events that followed Wolfe's escape. Stebbins has established that all the partygoers knew that Bottweill drank Pernod and kept a supply in his office. All knew that a supply of cyanide was kept in the workshop one floor down from the studio: Hatch uses it in his gold-plating work. Any of them could have found an opportunity to get some cyanide from the workshop and, unobserved, put it in Bottweill's current bottle of Pernod. But none of them ran when Bottweill died. Only Santa ran, and the police are concentrating for the moment on finding whoever played Santa. When Archie finishes reporting the doorbell rings. It's Cherry Quon, without appointment, wanting to speak with Wolfe. It comes out that Miss Quon recently became engaged to marry Bottweill. She is convinced that Margot murdered Bottweill in a rage at being thrown over for Miss Quon. And she delivers a bombshell: she knows it was Wolfe who played Santa at the party. Bottweill had told her that morning at breakfast. Miss Quon has a demand. She wants one of Wolfe's men to confess to having played Santa. As he was putting on the costume, in the bathroom attached to Bottweill's office, Wolfe's man heard something, peeked out, and saw Margot putting something in the Pernod bottle. Miss Quon is not blatant about it, but she implies strongly that if Wolfe does not comply with her demand she will tell the police that Wolfe himself was Santa. That's the last thing Wolfe wants – Cramer would lock him up as a material witness and possibly for withholding evidence, and the publicity would be humiliating. But Wolfe refuses to go along with Miss Quon's script. Instead, he sends notes to all the partygoers, inviting the murderer to identify himself. |
The Gentleman of Venice | James Shirley | null | Giovanni is the son of the gardener to the Duke of Venice; though a commoner of the humblest station, he is a serious young man of admirable character — which attracts the attention of Bellaura, the Duke's niece. Giovanni decides to serve as a soldier in Genice's war with Genoa; Bellaura equips him with armor and with a letter of introduction to the military commander, who is her relative. Giovanni distinguishes himself notably in the campaign — so much so that the Duke tells him to name his own reward. With great hesitation, the courageous Giovanni asks for the hand of Bellaura in marriage. But the proud young lady refuses him, and Giovanni returns to his gardening. At the same time, the Duke's son Thomazo has been convicted of high treason. The court is astonished when his old nurse Ursula, Giovanni's mother, pleads for a pardon for him, announcing that Thomazo is really her son, while Giovanni is the rightful heir of Venice. Ursula had switched the two as infants. Giovanni is recognized and accepted as the Duke's son; he and Bellaura are married. In the subplot, Cornari is a wealthy gentleman of Venice (the play's title derives from this subplot) who laments the childlessness of his marriage with his wife Claudiana. He is determined that his debauched nephew Malipiero shall not inherit the Cornari estate. So Cornari abducts an English gentleman called Florelli, a man of virtue and valor, and imprisons the kidnapped man in his palace. Cornari's goal is that Florelli will impregnate Claudiana. When Cornari thinks this has been accomplished, he plans to have Florelli killed; before doing so, Cornari masquerades as a priest and hears Florelli's confession — which convinces him that his wife has kept her virtue and no impregnation has taken place. In fact, Florelli and Claudiana spent their time together praying for Cornari. Ashamed and repentant, Cornari abandons his scheme and releases Florelli. (Florelli is tossed into the street with a bag ove his head; the experience leaves him distracted. He determines, firstly, to get drunk, and secondly, to leave Venice.) Cornari's nephew Malipiero, however, is arrested for participating in Thomzo's treasonous plot, and eventually comes to a sincere reformation of his ways, making him suitable as his uncle's heir. Critic Arthur Nason called the play's comic scenes "worthy of Restoration comedy at its best." |
Emphyrio | Jack Vance | null | Ghyl Tarvoke grows up on the planet Halma with his father Amiante. Their people are ruled by two hundred lords whose forefathers arrived 1500 years earlier and rebuilt a world devastated by many wars. In return, they were granted a 1% tax. Later, all mass manufacturing was outlawed and the people became artisans, selling their handmade work to a single company controlled by the lords. Amiante is a master woodcarver and his son follows in his trade. When he is eight, Ghyl attends a puppet show; part of the entertainment is the traditional drama of Emphyrio, a legendary hero. The proprietor points out a young girl in the audience and informs the boy that she is the daughter of a lord. Some time later, he and a friend sneak aboard a space yacht out of curiosity and are caught by the same girl. She has them beaten and thrown out. As time passes, Ghyl comes to realize that his father is dissatisfied with the constraints of their society. Twice, Amiante is caught by the authorities illegally duplicating ancient documents; the second time, he is taken away for four days. Soon after his release, he passes away. A few years later, Ghyl goes to a ball and encounters the girl, now an appealingly attractive woman, for the third time and finally learns her name, Shanne. That night, they become lovers. But she tells him that she is leaving soon to travel to the stars. An acquaintance persuades Ghyl and three other friends to hijack a space yacht and hold the passengers for ransom. The scheme is only made possible because Ghyl knows the departure date and the particular ship (the same one he sneaked aboard years before) that Shanne is leaving on. However, no ransom is forthcoming. When Ghyl wants to release their captives, there is violent opposition from his fellow kidnappers, resulting in several deaths. In the end, they reach an uneasy compromise: Ghyl is left on a planet with the lords, while the rest take the ship. Ghyl guides his charges to civilization, but notices their odd behavior along the way. He then slips away before they have him arrested. By chance, he sees one of his father's works in a shop. He discovers that it is a reproduction and that the priceless original is in a museum. He talks the shop owner into financing a venture to buy artwork on Halma for more than the pittance the lords pay. However, for some reason, no one is willing to sell to him. Then, though disguised, he is recognized and sentenced to death for his earlier crimes. Escaping a horrible execution undetected, he steals the best works from a warehouse, takes his cargo to Earth, and sells it for a fortune. While there, he visits the Historical Institute and learns the true history of his homeworld. The alien Damarans were forced to abandon Halma by spacefaring invaders. They found refuge on its moon and eventually struck back with warriors they had bred, but by then, their enemy had departed and humans had arrived, only to be attacked. Emphyrio attempted to negotiate peace, but was killed by the Damarans. However, the warriors listened to his message and stopped fighting, forcing the Damarans to resort to other means. Ghyl visits the Damaran moon and finds Emphyrio's place of execution. Seeing the Damarans firsthand, he deduces something of monumental importance. He goes to see the head of the lords on Halma and threatens to broadcast the truth about their relationship with the Damarans. With this leverage, he forces them to leave Halma. Soon afterwards, a human fleet lands on the Damaran moon and extracts payment for centuries of unwitting slavery. |
Second Thoughts | Shobha De | 1,996 | Second Thoughts is a love story about Maya, a pretty girl who is eager to escape her dull, middle-class home in Calcutta for the glamour of Mumbai, where she moves after marriage to Ranjan, a handsome, ambitious man who has an American university degree and a wealthy family background. Maya is determined to be the ideal wife, but finds herself trapped and stifled by the confines of her arranged marriage to a man who, she discovers, is rigidly conservative and completely indifferent to her desires. She begins to experience great loneliness in suburban Mumbai. She strikes up a friendship with Nikhil, her charming, college-going neighbor, leading to love and betrayal. |
Midaq Alley | Naguib Mahfouz | 1,947 | Mahfouz plays on the cultural setting. The novel is introduced with description of the Arabic culture. It centers around the list of characters described below. The novel takes place in the 1940s and represents standing on the threshold of a modern era in Cairo and the rest of the nation as a whole. |
The Moneychangers | Arthur Hailey | 1,975 | As the novel begins, the position of CEO of one of America's largest banks, First Mercantile American (very loosely based on the Bank of America, although it is located in an unnamed Midwestern city) is about to become vacant due to the terminal illness of Ben Roselli, the incumbent chief, whose grandfather founded the bank. Two high-ranking executives groomed for the succession begin their personal combat for the position. One, Alex Vandervoort, is honest, hard-charging, and focused on growing FMA through retail banking and embracing emerging technology; the other, Roscoe Heyward, is suave, hypocritical, and skilled in boardroom politics, and favors catering more to business than to consumers. Many characters and plot lines interweave. Senior bank teller Miles Eastin is discovered to be defrauding the bank whilst casting guilt on another teller, a young single mother. He is dismissed, arrested, and convicted. In prison, his knowledge of counterfeiting brings him to the attention of a gang of credit card forgers, who give him a job on his release. As an affiliate of the forgers, he secretly reports back to the bank's Head of Security; he is discovered and tortured, to be rescued in the nick of time. As readers increasingly appreciate Vandervoort, the protagonist, they learn of his troubled personal life. His advancement in banking circles has come as his marriage is failing; his wife is confined to an inpatient psychiatric facility. Vandervoort is shown as having developed a relationship with Margot Bracken, who is depicted as a radical attorney and political activist many years his junior; her attitudes sometime conflicts with Vandervoort's role at FMA. Meanwhile, Vandervoort's antagonist, Hayward, is depicted as a devout Episcopalian who strives to maintain an air of personal integrity and morality, only to slowly sacrifice them both in his pursuit of the presidency of FMA. As these men pursue their battle for the soon-to-be-vacant position of CEO, various issues involving the banking industry, such as credit card fraud, embezzlement, inflation, subprime lending, and insider trading are discussed. First Mercantile American is eventually revealed to have a doppelganger in the form of an organized crime family. The fight for control of the bank continues under the darkening clouds of an approaching economic recession. One of the two CEO contenders is brought down for his role in making a large loan to a dishonest multinational conglomerate (loosely based on International Telephone and Telegraph) that goes into default. The ensuing scandal causes a bank run and panic among depositors, shareholders, and employees, with the perpetrator committing suicide rather than face the consequences of his actions. The other candidate assumes the position of CEO of the half-ruined bank. |
