title
stringlengths 1
220
| author
stringlengths 4
59
⌀ | pub_year
int64 398
2.01k
⌀ | summary
stringlengths 11
58k
|
|---|---|---|---|
Under the Hawthorn Tree | Marita Conlon-McKenna | null | The novel tells the story of three siblings, Eily, Michael and Peggy O'Driscoll, who live in a small cottage in rural Ireland. At the opening of the book, in 1845, blight strikes the family potato plot. Their baby sister Bridget dies and is buried under the hawthorn tree in the garden: in Irish mythology, the hawthorn is linked with the otherworld. Their father goes to find work, and when he does not return for several days, their mother leaves to find him. After some time, the children accept that both are dead and take an arduous journey to their great-aunts' home hundreds of miles away. |
Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel | Joe Hill | 2,007 | Aging rock star Judas Coyne spends his retirement collecting morbid memorabillia such as a witch's confession, a real snuff film and, after being sent an e-mail directly about the item online, a dead man's suit. He is told, by the daughter(whom he does not know at the time), that the old man's spirit is attached to this funeral suit. The ghost will go wherever it does and so buying this suit would effectively be buying a poltergeist; Judas cannot pass up this opportunity. The suit soon arrives in a heart-shaped box. Various odd occurrences alert Judas to the fact that the ghost is dangerous and is out to kill him and those around him. His assistant, Danny Wooten realizes that the ghost of the suit will try to kill everyone round Jude. He leaves Jude's service, but not before contacting the woman who sent the suit. Jude finds out that the ghost was the father of a groupie, Florida (it is later revealed that her real name is Anna), whom he dated for a few months and who had later committed suicide. The ghost wanted revenge on Jude for causing Anna's death, as he saw it. His current girlfriend, Georgia (whose name is actually Marybeth), refuses to leave and together they run from the house with the ghost chasing them. The ghost's intention is to keep Jude away from his two dogs, Angus and Bon, as it turns out that dogs, as familiars, can protect their owners from the dead. But Georgia insists on taking the dogs with them. The animals save the couple several times, but the ghost eventually manages to kill both dogs. Jude and Georgia investigate and find out the true story about Florida. She did not commit suicide because of the breakup between her and Jude. Florida had many emotional problems and Jude had tried to help her but, in the end, he gave up. The reason she was so unstable was that she was being hypnotized and molested by her stepfather, the now dead and ghostly, Craddock McDermott. When Florida left Jude she had nowhere to go but back to her twisted family, but eventually she threatened to contact Jude to have him help her escape the incestuous relationship and file charges against Craddock and her elder sister, Jessica. They drove her to suicide to prevent her from doing so. At a later point, Craddock, a man knowledgeable in the dark arts, realized he was dying and planned with Jessica to get revenge on Judas. They believed that Judas had "ruined" Florida by making her reject her family and their incest. Craddock hexed the suit; once he was dead, Jessica set the plan in motion. After a series of gory battles between Judas Coyne and Craddock McDermott, Georgia finds the way to bring Florida back from the grave and help Jude fight her stepfather. In the end, the evil Craddock is vanquished, freeing Jude and Georgia from his cruel curse. The two make it through the horrendous event and happily marry. |
And Kill Once More | Ralph Salaway | null | Kate Weston is worried about her friend Sandy Engle. Since her marriage to George Engle, the vivacious Sandy has practically become a recluse. Kate's suspicion that something is wrong leads her to hire what she thinks is a detective to pose as her boyfriend during a weekend house party at the Engle's estate high in the central California mountains. Instead of a detective, though—because of a manpower shortage at the Gregory Agency—Kate gets a stand-in: Marty Bowman, an L.A. lifeguard with vague ambitions of following in his brother's private-eye footsteps. The guests at the party seem to have little in common until George Engle turns up dead at the bottom of his swimming pool with Marty Bowman's lucky silver dollar clenched in his fist. The murder investigation by slow-moving local sheriff Frank Toland finds the thread that connects most of the guests: they were being blackmailed by George. Marty becomes the prime suspect in the murder and to save his own neck has to stay one step ahead of Toland. As he subtly conducts an independent investigation under Toland's nose, Marty discovers that in addition to blackmailing his house party guests—and many others—George has conned his wife into believing she has tuberculosis. Slipping past the guard of sheriff Toland's rookie assistant, Marty and Sandy pay an after-hours visit to a clinic in the valley, where Marty, with the help of an X-ray technician, proves to Sandy that her ill health is an illusion. After bar-hopping with a jubilant Sandy for the rest of the evening, Marty resists her drunken advances (and beds Kate instead). The next morning, however, Marty finds that Sandy too has been murdered. Unbeknownst to the sheriff, Sandy had retained possession of some of the evidence her husband had used to blackmail their guests, a fact that led George's murderer to kill once more. The murderer, sensing that Marty is closing in on the truth, sets for him the same underwater death trap used on George. Fortunately, Marty's familiarity with swimming pool hydraulics enables him to anticipate the trap, foil it, and turn the tables on the killer. A struggle ensues, followed by the climactic denouement. |
Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit | Nahoko Uehashi | null | Balsa, spearwoman and bodyguard, is a wandering warrior who has vowed to atone for eight deaths in her past by saving an equivalent number of lives. On her journey, she saves Prince Chagum, and is tasked with becoming his bodyguard. His own father, the emperor, has ordered his assassination. The two begin a perilous journey to ensure the survival of the prince. Balsa's complicated past begins to come to light and they uncover Chagum's mysterious connection to a legendary water spirit with the power to destroy the kingdom. At a time when nature still holds the civilizations of mankind in thrall, a single drought can spell the end of a society and doom its inhabitants to piteous deaths. Chagum has the power to stave off drought and bring new life to his empire. However, he is accused of being possessed by an evil spirit, and must be put to death by his own father's hand. |
The Master Butchers Singing Club | Louise Erdrich | 2,003 | The novel begins at the end of World War I with Fidelis Waldvogel, a German sniper, returning to his hometown in defeated Germany from the battle lines. Fidelis seeks out Eva Kalb, the pregnant fiancée of his dear friend, Johannes, and informs her that her fiancé has died in the war. He tells Eva of his promise to Johannes, which is that he would marry and take care of her. She agrees, and soon the two are wed. Fidelis, a butcher by trade, leaves Germany by himself to emigrate to the United States in order to escape the immense poverty brought on by the war. He plans to travel to Seattle to set up a new life for his family, paying his way by selling German sausages. However his funds and sausages run out in Argus, North Dakota. Fidelis first works for the local butcher and then sets up his own butcher shop in Argus. He works hard until he can finally send for his wife, Eva, and her child, Franz. Delphine Watzka is the daughter of Roy Watzka, the town drunk, who grew up in Argus, North Dakota. Delphine never met her mother and leaves the town to become a vaudeville performer. Delphine meets and becomes attached to Cyprian, a World War I veteran. The two make money from an act where Delphine performs as a table upon which Cyprian balances. One day, after a performance, Delphine discovers Cyprian engaging in a sexual act with a man. This discovery changes their relationship, but the two remain together, posing as a married couple. The two return to Argus, where they stop to see Delphine's severely alcoholic father. There is an overpowering stench in Roy’s house, and in the process of cleaning the dwelling, Delphine and Cyprian discover the corpses of three people – two adults and one child – rotting in her father’s cellar. The three corpses are later revealed as the remains of the Chavers family. While attempting to unravel the mystery of the bodies in the cellar, as well as to eradicate the odor from the house, Delphine meets Eva. The two quickly become friends; Eva takes Delphine under her wing, allowing Delphine to work in the butcher shop, and mentoring her in many of the domestic skills Delphine had never learned. Eva learns that she has cancer, and despite medical treatments and Delphine’s nursing, her health deteriorates. Eva’s sister-in-law Tante ("aunt” in German) Maria Theresa arrives to assist the family with the various means of daily life. Tante and Delphine take an instant dislike to each other. During Eva’s painful final days, Tante destroys the morphine prescribed to assist her out of shame towards Eva’s dependency on the drug. In one of the most gripping sections of the novel, Delphine tries to find a doctor and pharmacist while Eva's pain becomes uncontrollable. Finally, Roy breaks into the pharmacy and obtains the morphine that Eva desperately needs. Soon after, Eva dies. Her death leads to the sobering of Roy, as she was one of the few people that was actually nice to him. Additionally, Delphine vows to raise Eva’s four boys and to assist Fidelis. Meanwhile, Albert Hock, town sheriff, has been investigating the Chavers case. Beads from Clarisse's dress that were embedded in the floor over the cellar becomes the means by which Hock attempts to blackmail Clarisse into becoming involved with him. She stabs the sheriff to death and flees to the Twin Cities. Tante and Cyprian both leave Argus. Tante returns to Germany with Erich and Emil. Cyprian returns to the life of the traveling performer. Both departures pave the way for a romance between Delphine and Fidelis, which eventually results in marriage. Roy Watzka dies, but not before revealing the truth behind the deaths of the Chavers family. They were left in the cellar as retribution towards Porky Chavers, the father, singing over Roy in Fidelis' singing club. Roy did not intend for them to die, but due to the after-effect of an alcohol-induced binge, he forgot they were in the basement. At the outbreak of World War II, Fidelis finds his family once again ravaged by war. His sons Franz and Markus both enlist in the United States Army, whereas his twin sons, Erich and Emil, enlist in the German military. Emil is quickly killed in the war, and his twin Erich is eventually captured by U.S. soldiers. He is transferred to a POW camp in the U.S. After Markus finds this out, he takes Fidelis there but Erich refuses to speak to either of them. Franz as well, on the American side, is gravely injured in an airplane accident, which eventually results in his death. On a post-war trip to Germany, at which Delphine and Fidelis attend an unveiling of a memorial to the bombing of Fidelis' home town, Fidelis falls ill. He dies on their return trip to Argus. The novel concludes with the revelation of Delphine’s true heritage, as told by the town scrap collector, Step-and-a-Half. Delphine was the biological daughter of Mrs. Shimek (Mazarine's mother). She had been abandoned when she was born and found in an outhouse by Step-and-a-Half. Step-and-a-Half gave her to Roy to raise. |
Plot It Yourself | Rex Stout | null | Someone has been getting away with a different spin on plagiarism. It's the old scam – an unsuccessful author stealing ideas from an established source – but it's being worked differently. Now, the plagiarists are claiming that the well-known authors are stealing from them (as Wolfe puts it, "plagiarism upside down."). And they are making their claims stick: three successful claims in four years, one awaiting trial, and one that's just been made. These claims have damaged both the publishers and the authors. The Book Publishers of America (BPA) and the National Association of Authors and Dramatists (NAAD) form a joint committee to explore ways to stop the fraud, and the committee comes to Wolfe for help. The first four claims have shared certain characteristics: in the first, for example, the best selling author Ellen Sturdevant is accused by the virtually unknown Alice Porter of stealing a recent book's plot from a story that Porter sent her, asking her suggestions for improvement. Sturdevant ignores the accusation until Porter's manuscript is found in Sturdevant's house. The writing and publishing industry is convinced that the manuscript was planted, but the case was settled out of court. That scenario, with minor variations, is repeated four times, with other authors and by other plagiarists. The latest complaint has been made only recently, and the target of the complaint wonders when a manuscript will show up somewhere that it wasn't the day before. Wolfe's first step is to acquire and read the manuscripts that form the basis for the complaints. Wolfe's love of literature turns out to be useful in his investigation: from the internal evidence in the manuscripts, Wolfe concludes that they were all written by the same person. Aspects such as diction, punctuation and syntax – and, most convincingly, paragraphing – point Wolfe directly to the conclusion that one person wrote all the manuscripts. At first, this seems like progress, but then it becomes clear that it's the opposite. The task initially seemed to be to show that the first fraud inspired a sequence of copycats, and the universe of suspects was limited to the complainants. But now that Wolfe has determined that one person wrote all the fraudulent manuscripts, that one person could be anyone. Wolfe meets with the joint committee to discuss the situation. A committee member suggests that one of the plagiarists be offered money, along with a guarantee of immunity, to identify the manuscripts' actual author. The committee concurs, and asks Wolfe to arrange for the offer to be made to Simon Jacobs. The next day, Archie goes to make the offer to Jacobs, but finds Sergeant Purley Stebbins at the Jacobs apartment: Mr. Jacobs has been murdered, stabbed to death the night before. In short order, Archie discovers two more dead plagiarists. Wolfe blames himself for not taking steps to protect Jacobs and the others, who had been made targets by the plan to pay for information. The only one left is Alice Porter, who first worked the fraud successfully, and who is now repeating it with Amy Wynn and her publisher. Wolfe, concentrating on Porter, catches her in a contradiction that identifies the murderer for him. |
Halloween | null | 1,979 | "The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in northern Ireland, at the dawn of the Celtic race. And once started, it trod the earth forevermore, wreaking its savagery suddenly, swiftly, and with incredible ferocity". The prologue of the novel takes place at the dawn of the Celtic race in Ireland and tells the story of a young 15-year-old disfigured boy named Enda who is passionately in love with the King Gwynwyll's daughter, Deirdre. After being severely humiliated for attempting to win her love Enda attacks and brutally slays Deirdre and her fiancé at a community ritual event on Halloween. Enda is immediately killed by the other members of the village and his soul cursed to wander the Earth forever, re-creating the events of that night. In Chapter 1 we flash forward to 1963 and witness several eerie interactions between little Michael Myers and his grandmother. The grandmother is concerned as her daughter, Edith, tells her that Michael has been admitting to hearing voices and having visions and nightmares (which are about the events that happened in the prologue with Enda and Deirdre). When Edith tells the grandmother that she had asked Michael about the voices, he replied, " They tell me to say I hate people". There is also discussion between the grandmother and Michael's mother about Michael's great-grandfather who apparently committed some sort of undescribed violent act. "I think there are enough similarities," says the concerned grandmother. Chapter 2 details Michael's experiences further. It is Halloween night 1963 and Michael, dressed in the infamous clown costume, is trick-or-treating with some neighborhood children. At some point during his trick-or-treating, he and the other children knock on the Myers home door hoping to receive some goodies. His sister Judy, opens the door and asks "what are you going to do if I don't give you anything?" to which Michael replies "we're going to kill you". Shocked, Judy responds "who said that? Michael Myers--was that you?". Michael replies "I'm not Michael Myers. I'm a clown", already hinting at the transformation that has taken place. In Chapter 3, we get a look inside Michael's head. "It was the voice. the voice stirred up the hatred. It had done so in his dreams and now it was doing it in real life. It had begun with the strange pictures in his head at night, pictures of people he had never seen--oh, maybe in comic books or on television, but never in real life. People in strange costumes, animal skins, armor, leather, drinking and dancing wildly around a fire. One couple in particular. They looked like Judy and Danny, madly in love with each other, dancing in a circle around a huge bonfire while he, Michael, stood in the crowd hating them, burning up with jealousy". Chapter 4 details Michael's trial and sentencing. Details of Michael's experiences at the Smith's Grove "Sanitarium" are given. A conversation between Michael and Loomis gives further insight into Michael's personality. Additionally, strange "occurrences" take place which intrigue Dr. Loomis who gradually becomes aware of what he is dealing with: "Every time Michael was slighted, or fancied he was, by a staff member or other inmate, some awful vengeance was visited upon the offending person. It might be a day, a week, a month later, but Michael got even. The problem for Loomis was that no one ever observed the boy doing it directly...a nurse who quarreled with Michael fell down the stairs two days later, fracturing her pelvis. A boy who borrowed a game from Michael and forgot to return it suffered a vicious rash that hospitalized him for a month". Michael eventually commands the ward as neither the staff nor the other inmates dare to challenge or defy Michael for fear of retribution. Fifteen years later on Halloween 1978, Laurie Strode's realestate father asks her to place a key under the mat at the old Myers house so that he can show it to some prospective buyers. When Laurie places the key under the mat, unbeknownst to her, Michael is looking through a door window and sees Laurie for the first time. At that point, the reader learns that Michael targets Laurie because she reminds him of Judith. "And as she turned her back on the house, a figure inside it, dark, shadowy, sidled up to the front door and pushed the tattered curtain aside with a knuckle. He watched the slim blonde toss her head and laugh as she raised her hands like a bogeyman to frighten her young companion. He breathed heavily, raspingly, as he watched the girl, and a memory entered his mind, the memory of another girl, another blonde, willowy and pretty. He remembered the trapped and frightened look in her eyes, and the futile, pathetic way she had raised her hands to protect herself. He followed the girl and boy with his gaze until they disappeared from view. Then he walked up the creaky stairs to the second floor and peered into the room where it had all happened... |
Too Many Clients | Rex Stout | 1,960 | A man who identifies himself as Thomas Yeager, head of Continental Plastics, asks Archie to ascertain whether he is being followed when he visits a certain address in one of New York's worst neighborhoods. When the real Yeager's body is found at an excavation site in the vicinity of that address, Archie crosses the threshold and finds a fantastically appointed love nest where Yeager secretly entertained many women. The case becomes more complicated when the daughter of the building superintendent is later killed; her novice attempts at blackmail provide Wolfe with critical evidence needed to solve both murders and earn a large fee, shoring up his low bank account balance. In short order, Wolfe and Archie find themselves beset by prospective clients: * the building superintendent and his wife, who want Archie to keep the police from harassing them (and, later, to catch their daughter's killer) * an actress, who offers to pay Archie to get her cigarette case out of the love nest * the directors of Continental Plastics, who want to keep the existence of that room from becoming public knowledge and causing a scandal * Yeager's widow, who expects Wolfe to solve her husband's murder even if it embarrasses the company |
Better Angels | Howard V. Hendrix | 1,999 | Better Angels is a prequel to Hendrix's earlier novels Lightpath and Standing Wave, filling in history about how the characters in those novels came to be who they are. "Better angels" is a phrase used by agents of organization Tetragrammatron to describe what they hope to make humanity into. Tetragrammatron is concerned with ensuring humanity's survival by creating a machine/human transcendences, turning humans into "better angels". |
The Labyrinth Key | Howard V. Hendrix | 2,004 | The backdrop for this story is an informational arms races between a future United States of America and China. Both countries are attempting to build a quantum computer, which they believe will be the ultimate information weapon, creating and breaking encryption schemes. One of the American investigators, Dr. Jaron L. Kwok, is mysteriously killed while in Hong Kong, and his mathematical understudy Ben Cho is ordered to pick up Kwok's investigation in an attempt to find out why and how he died. Running parallel to this storyline are the lives of Don Markham (known as Don Strum in Cybernesia)and Lu Mei-lin (also known as Marilyn Lu). Don is computer programmer whose work specializes in the virtual reality world Cybernesia. Lu is a forensic detective who works in Hong Kong. After Kwok's death in she is the leading detective on the case, called to Sha Tin by the Guoanbo, China's version of the CIA and its leader in the race for the quantum computer. At the time of Kwok's death a holocaust is disseminated throughout the world, showing the circumstances of the virtual reality world that he had died in. However, his death prompts not only the US and China, but multiple other organizations (from terrorists to secret societies) to go to any lengths for the chance to get binotech, the newest technology that reduplicates itself and stores a huge amount of information in tiny quantities. |
Neverwhere | Neil Gaiman | null | Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew and his trials and tribulations in London. At the start of the story, he is a young businessman, with a normal life. All this changes, however, when he stops to help a mysterious young girl who appears before him, bleeding and weakened, as he walks with his fiancée to dinner to meet her influential boss. The morning after Richard rescued the girl, Door, from the streets, she is greatly recovered, and sends him to find the Marquis de Carabas, a man who will be able to help Door escape two infamous and seemingly inhuman assassins, the Messrs; Croup and Vandemar. Richard brings the Marquis back to his apartment to meet Door, only to see both of them vanish immediately. Soon after, Richard begins to realize the consequences of his actions. He appears to have become invisible; he loses his job, where no one seems to recognize him, and his apartment is rented out to other people. Determined to set things right, Richard sets out for the world of London Below in search of Door. Richard’s journey takes him to the realm of the Rat-Speakers, who worship and perform tasks for rats, across the mysterious Night's Bridge, whose darkness kills one of Richard’s Rat-Speaker friends, Anesthesia, and eventually to the Floating Market, where he meets again with Door, who is holding an audition for bodyguards. Going to the floating market, a giant bazaar where people barter for all manner of junk and magical items, Richard realizes that London Below is not such a bad place. The legendary bodyguard and fighter "Hunter" joins their party, and the group, consisting of Door, the Marquis and Hunter, with Richard tagging along, sets out for the Earl's Court. Door and the Marquis have traveled to Door's home, and discovered a diary entry made by Door's father, which advises her to seek aid from the angel Islington. When the four reach the Earl's Court, on a mysterious underground train which follows its own bizarre schedule, the Marquis is forced to leave. This is due to an old grudge between himself and the Earl. The rest discover that they need to travel through the Angelus in order to reach Islington, and that the Angelus resides in the British Museum. Door and Richard travel to the Museum, while Hunter, due to a curse which prevents her from entering London Above, remains in the abandoned British Museum underground station. After some searching they find the Angelus, which Door "opens" using her family's Talent, and travel through it to the underground home of the angel. Islington explains that his position as protector of London Below is a punishment for the submersion of Atlantis, which was also under his care, and tells Door that he will help her learn the identity of those who killed her family, for a price. She and her company must retrieve a unique key from the Black Friars and bring it to the angel. The two return to the Museum and go below to reunite with Hunter. In the meantime, the Marquis seeks out Croup and Vandemar, exchanging a priceless Tang dynasty figurine for information regarding who ordered the murder of Door's family. The true price for this information, however, is his life; Croup and Vandemar capture, torture, and kill him, breaking the one-hour "head start" agreement that was part of their deal with the Marquis. Door, Richard, and Hunter proceed onward to the dwelling of the Black Friars. There, they are faced with a series of three ordeals; Hunter wins a test of strength, Door wins a test of intellect, and Richard, alone in history, wins a test of character. He was falsely convinced his adventures Below had all been a hallucination, but a trinket from his now-dead friend Anesthesia re-orients him. As a result, the three succeed in gaining the key. Richard’s ordeal greatly changes him, causing him to lose most of his self-doubts; he is now confident enough to interact with other beings of London Below. The three then travel to the Floating Market, where they are unable to find the Marquis, but where Hammersmith, a blacksmith friend of Door's is able to secretly forge a copy of the key won by Richard. Richard enlists the mysterious Lamia, one of the vampire-like Velvets as a guide. They travel on London Below’s Down Street, toward Islington. Door, Richard, Lamia, and Hunter make their way down the long path of Down Street. Old Bailey revives the Marquis. Weakened, the Marquis sets out himself, following Door and company. On Down Street, it is discovered that Lamia was a dangerous choice for a guide, because the price she demands of Richard for her services is higher than he can pay and yet live, but he is rescued by the Marquis. It is also discovered that Hunter long ago turned traitor to Door’s cause. She gives Door to Croup and Vandemar, in exchange for the magical spear she needs to hunt and slay the great Beast of London. Croup and Vandemar, with Door captive, travel downward, while Richard, the Marquis, and Hunter travel at a slower pace, all toward the great labyrinth through which they need to pass to reach Islington. In this labyrinth the Beast of London dwells. Hunter and Richard battle it, with Richard being the only survivor. Richard and the Marquis rush ahead, to the final confrontation between the parties, in which Islington’s true nature is revealed. Islington wishes to use Door and the key to force open the door to Heaven, where he seeks dominion over all the other angels as revenge for his banishment. After Richard is tortured by Croup and Vandemar, Door agrees to open the door, but she uses the copy of the key Richard won. The key does not open the door to Heaven, but instead to somewhere else, as far away as she could imagine. Islington, Croup and Vandemar are all sucked through the gateway before Door closes it. Door then uses the Black Friars' real key to allow Richard to travel back to London Above, where he finds himself restored to his normal life as it was before he first met Door. After returning home, Richard is happy for a time, but he realizes that his experiences have changed him, and that his old life and friends mean little or nothing to him now. He realizes that he is not satisfied with the regular world, and wants to return to London Below but does not know how to do it. He despairs of returning, feeling that he has ruined his life about as completely as possible, but in the end the Marquis provides a way back. |
Paula | Isabel Allende | 1,995 | Isabel Allende wrote Paula while tending to her daughter Paula Frías Allende who was in a coma arising from complications of the disease porphyria. Allende started the book as a letter to Paula, explaining what she was missing so she would not be confused when she recovered. The novel includes both an account of Paula's treatment and Allende's life, sometimes overlapping the content of first novel The House of the Spirits. Paula died on December 6, 1992, survived by her husband Ernesto and other family members. |