Moonlight | Harold Pinter | null | Andy, who is on his deathbed, rehashes his youth, loves, lusts, and betrayals with his wife, [Bel], while simultaneously his two sons [Fred and Jake] — clinical, conspiratorial, the bloodless, intellectual offspring of a hearty anti-intellectual — sit in the shadows, speaking enigmatically and cyclically, stepping around and around the fact of their estrangement from their father, rationalizing their love-hate relations with him and the distance that they are unable to close even when their mother attempts to call them home. In counterpoint to their uncomprehending isolation between the extremes of the death before life and the death after is their younger sister, Bridget, who lightly bridges the gaps between youth and age, death and life. (Back cover of the Grove Press ed.) |
Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant: The Final Victory | William R. Forstchen | 2,005 | {| style="clear:right; float:right; background:transparent;" |- | |} The book picks up where the second volume, Grant Comes East left off, after the Confederate victory over the Army of the Potomac. Lee's army meets Grant's army in the bloody "Battle of Frederick". This book has Lee's army, fresh after defeating the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River, dealing with Grant's army of the Susquehanna as it marches through the Cumberland Valley and towards Virginia. Lee's army consists of three corps, two of Veteran Troops under James Longstreet and John Bell Hood. Longstreet's corps numbers around 15,000, with divisions under Allegheney Johnson, 4,000, Lafayette McLaws, 6,000, and Robert Rodes old division (Now under Pierce Doles), 5,000. His largest division under George Pickett is now much reduced since Gunpowder River, and it's now the garrison of Baltimore. Longstreet's corps largely bore the brunt of the fighting there, so it's mainly kept in reserve at Fredrick. Hood commands the II corps, he's been recently promoted. His performance is aggressive and at times sloppy, but always remains as dependable and brilliant. Commanding the largest corps, it numbered 21,000 men, with veteran divisions under Jubal Early 7,000 men, Jerome B. Robertson, 6,000, R.H. Anderson's small command, 3,000 and Alfred Scales's survivors from Fort Stevens, 5,000. Lastly there was Beauregard's new third corps who were mainly troops who used to garrison the Carolinas and Virginia. Divided into three divisions, the officers names are not mentioned. Most likely though, they would've been Robert Ransom, Samuel French and Roswell Ripley, the department commanders underneath Beauregard at the time. His corps numbered close to 20,000 men, but were mainly green troops. Beauregard was often at odds with Lee through this campaign, and jealous. This would take its toll during the battle. On the Union side, Grant commanded all Union forces, and was directly in command of his troops sent from the west, The Army of The Susquehanna. This army consisted of the XIII corps, under Edward Ord. This was Grant's second largest corps, somewhere around 16,000 men full of veteran troops from Shiloh and before, these were the original core sector of Grant's army and its commander was legendary. His next Corps was only temporarily attached under Ambrose Burnside, the IX Corps taken from east Tennessee. It numbered around 16,000 men as well, including one division that is made up of colored troops who had never fired a shot. His third corps was the XVII Corps, his best unit of hardened veterans. His second in command, James Mcpherson, was in charge of those troops. This Corps also had Division commanders such as Blair or Logan. At 13,000 men though, it was the smallest corps in the army. His final Formation was the XIX corps, under Nathaniel P Banks. Made up of crack troops, this formation was the heaviest, numbering over 20,000. Grant also had available to him three other commands, his cavalry, under Ben Gierson and George Custer numbered close to 6,000 sabers. George Sykes commanded the fragment of the once proud Army of the Potomac which numbered close to 15,000-20,000. Lastly, Winfield Scott Hancock commanded the garrison of Washington, close to 43,000 green troops and colored from Washington. The Campaign begins after Lee has smashed the Army of the Potomac at Gunpowder River and Grant has finally completed transporting his army from the west and refitting it in Harrisburg, PA. Grant makes the first move, and begins to march his newly minted Army of the Susquehanna southward down the Cumberland Valley toward Virginia. He also sends a large force of untrained Pennsylvania militia whose enlistments are about to expire under General Darius Couch with a strong cavalry screen directly toward Baltimore as a feint. Lee, in Baltimore with the Army of Northern Virginia, intuits that Grant may be moving his main body south toward Virginia, but he cannot be certain and, thus, cannot fully commit his army until his own cavalry can break through the Union cavalry screen and obtain more information about their order of battle. However, purely as a precautionary measure, Lee does agree to send a pontoon train that was captured from the Union army during the Gettysburg Campaign westward to the vicinity of Frederick, MD, where it would be in better position to assist in any rapid Confederate movements in that direction. General George Armstrong Custer in command of a Union cavalry brigade screening Couch's force learns of Lee's movement of the pontoon train from a loyal Union railroad man, and decides it is an important enough prize that he must abandon his current mission, leaving Couch without proper screening forces. As a result, Lee quickly learns that, as suspected, Couch's force is a feint and of no military concern, and, also, that Custer is moving on Frederick. While the pontoons are not of critical importance, Lee realizes that the town of Frederick itself is extremely critical. Not only does it have critical railroad facilities and equipment that would expedite rapid movement of Confederate forces by rail, but it also sits at the base of the Catoctin Mountains and the passes through which he could launch a rapid attack on Grant's flank as his army marches down the Cumberland Valley. He immediately orders Stuart's three brigades of cavalry to Frederick to support the slim Confederate forces already holding the town, while his infantry follows close behind by rail and on foot (except for Pickett's division, which was decimated in the fight at the Gunpowder River, and is left behind as a rear guard in Baltimore). While this plays out, though, Custer's brigade of cavalry is able to reach Frederick and drive out the two regiments Confederate cavalry holding Frederick and retake the town as well as the critical rail facilities just minutes ahead of Stuart. Custer quickly makes plans both for defense and for destroying critical bridges and rail facilities on the banks of the Monocacy River just east of Frederick, but, before he can complete either, Stuart arrives and immediately begins to attack. His troopers greatly outnumber Custer's, and those numbers soon begin to show. However, Custer leads a brilliant "last stand" and, although he is mortally wounded in the process, he is able to hold out long enough to destroy the critical railroad bridge east of Frederick in spectacular fashion (by exploding several trains' boilers in an intentional collision), and, thus deny the critical rail facilities to the Confederates, which would, in turn, greatly slow efforts to bring infantry forward by rail for the remainder of the campaign. As Custer's last stand reaches its climax, Lee himself feels the result of the destruction of part of the railroad as he nearly dies in a train derailment. Lee along with Alfred Scales's Division arrive at the town shortly after Stuart retakes it and push beyond to seize the passes through the Catoctins with the intention of holding there until the remainder of the Confederate army can come up. James McPherson brings his Union Corps up, driving them relentlessly. When they arrive, his first brigade immediately engages Scales' strong defensive line and suffers heavily. After a half hour, his entire first division was engaged. Fifteen minutes later, his second division arrives and begins to forces Scales' now outnumbered command back. Not wanting to be a hollow wreck, Scales slowly pulled back. By the time McPherson's third and fourth divisions arrive, Scales was in full retreat. McPherson occupies the heights but needs reinforcements. However, Ambrose Burnside stops his corps to rest, which angers Grant. Burnside is relieved and Phillip Sheridan takes his place and tries to drive his men to the front. McPherson advances down from the crest of the Catoctins toward the town of Frederick where Lee decides to set a trap, intending to lure McPherson into the town where he can engage his isolated corps in front while sending additional forces around both flanks before Union reinforcements can arrive. Scales builds defensive positions in the town while Jerome Robertson brings his men to the south of town to flank McPherson in that direction and Stuart brings his troopers to the north to come down on McPherson's northern flank. McPherson's corps enters the town and confused, bloody house-to-house fighting ensues between his forces and Scales'. McPherson's men are taken piecemeal by groups of Confederates, and casualties quickly rise. Then, Robertson smashes through McPherson's flank and bags most of his Corps, killing McPherson in the process. The remainder of his corps flees the town and the day's actions are mainly over, except for a small fight with the IX corps. The first day's battle is a great tactical victory for the Confederates with over 7,000 casualties on the Union side versus only 2,000 on the Confederate side. The next day begins with various skirmishes. Lee is dug in on a ridge to the east of the town. By now the rest of the army has arrived and is dug in, Longstreet on the right\reserve, Hood in the center, and Beauregard on the left. After Grant probes his line, (Banks on the left, Ord on the right, Sheridan in the center and McPherson in reserve in Frederick itself. Grant is on a long ridge, with the town in the center. A road goes up his entire line, which is on the banks of the Monacacy. Throughout the day, the Union make small attacks but to little effect and the fighting on that day is over. The third day begins with Ord assaulting a Confederate salient on the river. After a fierce artillery barrage and duel, Ord attacks and suffers heavily. His first division is nearly destroyed at the ends of Hood's muskets. The second and third divisions redouble their efforts and temporarily push the confederates back to the ridge. Ord follows up on a frontal charge where he is defeated, until Jubal Early's men smash into Ord's line at the ford and after losing heavy casualties pushes Ord across the river for good. At the end of the day, Lee