The Janitor's Boy | Andrew Clements | 2,000 | The story, set in the small town of Huntington near Minneapolis, Minnesota, centers around a fifth grader named Jack Rankin Jr. who, while the new middle school is being built for the town, finds himself going to school in the old high school, where his father works as a janitor. After being ridiculed for wanting to be a janitor "like his dad" several years ago, he has tried to separate himself from his father as much as he can, but now finds these attempts futile since they are now in the same building. In order to let out his frustration, he concocts a plan to stick a large wad of gum to the bottom of a desk for his father to later clean up. Unfortunately, his plan backfires, and he is sentenced to three weeks of cleaning gum off of the bottom of desks and chairs in different parts of the school, for one hour every day. Jack is enraged by this punishment, since he will now be working for his father, but still manages to make some interesting discoveries: he finds a picture of his dad, another janitor, and two other men during their time in the army, and finds the key box for the building. Intrigued, he takes a key to the school bell tower, and another for the steam tunnel beneath the school. After his exploration of the bell tower, he realizes that he must, to his disappointment, drive home with his father. During the ride home, Jack's dad reveals that before his days as a janitor, he worked for his father at an old car dealership, and absolutely loathed it. He tells Jack that his grandfather would never let John have his own car, and that in anger he stole his father's corvette, only to completely destroy it in a crash with a light pole. In the hospital, John's father told him that he could forget about college until he paid off the price of the car in work, and so John joined the army the next day. John finishes his story by saying that at his father's funeral; several people approached John and mentioned how his father would always give away a couple of cars every year, free of charge, to help people. He tells Jack that the reason John never got a car was because his father loved him and didn't want him to be spoiled. Astounded by this revelation, Jack must nevertheless continue cleaning gum off different parts of the school, and while cleaning the auditorium he discovers the access door to the steam tunnel. Feeling courageous at first, Jack still ends up locking himself in the tunnel, and must follow his keen sense of smell to get out. As he reaches the final crossroads, he finds that a tiny "apartment" has been set up. Jack also finds that a boy named Eddie is currently staying there while his father tries to recover from his days in the Vietnam War, which he spent with Jack's father. Emerging from the tunnels in the town's fire station, Jack manages to catch a ride home with his dad, who explains to him that the little living area beneath the town was set up to give people a place to go, like Eddie. After the Vietnam War, John was completely out of it until a janitor at the high school offered him a job in order to get back on his feet. In turn, John put together the living area under the crossroads to help others. The first "resident" happened one of John's fellow janitors, Lou, who John met during his second tour during the war. Eventually, Lou moved out of the tunnels, but the furniture was left in the tunnels in case somebody else ever needed them. Touched by his father's kindness, and the kindness of those his father knew, Jack receives a newer, kinder image of his father, and the bond between them begins to grow closer. |
Room One | Andrew Clements | 2,006 | Room One is a story about sixth grader Ted Hammond. He is an avid mystery fan and detective. But on one of his normal newspaper routes, he looks into the Andersons' house. He sees a mysterious face through the attic window. He passes by but soon remembers that the Andersons moved out years ago. That's when Ted became determined to find out whose, or what's, face that is. It turns out to be April (who he thought was Alexa), a girl with a deep past regarding her family and their problems. |
Things Hoped For | Andrew Clements | 2,006 | The story is about 17-year-old Gwendolyn/Gwennie (Gwen) who lives in New York City with her grandfather. One day her grandfather disappears leaving only a phone message telling Gwen not to worry about him. Gwen continues her life as normal as possible while trying to practice for her violin auditions. She then meets Robert (Bobby) from Things Not Seen in a cafe. Robert is in town also preparing for trumpet auditions.Gwen invites Robert to stay in her empty house with her to help get him out of the hotel he was staying in. While shopping in Niketown Store in New York City, Gwen and Robert spot a faint shadow apparently coming from an invisible person. Robert then tells her that two years ago he turned invisible. In the following days Robert discovers Gwen's grandfather dead in the freezer. The other invisible man is found in Gwen's house after the discovery of her grandfather. The man named William started to seek out Robert to find out how to undo the invisibility. William also is revealed to be a womanizing thief. The mystery of Gwen's grandfather's death is closed when the grandfather's lawyer reads out a letter written the last day the grandfather was alive. The letter contains the will of the grandfather. Detectives decide that the grandfather knew he would die so he hid in the freezer. The detectives also say that the grandfather went in with an oxygen bottle, thick clothes, and left the refrigerator slightly open so he could have left if he wanted to. Gwen was distraught and did not feel like playing the violin the whole day.The next day she gets a phone call from Alicia, Robert's girlfriend asking her to play. Alicia ended up thanking Gwen for the beautiful song and hung up. On the day of Gwen's audition she opens an envelope with dog tags with a code leading to the title of a Bible passage. The passage says,"There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". Gwen finally understood why her grandfather did what he did, and she walks confidently into her audition. |
Lucas | null | 2,003 | The story opens as fifteen year old Cait recounts events occurring a year before on her small island home, Hale, which is roughly four miles long and two miles across at its greatest extent. She begins her story by explaining when she first met Lucas, a mysterious teenager who has traveled to the island to explore and live for a short time period. On the same day that she first sees Lucas, her brother returns home and she is nearly assaulted by another islander, Jamie Tait. However, Lucas is not accepted into the island community easily, due to the discrimination he receives at the hands of the town folk. He works a few odd jobs, but is the victim of attempted assault, forcing him to defend himself and earn a negative reputation. Primarily this comes from Jamie Tait, a university student and popular islander from a wealthy family. The negative behavior escalates when Lucas rescues a young girl from drowning during a town festival, but is met with accusations of molestation. Lucas is forced into hiding. However, he feels an urge to visit Cait one last time. Unfortunately, Jamie has decided to frame Lucas for the rape, assault and attempted murder of a promiscuous islander named Angel, who had befriended Bill, Cait's old best friend. The novel climaxes as the islanders attempt to capture Lucas, who is innocent of the crime. |
Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale | Mo Willems | 2,004 | Trixie steps lively as she goes with her father to the laundromat, down the block, through the park, past the school, to the Laundromat. For the toddler, loading and putting money into the machine invoke wide-eyed pleasure. But, on the return home, she realizes that her stuffed bunny has been left behind. Because she cannot talk, Trixie cannot explain why she is upset to her daddy. Despite his plea of "please don't get fussy," she gives it her all, bawling and going "boneless." They both arrive home unhappy. Mom immediately sees that "Knuffle Bunny" is missing. After several tries, dad finds the toy among the wet laundry and reclaims hero status. The toddler exuberantly exclaims, "Knuffle Bunny!!!" Those were the first words Trixie ever said. This book was also made into a musical (Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale) by Mo Williams, Michael Silversher, and Deborah Wicks La Puma. It toured with the Kennedy Center to cities all across the United States. http://www.kennedy-center.org/events/?event=KKTBD |
Leonardo, the Terrible Monster | Mo Willems | 2,005 | Leonardo is truly a terrible monster-terrible at being a monster that is. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to frighten anyone. Determined to succeed, Leonardo sets himself to training and research. Finally, he finds a nervous little boy, and scares the tuna salad out of him! But scaring people isn't quite as satisfying as he thought it would be. Leonardo realizes that he might be a terrible, awful monster-but he could be a really good friend. * By the way this is part of Barnes & Nobles's plot. |
A Week in the Woods | Andrew Clements | 2,002 | Fifth-grader Mark Robert Chelmsley is moving from his home in Scarsdale, New York, to New Hampshire in the middle of February. At the local school (Hardy Elementary School), Mark initially decides to ignore everyone. However, after camping out in the old barn in his yard, he decides to become more friendly and tries to be nice to the teachers. The fifth grade's annual camping trip in the woods tests Mark's survival skills and his ability to relate to a teacher who seems out to get him. |
Men Against the Sea | Charles Nordhoff | 1,934 | Men Against the Sea follows the journey of Lieutenant William Bligh and the eighteen men set adrift in an open boat by the mutineers of the Bounty. The story is told from the perspective of Thomas Ledward, the Bounty's acting surgeon, who went into the ship's launch with Bligh. It begins after the main events described in the novel and then moves into a flashback, finishing at the starting point. This true story is considered the greatest open-boat voyage of all time. |
The Renegado | null | null | The play is set in Tunis, in what is modern-day Tunisia; the title character, the "renegado" or renegade, is Antonio Grimaldi, who has converted to Islam and become a pirate. The true protagonist of the play, however, is Vitelli, a Venetian gentleman; he has come to Tunis disguised as a merchant, in order to search for his sister Paulina, who has been captured by Grimaldi's pirates and sold into the harem of the city's Viceroy, Asambeg. Even in the harem, however, Paulina's virtue is protected by an amulet she wears around her neck; Asambeg is infatuated with her and treats her with respect. A Turkish princess named Donusa falls in love with Vitelli; when this is discovered, they are both imprisoned in the Black Tower. Donusa tries to convince Vitelli to convert to Islam and marry her, and so gain freedom for them both; Vitelli refuses, and in their ensuing conversation converts Donusa to Christianity. The renegade Grimaldi falls afoul of Asambeg's bad temper, and his career as a pirate is finished. He experiences remorse for his past, and engineers the escape of Vitelli, Donusa, Paulina, and himself from Tunis back to Italy. |
The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa | Yasunari Kawabata | 1,930 | In the 1920s, Asakusa was to Tokyo what Montmartre had been to 1890s Paris, Alexanderplatz was to 1920s Berlin and Times Square was to be to 1940s New York. The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa describes the decadent allure of this entertainment district, where beggars and teenage prostitutes mixed with revue dancers and famous authors. Originally serialized in a Tokyo daily newspaper Tokyo Asahi between 20 December 1929 and February 16, 1930, this vibrant novel uses unorthodox, kinetic literary techniques to reflect the raw energy of Asakusa, seen through the eyes of a wandering narrator and the cast of mostly female juvenile delinquents who show him their way of life. The original newspaper serialization was incomplete. The remaining sections was published concurrently in two literary journals, Reconstruction (Kaizō, volume 12, number 9) and New Currents (Shinchō, volume 27, number 9). Markedly different from Kawabata's later work, The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa was influenced much by Western modernism. The annotated edition of this novel, translated by Alisa Freedman, includes the original illustrations by Ota Saburo and a foreword and an afterword by Donald Richie. |
Earth Made of Glass | John Barnes | 1,999 | Giraut and Margaret, now married, are sent on a diplomatic mission to the politically turbulent planet Briand, a distant Outer Sphere colony cut off from the rest of humanity for centuries until instantaneous travel became possible with the springer. Not only is Briand a very hot, high gravity planet, but the oppressive environment is matched by the increasing hatred between the two proud local cultures which have been forced to live in close proximity as a result of a volcano disaster—the Tamil Mandalam culture of New Tanjavur (based on an interpretation of Sangam literature) and the Maya culture that has been forced to live in the slum of Mayatown and the newly-grown city of Yaxkintulum after the destruction of their native Kintulum (based on an interpretation of pre-Columbian Maya civilization), have strained relations to the point that the Council of Humanity fears that full-scale war or ethnic cleansing may envelop Briand. Giraut and Margaret are given orders by Shan, their Office of Special Projects supervisor, to find the real power brokers of each culture in order to defuse the headline-grabbing daily ethnic attacks and steer the planet clear of all-out war. They must do this under the nose of Ambassador Kiel, a high ranking ambassador from Earth on Briand, who believes strengthening elected government officials is the only way to address a crisis. Giraut and Margaret arrive as their marriage is falling apart, but focus on their work and establish contact with key Tamil people. They are assigned a Tamil assistant, Kapilar, with whom they both spend a lot of time. They are at first unable speak directly to the reclusive Mayans, except for Tz'iquin, the Mayan contact in New Tanjavur. After a small mob attacks Paxa Prytanis, another secret agent sent by the Office of Special Projects, an invitation by the Maya comes unexpectedly. Giraut, Kapilar and Tz'iquin travel to Yaxkintulum in the latter's flying yacht, as the Mayans have officially refused to adopt the springer as well as other technological conveniences, and rely on simple subsistence farming in order to preserve their cultural heritage. Giraut meets Tz'iquin's grandfather, Pusiictsom, the most powerful and influential priest in Yaxkintulum, who, despite being in charge of the traditionally conservative Center Temple, is a reformer working on reconciliation with the Tamils behind the scenes. A plan is put into motion where Pusiictsom's nephew is raised to the position of prophet under the name "Ix," with a plan to move to Yaxkintulum and start a cult movement of tolerance, modernization and truth about the founding of the two cultures. The plan calls for the new cult to be brutally oppressed by Mayan authorities, and Giraut, Kapilar, Ix and Tz'iquin stage an escape to New Tanjavur. Through a series of public appearances, Ix begins to recruit Mayans and some Tamils to his cult. He starts dating Auvaiyar, a notable and famously attractive Tamil critic several years his junior who had previously been involved with Tz'quin, Kapilar and Kannan, a deeply bigoted Tamil critic and poet who heads the avant-garde movement and hopes to create a Fourth Cankam. The rumor that Ix has an affair with a Tamil causes mass riots, which Ix unexpectedly ends by confessing in public, despite Pusiictsom's protests, that his prophecy began as a ploy by his family, the Peccaries. Tz'iquin breaks into tears during his uncle's speech, revealing to Giraut his jealousy at his uncle's upcoming marriage to his former girlfriend. Just prior to Ix's next speech, however, Auvaiyar is found dead, her heart and lungs missing. Ix reacts calmly to the discovery, and decides to show the corpse to the crowd during his speech. Giraut and Kannan bring her body to the central plaza, before the temple of Murukan where Ix was going to wed Auvaiyar. As the prophet speaks to the mixed Tamil/Mayan crowd, he uses his pain, her murder and his forgiveness to whoever did it as a starting point for reconciliation between the two cultures. Tz'iquin comes forth, confesses Auvaiyar's murder (saying that he ate her heart, as Tohil is known to do), and shoots his uncle in the head with a maser. Kannan goes on a murderous rampage against the Mayans as a full-scale race war erupts. Giraut and Kapilar run back to the Embassy, where the former is ordered to evacuate it immediately. Almost everyone in the embassy is evacuated through springers to Earth, but Ambassador Kiel is captured by Tamils, and Kapilar refuses to go, choosing instead to join the fighting to honor his Vellala heritage. Giraut, Margaret and Shan watch the civil war unfold from a space station in the Inner Sphere. Mayan forces invade New Tanjavur through Pusiictsom's secret springer, an attack that the Peccaries had been planning for at least a year. Illegal anti-matter weapons are used by both sides, completely destroying both Yaxkintulum and New Tanjavur. The habitable areas of Briand are devastated, and with no springers left intact, the planet becomes isolated from the rest of humanity until a springer ship can arrive in several decades' time. Giraut finds out from Margaret that she had been having an affair with Kapilar since the mission began, and was ordered to not break it off by his friend and boss Shan, who hoped he could acquire valuable intelligence through Kapilar. The failure of the Office of Special Projects on Briand forces the secretive agency into the limelight, and they brace for public scrutiny and oversight. Giraut opts to take his one-year-long leave on the Hedon culture of Söderblom to try to salvage his marriage and to get away from Shan, but after that one year, he wants back into the Office of Special Projects to continue the important mission of integrating humanity to provide a united front for possible alien contact. |
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen | Dyan Sheldon | 1,999 | Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen follows the character of Mary Elizabeth "Lola" Cep as she moves to New Jersey with her family and attempts to become the Queen Bee at Dellwood High. In order to become so she must contend with Carla Santini, who has no intention of vacating her place in school society. Both end up vying for the lead in the school play, with the feud only getting worse after the breakup of Lola's favorite band. When Carla gets VIP passes to the band's last concert and the after party, Lola says she and her best friend Ella Gerard are going also. They sneak away to New York, get kicked out of the concert, then find the lead singer drunk and on the side of the road, which eventually leads to them getting to the after party. Lola and Ella return to school the next day, eager to boast to Carla about their antics at the afterparty, but are humiliated when Carla succeeds in convincing everyone else they never attended. Lola goes home, upset, and decides not to perform in the school play. But she changes her mind the night of the play after Ella tells her off, and Lola rushes to school to take on her role as the lead. The book ends with the play as a success and with Lola and Carla in the bathroom fixing up their make up for the after party while they acknowledge each other. |
Reckless | Cecily von Ziegesar | 2,006 | As punishment for being off-campus (and having a party), the girls are split up into separate rooms: Callie and Jenny are kept in their original room while Tinsley and Brett move to another. They spend most of their time and energy avoiding each other. Callie tries to deal with her breakup with Easy Walsh by getting a new haircut and a new wardrobe but is surprised when Easy asks her to go to dinner with him and his father during Trustee's Weekend because his father adores Callie and is unaware that they have broken up. Easy, who does not get along with his father, hopes to protect Jenny from his overly critical nature and believes that taking Callie would be much simpler. Callie accepts his invitation but wonders if it means that Easy is having second thoughts about their breakup. Jenny, on the other hand, is blissfully unaware of Easy's action and continues to spend time with Brett, who decides to finally have sex (and lose her virginity) with her on again-off again boyfriend Jeremiah Mortimer during Trustee's Weekend, after a big football game for St. Lucius. However, Tinsley helps Heath Ferro and the hot new freshman, Julian hide kegs of beer on the roof of the Dumbarton dorm and under the bed of a quiet girl who lives in a single known as The Girl In Black. After the boys leave, Tinsley throws and all girls party on the roof for all of the Dumbarton residents (excluding Brett and Jenny). Unfortunately, a staff member passing by hears the girls on the roof and attempts to a stop to it. All the girls quickly hide in their respective rooms so no one can be blamed but the administration insists that the keg left on the roof is more than enough to hold against the dorm as a whole. Due to the Trustee Weekend event, the administration does not want to draw too much attention to the incident so the punishment is light- all Dumbarton residents are under lockdown for the weekend. No one can enter or leave the dorm, thus ruining Brett's plans with Jeremiah. Upon hearing this, the guys of Waverly decide to make history by sneaking into Dumbarton while it is still on lock-down through secret tunnels built during the Cold War. Led by Heath Ferro, Easy Walsh, Brandon Buchanan, Alan St. Girard, Jeremiah Mortimer, and Julian McCafferty make it to Dumbarton unseen by the administration. Upon arrival, they break out the kegs stored under The Girl In Black's room, who turns out to be Kara Whalen, a previously chubby girl who was teased mercilessly by Heath Ferro her freshman year. In the spirit of generosity, Tinsley suggests that the girls of Dumbarton open their closets to the other residents so everyone can borrow each other's clothes. Tinsley, on a hunt for the hottest threads, checks on the kegs in Kara's room and discovers Kara has a fantastic wardrobe, thanks to her designer mother. She offers to help Kara with her make up but quickly forgets as the party begins. Jenny and Easy are reunited at the party but he still doesn't mention his dinner with his father and Callie the previous night before. Jenny leaves him in her room to grab drinks but a rumor quickly spreads that a teacher is roaming the hallways. He hides in the closet but is found by Callie who joins him. After she does so, the two begin to kiss but Easy realizes he has strong feelings for Jenny but is confused as to why he is still so attracted to Callie. Jenny, in the meanwhile, gets pulled into Kara's room after the rumors of a teacher in Dumbarton reach her. Kara and Jenny become fast friends and begin to chat when they are interrupted by Heath Ferro, who is looking for a place to hide as well. Heath is immediately attracted to Kara and does not recognize her as 'The Whale', the nickname he gave her freshman year and attempts to pick her up. Kara, however, is unimpressed and throws her mug of beer into Heath's face, making her one of the coolest chicks at the party. Brandon, unaware of the rumors about a teacher, bumps into Elizabeth Jacobs, a girl from St. Lucius. It quickly becomes apparent that the rumors about a teacher are actually about Elizabeth who has followed Jeremiah from St. Lucius. Brandon and Elizabeth quickly bond as they go around the rooms and coax the residents to continue partying as there is no threat of a teacher. Brett and Jeremiah quickly find each other at the beginning of the party and are about to have sex when they are interrupted by Tinsley who announces a game of 'I Never' is starting in the common room. Deciding to forgo sex for a more romantic occasion, Jeremiah and Brett agree to join the game. During the game, Yvonne Stidder starts with saying that she has never has sex before. The people who have done it, quickly do a shot, led by Heath Ferro. Surprisingly, Jeremiah and Elizabeth each do a shot which causes Brett and Jeremiah to break up. Shockingly, Tinsley, who has implied that she has had sex multiple times, does not take a shot (thus, revealing she is a virgin) which prompts accusations from her friends that she is a liar. Unwilling to be thrown into the spotlight for the wrong reasons, Tinsley announces in front of everybody that Easy took Callie to the Trustee Dinner instead of Jenny. Which prompts Jenny to flee the room. Callie becomes angry at Tinsley for revealing such a big secret in front of everyone, even though she hoped it would cause Easy and Jenny to break up, and reconciles with Brett who is with Kara, comforting Jenny. Jenny, to Callie's surprise, forgives her and both girls await Easy's next move. After the game of I Never, the party slows down considerably as the party-goers gossip about the recent events. During so, Elizabeth and Brandon sneak off to the tunnels and make out which makes Brandon believe that he is finally over Callie. |
Unforgettable | Cecily von Ziegesar | 2,007 | After being torn between Callie Vernon and Jenny Humphrey, Easy Walsh makes his decision and chooses Callie. Although Jenny and Callie made a pact to put their friendship before relationships with Easy in front of the whole school, Callie will certainly not give him up for her sophomore roommate. Meanwhile, Brett Messerschmidt is still upset about the breakup with Jeremiah. After Jeremiah lost his virginity to Elizabeth, Brett had enough with guys. Surprisingly, Brett finds love in the most unexpected place: Kara Whalen, and confides in the most unexpected person: Heath Ferro, an inveterate gossip. Not ready to declare her sexuality to the student body, Brett keeps the relationship a secret by bribing Heath with sexy pictures of her and Kara. As a result of this, the three become surprisingly close. Tinsley Carmichael does the unexpected and hooks up with a freshman: Julian McCafferty. However, Tinsley finds Julian growing increasingly more distant, and she cannot accept he might be bored with her. Brandon Buchanan is completely over Callie and Jenny and is completely in love with Elizabeth, a unique and spunky girl who goes to Jeremiah's school. However, Elizabeth is afraid of being tied down to commitment and wants to be free to see other people, much to Brandon's discontent. Then at a party hosted by Tinsley he sees her flirting with another guy and decides he is not able to have an open relationship with her. At a special off-campus party hosted by Tinsley, Easy proclaims his love for Callie, and they sleep together in a barn while the party rages on. Jenny walks in on them, runs out of the barn before they see her and finds Julian behind it. They talk and realize their feelings for each other, finally kissing. A fire in the barn interrupts them: a fire started by Tinsley throwing Julian's lighter away after seeing them. Suddenly, when the group returns to Waverly, rumors are flying about who actually started the fire. When Jenny confronts Callie about what she saw, they both accuse each other of starting the fire. Brett and Kara's secret is exposed when an intoxicated Callie lets the secret slip at the party, Kara having told Callie the secret after a meeting of Women of Waverly, the club started by Brett for girls to talk about their problems. Soon the entire student body knows that their prefect is in a lesbian relationship. Fueled by anger, Brett is hungry for revenge. Dean Marymount finds out about the fire in the barn and is planning to expel whoever was responsible. Tinsley and Callie seize this chance to frame Jenny and get rid of her once and for all. |
Candy | null | null | The story opens when Joe from a single parent family, a music lover and with a knack for curiosity - meets 16-year-old Candy on the streets of London. He soon learns that Candy is not only a runaway from her home town, but also a teenage prostitute and heroin addict. He immediately becomes infatuated with her. The pair begins dating cautiously, visiting London Zoo once, and Candy comes to see a gig that Joe and his band, The Katies, are playing. However, Candy's pimp, Iggy, feels that Joe Beck is a threat, worrying that Joe will reduce the business Candy takes in and thus reducing Iggy's income. When Joe finds Candy beaten, the pair attack Iggy and leave the city to hide and ease Candy off heroin. Iggy subsequently kidnaps Joe's older sister Gina, and uses her as a bargaining chip, claiming to plan to return her if Candy is returned to him. The novel climaxes when Iggy, Candy, Joe, his sister and his sister's boyfriend encounter one another at the family's remote country house. Candy stabs Iggy in the neck and the main story concludes. Candy is sent off to a rehab center for adolescents and Joe has a final meeting with her. Candy apologizes for everything and gets taken away. Joe is left wondering over her whereabouts and if he will ever see her again. The last chapter briefly explains that Joe's band received a record deal and had recorded Joe's song that he had written for Candy. They called several times for his permission to record it, but he never returned the calls. Although Joe was not at all upset by this, Candy very much was. This led to the last scene having Candy cry in Joe's arms, asking why their song was recorded. Did he have something to do with it? Left hanging on the streets all alone when Candy leaves, Joe is baffled, heartbroken, and still deeply in love. |
Keeping Faith | Jodi Picoult | 1,999 | When Mariah White catches her husband, Colin White, with another woman for the second time in their marriage, he files for divorce and gives her full custody of their child, Faith. After the divorce, Mariah falls into a deep depression, while Faith develops an imaginary friend called her "Guard". When she starts quoting the Bible, which she has never read as she is a Jew, her mother takes her to see a therapist, fearing for her sanity. The therapist finds that Faith may in fact be seeing God. News of this reaches Ian Fletcher, a "teleatheist" who is traveling around the country debunking "miracles" that feature God. Ian shows up at the Whites' house, where he has a confrontation with Millie Epstein, Faith's grandmother. This leads to the latter having a heart attack and being taken to hospital, where she is declared dead. About an hour later Faith kisses her good-bye and thus apparently raises her back to life. This increases the attention of the general public focused on her, with pilgrims and media representative surrounding the house, making it impossible for the Whites to continue with their normal lives. She performs a few other miracles, including healing an AIDS baby and showing what appear to be stigmata. Colin, hearing of the commotion surrounding his daughter, sues Mariah for custody of Faith. Mariah and Faith flee to Kansas City, where they are confronted with Ian, who is visiting his autistic brother, Michael. They end up staying together after Ian cheats Mariah into believing he will not betray them and give them accommodation. After a confrontation with Faith trying to "heal" Michael, Ian blows up. However, Mariah and Ian appear to have fallen in love. After hearing from her mother that Colin is suing her, they fly back. Meanwhile, Faith is admitted to the hospital again and her mother is prevented from seeing her by the court, at which point Faith's symptoms begin to worsen, eventually leaving her near death. Upon being reunited with her mother her health increases drastically, and in the end, Mariah is awarded custody, the holes in Faith's hands disappear, and her "guard" goes away. Mariah and Ian begin a romantic relationship during the novel and they and Faith eventually live together as a family. But at the very end of the story, it remains unclear whether the guard is really forever gone or is still with Faith. |
The Road of the Dead | null | null | The Road of the Dead opens as 14 year old Ruben and 17 year old Cole, half gypsy half English brothers, learn about their older sister's rape and murder. Determined to bring closure to their family, they travel to Lychcombe to collect her body. What begins as a simple task to bring her body home branches out into a quest for revenge when they learn that the murderer must be caught before they can bury Rachel. Slowly the brothers begin to uncover a plot in Lychcombe, involving the planned installation of a new hotel and vacation resort and several landowners who don't want to sell. Tragically, they discover that Rachel's murder was the result of an accident/miscommunication. However, the brothers are still determined to catch her killer. When the brothers discover that the killer has already been murdered himself for his mistake, they set out to find his body, the only way they can link him to Rachel. They soon find themselves involved with local gypsies, small town politics and the town's unofficial leader who's not going to give in without a fight. |
Mindgame | Anthony Horowitz | null | Mark Styler, a writer of "true crime" stories arrives at the Fairfields experimental hospital for the criminally insane, with the hope of interviewing serial killer Easterman for a new book. He meets Dr. Farquhar, the hospital director, however things don't seem quite right. The doctor is reluctant to let Styler see Easterman, and encourages Styler to leave. Styler, however refuses with the excuse of a long car journey. In the end, he stays and Farquhar offers him dinner. His assistant Nurse Plimpton seems frightened of something, and is anxious. She tries to give a note to Styler, but Farquhar burns it in the bin. She reluctantly makes a pot of tea and liver sandwiches for Styler. After she leaves, the two discuss the book further, but Styler's real feelings about Easterman are revealed. He is desperate to see Easterman, and suggests that he wore a strait-jacket to keep him from damaging anything. Farquhar, seemingly annoyed at this, retrieves a strait jacket from a closet and offers to put it on Styler to show what it is like, and he reluctantly agrees. Once Styler is strapped in, Farquhar taunts him about being mad, and threatens him with a scalpel, then Nurse Plimpton returns, and she knocks Farquhar unconscious with a wine bottle. She explains that Farquhar is in fact Easterman, who killed most of the staff during a "psychiatric drama" session. Nurse Plimpton is in fact Doctor Carol Ennis. She cannot undo the strait jacket straps, and as she bends down to get the scalpel from Easterman, he awakens and grabs her, then stabs her behind a curtain. When Easterman and Styler begin to talk, it turns out the two men used to be neighbours, and Styler admired Easterman, perhaps even loved him. It appears Styler's motives for visiting are not as they appeared to be. Doctor Ennis suddenly awakens, and cries out for help; Easterman straps her to a chair and after removing the jacket, asks Styler to kill her. Styler is tricked into thinking he is Easterman, and they think up various methods, but in the end Styler suffocates her with a carrier bag. Once it is done, he feels guilt but Ennis awakes and now assumes the role of Doctor Farquhar. She and Easterman, who is now Carol completely change, and Styler is told he is Easterman and Styler was just his assumed name. He tries to prove them wrong, however his BMW is gone, and the letter he sent to Farquhar is blank. In the end, Styler is forced to believe he is Easterman, however it is never explicitly revealed to the audience who is actually who. |
Oakleaf Bearers | John Flanagan | 2,006 | The book continues from where the previous book left off. In The Icebound Land, Evanlyn and Will have been captured and sold as slaves. As the time went on, Halt and Horace travelled across Gallica, defeating false knights, and ridding Gallica of the evil warlord Deparnieux. They are now in Gallica ready to board a ship and save Will. Meanwhile, Will has overcome his addiction to warmweed and finally regains his senses. Evanlyn, revealed to be Princess Cassandra, is out checking traps for food when she is taken hostage by the Temujai. Halt and Horace, still on their rescue mission, find a gate of which a dozen Skandians lay dead, shot. Halt manages to recognise an arrow, shot by the Temujai and becomes instantly worried. Two decades ago, the Temujai had nearly conquered the world, but with politics and a dish of bad clams, the invasion was stopped. Halt and Horace, after managing to track the Temujai down, came to Will's aid and they try to get Evanlyn back. Halt and the group, after being reunited, were then captured by Erak, the Skandian Jarl who had set Evanlyn and Will free. Erak had been trying to track down the people who shot the Skandians at the other gate, and hastily came to a conclusion that Halt was the one who did it. Halt gave a list of reasons, which convinced the senior Jarl to listen to him. The Skandians have no chance, as they are greatly outnumbered and the Temujai have long-range archers, versus the Skandians one-on-one close combat. Halt, Evanlyn, Will, and Horace are now forced to stay in Skandia because the Temujai have blocked their only exit to their homeland. Erak came to a decision into trying to get Ragnak, the Oberjarl, to let Halt become their strategist as he had lived and fought with and against the Temujai before, thus knowing their battle plans and style of fighting. Halt and Erak also manage to find the main army of the Temujai, followed with a very narrow escape because of Erak's clumsiness. Halt and Will also manage to convince the Oberjarl into getting the slaves to become archers with their reward being freedom, of which Ragnak had to very reluctanctly accept. 20 Skandians were also supposed to raid the army's food supplies, wagons, and release their horses as the army, who had not expected the Skandians to be strategic. Further on in the story, the Temujai begins their first attack and, as Halt had said, made a fake retreat of which the Skandians purposelly followed their "ambush". Halt, however, had placed a group of Skandians to ambush the Temujai. This made them driven back and the General of the army, along with the Colonel, were very surprised because the Skandians were not behaving anything at all from what they've heard. In the battle, Will manages to keep his archers concealed for a while, but soon, they are spotted. Will kept his archers firing their arrows, but they were defeated. Meanwhile, the Skandians, made an impact on the opposing army, and the General had to retreat back to his homeland because he lost too many warriors. The Skandians had won. Erak takes the group back to their home. After a long happy union, Will and Evanlyn then find out that Halt has been banished; Erak saves the awkward moment by trying to include it in their treaty to pardon him, of which King Duncan agrees. In the end, Halt was rewarded with his reunion back with the Rangers, Horace with his knighthood and position as the Royal Guards, and Will was offered to become one of the Royal Scouts, a high position of the King's army that trains archers and that only nobles could probably have; this would give him fame and reputation, but Will, in his heart, turns the offer down. Will wants to continue his training to became a full-fledged Ranger. Evanlyn, near the end as well, is sad because her friendship with Will is breaking up and Alyss is a little glad about that in later books. |
The Princess Diaries | Meg Cabot | 2,000 | Mia Thermopolis an average urban ninth grader. She lives in Greenwich Village with a single, liberal mom who is a semi-famous painter, but Mia puts on her Doc Martens one at a time, and the most exciting things she ever dreams about are kissing senior Josh Richter ("six feet of hotness") and passing Algebra. Mia's dad comes to town and drops a major bomb: he's not just a European politician as he's always led her to believe, but actually the prince of a small country. And Mia, his only heir, is now considered the crown princess of Genovia. She doesn't even know how to begin to cope: "I am so NOT a princess.... You never saw anyone who looked less like a princess than I do. I mean, I have really bad hair... and... a really big mouth and no breasts and feet that look like skis." Mia's troubles are worsened: her mom has started dating her algebra teacher, the paparazzi are showing up at school, and she has a fight with her best friend Lilly after this they don't talk for a while so they become distant from each other. Mia goes to her Grandmère's Plaza Hotel room in order to train to be a princess and she starts to develop into a great princess. Throughout story Mia also makes another friend named Tina, who is shunned because of her overprotective father, who makes her have a body guard. |
Exile's Honor | Mercedes Lackey | null | Alberich is a Captain of the army in Karse, the youngest person to receive this promotion. He has flashes of Foresight and one day gets a vision of bandits invading a village while grooming his horse, a gift from the priesthood upon his promotion. He musters his men and is able to save the village. After, a Red-robe priest of the god Vkandis proclaims that Alberich has a "witch-power" and therefore is condemned to death. He is locked in a barn and the barn is set afire. However, the horse given to him after his promotion rescues him and turns out to be a Companion named Kantor who Chooses Alberich. Alberich is unwillingly taken to Valdemar, where he recovers from his injuries. When he recovers, he is informed by King's Own Talamir that he is now a Herald Trainee. Alberich had been taught that Heralds were demons along with their "Hellhorses" - the Companions. Alberich now has to deal with this fact, as well as the realization that he no longer can return to Karse. A priest of Vkandis and his acolyte are able to help Alberich accept matters in Valdemar as they had fled from Karse as well. Alberich settles into life at the Collegium as the Weaponmaster's Second. Alberich is later made the bodyguard of Princess Selenay and accompanies her when she does her circuit training at the courts in the city. Karse and Valdemar have been at war for generations, and Karse hired a nation of mercenaries not tied to the Mercenary Guild to fight on their behalf. Alberich helps Valdemar fight what are later known as the Tedrel Wars. Alberich uses his connections in the Karsite military to acquire intelligence on the Tedrel Mercenaries as the battles go on season after season. In a dramatic final battle, Valdemaran forces fight the entire nation of Tedrel mercenaries. When all seems lost, King Sendar, Selenay's father, rushes into battle and is killed. King's Own Talamar loses his Companion, Taver, as well and another King's Own Companion named Rolan arrives to pull him out of his grief. Selenay becomes queen, and a funeral procession is arranged for Sendar to return to the captiol city of Haven. Upon his return, Alberich is made full Weaponmaster, the old one deciding to retire, and he finally settles into his new life in Valdemar. |
Come Back for More | Ralph Salaway | null | After testifying against the murderer of bank guard Pop Walters, "Swede" Anderson finds himself number one on the River City, California crime syndicate's hit list. He barely escapes fiery death after the mob wires a bomb into the door of his car. Captain Domms of the city police is unable to protect him or, worse, has his own hand in the mob's pocket. Seeing no refuge for himself in River City, Anderson rides the rails out of town and fades from local memory. Anderson realizes that after four years of hobo living has melted away his flab, the sun has turned his formerly pale skin to leather, and a run-in with a railyard bull has left his nose broken and his cheek scarred, he is scarcely recognizable as his old self. With a bottle of henna he completes the transformation by coloring his blond hair red. Under the name of his late hobo pal, Mac McCarthy, Anderson returns to River city with revenge on his mind. There, he signs on as a driver with Tyler Trucking. The firm is being run by Gail Tyler, following her father's death—under suspicious circumstances—in a high-speed truck wreck. Anderson soon learns that between the union and the crime syndicate it fronts, the lifespan of a trucker in River City is not entirely in the trucker's hands. Using a mix of guts, muscle, and brains, Anderson builds a reputation as a cool-headed tough whose only interest is in a quick dollar. He manages to infiltrate the mob, but soon finds himself in over his head. In what he thinks will be simple heist, he becomes an unwilling accessory to the murder of the head of a rival trucking firm. In this he implicates not just himself but also Tyler Trucking and Gail, with whom he has developed a romantic attachment. Investigating the crime, Captain Domms fails to see through Anderson's Mac McCarthy disguise and proves himself no more able to enforce the law than he'd been four years ago. Never losing his nerve, Anderson ultimately wins the mob bosses' full confidence and is taken into a plot to rob the same bank he worked in when Pop Walters was killed. While rehearsing for the robbery, Anderson sees through the mob's plan to murder him after he plays his part—to avoid making the generous payoff it's promised him. Anderson develops a counter-strategy, but realizes the mob has turned the tables on him when the next rehearsal suddenly becomes the real thing. As the story reaches its climax, Anderson has only moments to adapt his half-formed plan to the new scenario, save his life, and find the revenge he has sought. |
Jeffrey and Sloth | Kari-Lynn Winters | 2,007 | Jeffrey can't think of how to start his writing assignment so he doodles instead, only to have his doodle of a sloth come to life and order him about. Jeffrey struggles against the strong-willed Sloth, in the process telling a tale and completing his homework. |
The Alexandria Link | Steve Berry | 2,007 | The Library of Alexandria was the most important collection of ancient knowledge ever assembled. The building stood for six hundred years and contained more than half a million manuscripts. Then suddenly it vanished. No trace of this literary treasure has ever been unearthed. The book starts in Palestine in 1948, just as the state of Israel was being established. During Israel's War of Independence, a man is captured by Arab soldiers and taken to George Haddad who is surprised to find that this man is actually looking for his father and has some hidden truth to share. He mentions that Arabs are fighting a war that is unnecessary, against an enemy that is misinformed. Unable to learn more, the leader decides to shoot the mysterious man. In present day Copenhagen, Denmark, Cotton Malone is in trouble. His son Gary is being held hostage by unknown enemies who want to trade him for the secret of the Alexandria Link. Malone is the only living person who's aware of it. He receives an anonymous email saying that he has only 72 hours to get it and trade with them. He and his ex-wife Pam visit Malone's influential friend Henrik Thorvaldsen's mansion to get some answers. A mysterious man, Dominick Sabre, is following them all the time. Stephanie and her boss, US Attorney General Brent Green, contacts Larry Daley, the main contact in the White House who knows more than them about the Link. Green says that the Link is in fact a person named George Haddad, a Palestinian biblical soldier. Malone uses Thorvaldsen's computer to log in to his "Magellan Billet" secure server, which was accessible to him when he used to work for the justice department. He contacts his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, for more information. She mentions that there was some security breach and some secured files may have been exposed. Malone meets agent Durant, who works for Stephanie, but he gets killed before he learns more. Malone follows the killer and eventually rescues Gary after killing his captors. What he apparently does not realize is that that was the plan by Sabre, who had anticipated this from the start. He delivers this message to his employer, the mysterious Blue Chair, the head of "The Chairs", according to whom they have different interests in the Alexandria Link; while Sabre wants the link, the Chairs want it to be obliterated. Later Thorvaldsen reveals to Stephanie the whereabouts of "The Chairs" and that it is a recreation of the Order of the Golden Fleece) - a European economic cartel. The head of this circle is called the Blue Chair, currently Alfred Hermann, an Austrian industrialist. This circle has many controls over Europe and their highest priority is the Middle East. Malone is on his way with Pam to meet Haddad. He keeps Gary at Thorvaldsen's mansion, hoping that will keep him safe. He goes to London with Pam and meets Haddad to learn more about the Library of Alexandria and the mystery. Haddad tells them about the probable translation inaccuracies of the Old Testament and how he is working to show how it has been translated from Old Hebrew. But before he finishes explaining everything to Malone, Israeli agents arrive and kill Haddad. Stephanie meets Heather Dixon, an Israeli citizen attached to the Washington mission, who tries to kill her. Cassiopeia Vitt, Thorvaldsen's associate, appears and tranquilizes her with a dart. Brent Green helps her to learn a lot about the current situation and reveals that Pam Malone might be the conduit of Israel. Sabre meets Malone and Pam and tries to buy some information from them in exchange for decoding a word-play of Haddad. Henrik flies to Austria with Gary to attend the Order of Golden fleece's meeting, thus playing a psychological game with Hermann. |
Terrarium | Scott Sanders | 1,985 | In the late 21st century, humans have been forcibly moved into an enclosed network of domed cities connected by travel tubes known as 'The Human System'. The outside world was left because of extreme pollution, and the cities rely on harvesting the seas. Inside these cities, (called the "Enclosure") taboos extend so far as to make uncovered legs and unpainted faces a horrific sin. Due to likely ongoing large scale social engineering there are 12 stages for mating but most women have their reproductive organs removed or are used as breeders starting at the age of 13. Fear of the outside is extreme, another aspect of the social engineering that was incorporated into The Human System. Hence it is called the "wilder" and people who enter these lands legally on maintenance work are called wildergoers. Exiting The Human System without permission is illegal and might result in execution. The book focuses on a man named Phoenix and a Wildergoer called Teeg Passio, daughter of a renowned deconstructer of the original Earth cities whose pieces and materials were used to create the Enclosure. The book details how they and a group of others escape out into the wilds and find an outside world they didn't expect. |
All That Fall | Samuel Beckett | 1,956 | This is the first work by Beckett where a woman is the central character. In this case it is a gritty, “overwhelmingly capacious”, outspoken, Irish septuagenarian, Maddy Rooney, plagued by “rheumatism and childlessness”. “Beckett emphasized to Billie Whitelaw that Maddy had an Irish accent: : ‘I said, “Like yours,” and he said, “No, no, no, an Irish accent.” I realized he didn't know he had an Irish accent, and that was the music he heard in his head.’” The opening scene finds Maddy trudging down a country road towards the station, renamed “Boghill” in the play. It’s her husband’s birthday. She’s already given him a tie but decides to surprise him by meeting him off the 12:30 train. It is a fine June morning, a Saturday since her husband is leaving his office at noon rather than five. In the distance the sounds of rural animals are heard. She moves with difficulty. She hears chamber music coming from an old house, Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden”. She stops, listens to the recording and even murmurs along with it before proceeding. Her first of three encounters with men is with the dung carrier, Christy, who tries to sell her a “small load of … stydung”. She tells him she will consult her husband. The man’s cart is being pulled by a “cleg-tormented” hinny who shows some reluctance to move on and needs to be whipped. As she heads off Maddy’s thoughts return to “Minnie! Little Minnie!” The smell of laburnum distracts her. Suddenly old Mr Tyler is upon her ringing his cycle bell. Whilst relating how his daughter’s operation has rendered her unable to bear children, they are almost knocked down by Connolly’s van, which covers them “white with dust from head to foot”. Maddy again bemoans the loss of Minnie but refuses to be comforted by Tyler who rides off despite realising that his rear tyre is flat. Lastly an “old admirer”, Mr Slocum, a racecourse clerk, pulls up in his “limousine” to offer her a ride. She is too fat and awkward to climb in alone so Slocum pushes her in from behind and in doing so her frock gets caught in the door. He tries to start the car but it has died. After applying the choke he does manage to get going and, no sooner having done so, runs over and kills a hen, which Maddy feels the need to eulogise. At each stage of the journey the technology she encounters advances, but despite this each means of locomotion is beset by problems, foreshadowing the problem with the train: she finds walking difficult and is forced to sit down, Christy needs to whip his hinny to make her go, Tyler’s tire goes flat, and Slocum’s engine dies. All the relatives mentioned in this section are female and all the modes of transport are also referred to as females. At the station Slocum calls on the porter, Tommy, for assistance to extricate his passenger, after which he drives away, “crucifying his gearbox.” Beckett told Billie Whitelaw that Maddy “is in a state of abortive explosiveness”. This becomes apparent when she considers herself ignored. To the boy Tommy she says abrasively: “Don’t mind me. Don’t take any notice of me. I do not exist. The fact is well known.” As Ruby Cohn quips, “she endures volubly.” The stationmaster, Mr Barrell, asks after Mrs Rooney’s health. She confesses that she should really still be in bed. We hear of the demise of Mr Barrell’s father, who died shortly after retiring, a tale that reminds Maddy again of her own woes. She notes that the weather has taken a change the worse; the wind is picking up and rain is due. Miss Fitt approaches so immersed in humming a hymn she doesn’t see Maddy at first. Miss Fitt, as her name indicates, is a self-righteous misfit. After some discussion she condescends to help the old woman up the stairs to the platform, primarily because “it is the Protestant thing to do.” Unusually the train is late. The noise of the station builds to a crescendo but it is an anticlimax; it is the oft-mentioned up mail. Dan’s train comes in moments afterwards. Maddy panics. She can’t find her husband because he has been led to the gents by Jerry, the boy who normally helps him to the taxi. Tightfisted Dan chides her for not cancelling Jerry but still pays his penny fee. He refuses however to discuss the reason for the train’s lateness. Not without some difficulty – her husband is also not a well man – they descend the stairs and begin the trek home. On her journey to the station Maddy only had to compete with one person at a time, each an old man. Now she is faced with a crowd. Rather than the flat open countryside she has to contend with a mountainous climb; she refers to the stairs as a “cliff”, her husband calls them a “precipice” and Miss Fitt compares them to the “Matterhorn”, a mountain that for years inspired fear in climbers. Also, the means of transport that are mentioned here, the Titanic, the Lusitania and the train due are modes of mass transport and the level of danger shifts from the inconvenient to the potentially lethal. All the relatives mentioned in this section are now male. The weather is worsening. The thought of getting home spurs them on. Dan imagines sitting by the fire in his dressing gown with his wife reading aloud from Effi Briest. The Lynch twins jeer at them from a distance. Dan shakes his stick and chases them off. Previously they have pelted the old couple with mud. “Did you ever wish to kill a child?” Dan asks her then admits to having to resist the impulse within himself. This makes his comment shortly after about being alone in his compartment – “I made no attempt to restrain myself.” – all the more suspicious. This also focuses attention on his remarks about the pros and cons of retirement: one of the negatives he brings up has to do with enduring their neighbour’s children. Dan is as laconic as Maddy is loquacious. His refusal to explain why the train was delayed forces her to pester him with questions which he does his best to avoid answering. He prevaricates and digresses, anything to throw her off track. Eventually he maintains that he honestly has no clue what the cause was. Being blind and on his own he had simply assumed the train had stopped at a station. Something Dan says reminds Maddy of a visit she once made to hear “a lecture by one of these new mind doctors. What she heard there was the story of a patient the doctor had failed to cure, a young girl who was dying, and “did in fact die, shortly after he had washed his hands of her.” The reason the doctor gave for the girl’s death, as if the revelation had just come to him there and then, was: “The trouble with her was that she had never really been born!” As they near the house Maddy passed earlier, Schubert’s music is still playing. Dan starts to cry. To stop her asking questions he asks about the text of Sunday’s sermon. “The Lord upholdeth all that fall and raiseth up all those that be bowed down,” she tells him, and then they both burst out laughing. Mr Slocum and Miss Fitt had both passed comment on Maddy’s bent posture. Perhaps, this is partly why they laugh: it is the best reaction to a life of unending misery in a world devoid of any God. In Happy Days, Winnie asks “How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones”. It is worthy of mention too that “it is Mr Tyler, rather than the Lord, who saved the preacher’s life when they were climbing together”. It would be fair to assume that Maddy doesn’t really believe in a god anymore. When she says, “We are alone. There is no one to ask.” She is certainly not talking about there being no one to ask about her husband’s age. Jerry catches them up to return something Mr Rooney has dropped. Learning that it is some kind of ball he demands the boy hand it to him. When pressed by his wife all he will say is that: “It is a thing I carry about with me,” and becomes angry when pressed on the subject. They have no small change so promise to give Jerry a penny on Monday to compensate him for his trouble. Just as the boy starts back Maddy calls him to see if he has learned what delayed the train. He has. Dan doesn’t want to know – “Leave the boy alone, he knows nothing! Come on!” – but his wife insists. Jerry tells her that it was a child at which point her husband groans. When pushed for details the boy goes on: “It was a little child fell out of the carriage, Ma’am … Onto the line, Ma’am … Under the wheels, Ma’am.” We assume the child is a girl – all the foreshadowing in the play has been pointing to that – but, crucially, Beckett never actually says. (See his comment to Kay Boyle below however). With that Jerry exits. We hear his steps die away and the couple head off in silence. Maddy must realise the death happened while she was making her way to the station but she is – for once – speechless. All we are left with is the wind and the rain and to wonder what, if anything, Mr Rooney actually had to do with the death of the child. The third section of the play returns Maddy to the relative calm of the walk home. They encounter a further three people only this time they are all children. The laburnum also serves as an important benchmark. In the opening scene Maddy admires it, now its condition has deteriorated. The weather has also continued to worsen until, at the end, they are in the middle of a “[t]empest of wind and rain”. In 1961 Kay Boyle asked Beckett if, at the end of Happy Days, Willie is reaching for the gun, or for his wife. Beckett replied: : “The question as to which Willie is ‘after’ – Winnie or the revolver – is like the question in All That Fall as to whether Mr Rooney threw the little girl out of the railway-carriage or not. And the answer is the same in both cases – we don’t know, at least I don’t … I know creatures are supposed to have no secrets for their authors, but I’m afraid mine for me have little else.” |