has lost 6,000 men, many of them coming from Early's division, and the past three days add up to 10,000. Ord on the other hand lost all but three thousand of his Corps, which makes the total loss in the army the past three days 23,000 with two full Corps, Ord's and McPherson's, essentially destroyed. Lee now feels his advantage and wants to use it. His plan is to send two of Beauregard's divisions as well as Robertson and Mclaws to assault the union right by going down south, cross the river, and roll up the road that longs along the Union line. Grant on the other hand decides to wait, because he has a trap on a wider scale that is now being sprung. First, he has placed all the forces in the fortifications around Washington under the command of General Winfield Scott Hancock with orders to advance westward along the south bank of the Potomac to seize and fortify all of the crossings that Lee might use if he must retreat back to Virginia. Moreover, the surviving remnants of the Army of the Potomac, now under Sykes, are being transported to Baltimore by sea with the intent of retaking the city and eventually advancing on Lee's rear. Consequently, Grant need only keep Lee's army engaged at Frederick, while these other forces complete their maneuvers. Lee, on the other hand, with his communications to the south soon to be severed will soon have little choice but to attack and defeat Grant here at Frederick. After skirmishing throughout the morning hours, Grant shifts Sheridan's reserves to reinforce Ord. By twelve, Beauregard assaults union pickets at the ford with Stuart's cavalry. After defeating them, he continues up the road on a two division front. But instead of waiting for Mclaws and Robertson's veterans, he goes in without them. The battle drags out and becomes very costly. Beauregard eventually pushes Sheridan's and Ord's men back. The section where the colored and Ord's men are form in a rail road cut. Beauregard tries to rush the position but suffers heavily. He then tries to surround it and mass his attack that way, the same tactic he used at Shiloh in a similar position. This sector called the hornets nest, holds for hour after hour. Casualties mount as he fails to take the position. The colored troops in particular do well, by blunting Beauregard's attack. Eventually Robertson arrives and bayonet charges the position with the Texas Brigade in the thick of it. Robertson is killed and his division is torn to shreds. After hours of fighting, Ord surrenders, but not without inflicting over 10,000 casualties. Lee is furious with Beauregard and thinks of relieving him, for now Grant has bled Lee dry. Lee orders a frontal assault along the entire line and Early, Richard Anderson, Johnson, Doles and Scales to assault Sheridan and Banks. Sheridan and his men put up a fierce fight but are routed after tearing Early's division to shreds and wounding the commander. Banks pulls back as well, the onrushing confederates see victory in sight as they rush up Braddock's heights. Scores of Union are captured as Longstreet and Hood bring their forces upon the fleeing federals. Finally it seemed the road was over and there was a clear road all the way to Washington. Hunt forms a massive battery along two roads in Frederick, with McPherson's old command behind him. After the hornet's nest, Lee directs personally McLaws and two of Beauregard's divisions along with Robertson's old command to assault the town. Going up the two roads, Stuart leads the advance against 160 guns. The assault is torn to shreds as scores fall on the road. Mclaws is killed but his division along with Robertson's old division and Johnson seize the guns. The victory was nearly theirs until Banks arrived and made short work of the attack. Stuart is wounded and Hood was hit near the breakthrough in Sheridan's line earlier. The attack in Frederick was torn apart, divisions torn to shreds. Lee led the assault until taken custody of and sent to the rear. Lee nearly saw them break another time, only to meet failure. The rest of Lee's forces withdrew across the river, ending the battle since they withdrew the next day. Grant won, barely. He lost over 30,000 men killed, wounded and captured. Two of his corps commanders were lost, another wounded. McPherson, Sheridan and Ord's corps were hollow wrecks, he lost two thirds of his force. Lee lost 25,000 men, half his infantry. Mclaws, Robertson, Anderson, Johnson and all three of Beauregard's divisional commanders were dead. Early, Hood, Fitz Lee, Stuart, Jenkins, Beauregard and Jones were wounded. This was the turning point of the war, and it cost the south's last hope: The army of Northern Virginia. At the same time as Lee was making his final desperate attacks at Frederick, the other parts of Grant's plan were coming together. Hancock's army seized all crossings of the Potomac to Lee's south and, with the assistance of volunteer work brigades composed of Washington D.C.'s African American population, constructed an impregnable line fortifications literally overnight. Meanwhile, General Sykes with the remainder of the Army of the Potomac landed at Baltimore, routed Pickett's rear guard, and, after seizing the remainder of the Confederate Army's supplies, began to advance westward on Lee's rear. With his army fought out and short of supplies and, now, facing threats to his flanks and rear, Lee was left with no choice but to retreat back to Virginia. He first tried to retake the Potomac crossings now held by Hancock, but he was driven back. Marching westward, while attempting to hold off Grant to his north and the now rapidly advancing Sykes to the west, Lee searched for and, eventually, found an undefended crossing. He began to build the pontoon bridge, but, as the bridge neared completion, Lee again found himself pressed on all sides. First, Hancock advanced artillery to a point close enough to begin a bombardment of the bridge, which greatly slowed progress and threatened to destroy the bridge before it could even be used. Then, Sykes attacked and was able to drive right to the bridge and seize it along with a number of prisoners. Lee attempted to march the remainder of his army away, but his army was now greatly outnumbered, low on supplies and physically exhausted. By the following day, Grant's army caught up with Lee as well, leaving him surrounded on all sides. After briefly considering one final, desperate attack to push Grant aside and breakout to Virginia, Lee sees the futility of it and agrees to surrender. Lee was only responsible for the Army of Northern Virginia, but its surrender became the death blow to the Confederacy. After the surrender, Grant paroled Lee and his army, and allowed them to "go home". Then, he declared a 30-day, unilateral truce, ostensibly to give the paroled Confederates time to return home, but more so to give Confederate President Jefferson Davis time to "come to his senses" and realize the war was lost. However, Davis tried desperately to build a new army to defend Virginia and continue the fight, but his plan consisted mostly of redrafting the now-paroled Lee and his troops back into service. Lee's honor would not permit him to fight again when it was strictly forbidden by the terms of his parole, so he resigned from the army and, due to the great respect his generals and soldiers had for him, they all followed suit. Without an army, Davis was left with no choice but to surrender, ending the war. |
A Stitch in Time | null | null | Presented as a letter from DS9's resident Cardassian spy and tailor Elim Garak (writer Andrew Robinson's character from the series) to Dr Julian Bashir, Garak recounts his life story, and also notes developments on Cardassia after the end of the Dominion War. According to the text, Garak has since assisted in the rebuilding and recovery of Cardassia, while also supporting democratic reforms for its government. He believes that the Dominion War and destruction of Cardassia were partially caused by Cardassia's military-led government. Robinson has stated that one of the reasons he wrote the novel was to get "total closure" of the character. |
Idylls of the Rat King | Jeff Quinn | null | In Idylls of the Rat King, goblin bandits have taken up residence in an abandoned mine northwest of Silverton. Someone must get rid of them. But this is no ordinary abandoned mine. It was deliberately barricaded generations ago when the Gannu family, founders of Silverton, discovered an unspeakable evil on its lowest levels. And these are no ordinary goblins, for the curse of the Gannu family courses through their veins. |
The Last Defender of Camelot | Roger Zelazny | 1,979 | The story concerns Lancelot who has survived to the present day by means of magic. He must help Morgana le Fay confront Merlin, who is half-mad and attempting to meddle in the affairs of the world. Lancelot has remained alive since the fall of Camelot, having the appearance of an elderly man but retaining his strength and fighting skills. He has spent his long life seeking the Holy Grail, believing that his immortality is punishment for his sins, and that finding the Grail will end his curse. Lancelot instead learns from Morgana le Fay that Merlin is responsible for his condition. Merlin has slept for centuries, but is about to awaken, and intends for Lancelot to be his champion and protector. Morgana warns Lancelot that Merlin will cause great harm in his misguided attempts to right the wrongs of the modern world, and that he must be stopped. Lancelot finds Merlin and rejuvenates him from his centuries-long sleep with a magic elixir. Lancelot tries to persuade Merlin to desist from his plans, and Merlin removes the spell of immortality. Anticipating Merlin, Lancelot drinks the remainder of the elixir to restore his own youth. Merlin summons a "hollow knight" (a suit of armor animated by a spirit) to kill Lancelot. Morgana defeats Merlin, and Lancelot vanquishes the spirit, but is mortally wounded. As Lancelot dies, he finally sees a vision of the Holy Grail. |