The Fur Country | Jules Verne | 1,872 | In 1859 Lt. Jasper Hobson and other members of the Hudson's Bay Company travel through the Northwest Territories of Canada to Cape Bathurst on the Arctic Ocean on the mission to create a fort at 70 degrees, north of the Arctic Circle. The area they come to is very rich with wildlife and natural resources. Jasper Hobson and his party establish a fort here. At some point, an earthquake occurs, and from then on, laws of physics seem altered (a total eclipse happens to be only partial; tides are not perceived anymore). They eventually realise that they are on an iceberg separated from the sea ice that is drifting south. Hobson does a daily measurement to know the iceberg's location. The iceberg passes the Bering Strait and the iceberg (which is now much smaller, since the warmer waters has melted some parts) finally reaches a small island. A Danish whaling ship finds them. Every member in Hobson's party is rescued and they all survive. |
Goat Song | Frank Yerby | null | Ariston, a Spartiate, is the hero cursed and blessed by a matchless beauty that was the Hellenic ideal. This was a time of burgeoning culture and festering decadence, of excessive cruelty and sexuality. Here are found the battlefield and the helot slave market, the temple and the brothel, the discourse of Socrates and the Dionysian revel of Alcibiades, the brutal code of Sparta and the brilliant sophistication of Athens. Ariston is enslaved and brought to Athens where he earns his freedom and fortune only to face Sparta as an Athenian. |
Veracity | null | 2,007 | What Joshua knows, without a doubt, is that this is the last day of his life. Let alone is he severely injured and unable to walk, he has been tied to a tree by a group of people who will most likely return before the end of the day and kill him – and in the most painful way that they can. He decides that in the time that he has left, the most fitting and constructive thing to do would be to recall the story of who these people are, and why their actions are, he concedes, completely justifiable. Joshua is one of several young men and women who were raised on an island, under the strictest of control, by a group of people who are referred to as the Elders. While growing up, it was clear that a mass of information was being carefully kept from them, but they had also been assured that the reasons for this secrecy would be revealed in early adulthood, during a rite of passage known as Coming of Age. But when this rite finally begins to take place, it doesn’t exactly appear to be an uplifting experience for those who are put through it; like Mikkel, who, after finally returning to the community, attempts to meet with Joshua to give him some kind of urgent warning about it. However, Mikkel falls short, and before Joshua can make any sense of it, he himself is removed from the community to Come of Age. He is taken to an isolated shelter and put through a philosophically taxing ordeal, where he is forced to admit to some of his own callous tendencies and cruelty. He is then told of The Goal, which has all but been completed, and which is a meticulously thought out, three-phase plan designed to rid the world of our ‘vile race’, cleansing the planet of our destructiveness, and allowing nature the chance to heal from the wounds we’ve inflicted. However, as much as he tries to question the sanity of this reasoning, he soon realizes that he is completely outmatched, that they have thought of every angle and argument possible, and have formulated a set of seamless counterarguments to dispel any contention he can come up with. He then learns that he has been chosen as one of the few people who are given the ‘real truth’, and this, only because he is being considered as a candidate to lead an expedition that will set out from the island for the third and final phase of The Goal. This expedition will be a last sweep for a designated portion of a continent, making certain that the land is uninhabited, and, if anyone is found, to inconspicuously sterilize that person or group of people. Joshua realizes he has two choices: he can allow himself to adopt this obscure set of beliefs (the Elders are clearly too clever for him to fake it) and be given the chance for adventure and freedom away from the island, or he can refuse and live the rest of his days under even more severe and tyrannical control. Understandably, he chooses the former. Once his slow-building conviction begins to pass the test, Joshua is released back into the community. There, Mikkel finds another opportunity to meet with him in secret. He discloses the fact that he has some uncertainties about The Goal, and tells him of a text that he had once stumbled across during his education that talked about brainwashing. Joshua, being much more bought in, rationalizes how ‘programming people’ would be physically impossible, and Mikkel, realizing that he might have put himself in danger by opening up, quickly retracts his statements. Then another young man, named Peik, who is also a potential leader for the expedition, Comes of Age. But when he is released, he immediately calls a meeting (something strictly forbidden on the island) for every young man to attend. In this meeting he reveals, in addition to the fact that he is no longer mentally sound, exactly what the Elders are involved in. But the group that has gathered only take this as proof of his sudden spiral into madness, and Peik struggles to redeem himself by presenting a few sheets of encyclopaedia text that describe mind control. Seeing these pages, Joshua realizes what Mikkel has done: believing the Elders to be in the wrong, he has managed to smuggle pieces of ‘misleading information’ to Peik before he was taken into the shelter to Come of Age, in hopes that he might resist their indoctrination. And resist he did. The meeting, however, is cut short when an Elder discovers it, and Peik turns and runs for his life. Everyone else is ordered to go into a community hall to wait in silence while searches are conducted to find him. They finally return with bad news. Peik, in a clear act of insanity, tried to swim away from the Elders who were looking for him, and has drowned. They dismiss everyone to go outside and support each other in their state of shock and grief, except those who know about The Goal. Incredibly frustrated, the Elders try and root out the conspirator among them, concentrating their efforts on some of the women. Joshua chooses to keep quiet about what he knows, saving Mikkel’s life. The Elders are afraid. Only three young men have been given the ‘real truth’, and already someone on the island has managed to slip disclosed material to one of them, which, at worst, might have sparked a revolt, and, at best, has already left one of the three dead. Knowing that this rogue ‘paper smuggler’ could strike again at any time, the Elders decide that they have no choice but to shuffle the remaining two young men who have been given the truth, off on the expedition prematurely, as they would be the most vulnerable targets for the conspirator. They quickly train Joshua – who might not be the best leader, but seems to be the more convinced of the two – to head the expedition. They supply him with the last seaworthy sailboat on the island, a crew of six, and a first mate, Mikkel, who will act as second in command. Soon after setting sail, Joshua begins to illustrate his poor leadership skills, and the crew are increasingly allowed to get away with actions that would never have been allowed on the island. Then, just as his authority begins to be genuinely tested, a severe storm rolls in, damaging the masts and rigging beyond repair. During the ordeal, Mikkel saves Joshua’s life, and then quietly insinuates that he is no longer in his debt, that he considers the two of them to be even. Under the extreme stress of trying to deal with their predicament, the crew inadvertently uncover one of the lies that had been told to them, and begin to question the true intentions of the expedition (they had been told that it was a scientific study, which hoped to probe into the mystery of what had decimated the human population). While they find ways to repair the ship, they recall what Peik had said before evidently ‘committing suicide’, which soon escalates into paranoia, and eventually into a mutiny. Mikkel steps in before things get too ugly, and takes over command of the ship. He decides to inform the ignorant crew of the true reason for the expedition, and Joshua, imprisoned in his quarters, quickly becomes convinced that it is only a matter of time before his infuriated shipmates put him to death. Enlisting the help of the only person on board who believes in his innocence, Joshua escapes in the middle of the night while the ship is passing a steep peninsula (on which it would be impossible for the sailboat to disembark). However, before he can get into the water with the life raft, and amid the confusion of different people moving around in the dark, he accidentally slashes open the stomach of the young man who is trying to save him. Once he reaches the peninsula he travels further inland, until he comes to the remnants of a garden plot where fruit and vegetables are growing. He sets up a home there, and, as the restless weeks pass, he soon finds himself inside of a thorny philosophical struggle. He realizes that the only way to rid himself of the guilt that he feels for most likely killing the young man who helped to save his life, he must become more like the person that that young man thought he was saving. And the only way to do this, he concludes, is to abandon some of the Elder’s philosophies. Gradually, Joshua’s outlook begins to change. Until, one day, he finds a bird entangled in a spool of frayed rope that has lost most of its feathers and is on the brink of starvation. He decides to slowly nurse it back to health, a process that leads him to a strange conclusion. Through various experiences that revolve around the bird, he comes to understand that the longer we hold onto a certain piece of truth, the further from that truth we get. It turns out, he suddenly recognizes, that no one holds the truth of what humanity is – not the Elders, not Mikkel, not himself – and he grows to feel strangely enlightened by this fact. He eventually frees the bird, and settles into a quiet and simple existence on his garden plot. Then the day arrives that he wakes to the sound of Mikkel’s voice. In an instant, he realizes that the crew of the ship have been determinedly tracking him for months, hunting him down. After barely managing to escape, he continues to run for his life. The bird that he has saved follows, hovering above him, indicating exactly where he is. Recognizing that this one and only companionship in his life might also be his downfall, he lures the bird close enough to throw rocks at it, violating the trust he had painstakingly gained. But before the bird can fly far enough away, the crew manage to spot him, and quickly close in. Desperate, Joshua drops into a valley where he finds a recent fire pit, along with other, more disturbing signs of human destruction and cruelty. His old beliefs come flooding back, and he finds himself in a dilemma. If he continues, the crew will come across the same evidence, and almost certainly set out to protect this unknown group of people from other third phase expeditions, saving humanity, and prolonging the ruin and suffering that we cause. But if he retraces his steps and tries to lead them away from the evidence, he will be caught and die a painful and degrading death. After weighing things out, and in an extreme act of conviction and self-sacrifice, he turns around and retraces his steps, but only manages to lead them into the next valley before he loses his footing on a steep slope, tumbling downhill until he is knocked unconscious. Joshua wakes tied to a tree at the bottom of the slope. With no one in sight, he decides to spend the day recounting the story of how he got there. Finally, as the day is coming to an end, Mikkel approaches him, alone. He tells Joshua the crew’s side of the same story, how they all had to take care of the young man that Joshua had cut, and how the infection slowly, painfully, claimed his life. Mikkel explains that the crew were consumed with frustration, and that, upon disembarking, and despite his reluctance, they became determined to find Joshua in an attempt to impose some kind of justice. Then, Mikkel informs him that they have found the evidence of people in the previous valley, and that he and the crew intend on finding those people and educating them "to live in the most conscientious way possible," and to avoid making the same mistakes humanity has repeatedly made. Joshua shares his newfound philosophy, arguing that, as long as we are alive, it is our lot to make those same mistakes, endlessly; because we are perfectly wired to deceive ourselves, because while we are making those mistakes, we fool ourselves into thinking that they are the only true option, that they are right. But Mikkel disagrees, and, with the sounds of the crew approaching, he draws a knife. In order to prevent them from torturing Joshua, he stabs him, ending his life in a peculiar act of friendship, mercy, and hope. |
Seeker | William Nicholson | 2,005 | The main characters in the book are Seeker, Morning Star and The Wildman. Seeker and Morning Star are devout believers in the All and Only, however it is not obvious as to how far the Wildman worships the God. The Wildman used to be a ruthless pirate that killed without mercy. He was called the Wildman because his mood was often unpredictable. The Wildman wishes to join the Nom because he desires power, but moreover he wants inner peace. Morning Star wants to find her mother, whom she believes entered the Nom many years ago, but also wishes to serve her God. She also has an ability to tell peoples' feelings merely by looking at the colour of their aura, which she can see. Seeker wants above everything else to serve his God, and to prove himself worthy, as he has always felt that he lived in the shadow of his older brother, Blaze of Justice, who himself is a Noble Warrior. Seeker's father is the headmaster of the school on Anacrea, and wants Seeker to follow in his footsteps, forbidding him from applying to the Nom. However, when praying Seeker hears a voice telling him the 'door is always open' and that he would be the one to save the Lost Child. This confirms Seeker's belief that he will join the Nom. However, Seeker ventures a little further into the monastery and sees Blaze seemingly being cast out of the Nomana, undergoing a process of his memories being cleansed. He speaks to several monks, and they inform him that Blaze is a traitor! Seeker cannot accept this, and feels that this is why he is later rejected by the Nom. Seeker, Morning Star, and the Wildman all make their way to the Nom to apply to join, and inevitably all three are turned away. But not relenting, Seeker decides to find another way to enter the Nom; he will perform an act of notable good, and hopefully be invited to join. The trio go to the City of Radiance, where a weapon is being constructed, with the purpose of destroying the Nom. Seeker has the intention of destroying the weapon by pretending to want to be its bearer. The nature of the weapon is explosive. Basically, the power of the Sun is stored in water, leading to the name Charged water. The energy in the water is released when it comes into contact with air. It is planned that the bearer will have the normal water in his blood replaced with charged water, and will sacrifice himself to destroy the Nom. However, Soren Similin, who is in charge of building the weapon (but none of the scientists working on the project realise this), and who is also the secretary of the leader of Radiance, has found another candidate to be the weapon bearer; Seeker's brother Blaze. Along the way Similin encounters Morning Star's mother, (who was in fact rejected by the Nomana, and fled in disgrace) and she tags along with him and Blaze on their way back to the City of Radiance. Both Blaze and Seeker come to the place where the weapon is, and both help to destroy it; Blaze having not really been cleansed. Morning star is re-united with her mother, and the trio are accepted into the Nom. |
Birth of Fire | Jerry Pournelle | null | The book starts out in a year sometime between 2000 and 2050. It begins with Garret Pittson, a respected gang member who hasn't found his path in life, caught in the middle of a gang war and then caught by the police. He is sentenced to prison for twenty years but takes up his lawyer's offer of being shipped out to a colony on Mars where the conditions are rough and the pay unfair. Once arriving the events stir up and he ends up playing a prominent role in a revolution led by a group of farmers out on the 'rim' of a large crater in Mars southern hemisphere. Garrett is noticed as an excellent student by Commander Farr, who tells him to go to the city, and wait for someone to find him. Someone comes up to him and gets him suited to a P-Suit, he learns to farm and the two travel to a friend's farm where they meet Erica. Garrett has private time with her and they kiss, before she says they should wait, after multiple more trips, the two spend more time together and fall in love. References *Pournelle, Jerry. "Birth of Fire". 1976 Baen, Wake Forest. (ISBN-10: 067165649X) |
Under the Mat: Inside Wrestling's Greatest Family | null | 2,001 | The book focuses mainly on the realities of professional wrestling. Under the Mat recounts Diana's life growing up in the Hart home, being sister to Owen and Bret, witnessing their rise to fame and the terrible tragedy which claimed Owen's life. She remembers her father training some of the WWF's and WCW's biggest names in her family's basement gym, the famous Dungeon, and recounts their tales to stardom. |
The Comfort of Strangers | Ian McEwan | null | Mary and Colin are an English couple on holiday abroad in an unnamed city. Mary is divorced with two children; Colin is her angelically handsome lover who has been with her for seven years. Although they do not usually live together, their relationship is deep, passionate and intimate. One evening, the couple gets lost amongst the canals and are befriended by a forceful native named Robert, who takes them to a bar. Later, he insists on bringing them to his house where they meet his wife Caroline. Although the guests are at first shown great hospitality, it becomes clear that the hosts have a peculiar relationship with each other – Robert is the product of a sadistic upbringing and Caroline, who is disabled, has an uncomfortable masochistic view of men as being masters to whom women should yield. The liberal English couple withdraw from the house, but the events of the evening have set in chain a series of increasingly disturbing occurrences which neither foresaw. |
The Last Precinct | Patricia Cornwell | 2,000 | Following the death of Diane Bray and an apparent attack on Kay Scarpetta by Jean-Baptiste Chandonne in her own house at the end of Black Notice, The Last Precinct concentrates on discovering the full story behind Chandonne's killings. Kay Scarpetta is also under suspicion for the killing of Bray, due to their known rivalry and public confrontations. Torn between a desire to clear her name and the instinct of a wounded animal to turn against even its would-be rescuers, Kay sifts through the forensic evidence that seems to link Chandonne to past events in her life, up to and including the murder of her lover, Benton Wesley. A major new character is Jaime Berger, from the District Attorney's Office in New York, who believes Chandonne killed a woman in New York two years' before his arrival in Virginia. Kay must examine her own fears, misconceptions, and anything-but-altruistic motives to accept working with another competent woman. |
Enduring Love | Ian McEwan | 1,997 | On a beautiful and cloudless day, a middle-aged couple celebrate their union with a picnic. Joe Rose and his long-term partner Clarissa Mellon are about to open a bottle of wine when a cry interrupts them. A hot air balloon, with a 10-year-old boy in the basket and his grandfather being dragged behind it, has been ripped from its moorings. Joe immediately joins several other men in an effort to bring the balloon to safety. In the rescue attempt, one man, John Logan, dies. Another of the would-be-rescuers is Jed Parry. Joe and Jed exchange a passing glance, a glance that has devastating consequences and that indelibly burns an obsession into Jed's soul, for Jed suffers from de Clerambault's syndrome, a disorder that causes the sufferer to believe that someone else is in love with him or her. Delusional and dangerous, Jed gradually wreaks havoc in Joe's life, testing the limits of his beloved rationalism, threatening Clarissa's love for him, and driving him to the brink of murder and madness. During a lunch with Clarissa and her godfather, Joe witnesses the attempted murder of another man, resulting in the man being shot in the shoulder. However, he realises that the bullet was meant for him and that the similar character of the people at the other table had misled the killers into thinking the other man was their target. Before the hitman can deliver the fatal shot, Jed, orchestrator of the event, intervenes to save the innocent man's life before fleeing from the scene. In the subsequent interrogation, Joe insists that it was Jed who was behind this, but the detective does not believe him, possibly because he appears to get many of the facts of the incident incorrect. Joe leaves dissatisfied, knowing that Jed is still out there and looking for him. Like the detective, however, Clarissa becomes skeptical that Jed is stalking Joe and that Joe is in any danger. This, plus the stress Joe suffers at Jed's hands, strains their relationship. Fearing for his safety, Joe purchases a gun through an acquaintance. On the journey home, he receives a call from Jed, who is at Joe's home with Clarissa. Upon arriving at his apartment, Joe sees Jed sitting on the sofa with Clarissa. Jed then asks for Joe's forgiveness, before taking out a knife and pointing it at his own neck. To prevent Jed from killing himself, Joe shoots him in the arm. He escapes without charges. In the first of the novel's appendices (a medical report on Jed's condition) we learn that Joe and Clarissa are eventually reconciled and that they adopt a child. In the second (a letter from Jed to Joe), we learn that after three years, Jed remains uncured, and is now living in a psychiatric hospital. |
The Assassins of Rome | Caroline Lawrence | 2,002 | The story begins on Jonathan ben Mordecai 11th birthday. He is gloomy, saying that something bad always happens on his birthday. He opens the presents and is not satisfied with any except a jar of lemon oil. He breaks the jar of lemon oil, and the scent reminds him of his mother, who died in the Siege of Jerusalem. Officials turns up to warn Jonathan's father that an assassin, ben Jonah, has been asking for him. Jonathan wonders why his mother did not escape with them, which leads him to hear his father talking with a stranger. The stranger mentions that his mother didn't escape with them 'because of Jonathan'. The stranger turns out to be ben Jonah. Jonathan head butts him and tells his father to knock him cold before he gets up. Jonathan's Father, ben Ezra, tells him ben Jonah is the brother of Jonathan's mother, Susannah. Jonathan thinks about the conversation before, and thinks that ben Ezra must hate him for making Susannah not leave. That night, he dreams that his mother is sat at her loom in the Cyclops cave and tells him that she is still alive. The next day, he and ben Jonah have disappeared, with a message: Gone to Rome. The official returns and arrests ben Ezra for hiding ben Jonah. His friends Flavia and Nubia set of after Jonathan. This chapter is mainly about the trip that Flavia and Nubia (her real name is Shepenwepet) took to Rome with their bodyguard, Caudex and cart driver, Feles. Meanwhile, ben Jonah decides to take Jonathan with him to Rome, where he admits to his nephew that he a messenger to the Emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Flavia's mother Myrtilla has a sister who is the wife of the great senator Aulus Caecilius Cornix, so they go to his house to find it empty except for his secretary Sisyphus. In the rental room of ben Jonah, he shows Jonathan that he is a very talented musician by playing the bass lyre to him. Meanwhile, Flavia tells Sisyphus why they had come. ben Ezra's other friends go to ask the official, Bato, why ben Ezra has been arrested. Bato tells them that ben Jonah had been involved in a plot to kill the emperor. If ben Ezra helped him, it was treason. They visit ben Ezra in the prison. ben Ezra tells them that ben Jonah really was an assassin, but had changed his ways years before. In Rome, Flavia is surprised when Sisyphus tells her he will help them. Jonathan's friends Miriam, Aristo and Lykos (Lupus) find a message from Jonathan: Susannah is alive and at the Golden House. Meanwhile, ben Jonah tells Jonathan that he has been the first in 3 hired to kill the Emperor. ben Jonah asks Jonathan if he wants to go with him to the palace disguised as musicians, and help him kill the Emperor. Jonathan agrees, since it would provide a chance to see his mother. Aristo and Lupus go to Rome to tell Flavia and Nubia the news and help them. At the palace, ben Jonah is allowed in to perform because of his exceptional musical talent. While he is playing he is recognized. In Rome, Flavia meets up with Aristo and Lupus. In the palace, ben Jonah and Jonathan are arrested. Jonathan is branded as a slave and sent to work at the Golden House. Jonathan meets the eight year old Ripzah, who knows all the passages, or 'cryptoporticuses', of the Golden House. Sisyphus went to see the races and sees Celer, designer of the Golden House. Ripzah tells Jonathan that there is a woman called Susannah here. Susannah turns out to be Jonathan's mother. Discovering that she is visited by the Emperor he at first thinks she is his mistress. Ripzah tells Jonathan that it was woman called Berenice had hired ben Jonah and other assassins, but the target was Susannah, not the emperor Titus Flavius Vespanius. Jonathan tells Ripzah abut his mother in the Golden house. At the same time, Flavia tricks the Golden House's guard into telling them that the second assassin (after ben Jonah) has been arrested and crucified. The group of Sisyphus and Aristo are hired to perform music for Titus at the Golden House's Octagonal Room because they are 'talented musicians'. Jonathan hides behind a bush and sees Susannah visited by the Emperor again. Susannah finds Jonathan and realizes that he is a slave here. She tells him that ben Jonah is okay and that the emperor is sorry that he sieged Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the 'Musicians' start performing. Lupus spots the assassin Porcius and chases him. Susannah tells Jonathan that she stayed because her lover was in the city. His name was Jonathan. Jonathan realizes that that Jonathan was what ben Jonah was speaking of. Porcius escapes and climbs up to the roof, and Flavia throws a tambourine at him. He goes through the glass roof, falls and dies. Meanwhile, Susannah says she could not go back because Titus needs him. Titus gives all the slaves and women of the Golden House an option. They could stay or leave. Susannah, Ripzah and her mother Rachel stays, the others leave. Susannah explains why she stays: She could persuade Titus to rethink evil ideas because he is not so bad that he could not repent. ben Jonah becomes the steward to the Golden House. Titus apologizes for the brand and frees him as a reward for saving his life from the assassins. He also gave him a ring with Titus' seal imprinted on it. He also thanked Sisyphus. All the characters (except Titus) are invited to a feast. At the feast, Clio shows up. Everyone is surprised that Clio survived the volcano. Felix shows up too, and Jonathan invites them to dinner as well. All is well. The End |
Five Go Adventuring Again | Enid Blyton | 1,943 | Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy return to Kirrin Cottage for the Christmas holidays. As a result of being off school due to illnesses, the four children have a tutor, Mr. Roland, during the holidays in order to catch up with the work they missed. One day during the holidays, the children visit Kirrin Farmhouse, and the owners allow George to show her cousins all around the farmhouse, and show them some of the old secret cubby-holes in the farmhouse. George asks Mrs Sanders if she can show her cousins the cupboard with the false back on it upstairs, but Mrs Sanders tells her she is cleaning the room as she has some guests staying with her. When searching in a hole in the wall, Dick finds a piece of paper, with instructions on it written in Latin. The four take it back to Kirrin Cottage and ask Mr. Roland what the instructions on the paper say, as he reads Latin. He tells them that it is something about a room facing east with 8 wooden panels in it, and the panel must lead to somewhere! That night, George goes downstairs to see Timmy, as he was made to sleep outside because Mr. Roland didn't like dogs. George goes into Uncle Quentin's study to get the front door key, and finds Mr. Roland standing in the study. He tells George he heard a noise and came to investigate, but George finds it very suspicious. The four children then realise that the study is a room facing east with eight stone panels on the floor, and the panel which leads to a secret place is hidden under a rug covering the floor. The children follow the tunnel and come to a cupboard, and when they open it, they find themselves in Kirrin farmhouse, in the cupboard with the false back. The two guests staying at Kirrin Farmhouse are friends with Mr. Roland, and are planning on stealing Uncle Quentin's notes on his experiments. |
Five Run Away Together | Enid Blyton | 1,944 | Julian, Dick and Anne arrive in Cornwall to stay with George for the holidays. They plan to spend time exploring Kirrin Island but their happiness is spoilt when Aunt Fanny falls ill and has to leave with Uncle Quentin to be treated in a far-off hospital. They are cared for by Aunt Fanny's temporary cook, Mrs Stick, who is accompanied by her husband and their ghastly son Edgar. The Sticks and the children come to hate each other. When Mrs Stick tries to poison George's dog Timmy, George can take it no more. She hatches a secret plan to run away to Kirrin island and look after herself but when Julian catches her leaving she decides to allow the other children to go with her. While on the island, they find evidence of smugglers on an old wreck. A scream in the night and the discovery of a young girl's clothes alert the Five that there could be something very sinister going on. They discover that the Sticks have kidnapped and imprisoned a little girl on the island, the daughter of a very rich man. Having tormented the Sticks into a retreat they rescue the girl, taking her to the police who are amazed to see the child "the whole country is looking for!!" The police accompany them back to the island in time to trap and arrest the Sticks. The kidnapped girl's father allows her to spend a week with her new friends on Kirrin Island. |