Here Be Monsters! | null | null | Arthur lives with his adoptive grandfather, William, in the complex network of tunnels beneath Ratbridge. William went underground after being unjustly accused of attempted murder. Arthur emerges at sundown in search of food, aided by a pair of hand-cranked mechanical wings. He also carries a doll—an effigy of his grandfather with his wings—which serves as a walkie-talkie, allowing him to communicate with his grandfather. On one such expedition Arthur witnesses an illegal cheese hunt. He follows the hunters and the captured cheeses back to the Cheese Hall. Arthur's wings are stolen, and he is almost captured, by Archibald Snatcher, the leader of the once-powerful Cheese Guild. Arthur is rescued by Fish, a boxtroll, who takes Arthur to meet his friend, Willbury Nibble. Willbury is the proprietor of a former pet shop called Here Be Monsters. He shares his home with several boxtrolls (Shoe, Egg, and Fish) and a cabbagehead (Titus). Such creatures usually live underground and are collectively termed Underlings. Arthur's new friends intend to use their knowledge of the Underground to help him return to his grandfather, but they quickly discover that all of the entrances to the tunnels have been sealed. Back at the shop, a mysterious individual sells Willbury a number of miniaturized creatures and attempts (unsuccessfully) to buy their full-sized counterparts. Later, during a shopping trip, Willbury and Arthur are surprised to find that miniaturized Underlings are being marketed to Ratbridge's women as the latest fashion trend. They also seek out Willbury's friend, Marjorie. An inventor, Marjorie is camped out at the patent office, waiting for the return of the clerk who left with the prototype of her latest invention. When they return to the shop, the place is a shambles and the Underlings are missing. While assessing the wreckage they are visited by Kipper and Tom, members of the crew of the Ratbridge Nautical Laundry, soliciting customers. The Laundry is headquartered on a ship that became stuck in a canal and is staffed by a combination of men, rats, and crows. (Playing against stereotype, the rats are portrayed as intelligent, congenial characters who share leadership duties with the men. It is alluded to that the crew were pirates before going into business as a laundry.) Several of their crew have also gone missing and they are happy to join the search for the Underlings. The group begins surveillance of the Cheese Hall. After seeing the Guild members leave on another illegal hunt, Arthur slips inside. He retrieves his wings and helps a number of Underlings (including his friends) escape from the dungeon. They return to the Nautical Laundry. However, corrupt police officers arrest Arthur and hand him over the Guild; he is imprisoned in the dungeon. The prisoner in the adjoining cell—Herbert, the Man in the Iron Socks—tells Arthur that the Guild is creating miniature creatures, although he doesn't know why. He helps Arthur retrieve the keys to their cells from the sleeping guard. Meanwhile, Willbury, Marjorie, and several members of the Laundry disguise themselves as boxtrolls and enter the Underground via an open tunnel outside the city walls. They locate Arthur's grandfather, but soon the party is caught in the traps used by the Guild to capture Underlings and taken to the laboratory. Marjorie recognizes an enlarged version of her stolen invention—now revealed to be a size transference device. A gigantic rat emerges from a pit in the middle of the floor. The Laundry members recognize it as one of their missing comrades, although greatly enlarged. Snatcher reveals that the Guild has been transferring the size of captured Underlings to "the Great One", and feeding him with the captured cheeses, so that they can wreak vengeance on Ratbridge. Still believing her to be a boxtroll, the Guild transfers Marjorie's size to the rat, leaving her only seven inches tall. Arthur is then brought into the lab and is to be the next shrunk. However his guard is actually Herbert, disguised as a Guild member. Herbert is able to free the captives using his "walloper"—a large mallet—and knocks a hole in the wall to allow their escape. Arthur again retrieves his wings—and Marjorie's prototype—and the group quickly returns to the ship. The Guild proceeds to dress the Great One in battle armor, and the hole in the wall only allows him an easier exit. Seeing the danger the town is in, the heroes return to the Cheese Hall hoping to stop the Great One. They activate a large electromagnet, which draws the iron armor back toward the hall. However, the pressure within the armor is so great that the Great One explodes, covering the town in a layer of cheese. The shock wave triggers a collapse of the underground tunnels below the hall. Using the prototype size transference device, the miniaturized creatures are returned to their normal size. William is able to clear his name, and he, Arthur, and Herbert take up residence in comfortable rooms above the old pet shop. |
Sometimes a Great Notion | Ken Kesey | 1,964 | The story centers on the Stamper family, a hard-headed logging clan in the fictional town of Wakonda, Oregon. The union loggers in the town of Wakonda go on strike in demand of the same pay for shorter hours in response to the decreasing need for labor due to the introduction of the chainsaw. The Stamper family, however, owns and operates a company without unions and decides to not only continue work, but to supply the regionally owned mill with all the lumber the laborers would have supplied had the strike not occurred. This decision, and the surrounding details of the decision, are deeply explored in this multilayered historical background and relationship study—especially in its examination of the following characters: Henry Stamper, the old and half-crazed patriarch whose motto "Never Give A Inch!" has defined the nature of the family and its dynamic with the town; Hank, the oldest son of Henry whose strong will and personality make him a leader but his subtle insecurities and desires threaten the stability of his family; Leland, the younger son of Henry and half brother of Hank, whose constant weaknesses and the nature of his intellect led him away from the family to the East Coast, but whose eccentric behavior and desire for revenge against Hank lead him back to Oregon; and Viv, whose love for her husband Hank fades quickly when she begins to realize her true place in the Stamper household. The family house itself manifests the physical stubbornness of the Stamper family; as the nearby river widens slowly and causes erosion, all the other houses on the river have either been consumed or wrecked by the waters or moved away from the current, except the Stamper house, which stands on a precarious peninsula struggling to maintain every inch of land with the help of an arsenal of boards, sand bags, cables, and other miscellaneous items brandished by Henry Stamper in his fight against the encroaching river. |
The King's Last Song | Geoff Ryman | 2,006 | Set in Cambodia, it tells the story of Map, a policeman and former Khmer Rouge, and young motoboy William as they search for the gold leaf memoirs of the 12th Century king Jayavarman VII, which have been stolen by a former lieutenant of Pol Pot. The memoir is fictional, but Jayavarman is not, and an account of his life and reign is told in a parallel thread. In addition there is a lengthy flashback to Map's violent activities in the last years of the Cambodian war. The novel makes explicit the contrast between ancient Cambodia's opulence and the poverty and corruption of its modern counterpart. |
An Abundance of Katherines | John Green | 2,006 | Colin Singleton is an anagram-loving seventeen year old boy who has become depressed because though he has maintained his status of a child prodigy, he has not yet become a “genius.” He wishes to accomplish this goal by having a Eureka moment. As well as not being the genius he hopes to be, his girlfriend, Katherine 19 (over the span of his life, Colin has dated nineteen girls named Katherine, all spelled in that manner), recently dumped him. In these relationships, Colin remembers only the Katherine dumping him. After graduating from high school, and before college, Colin's best and only friend convinces him to go on a road trip with him to take his mind off the breakup. The friend is Hassan Harbish, a funny, lazy, Judge Judy-obsessed Muslim. After driving for a while, they come across the alleged resting place of the body of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. There, they meet Lindsey Lee Wells, a “paramedic in training.” She is the tour guide for those seeing the tomb of the Archduke. After a short time, Colin and Hassan find themselves employed by Hollis, Lindsey’s mother and the woman running a local factory that currently produces tampon strings. They live with their employer and her daughter in a rural town called Gutshot, Tennessee. As time passes, Colin finds himself becoming attracted to Lindsey, though matters are somewhat complicated by her on-again, off-again boyfriend Colin (he and Hassan call him TOC, "the other Colin"). Our Colin, the prodigy, attempts to become a genius by having his Eureka moment. He chases this goal through his theorem, which is meant to determine the curve of any relationship based on several factors of the personalities of the two people in a relationship. It would predict the future of any two people. His theorem eventually works for all but one of his past relationships with a Katherine. But it is later discovered by Colin that he had dumped this Katherine (Katherine the Third), rather than the other way around. The graphs all make perfect sense at this juncture. As Colin’s story is revealed to the reader, we find that K-19 was also the first of the Katherines, “Katherine the Great.” While the backstories of Colin’s life play out, Hassan gets a girlfriend, Katrina, a friend of Lindsey’s. The relationship is cut short when Colin and Hassan find her having sex with TOC in the graveyard where the Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s corpse is. A fight between TOC and all of the surrounding acquaintances begins when Lindsey finds out that he’s been cheating on her. While recovering from a kick to the groin, Colin anagrams the Archduke's name to dull the pain, and discovers that it is actually Lindsey's great-grandfather, named Fred N. Dinzanafar, that is buried in the tomb. Colin finds Lindsey at her secret hideout in a cave that she had shown him previously, where he tells her the story of every Katherine he ever loved. Lindsey tells him that she feels so self-centered, claiming that she does not feel sad but instead slightly relieved by TOC's affair. They then confess their love for each other. But when Colin applies the Theorem to him and Lindsey, it calculates that she will dump him in four days. Lindsey then slips a note under his door, four days later, stating that she cannot be his girlfriend because she is in love with Hassan. But she leaves a P.S. stating that she is joking. Colin realizes that his theorem cannot predict the future of a relationship. It can only shed light on why a relationship failed. Despite this, Colin is content not “mattering”. Hassan also states that he is applying for two college classes, which Colin has been trying to convince him to do throughout the book. The story ends with the trio driving to a nearby Wendy's, with Lindsey saying they could just "keep going and not stop." Colin takes her advice, as a transcendental and ecstatic feeling of "connection" with Lindsey, Hassan, and everyone not in the car surges through him. He has finally found peace and happiness via connection with other people, rather than from the pursuit of distinguishing himself from everyone, feeling "non-unique in the very best way possible." |
Restless | William Boyd | 2,006 | In the novel, Boyd tells the story of Eva, a young Russian woman, who is recruited after her brother's death to work for the British secret service. During this time she falls for her mentor and boss, Lucas Romer. But all is not as it seems as Romer is working as a double agent which ultimately leads to the attempted murder of Eva, alongside the deaths of other agents. The tale is interlinked with the present day story of Eva's daughter and how she comes to terms with the discovery of her mother's secret life. The setting of the novel is in London, Oxford, Scotland, Europe, and the United States. |