Five Go To Smuggler's Top | Enid Blyton | 1,945 | The Five are happily staying at Kirrin Cottage for the holidays until the big ash tree in the garden falls down and destroys the top floor where the bedrooms are. Uncle Quentin's scientist friend,Mr Lenoir, was coming to stay over but now as he can't, he invites the five to his house. Mr Lenoir's stepson Sooty is a friend of Julian and Dick. George finds out that she can't take Timmy her dog and at first refuses to go, but then decides to go and take Timmy, but hide him in secret! So they go to Sooty Lenoir's house, Smugglers Top while Kirrin Cottage is being repaired. Smugglers Top is situated on a hill named Castaway Hill. The children come to know that there is a network of secret passages inside the hill and that there are secret doors in the house which open into these passages. One night, the boys wake up and find someone flashing lights as some sort of signal from one of the towers at Smuggler's Top. The children are puzzled at this mysterious discovery. After a few days, Uncle Quentin also visits Smugglers Top to stay for a few days. But one night, quite unexpectedly, Uncle Quentin and Sooty disappear. The children are sure that they have been kidnapped. There are many suspects. It might be the butler Block who appears to be stone deaf or Mr Barling,who is a rich man and a suspected smuggler. The five even suspect Sooty's father, Mr Lenior! They hunt underground in the honeycomb of passages for Uncle Quentin and Sooty, with the help of Timmy the dog. Can they solve the mystery and find Uncle Quentin and Sooty before they get lost in the passages? |
Five Go Off In A Caravan | Enid Blyton | 1,946 | A caravan holiday for the Famous Five! It is bound to be another adventure for the intrepid gang. And sure enough, pretty soon they've caught up with a circus-where some of the circus folk have more sinister plans than just clowning around... |
The Just and the Unjust | James Gould Cozzens | 1,942 | The novel has a prologue of several court docket entries in the case of Commonwealth v. Stanley Howell and Robert Basso. The first entry, dated May 31, 1939, indicates that the three defendants in a case of capital murder—Robert Basso, Stanley Howell, and Roy Leming—have all been declared indigent and had attorneys appointed for them. A second, dated June 12, indicates that the trial of Basso and Howell has been severed from that of Leming, now defended by an attorney of questionable character. The defendants and their victim are all "foreigners—the people from somewhere else." They have been charged with the cold-blooded murder of a drug dealer and addict, Frederick Zollicoffer, whom they had kidnapped for ransom on April 6, and killed afterwards on or about April 17, possibly at the direction of a fourth criminal who died in a fall trying to escape from police in New York City. The F.B.I. had also entered the case and arrested Howell, from whom they had extracted a confession. |
The Town | William Faulkner | 1,957 | Each chapter is narrated from the point of view of one of three characters: Chick Mallison, Gavin Stevens, or V.K. Ratliff. ;Chapter One: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Flem moves into Jefferson; is cuckolded by de Spain. De Spain's election. Flem is made power-plant supervisor. Flem steals brass from the plant. Flem plays Tom Tom and Turl off against each other; Tom Tom cuckolds Turl. The firemen hide the brass in the water tower. ;Chapter Two: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Eck Snopes saves a Varner Negro, breaking his neck in the process; he is "never in the world a Snopes." He changes jobs several times. Discussion of Snopes family structure, economy. I.O. Snopes comes to town and moves up (e.g., becomes schoolmaster). Children of Eck and I.O. The Snopes Hotel opens. ;Chapter Three: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Jefferson gossips about Eula. The Cotillion Ball is planned; de Spain invited after some debate. De Spain squeals his tires; under Gavin's instigation, Chick and Gowan finally manage to pop one of his tires. De Spain sends Gowan a special corsage; the town experiences a corsage panic leading up to the ball. At the ball, Gavin challenges, fights, and is beaten by de Spain. ;Chapter Four: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Recap: trial of Mink Snopes for killing Jack Houston. Gavin prepares an indictment against de Spain, as mayor, for Flem's theft of the brass at the power plant, largely motivated by his desire to stand up for "the principle that chastity and virtue in women shall be defended whether they exist or not." Gavin receives an anonymous note ... ;Chapter Five: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin meets with Eula in his office at night. She offers to sleep with him, out of a desire to keep him from being unhappy. (93) Gavin deduces that Flem is impotent. Gavin analyzes his own personality and Eula's motives, and declines her offer. ;Chapter Six: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) De Spain outmaneuvers Gavin on the brass-stealing indictment, rendering the investigation moot. Ratliff speculates about why de Spain appeals to Eula, while Gavin does not. Gavin leaves for Heidelberg. ;Chapter Seven: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Gavin joins the French service in WWI; catches pneumonia while carrying a stretcher for them. Eck Snopes blows up a gas tank and himself, too, while looking for a missing child, Cedric Nunnery; his neck brace is all that can be found to bury. Montgomery Ward Snopes, in France, goes into the "canteen business," then opens the Atelier Monty when he gets home. Chick and Ratliff form their ice-cream/Snopes-watching association. Bayard Sartoris accidentally kills his grandfather, the Colonel, with that damned newfangled car. Byron Snopes steals money from Sartoris's bank. Wall Snopes begins to set up his trade empire. Brother (?) of Ab Snopes and the watermelon patch. Gavin is home from Europe. ;Chapter Eight: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on the principles of Snopesism (hermaphroditic but vested always in the male); on the relationships between himself, Eula, and de Spain. Flem rises in the bank hierarchy, trading again on Eula; also trading on the fact that he makes good Byron's theft; acquires methodological knowledge of banking. He withdraws his money and deposits it in a competing bank. Wall Snopes graduates, marries a woman who hates the Snopes clan and all they stand for, and goes into business for himself. Flem blocks Wall from getting a loan to expand; Wall expands anyway and opens a wholesale. ;Chapter Nine: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Chapter consists entirely of these sentences: "Because he missed it. He missed it completely." ;Chapter Ten: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Uncle Willy Christian's drugstore robbed of money and narcotics; night marshal Grover Winbush is nowhere to be found during the event. This starts a chain of events leading to the uncovering of the Atelier Monty as a "dirty picture" "magic lantern," which is why Grover Winbush was not available to catch the perpetrators of the robbery. Flem tries to influence Gavin in the handling of the Montgomery Ward case, then plants whiskey in the Atelier Monty. ;Chapter Eleven: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Chapter consists entirely of this paragraph: "And still he missed it even set--sitting right there in his own office and actively watching Flem rid Jefferson of Montgomery Ward. And still I couldn't tell him." Here, Ratliff is aware that Flem is ensuring that Montgomery Ward will be sent to Parchman (for the whiskey) rather than an out-of-state prison (for the porn, a federal charge) so that he will have a chance to trick Mink into attempting to escape. ;Chapter Twelve: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Linda is meeting Gavin; Gavin's motive is to "develop her mind." Linda comes to dinner with the Stevens/Mallison family; her boyfriend Matt objects, driving up and down in his racing car. Matt attacks Gavin in his office leaves after giving him a good beating. ;Chapter Thirteen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) In which Linda cries a great deal and it becomes apparent that she is willing to marry Gavin, although she doesn't really want to get married at all, despite the fact that she loves Gavin. ;Chapter Fourteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Matt follows Linda around town, gets in a fight with a McCallum boy, and is forced out of town. Gavin buys Linda a traveling case. ;Chapter Fifteen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on Linda's good name and on the nature of the quality of innocence. He attempts to manage carefully the town's perception of his relationship with Linda by making their encounters seem coincidental. Gavin and Linda avoid each other, then try to meet. Eula reveals her plans to attend the Jefferson Academy for Women (or whatever it's called); Gavin is horrified. He goes to call on Linda, who explains how Flem bought his furniture. Eula asks Gavin to marry Linda. The details of Eula's dowry are clarified. ;Chapter Sixteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) (Cf. the short story "Mule in the Yard.") The story of Old Het. Mr. Hait's death; Mrs. Hait snopeses I.O. Snopes over the matter of the killed mules. Mrs. Hait invaded by mules. Her house burns down, but she saves her money. Mrs. Hait buys the mule that burned the house down from I.O. at a reduced price, and shoots it; then she sells it back to I.O. before he discovers that it's dead. Flem forces I.O. back to Frenchman's Bend permanently. Ratliff hypothesizes on Flem's plans and motives, esp re: Linda. Flem, he argues, must now have respectability. ;Chapter Seventeen: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin speculates on Flem's "untimely" interest in money. Flem's method/motivation in withdrawing money from his own bank; the effects this had. Gavin speculates on Eula's sexual motives, plus those of Varner & de Spain. Speculation about how Eula disrupts the economy of Snopesism. Flem gives Linda permission to go away to school because he has extracted something more valuable than he gives her. Flem tells Mrs. Varner that Eula is cheating on him. ;Chapter Eighteen: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Ratliff gives Flem a ride out to Frenchman's Bend. Uncle Billy drives in early. ;Chapter Nineteen: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Polio comes to Jefferson; Chick and schoolmates get an extended holiday while the town officials try to figure out what to do. No one will explain the de Spain-Eula affair to Chick. Ethnography/history of Jefferson. The affair is finally actually public instead of just semi-publicly gossiped about. Eula gives Chick an envelope to give to Gavin. ;Chapter Twenty: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Eula's note asks Gavin to meet her in his office at 10pm. Mr. Garraway disapproves of adultery. Geographical description of Yoknapatawpha County. The town waits for the affair to blow up. Eula visits Gavin; reveals how Linda was sent to the Academy, that Flem is impotent, and what Ratliff's first and middle names actually are. Asks Gavin again (several times) to marry Linda. ;Chapter Twenty-one: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Eula has killed herself. The town is outraged at de Spain; he has to leave. Eula's funeral arrangements are made. ;Chapter Twenty-two: (Narrator: Gavin Stevens) Gavin insists to Linda that Flem is her father; Linda is doubtful. ;Chapter Twenty-three: (Narrator: V.K. Ratliff) Flem's social/financial position is apparently solidified. Eula's monument is delegated to Gavin; he arranges for it. Ratliff suggests that Gavin marry Linda. Linda makes travel plans and departs after she and Flem see her mother's grave. ;Chapter Twenty-four: (Narrator: Chick Mallison) Ratliff/Gavin's theory about Eula's motive for suicide: Eula was bored. The half-Apache children of Byron Snopes come to visit, then are sent back. fr:La Ville (roman) ru:Город (роман Уильяма Фолкнера) |
Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday | Alan Dean Foster | null | The story is set in 1969 and details the account of a top secret space ship called Ghost-1, built by the American organization known as Sector 7. The ship was built by examining and reverse engineering the frozen remains of the Transformer Megatron. Sent into space at the same time as Apollo 11 to hide its trail, the ship is sent to orbit the far side of Jupiter to look for any more alien activity. However, the ship falls into a wormhole that was apparently accidentally created by them due to a slingshot around the sun and emerges in an unknown part of the galaxy - where it is not alone. The Ark and the Nemesis arrive, intrigued by the ship's Cybertronian design. Starscream leads the Decepticons on an attack as the humans flee. Bumblebee pursues them, as does Starscream, who hopes to annihilate the ship - and any traces of Megatron with it. Putting Bumblebee to flight, Starscream communicates with Ghost-1, pretending to be benevolent. Scanning their computers, he learns of the existence of the Allspark and Megatron and decides to string them along by telling them of the war. He hopes to provoke them into firing on the "evil" Autobots, who will destroy them. Optimus Prime arrives, having fought off Blackout's attack in orbit, saving Bumblebee from giant rock-chewing worms. They encounter Starscream and Ghost-1, who fire on them, burying them in the cave with more worms. The humans, meanwhile, have become suspicious of Starscream's intentions, noting differences in the behaviors of his and Prime's. When their ship sinks into a sinkhole, Starscream betrays them and leaves them for dead. When Prime and Bumblebee cross paths with the ship underground, the Autobots communicate with the humans, who tell them of the in-stasis Megatron. Knowing that Megatron would decimate their people if he reactivated, Prime vowed to see the humans return to Earth to warn it. They eventually free themselves and head back into orbit, where a full-scale assault by the Decepticons is under way. Despite the Autobots' courage, they are outnumbered. Captain Walker of Ghost-1 makes the decision that they cannot flee, since doing so would lead the Decepticons straight to Earth. The wormhole eventually collapses as they prepare their attack on Starscream, which leaves them stranded. They fire on Starscream as he and Bonecrusher prepare to finish off Prime. Starscream annihilates them in retaliation and retreats, severely wounded. Prime laments their sacrifice, but had already begun to suspect that the Allspark was the reason Megatron went to Earth. Knowing that Starscream would seek Earth merely for revenge on the humans injuring him, Prime resolves to locate Earth before the Decepticons do. On Earth, a different crisis unfolds. An order has come through to transport the frozen "Ice Man" from the Arctic to a place of safe keeping somewhere near the West Coast of the United States, to be studied more concretely. The convoy carrying him is sabotaged and derailed by a Soviet spy, who indicates a KGB assault will take place to recover Megatron. A more immediate problem presents itself when it is revealed that Megatron is thawing out. As the weather worsens and the Russian attack begins, Megatron reanimates. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan and Colonel Thomas Kinnear, both of them seasoned and fine commanders from Sector 7, managed to stop the disorientated Decepticon leader by first driving a snow truck into him, then freezing him once more with liquid Nitrogen even as he killed them both. The soldiers, under the command of the tenacious and resilient officer Lieutenant Jenson, fought off the Russian attack with the aid of a squad of Army Rangers, then resolve to complete Megatron's transportation. |
Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel | Martin Cruz Smith | 2,007 | The ghost of Joseph Stalin has been seen stalking the stations of the Moscow Metro. Renko, perpetually in hot water with his superiors, is assigned to the case with heavy hints to quash it. Instead, he discovers a peculiar connection to a string of murders and a group of Chechen War veterans. |
A Man | Oriana Fallaci | 1,979 | The book is a pseudo-biography about Alexandros Panagoulis written in the form of a novel. Fallaci had an intense romantic relationship with Panagoulis. She uses the novel to put forth her view that Panagoulis was assassinated by a vast conspiracy, a view widely shared by many Greeks. The work has had mixed reviews. Some will find the harsh polemic repetitive and disturbing. Fallaci is said to have been angry at Ms Magazine for not reviewing the work and this enhanced her reputation as an anti-feminist. |
The Shepherd's Paradise | Walter Montagu | null | The Shepherd's Paradise deals with a mythical pastoral community dedicated to Platonic love, a refuge for unrequited lovers of both genders — "a peaceful receptacle of distressed minds." The Shepherd's Paradise is ruled by Bellesa, "beauty," who was certainly played by Henrietta Maria. The heroine of the piece is Fidamira. Much of Montagu's plot, such as it is, centers upon a prince named Basilino and his bosom friend Agenor, who have a shared tendency to fall in love with the same women. (The work is complicated by the fact that characters take on pseudonyms when entering the Paradise: Basilino becomes Moramente, while Agenor calls himself Genorio.) By the close of the play, Agenor/Genorio is revealed to be Prince Palante, long-lost son of the king of Navarre. The masque also features an extended debate on the nature of love, between Martiro, who speaks for the Platonic ideal, and Moramente and Melidoro, who argue for marriage. Since the play ends in the marriages typical of comedy — Basilino/Moramente marries Bellesa who is actually Sapphira, Princess of Navarre, his original betrothed, while Agenor/Genorio/Palante marries Basilino's sister — the text can be interpreted as suggesting a triumph of marital union over Platonic love. Fidamira is revealed as sister to both Bellesa/Sapphira and Agenor/Genorio/Palante, the lost princess Miranda; she remains chaste, but she gets to be queen of the Shepherd's Paradise at the end. |
Winter in the Blood | null | null | The novel, set in contemporary times, features a self-destructive narrator undergoing an identity crisis. He lives in a Native American reservation in Montana. His tribe and his culture are clashing with a nearby white settlement and misguided legislation. He moves through his days in a mental haze and tries to console himself with sexual encounters. He attempts to deal with the memories of his father found dead in a snowdrift and blames himself for his elder brother's fatal accident at the age of fourteen. |
Stone | Adam Roberts | 2,002 | Ae has been imprisoned for a crime rarely committed in the society he lives in: murder (mainly due to the difficulty of killing a body protected by nano-tech). He is placed in a high-tech prison (a stone with an artificial environment inside held in the plasma of a sun). He is "executed" by having his Dot-tech purged from his body, which, while not immediately lethal, will eventually cause him to die of natural causes. He is broken out and picked up by a sub-light ship, where he recuperates before traveling onward, employed by a mysterious agency. During the escape, he is implanted with an artificial intelligence who relays his instructions. The AI reveals that Ae is to kill an entire planet, but does not explain who has ordered the murder, nor their motive for doing so. All Ae is told is that the nature of his mission will be revealed upon its completion. Ae travels to a planet where he learns the secret of creating black holes. Meanwhile, he meets and travels with a woman named Klabier, and forms something of a romantic connection to her (something uncommon in the t'T), until she reveals herself to be a policewoman. However, Ae escapes before she can detain him. Ae uses the stolen black hole technology to destroy the atmosphere of his target planet, wiping out its 60 million inhabitants. Upon completing the murder, his directors reveal themselves to be a distributed intelligence that is distributed throughout Dot-tech. The connection involves distributed quantum waveforms, which humans collapse every time they use the Dot-tech, inhibiting its processing power. The Dot-tech cleared the planet of its human inhabitants to create space where they can operate unimpeded (it was necessary to use an unaugmented human for this task, as the Dot-tech's inherent programming apparently prevents them from carrying out the operation themselves). Unable to cope with the enormity of his crimes, Ae makes no attempt to escape despite being given ample opportunity to do so. Eventually, the police locate him and return him to his prison. Some large-scale effects of the application of quantum theory are also explored in this novel. |
The Venom Business | Michael Crichton | 1,969 | Charles Raymond is a smuggler and he is very content and mildly successful with what he does for a living. Based in Mexico, Charles uses his exceptional skill as a snake handler to his advantage by "exporting" snakes out of Mexico under the guise of medical research—their venom is used by drug companies and universities for research. But the snakes are simply a ruse to hide the identity of the real cargo—rare Mexican artifacts. Charles is good at what he does and his skills don't stop at smuggling. Upon a suspicious chance reunion with Richard Pierce—a long-lost acquaintance of Charles' from his school days—Raymond is enlisted to use his other talents as a bodyguard to help Richard stay alive until such time as he can acquire the rest of his deceased father's fortune, which has been held in trust by Richard's promiscuous widowed stepmother. Charles isn't a fan of Richard's brash womanizing ways, but agrees to help because the money is good. Only he finds out that Richards isn't the easiest guy to protect, and often he is his own enemy when it comes to self-preservation. After a series of thwarted sketchy attempts at Richard's life, Charles begins to smell a rat. The further he probes into the situation, the more confused he gets. Things aren't what they seem. The bad guys aren't really the bad guys, or so it seems and the good guys are no better. Who wants whom killed? Who is protecting whom? In the end it may be Charles who is the target. |
The Third Secret | null | null | The story takes us behind the Vatican walls during the reign of a dying pope. Clement XV, a gentle, poetic German, keeps visiting the archives where the Third Secret of Fatima is kept. He is clearly troubled by something, but won't fully confide in his secretary, Father Colin Michener. He sends Michener to Romania with a message for a priest who runs an orphanage under appalling conditions, and gives him other strange errands. Michener is an Irish-American who fell in love and broke his vows of celibacy with reporter Katerina Lew, now involved with another priest who has gone public with his sexual affairs and demanding that the Church allow priests to marry. All that Michener knows about Clement's problem is that it has to do with the third secret, which was (actually) written in Portuguese by Marian visionary Lucia Santos in the 1940s and (in the novel) translated into Italian for Pope John XXIII by the Romanian priest who now runs the orphanage. It was supposedly revealed to the world in 2000, but (as many suspect in real life) rumor exists that what was revealed was only the first part of a longer message. As Michener gathers information for Clement, it is confirmed that there is a second part, and also that the Romanian priest kept a copy (a "facsimile") of both parts, which he later sent to Clement with a letter saying "Why is the Church lying?" Michener learns that John XXIII started Vatican II partly as a response to what he read in the third secret, but without revealing it in 1960 (as Lucia actually said Mary had asked). Ambitious Cardinal Valendrea and his secretary/lover Paolo Ambrosi carry on Machiavellian conspiracies behind the scenes, including having Katerina spy on Michener during his mysterious travels. Valendrea is determined to be Pope and bring back pre-Vatican II traditions. Equally determined to keep him from ever assuming the chair is the tough but decent Cardinal Ngovi. Clement dies without revealing what is really bothering him, and we get an intimate look at the kind of political jostling that takes place as an impending conclave looms. Amid all the dirty campaigning a secret exists that will either usher the church into a new era, or bring down the entire establishment. The actual contents of the third secret are revealed and confirmed in a startling climax. The book is solidly based on the visitations of Our Lady of Fatima and other important Marian apparitions and also the Prophecy of the Popes. Clement's obsession with the Fatima messages is based partly on that of Pope John Paul I, who as Patriarch of Venice met Lucia Santos and spoke with her for several hours. Deeply moved by the experience, he vowed to comply with Mary's reported request, not the release of the third secret, but the Consecration of Russia. John Paul's attitudes toward birth control and homosexuality may also be reflected in certain aspects of the novel. |
The Cat Who Went Underground | Lilian Jackson Braun | 1,989 | With Polly Duncan in England, Qwilleran realizes that Pickax is a bore in summer. So he decides to go to his cabin on the lakeshore in Mooseville. Shortly before Qwill arrives, Buddy Yarrow, a carpenter, drowns while fishing, but the police report it as an accident. When he arrives, Qwill discovers his heater is broken, so calls a nearby resident and friend, Mildred Hanstable. She suggests subscribing to "Glinko," a family "network" that "dispatches" people like plumbers, electricians and others for emergencies. The plumber "dispatched" is Joanna Trump, known to many as Little Joe, who is the daughter of Big Joe, a carpenter who was recently killed in an accident. She makes many visits to fix broken plumbing equipment. Qwill is annoyed at the constant breakdowns and sometimes even suspects her of breaking things on purpose, but is never really sure. He decides to build an addition to his cabin, but is advised against it, because during the summer, all the good contractors are busy with big jobs, so the people are forced to hire itinerant carpenters, or Underground Builders as they are referred to by the locals, who are unreliable. But Qwilleran was lucky and found out that Clem Cottle, a reliable and experienced carpenter, needed money and so could work for Qwill. He builds steps to the beach and begins on Qwill's addition, but goes missing shortly after. Despite the assurances by Clem's father that he is on a last fling before he marries, Qwill, Clem's mother, and Clem's soon-to-be wife do not believe that. One day while biking on an abandoned road used only by hunters (and Clem was not a hunter), Qwill finds Clem's truck abandoned in a ditch. So he reports Clem's disappearance and begins to look for a replacement. When Clem went missing, Koko began tapping his tail three times, similar to the way Clem hammered nails. Eventually, Qwilleran resorts to an underground builder by the name of Iggy. He is lazy, has a nicotine addiction, and very large teeth. After doing a few days of work, in which little progress was made, he goes missing, only to reappear a few days later. That day Qwilleran and two friends go on a trip to Three Tree Island, a small island in the middle of the lake with a small shack, a dock, and three trees. John Bushland and Roger MacGillivray are looking for the scorched sand a helicopter pilot said he saw. They believe it was left by UFOs, or visitors as they are referred by the locals, but Qwill is skeptical of such things and does not expect to find anything. After a squall hits, the men become stranded on the island and are later rescued after a harrowing experience and taken to the Pickax hospital. He is released the next day and arrives home to find Iggy's truck is parked in the drive, but the carpenter is nowhere to be found. Koko then begins to paw excitedly at the trap door to the crawlspace under the cabin, which is where all the pipes and electrical wires enter the house, and lets Koko in. Koko had recently shown a great interest in the trap door, and to try to convince Koko there's no reason to go down, he closes the door behind him, and goes to lunch. When he returns, Yum Yum shows she is worried about Koko and so he goes down to get Koko. But Qwilleran finds Koko digging, and helps him uncover Iggy's dead body. The discovery of this death begins to convince Qwilleran that something is happening to carpenters that is causing their demise. He reads some papers of Emma Whimsy, an old woman who was interviewed by Qwilleran for the Qwill Pen and was so delighted she gave him some of her old papers, and discovered that Little Joe was Emma's granddaughter and had had a troubled life. Her mother married Big Joe and lived a terrible life. She and her children were poor, didn't have proper clothes, and were abused by their father. This was so terrible that Joanna’s younger sister shot herself. Qwilleran rides out to her house to give her the papers, but finds it flooded by the rain that came with the storm that marooned Qwill on the island. But her truck is not there so he assumes she got away safely. But while he is there, he finds Clem Cottle’s jacket. Qwill learns that local riff raff believe he is responsible for Iggy's death. Also, a policeman overheard him discussing how frustrating it was to have an underground builder, and even his statement, "I could clobber him with a two-by-four..." The police mentioned this during a second questioning, but then the phone rang and the cats acted as though it scared them (though the telephone had never scared them before) and police left without getting an answer to that particular question. Nick Bamba, a friend of Qwilleran's who is an engineer at the state prison, says he heard about some nasty rumors about Qwilleran, and says he will stay with Qwill that night, with his camper blocking the entrance, a shotgun, a rifle, and the sheriff alerted. Early in the morning, Koko begins acting the way he did when he uncovered Iggy's body. Qwilleran lets the cat down and he leads them to a list of names of carpenters who had died recently, written in the lipstick used by Little Joe. Qwill calls Glinko and fakes an emergency so that Little Joe comes. He then confronts her with the murder of her father, she rigged it so appeared to be an accident, Buddy Yarrow, he was fishing on her property, Murt, another underground builder who went missing and was never seen again, Clem Cottle, and Iggy, whose real name is Ignatius K. Small. She says simply that Louise did the killings and then ran off. Qwill calls the police and Little Joe is arrested. Qwilleran suspects that she has mulitple personalities and “Louise” is the other personality Joanna uses when she kills carpenters. |