The Key | null | null | The entire story is written in diary form, alternating between the entries of an elderly man who decides to spice up his ailing marriage with a series of intrigues and that of his much younger wife, who complies with her husband's desires without letting him know she is aware of his schemes. |
The Serpent Mage | Greg Bear | 1,986 | Michael Perrin has completed his magical training and is now back home, living with his parents and continuing his training. Perrin has inherited Arno Waltiri's home and estate. Perrin moves in and begins to go through Waltiri's papers, where he finds a strange news story about bodies that were discovered in a nearby hotel. Perrin is contacted by a musical faculty member from UCLA, Kristine Pendeers. Pendeers is searching for Infinity Concerto - Opus 45 with hopes that is has been left in Waltiri's estate, with the goal of completing Mahler's unfinished Symphony and performing the two pieces together. Perrin trains an apprentice Sidhe, and tries to arbitrate a peace between Sidhe and humans. |
Marianela | null | null | The novel takes place in the fictional town of Socartes, Spain. The town's name refers to the philosopher Socrates and his ideas about internal and external beauty. It tells the story of Marianela (sometimes referred to as "La Nela"), a poor orphan girl with an ugly face, and her love for Pablo, a blind boy, who has feelings for La Nela as well. Marianela frequently sings to Pablo, and he believes she is beautiful because of her voice. Pablo's father asks a famous doctor, named Teodoro Golfin, to come and examine Pablo to see if his sight can be restored. Pablo, full of hope at the prospect, promises La Nela that he will marry her after the operation if it is successful. He is convinced that La Nela is beautiful, even when she tells him otherwise. In the meantime, Pablo's father plans for Pablo to marry his beautiful cousin, Florentina, but tells neither of them about it. Florentina comes to Socartes and when Marianela first sees her, she mistakes her for the Virgin Mary because of her beauty. When Florentina is out walking with Pablo and Marianela, she expresses her pity for La Nela because she is poor, abandoned and nobody loves her. She vows to take charge of Nela and clothe and educate her. Pablo eventually gets the operation that gives him his sight. Before seeing Nela, he sees Florentina and proposes to her instead. Because of this, Nela attempts suicide but is saved by Teodoro Golfín, the eye doctor who cured Pablo. He and Florentina take Nela to Pablo's villa and take care of her while she is hiding away from Pablo because of her looks. Then, due to Pablo's desire to see her, Pablo finds his way to La Nela's room and serenades Florentina. He then sees La Nela in bed and confuses her for "just a poor girl who Don Teodoro took in from the street." La Nela then admits it is she and kisses his hand three times. Upon the third kiss, she dies of a broken heart and leaves Pablo distraught. |
Needle | Hal Clement | 1,950 | The Hunter, an alien lifeform (when not inside another being, resembling a four-pound green jellyfish) with the ability to live in symbiosis with and within another creature, is in hot pursuit of another of his kind. Both crash their ships into Earth, in the Pacific Ocean, and both survive the crashes. The Hunter makes its way to shore (its erstwhile host having been killed in the crash) and takes up residence in the nearest human being it can find (as it turns out, fifteen-year-old Robert Kinnaird) without letting the human being know. By the time it has figured out enough of what goes on inside a human being to look through Bob's eyes, it is shocked to find itself within an air vessel, being carried further away from its quarry every second. As it happens, Bob is simply returning to a New England boarding school from his home on an industrial island in the Western Pacific. Once Bob arrives at school, the Hunter sees no alternative to communicating with his host. After initial attempts produce panic in the boy, the Hunter eventually finds a way to convince Bob of his presence. Bob is very accepting of his guest, perhaps beyond what would be expected of a teenage boy who learns another entity is inside him, observing his every move. The two plot a way to return home. The puzzle distracts Bob from his studies, leading to a decline in grades that the school authorities ascribe to homesickness, and he is sent home for the remainder of the term. Upon arrival, the two begin to seek out their quarry. Bob is injured by an accident. The Hunter is able to hold the wound together, but he can't stop Bob from limping, and Bob is sent to the island doctor. They see no alternative to confiding in the doctor (the Hunter is forced to show his own form to convince the man) and the doctor becomes an ally in their search. Which of the many humans on the island is the host to their quarry? It is worse than a needle in a haystack (thus the title) because a needle at least looks like a needle, not a piece of straw. The Hunter is able to solve the riddle by observing the behavior of the island people. Bob's father, known for his attention to detail and safety, has been taking amazing risks. He is at least unconsciously aware that an accident will have no ill consequences. The quarry resides within him. The Hunter confirms this, and Bob and the alien have a new puzzle—how to get the alien out of Mr. Kinnaird's body without harming the man? This time, Bob comes up with the solution. He places himself in the middle of a large number of (empty) oil cans, uses a little actual oil to start a small fire, making it look like there will be a huge explosion shortly, and calls his father for help. The fugitive alien, fearful of being killed in the explosion, knocks out his host and removes himself from Mr. Kinnaird's unconscious body. As soon as the alien is a few feet away from Bob's father, the boy grabs the one full oil can, races over to the alien, pours oil over it, and lights it on fire. He then tends to his father. Mr. Kinnaird is fine, but Bob is worried. He and the Hunter had better come up with a good story for the man, or the Hunter will have to find some way to assuage the pain of a spanking. |
ESPY | null | null | The film deals with the recruitment of racecar driver Jiro Miki (Kusakari) and his dog, Cheetah, to a group of people who use ESP, psychokinesis, and other special mental abilities to fight crime. The major villain is Wolf (Wakayama), whose behavior stems as a result of the prejudicial murder of his father over his father's psychic abilities. |
The Strategy Paradox | Michael E. Raynor | 2,007 | The Strategy Paradox, the title and focus of the book sets up a ubiquitous but little-understood tradeoff. The tradeoff is that most strategies are built on specific beliefs about an unpredictable future, but current strategic approaches force leaders to commit to an inflexible strategy regardless of how the future might unfold. It is this commitment to uncertainty that is the cause of "the strategy paradox." |
The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp | Rick Yancey | 2,005 | A teenager named Alfred Kropp lives in a small apartment with his Uncle Farrel, who is a security guard. He stays mostly secluded, both at home and at school. A man named Arthur Myers calls Alfred's uncle at work, and offers one million dollars for the return of an object stolen from him by Uncle Farrell's boss. Basically, Alfred has to break into the main office, find the safe, and steal the object himself, accidentally cutting himself on the blade of the sword. Then when he is about to leave, he is attacked by three monks. A battle ensues, but Alfred manages to defeat them with Excalibur. Alfred and Uncle Farrell manage to escape, where they are attacked by Arthur Myers. He steals the sword, and kills Uncle Farrell, sparing Alfred. Alfred meets Bernard Samson ( Bernard is Alfred´s dad), who explains to him that Arthur Myers was an alias of an international terrorist, who wanted control of Bernard's sword, which was Excalibur. Bernard Samson, the heir of Lancelot, goes off to Jativa, in Spain, to try to reclaim the Sword from Myers, whom he knows as Mogart. A member of an international organization called OIPEP interjects that their codename for Mogart is 'The Dragon'. When Alfred asks Samson if there is anything he can do to help, Samson replies, "Pray." Alfred returns to his normal life unwillingly, and is taken into a foster home owned by a family called the Tuttles. Alfred, unsatisfied with his normal life, takes to hanging around the nearby town, particularly the cafes. There, Alfred meets Bennacio, a knight protector of the sword (and the lead monk who attacked him); he reveals that all the defenders, including Samson, were killed, and the sword was lost. After relating this, Bennacio leaves the coffee shop they were in and Alfred follows him. Alfred sees Bennacio get attacked and attempts to save him. They go to Bennacio's room at the Marriott, where Bennacio uses Alfred's blood (where he cut himself) to heal the wound. Bennacio explains to Alfred that Excalibur has the power to heal, and that having been cut by it, Alfred has been granted the power to heal. The next day, Bennacio is ready to leave without Alfred, but he pleads to the knight to help in any way he can. Bennacio offers Alfred a chance to drive him. They drive to Canada (In a Koenigsegg CCX) and steal a Ferrari Enzo, but are attacked by more of Mogart's henchmen. Bennacio kills them when he has the chance and then continues on their journey. They stop at a deceased knight's house, where Windimar's mother lets them stay. They leave the next day, and get attacked once again. This time there are six of them on Suzuki Hayabusas. Alfred and Bennacio continue through Nova Scotia, and hijack a Jaguar because their Ferrari was critically damaged. They then fly to France. In France, Bennacio tells Alfred that he is a descendant of Lancelot, making him the heir to his father's title. Then OIPEP offers to trade 10.5 billion dollars for the sword; however, Mogart double crosses them and kills Bennacio in the process, leaving Alfred as the last man standing. Mike Arnold, a member of OIPEP who set up the exchange, is also revealed as a traitor at this time. Bennacio's daughter, Natalia, is taken by Mogart, and held for a ransom. Alfred personally travels to Merlin's cave in England in order to save Bennacio's daughter. Here, in Merlin's Cave in Tintagel, Kropp finds his true destiny as the master of the Sword. Mogart is unable to kill him with it even though Kropp is impaled upon the sword and pinned to the wall of Merlin's Caves underneath Tintagel. As in the original King Arthur stories, Mogart is unable to pull the sword out of the stone as only the Master of the Sword can claim it. Kropp, having healed himself with the sword, pulls the sword out of the stone, finishes off Mogart, and returns home as a hero. At the end of the story, Alfred finds that he yearns for more excitement and calls OIPEP, wanting a job fighting "agents of darkness." |
The Ghost Brigades | John Scalzi | 2,006 | The main character in this narrative is Jared Dirac. He is instilled with the consciousness of a traitor, Charles Boutin, and has to deal with memories of a life he hasn't lived, while trying to find out who he really is himself. Jared is a member of the Special Forces, also known as The Ghost Brigades. Jane Sagan and Harry Wilson are the only primary characters returning from Old Man's War. |
The Prairie: A Tale | James Fenimore Cooper | 1,827 | The story opens with Ishmael, his family, Ellen and Abiram slowly making their way across the virgin prairies of the Midwest looking for a homestead, just two years after the Louisiana Purchase, and during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They meet the trapper (Natty Bumppo), who has left his home in New York state to find a place where he cannot hear the sound of people cutting down the forests. In the years between his other adventures and this novel, he tells us only that he has walked all the way to the Pacific Ocean and seen all the land between the coasts (a heroic feat, considering Lewis and Clark hadn’t yet completed the same trek). That night, a band of Teton warriors steal all of Ishmael’s animals, stranding the immigrants. The doctor returns the next morning along with his donkey. The trapper helps the family relocate their wagons, including one with mysterious contents, to a nearby butte where they will be safer when the Tetons return. Middleton joins the group when he stumbles upon the trapper and Paul. Before they return to the butte, Ishmael and his family go looking for his eldest son, Asa, whom they find murdered. The trapper, Paul, and Middleton return to camp, find Inez whom Abiram and Ishmael had been keeping captive, and flee with her and Ellen. Ishmael chases them until the Tetons capture the Trapper and his crew. They escape the Tetons, and then Ishmael forms an alliance with the Indians. The Indians attempt to recapture the trapper by surrounding them with a prairie fire, but the trapper lights a backfire and saves everyone. They meet up with Hard-heart, a Pawnee Indian who survived the fire wrapped in a buffalo skin, and attempt to escape to his village. The Tetons capture them. Ishmael demands the trapper, Inez, and Ellen for helping the Tetons but is denied and turned away. Mahtoree intends to take Inez and Ellen for his new wives. Le Balafre attempts to spare Hard-heart’s life by making Hard-heart his son. Hard-heart refuses, kills Weucha, and flees the village. When Hard-heart’s Pawnee warriors attack the Teton village, the trapper and his friends escape, only to be captured by Ishmael. The trapper is accused of Asa’s death until Abiram’s guilt is discovered. Abiram is executed, and Ishmael’s family returns east without Inez, Ellen, or the doctor. Middleton, Inez, Paul and Ellen travel back to Louisiana and Kentucky, respectively, while the trapper joins a Pawnee village located on a tributary of the Missouri River. Middleton and Paul return just in time to witness the trapper's noble death and bury him. |
Unburnable | null | null | Covering the African Diaspora, and offering a reinterpretation of Black history, the narrative of family, betrayal, vengeance, and murder, follows the fictional character Lillian Baptiste as she is willed back to her island home of Dominica from Washington, D.C. to finally settle her past. Haunted by scandal and secrets, Lillian Baptiste fled Dominica when she was fourteen after discovering she was the daughter of Iris, the half-crazy woman whose life was told of in chanté mas songs sung during Carnival: songs about a village on a mountaintop littered with secrets, masks that supposedly fly and wreak havoc, and a man who suddenly and mysteriously dropped dead. After twenty years away, Lillian returns to her island of birth to face the demons of her past. |
The Journal of Julius Rodman | Edgar Allan Poe | 1,840 | The Journal of Julius Rodman is a fictionalised account of the first expedition across the Western Wilderness, crossing the Rocky Mountains. The journal chronicled a 1792 expedition led by Julius Rodman up the Missouri River to the Northwest. This 1792 expedition would have made Rodman the first European to cross the Rocky Mountains. The detailed journal chronicles events of the most surprising nature, and recounts "the unparalleled vicissitudes and adventures experienced by a handful of men in a country which, until then, had never been explored by 'civilised man'." Julius Rodman was an English emigrant who first settled in New York, then moved to Kentucky and Mississippi. His expedition which departed from Mills' Point up the Missouri River with several companions was described in a diary. The MS. of the diary was submitted by his heir, James E. Rodman. Rodman is accompanied on his expedition by Pierre, Alexander Wormley, Toby, a Virginian, Andrew Thornton, and the Greely brothers, John, Robert, Meredith, Frank, and Poindexter. The party is described as "mere travellers for pleasure", abandoning commercial or pecuniary motives. They traveled by canoe and by a thirty foot long keelboat which was bulletproof. The travelers described the White Cliffs of the Missouri: "The face of these remarkable cliffs, as might be supposed, is chequered with a variety of lines formed by the trickling of the rains upon the soft material, so that a fertile fancy might easily imagine them to be gigantic monuments reared by human art, and carved over with hieroglyphical devices." In the final chapter, a ferocious attack by two grizzly bears on the expedition party is described: "We had scarcely time to say a word to each other before two enormous brown bears (the first we had yet encountered during the voyage) came rushing at us open-mouthed from a clump of rose-bushes." Their fiercenss was detailed: "These animals are much dreaded by the Indians, and with reason, for they are indeed formidable creatures, possessing prodigious strength, with untamable ferocity, and the most wonderful tenacity of life." A member of the party, Greely, is attacked and mauled by one of the bears. Rodman and another member, the Prophet, assist him. They shoot the bear but cannot stop the attack. Subsequently, Rodman and the Prophet are attacked. Cornered on the cliff, they are saved from death by Greely, who shoots the bear at point-blank range: "Our deliverer, who had fought many a bear in his life-time, had put his pistol deliberately to the eye of the monster, and the contents had entered his brain." |
Requiem for the Conqueror | W. Michael Gear | 1,991 | Humanity is trapped in a "gravity well", the so-called Forbidden Borders and there is increasing conflict because of ever-decreasing space resources. Staffa Kar Therma a.k.a. the Lord Commander is a mercenary who leads an elite group of soldiers (the Companions) and aligns himself to the group that pays him the most. He is separated from his soldiers and falls in to the hands of a slave trader but escapes, and comes into contact with a quasi-religious group led by the magister (who in turn is advised by the MagComm). The magister (under the guidance of the MagComm) believes that the Lord Commander is the root of all evil and attempts to assassinate him. Meanwhile Staffa discovers that his son is alive and is the leader of a battalion of the emperor's forces. Staffa finally escapes from the magister and the MagComm, killing the former and partially destroying the latter. The partially destroyed MagComm's automated repair mechanisms kick in and the computer becomes self-aware. |
The Imposture | null | null | Flaviano is the courtly favorite of the Duke of Mantua; he desires to marry the Duke's daughter Fioretta. She, however, has been promised to Prince Leonato of Ferrara, who has brought his army to the aid of Mantua in its current war. Honorio, the Duke's son and Fioretta's brother, favors Leonato; while he lies wounded, Flaviano schemes to persuade the Duke that Leonato is a wild young man who is morally unfit to be Fioretta's husband. Flaviano manipulates the situation so that Fioretta is moved to a convent, from where he spirits her secretly to his mother's country house. He also puts out word that Fioretta has decided to remain at the convent for a year, effectively postponing the marriage. Prince Leonato is outraged, and blames the Duke for bad faith; he demands a face-to-face meeting with Fioretta. The Duke feels that he cannot deny this demand — but he and Flaviano plan to substitute another woman in the meeting. One of the novices at the content is Flaviano's former mistress Juliana; Flaviano prevails upon her to take Fioretta's part. He even wants Juliana to marry Leonato — but the Duke will not go that far; Juliana is merely to insist upon the one-year delay. Prince Leonato arrives at the convent, and has his meeting with the false Fioretta. Juliana, superficially, plays her part as instructed; yet Leonato correctly interprets her replies to indicate that she would not object if he forced the issue. Taking the hint, Leonato leads a troop of his men to break into the convent and carry off "Fioretta." He takes her home to Ferrara...where the true Fioretta has also arrived. Suspicious of Flaviano, Fioretta has escped from his mother's country house and reached Ferrara in disguise, where she has taken an assumed name and is staying with Leonato's sister Donabella. Honorio has also come to Ferrara, to seek justice and vengeance for what he thinks is the rape of his sister. As he and Leonato are prepared to duel, Juliana and Donabella rush between them. Honorio confronts his pretended sister, but Juliana manages to persuade him to remain silent for the time being. The real Fioretta locates and welcomes her brother, while Juliana confronts Prince Leonato. She tells the prince that she is a noble virgin forced to impersonate Fioretta by the Duke of Mantua. Honorio breaks in with a captive Flaviano; Flaviano has followed Honorio to Ferrara to kill him, but has gotten caught instead. Honorio tries to explain Flaviano's villainous manipulations — but Leonato refuses to listen; he believes Juliana, and has resolved both to marry her and to go to war with Mantua. For a moment, Flaviano's plotting appears to have worked; but he is betrayed by a co-conspirator named Claudio. Juliana's falsehood is exposed; she begs for mercy, but Leonato casts her aside. The Duke of Mantua himself arrives in Ferrara, and the Fioretta/Juliana tangle is exposed and unraveled. Leonato is matched with Fioretta, and Honorio with Donabella; Juliana is sent back to the convent, and Flaviano is exiled. The play's subplot involves the courting of the widow Florelia by the soldiers Hortensio and Volterino. Florelia says that she will marry the man who cures her son Bertoldi of his cowardice. The soldiers, with a share of soldierly drinking and brawling, try to make Bertoldi brave, and failing that, to make him appear brave; but that fails too. Eventually making the best of a bad job, Florelia marries Hortensio. |
The Door in the Lake | Nancy Butts | null | Twelve-year old Joey vanished while gone camping with his family, and can't remember what happened during the two years he was missing - or why he has not grown. Then he starts to have seizures and starts to remember what happened - he believes that he was abducted by aliens. |