Dragons of Despair | Tracy Hickman | null | As with most D&D adventures, the exact storyline varies based on the actions that the game's players choose for their player characters (PCs), although a general course of action is assumed by the adventure. The story begins with the PCs meeting up in the elven settlement of Solace after five years of unsuccessful individual quests to find any sign of "true clerics". A series of wilderness encounters are used to direct the PCs to find the Blue Crystal Staff and take it to the ancient ruined city of Xak Tsaroth. In the jungle-covered subterranean ruins of Xak Tsaroth the player characters search for knowledge of the ancient gods of good, and first encounter the invading draconians. They also find baby dragons and encounter Khisanth, an ancient black dragon. The PCs follow the fleeing dragon down a well, where they must negotiate the first level of a dungeon typical of Dungeons & Dragons adventures, filled with draconians, gully dwarf slaves, and other monsters. On the second level of the dungeon the PCs must confront and defeat Khisanth. This is an extremely challenging task for the party. but if they have her Blue Crystal Staff, they will be aided by the goddess Mishakal. The adventure ends with the PCs recovering the Disks of Mishakal, allowing for the return of true clerics to Krynn for the first time in over 300 years. |
Dry | Augusten Burroughs | 2,003 | The first part of the memoir centers on Burroughs' intervention by his co-workers and boss as well as his time spent at a rehab facility that caters specifically to gay and lesbian patients. The second part of the novel deals with Burroughs' first bout with sobriety since leaving the rehab program. He meets a love interest at his group therapy sessions and takes in a fellow addict in recovery. Part II also shows the decline in health in Burroughs' ex-boyfriend and current friend, only named Pighead in the memoir. Pighead is living with HIV, and although healthy in the beginning of the book, he eventually succumbs to the effects of HIV. The death of his friend sends Burroughs into a relapse, including drinking, cocaine and crack. The memoir ends with Burroughs getting clean and helping another alcoholic friend of his through his recovery. |
A Boy at War | Harry Mazer | 2,001 | In the beginning, Adam has to move to Honolulu because his father is relocated to Pearl Harbor as a military officer. It is really hard just like any kid moving and having to go to a different high school, but it is especially hard for Adam because in the book it mentions how people at Honolulu High School hate military kids. The book never really explained why. But Adam did manage to make two friends. Their names are Davi Mori and Martin Kahahawai. Davi is a Japanese American, while Martin is a Hawaiian. One day the boys decide to go fishing early in the morning. As they are fishing on the land at Pearl Harbor, they find a rowboat and decide to take it out into the water. As they are fishing, they hear airplanes flying overhead. Davi cheers because he thinks these are American planes, but Adam realizes that they are Japanese planes and thinks that Davi is a spy signaling the airplanes. They then see the Japanese bomber planes bomb the naval ships at Pearl Harbor. When the first bombs are dropped, part of their rowboat explodes, and a piece of wood flies into Martin’s chest. He is wounded, but doesn’t die. Adam watches as his father's ship, the Arizona, goes down. Once the Japanese leave the harbor in the morning, Adam runs home with a rifle and makes sure his Mom and sister, Bea, are okay. They let Adam in the house, and he tells them what happened and that he doesn’t know if his Dad, Lt. Emory Pelko, is dead or alive. About a week after Adam arrives back home, the family gets a telegram saying the Lt. Emory Pelko is missing. So the family then moves back to the mainland of America. |
The Gravedigger's Daughter | Joyce Carol Oates | 2,007 | Rebecca Tignor is mistaken for another woman named Hazel Jones one afternoon in the woods nearby Chatauqua Falls, New York in the fall of 1959. Over 20 years later, Rebecca finds out that the man who approached her is a serial killer. In a secondary plot, Rebecca's parents escape from the Nazis in 1936, foreseeing the oncoming Holocaust; Rebecca is born in the boat crossing over. When Rebecca is 13, her father, Jacob Schwart, who has lost his intellectual dreams and has become a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker in Milburn, abruptly kills her mother, Anna, and nearly kills Rebecca, before committing suicide. At the time of the footpath crossing, Rebecca is just weeks away from being beaten and almost killed by her own husband, the brutal Niles Tignor. She and her only son, Niles Jr., flee, and she becomes the woman for whom she has been recently mistaken, purposefully adopting the identity of Hazel Jones. Niles Jr. assumes the alias of Zacharias. As Hazel, Rebecca seeks many livelihoods, as alternately a waitress, clerk and finally, the mistress of the overwhelmingly wealthy heir of the Gallagher media fortune, a man in whom she never felt the need to confide her past. |
The Crow | Alison Croggon | null | While his sister, Maerad, was in the north in search of the Treesong, as told in The Riddle, Hem and his mentor Saliman arrive in Turbansk, the centre of the light in the Suderain, which is Saliman's School. There Hem becomes a Minor Bard, and has lessons with other Bards of Turbansk. Because he does not know the Suderain language, Hem finds it very hard to make friends. After a quarrel with one of his teachers, Hem escapes to a garden, where he rescues a white crow from the attack of several black crows. Hem names the crow Irc, (the Pilani name for "bird"), and keeps him. A few days later, Turbansk receives news that the army of Sharma, the Nameless One, have destroyed cities and towns to the South, and are expected to attack Turbansk soon. The children are mostly evacuated from Turbansk. Under the request of Saliman, Hem stays at the School and works to heal those wounded in battle. One day while wandering around the nearly empty Turbansk, Hem meets an orphaned girl called Zelika, whose parents were killed by the dark army of the Nameless One. As Hem, Saliman, Zelika and Irc travel South to remain safe from the Black Army, they pass through an ancient underground city. There they stay and Hem and Zelika are trained as child spies. One day, when they are left alone, Hem finds a room with a mural of a tree-man. The tree-man is an Elidhu. After Hem and Zelika are trained as spies, their mentor sends them out. At the nearest hideout yet to be discovered by Sharma's army, the Pit, they stop. While spying Zelika spots her brother and gives herself away. Hem then spends months tailing Zelika, waiting to save her. When the chance came, he was already in the city where the Iron Tower was, and he found out that he had been tracking Zelika's brother all that time. As he ran away alone, Irc came back carrying a shiny thing. Irc helps him escape the city and tells him the story of how Irc came by the shiny thing. They met up with Saliman later and Hem is told that Zelika never even set foot in the camp—they had found her body mauled in the woods and did the best they could to honor her death. Later, Hem goes to find the tree-man and asks him what the thing was, and the tree-man tells him it was part of the Treesong, and that he couldn't touch it. He says that Hem was part of the Treesong, and that he was the player. Then Saliman, Hem and Irc set off to find Maerad. |
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing | Marilyn Durham | 1,972 | The novel is set in the American West in the 1880s, but is not written in a genre style. It is the story of Jay, a man of the West, and his offbeat relationship with Catherine, a woman from the East who is fleeing an unhappy marriage. Jay kidnaps Catherine on his way to rob a train and together they travel through the Wyoming Territory. Catherine eventually discovers that Jay is haunted by the murder of his wife, a Shoshone Indian named Cat Dancing, and his actions after the murder. Pursued by Catherine's husband and a railroad agent, Catherine and Jay fall in love. |
The Cat Who Saw Red | Lilian Jackson Braun | 1,986 | Jim Qwilleran, news reporter for The Daily Fluxion and former crime reporter, is assigned to review restaurants. For his first story, he decides to review Maus Haus, owned by Robert Maus. In addition to a restaurant, the architecturally peculiar historic building is also a boarding house. When Qwill discovers there is an open apartment, he promptly moves in with his two Siamese cats, Koko and Yum Yum. Also in residence at Maus Haus is Joy Wheatley, Qwill's old girlfriend from Chicago. She had found out she had a knack for pottery, and married a potter named Dan Graham. It soon becomes obvious that the relationship between Joy and Dan is strained, especially when they discuss how Joy’s cat went missing one day. Joy is deeply troubled by this, but Dan jokes about it. Joy is a far more successful potter than Dan; he is missing one thumb and so can only make roll pots, not as appealing as those spun on a wheel. One night she privately tells Qwill that she would divorce Dan if she could afford the court case. Qwilleran decides to lend her $750, the last of the prize money he won for a series of news articles. Later that same night Qwilleran hears a scream, and then a car pull out of the garage and drive away. The next day, Dan claimed that Joy has left him. He also brushes the scream off, as he claims Joy was working on an electric wheel and got her hair caught in a pot. She was saved by Dan when he threw the switch, shutting the wheel off and preventing her from being scalped. A few days later, one of the other residents of Maus Haus mentions how well Joy threw pots on her manual, not electric, wheel. Qwilleran begins to suspect Joy is dead. Shortly thereafter another mystery comes to Qwill's attention: Max Sorrel, a resident of Maus House, owns a restaurant called the Golden Lamb Chop which is suffering a spate of anonymous rumors about how the meat is cat, the chef has a terrible disease and other equally damaging tales. This has scared off the customers, leaving the restaurant near bankruptcy. Qwilleran decides to review the Golden Lamp Chop, but before he writes it, he gets a threatening phone call advising him not to write anything about the Golden Lamb Chop. He does so anyway. Dan gets a passport, claiming he will be going to Europe to display his pots. Qwilleran also learns that the car that drove off after the scream in the night was Max Sorrel’s speeding off after learning his restaurant was on fire. The houseboy says Joy always used the kick wheel, and that “Mr. Graham was going to blow a whole load of pots” because he was heating the kiln too quickly. The houseboy spied on Graham by using a peephole cut in the wall of Qwill’s room. The next morning, the houseboy is nowhere to be found. Dan claims he received a postcard from Joy in Florida, who asks to have her summer clothes. Hixie Rice, a resident of Maus House, breaks off her engagement with Graham as she does not want to be with a man cheating on his wife. When Qwill peers through the same peephole the houseboy had used, he sees Dan copying things out of a ledger. To get a better look, Qwilleran claims Fluxion wants a photo shoot of Dan's pottery, and brings Koko along to pose in some pictures (though he really wants the cat to sniff around for clues). Koko does show great interest in the trap door to the basement, but Dan says that they shouldn’t go down there because there are rats. But Qwill later learns that Maus is very particular about sanitation, and has an exterminator in regularly. Also, Qwilleran finds the ledger Dan was copying out of, and discovers it was a recipe of glazes used by Joy. Koko types "pb" on Qwill's typewriter — the chemical symbol for lead. Qwilleran looks through the peephole, and witnesses Dan burning Joy’s clothing. At the pottery opening, Dan surprises everyone with his “living glaze,” which compensates for the poor quality of his pots. Many people said that if his glaze was put on Joy’s pots, than they would be very popular. Qwilleran asks a diver friend to look below the boardwalk behind Maus House, after the housekeeper tells him she saw someone dumping a bag into the river. The diver reports the bag contains Joy’s pots with the living glaze. That night, Qwilleran reads a book on pottery, which provides the missing clue: * Dan, already envious of his wife’s success, became very jealous of her living glazes * He (and Qwilleran) read that in ancient China, potters burned human bodies to create a powerful red glaze * Dan uses Joy’s cat, whom he dislikes, as a test, and finds that it works * Dan prevents any of Joy’s pots from being displayed before the show, so no one will know she invented the living glaze * Dan murders Joy, and uses her ashes to create more red glazes. He then forges the post card saying that she was in Florida, and burns her clothing * So no one will know the living glaze was her idea, he throws her pots with the glaze into the river * When he learns that the houseboy was becoming suspicious, he invited him over for a drink and put lead oxide, used in glazes, into the houseboy’s drink, poisoning him. But because pots in the kiln were cooling, he had to put the body in the basement. The entrance was located in the clay room, so the smell of ripening clay would disguise any other odors * Dan got a passport and tickets to France so he could flee the country That evening, Dan breaks into Qwill’s apartment to kill him, but Koko and Yum-Yum had spun a spider web of yarn from a yarn ball throughout the apartment, causing Dan to trip and fall. Qwilleran is alerted, and Dan is arrested. As for the Golden Lamb Chop slander, Charlotte Roop overhears two Heavenly Hash House managers discussing how their attempts to put the restaurant out of business had failed. They had wanted to buy the property where the Golden Lamb Chop was located. |
The First Four Years | Laura Ingalls Wilder | 1,971 | The First Four Years derives its title from a promise Laura made to Almanzo when they became engaged. Laura did not want to be a farmer's wife, but consented to try farming for three years. Laura and Almanzo, whom Laura calls Manly, begin married life on his tree claim in the snug house Manly built. Laura keeps house and Manly tends the land and the stock, and they go on frequent pony rides together. At the end of the first year, just as the wheat is ready to harvest, a freak hailstorm destroys the entire crop, which would have brought them three thousand dollars and paid off their debts on farm equipment and the building of the house. Faced with mounting debt, Manly decides to mortgage the homestead claim. He and Laura will have to live on it as a condition of the mortgage, so they rent out the house on the tree claim and Manly builds a small home on the homestead claim. Their daughter Rose is born there in December. At the end of the second year, they share the harvest of the wheat crop with the tree claim's renter, and make enough money to pay some of their smaller debts. During the third year, both Laura and Manly contract diphtheria, and Manly suffers a complication which leaves him permanently physically impaired. The renter decides to move away, and as Manly can no longer work both pieces of land, they sell the homestead claim and move back to their first house. Laura receives an opportunity to invest money in a flock of sheep. The wool from the sheep repays Laura's initial investment with enough left over only for the interest on their debts. Meanwhile, the wheat and oats grow well, but are ruined just before harvest when several days of hot wind dry them irreparably prior to harvest. At the end of the third year, though farming has not yet been a success, Laura and Manly agree to continue for one more year, a "year of grace", in Laura's words, since they have no other prospects and Manly believes they just need one good year to turn things around. Unfortunately, hot winds again ruin the next planting of wheat and oats. Their unnamed son is born in August but dies a few weeks later. Finally, their house is destroyed by fire. Despite this, the book ends at the close of the fourth year on an optimistic note, with Laura feeling hopeful that their luck will turn. In reality, debt and the hot, dry Dakota summers drove Laura and Manly from their land; they managed a very successful fruit and dairy farm in Missouri, where they lived comfortably until their respective deaths. |
Acts of Faith,1985 | Rajiva Wijesinha | 1,985 | Using the 1983 race riots in Sri Lanka as a background, Acts of Faith explores social and political issues which characterize Sri Lanka and other Asian nations. The book provides a satirical critique of observed state-incited violence, manipulation of the media, caste and class rivalries. At the same time, underneath the racy humor there is a close attention to personal motivations, particularly in terms of the family structures that dominate such societies. |
The Tale of Pigling Bland | Beatrix Potter | 1,913 | Aunt Pettitoes, an old sow, can no longer cope with her eight troublemaking offspring and thus makes them leave home, with the exception of a well-behaved sow named Spot. Two of them, boars named Pigling Bland and Alexander, go to market. Pigling Bland is very sensible but the more frivolous Alexander loses his pig license and, when he fails to produce them to a passing policeman, is made to return to the farm. Reluctantly going on alone, Pigling Bland later finds the missing papers, which ended up in his pocket as a result of an earlier scuffle with Alexander. He tries to find his brother but ends up getting lost in the woods and has to spend the night in a stranger's chicken coop. He is found in the morning by a gruff farmer, Peter Thomas Piperson, who allows him to stay in his house, but Pigling is not sure the farmer is trustworthy. His fears are quickly confirmed when he discovers that Piperson has a second pig in his house who was stolen from her owner and whom he intends to turn into bacon and ham. The second pig, a beautiful black Berkshire sow named Pig-wig, suggests they run away so that they won't be sold, or worse, eaten. Pigling Bland has in any case decided to avoid the market and become a potato farmer instead. At dawn the pair sneak off but in the course of their escape they come across a grocer in a cart who recognises Pig-wig as the recently stolen pig for whom a reward has been issued. By being co-operative, and with Pigling Bland faking a limp, the two pigs manage to gain time and, once the grocer is at a safe distance, flee to the county boundary and finally, over the hills and far away, where they dance to celebrate their new found freedom. |
Démolir Nisard | Eric Chevillard | 2,006 | The book is about the struggle of the narrator (who seems very much like the author himself) to annihilate Désiré Nisard, a French author and critic (1806–1888). One of the characteristics of Nisard that so infuriates Chevillard's narrator is the fact that the critic so loathed the burgeoning modern French literature of his times. As Nisard considered that only classicism had a value, Chevillard's book can also be considered a form of meta-criticism upon contemporary trends in Literary criticism. |
Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time | Lisa Yee | 2,005 | A slack-off, fun-loving, basketball prodigy, Stanford Wong is ready for summer. He's going to spend every day at the park with his best friends (Stretch, Gus, Tico and Digger) and he's going to basketball camp where he'll learn from the pros. But his English teacher, the horrible Mr. Glick, presents him with some bad news: he got an F on his last book report on Holes and failed English class. Now Stanford must trade basketball camp for summer school - and as if this weren't bad enough, his mom hired a tutor for him: his arch-enemy Millicent Min. A child genius, Millicent Min is a senior in high school at age eleven, not to mention a world-class jerk. She hates Stanford as much as he hates her. Stanford's situation deteriorates as his father continues to distance himself from home, his grandmother becomes senile and moves to a dead retirement home, Millicent tortures him in their study sessions, and his lie to his friends becomes harder and harder to cover up - because he's told them that he passed English with flying colors. Life improves slightly when the beautiful new girl, Emily Ebers, takes an immediate liking to Stanford (the feeling is mutual) but Emily is Millicent Min's one and only friend. Apparently, though, Millicent doesn't want Emily to know of her sky-high IQ, because Emily is under the impression that Millicent is not only home schooled, but tutored by Stanford. Stanford goes along with this lie because he believes that Emily will never like him if she knows he is stupid. In a strange way, Millicent and Stanford form a tentative friendship; they are bound by their affection for Emily, and in the process, the two become closer as well. Soon, everything falls apart: Emily inadvertently discovers Stanford and Millicent's secret. She shuns them both, not because of their varying intelligence levels, but because they lied to her. A classmate and basketball player, Digger Ronster, knows what Stanford really got on his book report, and blackmails Stanford into purposely losing whenever they play basketball with the other guys. Stanford descends into depression because all of his lies have fallen through. He is saved, though, when Emily forgives him. Also, Stanford doesn't have any more trouble with his friends because even though they know that Stanford lied about his English grade, they forgive him, too. Digger leaves Stanford alone after realizing that his blackmail no longer works. Millicent and Stanford make up after getting in a fight over Emily. Emily kisses Stanford on the cheek and the two start dating. At the end of the story, Stanford's father reveals that he has been working so incredibly hard all the time because he was hoping for a promotion - which his boss granted him. However, the promotion required a relocation to New York. Stanford protests angrily, but his father tells him that he didn't take the job. He says that he just recently realized how distant he became from his family, and that wants to reconnect with them. Now that he had rejected the promotion, he says, he would probably have a lot more free time on his hands to spend with Stanford. The book ends with Stanford thinking, "I have so much to tell my dad." Later that night, he falls asleep wearing Alan Scott BK620s, what he always wanted the whole summer. |
Shadow Game | Christine Feehan | null | Dr. Peter has succeeded in enhancing the psychic abilities of a group of men in the Special Forces. These men, called Ghostwalkers, have the ability to move objects, control animals, even walk in dreams. Despite the resounding success, there are problems. Some of the men suffer great pain due to psychic overload, unable to block or filter the thoughts and feelings of others, and need to have anchors (someone to draw the overwhelming emotions away) in order to function. A year into the experiment, some of the men began to die, supposedly from side effects of the process. To help find the answers, Dr. Whitney brings in his daughter, Lily, who is psychic. Lily is at first reluctant to join, but her father is insistent. She is stunned by her immediate and powerful attraction to Captain Ryland Miller, the leader of the Ghostwalker team. He thinks that Peter has betrayed him and his men, separating them from their anchors. He is sure that the men have been murdered and suspects that he’s next. She is also jarred by the evident animosity between her father and Colonel Frank Higgens, Miller’s immediate commanding officer. He and Whitney argue over Whitney’s denying Higgens access to his notes about the enhancing process. Higgens even admits to breaking into Whitney’s computer. Peter Whitney asks Lily to meet him for dinner after leaving the lab, but he doesn’t show. Despite his lack of psychic ability, he somehow telepathically contacts his daughter. He’s dying; someone at Donovan’s is responsible for his murder. He tells her that believes that someone is trying to sabotage the experiment and that that person is within the project itself. He also tells her that there’s a secret laboratory with all his notes on the project. The then begs her forgiveness, and that she has to help the remaining men and find “the others”. Before he can say anything more, she feels him being dumped into the ocean. Stunningly, someone forces her to break contact with her father, Ryland Miller. Several days after her father’s murder, she meets with Ryland Miller again and confronts him. She asks him if he was involved Peter’s death. He denies it; he felt that Dr. Whitney was the only man who could help his men. Realizing that the men cannot stay at Donovans, Lily agrees to help Captain Ryland Miller and the others escape. In her large home, the men can hide while she teaches them the techniques and exercises to help them rebuild their mental barriers. She also finds her father’s hidden lab. Once she does, she’s hit with several brutal shocks. She is not Peter Whitney’s biological daughter. She, along with eleven other psychic girls, all under the age of three, were taken from European orphanages by him and experimented on, just like Ryland and his men. He chose girls because there was an abundance of female children abandoned by their families. Even more alarming, he experienced the same complications with the girls as he had with the men: painful headaches, brain bleeds, seizures. Just like the men, they had lost their natural barriers and Whitney couldn’t undo what he had done. So, he stopped the experiment; he had the other girls adopted and kept Lily. He tried the experiment again because he thought that he had gone wrong by choosing such young subjects. He felt that adult, well-trained subjects wouldn’t have the same problems, but he was wrong. Once the men escape to Lily's home, she discovers that one of the men had electrodes planted in his head. This could only be done for one reason, to induce brain bleeds and kill him. Now it all become clear to Lily; someone is trying to steal the process and sell it on the open market. When they were unable to break into Whitney's computer and get his notes, they resorted to killing the men to dissect them in order to discover how process worked. When Dr. Whitney became suspecious of the deaths, he too was murdered. The situation is even more complicated by Ryland and Lily's powerful attraction to one another. Lily fears that it's the result of her father's manipulation, and doesn't trust it. Ryland knows he's in love with Lily and doesn't care it is because of what Whitney has done. Lily thinks that Higgins and Philip Thornton, CEO of Donovans are responsible but she has no real proof. Luckily she finds a recording of Higgins (secretly made by her father) plotting not only Ryland's death, but also of General Ranier, Higgins' commanding officer. With the tape, they stop Higgins and restore the reputations of the Ghostwalkers. Now Lily and Ryland begin to search for the young women Peter put up for adoption. |