Lost Property | null | null | The book is about Josh Tambling who is well loved and cared for by his parents. Josh and his mates have formed a grunge metal band and dream of being rock stars. But when he lands a holiday job in the Lost Property Office at Sydney’s Central station, Josh starts to sense the loss of some important things in his life. One is that his brother Michael has drifted off and will not let anyone know where he is. The stress this is putting on his family grows, so when Josh discovers a clue to Michael’s whereabouts while handling lost items in his work, he sets out on his own to bring him back. Josh Tambling is the son of a famous footballer and a very well known radio station personality. He is in a band with his mates. He has a girlfriend named Alicia. During the holidays he works at the Lost Property office. On his first day a lady requests a cardigan and Josh gives it to her but she doesn't find what she wanted, a brooch. Josh's supervisor, Clive, explains that sometimes they separate jewellery and other valuable items from bags and clothing. He finds a brooch in the safe where jewellery is kept and it belongs to the woman. She is overcome with emotion and explains that even though it is of little monetary value,it is a family heirloom and very important to her. Here, Josh realises how important small things can be to people. He goes for a band practice with his friends and they meet his friend Steve's sister, Gemma. The next night Josh goes to Alicia's house and goes into the pool. They play around and look at the stars and Josh confesses that he believes that the universe is big for no reason. His trust in God slowly decreases. He goes to work again and in the afternoon goes for another band practice. He talks to Gemma about the same conversation he had with Alicia and she responds that there is more out there than just a big waste of space. The band decide to go to The Domain for New Year's Eve. When they go Josh sits next to Alicia and his friend Neven sits next to Gemma and their relationship is revealed. That evening Josh finds himself dwelling on the last thing Clive said to him, which was “Don’t forget, if you find any lost property, even the small things can be valuable”. Josh is in the train home when he answers to a calling, he starts picking up all the lost property in his carriage then follows on to do all the carriages. He continues to do this on another train, then another until he reaches Cronulla Station. His life begins to go downhill. |
Rules | Cynthia Lord | 2,006 | Catherine is a 12-year-old girl. Her eight-year-old brother, David, has autism and Catherine explains how this makes her life complicated and causes her to wish that her life was a bit more "normal". She is compiling a list of rules for David so that he can understand how the world works. Despite her search for a normal life, she finds herself drawn into a friendship with wheelchair-bound Jason. His physical disability and her brother's mental disability combine to make her ashamed, especially of what her new neighbor Krista might think. Despite her fear, she struggles to do the right thing for everyone involved. She learns not to be scared to be afraid of what others think of her. All in all, she learns to deal with her brother and life. |
CHERUB: The Fall | Robert Muchamore | 2,007 | An MI5 operation goes disastrously wrong when two agents working with James murder their prime suspect, Denis Obidin, and he is trapped within Aero City, Russia. He is not able to contact campus and when he attempts to he is beaten up badly by a group of Russian thugs. They have heard of a reward offered for James' capture, and as such they call the hotline. A short while later, a man appears, hands them their reward and bundles James into a car. Once they are driving, he reveals himself to be a CIA agent working undercover, and takes James back to his flat where he treats the boy to the best of his ability before challenging him as to why he was there, and why the suspect was killed. When James protests that their intentions were peaceful, he is shown CCTV footage of the murder. The agent lets James call CHERUB campus before he leaves, telling him not to go to sleep at any cost. Ewart appears a while later and takes James to an airfield where two British service people are to help with their escape. The Russian authorities appear, though, and they are forced to take the couple with them. On the flight, James passes out when air trapped in his broken nose expands due to air pressure changes and the pilot ends up making an emergency landing in Helsinki, Finland. Half a week later, James wakes up in hospital on CHERUB campus to the relief of Lauren and Kerry. Once he is up and about, James is made to choose between helping junior CHERUBs preparing for Basic Training or a course in socioeconomics. James chooses the PE training, and is asked to "help" a redshirt, Kevin Summer, who is scared of heights. Bruce Norris helps, but breaks his ankle falling from the height course. However, while this freaks James out, Kevin gains confidence and soon decides to try the height course alone. He succeeds, and James is rewarded for his work by having his history GCSE pass guaranteed. Meryl Spencer and some of James' best friends get together and organize a day out and they think he deserves it after all he went through. James has no idea what is happening until he gets a message from Meryl.He heads down to her office terrified as he doesn't know why she wants him. When he arrives he learns that all his friends have put together enough money and vouchers to go to a fancy hotel. Firstly they go motor carting and later they go a Spa Hotel where they get drunk and James pressures his girlfriend Kerry to have sex with him. She refuses and leaves in a crying state, but forgives him the next morning. After the Russia disaster, James has been suspended from all missions and after a talk with Mr. Pike, he suspects Ewart, the mission controller, of betraying him. James needs to have his history homework finished and spills coffee over Kerry's work while he was copying off it, landing in a fight. James is later heartbroken when Kerry shouts at him and accidentally mentions him screwing his mission. James later asks Kerry to help him investigate, but refuses, so James goes alone. While looking through Ewart's office, James is caught by Dana, another CHERUB agent, who decides to help. From investigating some papers they found in the office, they find out that Ewart has been lying about how much evidence he had. After, Dana admits that she fancies James and they end up kissing. Then it leads to stripping and Dana allows James to see her breasts. However, as things develop Lauren walks in and sees James with Dana's bra in his hand. James tries to wiggle out of trouble by saying it was an accident. Lauren is upset and as James tries to comfort her she says to James that he thinks humping is like eating chips. The next morning Dana and James take one of the CHERUB's pool cars and follow Ewart who meets an old reporter who used to write stories about Lord Hilton, a rival of Denis Obidin (James' mark from the Russia mission) and uncovered links that suggested that Lord Hilton was having people who endangered his son's political career and his own aeroplane business assassinated. He had arranged for Ewart to be killed but James and Dana saved his life for which Zara is very grateful. She apologises for keeping James in the dark and awards him and Dana the black shirt. By now, James had decided that he wants to date Dana. When the new couple go to dinner, Kerry (who found out about their kiss from Lauren) starts a fight with Dana. A food fight breaks out as James stands there, grinning as all hell breaks loose around him and that Dana and Kerry are fighting over him. |
Golden Buddha | Craig Dirgo | 2,003 | In Golden Buddha, Juan Cabrillo embarks on his first mission in The Oregon Files (although it is made clear that this is not the first mission for the team through references to other missions and its part in the book Flood Tide). The team is hired to find and recover a stolen statue, the Golden Buddha, stolen in 1959 from the Dalai Lama. The success of the team will determine the future of Tibet. Whilst playing the Russians off against the Chinese, the team must put their lives at risk in order to complete the mission. In their state-of-the-art vessel, disguised as a rusting heap of junk, they sail from Cuba to Macau, and there the team use their cunning and wit to outsmart a billionaire—Stanley Ho—and the Macau police. They also swindle a 100 million dollars worth of bonds from billionaire Marcus Friday and convince the UN to ratify the military coup in Tibet. |
The Golden Goblet | Eloise McGraw | 1,961 | Ranofer is an orphaned 12-year-old porter at a goldsmith's shop who has learned much about gold working. Gebu, his evil half brother, beats Ranofer. When the tallies of gold sweepings do not add up, Ranofer tries to figure out why. He determines that Ibni is smuggling gold to Gebu through wineskins that Ranofer unknowingly carries home. Ranofer tries to stop this, but Gebu forces him to continue, threatening to beat again and sell him into slavery. Ranofer makes two new friends, the Ancient and Heqet, but things take a turn for the worse when Gebu moves him to his stone cutting shop to be an apprentice after Ibni is caught. With the help of his new friends, Ranofer discovers that someone else is stealing gold at night after getting suspicious again. After Heqet suggests they work together to spy on Gebu and his evil helpers, they meet in a thicket near the river, share food, and talk about what they have heard during midday when Ranofer gets a break from his awful job at the stonecutters. Ranofer breaks into Gebu's room and discovers a golden goblet which could not come from the area. Ranofer realizes that Gebu has been tomb robbing by the markings at the bottom which say the name of a pharaoh. Also with that evidence he realizes that no one can get as rich as Gebu was getting in one day which supports his theory. He asks the Ancient how tomb robbers are caught, and the Ancient replies, "They may be followed". Ranofer knows from Heqet's eavesdropping that Gebu will be going on another tomb robbing session during the upcoming feast, but keeps his findings to himself. Ranofer follows Gebu to the burial chamber. Meanwhile, Heqet and the Ancient have also gone to the Valley of the Kings looking for Ranofer, putting puzzle pieces together where he has gone and why. Ranofer runs out of the tomb after extinguishing the robbers' torch and one of the giant steps crumbles, trapping Gebu and his companion Wenamon. Ranofer puts a boulder on top of the entrance, and then finds Heqet and the Ancient, who seal the tomb and sit on the boulder while Ranofer returns to town. He manages to get into the palace, and tries to get an audience with the queen but is delayed by Qa-nefer, the queen’s assistant, who doesn't believe his story and thinks he is crazy. After lots of persistence Ranofer finally gets an audience with the queen, and by telling her about the golden goblet with the pharaoh's name on it, she decides to test him by asking him, "What the object is leaning against the tomb's north wall of the tomb?" Ranofer answers, "Your father's oaken staff," and the queen immediately sent out soldiers, who catch Gebu. Finally, the queen asks what Ranofer wants most in the world. "A donkey," Ranofer said, "so that I may earn a living for myself like the Ancient." At the end, it shows him riding on his donkey with the goods earned from the queen with praise ringing from his ears to Heqet and the Ancient. While he is riding he is thinking about how the next day he will go see Zau, the master goldsmith, and become his apprentice. |