Peter Pan | J. M. Barrie | null | The Darling Nursery As Mr. and Mrs. Darling prepare for an evening out, two of their children, Wendy and John, play their parents. When Mrs. Darling comes in and sees Michael is left out, she gets him in the game and joins in with all of them ("1, 2, 3") while their nursemaid, the dog Nana, watches. Mr. Darling comes in to have his tie tied, and he questions using a dog as a nursemaid, but Mrs. Darling defends her. The previous week, while the children slept, Nana was surprised to see a boy in the room. Before she could catch him, he flew out the window. She did manage to catch his shadow, however, which Mrs. Darling has tucked away in a drawer. Nevertheless, Mr. Darling insists that Nana spend the night downstairs. Mrs. Darling and the children sing a lullaby ("Tender Shepherd"). The children fall asleep. A fairy, Tinker Bell, and Peter Pan fly in through the window. Tinker Bell shows Peter where his shadow is hidden. He tries to reattach it and starts to cry when he can not get it to stick. Wendy wakes up and asks, "Boy, why are you crying?" When he explains, she offers to sew his shadow to his foot. Peter is thrilled when his shadow is reattached ("I've Gotta Crow"). Peter tells Wendy about how he has lived a long time among the fairies, and how one of them dies every time a child says he or she does not believe in fairies. Peter tries to introduce Wendy to Tinkerbell (who accidentally got shut in the drawer when Peter found his shadow), but Tink is jealous and will not be polite. Wendy asks where he comes from, and Peter tells her of his island, called Neverland ("Never Never Land"). Peter says he sometimes came to Wendy's window to listen to her mother's stories and tells them to the Lost Boys, forgotten children who end up living in Neverland; Wendy says she will tell him and the Lost Boys all the stories she knows, if Peter will let her bring Michael and John along, to which Peter agrees. Wendy wakes her brothers up, and Peter invites them all to Neverland, and promises to teach them to fly. They happily agree and ask Peter to show them. Peter happily launches himself into the air ("I'm Flying"). Peter covers the kids in fairy dust and tells them to "think lovely thoughts." Soon the children are flying just like Peter. ("I'm Flying – Reprise") Grabbing some belongings, the children follow Peter, but Michael doubles back when Liza comes into the room, giving her some of his fairy dust and telling her to come to Neverland with them. Peter and children fly through the night to Neverland. Never Land Peter's "Lost Boys" are standing outside their underground lair, wondering when he will return, when they hear Captain Hook and his pirates ("Pirate Song"). The boys hide. Hook tells Smee, his right-hand man, that he wants to kill Peter most of all, because Peter is the one who cut off his hand and threw it to a crocodile, which has developed a taste for Hook and follows him around, hoping to eat more of him, but luckily ate a clock that ticks and will alert Hook to its presence. Hook accidentally stumbles upon the entrance to the hideout, and summons Smee and his men to provide background music while he plans the Boys' demise ("Hook's Tango"), a rich cake with poisonous icing. Hook suddenly hears a loud tick-tock; the crocodile appears but Hook escapes. The pirates flee, and the Boys reappear, thinking they are safe. Suddenly, a group of "Indians" appears, led by Tiger Lily ("Indians"). They leave the Boys alone, and go on hunting the pirates. The boys suddenly see Wendy, whom they confuse for a bird, in the sky, and one of the Boys fires an arrow (the Indians run away in fear). Peter, Michael and John land to find the arrow lodged in her heart. She is not dead, but she can not be moved into the hideout, so the Lost Boys build a house around her, hoping that she will agree to be their mother ("Wendy"), to which, when she wakes up, she agrees. Hook plants the cake, but Wendy thinks it too rich; instead, she will tell the Boys stories. Hook is infuriated that the Boys have found a mother. He plots to kidnap Wendy and the Boys, while Smee and the pirates play a "Tarantella". After the pirates leave for their ship, Liza arrives and does a ballet with the animals of Never Land while Peter sleeps outside the house. A few days pass with everyone having adventures. One day in the forest, after Peter leads the Boys in their anthem ("I Won't Grow Up"), they almost run into the pirates, who arrive with a pirate carrying Tiger Lily over his shoulder. They tie her to a tree for the wolves to eat. Peter hides and, feeling sorry for Tiger Lily, throws his voice in mimicry of the Captain and convinces the men to let her go. Hook arrives and becomes enraged at the news of her release. He demands that the "spirit of the forest" speak to him, so Peter tricks them all to think he is Hook, and the real Hook is a codfish. The pirates abandon Hook, but Hook convinces the "spirit" to reveal its true identity. Peter obliges, disguising himself as a "beautiful lady" ("Oh, My Mysterious Lady"). Hook catches on and tries to ambush Peter (and the pirates rejoin), but the pirates are chased away by Tiger Lily and her Indians. Back at the hideout, Tiger Lily and the Indians rush in, and are almost shot by the Boys, until Peter reveals the truce between them. They smoke a peace pipe and vow eternal friendship ("Ugg-a-Wugg"). Tiger Lily and her Indians leave to stand guard around the house above. Wendy asks Peter to sing the Boys a lullaby ("Distant Melody"). Michael and John want to return home, and Wendy admits to being homesick, too. The Boys wish they had parents, and Wendy offers hers to all of them. Everyone is excited about being adopted, except Peter, who says he will not go because he knows he will grow up if he does. Wendy tells him she will come back once a year to do his spring cleaning. The pirates attack and subdue the Indians. They give Peter a fake all-clear signal, so Peter sadly sends Wendy, her brothers, and the Lost Boys on their way. Before she leaves, Wendy sets out Peter's "medicine" for him to take before bed. After she tearfully leaves, Peter, who pretended not to care, throws himself on a bed and cries himself to sleep. As the they leave the underground house, Wendy and the boys are captured by the pirates. Once the boys and Wendy are carried off to the pirate ship, Hook sneaks into the lair and poisons Peter's medicine. Tinker Bell awakens Peter, tells him of the ambush, and warns him about the poison, but he waves her off as he prepares for a rescue. Desperate, she drinks the poison herself. Dying, she tells Peter that if every boy and girl who believes in fairies would clap their hands, she would live. Peter asks the audience to believe and clap their hands. They do, and Tinker Bell is saved. Peter grabs his sword and heads off to rescue Wendy and the Boys. The Jolly Roger Hook revels in his success ("Hook's Waltz"). As the plank is prepared, Hook hears the tick-tock of the crocodile and panics. It is actually Peter with a clock, and while Hook cowers, Peter and the Boys help the Indians, the animals and Liza onto the ship and hide. Peter hides in a closet and kills two pirates Hook sends in. The pirates then carry the Boys in, and the Boys pretend to be afraid as they are carried in. Peter disguises himself as a pirate, and the pirates think the "doodle-doo" (named so as Peter still crows after killing the pirates) killed all the Boys. Hook believes the ship is now cursed, and everyone thinks Wendy is the source. The pirates push Wendy to the plank. Peter ditches his disguise, and the Indians and animals attack, as well as the Boys who are alive and armed. The pirates are all defeated, and Peter challenges Hook to a duel and defeats him. Hook threatens to blow up the ship with a bomb, but runs into the real crocodile (whom Peter also brought on the ship). Peter catches the dropped bomb and tosses it in the sea after Hook slides down the plank (which is shaped like a slide) with the crocodile chasing behind him. Hook is presumably blown to smithereens. Everyone sings Peter's praises ("I've Gotta Crow" (reprise)). Before the Darling children and everyone goes to London, Liza asks Peter to teach her to crow ("I Gotta Crow – 2nd reprise"). Back home, the Darlings sit by the nursery window night after night, hoping for their children to return. The children silently reappear and sing to their mother ("Tender Shepherd" reprise). Joyous over their return, the Darlings happily agree to adopt the Lost Boys ("We Will Grow Up"). Wendy prays to the window that Peter will return to her. Years pass, and Peter comes to the nursery, surprising a much older Wendy, who no longer expected him. He wants her to come to Never Land for spring cleaning, but she tells him that she cannot – she has grown up; she is married and has a daughter of her own now, Jane. Peter begins to cry, and Wendy leaves the room at the sound of her husband's offstage voice. Jane awakes, and like her mother before her, asks, "Boy, why are you crying?" Peter introduces himself, but Jane knows all about him from her mother's stories. She has been waiting for him to come take her to Never Land and to learn to fly. Peter, now happy again, throws fairy dust on her, but as they are about to leave, Wendy tries to stop them, saying, "Oh, if only I could go with you!" In the most poignant moment of the show, Peter answers with a sad but understanding smile, "You can't. You see, Wendy, you're too grown up". And so, Wendy reluctantly lets Jane go, "just for spring cleaning." Her daughter and the "boy who refuses to grow up" fly off into the night. ("Finale: Never Never Land – Reprise") |
The Treasure in the Royal Tower | Carolyn Keene | 1,995 | Nancy takes a vacation in Wisconsin when the library of the place she is vacationing at is vandalized. Nancy, along with her friends George Fayne and Bess Marvin, must survive an unknown assailant while discovering the secret passageway's inside of an old castle. Later, Treasure in the Royal Tower was made into a Computer (PC) Game where you can play as Nancy and find Marie Antoinette's tower. |
Leaving Poppy | Kate Cann | 2,006 | Leaving Poppy is split into three parts. The story starts with a girl, the main protagonist 'Amber' arriving at a house on Merral Road. She's unsure that it's the right house, as many others she tried weren't right. After entering the house that she begins to think back about her mother and half-sister Poppy, she thinks back to various previous events such as Amber's birthday which Poppy ruined. Amber had told her mother that she was going on holiday, but she found the house (17 Merral Road) on a flat sharing website, intending to stay there, telling her mother later by phone. Poppy is obviously a disturbed and emotionally unstable child from the beginning, she "crys all the time...refusing to eat". Amber saw her moving as abandoning them. She meets Rory, who helps her with her case, which she promptly unpacks. Later she meets the rest of her housemates: Ben, Chrissie and Kaz. After eating the meal Ben had prepared that night, she asks about finding a job, determined she'll find one tomorrow. Amber had lied to them all, she wasn't ever on a gap year and never had a broken relationship. Upstairs Amber sees 'dust shapes', but thinks nothing of it. Amber has recounts more of Poppy's previous actions and her bizarre relationship with her mother. Poppy acts violently hurting another girl, then runs into her mother's bed bot Poppy and their mother crying. Their mother refuses that anything is Poppy's fault. The next day Amber looks for a job in many cafes and bars but can't find one. She eventually finds a cafe she loves and keeps asking for a job. She makes an apple crumble as a trial and eventually gets the job. The owner of the cafe (The Albatross) is Bert and the other cook is Marty. That night Amber wakes many times, because of the window rattling. After a day at work, Amber decides to get fit. On the way to number 17 she bumps into an old woman from 11 Merral Road, talking to her about whereabouts in the house she lives mentioning the attic. She leaves Amber asking her why the last person left the house. Amber, thinking she's crazy quickly goes into the house. When heading up the stairs Amber thinks she sees the dust shadow again in the large ornate Edwardian mirror on the landing. She heads up to the attics, to find 2/3 of them full of junk. As she enters the last attic, Amber begins to notice things such as the iron bed and the wooden rocking chair,seem to falter and fade, so she eaves the attic quickly. Amber asks about the previous housemate left and got the answer that she just wanted a change. She asks Ben if old things can have an 'atmosphere' but doesn't tell him what happened in the attic. That night when she goes to bed she keeps telling herself not to go crazy. She dreams one of her 'guilt dreams' where she leaves Poppy. The next day Amber leaves work and tells her housemates that she'll cook the next meal. Amber forgot to phone her mother once again like she promised, upon doing so it appeared that her mother had called the police and they'd laughed at her. The conversation ends with Amber saying sorry. "...she'd said she felt sorry so many times that the word had lost all meaning." Amber had 2 days off work, she spent the first drunk and slept happily, and the second hanging around with Kaz talking. Sunday night she is awoken by the 'fixed' window rattling again. She scavenges a rug, radio and other items from the first 2 attics, not going near the 3rd. Her room "didn't feel quite right..." Amber gets into the routine of going to the phone box every day after work to call her mother. Her mother kept her updated about Poppy, she'd only managed 2 days of college since Amber left and is deeply depressed. Amber scavenges some raw fish from Bert and cooks a meal that goes down well with everyone. Amber phones her mother finally telling her she's not coming back, her mother sees this as abandoning her saying she cares for no-one but themselves. She notices her throat becoming sore, she reveals her mother doesn't trust doctors and she gets tonsillitis twice a year. Kaz says she'll make the next meal, obviously attracted to Rory playfully flirting. Amber goes to bed the darkness upstairs doesn't seem right and she keeps telling herself not to get ill. The next day at work, Bert reveals that Marty is involved with a girl he met in the summer, Amber's heart sinks. On the way home she meets the old women again, who seems to warn her not to go into the house, not to sleep in her room. She enters no. 17 asks Ben to fix her window then sleeps on her bed. Amber woke up sure Poppy was in the room with her, sitting on the bed, like she does, she could feel the pressure on the bed. The shape disappears and Amber tries to get back to sleep. She hears a high pitch complaining like Poppy but different, then she hears an eerie noise, wood on wood. The old rocking chair in the attic. Next morning Amber tries to convince herself it was a dream. Looking in the mirror again she sees the dust shape, only thinner this time, also her reflection seems to waver and move. After Kaz's meal, Kaz and Rory have a playfight with one of the old cushions. In the scuffle it's torn apart and everyone recoils in horror. Fingers of hair poked out the pillow, melted together with pins. Inside are 3 small teeth, from a child. Amber hears that Kaz had seen and heard exactly what she had seen and heard but she says nothing. Kaz wedged the rocking chair with books, haunted by the noises at night. Part 1 ends with "everything going dark" leaving the reader uncertain of what happens next. |
The Woven Path | Robin Jarvis | 1,995 | When Neil Chapman, son of the new caretaker of the Wyrd Museum (a strange building owned by the three mysterious Webster sisters) enters the secret room that holds the 'Separate Collection,' he is unwittingly whisked back in time to World War II London with a teddy bear possessed by the spirit of an American airman who wants to change the past and save the lives of those dear to him. |
Cue for Treason | Geoffrey Trease | 1,940 | Peter Brownrigg, a 14-year-old boy who lives in Cumberland in the north of England, is involved in a secret night protest against the theft of his village's farmland by Sir Philip Morton. He leaves his village to escape prosecution for throwing a rock at Sir Philip Morton. He first goes to Penrith, but unexpectedly encounters Sir Philip at a performance of Richard III by a touring playing company. He hides from him in a prop coffin (supposed to contain the body of King Henry VI) which is later carried on to the company's cart. The players discover Peter hiding and the kindly Desmonds, who run the playing company, take him on as a boy actor. Another boy, Kit Kirkstone, also joins the company. Kit proves excellent at playing female roles while Peter acts as an understudy. After Peter's jealousy leads to a fight, he discovers Kit's secret. Kit is actually a girl in disguise, really called Katharine Russell, who is running away to avoid a forced marriage to Sir Philip, who is only interested in her inheritance. The company breaks up and the Desmonds promise to take Peter and Kit to a London theatre company. When Mr. Desmond breaks his leg in a river accident, the youngsters go on ahead. After being initially turned away by Richard Burbage of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, they are accepted as apprentices by the playwright William Shakespeare, who recognises Kit's acting ability and Peter's gift of mimicry. They perform in various plays and see Sir Philip in the audience during Romeo and Juliet. Peter's copy of Shakespeare's new play Henry V is stolen by the "Yellow Gentleman", and Kit and Peter worry that he plans to profit from the unpublished play. While stealing back the script, Peter overhears a plot by Sir Philip and his associates to assassinate Queen Elizabeth. He also notices an odd poem written on the script. He realizes that some of the underlined words found in this poem must be part of a code but has no idea how to decipher it. After meeting the head of the Queen's Secret Service, Kit and Peter travel back to Peter's village in disguise with one of the Queen's spies, Tom Boyd, to follow a clue which leads to Sir Philip's peel tower. Tom is killed by the conspirators. Peter is captured but not before learning that John Somers, an actor in their company, is to shoot the Queen during the first performance of Henry V. This is part of a wider conspiracy to install a new regime in England, the rest of it is vague but they are evidently in league with Spain. He is taken for questioning to a deserted Ullswater islet but manages to knock out the guard. He swims to the mainland and narrowly escapes across the fells. Kit and Peter go to a local magistrate, but discover he is a part of the treasonous plan. They steal his horses, which are of exceptional quality, intending to ride to London to warn the Queen. Sir Philip and his associates give chase. On the road they meet Desmond and the rest of the company who are rehearsing Edward II. On hearing of the conspiracy, Desmond vows to stop Sir Philip. The actors dress up in their soldier costumes and rig the horses to sound like an army ready to attack, with trumpets and drums behind. Kit and Peter pretend to be captives so Sir Philip will dismount, and he and his followers are then taken into custody by Desmond's men. Kit and Peter make a desperate dash back to London, and John Somers is captured by guards moments before he can shoot. Kit and Peter meet the Queen and tell her their adventures. In the last paragraph, Peter finishes writing the story and we learn that he and Kit are now married with 2 boys and living in a lakeside house in Cumberland. |
The Singapore Grip | James Gordon Farrell | 1,978 | Broadly satirical in nature, The Singapore Grip details events during the beginning of the Second World War and the Japanese invasion and occupation of Singapore. The action centers around a British family who controls one of the territory's leading trading companies. The title derives from a slang phrase describing a sexual technique sometimes used by prostitutes. |
Mr. Norris Changes Trains | Christopher Isherwood | 1,935 | The novel follows the movements of William Bradshaw, its narrator, who meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris on a train going from Holland to Germany. As they approach the frontier William strikes up a conversation with Mr Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a suspect passport. William and Mr Norris succeed in crossing the frontier. Afterward, Mr Norris invites William to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin they see each other frequently (including eating ham and eggs at the first class restaurant of Berlin Friedrichstraße railway station). Several oddities of Mr Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a Communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Mr Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt, who tyrannizes him. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin. Norris subsequently returns with his fortunes restored and apparently conducting communication with an unknown Frenchwoman called Margot. Schmidt reappears and tries to blackmail Norris. Norris uses Bradshaw as a decoy to get an aristocratic friend of his, Baron Pregnitz, to take a holiday in Switzerland and meet "Margot" under the guise of a Dutchman. Bradshaw is urgently recalled by Ludwig Bayer (based on Willi Münzenberg) one of the leaders of the Communist groups, who explains that Norris was spying for the French and both his group and the police know about it. Bradshaw observes they are being followed by the police and persuades Norris to leave Germany. After the Reichstag fire, the Nazis eliminate Bayer and most of Norris's comrades. Bradshaw returns to England where he receives intermittent notes and postcards from Norris, who has fled Berlin, pursued by Schmidt. The novel's last words are drawn from a postcard that Mr Norris sends to William from Rio de Janeiro: "What have I done to deserve all this?" |
Chéri | Colette | 1,920 | The novel is about the separation of Chéri and his lover of six years, the much older Léa de Lonval (as the novel opens he is 25 and she is 49). The two believe their relationship is casual until they are separated by Chéri's marriage at which point they realize they are in love. They spend a miserable six months apart, at which point Chéri appears at Léa's home. They spend the night together and Léa begins to plan their new life together. However, when she learns that Chéri had returned for the moral strength to be a husband, she gives him courage then releases him to return home. |
The Fighting Ground | Edward Irving Wortis | 1,984 | The story takes place in New Jersey on April 3 and 4 in 1778. The Revolutionary War has begun, and the American colonists are fighting for their independence from Britain. As he works the fields with his father on a warm April day in 1778, thirteen-year-old Jonathan daydreams of being a soldier in the Revolutionary War. Against his parents' wishes, he rushes to the village when the warning bell tolls, to meet the British forces. Jonathan expects to find excitement and glory on the battlefield. Instead, Jonathan and the other local patriots battle and retreat from a group of Hessians, feared German mercenaries that have been hired by the British. Due to a lack of understanding of the German language, Jonathan, in hiding, believes he has been discovered by the Hessians and rather than wait for death, surrenders himself to them (although, ironically, they would never have noticed him if he hadn't revealed himself). Three Hessians capture Jonathan and hold him hostage in an abandoned house. Jonathan now experiences fear, exhaustion, confusion, and eventually, Stockholm syndrome, forming an unusual and almost warm relationship with his enemies. Hardly more than twenty-four long hours later, however, the house is suddenly raided by some of Jonathan's fellow patriots from the previous day. Abruptly, the Hessians are all three killed, something Jonathan is not sure whether to be thankful or upset about. In the end, Jonathan returns home, his understanding of war and life forever changed. |
REM World | null | null | Arthur Woodbury is very tired of being overweight and being called "Biscuit Butt". The reason he is overweight is that his father died and he is very sad, even though he lives with his mom and grandma. So he orders the REM sleep device which will help him lose weight. After reading the first side of the instructions, he falls asleep and enters REM World. Feeling ripped off, he throws the device off, but after meeting his guide Morf, a small furry creature that can change form, he realizes that he need to find the device, or else the whole world will be swallowed by an evil darkness. On his quest, he meets frog people, giants, cloud people, killer birds, and an evil demon. After finding the device and learning his life should not end because of a lost loved one and that imagination is important, he comes home and has lost a lot of weight. From now on, he is now called "Courage" rather than "Biscuit Butt". |
Bye-Bye | Jane Ransom | 1,997 | The bisexual, nameless narrator decides to abandon her life with her husband, changing her name and her appearance. The story follows her obsession with Andorgenie, a mysterious performance artist, and her relationships with different men and women, none of whom she really likes. |
The Time Trap | Edgar Pierre Jacobs | 1,962 | When Mortimer discovers a time machine built by his old adversary Dr. Miloch, he can't resist to try it out and travels through time to a prehistoric swamp, the Middle Ages, and a desolate wasteland in the 51st century. |
The Yellow "M" | Edgar Pierre Jacobs | 1,956 | For some time now London has been terrorized by an enigmatic villain who informs the press in advance of his crimes. He commits daring robberies and leaves behind an "M" in a yellow circle as a signature. When the Imperial State Crown is stolen from the Tower of London, the Home Office assigns Captain Francis Blake to assist Chief Inspector Glenn Kendall of Scotland Yard. Blake in turn calls in his old friend and housemate, Professor Philip Mortimer, who has been on holiday to Scotland but agrees to return to London to help in the enquiry. Meeting Blake at the Centaur Club, Mortimer is also introduced to some of its regulars: Leslie Macomber, editor of the Daily Mail; Sir Hugh Calvin, judge at the Central Criminal Court; Professor Robert Vernay of the British Medical Association; and Dr Jonathan Septimus of the Psychiatric Institute. Following dinner the group breaks up with Vernay and Septimus electing to walk home. On the way Septimus feels uneasy and calls a taxi, leaving Vernay alone. Shortly afterwards, Vernay is abducted by the Yellow "M". The following night Macomber is kidnapped from his office at the Daily Mail. In spite of the judge's objections, Kendall insists on staying the night at the Calvin residence as a precaution. This is to no avail: Calvin disappears and Kendall is later found unconscious and with no recollection of what happened — a common occurrence with those who have confronted the Yellow "M" head-on. Blake and Mortimer meanwhile receive several messages telling them to stay away from the case and the symbol of the Yellow "M" even appears on the back of Blake's overcoat. The Yellow "M" announces that there will be yet another kidnap and the terrified Septimus is convinced that he is next. He agrees with Blake's suggestion that he leave London. Taking a train from King's Cross with two police detectives, their journey is unexpectedly stopped. Blake goes to investigate but, returning to their compartment, discovers Septimus has disappeared. As he and the policemen search the area, their train suddenly collides with the Harwich Express and is derailed. Meanwhile, Mortimer is at the archives of the Daily Mail where, with the help of Mr Stone the archivist, he is conducting his own research into the affair. He comes across the case of The Mega Wave, a book written many years ago by a certain Doctor J. Wade about aspects of the human brain. Wade theorised that a part of the brain, which he called the Mega Wave, could be used to turn people into docile and powerful beings and even be manipulated by others. James Thornley, the publisher, instigated libel action against scathing press articles attacking the book and its conclusions. Macomber, Calvin, Vernay and Septimus were all involved in the court proceedings and Thornley suddenly died of apoplexy when he lost the case. Mortimer goes to the British Museum to find a copy of The Mega Wave only to discover that it has been stolen by the Yellow "M". He returns home to inform Blake of his discoveries and they agree to look into it further. That night a mysterious masked figure breaks into Blake and Mortimer's house. Awoken, the occupants confront the intruder but he is resistant to bullets and Nasir the manservant is knocked unconscious when he attempts to seize him. The intruder escapes into the night. Blake and Mortimer then discover a listening device hidden in their living room. Later that day Blake receives a letter from Septimus begging him to go to Limehouse Dock where someone will give him vital information regarding the case. It's clearly a trap, but Blake elects to go anyway with Kendall and the police providing discreet support. After Blake has left, Mortimer is visited by Stone from the Daily Mail who has found a copy of The Mega Wave which was sent to the paper for review when first published. Mortimer reads through the complex book and something in it makes him realise that Blake is in terrible danger! At the docks, the Yellow "M" makes an unsuccessful attempt to kill Blake. The police give chase but, despite being shot at, falling into the river, crashing his car and catching fire, the Yellow "M" still manages to escape, apparently unharmed. Arriving at the scene by taxi, Mortimer stays on the Yellow "M"'s trail, following him into the sewers where he finds the mystery man's secret lair. There he comes across an impressive laboratory where he sees none other than Septimus questioning the Yellow "M" over his recent failures regarding Blake and Mortimer — which he is unable to explain. When the Yellow "M"'s cumbersome headgear is removed, Mortimer is astonished to recognise his old enemy Olrik, but the man who was once a ruthless adventurer, gang leader and master criminal now appears to be nothing more than a pathetic slave in a state of hypnosis under Septimus' control. Once Olrik has been sent to get some rest, Mortimer confronts Septimus at gunpoint only for the latter to use a spinning disk on his head that hypnotises Mortimer and makes him unconscious. Now prisoner, Mortimer listens as Septimus explains how he was the writer of The Mega Wave (using the pseudonym Wade) and how the theories it put forward were the subject of ridicule by Macomber and Vernay in the press, who saw it as both nonsense and harmful to the public. When his publisher Thornley instigated libel proceedings, Judge Calvin was equally critical, describing it as "scientific heresy". This resulted in Thornley's death while Septimus, who had defended the book in court without revealing himself as the author, left, gutted, for Sudan. In Africa he met a white madman found wandering the desert and decided to use him as a guinea-pig in order to try out his theories on the Mega Wave and get his revenge. In time he invented a machine called the Telecephaloscope which enables him to gain control over a subject's Mega Wave and thus manipulate them from a distance. He can even see what the subject sees through a TV screen — the subject's eyes acting as cameras relating to the brain which passes the images on to the Telecephaloscope. Septimus is still unaware that Pig, the name he gave to his subject, is Olrik, the infamous adventurer, driven almost completely amnesiac due to the events surrounding the mystery of the Great Pyramid. Septimus concedes that he cannot control the subject's subconscious and Mortimer privately theorises that this would explain the Yellow "M"'s failures regarding him and Blake — since events in their confrontations subconsciously reminded Olrik of his past battles with them even if he was not actually aware of it. Using the technology in his lair, Septimus jams the BBC Television signal, announcing that the Yellow "M" will execute Mortimer in the morning. The officers at Scotland Yard are able to triangulate the source of the signal and begin to search the area. Septimus then proceeds to kidnap a number of prominent Harley Street doctors who are taken prisoner to his hide-out. There he puts on a show of Macomber, Vernay and Calvin, their minds under his control, falling on their knees and "begging" forgiveness for their attacks on him and his theories. Blake learns about Stone taking to Mortimer a copy of The Mega Wave and guesses that this is what led his friend to Limehouse. A reward is issued for the return of the book and the taxi driver who took Mortimer to the docks finds it in his cab. He gives it to Blake and Kendall. The book includes a dedication and they recognise Septimus' handwriting. Realising that he is the mastermind behind the Yellow "M", they lead a raid on his house. Septimus is about to kill Mortimer when the latter breaks the doctor's hold over Olrik by repeating the spell cast on him that caused him to lose his memories (Meanwhile, Mortimer remembering the magic phrase of Razek launched Olrik face and destabilized, a "For Horus remains" ). Suddenly going mad, Olrik turns against Septimus, chases him into the laboratory and uses a machine that casts a lightning bolt to kill the scientist. Olrik recovers his memories and his personality. He recognises Mortimer and is about to take on his enemy when Blake and the police arrive and he is forced to flee. Septimus' death has also restored Calvin, Vernay and Macomber to normal and the Harley Street doctors are freed. Mortimer hands over to Kendall the stolen Imperial Crown. Blake concludes that although Septimus and his exceptional skills could have led him to be seen as one of the greatest scientists of the age, ego and the desire for revenge diverted him from his original goals and led to his downfall. Thus his death should be seen as a warning to others that science is there to help mankind in general and not serve the tyrannical ambitions of a single individual. |
The Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Volume 1: Manetho's Papyrus | null | null | Professor Philip Mortimer is going to Cairo, Egypt for a holiday. He soon gets mixed up in a weird business with ancient papyrus, heretic kings, lost treasures, an old nemesis, and the murder of his friend; Captain Blake. |
Candle | John Barnes | 2,000 | Set in the year 2087, on a nearly crime-free Earth in which humans are under the telepathic control of the artificial intelligence One True, the story is narrated in the first person by its main character, forty-nine-year-old Currie Curtis Curran, a retired mercenary soldier and “cowboy hunter” who is recalled from retirement to capture “Lobo” Dave Singleton, the last of the cowboys, people who have remained beyond of the control of One True by retreating into the Colorado wilderness. Currie’s contact with One True is through a copy of the Resuna “meme”, a “neurocode” program uploaded into the brain, and an implanted “cellular jack” radio device. In addition to communicating with One True, Resuna monitors its host’s thoughts and emotions, provides everyday information and communication, downloads requested memories or skills, adjusts their physiology, and, when offered the spoken code phrase “let overwrite, let override”, can assume control of its host’s body, and erase memories. Resuna learns its host’s preferences and habits, is friendly and communicative, and can even play chess with its host or engage in other pastimes. Ten years before, Currie was the leader of a team of cowboy hunters who captured Lobo’s cowboy gang after a long pursuit in which several of the team were killed and several, including Currie, badly injured. During their final confrontation, Currie sees Lobo fall from a high cliff, apparently to his death. In his briefing by One True, Currie is shown the recorded memories of a mother and daughter beaten, raped, and robbed by Lobo days earlier. Although such emotions are normally kept in check by Resuna, Currie is allowed to feel revulsion and hatred of Lobo, to improve his performance as a hunter. One True explains to Currie that, to decrease his chance of being detected and evaded, he has been assigned to hunt Lobo alone. After goodbyes to his wife of 23 years, Mary, Currie is dropped of by diskster (a futuristic, automatically piloted hovercraft) with various high-tech equipment, including an advanced cold weather suit, shape-adjusting ski/snowshoes, and a shelter that self-assembles from collected carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen matter. Within days, Currie is captured by Lobo, awakening after many days unconscious from the severe blow to his head that incapacitated him in a comfortable, geothermally-heated underground lair, to discover his copy of Resuna no longer responding to his mental or spoken requests. Nursed back to health by Lobo/Dave, the two men exchange life stories, which are so similar they joke that they could be brothers. No longer controlled by Resuna and One True, Currie agrees to join Dave in an effort to hide from One True. About half of the book consists of Currie and Dave’s telling of their personal and the Earth’s general history. Among the details revealed are that the beatings and rapes shown to Currie were fabrications, and that the mother and child are actually Dave’s wife and child, who were captured and “turned” by One True during the “Meme Wars”, giving them false memories of their history, from which, during Dave’s actual visit to them to obtain medicine and supplies, he was able to temporarily free them. Currie’s search for Dave resulted in enough information being uploaded that they must abandon his lair and attempt to build another, while remaining undetected by One True’s network of surveillance satellites. While caching supplies, Currie has a skiing fall, and, shaken up and angry, reflexively says “let overwrite, let override”, to find himself immediately calm. A little later, he realizes that after saying the trigger phrase, he was unconscious and under the control of his Resuna for several minutes, during which time it/he carelessly left a trail visible to satellites, and, he assumes, Resuna uploaded information to One True, though he is still unable to make the usual mental contact with Resuna. Hurrying to their old lair to warn Dave, he discovers in a previously unexplored room there a suspended animation device, unmentioned in Dave’s story, and beyond anything he could have constructed himself. Dave informs him that, while he was unconscious, Dave used various means to burn out his cellular jack, assuring that even if his Resuna reactivated, it would be unable to contact One True, and promising to tell him the omitted parts of his story after they have fled to safety. After abandoning the first lair, while the two work to excavate their new one, Dave tells more of his life story. As Dave reaches its conclusion, Currie realizes that his disabled Resuna is not due to his head injury, but due to Dave uploading an additional meme, “Freecyber”. Although designed during the Meme Wars to disable other memes, principally One True, Dave’s story explained that every version of Freecyber had “mutated” into as controlling a meme as the ones it was intended to fight. Enraged, Currie attacks Dave, and is on the verge of killing him when Dave shouts “let overwrite, let override”, disabling Currie, and flees. Upon regaining consciousness, Currie finds his Resuna fully functional, though still unable to contact with One True. He pursues Dave, arriving at the original lair to discover him already captured by a large team of hunters. Making no effort to fight or hide, Curry joins them, and returns to his home and civilization. Back in civilization, a cellular jack is installed in Dave’s head, but One True is unable to load a functioning Resuna in his brain. Currie’s Resuna is behaving atypically, indicating to he and it that it has become a true, human-like person. He neither requests nor is compelled to have his burnt-out jack repaired, and demands to be allowed to speak with One True via eyes and ears. One True speaks with him, explaining that his Resuna is an experimental version designed to interact with Freecyber, and that his mission was planned to result in his capture in order for One True to obtain a “wild copy” of the last generation of Freecyber for its research. As a learning AI, One True explains, it is dissatisfied with its lack of true human empathy and the lack of freedom accorded humans under the present scheme, and seeks to change it, without allowing human society to return to its previous warring, suffering state. The story closes a few years later, with Dave, his wife Nancy, Currie, and Mary listening to Dave’s daughter Kelly give a philosophical speech at her high school graduation, while Currie, his cellular jack repaired, converses with One True about Kelly’s speech, the reluctance of many people to replace their old, more controlling version of Resuna with new ones, and the nature of the human experience. |
The Last Day of Creation | Wolfgang Jeschke | 1,981 | The book is structured into three different parts. The first part describes several ancient artifacts that turn out to be remnants of modern era items: a part of a pilot's breathing apparatus worshipped for centuries as a Catholic saintly relic, a clearly recognizable trace of a Jeep discovered during archaeological works on Gibraltar, found in the same layer as an early hominid skeleton and an equally old grenade launcher of a model just introduced in the US Army. William W. Francis, an ambitious officer of the US Navy, becomes convinced that time travel is possible and manages to launch a secret project to develop a technological device able to transfer people and materiel through time. The second part describes the project "Chronotron", the successful implementation of a time machine, which is at first able only to move things into the past. It is believed that time transfer into the future will be solved soon. The American administration decides to move oil pumping machinery 5 million years into the past, set it up on oil deposits in the Near East, and transport the oil through the then dried-up Mediterranean Basin to the shores of the North Sea, where reverse time machines will push it to the modern era. The massively expensive project is kept strictly secret. Objections of scientists that time transfer into the future may be just a dream, that the project could exhaust the country in a new arm race, and that the history of humankind may be irreversibly changed, are ignored. The third part introduces Steve Stanley, a military pilot picked up to participate in the project. His task is to protect the installations and specialists transferred into the past. Stanley successfully descends into the prehistoric Mediterranean. He is surprised to arrive in the middle of an all-out war, where newcomers are chased by nuclear artillery. He learns that the plan went completely wrong: isolated groups of Americans were scattered through time more widely than calculated, the reverse time transfer is impossible, and worst of all, Arabs had discovered the plan and decided to strike back by sending their own soldiers into the same period to destroy the American expedition. Stanley meets people who arrived from various different futures, including one where the United States is limited to the east of the Mississippi and Mexico is the superpower. Most of the time travellers, unable to adjust to life without modern amenities and having no practical skills, have been evacuated to a base on the Bermudas, and the rest try to fend off attackers and to rescue unsuspecting newcomers. Overall, the situation seems hopeless and the handful of modern humans have no chance to set up a new civilization. |
The Coldest Winter Ever | Sister Souljah | null | Set in the projects of Brooklyn, New York, The Coldest Winter Ever is the story of Winter Santiaga (aptly named because she was born during one of New York's worst snowstorms), the rebellious, pampered teenage daughter of a notorious drug dealer. Ricky Santiaga, Winter's father, has attained substantial wealth through his illegal drug empire and lavishes his wife, Winter, and Winter's three younger sisters, Porsche, Lexus, and Mercedes, with the best things money can (and cannot) buy. Unknown to her father, Winter uses her hustling tricks to get whatever she wants. Winter's world is turned upside down on her 16th birthday, when her father suddenly decides to relocate his family and his growing business to Long Island, but she is determined not to sever ties with the old neighborhood. Her life spirals downward when her mother is shot in the face by foes of her father. Shortly afterward, the FBI arrives at the Santiaga mansion while Winter is at a party, seizes the family's possessions, and sends the drug lord to prison. At this juncture, Winter's sisters are placed in child custody, rather than in their unemployed mother's custody. Winter escapes by pretending to not be her parents’ daughter. Winter stays with a man just for his money for a while, but when his girlfriend comes back, Winter goes to live with an aunt. While with the Aunt, Winter's location is revealed, and she is turned over to the Bureau of Child Welfare. Winter's location was probably divulged by Natalie, a former friend of Winter's, who suspected that Winter was trying to date her boyfriend. While visiting her father in jail, she finds out that he had an infant son and was cheating on her mother, which tears her apart. Also, her father murdered someone while in jail. After being taken out of her aunt’s home, Winter starts living at the House of Success, a group home for teenage girls. Her new surroundings do not stop her from hustling: she makes money by selling clothes and cigarettes to her housemates, and she does their hair. Winter obtains the goods she sells from her friend Simone, who is a booster who steals designer clothes for her. Winter continues making money this way until Simone is arrested. Winter does not bail out now-pregnant Simone, but Simone gets out another way. Upon her release, Simone gathers some friends to wait so that they can beat up Winter. Winter escapes the beating by running and never returns. Then Simone falls and has a miscarriage. Rashida, one of Winter's House of Success housemates, thinks that Winter needs help and persuades her to go to a friend's house. Winter doesn't know that the friend is Sister Souljah, whom Winter boldly stated she never liked in the book's introduction. Under Souljah's tutelage, Winter volunteers at a benefit for people with HIV/AIDS, but Winter still does whatever she can to get money. Winter steals money from the AIDS benefit and rushes home to pack. Suspicious of Winter leaving, Lauren, Souljah's sister, switches the bag into which Winter has put her prized belongings. Winter takes a cab to a New Jersey hotel, and realizes that she has no money, no jewels, and no protection. Winter hooks up with an old boyfriend named Bullet, who has money. She finds out that she is pregnant with the baby of a man who tricked her into believing he was hip-hop MC GS. Months later, Winter's world crashes again when she is attacked in a car by Simone. A crowd gathers to watch the fight, and Winter loses focus when she sees Bullet cause the crowd to disperse by waving a gun in the air. Once Winter looks away, Simone slashes her across the face with a broken bottle. Winter is led back to the car by Bullet and, shortly afterward, the police arrive. Bullet leaves Winter, who gets a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for transporting drugs in his rental car. Soon, her old friends Natalie and Simone join her in prison, and her younger sister eventually becomes just like her. The ending surprises: after her father was jailed, Winter talked about being let out of prison to attend her mother’s funeral. |
The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers | Sarnath Banerjee | 2,007 | The novel reinvents the legend of The Wandering Jew as a Jewish merchant called Abravanel Ben Obadiah Ben Aharon Kabariti who once lived in 18th century Kolkata (Calcutta) and who recorded the scandalous affairs of its British administrators in a book called "The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers". Although it has several subplots, the novel is basically about the narrator's quest to find the "Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers" which his grandfather Pablo Chatterjee found at an old Jewish trinket shop in Montmartre, Paris, in the 1950s. Pablo's wife gave away the book, as well as her husband's other belongings, upon his death; the narrator tries to recover the book, which was one of his childhood favorites. |
White Death | Clive Cussler | 2,003 | A Novel from the NUMA files, A Kurt Austin Adventure. In this novel, the main character Kurt Austin has to destroy an overpowered fish farm that makes mutant fish before the entire eco-system is changed. it:Morte bianca (romanzo) fi:Kurt Austin |
Love Lessons | Jacqueline Wilson | 2,005 | The story revolves around a girl called Prue who lives with her bossy, often scary dad who loses his temper very easily, a sweet yet pressured mum and an immature but kind hearted young sister, Grace. Her dad is very temperamental and he gets mad on silly things like art classes for Prue and he thinks going to school is an absurd idea. He insists on educating Prue and Grace himself while running a not-so-successful book shop. One day a man from the education system comes and tells Prue’s dad that Prue will have to go to school so she can get her GCSE’s. After much grumbling her father decides to send her to Maths tuition but not school. After the class, Prue gives up and bunks her classes, while spending £60 in the process on chocolate which she later shares with Grace and some lacy undies. Prue’s father finds out and gets so worked up about it that he has a stroke and has to leave for the hospital immediately. After much thinking over, the girls’ mother decides to send them to the nearest public school, Wentworth High, while still keeping it a secret from their sick father. Prue and Grace go to their new school and find it a slightly scary place. Prue meets the school art teacher, Mr Raxberry(Rax as everyone calls him) and develops a crush on him. Prue tries to be confident but Grace shows that she is scared. The girls give admission exams but while Grace finds most questions easy, Prue panics as she thinks the easy questions are trick questions and can't do the hard ones. She writes an essay in hope that it will be counted as good intelligence. Grace passes with flying colors while Prue does not get a good score and is sent in the class where dense kids are put. She finds it a struggle and is very unhappy. Grace on the other hand is very happy and makes new friends who nicknamed themselves as Iggy and Figgy. The next day is also difficult for Prue as there are PE lessons and she has to change with the other girls where they see Prue's lacy under-garments and starts calling her a slag but she has Rax’s art lessons to look forward to. She enjoys immensely and Rax even tells her that “You’re going to be the girl that makes my teaching worthwhile, I love you'. A boy named Toby likes Prue though the feeling is not mutual and Toby’s girlfriend is very jealous of them. Prue helps Toby with his reading as he is dyslexic and continues to visit her father, who is being extremely uncooperative in trying to recover his speaking skills, on regular bases. Prue finds out while talking to Rax that he is married to a blonde woman who had been his childhood sweetheart and has a son and daughter. Soon Prue and Rax’s relationship starts to develop and they share the 10 minutes of peace they have without anyone in the way, to talk and laugh, as Prue starts to baby-sit for Rax’s children. After having an argument with Rax, Prue confronts him and asks if he loves her, he then confesses that he does and cannot stop fantasising about her but says that he cannot risk his marriage and his job. She then kisses Rax, who at first pulls away but Prue is persistent and kisses him again and soon Rax begins to kiss Prue back. Afraid they will be spotted Rax drive off to a place he used to go to with his wife when they were young, they talk and continue making out. However when she arrives back home Prue’s dad has come home, he finds out about their going to school but cannot do much because of his still stiff position. Afraid that he will ban her and Grace from going back to school and therefore not seeing Rax anymore, she confides her troubles to Rax, who is really agitated about them being seen together and asks her to calm down. Finally he hugs her trying to calm her but then another student named Sarah spots Prue hugging Rax and telling him that she loves him. Sarah then proceeds to tell everyone else about the incident. The end consists of the head teacher of the school expelling Prue, Rax comes and says goodbye to Prue for the last time, where they briefly consider running off together. Later with the help of Tony Prue's family discovering a set of antique books and selling them to pay off their heavy debts. Prue is sent to Kingtown High School while Rax gets to keep his job. |
Downsiders | Neal Shusterman | 2,001 | The Downsiders which is located underneath New York City, is a secret community of over 5,000 people (either native-born or "fallers" from the surface) that are never allowed to travel to the Topside (the surface). Talon, a fourteen-year-old Downsider, is curious about the Topside; he travels to the Topside and meets a fourteen-year-old girl named Lindsay Matthias, who just moved to her father's NYC townhouse after her mother went to Africa with her professor for three years to study the white rhino. Things get off to a rocky beginning, but they become friends. However, when Talon brings Lindsay to the Downside, the Wise Advisors (the Downside's government) find out and sentence Talon to death by executing him in the pipe system. Talon survives; he winds up on Coney Island "under the boardwalk," and has the time of his life, experiencing the "strange Topside rituals" for the first time. Meanwhile, Mark Matthias, Lindsay's father, is working on an Aqueduct Shaft downtown. He has been noticing strange behavior from his daughter lately, most notably not coming home until the early morning hours, and his stress from home spills over into his work life. He comes down hard on his workers, causing an extreme speedup in progress. However, one dump truck that lurches forward too quickly to receive its load collapses through the ground into the Downside's Brass Junction. While the Downsiders panic about the Topsiders discovering them, Talon sees what is happening on Lindsay's TV screen and, after seeing more than he could bear, rushes back to the Downside with Lindsay in hot pursuit. After Lindsay meets up with Talon (after almost being killed in a Null Tunnel), Talon tells Lindsay that they should stop seeing each other, for all that they do only brings trouble. Lindsay, who feels that if she finds out the Downside's origins she could save the Downside, rushes to the library while Talon heads to the Downside. As Talon heads for the Downside, the Downsiders meet at the city hall ("Hall of Action") to try to stop the Topsiders. Railborn Skinner, Talon's former friend and the person who ratted Talon out, suggests knocking out the Topside's utilities to punish them for their "ungratefulness." Talon comes back and tells the Downsiders, who thought he was dead, that he saw the Topside; after the Wise Advisors ask Railborn what to do, Railborn orders for Talon to be sent to the Chamber of Soft Walls (the Downside mental ward). In the midst of the events, the Topside's utilities are knocked out (which include electricity,gas,and water). However, rather than panicking, the New Yorkers decide to party instead, and the mayor passes an order that the utilities be shut down once per year in a celebration known as "The Festival of Outages". Meanwhile, Lindsay, who has gathered info about the Downside's origin, sneaks into the Downside and gives the information to Talon, hoping that it helps. At first, Talon is angry at this information; he soon, however, realizes what to do. He demands to the guard to be released and travels to the Chamber of First Runes, where only a Most-Beloved (the Downside's leader, who there is none at this point in time) is allowed in. The guards let him in after Talon demands to be let in (several times, actually; the guards did not cave easily). Talon sees the grave of Alfred Ely Beach, a forgotten inventor who created the Downside over one-hundred years ago, and after having a "conversation" with him, he leaves, knowing what to do. At the same time, a large piece of rock impales Gutta, and leaves her unconsicious. Railborn carries Gutta to a hospital on the Topside, and they are both labled wards of the state. At the hospital, Railborn does a ritual swearing he would never seek the Downside again. Meanwhile on the surface, Mark is being blamed for the outages. The city orders his resignation, and he signs the resignation papers after talking to Lindsay, who tries to comfort and console him. As the two share the moment, an explosion is heard and felt. The explosion is actually half of the Downside, which was destroyed, and sealed up as a result, in a plan by Talon to keep the Topsiders out. The plan works, and Talon, who is now Most-Beloved, later returns to the Chamber of First Runes and leaves Lindsay's information at Beach's grave; he sees a journal there, though as tempting as it is to read it, Talon leaves it. Upon exiting the chamber, Talon tells the guards to never let anyone (himself included) in until a new Most-Beloved arises. Talon and Lindsay meet up again months later. Talon takes Lindsay to the top of an abandoned skyscraper; Downsiders are now living atop them, and this area is called the Highside. Talon tells Lindsay that once the Downsiders know what all the Topsiders know, they will reveal themselves. But until then, they will remain left alone. On a orphanage on Long Island, a boy and a girl name Raymond and Grettel are the most beloved kids there. Following this book will be a sequel called "Downside Up" Disney Channel Also owns the rights to the movie script adapted version by Neal Shusterman and has not been released yet. |
The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn | John Bellairs | null | Anthony Monday and his family live in Hoosac, Minnesota, and, while not poor, are having money problems. Anthony is desperate to help with expenses and accepts a part-time job from Myra Eells, the elderly librarian of Hoosac Public Library. Working at the library allows Anthony to earn a little money, as well learn more about the man who built the library, the wealthy and eccentric Alpheus Winterborn. Rumor has it that Winterborn found something on an archeological dig many years before and hid it for safekeeping somewhere in the library, but no one believes the tale to be true. During his chores around the building, Anthony ultimately finds a clue that hints that the Winterborn treasure does exist and if clues, written by Winterborn himself, are followed correctly they will lead the lucky treasure hunter to the prize. Anthony knows that finding the treasure will result in money that can help with family finances and treatment during his father's heart-attack recovery. But soon Anthony runs afoul of the greedy bank vice-president, Hugo Philpotts, who seems to know a little something about the Winterborn treasure, too. They both fight for the treasure and look for it. Anthony finds the treasure in the weathervane, a gold statue that was worth a lot of money; after which he sells it. He gave half of the money to Ms. Eells and kept half for himself. |
The Dark Secret of Weatherend | John Bellairs | null | Anthony and Myra Eells are touring the countryside near their hometown in Minnesota when they pass the old Weatherend estate, a dilapidated mansion where the eccentric J.K. Borkman once lived. He was obsessed with the weather and spent his years monitoring the skies. Despite posted signs enforcing No Trespassing, Anthony and Ms. Eells explore the grounds and find grotesque statues symbolizing wind, hail, snow, and lightning and a small diary hidden in the floorboards of the garage. The two would-be treasure hunters take the book home as a souvenir. Soon thereafter, Anthony and Ms. Eells are visited by Anders Borkman, the son of the man who built Weatherend, who has come reclaim his father's book. Terrifying weather that can only be created by magic begins sweeping through Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Anthony and Ms. Eells realize all too quickly the connection between the weather and what's happening out at the justly named Weatherend estate. |
Ratha’s Creature | Clare Bell | 1,983 | Ratha and her people (the Named) are a clan of a strong self-aware cheetah-like prehistoric big cats. They have laws, languages, and traditions and live by herding the creatures, dapple backs (horses) and three horns (deer), they once hunted. Surrounding the Named are the more numerous non-sentient UnNamed, who prey on the clan’s herds. Mating between Named and UnNamed is forbidden, since the clan believes that the resulting young will be UnNamed animals. Ratha, a young female, bucks the clan tradition of male dominance by training with the herding teacher, Thakur, to become a herder. All the herders are male except for Fessran, a strong-willed female who became a herder before Meoran took over leadership. Attacks by the UnNamed are driving Ratha's clan close to the edge of survival. Only her discovery and use of fire (“The Red Tongue” and the “Creature” of the title) offers the clan a chance to survive. Meoran, the tyrannical male clan leader, opposes Ratha and drives her out of the clan. In exile among the UnNamed, Ratha meets a lone male and discovers that the clan is wrong about some of the UnNamed - he speaks very well and is as bright as any clan member. She dubs him "Bonechewer". He teaches her to hunt, the two mate and she has his young. When the cubs don’t develop according to her expectations, she realizes that they are probably non-sentient. She flies into a rage, attacking Bonechewer, biting and crippling the female cub, Thistle-chaser and abandoning her mate and the litter. Returning to the clan at Thakur‘s bidding, Ratha re-acquires “her creature”, the Red Tongue. With it, she overthrows and kills Meoran. When the UnNamed attack again, she, Thakur and Fessran lead the clan in striking back with a new weapon, fire. The enemy flees in terror. After the battle, Ratha emerges as clan leader. She makes Fessran chief of the Firekeepers, those who build and tend fire for the clan. The Firekeepers also wield torches in battle. Ratha gives The People of The Red Tongue each a torch, and they fight the UnNamed. Ratha’s victory is bittersweet, however. Her mate, Bonechewer, was fatally injured in the fight and Ratha finds him dying. Despite everything, she still loves him and is wounded by his death. She is also troubled by the changes Red Tongue has made in her people. However, she knows that with the Red Tongue, the Named will survive. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.