Sleeping with the Fishes | MaryJanice Davidson | 2,006 | Fred, 29, is a marine biologist working at the aquarium in Boston. She is a mermaid in the water, although she has legs on land. Her mother is human, but her biological father is a merman. Jonas, her thought-to-be-gay best friend, is the only one outside the family who knows the secret, until she is seen swimming in the fish tank by Thomas, a new employee at the aquarium. Prince Artur, a merman from the Black Sea, arrives to investigate the increased pollution in Boston Harbour and enlists the help of Fred and Thomas. They discover it to be a sewage waste problem caused by careless developers. Thomas and Prince Artur are rivals for Fred's affection, despite her abrasive manners and dismissive attitude to romance. |
Empire of Ivory | Naomi Novik | 2,007 | Laurence and Temeraire arrive back in Britain, following their evacuation of Danzig in Black Powder War. Their relief at arriving safely is short-lived as Napoleon continues his preparations for an invasion of the British Isles. When questioned about the lack of British air support for the Prussians, Laurence discovers that Britain had no dragons to spare: a flu-like epidemic has infected the greater part of them, and British science has yet to devise a cure. To combat it, Temeraire, Iskierka and the ferals are forced to fly frantic patrols, both as a show of force and to prevent Napoleon from getting reconnaissance in over the contaminated coverts; at one point Temeraire is forced to knock a French courier-dragon, Sauvignon, out of the sky and down into one of the coverts, risking infection himself. Temeraire and Laurence continue to develop their notions of draconic equality in British society and find common cause with William Wilberforce and the abolitionist movement in exchange for assistance from prominent political leaders. Before they can continue their plans, they are enlisted to return to Africa to seek a cure for the draconic flu, which Temeraire caught and was cured of in Throne of Jade; his immunity is proven when he fails to contract the illness from Sauvignon and the other dragons. The entire formation is shipped to the Cape Colony aboard the Allegiance, along with a black missionary, Father Erasmus, and his wife and daughters. The missionaries are manumitted slaves, causing tension between Laurence and Allegiance captain Tom Riley, a staunch supporter of the trade and sometimes-friend to Laurence. Riley is also further thrown off-balance by the discovery that some of the Aerial Corps' officers, including Lily's captain Harcourt, are women (the acid-spitting Longwing breed refuses to accept male handlers). After several weeks of searching, the formation makes land at the Cape of Good Hope; Maximus, the Regal Copper, is so weary that his handler Berkley does not believe he will ever return home. However, enough fungi is found to cure the formation, and with the help of two African boys, Demane and Sipho, and their small dog, they set out to find more. In the end they discover the fungus in a cave, being fertilized by dragon dung: it has been deliberately cultivated. Scarcely has this realization set in that the Aerial Corps are beset by Tswana humans and dragons; the British beasts, who have been sent back to the Cape with their precious cargo, are unable to prevent their aircrews from being captured. The Tswana, in addition to being fiercely offended by the depredations of the slave trade on their people, practice an odd form of ancestor worship in which dragons are brought up to believe they are the reincarnations of former (human) tribe leaders. The captivity is particularly challenging to Catherine Harcourt, who had become intimates with Riley during the voyage and is now bearing his child, but Mrs. Erasmus, a former member of the Tswana people, is able to provide some intercession on behalf of the British. Temeraire and the other dragons are able to organize an escape for their crews, but the Tswana overrun the Cape Colony, and indeed all European ports on the African coast, in vengeance against slavers specifically and all white men in general. Lily's formation retreat to Great Britain aboard the Allegiance; whilst at sea, Riley marries Harcourt, more at his insistence than hers. Upon returning to Great Britain, they discover that the latest abolitionist bill in Parliament was defeated by strong opposition from Admiral Horatio Nelson, and that Sauvignon, now infected with the plague, has "escaped" back to France. Laurence and Temeraire are horrified to realize that Government and Admiralty alike have countenanced the wholesale slaughter of, not only every French dragon, but quite probably every dragon in Eurasia. Acting on their consciences, they steal a tub of cultivated mushrooms and fly the English Channel to deliver the cure to the French. For this they earn the personal respect of Napoleon Bonaparte, but Laurence turns down the Emperor's offer of asylum, preferring to return to his beloved Commonwealth and answer for his treason. Naomi Novik went to Africa to do research for Empire of Ivory. |
The Country Captain | William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle | null | Sir Richard Huntlove is an elderly aristocrat who is jealous of his beautiful and vivacious young wife. His jealousy is more valid than he realizes, for Lady Huntlove is planning an affair with a gentleman named Sir Francis Courtwell. To distance his wife from the temptations of London, Sir Richard moves his household to his country estate — along with a gaggle of followers and hangers-on, including: Lady Huntlove's otherwise-unnamed Sister; Sir Francis Courtwell and his nephew, the younger Courtwell being in love with the Sister; Captain Underwit, Sir Richard's stepson by his first wife; Engine, a "projector" or speculator; Device, a "fantastical gallant;" and Captain Sacksbury, a drunken old soldier. Captain Underwit has just received a commission in the local militia, and Captain Sacksbury is his mentor. Lady Huntlove's maid Dorothy is also present; she intends to become Mrs. Capt. Underwit. Sir Francis arranges a meeting with Lady Huntlove; he fakes indisposition when Sir Richard goes hunting. Sir Richard returns unexpectedly and catches the two together — but Lady Huntlove manages to convince her husband that she is sleepwalking. The would-be lovers try for a second assignation: the Lady pretends to be pacing the floor with a toothache, and when her husband is asleep Dorothy slips into bed in her place and Lady Huntlove goes to Sir Francis. But the gentleman, tired of waiting, has fallen asleep. For their third attempt, Sir Francis intends to fake a riding accident while he and Sir Richard are going to London, and so return to the estate without the husband. He falls off his horse in reality, though, and injures himself seriously; and he takes this as a bad omen and turns penitent. The younger Courtwell has better luck in courting Lady Huntlove's Sister — though at first she mocks and ridicules him, and he responds in kind. Paradoxically, the Sister is provoked by Courtwell's subsequent coolness; the two end up married. Dorothy sends a false letter to Sir Richard, indicating that she, Dorothy, is a runaway, and the daughter of a rich knight. Captain Underwit marries her in the belief that she's a good catch...and later finds out the truth. A supply of more blatant comedy is provided by Engine, who has to feign lunacy to escape the consequences of his previous financial manipulations and swindles. In addition to a wide range of commonalities with Shirley's plays, The Country Captain shows debts to the drama of Ben Jonson. This is unsurprising, since Newcastle was a patron and friend of Jonson, and on the basis of his plays is often included in the so-called Sons of Ben, the group of self-styled imitators of the master. |
The Astronauts | Stanisław Lem | 1,951 | The introduction describes the fall of Tunguska meteorite (1908) and subsequent expedition of Leonid Kulik. The hypothesis about the crash of a spaceship is mentioned. Fast-forward to the year 2003. Communism has won worldwide and humankind, freed from oppression and chaos, is engaged in gigantic engineering projects - irrigation of Sahara, construction of a hydro-energetic plant over the Strait of Gibraltar, and the ability to control the climate. The latest project is to thaw the Antarctic and Arctic regions by artificial nuclear-powered "suns" circling above. During the preparation of earthworks in the Tunguska area a strange object is found and later identified as an extraterrestrial data record. The record contains details about the travel of the spaceship from Venus (which crashed in Tunguska) and the data ends with an ominous message: "After two rotations the Earth will be radiated. When the radiation intensity drops to half, the Great Movement will commence." Scared, the government of the Earth (consisting of scientists) decides to send the newly built spaceship Kosmokrator (equipped with vacuum tube-based computer Marax) to Venus. After a few weeks the international crew of Kosmokrator arrives on Venus but finds no traces of life, only strange, half-destroyed technological structures like the White Globe, a giant anti-gravity device. It turns out that Venus was inhabited by a warlike civilization planning to occupy the Earth. Before they managed to destroy the life on Earth they themselves perished in nuclear civil war, leaving only ruins of the cities and scattered electronic records. |
The Moneypenny Diaries: Final Fling | Samantha Weinberg | 2,008 | From saving spies to private passions, this book covers the secret adventures of James Bond's right-hand woman. Jane Moneypenny may project a cool, calm and collected image but her secret diaries reveal a rather different story. Kate Westbrook is trying to publish Miss Moneypenny's diaries, but everyone she speaks to about them is trying to stop her. Whilst in consultation with Tanner it is hinted to Westbrook that her aunt was murdered because she was searching too hard for the MI6 mole. Locations for this final adventure include Jamaica, the Outer Hebrides, Cambridge, and London. The storyline is almost evenly divided between the adventures of Miss Moneypenny and the modern adventures of author “Kate Westbrook.” |
The Eye of the Heron | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1,978 | The planet of Victoria received two waves of colonists from Earth: first two prison ships founding a penal colony and then one ship of political exiles. The descendants of the prisoners mostly inhabit the City. The descendants of the political exiles, the "People of Peace", inhabit Shantih Town, which is known to the City dwellers as Shanty Town. The Shantih Towners, whose primary occupation is farming, want to settle another valley further away from the City. The City "Bosses" do not want to lose the control they believe they have over the Shanty Towners and so they take action to try to prevent any settlement beyond their sphere of influence. |
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